The Empty Frame

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The crying was that of a woman. She had a low voice, quite deep, and she was sobbing. There were no words. He sat up in bed and his hands met warm fur. Arthur was doing his rounds, first Floss, then Sam, now him.

Magnus could just see the shape of his little head. His ears were pricked up and his fat little tail was erect and quivering. His fur was a stiff bush and he was making a curious sound, not a mew and certainly not a purr, but a kind of throaty growl, the sound of a beast that is suspicious and uncertain, possibly afraid. The low sobbing went on, though fainter now and already fading away. But the cat did not stay with Magnus. It shot off the duvet, plunged through the open door and vanished into the darkness.

It was cold in the turret room now, cold and chilly like the Great Hall, and Magnus’s duvet felt clammy and damp. It had been hot when they’d switched their lamps off and they’d all flung their bedding aside, to get cool. The cold he now felt was like mist, in fact he could see a sort of mist in the room, lit up by some faint light. The source of this light was a mystery to him because all was dark outside; perhaps the mist had its own light. He watched it. It was like a fine piece of gauze, or a wisp of cloud, wreathing round upon itself, unfolding and refolding until, like a square of silk in the hands of a magician, it vanished into thin air leaving a coldness that was even more intense than before.

He listened again for the crying noise. It was so faint now it was no more than a sad little whisper; it had almost become part of the dissolving misty cloud. But the woman had not gone away altogether. He could still hear her, though only very faintly, and she was still in distress. Magnus decided that he must try to find her. He had to stop that crying.

But first he felt under his pillow where he always kept two things: a green army torch and a heavy black clasp knife. These things were secret treasures and absolutely nobody knew about them but him and Father Godless, who had given them to him long ago, or so it felt to Magnus.

It was awful that “Uncle Robert”, which was what Magnus had called the kind old priest, should have had the surname “Godless” – though the old man had laughed about it. Magnus would have changed it, like people sometimes do when their name is Shufflebottom, or Smellie. He’d got to know the old man while staying with his first foster family, after they had taken him away from his mother. He was one of the priests in the church they went to. He lived in an old people’s home, now, near London, but he sometimes wrote to Magnus, and occasionally sent him presents.

He’d given him the torch because he knew Magnus got scared in the dark and he’d given him a little Bible, too, with tiny print and a red silk marker. He’d called it “the sword of the spirit which is the word of God”. But he was a very practical old man so he’d also given him the knife. This knife, like the torch and the Bible, had accompanied him on dangerous missions in the war when he’d been a soldier.

Magnus got up and felt for his dressing gown. It lay ready on his bed because he sometimes got up in the night, to go to the lavatory and, in this turret block, the main bathroom was four floors down. He liked his dressing gown. Floss’s mum and dad had given it to him. He liked its bold red and blue stripes and he liked its deep pockets. Into one of these he now slid his clasp knife and into the other the little red Bible, because he was scared. The gold cross stamped deep into the front of it might give him some protection. You could wave crosses at vampires and it was supposed to shrivel them up.

He slipped through the door and made his way down the stone spiral of stairs. Each landing was lit by a small spotlight, but in between the floors there was a deep darkness. His heart bumped as he picked his way down the smooth cold treads, his ears strained for the sound of the weeping voice. He could still hear it, though it was very faint now, and it seemed to come and go as if the troubled woman was wandering about, all over this rambling place, coming near to him and then withdrawing when she did not find what she sought.

He knew where he was going and he made his way unerringly down the twisting stairs then out into the low arched entrance hall where Cousin M had greeted them. This was dimly lit by an occasional spotlight, and he could see now that there were lights in some of the flowerbeds. Through curious low windows, the shape of half-closed eyes, he could see lawns manicured with light-dark stripes where the mower had gone up and down, and the glint of shifting water and the great trees standing like silent sentinels.

The door to the Great Hall where Cousin M had fed them was ajar, but only a crack. Magnus pushed at it and the vast slab of whorled timber, many centimetres thick and patterned with marvellous iron traceries, swung open silently. Then it gave a single, sharp creak, a sound not particularly loud but deafening in the vast room hung with its rows of gilded portraits. At the table, by the fire where they had eaten their sandwiches, a man sat in front of a chessboard. At the creak of the hinges he turned his head sharply and, seeing the small boy in the doorway, got abruptly to his feet, sending two of the chess pieces rolling across the floor. He touched a bank of switches by the fireplace and lights came on everywhere. Magnus was terrified but he stood his ground as the elderly man, who walked with a slight limp, strode purposefully towards him.

It was his first meeting with Colonel Stickley, the mysterious relative of Cousin M’s who had gone off to bed without greeting them. Magnus never forgot that moment, the tall spindly figure limping across the cold chequered floor, the sudden harsh light after the reassuring darkness, and what that light revealed – row upon row of faces, priests and soldiers, men in university robes posed self-importantly over open books, women in wimples, children playing with cats and dogs and with curious toys, such as you only ever saw in museums. So many faces looking down upon the modern man and the modern boy, each from their own little corner in the greater sweep of history. But the face he had come to see was not among them. The huge gold frame, containing cruel Lady Alice of the thin white hands, was empty. He found himself looking up at a blank black rectangle.

Did the Colonel see? Magnus could not decide because, instantly, the old man had interposed his own tall, stooping figure between the boy and the painting, had bent down and thrust his whiskery face at him. “Humph! What’s this? Are you sleepwalking or something?”

Magnus, smelling pipe smoke and whisky, suddenly burst into tears. The crying of the woman which had brought him here had most definitely ceased now, and the painting was most definitely blank. These two things belonged together, of that he felt certain. But how they belonged he did not understand. She had looked so cruel, the Lady Alice Neale. It could surely not have been Lady Alice that wept. But where had she gone to, slipping out of her gilded frame and leaving the canvas empty? None of it made sense. He suddenly felt bewildered and lost, and he very much wanted to go back to bed.

The Colonel looked down at the snivelling boy, inspecting him through small round spectacles as, Magnus felt, one might scrutinise some botanical specimen under glass. Then, very awkwardly and stiffly, he stretched out his hand and laid it lightly on the boy’s shoulder. “Stay there young man,” he said, then he went round the hall switching off all the main lights. Magnus could hear him talking to himself, he seemed to be complaining about Maude. “Mad woman, my cousin. What did she want to put you up there for, four floors up? I told her not to but the woman wouldn’t listen. It’s not civilised. No wonder you lost your bearings. Come on, I’ll have you in bed in two shakes of a donkey’s tail. I’m going to see about this in the morning, get you moved. Are you up to walking up all those wretched stairs? Want a fireman’s lift? My son always liked a fireman’s lift, cheeky little beggar.”

Magnus suspected that a fireman’s lift, one of the few terms with which he was not familiar, involved being carried back to his room over the old man’s shoulder. “I’m all right,” he said firmly. “I’d just like to go back to bed. Sorry if I frightened you.”

The Colonel gave a dry laugh. “You didn’t frighten me, young man, I often sit up late. Can’t sleep y’know, it’s my age. All right then, follow me, and mind where you put your feet, the lighting’s not good along these corridors.”

But as they left the hall something made Magnus look back. He said, “You’ve left one of the lights on.”

Colonel Stickley turned round. “So I have, and the Lady Alice won’t like that. Beautiful young woman but she had quite a temper, they say, quite an old paddy.” He clicked a switch and Magnus saw the tall woman in white and black with the thin little dog at her feet fade into the darkness.

As they went along the corridors towards the turret stairs, he saw two tapestries hanging on a wall, lit by a solitary lamp. One portrayed Pontius Pilate washing his hands in a bowl of water. A soldier stood by with a scarlet towel and Jesus, in a corner and already wearing his crown of thorns, was looking on, sadly. The other showed a scene from the Old Testament. Father Robert had told him the story, about Balaam’s donkey who was beaten because he disobeyed his master. Knowing that he was in the presence of an angel of God, the poor beast had lain down in the road and would not budge. Here, in ragged, faded threads, was that donkey, flattened, with its ears sticking out at right angles, as if something had run over it, and a great ball of shimmering light that was the angel. It was only a glimpse as the Colonel, puffing slightly, started to mount the spiral stairs, but it made Magnus think of Arthur, the little cat. Animals were sometimes more sensitive to the big, deep things than human beings were, and Arthur had been plainly terrified when the crying began. Like Balaam’s ass, the cat must have suddenly picked up a very strong presence, and he had fled from it. It was definitely not good, like the angel, but perhaps it was not totally bad either. All Magnus knew for certain was that it was very troubled. Its grief was great and it had wept human tears.

But how could it have anything to do with that hard-faced woman in the gold frame, the woman who had, he was sure, been out of it when he’d first come into the Great Hall and found the Colonel playing chess? And had Colonel Stickley known that the woman had gone from the frame and was that gruff, calm treatment of Magnus all a sham?

As the Colonel said goodnight to him and he snuggled down into his bed again, he once more felt afraid. He wanted some arms round him. Why hadn’t he gone to Majorca with Auntie Win and Uncle Donald? He felt round in the bed. Perhaps Arthur had crept back and was waiting for him, a warm purry presence, but the cat was not there. So he turned on his side, burrowing down as Colonel Stickley limped down the stairs, still muttering to himself. “Flowers in the fireplace,” Magnus heard. “Whatever next… for three children. Is this the Hilton Hotel? Humph, I’m not clearing the mess up. It’ll be that damned cat.”

But a cat as small as Arthur could not have achieved the complete wreckage that now lay in the grate, a wreckage Magnus had not seen as he’d climbed thankfully and hurriedly into his bed. Cousin M’s beautiful arrangement of wild peonies, set in the fireplace in their honour, lay in ruins. The simple green vase that had held them was smashed and it looked as if some of the smaller pieces of glass had been ground into powder. The flowers themselves had been torn from their stalks and dismembered, petal by petal, and they lay upon the dark polished floor of the tower room like big flakes of snow.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_5a49db88-5288-51bb-b0dc-ee25aa8ac0f0)

Cousin M, coming into the turret room next morning, saw the flowers scattered in the grate, knelt down and, without comment, began to pick them up.

“It wasn’t me, I didn’t knock them over,” Magnus said defensively, sitting up in bed. He’d become very used to people telling him off for things he hadn’t done.

Cousin M showed no reaction. “It’s all right dear. It’s a shame about the vase though, it was a pretty one. Perhaps the children’s mother could get me another. It came from the old glass factory near my flat in Majorca.”

Sam and Floss had woken up too. Through the barred window they could see a square of cloudless blue sky, sun shining on a sheet of water. The day suddenly felt good.

“Don’t know if you’re interested, but there’s breakfast down below,” Cousin M said casually, tidying the bits of glass into a heap. “Mind you don’t cut yourselves on this. I’ll bring a dustpan.”

“Did Arthur knock the flowers over?” asked Floss.

“Probably. He doesn’t know his own strength, that animal.” But Magnus, who was observing her very carefully, didn’t believe a word of it. It was quite obvious to him that this kind of thing must have happened before and she’d got used to it. Her studied matter-of-factness did not fool him at all.

“I’m very interested in breakfast,” announced Sam, suddenly smelling a faint bacon smell which he decided must be coming up the chimney flue. The sandwiches and buns of the night before now seemed a very long time ago.

“Well, get ready and come down. We’ll be in the hall. When there are just the two of us we usually eat in the kitchen but you’re a good excuse to do things properly. I’m afraid the Colonel doesn’t like the way I slob around in my gardening things.”

While they were cleaning their teeth, Floss said to Sam, “Do you think Mags is all right?”

“Seems to be. Why?”

“I’m sure he was crying again, in the night. It woke me up.”

Sam shrugged, then made a great business of rinsing and spitting. He half-believed that a noise had woken him too, the voice of someone in distress. It hadn’t sounded at all like Magnus, it had sounded too adult. But he was a very sound sleeper and he had finally concluded that he was almost certainly dreaming. He’d snuggled down in the bed until he’d fallen asleep again.

Floss had lain awake for some time too, but the sound she’d thought was Magnus had faded away in the end. The other thing she remembered was feeling very cold. “Do you think Cousin M has got any hot water bottles?” she said, as they climbed back up to Dove, to collect Magnus for breakfast. “My feet were like ice, last night.”

“You could ask her,” said Sam. Then he added, “My feet were cold too. I put some socks on. It’s funny, how it suddenly went very cold. It was cold down in the Great Hall as well. And yet our dormitory’s a warm little room compared with the others, according to Cousin M. That’s why she’s put us up there. She said that Colonel Stickley was cross about it, apparently. He told her off. He said we should have been in one of the portakabins.”

The long oak table by the fireplace was set for breakfast with a checked cloth and neatly folded napkins. As Cousin M seated them all Colonel Stickley came in with a loaded tray. He presented an interesting contrast with Cousin M who was wearing her grubby gardening clothes of the night before. He looked very formal and very smart in a tweed suit with a waistcoat and a watch chain across it, a silk handkerchief tucked into the top pocket and brown brogue shoes polished to a mirror gloss. “He’s a bit of a smoothie, isn’t he?” Sam whispered to Floss, as they sat down. “What is he doing frying breakfast for us lot? Don’t they have servants in a place like this? Where’s the cook?”

Cousin M said, sticking spoons into pots of honey and marmalade and manhandling a very large teapot, “Let’s have a few introductions. Cecil, this is Sam, Floss and Magnus. This is Colonel Stickley, children.”

Embarrassed, and unused to formal introductions, the three of them made vague mumbling noises and took refuge in their bowls of cornflakes. “Stick insect,” thought Sam, watching the colonel’s long legs arrange themselves neatly under the table. The old man did not smile, nor did he look in their direction. The business of the moment was breakfast and he was concentrating on that.

Magnus, who was sitting with his back to the fireplace, thought he knew why Colonel Stickley was ignoring them all. It was because of the episode the night before. He’d been quite friendly in the end, in a stiff, grandfatherly way, helping him up to bed, but he was very different this morning. Magnus was determined to talk to him in private but he would have to find the right moment.

He chewed his cornflakes and ran his eyes along the rows of portraits. The Lady Alice Neale, in her black dress, was back in her frame. There were the thin, unkind lips and the cruel hands, there was the little dog. He did not dare look from the portrait to Colonel Stickley. It was obviously better for now to go along with the pretence that the two of them had never met before.

Instead he said, “Who is the big fat man?”

Colonel Stickley glanced along the rows of painted faces and removed a sliver of food from between his teeth. “His nickname is Burst Belly,” he said. “He was a monk, head of this place, once. He was in charge of the Black Canons. Henry the Eighth got rid of them and he didn’t much like it. So he put a curse on the Abbey, or so people say.”

Floss and Sam looked up at Burst Belly too. He was a huge and ugly man wearing the black and white robes of a priest. The white part of the costume was lacy and frilled like a Victorian night gown, incongruous under the flat silver cross which hung round his neck.

“Good name for him, wasn’t it, Burst Belly,” Cousin M remarked, buttering her toast thickly and heaping on the marmalade. “He obviously ate too much, like me. I do love food, don’t you?”

Floss said, “I don’t like his face. It doesn’t look exactly… well, holy, to me. It’s not the kind of expression you expect in a priest. Did he really curse the Abbey?”

“That’s the story,” said Colonel Stickley. “But who knows? It’s certainly had a sad history. If you look at all the families that have lived here, you’ll see that nobody stayed around for very long. Things tended to happen to people.”

“What sorts of things?” demanded Magnus, and his voice was unnaturally high and shrill. It was the voice he unconsciously seemed to develop when he was really concentrating on something. It irritated the other two.

“Shh, Mags,” said Floss, and pressed his foot under the table.

But Magnus seemed not to have heard. “That’s what you told us,” he informed Cousin M.

Cousin M blinked at him. “Me, dear? What did I tell you? I’m afraid you’ll have to remind me.”

“You said yesterday that Lady Alice did things she lived to regret; that’s exactly what you said, those were your exact words.”

Floss was now pressing down on Magnus’s feet just as hard as she could because she knew it was a dangerous moment. If they didn’t somehow change course, he would start crying, possibly even screaming. It had happened just once or twice, and it was frightening. It seemed to be something to do with the stresses of the awful life he’d had, shut away in the unfamiliar house with his sick mother, wondering what had happened to his father.

But Colonel Stickley, not knowing what was going on under the table, actually helped matters by glaring at Cousin M, rolling up his napkin and standing up. “End of subject,” he announced crisply. “Now then, I have a very busy morning, but if you’re prepared to come with me now I will show you a little of the Abbey, so you can get your bearings for the day.”

Cousin M said in a nervous voice, “Why don’t you let them go round on their own, Cecil? You’ve so much else to do and I’m sure they’d be happier poking round independently.”

Sam said, “We’ll be fine, sir, we won’t touch anything.” He was dying to get away from Colonel Stickley.

“I shall take you round,” he said frostily. “‘Poking about’, as you call it, is precisely what I do not wish to encourage,” and he produced a bunch of keys from his pocket. “The public still use this place from time to time, Maude, in spite of our present circumstances. There are all kinds of hazards in an old building like this. I’d like them to see exactly what’s what.”

“Very well, Cecil,” Maude said meekly, then, to the children, “I’ll be in my garden this morning, dears, if you want me. It’s the walled garden, beyond the dovecote at the end of the Long Walk. Otherwise, see you at lunch.”

“At twelve-thirty,” said Colonel Stickley, “and it’s… nine o’clock now.” He consulted a large gold pocket watch, tapped it and dropped it back into his waistcoat pocket. “I will meet you in the entrance hall in ten minutes, after you’ve rinsed off your breakfast crumbs. I shall go and do the same.”

Floss and Sam exchanged disappointed looks, shrugged silently at each other, then set off obligingly for their turret room. But Magnus lingered. In between the pictures of Burst Belly and the Lady Alice Neale was a tiny portrait of a young boy. Magnus hadn’t noticed it the night before but now sunshine was filtering through small leaded panes and a square of barred light was shining on it. He was almost certain that it was a boy, though the child was very prettily dressed in a lacy ruff and had longish golden curls. Between two fingers he held a white, many-petalled flower.

Magnus said, “Is that a peony?”

The Colonel glanced up at the little painting. “I wouldn’t know. Flowers are Maude’s department. Why?” he demanded quite sharply. “I must say you ask rather a lot of questions.”

Magnus was not put off. He was collecting information. “Well, she put some flowers like that in our room, and the cat knocked them over and broke the vase. Where is Arthur, by the way?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. Cats aren’t my department, young man. Asleep somewhere, I suppose, it’s a nice life. I must get on, I’ve a great deal to do this morning. Rinsed your hands, have you?”

Ignoring this Magnus said, “Who is that boy in the painting? Is it a boy?”

“It is. And we don’t know. He might have been a son of the Lady Alice. She was married twice and she had several children. If it is a son of hers, then he wasn’t born here. He’s not in the parish records, and he’s not included in the family memorial, down in the church. Seen the church, have you? Rinsed your hands?” he repeated.

“Just going to,” muttered Magnus, but he didn’t. His hands were perfectly clean. Instead he went into the entrance hall and stood by the tapestries, Balaam’s donkey and its meeting with the angel, Pontius Pilate washing away his guilt. That set him thinking about the woman in the night again, the woman who’d cried, and about the misty coldness, and how Arthur had fled in terror. Who was the pretty child with the flower between his fingers, and who had smashed Cousin M’s vase of green glass and torn her peonies to pieces? He had come to a conclusion about Cousin Maude and Colonel Stickley. They were both pretending. Both of them knew that all was not well in the Abbey but neither of them was prepared to say anything. This thought rather excited Magnus, but it also made him afraid. He’d quite like to talk to Floss and Sam about it, but would they laugh at him? He suspected that the best person to talk to would be Colonel Stickley, if he could get him on his own, and in a good mood – if the old man ever had such things.

Colonel Stickley was obviously determined to show them as little as possible of “his” Abbey. He’d made it clear at the beginning that he thought of it as his, even though Mum had told them that it was Cousin M’s money which had saved it from being sold. It was obvious that they were not to see a lot of the rooms.

“What’s in there?” they kept asking, as he hustled them past intriguing doors bristling with ancient nails and bolts, and very firmly shut. “Can we just have a peep?”

“Absolutely nothing of interest”, the Colonel would say or “just household rubbish”, or “the domestic offices”. And the faster he hurried them on the more they wanted to linger and to explore.

What they saw were the public or “show” rooms; those rooms which were on view to possible clients, for firms to use when they held conferences at the Abbey – a money-making scheme which, like the sports centre, had almost ground to a halt.

“Why don’t people come any more?” asked Magnus.

Floss glared at him and Sam tried to get near enough to give him a kick. “Don’t keep going on about it, Mags, it’s tactless,” he whispered, holding him back as Colonel Stickley unlocked a door labelled “Council Chamber”.

But Colonel Stickley had heard. “Ask away,” he said. “We’re in a recession, young man, everybody is tightening their belts. People don’t have the money for luxuries any more. Our charges are high, naturally, because we give a very high quality of service, but there isn’t the money to pay for it. QED,” he added.

“‘As has been demonstrated’,” said Magnus. “‘Quod erat demonstrandum’.”

“Stop showing off,” Floss hissed at him. “It’s getting on my nerves.” In the atmosphere of the Abbey Magnus definitely seemed to be coming out of his shell and to be more confident. He was talking more and asking most of the questions. She supposed this was better than sitting in silence all the time but she was finding it irritating, particularly when he paraded his knowledge in front of Colonel Stickley.

But the old man didn’t seem to have heard. “I don’t mind the place being empty for a few months,” he said. “I quite like it to myself, actually. All those tennis-playing brats were beginning to get me down.”

“Thanks a lot,” mouthed Sam to Floss, as they stepped inside a large panelled room on one wall of which was a small bay window with a cushioned seat and a view of the river. There was another huge fireplace with a coat of arms above it.

“This room was improved,” he told them, “for the young Elizabeth the First. She was a friend of Lady Alice Neale. It’s not very likely she held councils here, but that’s why they enlarged it, just in case.”

“What a waste,” said Sam. He disapproved of the Royal Family. “It’s like putting new lavatories into places when the Queen’s only going to be there for about five minutes.”

“But even royalty has to go to the lavatory,” Magnus observed solemnly.

Floss started to laugh but the Colonel didn’t seem to notice. “They raised the floor in this room,” he said. “It would have been much lower, originally. They really did do their best to get the Court to come here. They were obviously very ambitious, and it worked. The husband became a major diplomat. Anyhow, that’s about it, really. Pleasant room for a spot of reading or sewing, not to mention the royal comings and goings. Come along then, we’ll do the lower floor next.”

Floss and Sam set off in front of him. They were bored with these empty rooms. “Do you think we could slip away?” Sam suggested. “He’s obviously not going to show us much else. I’d rather come back when he’s out of the way, when he goes off to London or something.” The gardens and the river looked much more tempting than this series of empty rooms and, so far as he was concerned, the sooner the grand tour was over the better.

As the Colonel pulled the heavy door shut behind them, Magnus, hanging back for a final peek, was aware of a rush of cold air. It was not the general cold of an ancient, thick-walled dwelling, that retained its delicious coolness on a day of sun, it was a more precise, sharp cold; it was enclosed in time, like a phrase of music, or a sentence. And he distinctly saw, as the closing door filled the sunlit space beyond, the figure of a woman moving across the Council Chamber from right to left. Her Elizabethan dress was pure white and round her neck hung a broad, black priest-like stole. She was carrying white gloves and she continually twisted them in her hands, as if they were a handkerchief. He could hear a sobbing noise. He was unable to see the apparition’s feet. These were cut off from his view above the ankle, as if the rest of her was moving along at a lower level, about a foot below his eye.

Magnus cried out, then clapped his hand across his mouth. The Colonel looked down sharply. “You all right, young man? Got a pain? Shouldn’t bolt your food, you know.”

He said, “You’ve just locked somebody in. There’s somebody in there, a woman. Listen, she’s crying, can’t you hear her?”

Colonel Stickley stared at him, grimaced, pulled at his moustache then stood very still. The sound, though muffled through the thick oak door, was the same sound that had woken him in the night, the anguished sound of inconsolable weeping that Magnus had been unable to bear. And he could not bear it now. He clapped his hands to his ears and screamed, “Stop it! Stop it, can’t you!”

The Colonel dropped his bunch of keys and shook him vigorously. “Come on now, no hysterics, there’s no need for that.” But his voice was quite gentle. This was the foster child, the boy whose father had walked out, never to be heard of again, and whose mother had lost her mind, the child who’d never had a childhood. “Wait there,” he said, and he limped off after Floss and Sam. “I just have to oil a lock,” he called after them. “Make your way down to the buttery. We’ll be with you in a jiffy.”

Coming back to Magnus he picked up his keys, unlocked the door of the Council Chamber and steered him into the room. “See for yourself,” he said, “go on, investigate. Climb up the chimney and pull up the floor boards. It’s all been done before, you know.” His voice, no longer brisk and soldierly, was wavering, that of a tired old man. It was almost as if he wanted to cry now.

Magnus stared into the room though he knew perfectly well that he would not see the woman in white. She belonged to another time, to a time when the floor of the Council Chamber had been lower. She had been walking on that floor which was why she had seemed to him to have no feet. These were the simple mechanics of ghosts. Magnus knew all about them from old Father Robert, whose church had once been inhabited by an unhappy spirit which he had laid to rest with his prayers. The mechanics were not what scared him, they were just about two kinds of time getting muddled up. What was frightening was how he felt about the two women – the one who had cried in the night and the one he had just seen gliding across this room. Each spectre had brought the awful coldness with her, a cold that went into his very marrow and felt like death. And the coldness was part of her pain, of the grief which troubled her so. In a way he didn’t fully understand, it was as if her pain had joined itself to his. He was suffering as well, which was why he’d had to stop the noise of the crying.

Were there two women or were they one and the same person – the woman in the night, who he believed must have been Lady Alice, because her frame had stood empty, and now this other woman, all in white? Magnus could not begin to work out what was happening. He felt as if the top of his head was coming off, through too much thinking.

A hand descended on to his shoulder. “As you see,” Colonel Stickley informed him, “the room really is empty. There is nothing going on here and there never has been. All this talk of ghosts is all silly rumour, put about by people who are trying to ruin my business because they want to get this place from me. Do you understand, boy… what’s your name?”

“Magnus.”