“Mr. Straithmore, Great-Aunt Clorinda is so old she doesn’t have any eyebrows. She said they’d fallen to her upper lip so now she had a mustache.” P.C. shuddered, then her thin shoulders squared and she looked him right in the eye. “Sir, when I saw you in the village this morning and I recognized you from your picture on your books, I knew you could help us. I remember Grandmama telling the Great he should read your books because you lived here now, and it was only polite. She said he snorted, said who cares if you live here now since you spend your life stringing words together, so long as you aren’t an imbiber and fall off a cliff?
“My mama and grandmama love your books too. She reads them to me, and then I read them to her, to practice my speech. Mr. Straithmore, Mama and I don’t want to go to Scarborough.
“And what would become of Grandmama and Barnaby and all the servants? You’ve got to fix what is wrong. You’ve got to speak to the voice and tell it to be clear in what it wants, or I know it’s the abyss for Mama and me, or worse, Great-Aunt Clorinda.”
“Why does your mama believe the Great knows about this?”
“She said when he tries to hide anything, his left eye twitches something fierce and he rubs his hands together, like Lady Macbeth, but I don’t know who she is. Mama said he was already writing a letter to Great-Aunt Clorinda telling her of her joy in having us live with her.”
Barnaby said, “Nobody wants Miz Miranda or P.C. to go to the great-aunt. Suggs is muttering and telling Mrs. Crandle to do something. Marigold, she’s the upstairs maid, and Meg, she sees to Miz Elaine and Miz Miranda, they don’t want them to leave even though Mrs. Crandle said it sounded like P.C. and Miz Miranda had rust in their upper-works. As for Suggs, he thinks it’s a lovely enigma, whatever that is, his words exactly.”
P.C. said, “Suggs is older than the Great. He’d look like God if he had any hair.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“Aye, the old blighter is bald as a river rock,” Barnaby said. “Ah, Old Suggs is the butler. A rheumy eye has Old Suggs, catches me whenever I sneak a pie from the kitchen.”
P.C. turned on him. “You don’t even know what rheumy means, Barnaby. You’re copying what you heard Mama say.” P.C. smacked him in the arm.
“Yeow!”
“You sounded like Musgrave—he was my cat before he died of old age,” she said to Grayson. “Mama said a mouse could ride around on Musgrave’s back and Musgrave wouldn’t even notice, he was just that stupid.”
“Well, now ye’ve got Musgrave Jr., and he’s as stupid as his ma.”
Grayson wanted to laugh, but he didn’t, not with those two young, worried faces staring up at him like he was their savior. He looked around and spotted a smooth grassy spot. He took off his greatcoat and, despite the chill, spread it on the ground. “Both of you, sit down.” They collapsed onto his coat, boneless, like Pip, like he himself had when he’d been a child, he supposed. He saw P.C. was wearing disreputable boys’ clothes, probably Barnaby’s castoffs. He couldn’t tell about her hair; it was tucked under a dirty black wool cap. “That’s right. Now, let’s get back to the problem at hand. You said the voice brought the abyss last night. Describe the abyss for me again.”
“It was this whirling black hole right there in the middle of the entryway. The last time we heard the voice it was coming from that black hole. We slept together with Barnaby, and today Mama wouldn’t let me out of her sight. Mr. Tubbs, he’s the head stable lad, he woke us up.”
“You’re here,” Grayson said. “Your mama isn’t.”
The little girl looked down at her feet. “Well, she was tired from packing all our things and was sleeping, and I slipped out. This was important, sir, surely you see that. I don’t want to leave Wolffe Hall.” She looked at Barnaby. “I don’t want to leave him either. He’d wither away without me, Mr. Straithmore. And I’m afraid the voice and shudders will come while I’m gone and Mama’s all alone.”
“I think yer ma’ll be all right, P.C. I been considerin’, yer inkpotness, that meybe the voice has to rest up afore it puts on another show for P.C. and her mama.”
“Interesting, Barnaby. The voice, the shudders and quaking, the black hole—it would all require great energy, great power.” Grayson again felt that spark, now more a flame, he realized, burning bright now, making his blood heat, his heart speed up. “I’m not an inkpotness.”
“Well, ye don’t sing yer stories, do ye? Ye write ‘em down. Ye use ink, don’t ye? Ye don’t try to use spit, do ye?”
“He can’t spit down the words, Barnaby,” P.C. said. “They’d dry and disappear, and then where would he be?”
“Well, that’s why the sirness ‘ere is an inkpotness, not a spitpotness. And I ain’t gonna wither, P.C. I’m a boy and boys grow up to be big strong trees.”
Again, Grayson wanted to laugh, but P.C.’s bright blue eyes were once more fixed on his face like he was the only possible savior of her world. He realized too that he liked Barnaby’s newest title for him. “You said your grandmama’s bedchamber door was locked?”
P.C. nodded. “Grandmama told Mama she hadn’t locked it and that she was asleep, probably dreaming about Alphonse. She really likes Alphonse.”
Who was this Alphonse? Not important—he’d find that out later.
“All the servants are worried, sir. They don’t want to think we’re nutters, but they don’t know. I think they’re afraid too.”
“P.C. says if ye don’t help, then we’ll all be swept away into this abyss or they’re leaving for Scarborough on Saturday.”
“Mama doesn’t want to leave her garden, sir. It’s really quite amazing. You do believe me, don’t you? You don’t think I’m just a little kid and I’m making this up? Or that I’m a nutter?”
“If you’re making this up, you’re far better at storytelling than I am. Who else lives at Wolffe Hall?”
“Besides the Great, only Grandmama—she’s my daddy’s mama. Her name’s Elaine. She’s a floater, like a fairy whose feet don’t really touch the ground. She spends most of her time in the portrait gallery, standing in front of Alphonse, talking to him. I don’t know what she says, but she never tires of standing there, looking up at him, and talking. I brought her a chair once, but she had Suggs take it away. Mama said Alphonse lived back in Queen Elizabeth’s court and that was about forever ago, and that’s why he’s wearing funny clothes, like a ruff, that’s the name Mama told me for the fancy collar. And he has on green tight pants. Grandmama calls him her darling Alphonse. He’s got a pointed beard and I think his eyes are sly, but Grandmama doesn’t agree.