The Binding. Bridget Collins

      I tried to master the nausea. ‘I thought—’

      ‘It wasn’t Emmett’s fault, it was mine,’ he said. ‘My name is Lucian Darnay. I did write.’

      ‘Lucian Darnay.’ Seredith frowned. A strange, wary expression swept over her face. ‘And how long have you been talking to Em— to my apprentice? Never mind.’ Her eyes went to me before he could answer. ‘Emmett?’ she said, more softly. ‘Are you – well?’

      The shadows swirled round me, blacking out the corners of my vision; but I nodded.

      ‘Good. Mr Darnay, come with me.’

      ‘Yes,’ he said, but he didn’t move. I could feel his desperation pulsing out in dark waves.

      ‘Come,’ Seredith repeated, and at last he turned and moved towards her. She reached for her keys and started to unlock the door at the far end of the workshop; but she didn’t look at what she was doing, she looked at me.

      The door swung open. I caught my breath. I didn’t know what I had expected, but there was a glimpse of a scrubbed wooden table, two chairs, a hazy square of sun on the floor. It should have been a relief, but a tight claw closed round my chest. It looked so tidy, so austere – and yet …

      ‘Go in, Mr Darnay. Sit down. Wait for me.’

      He drew in a long, slow breath. He glanced at me once, the fierceness in his eyes as unreadable as a riddle. Then he walked to the door and through it. When he sat down he kept his back very straight, as if he was trying not to shake.

      ‘Emmett, are you all right? He should never have …’ Her eyes searched my face for a reaction they didn’t find. ‘Go and lie down.’

      ‘I’m fine.’

      ‘Then go and mix up a jar of paste in the kitchen.’ She watched me walk past her. I had to make an effort to take smooth steps and not stagger. Black wings were beating around me and it was hard to see where I was going. That room, that quiet little room …

      I sat down on the stairs. The light lay on the floorboards in a silvery lattice. The shape of it made me think of something – half-remembered nightmares, a flash of Lucian Darnay’s face, his hungry black eyes. The darkness hung in front of me for a long time, like a fog; only there was something new in it, a flash like teeth, sharper than I could bear. Not hatred – but something that would have torn me apart if it could.

      Then it closed round me, and I was gone.

       III

      I surfaced gradually into a grey soft day and the muffled sound of rain. There was another noise too, one I couldn’t identify right away: I stared at the ceiling and wondered idly what it was. A swish, a pause, a human breath, swish … After a long time I turned my head, and saw Seredith sitting at the table beside the window, her head bent. There was a kind of wooden frame set up in front of her, and piles of folded paper. She was sewing the folded pages together, along one way and then the other, and the thread whispered as it pulled taut. I watched her for a long time, lulled by the rhythm of it: in, pull, out, over, in … She tightened a stitch, cut the thread, reached for the spool, cut a new length, and tied it on. The room was so quiet I heard the little click as the knot bit. She looked round, and smiled. ‘How do you feel?’

      ‘I …’ I swallowed, and the sharp dryness in my mouth brought reality back. I ached all over. My wrist stung, like a Chinese burn. I glanced sideways, confused for a second. I was tied to the bed with a strip of whitish cloth. The fabric was rucked up into a narrow fold that cut into my flesh, as though I’d fought to get away.

      ‘You were having terrors,’ Seredith said. ‘Do you remember?’

      ‘No.’ Or did I? An echo of screams, a flash of dark eyes watching me …

      ‘Never mind. Now you’re awake I’ll untie you.’

      She stood up, putting her needle down carefully on the half-sewn pile of paper, and bent over me to pick with gnarled fingers at the knot. I lay still, not looking at her. What had I done? Had I gone mad, again? Last time, when it got really bad, I’d hit out at Ma and Pa. Alta had been afraid to come near me. Had I attacked Seredith?

      ‘There.’ She dragged the chair to my bedside and settled into it with a sharp breath. ‘Are you hungry?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘You will be. Five days you’ve been out.’

      ‘Out?’

      ‘Two more days of rest. At least. Then you can try getting up.’

      ‘I’m fine. I can get up now.’ I wrenched myself into a more upright position, and grabbed the side of the bed to steady myself against the sudden drag of dizziness. Slowly the spinning stopped, but it had taken all my strength and I let my head drop back on to the pillow. I squeezed my eyes shut, forbidding myself to cry. ‘I thought I was getting better.’

      ‘You are.’

      ‘But—’ I didn’t want to think about how it must have been, one frail old woman against her crazed, hallucinating apprentice. I might have hurt her, or worse …

      She shifted. ‘Open your eyes.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Look at me. That’s better.’ She leant towards me. I smelt soap and glue and the leather of her apron. ‘It was a relapse. But the worst is over.’

      I turned my face away. I’d heard Ma say that before, and every time it’d had slightly less conviction.

      ‘You can trust me, boy. I know a little about binder’s fever. Normally it isn’t so bad, but … you will recover. Slowly, of course.’

      ‘What?’ I raised my head so suddenly it sent a flash of pain across my temple. There was a name for what was wrong with me? ‘I thought it was just – madness.’

      She snorted. ‘You’re not insane, boy. Who told you that? No, it’s an illness like any other. It’s a sort of temporary frenzy.’

      An illness, like influenza or scurvy or the flux. How I wanted to believe it. I looked down at the red creases in my wrist. Further up my arm there were two bluish smudges like fingerprints. I swallowed. ‘Binder’s fever? What’s it got to do with binders?’

      She hesitated. ‘Only binders get it. That is … not binders, but people who could be binders. When you have the calling … sometimes it goes wrong, in your head. It’s how I knew you’d be a binder, boy – and a good one. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. And now that you’re here, it will pass.’

      ‘Do all binders get it?’

      ‘Not all, no.’ A spatter of rain rattled the window. She glanced up, and I followed her gaze; but there was nothing out there, only the grey emptiness of the marshes, and wet veils of fog. ‘One of the greatest binders of all nearly died of it,’ she said. ‘Margaret Pevensie. She was a widow in the Middle Ages, and she bound over twenty books – that was a lot, in those days. A few of them survived. I travelled to Haltby, once, to see them.’ Her eyes came back to me. ‘My old master used to say that the binderbound fever was what made someone an artist, not a mere artisan. I always thought he was teasing me, but if he was right … well, you’ll make a good apprentice.’

      I laid my hand over the bruises on my arm, fitting my fingers into the marks. The wind murmured in the thatch and drove another gust of rain against the window-pane, but the house was thick-walled, solid, as old as rock. Binder’s fever, not madness or weakness.

      ‘I’ll get you some soup.’ She got up, put the reel of thread and the loose folded pages into the pocket of her apron, and lifted the sewing frame.

      I craned forwards. ‘Is that …?’

      ‘Lucian Darnay’s book.