The Book of Lies. James Moloney

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СКАЧАТЬ She was much older than the girls he had seen near the stairs – older than he was, he guessed. She was brushing the end of her long ponytail with her free hand as she went, paying more attention to this than the bucket. He said hello, but she didn’t even look at him.

      “What’s she being so high and mighty for?” he asked.

      “She’s always like that,” said Hugh. “Did you see the way she was spilling the water? She’ll have to go back for another load.”

      “What’s her name?”

      “Nicola. Only been here a few weeks. No one likes her much.”

      “She was sent back,” said Dominic. There was something about the way he said this that made the newcomer raise his eyebrows, puzzled.

      Hugh tried to explain. “A family in Fallside wanted someone, a bit like a servant, but more like a daughter really.”

      “Except she was hopeless. Too proud to do anything useful so they sent her back,” Dominic continued bitterly.

      Hugh dropped his voice to a whisper. “It’s a terrible thing to be sent back.”

      “She lost her chance,” said Dominic, and suddenly the new boy understood why he spoke so savagely. Dominic’s limp meant he would never be offered a home.

      After Nicola had disappeared haughtily through the kitchen door, the tour continued. They headed for the back of the house, past a vegetable garden, and beyond it a field with two well-fed cows. They rounded a pond where ducks quarrelled and a family of geese strutted proudly at the water’s edge.

      “This is the orchard,” Dominic said as they walked between rows of apple trees that ran all the way to the stone wall bordering the orphanage. “Albert and Mrs Timmins sell the fruit in the village. That’s how we buy the food we need.”

      They showed him the rope they swung on and their favourite climbing tree among the oaks on the other side of the house. But since the conversation about Nicola the new arrival had sunk into a reverie, and no matter how hard Hugh and Dominic worked to make him feel at home, he remained distant.

      “Will we show him the waterfall?” asked Hugh.

      “We’re not supposed to cross the wall,” Dominic replied cautiously.

      “Oh, come on, Albert’s not watching,” Hugh insisted. The gleam in his eye showed a spirit far stronger than his withered body. It was enough to carry Dominic along.

      The three boys clambered over the waist-high stone fence and a minute later arrived at the cliff’s edge, or at least, as close to it as any of them dared go.

      “It’s massive,” the newcomer breathed in awe, becoming more enthusiastic now. From the waterfall at his right, the craggy cliff continued as far as his eye could see. He inched closer to the edge, feeling the fine spray from the plummeting water, cold against his face.

      “It’s straight down, all the way,” said Hugh. “How far, do you think?”

      “A thousand feet.”

      “More like two thousand,” Hugh corrected him. “It’s like the earth broke itself in two and pushed one half straight up into the sky to make these highlands.”

      The boy looked out over the cliff’s edge to the enormous plains below. They seemed to flow in a shimmer of midday heat all the way to the horizon. “Perhaps I come from down there,” he whispered, too softly for his companions to hear. Then he asked, more loudly, “How do you get down into the valley?”

      “There are paths down the rock face in places,” said Hugh.

      “Or you can jump!” Dominic laughed at his own little joke but a shudder ran through each of the boys all the same.

      They headed back through the stand of oaks and then Hugh and Dominic left him so they could catch up on their chores. The boy drifted aimlessly through the orchard to a place where the ground disappeared under a wild mess of brambles and blackberry canes. There was a well-worn path at the edge and an opening large enough to crawl through. He dropped to his hands and knees and found himself under a tightly woven archway of thorny vines that formed a sort of cave. The ground had been hollowed out, except for a few small boulders, to form a snug hideaway. Best of all, it was peaceful and he could be alone. He found a seat on a rounded granite boulder.

      “You can’t remember, can you?” said a voice.

      The boy stood up sharply, bumping his head on the thick canes that formed the roof. He looked around him but he couldn’t see anyone. “Who said that?”

      “You’ve lost your memory,” the voice said again.

      “Who is it? I can’t see you!” He whirled around frantically, stopping to stare at the place where the voice seemed to come from. To his amazement, a figure emerged from the shadows where it had been standing unnoticed even as he gazed at it. It was one of the little girls, the one who had smiled at him.

      Her face was bordered by swirls and ropes of brown hair growing wild, like creepers around a statue. Her skin was dark, which helped her stay unseen in the shadows. Perhaps she kept her dress dull and dusty for the same reason. But she wanted to tell him something, and while the eagerness gripped her, her eyes sparkled and he could see her clearly.

      “Who are you? And why were you hiding there?”

      “I wasn’t hiding,” she said defiantly. “Not on purpose, anyway.” She hesitated a moment then seemed to make up her mind. “Your name,” she said softly. “It’s not Robert at all.”

      “What do you mean, not my name? But Mrs Timmins, she called me…” He didn’t say it. “If my name’s not Robert, what is it, then?”

      The girl hesitated.

      “Tell me, please!”

      At last she spoke. “Your name is Marcel.”

      “What did you call me?”

      “Marcel,” she said again, more confident now.

      He felt his heart leap at the sound of this name and he braced himself to remember who he was and all that had happened in his life to this day.

      Nothing came.

      “You’ve told me my name, but… but who am I?”

      She shook her head sadly. It was a simple thing to tell him his name, but the rest…

      “You must know. Why did I think I was called Robert?”

      “It came from a book.”

      “A book?”

      The girl told him then of all that she had witnessed the night before, of the old man in the dark robes and the heavy book he had brought to the room at the end of the hall, of the voice and its story and how it couldn’t be stopped. He listened, wide-eyed. Finally she told him how she had plugged his ears with wax.

      “You saved me,” said Marcel, for he had no doubt now that this was his name. “You’re much braver СКАЧАТЬ