‘I want Hob’s Hallow. That’s what I want.’
‘Then take it, leave me here but take it! Gods, Aidan, you had it. I was gone and you had it.’
‘Ah, but Madame Lawrence took it and more, all from me and now you are the only way back.’ There’s the final whir and click, and the last lock drops open. He pushes the door wide, then retrieves the lantern. ‘Come along, Miren, this only needs to be as unpleasant as you make it.’
38
Aidan grabs my upper arm and together we step forward into the darkness, shoes echoing on stone. The light does not go far ahead of us.. He raises the lantern higher and higher, then releases me, saying, ‘Wait here.’
Without the support of his hand I feel strangely untethered. I turn, trying to locate the door, but there’s nothing around me except shadows, as if the egress was lost the moment we stepped through it; I’m too scared to move. The blackness feels like treacle, something I might drown in, and it smells stale, of dead things or something that should be. I watch Aidan get further away, becoming nothing more than an orange point in the darkness; it makes me think of Jedadiah and I wish he was here now.
But he is not.
Ena doesn’t stir. She’s damp and hot against me in the cold air of the cellar that smells of dead things. I check to make sure she’s still breathing; she’s alive, just sleeping deeply. The brand on my hip is itching, itching, itching as though I’ve brushed against scratchweed. I listen hard: Aidan’s footsteps; the drops of water coming from somewhere, going somewhere else; a splashing sound, furtive as if not to draw attention to itself.
Then something changes: the darkness is retreating. Aidan is traversing the broad cavern and lighting a series of wall sconces, until the space is a combination of dancing shadows and bright specks of flame. The ceiling is vaulted, just like the one at Hob’s Hallow; and in the centre of the room is a well, the stone wall perhaps three feet high, perhaps four. I throw a glance over my shoulder: still I cannot see the door. It must be fear; I’m sure it must be there somewhere and if I could only look without this shiver of panic in my mind, I would see it.
I wonder about the men whom Isolde hired to build Blackwater, who made this chamber. I think about the story, the pages she’d brought with her: who had she hired to design such a thing, such a trap, such a mechanism? Here at least, unlike Hob’s Hallow, she could simply have dropped the sea-queen in from above, then cast whatever spell she needed to restore the thing to normal size… but the means for catching the scales as they sloughed off? She would have had to trust someone to design it, to build it, to know its purpose. Those men, not the men of Blackwater, for Jedadiah had said the house was already built when Isolde began to bring people to her … those men … she could not have let them live. She could not – as Aoife’s daughter, would not – have let them live and risk them telling anyone about this strange place. I look around the walls, trying to see if there are any bones lying about, proof of what my mother might have done.
Nothing. I wonder if she used them in the mine? The first blood to seed it, their bodies dropped in some deep hole. Those who followed later – Jedadiah’s wife and the others – were a consolidation to increase what the earth would give. Perhaps the flood was simply a mistake – or perhaps not, all that salt water. The alchemy of blood and salt and dirt and the sea-queen’s silver scales. Isolde and her talent for making things big or small.
A hand grabs my upper arm once more and I jump. It’s just Aidan.
Just Aidan, who else?
He jerks his chin towards the well at the centre of the room.
‘Did you see it?’ I ask and find my breath is mostly gone. ‘Did you ever see it at Hob’s Hallow?’
He shakes his head. ‘It wasn’t spoken of; most of the extended family don’t know about it. It’s not something that was paraded, two gold bits for a gawk, Miren.’ His tone is reproachful. Then he swallows and I can see he’s as nervous, as afraid, as I am. ‘Come along, Miren, time to meet your great mother.’
And I think perhaps a truer word has never come from his lips, but I still correct him: ‘Our great mother, Aidan.’
If he thinks the words a long-delayed kindness he gives no sign, but push-pulls me to the wide, wide mouth of the well. There’s too much spilt blood and bitter spite between us anyway. The distance takes longer than it should as if time is stretching, as if our path leading here has not been quite long enough, but at last we are there. We lean over, though I’m careful of my balance with Ena held to my chest with one arm, the hand of the other touching the rim of the well wall.
Aidan still has his lantern and he lifts it high so the light darts straight down to illuminate what lies perhaps twenty feet below.
There is water, dark and deep, and beneath it a sheen of silver – all those scales that haven’t been washed into the mine because my mother was dead and Edward Elliott had no idea about the truth of this place. And in that broad circle of liquid, the mer-queen, coiled in a space not quite big enough for her; and the brand on my hip burns as
