CHAPTER 73

THE PARTING GLASS

Things happened quickly once Cook, The Smith and Hodge returned from the river. Sara met them as they came in and told them everything that had occurred in their absence. Cook did a great deal of blowing her nose and wiping her eyes when she saw Sara had been reunited with her hand, and they all were vocal about how restored she looked. They had taken advantage of their stop at The Folley to put a soothing poultice on Hodge’s eyes and bandage each other’s wounds, and so looked a very piratical and chopped-about crew indeed. Of the fighting they said nothing, other than that it had been bloody and brief.

They were much more interested in her recovery.

“When we set out you looked like you were in a shroud and six days dead,” said Cook. “And now look at you!”

Sara was again dressed in slender black riding clothes, a tight coat and an oiled silk overskirt, her rings winking on top of her gloves, and her hair, which had looked an hour earlier more like a half-blown dandelion, was now tamed and pulled tight to her head in a thick white plait.

“Quite yourself,” said The Smith approvingly. “Just as you should be. And where are the two of them?”

“In the kitchen,” said Sara. “And since there are two of them, I have some proposals. The first of which is that I think we might impose on Emmet and ask if he would go back into the river and at least retrieve the Wildfire.”

She looked round at them.

“Of everything we have put out of harm’s way beneath the water, it is the one that would be better kept close.”

“If there is a Hand to guard it,” said The Smith wearily.

“And take its power,” said Sara.

“You are suggesting we make up our number with one of these young people?” said Hodge.

“They are not children,” said Sara. “They are both close enough to twenty. And they have true hearts.”

“Why is it, Sara Falk, that whenever you say you are making a proposal it ends up sounding as though it is an order because you and you alone have made your mind up?” said Cook, her chin jutting dangerously forward.

“Because I am attempting good manners,” said Sara.

“So you want one of these… these unproven whippersnappers to join and make the Last Hand five again?”

“No,” said Sara, taking the wind out of Cook’s sails. “Not at all.”

“Oh,” said Cook, relaxing. “That’s all right then.”

“I want them both to join,” said Sara.

Lucy and Charlie heard the raised voices upstairs for a long time, then the noise subsided into more normal conversation, and by the time the feet came down the stairs, there was even the odd short laugh. They were introduced to The Smith and Hodge and Cook, who all admitted to knowing and liking Charlie’s parents, and then Cook made a large supper while the proposal was put to them and things were explained.

And then Lucy and Charlie were left alone to decide what they would do. They looked at each other.

“I’ll do what you do,” said Charlie.

Lucy shook her head.

“You do what feels right for you. Don’t make it all my responsibility.”

He nodded.

“Fair enough. Didn’t mean it like that, but I see what you mean. What are you going to do?”

She looked round the warm room.

“I nearly went with that man just because he knew my name.”

“They know that,” he said. “And you didn’t go. You fought him off.”

“Thing is, I don’t know everything about my past. I know some things but they’re not connected. At least they are connected, but only by the fact that I know I’ve been alone and running from something for a long, long time.”

She took a deep breath. This was harder than she had expected it to be.

“So maybe if I stay in one place I’ll find out what that is. Maybe I’ll find out who I am.”

Charlie grinned and stuck his hand over the tabletop.

“So we’re both in, then.”

The Smith appeared in the door and caught them shaking hands very seriously.

“I hope that means what I think,” he said. They nodded. “Good. And I guarantee you one thing more, Lucy Harker. You won’t be alone any more.”

Cook found Sara in the passage leading to the hidden cellar where the Murano Cabinet stood open, an ordinary candle in a pewter stick on the floor at its centre.

Sara was standing in the doorway holding another candle in one hand, the other placed within the boundaries of the newest addition to the prints on the wall. JS was written below it.

Sara was shaking, and Cook realised with a shock that she was glinting.

She watched Sara’s face, the face she had watched grow from a baby through girlhood to the woman now in front of her, and she saw the tear streak out of the eye and splash to the flagstone below, and seeing it she wanted more than anything to take the woman in her arms and tell the child that she still saw within her that everything would be all right.

But she loved Sara too much to lie to her.

So she stepped back, and as she heard The Smith enter the passage behind her she motioned him to stop until whatever memory of himself that Mr Sharp had left as he stood with his hand where Sara’s now was had finished coursing through her.

They watched her try and smile through the tears, and when the glinting stopped she jerked her hand free of the wall and turned her eyes to them. She looked dazzled with surprise and something close to wonder.

“He sang,” said Sara. “Mr Sharp sang…”

“He sang to you,” said Cook. “Only you could provoke that in him.”

“He sang farewell,” Sara choked. “He sang ‘The Parting Glass’.”

“Then he will have wished you joy at the end of the song,” said Cook, her voice thick. “And you must honour that wish.”

Sara wiped her tears away and then turned away again, suddenly bent double. Cook hurried to her and put her hand on her back.

“My dearest child—”

Sara looked up, an agony of incomprehension in her eyes.

“What is this?” she whispered. “What is this pain?”

And still Cook could not lie.

“It is your heart breaking,” she said. “It is the worst pain in the world.”

“I cannot go on,” choked Sara.

“You will,” said Cook. “And that is why it is the worst pain in the world, because it doesn’t kill you. And surviving it makes every day of the rest of your life feel like a betrayal of what you loved and lost. But it isn’t.”

Sara pulled Cook closer and whispered raggedly in her ear. She sounded ashamed beyond despair.

“I never told him that I loved him…”

And then after a long deep breath she shook herself, stood up straight and walked into the cellar.

There was a table on which were Mr Sharp’s honing stone, four knives of various lengths and two pistols. Sara slid three knives in her belt and one in her boot, and put the larger pistol into a holster looped under her arm and the other in some arrangement she had clearly previously strapped to her upper leg. Then she smoothed her dress and turned to face them all, Lucy and Charlie too.

Jed led Hodge in and then trotted forward to lick her hand. The Raven sat on Hodge’s shoulder and clacked its beak.

“You look just like your mother,” said Hodge, his face smiling beneath the bandage blindfolding him.

“You can’t see,” said Sara.

“Raven and I been sharing eyes since I was a lad, and Jed since he was a pup,” he said. “No reason to stop now. You look the spit of her. She broke your heart to look at too.”

“What are you doing, child?” said Cook.

“You have The Smith. You have Hodge. You have Lucy Harker and Charlie Pyefinch: you still have a Last Hand,” said Sara.

“They are unproven,” said Cook, eyes flicking at them. “No offence.”

Sara gripped Cook by the shoulders. The tears had been banished by an act of will. Her face was fierce again.

“I was a child when my mother and father went into the mirrors with eighty-three of their friends,” she said, pointing through the door at the tell-tale handprints. “Our friends. Your friends. They all did it to save something they loved, something they believed in. And though they were wrong and misguided, I cannot fault them. The Disaster happened, and I had to make up numbers for the Last Hand. I did. I was younger than those two! You have five. You have a Hand! Keep Lore and Law until I return. I have kept myself safe hiding in this house for too long.”

As she turned toward the cabinet and the waiting mirrors, The Smith cleared his throat.

“There is no Ivory to guide you. There is no get-you-home. You will be lost in the mirrors.”

She whirled on him, cold fury in her eyes.

“Mr Sharp too is lost! And maybe I will never find him. But then we will be lost together. I will not have my dearest friend go into darkness alone.”

The silence in the room crackled with things left unsaid.

“And I will not have you go alone,” said Hodge gruffly.

He reached up and let the Raven hop onto his hand. He then put the bird onto her shoulder. The Raven clacked its beak and shook itself.

Sara was unable to speak for a moment.

“Look after her,” said Hodge.

Sara swallowed.

“I will,” she said.

“I was talking to the Raven,” said Hodge. “It’s a he.”

The Smith and Cook exchanged a look.

The Raven nudged Sara’s ear and clacked its beak.

A ghost of a smile lifted one side of Sara’s mouth.

Lucy saw it and thought it made her look suddenly invincible.

“She says, ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’,” said Sara.

And then without another word, perhaps because she hated goodbyes, perhaps because she could not trust herself to speak, she raised a hand in curt farewell, and stepped into the mirror.

And then she was gone.

As they walked silently back out of the room Cook stopped and pointed at the newest handprint on the wall, next to Mr Sharp’s.

“She lied,” she said, her voice catching.

“What?” said The Smith.

She pointed at the handprints and suddenly had to rummage in her bloomers for a clean handkerchief.

“If Mr Sharp should ever come back, she did tell him she loved him,” she said.

Under the JS and the SF, midway between the two handprints, were three more letters scratched into the plaster, linking them.

“Who’s Avo?” said Charlie.

The letters were A, V and O.

“Amor vincit omnia,” said The Smith.

“Love conquers all,” translated Cook, thundering into her handkerchief. “It’s Latin.”

“Powerful stuff, Latin,” said Lucy.

Cook stopped wiping her eye and fixed it on the younger woman. Lucy didn’t blink.

“Don’t forget much, do you?” said Cook, a hint of approval in her voice.

“I have forgotten too much,” said Lucy, looking at Charlie. “But I intend to learn a great deal more.”