But she could not stay there forever. There were mind-places to go, and things to remember. There was an abyss to brave, and an enemy to face.
You can wait here for me, Makepeace told Bear. I will come back soon. I need to face this alone.
But Bear did not really understand. He was coming with her, of course he was. And after a moment she realized that she was the one being foolish. There was no longer any such thing as ‘alone’.
So when Makepeace took a deep breath and started to remember Poplar, the younger self she pictured in her mind’s eye walked with a Bear at her side. She let herself sink into the image. It was memory, it was imagination, it had the power and vividness of a dream.
There was Poplar, after all this time, with its reek and roar. The clatter and thunder of the shipyards, the fluttering poplar trees, the lush green marshlands where brown-and-cream cattle grazed. It was so vivid that the smoke stung tears from her eyes. Like clothes tucked away in a chest from the light of day, the memories had not faded. Their dyes were still bright.
And . . . Poplar itself was small, she realized. Far smaller than Oxford or London. Just a few houses clustering around a road, like grass seeds about a stalk.
In her imagination she walked the road to London, as she had three years before. Nobody gave twelve-year-old Makepeace a second glance, or seemed to notice Bear at her side. The sunset was vast. The sky was darkening. With every step, the air became murkier and more oppressive. But there was somebody she needed to find.
Bear was still beside her. She could reach out and touch his fur, even as the roar of an angry crowd filled her ears. And when she ran, he ran beside her, on all fours.
Now they were in the crush of the apprentices’ riot, a mad, screaming darkness torn by gunshots. Looming adult bodies stampeded and shifted in panic, knocking Makepeace this way and that, crushing her and blocking her view. Makepeace looked all around, desperate to see one specific face.
Where was she? Where was she? Where was she?
There. Right there.
Mother.
Every line of her face clear. The witchiness of her hair escaping from under her cap. The deep-set eyes with stars and riddles in them. Margaret.
And a carelessly swung cudgel was heading towards her undefended brow . . .
But Makepeace and Bear could prevent it! They were here now; they could block it! A bat of the paw deflected the cudgel.
But now a bottle shattered nearby, shards heading for Margaret’s face . . .
Makepeace’s imagined self raised a hasty arm to shield Mother. But now a hoe was knocked out of somebody’s hands, so that its blade careered towards Margaret. A thrown stone ricocheted off a wall in her direction. A bullet fired blindly took its relentless course for her temple . . .
Mother screamed.
Then she was standing in front of Makepeace, her pale face half covered in dark rivulets of blood. She stared at Makepeace, her face deathly, and then her expression twisted.
‘Stay away from me!’ she screamed, striking Makepeace’s face with a blow that shuddered the world. ‘Go away! Go away!’ She shoved at her daughter with a giant’s strength.
Makepeace tumbled back into a different darkness. She landed among thistles, and stared up at stars. She was in a little overgrown clearing, flanked by reeds that whispered in the wind. She sat up, and saw not far away a lowly oblong of disturbed earth. It was Mother’s grave, on the edge of the Poplar marshes.
Bear was a little cub now, his soft muzzle opening to give a small bleat of dismay. He had died in these marshes, and he recognized them. Makepeace scooped him up in her arms, feeling herself shiver from cold and fear.
Beyond the edge of the clearing, among the reeds, stood the smoky silhouette of a woman. She was motionless but for her loose, wild hair, which stirred and wavered in the breeze.
‘Ma,’ gasped Makepeace.
You were the death of me, whispered the wind, the reeds, and the stealthy click and gurgle of the streams. You were the death of me.
‘I’m sorry, Ma!’ The words came out in a little sob. ‘I’m sorry we argued! I’m sorry I ran!’
The woman-shape did not move, but suddenly it seemed to be a lot closer, still faceless and implacable. The death of me, breathed the lonely marshes. The death of me.
‘I tried to save you!’ Makepeace felt her eyes sting with tears. ‘I tried! But you pushed me . . . and that man carried me away . . .’
The death of me. The wind rose, and the woman’s hair billowed. All of a sudden she was standing on the very edge of the clearing, silent and ominous, her face still lost in shadow.
Soon the shape would swoop at her, and Makepeace would see its terrible smoky face, and hear it slur in her ear as it clawed at her brain. And yet Makepeace was filled with an anguish and longing even greater than her fear.
‘Why couldn’t I save you?’ Makepeace shouted at the figure. She thought again of the scene she had just left, and all her hopeless attempts to shield Mother from a fatal blow. ‘Why does it have to happen? Why can’t I stop it?’
It turned out that, deep down, she already knew the answer.
‘It was just bad luck, wasn’t it?’ she whispered, and felt tears slide down her face. ‘There was nothing I could do about it.’
Bear was warm and heavy in her arms. She bowed her head over him protectively, and felt his rough fur against her cheek.
‘Why did you push me away, Ma?’ asked Makepeace in anguish. ‘I could have helped you! I could have taken you home!’ She was afraid that at the end Mother had hated her so much that even her help was unbearable.
And then, at last, Makepeace finally understood.
‘Oh, Ma,’ she said. ‘You were afraid. You were afraid for me.
‘You didn’t hate me. You guessed you were done for, and you were scared that your ghost might turn on me! You were trying to protect me. You were always, always trying to protect me.’
At last, Makepeace felt that she had begun to understand the wild, secretive mother who had brought her up. Margaret had been too inflexible, but how could she be otherwise? Nobody with a will less stubborn could have escaped the Fellmottes.
But she had loved Makepeace. She had defied the Fellmottes for Makepeace, fled house and hearth for Makepeace, worked her fingers to the bone for Makepeace. She had loved her with the cruel purity of the mother bird who forces the fledgling out of the nest to test its half-formed wings. She had done what she thought was best for her daughter. She had been right, she had been wrong, and she would never have apologized anyway.
‘You loved me,’ said Makepeace, hardly able to voice the words.
The night seemed to breathe out for a long, long time. Afterwards, there were no longer voices in the wind-blown reeds, and now the marshes were simply dark and cold, not seething with menace and pain. There was still a female figure at the clearing’s edge, but the outline looked different now. Makepeace’s eyes cleared, and she could see who the woman was, and who she was not.
‘Hello, Lady Morgan,’ she said, and slowly approached. Bear was larger and heavier now, and Makepeace had to put him down.
Morgan was indistinct, a woman-shape of smoke and silver pins, but as Makepeace drew closer, she could make out a clever, narrow face with heavy-lidded eyes, a high brow and a subtle, curling mouth. There was no visible sign of injury, but nonetheless she seemed subtly askew, like a picture on a slightly bent card. Evidently she had not fully recovered from her first fight with Bear.