The hairs prickle on her arms. Ghosts are serious business. Not something to be tossed casually off the tongue like passing gossip. There are places even in the town where no one would go alone at night. And the sirenas wailing from their sea cave fill her with dread even though she has never heard them herself.
‘What ghosts?’ she asks, tremulously.
‘Oh, all sorts,’ says Tatiana. ‘Full of history, this place. Dead kids, kidnapped heiresses. All the traitors who died in the dungeons … ’
She makes claws of her hands and swipes them through the air at Mercedes’ face, and Mercedes, startled, leaps out of the way.
Tatiana looks intrigued. ‘Oh, my God! Are you scared?’ She narrows her eyes. Starts walking slowly towards her, her head on one side. ‘My God, you are, aren’t you? You’re scared! You actually think they’re going to come out and go BOO!’
She shouts the last word and leaps, arms flailing. Mercedes screams and drops her bag. Clutches her heart.
Tatiana begins to laugh. Holds her sides as though they’re splitting and points a mocking finger. ‘OMG,’ she cries, ‘that’s hilarious!’
Adrenalin, still pumping through her veins, makes Mercedes forget for a moment who she is. Where she is. She screams into Tatiana’s face. ‘That’s not fucking funny! L’ostia! Mjerda con xerda! You don’t ever, ever do that again!’
Tatiana’s laughter ceases, abruptly. She raises her eyebrows, runs her eyes over Mercedes, top to bottom to top again. ‘There’s no need to be like that,’ she says.
And she turns on her heel and leaves the room.
*
Oh, God.
Mercedes scurries in her wake. Angry Tatiana is as venomous as an aspic viper, but she’s done apologising.
‘Tatiana, that was a horrible thing to do,’ she says.
Tatiana turns and gives her a smile so cold she almost jumps back again. God. This is going to be a long forty-eight hours.
She turns back and continues along the corridor, heading for the dead-end wall at its furthest extremity. Mercedes considers going back, for a moment. Collecting her bag and just going.
‘You don’t want me here,’ she says.
Tatiana doesn’t respond.
‘Where are we going? I thought we were going to the pool?’
‘We are.’
The tapestry hangs from a curtain rail. Tatiana pulls it back, and reveals a small, arched door.
‘Shortcut,’ she says. ‘Servants’ staircase. It connects to all the floors. Nobody likes seeing their chamber pots once they’ve used them. I’m surprised you didn’t know. Surely someone in your sainted ancestry used to carry the shit in this place?’
I won’t, she thinks. I won’t. I’m not like her. I won’t respond in kind.
‘It goes all the way down to the dungeons,’ says Tatiana, ‘and up to the roof. Only three storeys. Up. And four down. Though I’d advise against going down. Those dungeons are rank.’ She gives her an eloquent look. ‘And full of ghosts, of course.’
Mercedes goes into the entrance and looks. Such a tiny little door, such a narrow little flight of steps spiralling down into the darkness, up towards the bastions.
‘It’s miles, the long way,’ says Tatiana.
It smells of staleness and spiders. A hairy old rope fixed with iron pegs to the outer wall leads upwards, out of sight. Something to hold on to, at least.
‘Go on,’ says Tatiana.
Mercedes steps in. She grips the rope. It’s even darker than she had expected. She’d assumed that there would be little apertures – arrow slits – to let in light, but there is nothing to see but rough limestone walls. It’s hot and cool at the same time: the outer wall, baked by the summer sun, emanating heat into the constricted space, stale air rising up from the cellars. I don’t like it, she thinks.
Gingerly she takes a step upwards to make room for Tatiana, and the world turns black.