Immortal (21 page)

“W-why are we h-here?” My teeth were chattering with cold.

“I want to show you something.”

He slithered off the horse’s back, and I followed him across the grass until we reached a dark shape: a slab of stone half-buried under a tangle of thornbushes. It was the exact spot where I’d seen Helen, or thought I had, on our visit to the Hall.

“Come and look, Evie.” Sebastian took my hand in his cold fingers, and we stood side by side in front of the granite tablet.

In Memory of a Beloved Son,
Sebastian James Fairfax,
Born in 1865.
It is thought he departed this Life
In 1884,
By his own hand.
GOD REST HIS SOUL.

“This memorial is for me. This is who I am.”

Fear broke over me like an icy wave. “Stop being so dramatic; it’s a stupid—”

“It’s true.” He looked immeasurably tired and sad. “My parents put this stone up for me within sight of their house. But they got something wrong. I didn’t die in 1884. I never died.”

No, no, no.
I wanted to scream, but I did my best to stay calm. Sane, sensible Evie, calm and logical and reasonable…

“But you’re not called Fairfax,” I argued.

“Sebastian James, remember? I only told you my first two names. I conveniently forgot about the Fairfax. I’m sorry I lied to you. I had no choice.”

“Please stop—”

“Poor Evie, you think I’m quite mad, don’t you? And you’re right. It was mad of me to allow myself to start seeing you, mad to carry on with it, and mad to let myself love you.”

Love.

It seemed like a word from a different world. But it was all I had. Sebastian loved me. I loved Sebastian. I had to hold on to that and never let it go.

“It’s because I love you that I have to tell you the truth,” he said. “It’s too late to continue pretending that it’s all going to have a happy ending.”

Too late
. My heart felt empty, like a ransacked grave.

“When you go back to the school tonight you will never be able to see me again. I have to make you understand. Please give me this one chance to explain.”

“All right,” I replied mechanically, though my words seemed to come from the depths of a dream.

We moved away from the granite stone, and Sebastian spread his coat for me on the grass. I sat down, but he walked about restlessly, as though he didn’t know how to start. Then he pulled a small black book from his pocket and pushed it into my hands.

“You need to read this. If you don’t believe what I’m saying, you’ll believe her.”

“Who? What are you talking about?”

“Agnes, of course. This is her journal. Everything you need to know is in there.”

I looked in wonder at the musty, waterstained little book. Its pages were covered in small, sloping handwriting. Some of them were stuck together, and the ink had spread and faded. It certainly looked very old.

My voice cracked in panic. “Where did you get this?”

“Please, Evie, just read it—for me. For us. Please.”

The words danced in front of my eyes. Was I really going to find out the truth at last? I began to read the faded, looping handwriting:
My news is that dearest S. is back from his travels at last.

Forty

I

had finally reached the last entry of the journal. Sebastian and I had sat side by side through the night, taking no notice of time, as I followed Agnes on every step of her strange journey. And now she had almost finished telling her tale:

DECEMBER 11, 1884

We have reached Wyldcliffe after an exhausting journey and have been here several days. Martha and her family have been sworn to secrecy about our presence until I find the right moment to approach my parents. Martha’s people are all being so kind. Her nephew John is newly married, and his wife begs me to let her cuddle the baby, marveling over her tiny fingers and toes. I swear they are all in love
with her already. Their love and understanding make my task a little easier, but I dread that first meeting with my family. I still haven’t decided whether to knock boldly on the front door or to write to them first. I have been taking long walks at dusk, leaving my baby—and the other treasure that I guard—safely with Martha, while I wander in my old haunts, brooding over my memories.

Once, I thought I saw a rider in the distance on a black horse, and my heart leaped with the thought that it might be him. But Martha says she has heard that he hardly stirs from the Hall, and lives in almost total seclusion. It is better like that, though I confess I would love to see him one more time and know whether he has repented of his folly. I pray he has, for all our sakes.

If only we could go back to before all this began and have one more ramble over the moors, just as when we were children. And yet I cannot regret anything that has happened, for without this tangled tale I would not have my beautiful baby, my darling Effie. Only her life matters now. Soon I must find the courage to face my parents and find out my little one’s fate and whether they will protect her when I have gone. For something in me whispers that I have come back to Wyldcliffe to die.

Despite this, my heart is full of hope. I feel sure my child will have a happier life than mine. And when I look into the future with what little force I have left, I know that after my daughter and my daughter’s daughters have left this earth, then the girl I have seen in my mind will come from the wild sea and put all this great sorrow to rest.

Tears blurred my sight. I could hardly see to read the last few lines.

I dreamed of her again last night. She was standing on the top of the moors with her hair blowing free and my gift to her hanging around her neck. As I watched her, I saw her raise her hand, and the hills around her turned to high green waves battling in a mighty storm. I do not know what it meant. But she too is my daughter, my sister, my hope. I know that I am with her always, and will somehow help her before the end.

All this great sorrow. I wiped my eyes, seeing Agnes in my mind as clearly as I saw the rough grass at my feet. She was bending over a low table, scratching away with an old-fashioned pen, and she raised her pale, serious face to me and smiled.

My head was whirling with images of fire and water, of meetings and arguments, of strange rituals and threatening shadows. And through it all was a dark-haired boy, passionate and headstrong and beautiful. A boy called Sebastian James Fairfax. I let the book fall from my knee and closed my eyes.

“So now you know,” Sebastian said in a low voice.

“I know what?” I forced myself to say. “The diary must be fake, a joke.” But I knew in my heart that it wasn’t.

“It’s no fake. This journal was buried in a lead casket next to Agnes’s grave. For these many, empty years I have respected her resting place, but last night the thought of those hidden papers tormented me beyond endurance. Agnes had once spoken to me of a girl she had seen in some strange vision. I had to know if that girl was you—if you were part of our tangled tale.” He looked away, as though he were ashamed. “I…I dug up the casket last night. I had to find out if Agnes had left a clue that would tell me the truth.”

“Oh, my God…”

“You’re the one she wrote about, the one she was waiting for. It’s true. You are descended from her. The last time I saw Agnes she told me that the baby was dead, but in fact it was alive and well, hidden at Uppercliffe Farm with old Martha. After Agnes died, Martha’s family secretly hid her journal and brought the baby up as one of their own. You’d guessed that part of the story already, and you knew it was Effie’s necklace that you wear.” A hungry look flickered across his face. “The necklace is the key to everything.”

I tried one last time to run away from the truth.

“Agnes can’t have told you anything, Sebastian. She died more than a hundred years ago, and you’re here with me now. It’s all in the past. It’s all over. You’re just confused; you’re not well.”

Sebastian shook his head. “It’s no use, Evie. Think about what you’ve just read. What did Agnes warn her friend, her beloved, about? What did she tell him would poison his very existence?”

The sky seemed to press down on me, and the hills were watching, waiting for some catastrophe to happen. I didn’t want to speak the words. But I had to. “She told him not to seek eternal life.”

“And he ignored her. He went down those dark paths as far as he could without her help. Not far enough to achieve true immortality, but enough to live a hundred years, two hundred maybe. Enough to be able to talk to Agnes and then to you, five generations later.”

“I have to go.” I began to walk away. All I wanted to do was get back to the school, crawl into bed, and shut this insanity out of my head.

“Evie, wait—I can prove it. Wait!”

I turned unwillingly and saw Sebastian take something from his pocket. It flashed silver-gray in the moonlight as he raised it to his head.

“Watch me, Evie.”

“No!”
The noise of the shot echoed across the moors, magnified a hundred times in the still night. Birds screeched and flapped up from the trees. I hurtled over to Sebastian’s slumped body. An old-fashioned silver pistol had fallen from his hand. Blood ran down the side of his face, and his eyes were staring up at the stars. I covered my face in horror, shaking and terrified. A few minutes later, a low voice mingled with the wind.

“Don’t cry, Evie. I just had to prove I was telling the truth.”

I looked up and screamed. Sebastian was kneeling by my side, trying to comfort me. Where that dreadful hole at the side of his head had been, there was no mark at all, as if it had never happened.

“You see? I can’t die. I never died. I am Sebastian Fairfax. Do you believe me now?”

I couldn’t answer. I got up and staggered away, then bent over the grass and was violently sick.

“Feeling better?”

I couldn’t answer. Sebastian had wiped my face and wrapped me in his coat, but I was still shaking.

“I’m sorry I shocked you like that. It was the only way I had of convincing you.”

“I know.”

Finally I knew the impossible truth. Sebastian had known Agnes. He had been alive for almost a hundred and fifty years, yet he was still nineteen…. He could never die…. I needed to keep saying it to myself over and over again. I pulled the newspaper clipping from my pocket and gave it to him.

“You stole the painting from Fairfax Hall, didn’t you, so that I wouldn’t guess who you were?”

“Yes. I thought it would finish everything between us. And I couldn’t bear not to see you again. I know it was selfish. But you were the only good thing I had, the only light in the terrible darkness all around me. I’m so sorry.”

“Tell me everything, Sebastian. I want to understand.”

He hesitated. “There’s so much that I wish you didn’t have to know. And when I have told you, you’ll understand why we can never meet again.”

“But if we love each other—” I began.

“Love can be destroyed, Evie,” he replied grimly. “I don’t think you’ll have any love left for me when I have told you everything.”

I didn’t think anything else would ever shock me again. “I just want the truth.”

“Everything Agnes wrote in the journal is true,” Sebastian began. “How I found the Book, how we started to follow the Mystic Way. At first it seemed like a game, but Agnes had an extraordinary gift. She was right: I was jealous of her. I was accustomed to being the adored one, older, wiser, more knowledgeable—or so I thought. I worked furiously hard to keep up with her, straining myself to learn more and go deeper, but she was a natural.

“You know now what happened next. My insane ambition took over. I bullied her again and again to give me what I wanted. I knew she loved me, but I was too selfish to feel real love in return. I wanted power, not love. I wanted to live forever. Agnes could have found a way to achieve what I asked, but she knew it would be wrong. It would have distorted her powers and taken her into dangerous realms. And yet it was a torment to her not to be able to give me what I craved, so she ran away from me.

“When she had gone, I was furious. My pride forced me to prove that I could achieve my dreams without her, without even telling her. Oh, Evie, I can’t describe what dreadful paths I went down! But I was pleased with myself; I thought I was doing something daring and brave and magnificent. Eventually I learned how to extend my life beyond the dreams of men. I would live for many generations, but one day my time would run out. True immortality eluded me. I still need the touch of the eternal Fire, which Agnes reached so easily with her incorruptible mind.

“Agnes had hidden herself away in the stinking streets of London, while her parents pretended that she was in Europe on some pleasure tour. They were terrified of the possible scandal, and filled themselves with the hope that their darling girl would walk through the door one day, as though nothing had happened. I tried desperately to find Agnes, with no success. But when she finally dared to come back to Wyldcliffe, my spies found her easily enough. She walked every night in the shadows of the Abbey’s walls, plucking up the courage to return to her home. I waited for her, and one night we met again at last.”

He groaned and covered his face with his hands.

“Oh, Evie, tell me you love me now, for the last time.”

I took his hands in mine and looked straight at him. His beauty was clouded by fear and pain and exhaustion, but that didn’t matter.

“I love you, Sebastian. I always will.”

He kissed my hands and forced himself to continue.

“Agnes was more beautiful than ever, though thin and tired. After the first shock she was overjoyed to see me again. But I was unkind, as always. She told me about her marriage, and the baby. I accused her of debasing herself by marrying anyone but me. I made insane threats against her husband and her child. Then she told me that her husband—Francis—had died, and that the child was dead too. I believed her, so I begged her to come away with me, to start again. She refused, and said she could no longer love me as a husband, only as a brother. I got angry. I told her that I loved her, which was a lie. I told her that I needed her, which was true.