But Susan was too hungry, tired, and generally apprehensive to appreciate the beauty of this wood. She strode on behind the Grail-Keeper, who walked fast and occasionally began to skip, which was even faster. The fizzing, expectant sensation inside Susan was still there, even growing stronger, but it was counterbalanced by a heavy feeling of lonely dread.
The path began to climb a little, and they came to a grassy clearing. The girl crossed it and climbed upon a strangely flat-surfaced lichen-covered rock that thrust up out of the earth, the greater part of it buried. Though at first it seemed an entirely natural outcrop, Susan realized it was in fact a roughly worked and truly enormous obelisk, bigger even than Cleopatra’s Needle, fallen on its side and buried, with only the last dozen yards projecting out of the earth.
“Come on!” said the girl.
Susan clambered up the sloping face of the great stone to the end and stood next to the Grail-Keeper. She was surprised to see they had come to the other side of the island; the shore had been screened by the trees. The stone projected out over the lake. Clear water lapped directly against the rocky shore of the island underneath, some thirty feet below where she stood. The water beneath looked very deep, the sunlight only illuminating the upper reaches.
The Grail-Keeper gestured below.
“There you are.”
“What?” asked Susan. “Do I jump in?”
It was a long way down.
“You could dive, though I don’t recommend it,” said the Grail-Keeper. “If you walk forward here, you will walk forward there.”
“There being somewhere close to the mountain? To the Old Man of Coniston?”
“Indeed,” said the Grail-Keeper. “Off you go.”
Susan hesitated, looking down into the dark water. She glanced at the Grail-Keeper, wondering if she should trust her.
“Yes,” said the Grail-Keeper. She sighed in exasperation and added, “You should have jumped straight away. Now there’s an unnecessary complication.”
“What?” asked Susan, but the Grail-Keeper had disappeared. Susan looked down but the girl was not in the water, not on the rock or in the clearing. Nowhere visible.
But someone else was.
The left-handed bookseller Merrihew, dressed as she had been in the New Bookshop, in a fisherman’s vest over a sleeveless dress, but this time she had on black Wellington boots rather than shoes. She looked cross, her face set in stark lines, and she was stamping her feet as she crossed the grassy clearing.
Merrihew saw Susan, and without hesitation, a small, bright knife appeared in her hand. She flicked her wrist and it flew straight at Susan’s face, so fast there was no chance to do more than flinch as it sped straight at her eye.
But it didn’t hit her. In one instant the knife was in the air, death imminent, and in the next it was held by a tall, balding but white-haired and white-bearded man very reminiscent of a portrait Susan liked of Charles Darwin, the one by Walter William Ouless.
But his deep black eyes and the gold bangles of wound wire on his wrists indicated who he was, despite the change of gender and the rumpled gray suit he wore rather than a homespun smock.
There was no doubt he was another aspect of the Grail-Keeper.
“I don’t allow killing on Silvermere,” chided the Grail-Keeper. “Not by others, at any rate. You know that, Merrihew.”
“You do not interfere in the business of the St. Jacques, Grail-Keeper,” said Merrihew. “That is the law.”
“Beyond my borders, that is so,” said the Grail-Keeper. She looked at Susan and smiled her enigmatic smile. “But here, my rule is absolute. You may leave us, Susan. Simply step off into the water; you will be where you want to go.”
“And I will follow!” said Merrihew vehemently. “And do what should have been done earlier. She’s the daughter of an Old One, and a clear and present danger to all of us!”
“Good title for a book,” shouted Susan scornfully. “Someone should use it. You know I’m not a danger to the St. Jacques. You’re not only rude, you’re a traitor as well, and Merlin and Vivien know it. I bet you even killed their mum.”
The Grail-Keeper sighed, a little girl’s sigh, odd from the old man’s mouth.
Merrihew’s lips thinned to the merest line, and her eyes narrowed.
“How dare you! I would never do such a thing. It was a coincidence, or an accident!”
“Yeah?” said Susan. “I bet you knew. And what about those police officers sent to kill Merlin and Vivien?”
“What?”
“You know!”
Merrihew’s hand sidled to a pocket of her vest, but stopped as the Grail-Keeper suddenly flipped the knife, to hold it by the hilt rather than the blade.
“You’re nothing more than a minor complication in a long and successful operation,” called out Merrihew. She took a couple of slow steps forward. “Which has delivered great benefits to us, and will continue to do so when you are no longer able to cause highly unnecessary trouble.”
“I bet Aunts Helen and Zoë are onto you, too,” spat Susan. “Whatever happens to me, you’ve had it.”
“You have no conception of how we booksellers conduct our business,” said Merrihew. She raised her gloved left hand, and stepped forward again. “I command the left-handed—and the left-handed are both executors, executioners and the executive. If I say something has to be done for the good of all the St. Jacques, then that is so. But perhaps I have been hasty. The Grail-Keeper will not allow me to harm you here. We should talk, more calmly.”
Susan realized that having failed to kill her, Merrihew now wanted to slow her down, to stop or delay her leaving. She doubted this would be to her benefit.
“I’ll give you a small head start,” whispered the little girl, close to Susan’s ear, even though the Charles Darwin–like figure still stood in front of her. “It won’t be much.”
“I apologize for throwing the knife,” called out Merrihew, sidling closer again.
“Fuck you!”
