Sapphire and Steel Read online

  Steel gave a kind of impartial nod, eased past her and walked on up the stairs.

  As Steel climbed the attic stairs, so the patch of dull light moved out from under the rug on the second landing. Accompanied by its faint murmuring sound, it glided in the other direction, across the landing, and began to descend the stairs to the first landing below.

  When Rob reached the landing, staying wisely at the heels of Sapphire and Steel on the way up, he looked first at the attic door.

  ‘It’s back as it was,’ he exclaimed.

  Steel was peering at the clock face. ‘And so is the clock.’ He held it out in the darkness for Sapphire to see. ‘It’s at the correct time again.’

  Rob began, ‘You mean it lost ten minutes just on...?’

  ‘Quiet.’ Steel raised his hand as he moved to the boarded-up door. He then put his ear close to the wooden struts, and listened. ‘Well, one thing’s changed,’ he said, eventually.

  Sapphire took his place at the door and Rob moved with her to listen. From within the room, the flat, mechanical-like whisper, that did not vary in pitch, was saying the words, ‘Upstairs and downstairs, Upstairs and downstairs,’ repeatedly.

  Sapphire turned her head to look at Rob. ‘When your mother’s voice called to you...’

  ‘That isn’t my mother’s voice.’

  ‘I know.’ Sapphire smiled patiently. ‘But when her voice spoke to you, was that the rhyme you chose?’

  ‘I didn’t exactly choose it. It was put in my head...’

  ‘But was that the rhyme?’

  Rob put his head to the door and listened a second time.

  ‘If it is, just tell me.’ Sapphire’s smile had gone. ‘Whatever you do, don’t say any of it aloud.’

  Rob nodded as he listened. He then looked away from the door. ‘That’s the one,’ he said.

  ‘And did you complete it? Did you say all of it?’

  ‘No.’

  Then he heard the other sounds again. Heavy footsteps and the hard jingle of metal as the troopers stamped their way up the stairs. He turned quickly to see if Sapphire and Steel had also heard it. They had.

  With swords drawn, the shadowy figures of the Ironside troopers climbed the stairs in exactly the same way as before. To Rob, it was like seeing the repeat of a piece of film.

  ‘Stay as you are,’ was the command from Steel.

  Rob tried to move closer to him and Sapphire as the troopers marched their way up the stairs.

  ‘Stay just as you are. Don’t move!’

  Rob stayed as he was.

  The troopers reached the landing and advanced across it as before. Rob saw, rather than felt them pass him. There was the stale, musty smell, the skull-like faces under the visors, eyes staring ahead at the door of the room. And the door was the old door once more. The troopers moved to it, one raising his sword to strike the door. Then the figures disappeared and the attic door returned to normal.

  Rob was not surprised to find that Steel and Sapphire had taken the incident quite calmly. Even though he could never understand the two of them, at least he was getting used to their unpredictable behaviour. He often felt that, given a few years with this pair, there would be no real surprises left in life.

  ‘That’s what you saw before?’ Steel was asking him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any variation?’

  ‘What?’ queried Rob.

  ‘Did they seem different this time? Did they act differently?’

  ‘No,’ said Rob.

  ‘If he only said a piece of the rhyme,’ suggested Sapphire. ‘It could have set off a recurring image.’

  Steel held out the clock for Sapphire to see. ‘It didn’t stop,’ he said. ‘It didn’t lose time. Those images didn’t affect it.’

  ‘But something did,’ said Sapphire as Steel began to descend the stairs, holding the clock out before him.

  ‘Yes. Something did.’ Steel reached the place on the stairs where the troopers had first appeared. He swung the clock slowly around, testing the area of stair. The clock continued to tick. ‘So those ten minutes were not lost on these stairs.’ Steel stepped down to the bottom of the stairs and pushed the cupboard-stair door open wide. ‘They were lost on this landing.’

  The patch of light waited below on the first landing. It waited by the skirting board, beside the earthenware jar that was neatly arranged with pampas grass and dried wild flowers.

  On the wall, above the earthenware jar, was a framed picture. It was one of many pictures, paintings and prints that Rob’s parents had collected and hung on the walls of the house. This particular picture was of an old, seventeenth-century dwelling. It was a small thatched cottage with a cluster of rickety outbuildings. The picture had always fascinated Rob because it was not the usual pretty, thatched cottage. This building looked uncared for, unloved. Because of that, it seemed somehow forbidding. When he first saw it, Rob had thought that it was a painting of a derelict cottage until he noticed the small chimney and its thin spiral of smoke.

  While Steel, Sapphire and Rob examined the landing above, and Helen slept soundly in the room below, the patch of light began to move once more. But this time it moved back to the wall and began to climb it. Gliding smoothly over the skirting board, and emitting the low, strange sound, the patch of light skimmed slowly upwards, over the surface of the wall. It reached the picture and slipped behind the wooden frame. The glow was extinguished and the sound died.

  Steel had examined the second floor landing but had found nothing. The clock had not stopped on this occasion, neither had it lost any more time.

  As Steel led the way down the second flight of stairs, he asked Sapphire about the significance of the second nursery-rhyme.

  ‘Like the first rhyme, this one has historical roots,’ Sapphire explained. ‘From the Civil War.’

  ‘Civil War?’ Steel inquired as he continued to lead the small party down the stairs.

  ‘Yes.’ Sapphire continued with her explanation. ‘When Parliament troops searched houses, looking for people who wouldn’t pray.’

  ‘Wouldn’t pray?’

  ‘Unbelievers.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Steel, appearing to lose interest in the topic.

  ‘Don’t you know your history?’ Rob chipped in.

  Steel did not bother to look at him. ‘I know mine, yes,’ he said, giving Rob yet another thought to puzzle over.

  ‘But then, it doesn’t make sense.’ Sapphire said as they reached the second landing.

  Steel halted at the foot of the stairs. ‘What doesn’t make sense?’

  ‘Well, those soldiers are an anachronism. If they’re ghosts, they must have lived and died a good hundred years before this house was built.’

  Steel looked at her. ‘So?’

  ‘So why should they be breaking down a door that was never a part of this house?’

  Steel had no idea. He shook his head.

  ‘It’s history gone wrong,’ said Sapphire, looking back up at the stairs. ‘Either that or part of a plan?’

  ‘A plan?’ asked Rob, intrigued.

  But Sapphire ignored him as she looked back at Steel. ‘A deliberate confusion. A way of diverting us.’

  ‘From what?’ Steel walked across the landing towards the first flight of stairs, with Rob close behind him.

  Sapphire remained on the landing. ‘I don’t know. But they know it’s us. They’re not likely to use tricks that we already know, are they?’

  Steel passed the picture. ‘I doubt it,’ he said as he began to descend the first flight of stairs. Rob followed him. He still felt tired, but he did not fancy sleeping in his own bedroom. Not at the moment. He passed the picture, thinking that there was another couch in the sitting room. Maybe if he fell asleep on that, or even pretended to sleep on it, Sapphire might make him a bed there and tuck him up for the night. He was even wondering, though he would never admit it, what a kiss goodnight from Sapphire would be like.

  He was still thinking about that imagina
ry kiss when he almost bumped into Steel, who had stopped on the stairs. Steel was staring at the face of the clock that he held.

  ‘It’s lost time again,’ he exclaimed. ‘Another ten minutes.’

  Rob peered over Steel’s arm at the clockface as Sapphire hurried across the landing. ‘Then it must have been lost right here,’ she said, pointing at the landing. She passed the picture but it was too late, even though she saw the glow from the corner of her eye and turned her head quickly to look.

  She heard the faint sound and saw the patch of light glowing through the painted, ramshackle cottage.

  ‘Steel!’ she cried out.

  Rob and Steel turned quickly from the clock. They stared back at the landing and Rob’s mouth opened in shock and amazement.

  There was no-one on the landing.

  Chapter Nine

  Steel made no immediate move back on to the landing. He stood at the top of the first flight of stairs and took a careful look at the landing area. Rob noticed that there was no surprise on the man’s face, only the look of calm determination that was always there whenever he was confronted by a difficult and dangerous problem. And it seemed as if this particular problem was of a kind that he was used to, that he might possibly have experienced before. Once more, he was like an expert examining a minefield before attempting to cross it.

  Eventually, he called out quietly to the empty landing. ‘Sapphire?’

  There was no reply.

  Rob looked at the landing, looked at all the familiar objects that once symbolised home. The decorative table, the putty-coloured earthenware jar, the dried plants, the painting of the tumbledown cottage.

  ‘Sapphire?’ Steel called out a second time, and there was a trace of urgency in his voice now.

  ‘Yes, Steel?’ Sapphire’s voice seemed so close at hand that Rob was almost startled by it.

  ‘Just tell me.’ Steel lowered his head in concentration, to listen rather than to watch.

  ‘I’m in a room. A tiny room,’ said Sapphire’s voice from the deserted landing.

  ‘Sitting, standing, what?’

  ‘Standing.’

  ‘Where are you standing?’

  ‘Facing a wall. Just a blank piece of wall. It’s an old wall. Old plaster. Beams. It’s very old.’

  ‘In this house? Rob’s house?’

  ‘No.’ And there was just the slightest tremor in Sapphire’s voice. Rob heard it. He looked at Steel, but Steel was still listening hard, still concentrating.

  ‘You haven’t changed your position?’

  ‘No,’ replied the unseen Sapphire. ‘I’m standing exactly as I was when I was last in the house with you.’

  Steel raised his head quickly. ‘You’re still in the house, Sapphire.’

  ‘Yes, Steel.’

  ‘Keep remembering that.’ He looked hard at the landing now. ‘And don’t change that position. Don’t move at all. Don’t make yourself a part of that room. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Steel.’ Sapphire’s voice said, with a slight exclamation, like annoyance, like self-reproach.. ‘We walked right into it, didn’t we? I walked into it.’ And Rob sensed the touch of nervousness in that voice and it worried him.

  ‘Don’t think of that. You’re still in the house.’ Steel raised his voice as he drove home the warning. ‘Remember that you’re still in this house with us. Right?’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Sapphire?’

  The reply was only a second or two late but, to Rob, the emptiness of the landing made it seem interminable. ‘Yes, I heard that, Steel,’ said the trapped voice.

  ‘Good.’ Steel seemed to relax slightly. He then looked up at the landing space once more. ‘Now, from where you stand, describe that room to me.’

  ‘It’s a — well, its like part of an old cottage.’ Sapphire’s voice said from the landing of the house. ‘A scullery. Yes, a scullery. A scullery in an old cottage. Not a — not a very tidy place. It seems a bit ramshackle.’

  Her words reminded Rob vaguely of the picture. He was about to glance up and across at it when Steel spoke again. ‘Night or day?’

  ‘Day.’ Sapphire’s voice came quickly back at him.

  ‘Well, just remember that you’re in Rob’s house with us, and that it’s night.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just think of that room as a picture.’ Steel continued, ‘Just a picture. Nothing real. A picture that you’re looking at...’

  ‘It was a picture.’

  ‘What?’ Steel stared at the landing, stared in the direction of Sapphire’s voice.

  ‘A picture on the landing. That’s what I was looking at when it happened. Left side, almost at the top of the stairs. See it?’

  Steel saw it. So did Rob. There was no glow to be seen. Just an ordinary, innocent looking painting of an old dilapidated cottage.

  ‘Yes, I see it,’ said Steel.

  ‘Well something was waiting for us.’ Sapphire’s voice spoke out from the vacant landing. ‘It got into the picture and it wants me to be in there, too. It wants me to think that I’m in the scullery of that cottage.’

  Steel spoke sharply. ‘Well you’re not.’

  ‘No.’ Then, like a shiver. ‘It’s cold here...’

  ‘You’re not in that room.’ Steel raised his voice, still sharp. It was almost a shout.

  When Sapphire’s voice spoke again, it was quieter but there was still the hesitant tone to it. ‘Sorry, Steel.’ Then a pause, and Rob looked at the picture and imagined the small, cheerless room in the cottage that seemed somehow so uninviting, and he found that he could also imagine Sapphire’s feeling of coldness. He was almost sharing it with her. He rubbed at his arms and shivered as his eyes remained fixed on the picture.

  And, as he looked, Sapphire spoke again. ‘It’s just that —well, it’s just that something happened in this — in that room once. Something terrible. It knows that. It wants me to sense it. Wants me to know. Wants me to be a part of this room, a part of what happened here.’

  As Sapphire spoke, Rob found that his eyes and his mind were concentrating on one small window in the picture. One tiny lattice window in what looked like an attached outhouse. The projection was of stone and had a sloping tiled roof that was overgrown with briars.

  ‘Sapphire!’

  ‘It’s alright,’ she called back, reassuring Steel. ‘I’m in control of my mind. I won’t think what it wants me to think.’

  ‘That’s fine. Because you’re only a few feet away from us,’ Steel reminded her. ‘Just a few feet away, on the landing in Rob’s house.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Steel paused for a moment and then took up a position on the top stair, as close to the landing as he dared. ‘Now, Sapphire, when I tell you, look to your left, to where the picture is. Do it very quickly, then back as you are. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ came the reply.

  ‘I want to know if you can still see the picture. But don’t forget, look very quickly then back.’ Steel waited a moment. ‘Now,’ he called.

  There was an uneasy silence as Rob and Steel waited.

  Steel broke the silence. ‘Sapphire?’

  ‘It’s — it’s alright.’ But there was the hesitation again in Sapphire’s voice. ‘The picture isn’t there.’ And then she added quickly, in what seemed like a rush of words. ‘There’s a rope instead. A rope hanging on the wall. And a hook. And — and some kind of block with an axe in it. A chopping-block, I suppose. There’s some logs and pieces of firewood lying around...’

  Steel interrupted her. ‘Are you looking towards us again, Sapphire?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then forget what you’ve seen. It doesn’t belong here.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And just stay as you are.’ Steel turned on the stairs and walked down three or four steps. He stood there, in thought, his back turned to the landing.

  Rob looked down the stairs. ‘Couldn’t we get the picture?’ he whispered. ‘
Reach out and get the picture. Wouldn’t that stop it?’

  ‘Whoever tried to get the picture would be in that room with her,’ Steel said, without turning.

  Sapphire’s voice rang out from the empty landing. ‘I’m not in the room. Remember?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Steel, as he wandered back up the stairs, still in thought. ‘Sapphire?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can you try to take Time back?’

  ‘I can try, yes.’

  Steel had climbed to the highest, safe point on the stairs once more. ‘Even ten minutes would do. But no less.’

  ‘Alright. I’ll try.’

  ‘Rob?’

  Helen had appeared at the foot of the stairs. She still wore her nightclothes and her eyes were heavy with sleep. Steel and Rob looked down the stairs at the small, tired figure.

  ‘Go back to sleep, Helen,’ Rob said, trying to copy Steel’s manner of sharpness.

  ‘No.’ Helen began to climb the stairs. ‘I want Sapphire. Where is she?’

  Steel jabbed a finger in the direction of the hallway. ‘Keep her down there,’ he ordered.

  Moving quickly down the stairs, Rob intercepted his sister.

  ‘Is she upstairs?’ Helen asked, refusing to budge from the second step.

  ‘Quickly.’ Steel was calling to the landing. ‘Try taking it back now.’

  ‘Alright.’

  ‘I can hear her.’ Helen looked around her at the sound of Sapphire’s voice.

  ‘Quickly. Now.’

  ‘But I can’t see her.’ Helen stared up at Rob. ‘Where is she?’ She tugged at Rob’s sleeve.

  Rob, still watching the operation at the top of the stairs, reached down and held Helen’s hand tightly. ‘Please be quiet, Helen,’ he murmured.

  But Helen had decided to call out at the top of her voice. ‘Where are you, Sapphire?’

  Steel turned round quickly, angrily, as Rob placed his hand over Helen’s mouth.

  ‘I’m alright, Helen,’ Sapphire’s voice floated down from the landing. ‘Just do as Rob says.’

  Helen’s eyes looked around the stairs and the hallway. Mystified, she nodded her head at thin air.