'Good,' he said.

'And where did you tell Arkhew the wil was hidden this time?'

'I only suggested it. I didn't think anyone had looked there before.'

'Everyone has looked everywhere,' she intoned. 'Where did you say?'

Owis shrugged. 'Not telling.'

Innocet looked at Jobiska. 'In the clock, dear,' said the old lady. 'That's what he told him.'

There was a footstep outside.

By the time the door opened, the three occupants of the room were seated round the empty fire mantle enjoying a quiet moment of contemplation in each other's company.

The Drudge stalked into the room as if it was searching for an il icit and forbidden party. None of the Cousins looked up. The huge servant surveyed them for a moment. It placed the bowl of feathergil gruel that it was carrying on the table.

'Early tonight,' observed Innocet to Owis as she darned a tear in the patched robe she was wearing. She regarded the Drudge with the contempt it deserved. 'My Cousins are staying here until the disturbances have stopped.'

The Drudge moved to the mirror. It carefully pulled away the shawl that had been draped over the gla.s.s. Fixing Innocet with its implacable stare, it lifted up the garment and ripped it slowly and deliberately in half.

Innocet ignored the warning and got on with her needlework.

The chest of drawers gave a click. One of the drawers had unlocked itself. It slid open and disgorged the pack of cards in a small fountain.

'Treacherous,' muttered Innocet.

The Cousins watched in silence as the Drudge gathered the scattered cards off the floor. It pulled open a drawer in its own wooden bodice and dropped the pack inside. Giving them a varnished glare of triumph, it stalked out of the room.

The door closed itself.

Innocet picked at the st.i.tch she had just made.. 'Those were my best cards,' she said. 'My last Drat pack.'

'They were checking on us.' Owis was eyeing the naked mirror. 'Suppose it tells Satthralope?'

Innocet nodded. 'That's why they brought the rations early. But if Satthralope is awake, then she'll already know.'

Since the Housekeeper had not left her chair for seventy-one years, and had not been out of her room since the west annexe was infested by gullet-grubs one hundred and twelve years ago, the likelihood of being watched seemed negligible. But Innocet stil kept the gla.s.s covered. Just in case.

She climbed up on the dressing table, and arranged the two halves of shawl over the mirror as best she could.

'They must realize something's happening,' she said.

Owis peered into the pot of gruel. 'At least they haven't withdrawn rations.'

'Not yet.' Innocet pointed a thimbled finger at him. 'You are going to find out what's happened to Arkhew.'

'What?' bl.u.s.tered Owis. 'Out there? After candledark? But you said... What about supper?'

'The glory of receiving is in the antic.i.p.ation,' said Innocet.

'Suppose it's something unexpected? Can't antic.i.p.ate that.'

'Don't argue. You're six hundred and seventy-five and it's time you took some responsibility.'

'But... ' He stared longingly at the gruel pot.

50.She took up her needle again. 'Especial y since this is all your fault.'

The kitchen was an empty cavern near the top of the House. Chris had come down the dark attic stairs, drawn by the light from two pale lamps which hung by a rank of stone ovens. It had once been the giant's kitchen from his dream, but the days when it had cooked on a grand scale were clearly long gone. Web clung across the stacks of pans and skillets. A row of rusty spikes and gambrels dangled over a long neglected grate, where Chris reckoned that animals had either once been slaughtered or roasted whole.

Even so, he could smell something cooking. At the far end of the kitchen, there was evidence that the place was still in use. Cl.u.s.ters of dried fungi hung on strings from the ceiling branch-beams. To his disgust, Chris noticed that one cl.u.s.ter was made up of little brown-furred rodents strung together by their tails.

On a stove, a pot large enough to be a cauldron sat over a low flame. A sort of greasy grey stew steamed and glopped in the pot as if it was alive. It smelt rank, but it proved that the House was stil occupied.

On a work surface, a bowl was piled with a different sort of mushroom, all pale and chalky. They stank too.

As Chris walked across the centre of the kitchen, a row of ladles hanging from a beam began to jangle like an alarm. He ducked into the nearest doorway and nearly fell down some more giant steps.

The ladles shut up as soon as he was clear. He edged further down the stairs. The white tree trunks were everywhere, lining the pa.s.sages and reaching into arches between which the solid walls ran. Occasional y, there were glimmering lamps which filled the paths of the House with a ghostly glow.

As he neared the foot of the stairs, Chris heard a distant whistle. Two notes, whee-whoo whee-whoo, like that. He slowed his pace and edged forward.

Whee-whoo.

He was looking along the length of gallery. One side was open like a cloistered balcony that overlooked something dark and cavernous. Chris guessed it was the great hal .

The Doctor was standing in an archway halfway along the gallery, staring down over the bal.u.s.trade into the gloom.

Whee-whoo.

He was whistling into the dark. Over and over, he repeated the same two notes.

Chris wanted to join him, but he held back. He had to watch. Beneath him, a floorboard creaked. The Doctor tensed and looked up.

Chris pul ed himself back. Rather than be caught, he headed back up the stairs to the kitchen. He needed to get a handle on the place, before the Doctor began imposing all the hyperactive catalytic effects that the Doctor always imposed on every situation he walked into.

He was moving cautiously across the kitchen for fear of setting off the ladles again, when he heard footsteps. He ducked down some steps into a recess with a heavily barred door.

It was cool here, but there was also a smell like rancid cheese. Two thick metal struts had been slotted across the entrance. Chris pressed himself flat against the door for cover. The surface was surprisingly cold to his touch. His breath was turning to steam against it.

Something scrabbled on the other side of the door. There was a thump as the something hit itself against the barrier.

The cheese stench got stronger. Chris pulled up the cover on a spyhole in the door.

There was a hiss in the dark on the other side. A grey-veined eyebal with an oblique black slit suddenly stared back out of the hole at him.

Chris flinched. He heard movement in the kitchen. There was nowhere else to hide.

He felt the door strain against its bars as the something inside pushed outward. Inches from him, the eyebal was starting to squirm out through the spyhole. It swivelled in its new socket to stare, unblinking, at him.

A hand slammed the cover down on the eye.

There was a hissing squeal of rage and the pressure on the door relented.

The Doctor wiped his hand on his trousers and studied Chris. His expression gave nothing away.

'What was that?' Chris choked.

'How should I know?' he said smoothly. 'Something way past its sell-by date from the smell of it.'

'Sorry,' said Chris.

'Never mind.' The Doctor glanced back into the kitchen. 'You just saw something nasty in the pantry, that's all.'

Chris shuddered involuntarily. 'I think it saw me too.' He held out the Doctor's jumper. 'I brought you this.'

The Doctor took the garment, wiped his hands on it like a towel and deposited it on a work bench. 'We have to find the TARDIS. It fell through the floor.'

'I guessed that,' said Chris. 'How far down did it go?'

'Too far.'

There was a slurping noise from the main part of the kitchen. The Doctor looked round nervously. 'Just the stew,'

he said.

Chris pushed past him out of the recess. 'We'd better go and find the TARDIS then. This kitchen gives me the creeps.'

'Fee fi fo fum,' said the Doctor. He lingered by the doorway.

'Do you know this place or something?' said Chris.

The Doctor shook his head. 'Not at al .'

'Or what planet we're on?'

'Haven't a clue. The TARDIS must have drifted off course.'

51.'I thought you said someone had tampered with the Time Vector Generation Unit.'

'Ah, you remember that.' The Doctor a.s.sumed a completely unconvincing air of bonhomie. 'Why don't you just pop down into the House and have a scout round?'

'Just me.'

'Yes. It seems like a big place and there's something I have to. . . sort out. Just a quick look, Chris. Go and see if you can find the TARDIS.'

'Suppose I run into somebody?'

'Big Adjudicator like you?' said the Doctor. 'It's dark. Stay out of sight.'

'OK,' said Chris. 'And if I do get spotted, at least they won't recognize me me.'

Anger suddenly flamed in the Doctor's eyes. 'Why? Who have you been talking to?'

'No one,' said Chris blithely. Ouch, he thought. Hit a raw nerve there.

Cousin Arkhew clung to the side of the Loom. The two dim tallow lamps that stood by the carved stone bier did nothing to dispel the shadows of the Great Hall.

He shivered. He had crawled the length of the Hal from where he had fal en from the clock. The toxins in the dust must have relaxed him, because, apart from a few bruises, he was unhurt.

The only scars were inside. The twin hurts of misery and despair. To lie so close to the life-giving energies of the House's heart should be comforting, but the stone ap.r.o.n was cold and unresponsive. Barren, he thought.

In his mind, like echoes, he heard the whispering voices of long-lost Cousins calling him to join them. Why did he wait there? Why be alone? The echoing voices were hands that reached out to him. He longed to succ.u.mb to their embrace and be led by them into the darkness. That darkness where he no longer had to see anything.

But he could not cast off what he had witnessed. He pulled himself up the side of the Loom plinth and wiped at the dusty gla.s.s coffin that lay on the top. The figure that lay inside was serene and calm. A tribute of fresh flowers lay on Quences's ancient chest. Flowers still fresh after six and three-quarter centuries. There were no signs of the stab wounds in his chest.

It's a lie, Arkhew told the echoing voices. We have al been living a terrible lie.

'We know that,' they answered. they answered.

'Murderer. . . murderer,' he repeated aloud. A terrible sin for which he would be punished. That name should not be spoken. It was forbidden in the House.

Through the whispering gabble of voices, he heard footsteps approaching. He glanced round. It would soon be candleday.

He crawled for cover in the darkness.

'I thought so,' Innocet muttered to herself. 'How could I forget the date? I'm such a fool.'

She sat on her bed, turning the pages of the almanac with reverence. It was one of the few natural books in the House - a journal that she had endeavoured to work on every day since before the beginning of the dark despair.

Just as she daily wound her hair and worked to complete her rendition of the cla.s.sic texts of the Old Time - all from memory. The only true edition in the House was stored on datacore and there was no power to read it.

She sighed. Her hand-written script had deteriorated badly in the last hundred years or so. There were places where it was an indecipherable scrawl. At other points, the improvised ink made from the juice of crushed saprophytes, or even once in desperation from her own blood, had faded completely. The dry, dry paper drank it completely.

Yet suddenly she saw the chance of an end. First an omen, and now this discovery.

It was nonsense, of course. An end? She wasn't even sure what that meant any more. No more darkness? No more gruel? No more re-darning the darns over the holes in the patches on their ragged clothes? Indefinable nonsense. She turned the pages of the almanac to verify her error.

While Housekeeper Satthralope grew more cantankerous and less approachable than ever, Innocet took it on herself to maintain any order in the House. She tried to keep up a moral stance, even if it was only for Cousin Owis's sake. But despite her best efforts, Owis slid al too easily under the influence of Cousin Glospin. What could she do in the circ.u.mstances? How could Owis know any better? The wretched creature had never once been away from the House. Glospin was nearly three times Owis's age, yet the two of them slunk around the House like new students barely out of brainbuffing. It was not the education that Innocet had in mind for her charge. One day, she foresaw a battle between herself and Glospin for Owis's soul.

52.

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This was how she pa.s.sed her time. It was her burden. The routine that kept her from madness. A task that no other Cousin in the House of Lungbarrow had ever dreamt to undertake. She was not prepared to vouch for the sanity of any of them. She had her secrets too, but while the others found their own ways to survive or eventual y pa.s.s on, she did what she could to ease their pa.s.sage.