Read Online Darkwater by Catherine Fisher - Free Book Online

categories—history, science, religion—and then to number them, making accurate lists. There were thousands, and it would take years to do, even if she could stop herself reading them, but the idea exhilarated her. Already she had discovered a whole cupboard full of chained Bibles in unknown alphabets; the unknowable squiggles of their letters fascinating her. She had to force herself to get out and get some air, walking between the heavy October showers to the beach, where the hard sand was pitted with rain marks. She ate her meals alone and she slept deeply, as if all the worries of the world had been wiped away. Twice, sleepily, she thought she heard the distant unbolting of a door, and sometimes through her dreams ran the deep thunder of a hidden river, far below her pillow, echoing in the foundations and walls and vast chimneys of the old house.
    And she didn’t go home. She didn’t even think of the cottage until Azrael mentioned it. Late on the night before Hallowe’en, she helped him open the great casements in the laboratory and wheel out the brass telescope. Scrab was there too, muttering in disgust at the oil on his hands.
    â€œWhat you want with this contraption,” he said sourly, “I don’t know.” He ran a dark eye around the room. “Nor yet the rest of the junk I ’ave to clean.”
    Azrael smiled. “All knowledge is in the heavens, Scrab.”
    â€œAnd in ’ell, more like.” He shuffled out, wiping his palms on his sleeves.
    â€œWhy do you put up with him?” Sarah asked.
    Azrael looked surprised. “He’s an old family retainer. I’d miss him, if he went. He’s devoted to me, of course.”
    â€œIt doesn’t look like it.”
    He smiled, sitting at the eyepiece, and turned the scope to face the moon, adjusting the focus carefully. “And as for you, well, tomorrow is Sunday. Your day off. You must go to church, and then home.”
    â€œThere’s too much to read,” she said evasively.
    â€œIt will wait. You’ll have a lifetime to read it all. Maybe more.”
    She stared at him, but he was taking notes in the moonlight. So she said, “What if I don’t want to go?”
    â€œYou must. Otherwise my name will be further blackened in parish gossip. Sarah Trevelyan kidnapped and held against her will!”
    He swiveled around, his face lit with mischief. “Or they’ll say we play cards eternally for the soul of your grandfather!”
    The idea seemed to amuse him. He got up, took a pack from a drawer, and slapped it down in front of her. “Shall we, Sarah?”
    â€œDon’t make a joke of it.”
    â€œI’m not! I mean it. Cut the pack.”
    Alarmed, she said, “Why?”
    â€œDo it! For a wager. It will help you understand how he felt—the recklessness, the madness! I tell you what—I’ll wager all the books of my library. They could all be yours!”
    She didn’t trust him in this mood. He jumped up and leaned over the bench, his lean face transformed with feverish excitement. “There’s nothing like it! The thrill of knowing you could lose everything.”
    â€œI haven’t got anything to lose.”
    â€œOf course you have!” He smiled, sidelong. “You have what we all have. You have your soul.”
    Sarah went cold.
    The feeling she had had once before swept over her, of being balanced on the edge of a dark bottomless pit of terror, wobbling, unsteady.
    â€œMy soul?” she whispered.
    â€œYes.” Azrael looked eager. “The most secret part of you. The real you. The spirit that will live for all eternity.”
    He was joking, of course. And yet pictures from the old Bibles of the library began to haunt her, the terrible screaming torments of the damned, who had chosen evil, burning, lost in unimaginable suffering. She turned to the table. “That’s not funny.”
    â€œIndeed no. But