Hawthorn Read online

  We stood, our shoulders touching, braced for the attack, straining to make out each footfall. They were circling us, closing in for the kill. I counted six, seven, eight . . . too many for us to take on ourselves.

  Then a howl split the dense fog. It felt like a dagger splitting my brain in two, like an abyss opening up inside my chest. Others joined it, deafening and maddening.

  “They’re trying to frighten us,” Mr. Bellows whispered.

  “No,” Daisy said. “They’re frightened.”

  “What do they have to be bloody frightened—?” Mr. Bellows began, but then a ball of fur exploded out of the fog. Mr. Bellows lunged for it and thrust a dagger through its heart. It landed with a thud at my feet. I looked down—and noticed that its throat had been cut.

  “Something’s killing them,” I said.

  Another wolf backed out of the fog, snarling at something in front of it. It lunged into the fog—then fell back, a spear plunged into its throat. A shape loomed out of the fog, tall and shaggy and . . . blue.

  “Trows!” Daisy squeaked.

  “Quick!” Mr. Bellows cried. “While they’re killing the wolves make a run for it. I’ll stay here and fight them off.”

  But it was too late to run. Blue creatures were dropping out of the trees. They had wolf heads and furry legs and necklaces of bones dangling on their bare chests. They were yipping like wolves and shaking their spears at us. They’d scared the shadow wolves away, which only made them more frightening. But I was tired of being frightened. I picked the one who looked like the leader—the one with the biggest spear making the most noise—and hurled myself at it. We landed in a thud, my dagger at its throat. Its wolf’s head fell back and two pale eyes stared up at me out of a blue-streaked face.

  “Ava?” it said.

  “Nathan?”

  15

  THE POINT OF a spear pressing against my ribcage brought my attention away from Nathan. I looked up from him into a wide blue face framed by a wolf’s-head hood.

  “Stand down, Bottom,” Nathan bit out between gritted teeth. “She’s a friend . . . at least she was a friend.”

  “Are you sure, Becky? It’s got wings.”

  Bottom? Becky?

  “Yes, I can see her wings, but remember how I explained that the Darklings weren’t all bad?”

  “Oi, what about these two?” Another one of the blue demons prodded Daisy with a spear. “Are they Darklings, too?”

  “Leave her be, Collie. That’s Miss Daisy Moffat and if I’m not mistaken she could take you in a fair fight.”

  Collie, who beneath the fearsome blue paint and wolf’s hood looked all of ninety pounds and not older than fifteen, gave Daisy a wary look, at which Daisy bared her teeth and growled at him. Collie jumped back two feet into a third blue warrior—a tall lanky lad with red curly hair escaping from under his wolf’s hood.

  “Geroff, ye dunderheaded berk. If yer gang to do a bunk do it away from me.”

  “I’m not running away, Jinks,” Collie cried. “Becky says they’re all right.”

  “Then why’s it still on top o’ him?” Jinks asked.

  “Yeah,” Nathan groaned. “Why’s it still on top o’ me?”

  “Oh!” I shifted my knees off Nathan’s chest, drawing my wings in, and got up slowly, keeping an eye on Bottom’s spear. I offered a hand up to Nathan but he ignored it and got up on his own, brushing dirt off his torn ragged trousers and wolf cloak as if he were adjusting a fine bespoke suit.

  “Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce Miss Avaline Hall, Miss Daisy Moffat, and Mr. Rupert Bellows of the Blythewood School.” He performed the introductions with a bow and a flourish. “Ava, Daisy, Mr. Bellows, meet Henry Higginbottom the third, Clyde Collingwood, and James Jenkins of Hawthorn Hall.”

  We nodded warily to each other, then Daisy broke the awkward silence. “Why are you painted blue?”

  “Keeps the shadow things out,” Collie said, thumping his skinny chest.

  “Aye,” Jinks said, “Mr. Farnsworth thinks that why the Picts did it.”

  “Mr. Farnsworth is here?” Mr. Bellows asked.

  “Back at the castle,” Nathan replied, “where we ought to be heading. It’s getting dark—and no amount of blue paint in the world can keep out the shadows after dark.”

  “We’ve got to bring Nessie,” Daisy said, stroking the horse’s head.

  Nathan stepped toward the cart to examine the damage that had been done in our fall. “We’ll unhitch her and come back for the cart tomorrow.” He turned to look at us. “Is this all of you, then? I’ve been expecting an expedition from Blythewood but I’d have thought you’d bring reinforcements. I suppose Helen had more important things to do.”

  Daisy, Mr. Bellows, and I looked at each other, none of us wanting to be the one to tell Nathan what had happened to Helen, but at last Daisy did.

  “Van Drood’s got her. It’s all my fault. Spring-heeled Jack used me as a distraction. . . .” She spilled out all the details of the ambush on the train, ending with the assurance that Raven, Marlin, Agnes, and Sam had all gone after her. “They’re bound to find her!”

  I couldn’t judge the color of Nathan’s skin under the blue paint, but I could see his jaw clench and his hand squeeze Nessie’s rein so tightly that the gentle horse whinnied. “They’d better,” he said between gritted teeth. “Come on, then,” He led Nessie through the trees. “Before you lose anyone else of your rescue party.”

  As we walked through the woods Nathan recounted the events of the last few months at Hawthorn Hall.

  “Mr. Farnsworth and I noticed that something was off as soon as we arrived. The masters had instituted some rather odd rules—dodgy even for Hawthorn.”

  “They had us cutting down trees in the forest,” Bottom complained.

  “And scrubbing the bloomin’ cellars on our hands and knees,” Collie added.

  “And they whipped us,” Jinks noted.

  “And sent us to bed without our supper,” Bottom concluded in an aggrieved tone. At Daisy’s insistence, he was carrying the hamper full of food, sniffing appreciatively at the smell of steak and kidney pies.

  “It became clear to Mr. Farnsworth and me that all of the masters had been taken over by the tenebrae.”

  “All of them?” Mr. Bellows asked.

  “Yes—and they were using the boys to look for something.”

  “The vessel,” I said. “Did they—?”

  “No. The headmaster grilled Mr. Farnsworth when he arrived. He wanted to know what he’d done with A Darkness of Angels. But Mr. Farnsworth wouldn’t talk so they locked him up and tortured him.”

  Daisy gasped.

  “That’s when I organized the boys in a revolt.”

  “That was very brave of you,” I said, my eyes filling at the thought that I’d ever thought Nathan might have been taken over by the shadows.

  “Yes,” Mr. Bellows said. “Er, what did you do with the masters?”

  “Chased them off,” Collie exclaimed in a high, excited voice. “You should’ve seen them run.”

  “Some wanted to string ’em up,” Jinks said. “But Becky forbid it. Said they’d been men once—”

  “And might be men again,” Collie finished.

  “Yes, well,” Nathan murmured. “It might not have been the wisest choice. As soon as they were gone we were besieged by shadow creatures—crows on the battlements, rats in the cellars, and wolves in the woods. We’ve been trapped here, unable to get out or send a message. I figured that Blythewood would send someone eventually.”

  “Helen and I only got back a few weeks ago,” I said guiltily. I went on to explain what had happened to us. Nathan listened in silence as I described the ruined Blythewood and the war that had ravaged Europe and then the United States.

  “Blimey!” Bottom swore. “You’re saying we Brits didn
’t stand up against the Bosch? But we’re pledged to aid France.”

  “We’d never stand idle while France fell!” Collie cried, his voice cracking. “I’d go to war myself!”

  “It was the work of the shadows—and van Drood,” Nathan said. “Before the masters fled I had a look at some of their papers—letters to uppity-ups in the governments of England, France, Austro-Hungary, Germany, and Russia. A network of influence spun by van Drood to enable the tenebrae to take over the world. We must stop it!”

  “We will,” Mr. Bellows said, patting Nathan on the shoulder. “But first we must find where the second vessel is.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” Nathan said. “I know where it is.”

  “You do?” I asked, feeling the first stirring of hope.

  Nathan turned his head and looked at me. Against the bright blue paint on his face his eyes looked pale as water, washed clean of emotion and impossible to read.

  “Yes,” he said, looking away from me and jerking his head toward something in front of us. I followed his gaze. We’d come to the edge of the woods. Across a grassy field rose a steep cliff covered with thorny brambles. Steps carved out of the rock led up to a stone castle. The last light of the sun turned the old stone walls the soft gold of buried treasure. “It’s there,” Nathan said, “buried in the hill under Hawthorn Hall. The castle was built up around it to protect the vessel.”

  Nathan led the way up the steep steps so fast that, trying to keep up with him, I had difficulty catching my breath enough to talk. It would have been easier to fly up to the castle, but when I flexed my wings Nathan shook his head.

  “Don’t do it. We’ve got archers in the battlements and meurtriers—those are the arrow slits in the walls—”

  “I know what a meurtrier is,” I snapped, folding back my wings. “I heard the same medieval siege lecture in Mr. Bellows’s class as you. But I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about Helen.”

  “What’s there to talk about? I’ll get her back from van Drood if it’s the last thing I do.”

  I grabbed Nathan’s arm and made him look at me. “You love her, don’t you?”

  Nathan glared at me as though I’d accused him of a crime. “What of it?” he finally snapped. “She was none too happy with my declaration. I remember her exact words: ‘Nathan Fillmore Beckwith, you idiot, why have you gone and ruined everything?’”

  “That’s why she came back from Europe upset?” I said.

  Nathan shrugged my arm off and kept climbing. “I didn’t know that my feelings would be such a burden to her. I always thought . . . that well . . .”

  “She had feelings for you?”

  “Yes. I hate to admit it but I took her for granted. She was always tagging along behind me, like a little sister, only . . .”

  “Not like a sister entirely.”

  “No. So when you came along . . .”

  In the places where the blue paint had rubbed away his skin turned red.

  “You thought you fancied me?”

  He groaned. “Do we really have to go over all my mistakes?”

  “It wasn’t a mistake,” I said gently. “I-I thought . . . well, I fancied you, too, only then . . . well, now . . .”

  “You love Raven. I understand. And Helen loves Marlin . . .”

  “But that’s just it. I’m not sure . . . I mean, she likes him, and when she found out you’d gone . . .” I left off, realizing that I didn’t want to tell Nathan about Marlin coming to Helen’s room on the ship.

  “She went back to him,” Nathan said. “Well, maybe that’s for the best. Only I wish he’d taken better care of her. But if you think I won’t do everything in my power to get Helen back even if it’s to deliver her into Marlin’s arms, you’re dead wrong.” He glared at me, daring me to object.

  “That’s not what I think at all!”

  “Good. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to make a ridiculous sound.”

  “What?”

  He sighed. “It’s a signal. These lads, well . . .” He looked back at Collie, Bottom, and Jinks with an expression of fondness I’d rarely seen on Nathan’s face. “They’ve been raised on all these outlandish tales—Peter Pan and Rudyard Kipling. They love signals and codes and nicknames—as if it’s all a game. Don’t get me wrong—they’re good lads and brave, only I wonder sometimes if their innocence won’t be their undoing.”

  For a moment the setting sun turned the blue paint on Nathan’s face to red streaks and I saw him on a field of war leading men into battle, his eyes filled with a terrible pride and sorrow. Then the red light was extinguished and his face was in shadow.

  “At any rate, if I don’t caw like a crow right now the sentries will assume you’ve taken us prisoner and pour boiling oil from the machicolations.”

  He pointed up to a projection in the battlement wall and then he cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “Ca-caw, ca-caw, ca-caw.”

  Collie, Bottom, and Jinks joined in the noise, adding some fillips of other bird sounds and flapping their arms up and down. They looked so ridiculous—humans pretending to be birds always do, Raven had once told me—that I couldn’t help bursting out laughing. Daisy did, too. Mr. Bellows joined in the flapping and cawing, looking happier than I’d ever seen him. Nathan was right, these were good lads and brave—and far too young to go to war.

  We crossed a drawbridge over a dry moat filled with thorn bushes—the same hawthorn shrubs that grew over the entire hill—and under a raised portcullis. Looking up, I saw buckets poised on rafters and smelled . . . bacon.

  “That’s your boiling oil?” I asked. “Bacon grease?”

  “All we’ve got,” Bottom replied. “Gives me an appetite whenever I’m on sentry duty.”

  “You’ve always got an appetite,” Collie said, not unkindly. “I’ve seen you sopping your bread in the boiling oil.”

  “Lads, now’s not the time,” Nathan pointed out as we emerged into a wide courtyard. A line of six boys dressed in a motley combination of school uniform, plaid kilt, and tattered fur stood with bows drawn, arrows trained on us.

  “Stand down, lads,” Nathan said, “these are friends from Blythewood.”

  A tall young man wearing a plaid kilt, crested blue serge blazer, and feather-topped beret stepped forward and saluted Nathan. “Just following your own orders, sir. Everyone back from the field must undergo observation, sir.”

  “Yes, that’s right, Kingsley.” Nathan turned to us. “They have to check that none of us are shadow-ridden. Just step up and stand still . . . it won’t hurt a bit.”

  Daisy looked at Mr. Bellows uneasily.

  “I’ll go first,” Mr. Bellows said. Stepping up as if he were part of a military parade he saluted Kingsley. “Reporting for observation, soldier. Do your worst—”

  The chuckle emerging from his throat curdled as Kingsley extracted a long steel needle from the rim of his beret. “Stand still, sir, and it won’t hurt.”

  “So you keep saying,” Mr. Bellows muttered under his breath.

  Kingsley raised the needle to Mr. Bellows’s face while another boy shone a lantern into his eyes. Daisy gasped as the needle touched the corner of Mr. Bellows’s right eye.

  “All clear!” Kingsley shouted. “Next.”

  “What are they doing?” I hissed at Nathan as Daisy stepped up.

  “We call it the Stick and Shine. The needle prick draws the tenebrae to the surface of the eye.”

  “And if you see a shadow?”

  “That’s what the other boys are standing by for. Those arrows are tipped with a poison lethal to the tenebrae.”

  “Have you caught many?” I asked as Bottom, Collie, and Jinks each presented themselves for examination.

  “Er, yes, only . . .”

  “Only what?” I demanded as Kingsley motioned for me to c
ome forward.

  “You have to shoot quickly to catch the escaping shadow and, well, not all the boys have the best aim.”

  I shot Nathan a reproachful look as I stepped up to Kingsley. I was remembering something van Drood had told me—about how the Darklings had been contaminated by the tenebrae in that long-ago attack on the bell maker’s daughters. That was why the Darklings couldn’t enter Faerie. What if that contamination was enough to show in my eyes now? I glanced at the line of archers and detected a faint tremor in their shoulders—from holding their bows drawn so long, but also from fear. Fear of being killed and fear of killing. It wouldn’t take much for one of them to let loose an arrow. But if I refused to take the test, then I’d look guilty.

  I faced Kingsley and opened my eyes wide, trying not to look at the quivering tip of the needle as it approached my eye. I felt the prick in my right temple—and at the base of my spine. It felt like something awoke there—something tightly coiled, unfurling . . .

  No! I drove whatever it was back down with the same willpower I used to keep my wings from unfurling. Kingsley’s eyes narrowed as if he’d seen something suspicious.

  “What is it, soldier?” Nathan barked.

  “Nothing, sir, just . . . nothing.” He turned smartly on his heel and saluted. “All clear, sir. You may proceed from the bailey into the keep. Master Farnsworth is waiting in the tower.”

  “Good job, Kingsley,” Nathan said, returning the boy’s salute. “I’ll send relief for you and your boys and order an extra ration for your tea.”

  “Thank you very much, sir! Just doing our duty, sir, but the lads will appreciate it, sir.” And then he added to me and Daisy, “Sorry for any inconvenience, misses. Hope you understand.”

  “Of course,” Daisy replied. “There are some steak and kidney pies and Scotch eggs and ale in those hampers for you if you like.”

  The bailey guards let out a cheer, transforming instantly from fierce soldiers into hungry boys.

  “You’ll spoil them,” Nathan remarked as we entered the keep.