I came to, lying on the damp soil of my vegetable patch. Next to me was the guerdon I had seen in the drawer. Perdita had told me that all I had to do was touch it. My head hurt where it had struck me. Me? Talisman Malaby? I couldn’t separate the two of us. I picked myself and the guerdon up and headed for the cellar.
As soon as I came down the stairs into Ship’s control room, Perdita ran towards me. I thought she was desperate to get her hands on the guerdon, but she barely looked at it as she took it off me and put it in its niche.
“You’re back! Are you alright?”I wasn’t, and we could both see that. Living as Talisman Malaby had been awful. Beyond awful. It hadn’t just been what she – and I – had gone through. Her mind had been unpleasant to be inside.
Suddenly, and much to my surprise, I burst into tears. Once I’d started, I couldn’t stop. Perdita patted my shoulder, found me some tissues, and generally calmed me down.
Then she got me to get changed into my dressing gown, put me to bed with a book, and set about making me a hot drink.
I don’t know what was in the hot drink – it tasted a bit odd – but I fell asleep almost as soon as I’d finished it. And I didn’t wake up until the next day.
Twenty hours’ sleep, a bath and a hairwash later, and I felt a bit more like myself. Also ravenous! The quickest thing to make was a salad, but I wasn’t thinking of stopping there.
Next thing I was planning to do was renew my acquaintance with the large tub of ice-cream I’d ordered a while back. And then maybe finish off the biscuits too…
I cleared up after myself and, yes, I did feel like Talisman Malaby again. But only for a moment or two. This was my kitchen now, and my house – even if only for this little while. So I was going to look after it.
Then I played chess with the Professor, concentrating ferociously, and actually holding him to a draw, before falling asleep again.
As I watered the garden the next morning, I suddenly realised what I’d done. I’d brought all the guerdons back! I was free now – I could leave – go and see the village, go back home to Harry and Sapphire. Yet when I touched the wall, it still prickled faintly under my fingers, like static electricity.
I went downstairs to find Perdita.“I’ve found all the guerdons for you.” I could see the last one, in its place, from where I stood.
I can go home now, can’t I?” If I had been asking that question in Latin, I would have used ‘nonne’, for “a question expecting the answer yes”.
“Yes,” said Perdita. “And no. You can’t leave quite yet, but you can go very soon. You have to stay until Ship is ready to leave.”“Why?” I wasn’t any too pleased about this.
“Two reasons. One, because you are Talisman Mallerby. Two, because Ship wants to make amends.”
“For the way she’s treated me?”
“Yes. And no. Another week should do it – have you got enough holiday left?”
I had. Just, but I had.
“Talisman. I will miss you. And I am so grateful to you for what you’ve done – and so proud of your bravery too.”I was touched. I could tell that Perdita meant it. And my quarrel wasn’t with her, anyway. She and the professor had been more than kind to me.
I thought back to how this control room had looked when I first found it. The contrast between then and now was amazing!
The professor said that we might as well make the most of our last week together, and launched into a gruelling timetable.
After a particularly exciting but exhausting history lesson, I finally asked him about the time I’d just been to.“Now that was quite a cause célèbre in its time! The newspapers were full of it. It was right near the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign, if I remember properly. There was Charles Mallerby, back from the dead, coming to claim his own again. Very romantic.”
“So what happened to the people involved?”
“Charles Mallerby and his children lived happily on in Ship House. He married again, eventually, and had three more children. Charles Malaby – the imposter – died in prison a couple of years into his sentence.”
“What about Talisman? The fake one, I mean?”“Now that’s another story. And one that’s spread over many years. It starts not long after the real Charles Mallerby came back. One of the maids came into the kitchen, and found the cook sitting there, dazed and obviously ill. She asked the cook what had happened, and the cook said that Talisman had attacked her. Then she fainted, and they couldn’t revive her. They sent for the doctor, and he found that she’d suffered a severe blow to the head. She never came round, and died two days later, from her injuries.”
I hadn’t liked that cook, but I wouldn’t have wished that on her!“And then?”
“There was a police hunt for Talisman, but they never found her. And then, sixty years later, there was some work being done in the cellars. The workmen found a secret door, and behind it, a strong-room.”
“And in that room?” But I had a feeling I knew the answer.
“A skeleton of a young girl, probably about thirteen or fourteen. Most of what she was wearing had rotted away, but there was some evidence to suggest that her hands had been tied.”
The cook. The cook had threatened to lock Talisman in the cellar. She must have done it. And then died of the injuries Talisman had inflicted upon her before she could tell anyone about what she’d done.“They thought it was Talisman?”
“Right age. Right length of time since her disappearance. That was the conclusion.”
So what would have happened to me, if I had still been in Talisman’s mind when she was locked up down there? Was this why Perdita had been so worried about me?
The bath was grubby again: it got dirty really fast. I think it needed re-enamelling or something. As I cleaned it out, my head was full of questions. Could I have helped Talisman at all? Why did Ship need me here until she was ready to leave? And – biggest of all the questions – how could I bear to leave here and never come back again, except to put Ship House on the market?
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