Talisman Chapter 12

Chapter 12 Perdita took the guerdon from me and headed for another empty niche. I watched the lights come on and heard – no,felt, more – the rhythms of Ship change beneath my feet. Ship looked different again. I gazed round.
“Ship has changed again since I last came down here.”
“Yes. Thanks to your efforts, she’s managing to repair herself bit by bit.” I looked at Perdita more closely. “You look different too.”
She smiled. “Yes, Ship is rejuvenating me too – but that takes a lot of power, so she can’t do it all at once. I have to admit, I do feel better too.”
“It must have been really lonely for you as well,” I said slowly, thinking about the sheer length of time Ship had been trapped here.
“It was.” Perdita looked down, her face shadowed suddenly. “Very lonely sometimes. Not so much at the start, but as the others died…I was the youngest. This was my first voyage. There were the robots of course -” “Robots! You mean proper androids like Data?”
Perdita actually laughed – the first time I’d ever heard her do that. “I can tell what you like watching! Yes – we used them for reconnaissance work because it was easier to alter their appearance than ours. But it all came down to power again. With the guerdons gone…”
“Yes! That’s what I meant to ask you! The guerdons – how do they bring “luck? I mean, they’ve got to work somehow.”
“Think about it. What makes your life go well? The biggest determinant is what’s called emotional intelligence. The better you interact with those around you, the more successful and happy you are. Ship set the one here to – how can I explain this – basically to boost that aspect of your brain.”
Things began to fall into place. Pierre and Anna de Malherbe’s care for their serfs and villeins. Aunt Violet’s insistence that you keep on giving even when it’s hard. “And the other guerdons?”
“When she realised they were being stolen, Ship set them to boost negative traits, until they were put back here where they belonged. What destroys communities and lives?”
I thought. “Cruelty. Lying. Bullying. Greed – wanting more than your fair share and taking it off others.” A memory of some of the girls at school came back to me. “Bitchiness – you know, always running down other people.”
“You’ve got the idea. Ship set the guerdons to boost whatever negative trait the owner had.”
“But the time I just went to – it wasn’t like that at all.” “Ah. There were two guerdons near each other for quite a long time. That can go one of two ways. If someone has a strong, unpleasant personality, then that will be emphasised. Or they just sink into apathy – it’s as if their character gets – well, ironed smooth into nothingness.”
“That’s what they were like! Sort of nothing-ish and all depressed and can’t-be-bothered.”
“Yes. That’s quite within normal operating parameters for two counter-set guerdons.” I was learning so much from my time with these other Talismans and I didn’t want to forget it. I pulled out one of the note-books we’d bought and a pencil, and began to write. The relief at being back in my own time was overwhelming this time. Not just having toilet paper again (and a toilet for that matter), but the food! Talisman de Malherbe had eaten well – not food I was used to, admittedly, but there had always been enough to eat and to Talisman’s taste buds it had been nice food. But for the Talisman I had just left, the food had been poor and inadequate. A bowl of Special K had never looked so good – and the second one was going to look just as good too! I quizzed the Professor about the late Elizabethan Talisman over our evening chess game. As usual, he claimed that I was trying to distract him, and as usual, he hammered me. But he also coughed up some interesting information.
“The main evidence we have about the Malherbes of that time comes from the rent rolls. The income runs at about £100 a year at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign. Then there’s a sharp decline in the family fortunes – fines demanded for recusancy, and a large building project as well, but the income remains steady. Then it begins to decline, picks up for a year or two and then declines again. For about thirteen years, at a time when food prices were rising sharply. The income goes down to about £20 a year – and again, this is at a time when rents from land were increasing in other places.” The situation on the chess board was getting worse. I was playing Black, and White was chasing me everywhere. Thirteen years of decay. They had arrived at the house when Talisman was about four, so from seven to twenty all she had known was steady decline. I really did wonder if they would have lasted that winter without my help. The Professor was still speaking.
“…but when the next Sir Malherbe, who seems to have been called Hal after the old king, came back home, he seems to have brought a “modest but useful sum of monies” home with him. Interestingly, the “eldest daughter of the house” is named as an official rent collector along with “any heires male.”
He went on talking, but I stopped listening and thought: so Hal came home! But then he must have done because otherwise there wouldn’t have been any more Malherbes – or Mallerbies – at Ship House. I wonder why the spelling changed? The weather grew warmer, and I started wearing shorts – though only in my nicely cleared bit of garden! The rest of it was so bramble-ridden that I still needed jeans to prevent my legs from being shredded. It was kind of satisfying, keeping the kitchen looking clean and tidy. I did wonder about cleaning another room up, but all the other rooms were so bare. Apart from the bathroom, which was what you might call self-furnished! I had a feeling Ship would be sending me somewhere soon though. I sort of hoped so, and sort of didn’t. Last time had been hard work and not very pleasant – but, on the other hand, I had to be back with Harry and Sapphire by the end of the summer holidays. I couldn’t spin my absence out any longer. I told Harry and Sapphire stories about Perdita and the Professor, and it was easy to talk about what I was learning. The Professor was threatening to move on to chemistry next… I kept on writing down everything I remembered about the times and places I’d been to. Well, only one place really, but it had been different each time. I was on to my third notebook by now, and still little details would come back to me. And then I raided the Professor’s bookshelves and read up about what was happening in the wider world then – the politics of Henry’s time, the great voyages of exploration in Elizabeth’s time, the effects of the First World War on English society and culture. It was interesting, in a way that school history had never been. It was early evening, the end of a beautiful summer’s day. It had been almost too hot earlier, but now the temperature was dropping, and my energy was coming back. Once again, I wondered if I could improve the rest of the house a bit. Some forty minutes, and three buckets of water later, I’d cleaned a small part of the hall floor. I stepped back to look at it, and had to laugh. It looked exactly like an ad for “New Super-Cleeno! Just one swipe and it sparkles!” If only!! I was just about to go and get some more water, when an all-too-familiar noise began.
“Talisman Mallerby. Talisman Mallerby.” “Talisman Malherbe. Talisman Malherbe. Have you forgotten your place, Talisman Mallerby?”
The words were sneering and unpleasant. I was in the room that had once been a chapel and then Talisman Malherbe’s bedroom, but was now bare. Like my feet, which were also cold. And my clothes were thin and dirty. And two richly-dressed young women of my own age were taunting and mocking me.
“Wrong part of the house at this time of the day, Talisman Malherbe. Thou art naught but a pauper, and paupers belong in the kitchen or the cellars. Paupers do not live upstairs.” And in the cellars was what they meant. In one of the old dungeons – though it had a normal door now! – was an old bed with thin and worn blankets on it. What had I come to?