‘Oh do hurry up, hurry up …’
Aunt Kestrel came into the hall. ‘If you are going out you need stout shoes. The grass is very wet.’
Leonora ignored her, hand on the front door.
Edward looked at his feet. Were the shoes ‘stout’?
‘Well, perhaps you’ll be all right. Don’t go too far.’
‘Hurry up,’ Leonora said again. The inner door opened and she went to the heavy outer one, which had a large iron key and a bolt and chain.
‘Anyone would suppose ravening beasts and highwaymen would be wanting to burst in,’ she said, laughing a small laugh.
Mrs Mullen was in the dark recesses of the hall watching, lips pinched together.
Aunt Kestrel sighed as she closed both doors. She was confused by the children, and bewildered. Leonora was like Violet, which boded ill though perhaps not in quite the same way, who knew? Edward was simply opaque. Had they taken to one another? Were they settling?
She went into her sitting room with the morning paper.
Mrs Mullen did not ask the same questions because she had made up her mind from seeing both children, Edward, the little namby-pamby, too sweet-tongued to trust, and Leonora. She had looked into Leonora’s eyes when she had first arrived, and seen the devil there and her judgment was made and snapped shut on the instant.
‘Where are you going?’ Edward watched his cousin going to the double gates. ‘The garden is on this side.’
Leonora gave her usual short laugh. ‘Who wants to go in a garden?’
She lifted the latch of a small gate within the gate and stepped through. He went after her because he thought he should look after her and persuade her to come back, but by the time he had clambered over the bottom strut she was walking fast down the road and a minute later, had crossed it and started up the path that led to the open fens.
‘Leonora, we’d better not …’
She tossed her red hair and went on.
When he caught her up she was standing on the bank looking down into the river. It was inky and slick and ran quite slowly.
‘Be careful.’
‘Can you swim?’
‘No, can you?’
‘I wonder what you can do. Of course I can swim, one of my stepfathers taught me in … I think it was Italy.’
‘How many have you had? Stepfathers?’
She did not answer, but moved away and followed a rivulet that led away from the main course deep into the fen. They looked back. Iyot House reared up, higher than the other huddled houses, dark behind its trees. The church rose like a small ship towards the west.
It was very still, not cold. The reeds stood like guardsmen.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Anywhere.’
But it was only a little further on when she stopped again. The rivulet had petered out and widened to form a pool, which reflected the sky, the clouds which were barely moving.
‘There might be newts here,’ Edward said.
‘Are they like lizards?’
‘I think so.’
‘There are lizards everywhere in hot countries. On stones. On walls. They slither into the cracks. Are you afraid of things like that?’
‘I’ve never seen one.’
She faced him, her eyes challenging, dark as sloes in her face.
‘Are you afraid of hell? Or snakes or mad bulls or fire coming out of people’s mouths?’
Edward laughed.
‘You should be careful,’ she said softly. ‘Mind what you laugh at. See if there are any of your newt things in there.’
They bent over and, instinctively, Edward reached out to take her hand in case she went too near to the edge. Leonora snatched it away as if his own had burned her, making him almost lose his balance.
‘Don’t you ever dare to do that again.’
He wanted to weep with frustration at this girl who made him feel stupid, and so as not to show his face to her, he knelt down and stared into the water, trying hopelessly to see newts, or frogs – any living, moving creature.
‘Oh. How strange.’
Leonora was pointing to the smooth, still surface of the water. At first, Edward could not see anything except the sky, which now had patches of blue behind the white clouds. He looked harder and saw what he thought was – must be – Leonora’s face reflected in the water, and there was his own, wavery but recognisably him.
Leonora’s red hair spread out in the water like weed, and the collar of her blue frock was clear, and a little of her long pale neck. But her face was not the same. Or rather, it was the same but …
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘Who is it?’ Leonora whispered.
He could not tell her. He could not say, because he did not really know, who he saw or what. He reached out his hand to her and she held it fast in her own, so tight that it seemed to hurt his bones.
‘What is it? What can you see?’
She went on staring, still gripping his hand, but even when he bent down, Edward could only make out the blurred reflection of both their faces upside down. There was nothing behind them and you could not see below.
And then, she was scrabbling in the earth for small stones, and clods of turf, and then larger stones. She threw them into the water and then hurled the largest one and their images splintered and the water rocked and in a moment, stilled again and there they were, the boy Edward, the girl Leonora. Nothing else.
‘I don’t understand,’ Edward said. But she had gone, racing away from him along the path. He watched her, troubled, but he knew he ought not to let her be by herself, sensing that she was quixotic and unsafe, and followed her from a distance but always keeping her in sight as she ran in the direction of Iyot Church.