The Girl Green as Elderflower Read Online Free Page B

child materialize in the place opposite him.
    Her finger was tiny. To see his own near it made Clare feel like a caveman, and none too clean.
    She said: ‘Will you ask the questions, Crispin?’
    ‘No,’ he said, ‘you do it, you’re practised.’
    The little voice, so oddly precise, asked: ‘Is anybody there?’ And with no great speed, but effortlessly and inevitably, the board answered: YES.
    ‘Is the person there,’ Amabel asked, ‘who wanted to speak to Crispin?’
    YES.
    ‘What is your name?’
    The board spelled out three letters, then stopped. M-A-L.
    ‘
Mal
,’ said Mark. ‘Cris, you’ve hit the jackpot.
Mal.
I should think that was something slow and terminal.’
    ‘Marco, belt up,’ said his mother quietly. ‘It’s not his fortune, it’s a name.’ She left the settle and came to stand with the others around the card-table.
    The message had seemed to come to an end, but with a jerk the indicator darted towards another letter.
    ‘E,’ said Lucy, scribbling on the pad in her hand.
    All at once the thing was full of purpose; it swooped across the board. What it wrote meant nothing to Clare, yet he was somehow alarmed by its assurance. When it was still he looked round at Lucy.
    ‘Any sense?’ he asked her.
    She frowned over the pad. ‘Not that I can see. Here, you look.’ She tore off a sheet and laid it beside him.
    At first it was a jumble. Then the letters separated into words. ‘Good God,’ he said.
    A log fell, and the light flared around the edges of Amabel’s hair, shadowing her pointed face.
    He pushed the paper towards her. ‘Do you understand that?’
    For a moment she gazed at him, with her ambiguously coloured, very beautiful eyes. Then she studied the paper, wrinkling her forehead under the pale hair.
    ‘This isn’t anything,’ she said, ‘is it? It isn’t English.’
    ‘Could you pronounce it?’
    ‘Of course not.’
    ‘It’s Latin,’ Clare said. ‘You don’t know any Latin, do you?’
    She only laughed at the question.
    ‘Mark—could you read it?’
    ‘I was good at Latin once,’ Alicia said, ‘let me try.’ She reached for the paper, but Mark had taken it. Standing together, flame outlining them, they turned so that the firelight fell full on the sheet.
    ‘Oh,’ said Alicia after a moment, ‘I’ve no patience with this sort of thing.’ She relinquished it to her son. ‘It’s gibberish.’
    ‘If it’s Latin,’ Mark said, less confidently, ‘Cardinal Wolsey wasted our money on educating me.’
    ‘It splits up into words,’ Clare said. ‘Can you see?’
    ‘His Latin was always terrible,’ said Alicia. ‘Even worse than Lucy’s writing. Tell us what you think it is.’
    Clare said: ‘The first word is a name. It says:
‘Malekin me vocitabam.
’ It means: “I used to call myself Malkin.”’
    All the time he was watching Amabel’s face, which showed no surprise or interest. ‘Ask her,’ he said, ‘another question, Tinkerbell.’
    ‘
Her
?’ repeated the child, and the lovely eyes changed just a shade.
    Clare explained: ‘She’s a little girl. Use her name to her. It’s Malkin, remember.’
    Amabel bent her head and spoke into the centre of the board. Her tone was gentle. ‘Your name is Malkin?’
    The board said: YES.
    ‘Where do you live, Malkin?’
    The board spelled out a rapid word. Lucy tore off a sheet of her pad and slapped it on the table.
    ‘
Suthfolke,
’ Mark read. ‘Is that supposed to be Suffolk?’
    ‘
I
can spell Suffolk,’ Mikey let everyone know.
    ‘She’s very young,’ Clare excused. ‘Amabel, ask her where she was born.’
    Amabel, imperturbable, asked in her fairy television presenter’s voice: ‘Where were you born, Malkin?’
    This time the board was not so fast that Clare could not follow. His finger tensed and relaxed as each expected letter came. He knew what would be on the sheet which Lucy planked before him.
    ‘
Lanaham
?’ said Mark, doubtfully. ‘There’s no such place. Not in