The Old Silent

Melrose moved the Braine woman's lap desk, still with cards outspread, and slouched down in the deep armchair that she had staked out as her territory.

He had the Tarot and Malcolm's portable stereo for company. The Magician stared up at him; the stereo squawked lightly and indecipherably with one of Malcolm's oo-ah-oh-oh-ohteeny-bopping tunes. He reached over and pushed the stop/eject button and looked over the several tapes to see who this brain- curdling group was. BROS. The picture in the empty plastic box showed four very young men who looked like they'd just graduated from the Beavers. He found the Lou Reed tape and slotted that in, turned up the volume, and leaned back to think.

Caroline says-

while biting her lip

Melrose had to admit to a fascination with Caroline's chronicle, with her drugged-out, crazy, wasted life. All of the songs were about Caroline, he was certain, though her name came up in only two. Caroline and her lover or husband and their marriage made in hell.

it's so cold in A-las-ka

it's so cold in A-las-ka

Endless snowy wastes. Melrose got up and went to the window again and saw the moon cast an ambient light across the misty courtyard. Where could the girl be but on the moors? Suddenly, he thought of Mr. Nelligan and relief flooded him for a few moments. Abby was probably sitting in Mr. Nelligan's van warming herself with a cup of cocoa at the very moment Caroline was being beaten.

But he didn't really believe it and walked morosely back to the armchair. Absently, he rolled the brandy around the balloon glass and thought about Ann Denholme. Ann Denholme sitting on his bed. Ruby's comments. The persistent beat of the most depressing of the songs,

they're taking her children away

because they said she was not a good mother

A relentless dirge of guitar chords. It mimicked the repetitive, meaningless sexual encounters of Caroline-army officers, incest, she drew the line at nothing. He half-smiled thinking of Major George Poges. But even given Ruby's hints of Ann Denholme's promiscuity, Melrose couldn't imagine her trying it out on Poges.

miserable rotten slut couldn't

turn anyone away

Up again, he paced round the room. He stopped, went out into the hall, looked at the boots lined up there, and noticed the Princess's ermine-lined ones were missing. Perhaps she'd decided to dine with Poges after all.

What was a woman like that, with her printed velvets and figured satins, her Worths and Lady Duff Gordons… what was she doing here?

He returned to the front room and the fireplace and leaned his head down on his folded arms. Police. Should he call them. About what? No one else was in the slightest way concerned that Abby hadn't eaten her tea. He sighed and paced.

Charles Citrine. Charles Citrine was a regular visitor to Weavers Hall… It was ridiculous to jump to such a conclusion. He knew the man only through that brief meeting. Still.

Ann Denholme had got a phone call; she'd left and been walking in the direction of that house. When he'd stopped by on his way from Harrogate, had he seen that cloaked figure against the sky taking the same route?

But if Charles Citrine had rung up, if he were the one waiting on the moor, why? Or one of the others in that household-Nell Healey or her aunt. Had Charles Citrine thought to marry Ann Denholme? Inheritance couldn't be a motive. Had the sister, Rena, hope of her brother's money? According to Jury they didn't get on. And Nell Healey was far richer than her father. If not money, what?

Knowledge? Blackmail?

since she lost her daughterit's

her eyes that fill with water

That scrap of conversation during breakfast. How Ann Denholme had gone to tend her ill and pregnant sister because the doctor feared another miscarriage.

The Princess had said Ann Denholme hadn't been here when she'd made her first visit to Weavers Hall. That had been eleven years ago. Doesn't come on as the motherly type, not to me, George Poges had added. Why'd she take over the child? Doesn't seem to care much about her… .

because of the things that

she did in the streets and

5

He heard the piercing sound from down there where she was. She hadn't come with the sound. He knew what it meant but he was used to seeing her, her being there behind the sound, aiming the crook or making the clicking and snapping noises or, sometimes, only her eyes telling him what to do. Or trying to. She wasn't that good, but she was small, too, like most of the sounds she made. She couldn't know everything.

What he did know was danger and that there was too much of it in that cracking noise, the air splitting above his head. He could sniff it like blood. Blood everywhere on the snow.

He had not run away. He had run farther, higher, to watch and wait.

He looked sharp to one side then to the other, his nose for the heady smell of the Smokes. They were standing or moving silently down on the moor and round the banky hillside. More were on the other side and he'd have to get behind them and-

He froze. An onrush of white over there was making for the Smokes and running faster than he believed it ever could. It was the Deadheel, the one that never moved from the mat in front of the fire.

That one could run?

The Deadheel could move that fast? But if she'd sent it on a long outrun, she wanted him to work with it.

His brief howl was not pain, not Hello. It was Oh no, oh no, oh no and he pulled it back into his throat.

Oh, no.

In a straight line from his point to its point, he looked at the Starer and panted from the long outrun toward the Clouds. He'd watched the Starer sometimes freeze a cloud with his starey eyes and go right on until he'd frozen himself, as if he was staring at his own eyes.

It wasn't the best way to get the Clouds to obey. You had to get your teeth into them.

But they would have to do this together. Oh, no.

He started climbing the hill and so did the Deadheel. A stumbling hill of banks where the Smokes ranged wide, a hill of broken shards that made walking hard, and running awful. As he ran, some of the Smokes turned and watched.

They knew; they always knew.

Wide apart from the Starer, he'd reached the other side at the same time. He looked over at the Starer through the Clouds and caught a signal. They dashed in opposite ways.

He would have to rough them; it was better to hurl himself against several than to hang on to just one.

In widening arcs they ran until he and the Starer were behind the Clouds.