Chapter 15
Darley Hall
W e are bathed in thick, cloying silence. I can’t hear the noise from the courtyard at all, as though the hall itself has been spelled and muffled. If we can’t hear anyone outside, we’d better not run into any trouble in here. No one would hear our screams.
Tessa points to the dining hall to our right, set out much the same as Gantry, door slightly ajar revealing rows of tables and a platform at the back.
I step towards the door, peering through, and catch the scent of parchment and dust, with the faintest whiff of mildew.
It seems unlikely anything or anyone would be in there.
Tessa gestures to the staircase and tilts her head towards them.
I bite my lip, wondering what we’ll find here.
If there’s anything, perhaps, to help us get through the Ordeals and any hints about my parents.
Or if we’re about to stumble upon something best left alone.
I point to the staircase and Tessa nods. Harder to escape down a lone set of stairs if we’re caught, but more likely to contain something interesting. In for a flor, in for a floren.
We ascend slowly, testing the sound of each footfall.
It’s a spiral staircase like the one in Hope, walls whitewashed over rough plaster.
Dust and cobwebs gather at the few arrow-slit windows, edged in the original stone.
This is an older part of the castle structure, still intact after alterations and extensions made it into a college for wielders.
We arrive on the first-floor landing with a corridor and a set of three doors across from us.
I nod to Tessa and we move to the doors first, listening at each one before stepping inside.
The first two are set up like classrooms, with desks and chairs and even blackboards.
In the second one, half-stubs of chalk still sit in the sill under the blackboard, the faintest trace of old lessons on the board itself.
‘Where’d they all go? There’s nothing here,’ I whisper to Tessa. It seems less forbidden and more just abandoned. Like everyone got up and left one day, leaving it frozen in time. So far, there doesn’t seem to be anything that could help us in the Ordeals as we’d hoped.
‘I wouldn’t be so sure … look.’
I turn and see she’s standing at the wall by the door, looking at framed certificates and notices of some kind.
Keeping my footsteps as quiet as I can manage I go to the certificate she’s standing in front of.
It’s in old, copperplate lettering with flourishes in dark ink.
The Killmarth crest is at the top, and beneath …
‘Dorothea Goode?’ I say softly. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Goode is old Parnell’s maiden name. She went to school here, alongside my father and Harvey Parnell.’
I frown, looking at Tessa. ‘The groundskeeper?’
‘Yes, her husband. Last seen entering Darley Hall and never leaving eight years ago. Apparently, it was closed the next day, all the scholars assigned to the hall redistributed to Gantry, Fetlock and Godolphin.’
‘So she was a scholar in Darley.’
Tessa looks at me. ‘Yep, an illusionist, but Darley was mostly made up of alchemists back then. Every intake since, there have been fewer and fewer. That’s the reason that’s been bandied about for never reopening this hall. I’ve heard my father and grandmother discussing it.’
‘Doesn’t explain why it’s forbidden now though,’ I mutter.
My gaze strays from the certificate to a black-and-white framed photograph next to it.
Sepia-toned, the picture is still crisp, as though taken and hung only yesterday.
It seems to be a class photograph, staged in front of Killmarth College with men and women sitting in a row, and another row standing behind them.
I move closer, scrutinising the list of names beneath and the year, exactly twenty-five years ago:
Oliver Locke
Harvey Parnell
Dorothea Goode
Ezra Darley
Lucas Winter
Caroline Fetlock
Perdita Beacham
George Godolphin
Tessa taps an index finger on a figure towards the end of the top row. ‘That’s my father. George Godolphin.’
I round on her slowly. ‘You’re related to one of the founders of Killmarth? You’re not just third generation then.’
‘Well …’ Heat rises up her cheeks as they flush and she shrugs.
‘Killmarth was established four generations back when alchemists were discovered during the Fair Age, so technically I’m third generation.
I promise I don’t get any special treatment because of it.
Nor did grandmother or father. It’s why I try not to draw attention to it.
My great-grandfather died before I was born, but I’ve heard he was pretty insistent on that rule.
Family ties came second to actual ability. ’
‘Did he make the Ordeals, you know … ?’
‘Cut-throat?’
‘Yes.’
Tessa goes on. ‘Only the strongest survive, so only the strongest carry the magic in their bloodlines. That was the plan, but of course then the more elite wielding families wanted to preserve their status and the bloodlines, and so Kellend became as it is. Occasionally you’ll see a strong wielder born into a different class, though.
And the Crown keeps funding Killmarth to keep the territory strong, which at least makes it possible for all of the strongest to compete. ’
‘If you know when and where the Crucible is,’ I say.
She exhales. ‘There is that. But if someone really wants to get in, they figure it out.’
I press my lips together, not mentioning how close to the bone that statement is as I scrutinise the photograph again. ‘You think there’s something here about Harvey Parnell’s disappearance?’ I think back to when Parnell showed me to Hope Hall, the mystery surrounding Darley.
Tessa shrugs. ‘Why else would you close off an entire hall and never reopen it? But it wasn’t just Parnell; my father let slip once that a good number of scholars of Darley at the time disappeared as well.’
‘Alchemists?’
She nods.
I wonder what this means. Why such an old sepia photograph is displayed on the wall and none from any more recent years, why this place feels like a time capsule from more than eight years ago.
Despite the sense of unease lingering in the air, it gives me hope that there may be some sign of my parents in this place. ‘Let’s keep looking.’
The corridor leads to a dead end. A locked door, with not a whisper of sound on the other side.
There’s still no sign of the two people we saw walking in here, and I wonder where they are.
I try peering through the keyhole but find it’s been blocked up from the inside.
Straightening, I look at Tessa. ‘Lost your nerve yet?’
She smiles ruefully. ‘Absolutely not. We haven’t checked the other floors. If grandmother taught me anything, it’s to be resourceful. To use the space of time between Ordeals to my advantage.’
The second floor is much the same, except it contains a series of smaller studies.
But the third floor and attic rooms … this is where the scholars slept.
The attic floor contains only locked doors between the eaves and we find that out of thirty rooms on the first floor, just three are unlocked.
The first contains a single bed, covers tucked neatly around the mattress, a chest of drawers and a desk.
It looks too clean, as though it’s been carefully maintained, unlike the cobwebs and dust crowding the other rooms. We leave it quickly and move to the second room.
This one holds more promise, containing the same furniture, but in the desk drawers, we find a set of letters.
Tessa quickly snaps the twine holding them together and we leaf through the faded handwriting.
‘Love letters,’ Tessa says.
‘From H to D … you don’t think … ?’
Tessa’s eyes widen and she grabs the one I’m holding, placing them back in the drawer. ‘There’s no dust. What if Parnell still comes in here? What if these rooms …’
‘Were their bedrooms as scholars?’ I frown down at the letters. ‘How sentimental of her. That’s heartbreaking.’
Tessa blinks quickly, a hint of fear cramping her features. ‘Not good if she catches us here.’
I nod, already heading for the door. We don’t bother with the third bedroom; the whole place feels sad and watchful.
Too watchful. There doesn’t seem to be anything here we can use.
I hoped it would be like the poison garden, clues hidden away for us to find.
This whole hall feels off. Wrong, somehow.
But when we reach the landing on the first-floor staircase, Tessa hesitates, motioning to me.
There are voices. Quiet, controlled voices and they’re coming from the locked room at the end of the corridor.
Tessa raises her eyebrows to me and, after a brief hesitation, I roll my eyes in defeat.
She grins, leading us to the classroom closest to the locked room and points to an air vent.
I hasten after her as she quietly places a chair against the wall, balances on her tiptoes and pulls a small lever on a discreet gold grate set high on the wall. I do the same, bringing a chair beside hers and, with my height, I can hear without having to strain.
‘Eight years of almost no encounters and now it’s happening again,’ a male voice says. ‘Any thoughts on this?’
‘Only what we know happened last time. And the time before that,’ another male voice says, one that sounds oddly familiar.
‘To my husband.’
I look at Tessa, and find her eyes as wide as mine.
Now that voice …
‘ Parnell ,’ she mouths.
‘Victims are usually wielders, drained and dead.’
‘Edmund, did you confirm the victims in the Morlagh?’
‘Two drained,’ he says, and I understand why the voice is familiar. Of course, it’s Alden’s brother, Edmund. ‘Bloodless. The other hopefuls were shredded by werewolves and the two I couldn’t find, most likely bitten and turned. I found blood, but not their bodies.’