Talisman Chapter 20

Chapter 20 Talisman knew what verdict the jury had reached. The cook’s expression of triumphant and malicious glee told her the answer. They had found her father guilty of – and then her internal block slammed down hard and, once again, I did not know what her father had been accused of. But I knew that he was now in prison.
“Twenty years hard labour,” the cook called across the kitchen. “That’s the sentence. And lucky for you that you weren’t there alongside him in the dock. If it wasn’t for your cousin’s kindness to you, you would have been.”
I was horrified. Talisman was not quite fourteen – and yet she could have been sent to prison as well?
“Mind you,” the cook went on, obviously feeling that this was no more than Talisman deserved, “you’d probably have been transported to Australia. So I reckon you should show your gratitude to your cousin when she arrives.” Talisman was so shocked by what she’d just heard that she didn’t have it in her to react with her normal rage at the idea of being grateful to her cousin. But nevertheless, I felt her implacable dislike of, and hatred for, her cousin stir within her.
Talisman was like Roberta in The Railway Children, I thought, with a father falsely accused and in prison. Though I couldn’t quite fit her into Roberta’s shoes; I hated to say this, but she wasn’t as nice or as kind. But then, Roberta had had her mother there, and from what I could gather from Talisman’s closely-guarded mind, her mother had died a long time ago. The one place Talisman couldn’t guard her mind quite so well was in her dreams though. That night she dreamt with great vividness about her past.
She and her father had gone to visit the vicar. I saw, in her dream, that the vicarage had changed again, and been extended. I caught a glimpse of her clothes, but no sign of the man at her side, though I could hear his voice in her dream. She was wearing a white and lavender dress: she was in half-mourning. And the vicar had been offering them his condolences on the recent death of her mother, which her father had accepted with gravity. Then when they had left, her father had turned to her and said, “You did that very well. Now we had better go over to the graveyard.” Next, in the strange ways that dreams go, it was as though I was watching Talisman. A girl in a summer dress, with matching boots and gloves, going over to a memorial and looking at it solemnly. I saw that this was a new graveyard: the old churchyard must have been full. But still I couldn’t see her father anywhere in her dream. Then they were somewhere else in the village altogether. These were new houses, in a row of rather dismal-looking streets.
“We’ll put the rents up on these as soon as we can.” That was her father’s voice again. “I think there’s quite a bit more profit to be made here.”
Over the river from those houses was a factory. It didn’t seem to bother either Talisman or her father that the trees around the factory were dying, and that the river nearby was looking polluted.
“We’ll get another one built further along the river, as soon as we can. This one’s turning us a goodly amount of money. Now that everything’s gone through at the lawyers, we’re finally home and dry at Ship House.”
And even in the dream, I could feel a strange sense of mingled satisfaction and trepidation in Talisman’s mind.
“We really are safe at Ship House now, Papa?”
“Yes. We’ve finally got here.” When Talisman awoke from her dream, and found herself locked in her box bed, and wearing the rough clothes she had been given, her disappointment was so strong it nearly overwhelmed me. She had thought she was finally safe at Ship House! And now she was little more than a prisoner here. And like her father, she was condemned to a life of hard labour. And the next week did nothing to change her mind about that. Her cousin’s arrival grew ever nearer, and the whole house was cleaned from top to bottom, with Talisman coming in for most of the dirty work. And all the servants, even the ones who were arriving from London, seemed to think that this was perfectly reasonable, and no more than she deserved. Her thoughts about her cousin, and her cousin’s family were positively murderous. I was actually shocked: she really wanted to kill them! Even Lissa hadn’t thought like this – but then she had been older, and hadn’t been quite so badly treated. The sun was just rising, but already everyone had been up for ages. The family were arriving today, and the whole house was a hive of activity. Down in the cellars, where she had been fetching and carrying stuff, Talisman was a hive of hatred, anger, fear , and an overwhelming desire for, I suppose, revenge. The guerdon was obviously somewhere in this house, and just as obviously working on Talisman. Perdita had said that it tended to magnify strong emotions or character traits. And I had had no chance or opportunity to look for it: Talisman was always watched and occupied.
I didn’t really like being in her head much, I had to say. And I found her so confusing: it felt to me as though her mother had died when she was very young, yet she had remembered the vicar condoling with her father on the fairly recent loss of his wife. And she had been wearing half-mourning at the time. Maybe her mother just hadn’t been around when Talisman had been growing up. That would explain quite a lot about her, really. Talisman wasn’t supposed to be anywhere in sight when the family arrived, but she sneaked upstairs to one of the servants’ bedrooms in the attic. I was curious to see them too, especially the cousin who had been so “kind” in letting Talisman stay at Ship House. I figured it was probably better than a Victorian prison – or transportation – but not much. I wondered what the cousin would look like: all snooty and stuck-up like Beatrice and Ruth perhaps. The father must be quite old by now, to have a grown-up daughter. But Talisman wanted them dead: with them out of the way Ship House would be hers. There was a fierce possessive desire in her to own Ship House. But the people who got out of the carriage, and stood and looked around at the garden and the house didn’t fit my imaginings at all! The father was young, and looked too thin and fine-drawn, as though he had been through some difficult times. And the cousin that Talisman wanted dead? She was a child! With a little brother who looked about four years old. The family went into the house and Talisman went softly down the stairs and leant over the banisters to hear what they were saying.
“So this is Ship House?”
“Yes, Tallie.” It was odd, hearing someone else use my name to their child.
“It’s very strange after India.”
“It seems strange to me, too, Tallie. I have not been inside Ship House since I was seven years old.”
“That’s younger than I am now! Do you remember it at all?”
“Well, I was born here.” He laughed at her, kindly. “There used to be fish in the pond. Shall we go and see if they are still there?” Talisman went up on to the roof, to see what they were doing next. Her fists clenched with anger at the sight of them. They ought to be dead! Charles Mallerby was sitting on the grass, heedless of his clothes, talking to his little son. Tallie was trying her hand at fishing, but kept looking at her brother and father, as if she wanted to know where they were all the time. I had had enough of this. Charles Mallerby had said that he was born here! So how could Ship House belong to both him and Talisman? And, watching him with his children, I could tell that he was a kind and loving father. Not the ogre Talisman had led me to expect. And how could Talisman hate a child? And wish her dead? I felt as though I was battering at her defences, trying to find out what was going on, what she was hiding from me. But I only felt her being more determined than ever not to tell anyone what had happened in India. The next day, I found out. Talisman had been sent outside to hang the washing up on the lines, when she heard voices coming from the other side of the wall. It was the gardener and Nellie, the young nurserymaid who had come from India with Charles Mallerby and the children.
“So there we were.” Nellie’s voice was young and clear. “Stranded in the middle of nowhere with night falling. How they’d come to take the wrong road, I shall never know. The coach was turned over, the horses had bolted and there was no sign of the driver or his assistant. The children were alright, but the mistress had hurt her leg badly, and the master was bleeding all down his face from a cut on his head.” “And then what happened?”
“Well, I bandaged up the master, and did what I could for the mistress, and calmed the children. We spent the night in the coach. Come daylight, we could see a little better. The mistress’s leg was broken, so we did what we could to set it and splint it, but we couldn’t travel anywhere. And the road was long disused. So we had to do our best where we were.” “So how long was it before you were rescued?”
“We weren’t rescued. We lived there, in the jungle, for a year and a half. Luckily there was water nearby, and the master was a good hunter. But the mistress never really recovered from her injury. She slowly grew weaker and weaker. Eventually she died, and we buried her there.” Nellie’s voice broke on the last few words. Talisman would have gone away as fast as she could, but for the first time I over-rode her will and forced her to go nearer the gate so that I could hear better. “That was a hard time. I don’t like to think of it. Then we packed what necessities we could carry and set off to find our way out of the jungle.”
“And how long did that take you?”
“That was another six weeks before we came to a village. And we stayed there a long while because the rains were coming. Then, eventually, we made our way back to England – and found that there was a Charles and Talisman Mallerby already in Ship House. We had to prove who we were, bring the case against Charles Malaby, and win it before we could come here.” Malaby. Charles Malaby. They hadn’t been calling her Talisman Mallerby, they’d been calling her Talisman Malaby. She was the imposter, not little Tallie. Her father was the villain. Everything fell into place. Why the servants hated her. Why she was afraid and angry all the time. All the little digs about prison, and convict haircuts. It was you! You are the villain! It was as though I shouted this inside her head – and the barriers cracked open, and I finally saw all the way into her mind. Her father hadn’t just decided to claim Ship House when he heard that Charles Mallerby had gone missing. He’d arranged it all. He’d bribed the coachmen to kill them all, and they’d told him that they had done just that. And Talisman had known about this and been willing to go along with her father’s plan. I was horrified. Horrified and disgusted. And for a moment, Talisman’s body drooped with shame. Then her familiar quick anger sprang up. She wasn’t going to stay here, with everyone knowing everything about her! She was going to run away. Leaving the washing, Talisman ran for the kitchen. She knew where the cook hid her money – she’d steal it and go. Talisman looked swiftly around and then pulled open the drawer. She was looking for the cook’s purse, but I spotted something else in the drawer. The guerdon! Tucked away in a corner, but there. I was just about to force Talisman to touch it when the cook appeared from around the corner. Talisman slid the drawer shut, but she was too late. “So! You little thief! You belong behind bars, just like your father!”
Enraged, Talisman lashed out at the cook, knocking her head against the wall and leaving her dizzy and tottering. She turned and pulled the drawer open again, reaching inside to seize the money and run. But the cook was tougher than she looked. She staggered to her feet and struck out at Talisman, cutting her lip and filling her mouth with blood.
“You can go back into that secret cellar madam. Until we’ve broken this spirit of yours. You need to learn some hard lessons.”
Talisman’s verbal cry of “No!” was echoed by my wordless one. She sprang upon the cook, fighting for her freedom. But the cook was older, stronger and heavier. Despite the blow to her head, despite her unfocussed eyes, she pinned Talisman face down on the ground, sat on her and reached into the open drawer for something to tie her wrists with.
Talisman gave a gigantic heave, in a desperate attempt to get free. She didn’t succeed in dislodging the cook, but the drawer and all its contents came out of the chest of drawers, landing on Talisman and the cook indiscriminately. Something hard and metallic struck Talisman’s head, and darkness enfolded me once more.