This time there was no mistaking the change in Perdita. She looked years younger! – and healthier too. She thanked me as I came in with the guerdon.“With this in place, Ship can finish restoring my body completely.”
“You’ve moved one of the guerdons,” I said as I watched her put this on in its niche. “Yes. They go in pairs normally. But we needed the power for life support and rejuvenation first.”
I looked around some more.
“So there’s another of these somewhere? Or is this the one Ship gave to Sir Guy de Malherbe?”“Yes to your first question, no to your second.” Perdita laughed again.
“And Ship looks different again.”
“Yes. She’s healing herself as well as rejuvenating me.”
The Professor made good his threats and started teaching me chemistry. And again, it was nothing like school lessons – no watching the teacher do an experiment and then filling in a work sheet afterwards. He was horrified by my ignorance of the periodic table, and made me learn it, across and down. But he taught me useful mnemonics to help me learn it too, and glued it together with stories, like the noble lords, Hene, Arkr and Xern, who didn’t react to anything because that would be too vulgar.
The Professor got quite excited when we performed a successful experiment.
One or two of them came out a bit smelly!
But the Professor was very reassuring about my failures.“If you never make mistakes – or are never willing to risk making mistakes – you will never learn anything.”
In between the lessons, though, I had time to myself. And I began to notice that something was happening to me. I sat down to write about my time as Lissa Malherbe – and I didn’t want to think about it.
Another day I went into the hall, to carry on washing the floor. As soon as I went to kneel down and begin scrubbing it again, I burst into tears. The memories came flooding back to me so vividly: Lissa Malherbe kneeling down to scrub the floor, and one of the sisters striking her sharply across her bowed shoulders.
As I wiped my eyes, I found I was shaking. I felt limp and drained of all energy.
I went out into the garden and on into the orchard. In Aunt Violet’s time, there had been a door here in the wall. And somewhere beyond that wall was the village – and other people. Maybe I could climb the wall? I could stand on the rain-water barrel in the corner. I reached out to touch the wall – and jerked my hand back suddenly, as a shock coursed through my body. The wall was like an electric fence! Ship must have done this.
Even simple things, like making my bed, brought back memories. Lissa’s memories, but mine also. Going back in time had changed me – and I was just beginning to realise how much it had changed me. I could remember what had happened to all those different Talismans, as if it had happened to me. But this last time hadn’t been like any of those others.
I stretched out on my bed and forced myself to think. To think about what had happened to me, and how it had changed me.
I thought about Talisman Mallerby and realised, with a shock, that I still knew all the maths and the Latin that she had learnt. And I could remember how to play the piano as well! But that time hadn’t been so bad – Aunt Violet had been lovely. My eyes filled with tears remembering that happy household. I pulled myself away from those memories.
Talisman de Malherbe. That time had just been interesting from start to almost the finish. And I had loved knowing what it was like to have my own true parents, and brothers and sisters too.
Talisman Malherbe. That time had been hard work – like pushing a snowball uphill – but it hadn’t been frightening. Alarming, when I realised how little food they had, but not terrifying. So what had made this last experience so bad?
As soon as I asked myself the question, I knew the answer. It was all in the way Lissa had been treated. And I had gone through it with her. Those were my experiences now, like it or not. I couldn’t unwrite them from my memory. It hadn’t been like watching a film, or even taking part in a play. It had been real, and it had left its scars. I was not who I had been when I first came to this house.
I found myself looking at the walls when I went outside to do the garden. Ship was keeping me prisoner here, just as Beatrice and Ruth had kept Lissa prisoner. And Ship didn’t really care what happened to me, as long as I brought the guerdons back to her. It was Perdita who had seen that I needed clothes and food, and stuff like that. My resentment was beginning to boil up inside me, and I decided to go and talk to Perdita.
I was in the cellars, heading for the staircase down to Perdita, when I heard her voice.“Ship. You can’t send her to that time. Not straight after the one she’s just been to.” There was a low rumble, and then Perdita’s voice again.
“No. I don’t care if that’s the most powerful of the guerdons. You know when it is. And what happened. She has to go somewhere easier first.”
Another low rumble.
“Ship. I mean this.” There was a pause, and then Perdita said
“Thank you, Ship.”
I was just about to get seriously worried, when I heard the voices beginning again.
“Talisman Mallerby. Talisman Mallerby.”
And the darkness folded over me.
When the darkness unfolded itself from around me, I found that I was standing in the garden, on a beautiful summer’s day. And the house behind me looked nothing like Lissa Malherbe’s house at all.
I didn’t recognise the elegant gardens, nor the quaint Chinese-style lodge at the entrance to the grounds. And I certainly didn’t recognise the emotions that were sweeping through this Talisman Malherbe.
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