CHAPTER 21

Now I come to a time when my memory was very confused. I did not know if I had had a child or not, but I believed I did. I did not know if I was hearing truth or lies. I did not know what was real and what was a dream.

There was a morning I sat up, looked out of the blue church window. I was alone, in bed, and I remembered.

‘Thomas?’ Franz had said to me earlier, as he sat by my bed. ‘Who is Thomas?’

‘My baby.’

‘Oh … I am so sorry, Mary Ann. The child was stillborn.’

I had taken my hand from Franz’s and had turned on my side, away from him. I would not believe it.

Later. My jelly limbs had firmed. I could get out of bed and use the chamber pot, though needles went through me as I squatted. I tried the door handle, but it would not open; the door was jammed. A large young woman with thick eyebrows and purpled hands lit the fire and washed me and brought me food and drinks on trays, and bitter-tasting medicine that I swallowed every night.

‘Will you not bring me my baby?’ I asked her. The nurse breathed heavily through her mouth, said not a word. When she had gone, I pulled the covers around my shoulders and sat on the windowseat, watching the cove through the bars. Water snaked in and out of the folds in the land, and ships crossed it to berth at the wharf below. On a headland nearby stood a strange Grecian temple, square and pillared, glowing white in the sun. I thought of another view, of apple trees, how I had sat in another strange nightgown, my needle dipping in and out of a tiny glove. No one but the nurse came to me. Sometimes I yearned for Franz’s face; other times I yearned for another visitor, carrying a muff or a little pair of gloves.

‘Am I mad?’ I asked the nurse. ‘Where is Mrs Bleeker?’

The woman frowned, bundled a pile of towels to her huge bosom and slid out the door.

I walked around the room, twenty circuits, then back the other way, knocking at the walls with my knuckles as I passed. I opened the wardrobe and the drawers and found my clothes, clean and neatly folded — there seemed no need to put them on. I put my hands to my stomach, slack and rubbery, like a puffball. At night, I fancied the ceiling rose sent down a black beam that dispatched me into dreamless sleep.

Franz would come to me, in time. Perhaps he thought it still too painful for us to see each other. But I was not sure where this pain was coming from, or who was feeling it.

And where was Thomas? Perhaps he was outside, somewhere in those snaking stretches of blue beyond the window. One time I had seen a small figure that looked familiar, walking close to the wall below me, and I had leaned out and looked again, but the path the figure had taken came to a stop and the wall dropped like a cliff, and the figure had gone. There was no way I could climb down, and in any case the bars would stop me. If only the door were not jammed, I would rush out and find them. Should I cry out? Who would hear?

I sat on the window seat, drew up my knees. I had found that gazing towards the serene Grecian temple on the green headland with its air of a painter’s Arcadian paradise offered a little comfort to my agitated heart. I tried to find something firm in my woolly thoughts. The door was not jammed, it was locked; they had confined me for my own good. Perhaps I had gone mad with grief, but grief for what? Only my breasts felt anything — the nurse put cabbage leaves onto them, under my nightgown. They were hard as rocks, they burned, and sometimes they leaked white tears. I thought of the wet sheets hanging round Mother and Father. Perhaps I had been mad for a long time and had not known it. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. The Lord might have waited a little, just long enough for me to hold my child. But Thomas would come back; he had wriggled and kicked so when he was inside me, he would never stay still.

I walked and walked. Thirty, forty circuits. When the nurse left me alone for the night, I poured my medicine out the window, and my dreams returned. Day after day, I put my ear to the door and heard footsteps, bangs, a bird’s screech, faraway voices, rattling trays, a clock’s distant chimes.

Once I heard an argument. Franz’s voice was loud, furious: ‘You gave me your word you would not harm her.’ I could not hear a reply. Then Franz shouted again: ‘Why did I believe anything you said? I have been under a spell, and I have woken up.’

Was I under a spell too? When would I wake up?

It was always quiet between ten and twelve in the morning: that must be the time when everyone was out. I poked at the lock with a hairpin and, halfway in, the pin scraped on some obstruction I guessed was the key. I kneeled and stared under the door: the floorboards left a space large enough for me to slip in my fingers, but it was too dark to see anything.

The next morning, after the nurse had collected my breakfast tray, I took my shawl from the drawer, slid it under the door until half of it lay on the floor outside. Then I poked the end of Franz’s beautiful crescent-moon hairpin into the keyhole, pushed the key backwards until it fell on the other side of the door, and pulled the shawl back, very slowly, holding the fabric taut. The key came with it. I unlocked the door from the inside, dressed quickly in my outdoor clothes and waited for the clock to strike ten.

As I turned the door handle, a fear shot through me that it would rot like an overripe peach in my hand, but it stayed firm, and I stole into the hallway, where silence and dimness enveloped me. I was in a short corridor leading to the top of a narrow flight of stairs, probably the servants’ passage. Willing myself not to run, I descended, floor after floor, pausing every now and then to listen to the silence beyond my own ragged breath. My head seemed to work less well than my painful legs, and when Thomas or Franz edged into my mind, I drew down a blank sheet. I must leave the building without anyone seeing me; what I would do next, I had no idea, but for now there was only the need to be free of the house. Yet still there was the madness; that was why I was here. Was it not better to turn round, climb the stairs, get into bed and pull the covers over my head? But my aching legs kept carrying me down, the blank walls corkscrewed around me.

At last the stairs stopped, in another short corridor with a door at one end: I walked to it, turned the handle, but it was locked. When I walked the other way, the corridor rounded a corner and I flung a hand over my eyes, dazzled with red, purple and green lights, expecting to be seized and carried away, but all I could hear was a regular tick, tick. I took away my hand and looked around at a great oval saloon, unfurnished except for a handsome grandfather clock. A majestic flight of stairs, flanked by two black marble statues of Egyptian gods, spiralled upwards from the stone floor, to a distant blue dome that admitted light through a row of windows. The rainbow lights came through the hallway ahead of me, from a very high windowpane shaped like an open fan, too high to reach from the ground, which held a peacock’s tail of stained glass. Beneath the peacock’s tail were great double doors, and I ran to them, rattled the handles, pushed and pulled, but they would not budge. I stood to get my breath, licked my dry lips, listening, then turned to the room on the left of the double doors and found a bare echoing space, darkened by shutters locked over the inside of the great Gothic windows. The room off the other side of the hallway was dark for the same reason, but full of piled shapes I guessed were wooden boxes. Back in the saloon were more doors, all locked, and two doors under the stairs that were not even proper doors, just panelling: the staircase cut diagonally across them. I wanted to bang on the panels and shriek, but instead I sat on the lowest level of the spiral flight, loosened my bonnet and let it hang down my back. The black goddess on my left and the dog-headed god on my right gazed straight ahead as if I were beneath their notice. A lozenge of purple light fell on my left hand, and cool fingers brushed the back of my neck.

I almost screamed, then realised what I felt was air, a draught from upstairs. At once I was up, climbing, sniffing like a dog at the tiny breeze that came, with a stream of white light, from an open door on the first landing. Inside the room, I made straight for the sash window, raised a little to admit the air, and pushed it up as high as it would go. I looked out towards a pair of straggly eucalypts, a dusty shrubbery, a brick wall, tightly ranked slate roofs and chimney pots, and a row of iron bars, identical to the ones in my bedroom, across the width of the window. I pushed at the bars, tried to turn and squeeze a shoulder through, though I could see they were too close together for me to escape. What a fortress they had left me in. I stood, hands on the bars, as if my will could force them apart, and I could fly into the eucalypts.

A dull thump from the front of the house. Another, then another. They had returned early, they would catch me, punish me. But the thumps went on, as if someone were moving heavy objects, and they came from the window, not from the stairwell. Whoever was making the noise was outside the building, round the corner, out of my vision. If the window had been overlooking a street, I could call out; but there was not even a path. A taunting breeze, damp with salt and recent rain, riffled my hair and sent a drift of pale leaves against my skirts and onto the floor. When I looked down, I saw they were not leaves, but sheets of paper covered in writing. I made out a line:

As to my relation to the mermaid, it is entirely honourable …

Somewhere behind the constant pain in my breasts, something squeezed my heart.

I bent to pick up the paper, which I saw now had not blown in through the window, but had floated down with other sheets from a desk in the centre of the room. In my haste to reach the window, I had not noticed my surroundings. The room reminded me of somewhere I had been before, but I could not think when or where. A padded leather chair sat behind the desk, a blue rug patterned with red octagons covered the floor. The remains of a fire glowed in the marble-fronted fireplace. Shelves of leather-bound volumes covered most of one wall, tall glass-fronted cabinets containing rows of slim drawers lined two more walls. The fourth wall, at the other end of the room, was hidden by a Japanese screen. It depicted three robed figures crouching. One unfurled a scroll, another drew a sword, and looming over them, goggling at them with its vacant eyes, was a giant skeleton.

On the maroon flocked wallpaper close to me was a framed drawing of a man’s head in profile, with the skin of his face peeled back to reveal the folded muscles beneath; I shuddered at the naked eyeball. On the desktop, under a green-shaded lamp, was a blotter, a brass inkwell, a large crystal ashtray, a leatherbound ledger and two open folders. I opened the ledger, flicked the pages. There were long lists of mysterious names in tiny handwriting — Nautilus pompilius, Dolabella callosa, Argonauta argo — sometimes with prices attached, and more pages listing items — arsenate of soda, camphor, rubber tubes, bulbs. The last entry read: 16 Panes Glass, flat. Three Glass Domes. To the Temple. Lower Fort Street. Something about these lists seemed familiar, but nothing made any sense. I turned to the papers on the floor, which had probably spilled from the folders, disturbed by the breeze. I picked up a few pages, leafed through them, gazing at the loops and curls of another hand, one I knew very well.

The mermaid is not at all like a common prostitute …

Swiftly I put the papers face down on the desk, shut my eyes, put my head in my hands. The breeze from the window had died. I heard the distant ticking of the grandfather clock. Eyes still shut, my hands groped across the folders, pulling together the pages, holding them up. My eyes obeyed me, but my hands would not.

By the time the clock struck eleven, I was no longer thinking of escape. I sat behind the desk in the leather chair, reading sheet after sheet of paper, knowing that soon I must go back to the room upstairs and climb into the bed and try to rest my aching body, because here was the proof that I had indeed gone mad.

… Do you have more news of Mr Liszt and the Altenberg Eagles? I am most gratified to learn that the maestro replied to yr last letter with brief but favourable words — you must have been very flattering about my poor performance on yr magnificent pianoforte, the night you invited me to dine with you tête à tête at Athena Hall — would that my sadly unpractised skills could have matched your instrument. Tell Mr Liszt that I will endeavour to improve, da capo, da capo, despite the execrable quality of the Antipodean theatre pianos I am forced to play — I console myself with the thought that this is a purgatory that will end …

There were dozens of letters, written on thin, flimsy paper with the marks of many foldings. Each was headed with the place and the month — Ballarat, March; Wellington, July; Seymour, September; Oatlands, May — but did not follow any sequence in the folder. Some were neatly written, others crumpled and smudged. These latter were scarcely legible, yet all the letters were in the same hand. All those I could read began My Dear Doctor and finished Yr Grateful Servant, FR.

With a sudden movement, I turned to the second folder on the desk. Again, a pile of letters, not quite so high, on finer quality notepaper, written to My Dear FR in a neat, cramped hand, the same hand that had filled the ledger. These were not signed: they must be copies of the originals, and the meticulous patience of this copying struck me as nightmarish. I flipped through the sheets.

I have had more news of the young Altenberg eagles. They perch on crags around Maestro Liszt’s summer house. Under his tuition, they shed their downy feathers and grow pinions, evolve from promising musicians into angels of the piano. The Maestro endured years in an abyss of pain, haunted by the fear that he was squandering his God-given gifts in circus performances. Now he has found a new vocation — more humble, more noble — in teaching others.

I turned back to Franz’s letters, staring at his bold loops and dashes, feeling a leaden reluctance to seek the word. At last I turned a page and it jumped out like a fin from water.

The mermaid is not at all like a common prostitute — she is young, well educated, well spoken, a little spirited but sweet-natured, passably intelligent, not at all grasping — not tall, not small — erect spine — abundant head of hair, chestnut brown — clear complexion — good hips — good teeth — small hands & feet — as to her constitution, seems lively, strong & hard-working, though given to occasional long spells of sleep — neither a drinker nor a partaker of narcotics — plays the piano quite prettily — handsome, if you desire such, tho I prefer a downy apricot to a cantaloupe …

I gripped the side of the desk to steady myself, then turned to the second folder. Again, the word leaped at me.

What foolishness is this? It was as well your plan failed.

In the first place, I already have two mermaids. One is a rare sirenoform infant. The other is as sorry as old leather and she stinks. Some rogue off Honshu stitched her together from a mummified monkey and a dried fishtail. I suspect Mr Barnum’s Feejee mermaid came from the same source. I would not give you tuppence for that madam. As for a living female with webbed fingers, no tail … commonplace. Not even Mr Barnum would bite.

Second, it is supreme folly to abduct an employee of General Tom Thumb’s troupe and attempt to bring her to my door. I cannot be associated with such nefarious practices. My reputation is spotless, and shall remain so, no thanks to you. And I had taken you for an intelligent young man. You must pledge to refrain from any further wild deeds, lie low, watch, listen, keep me posted. Above all, heed my counsel.

I seized the first folder. A few pages on:

… to answer yr questions: the circumstances of the conception are as follows, viz: the General and his mermaid coupled under the bridge which spans the Yarra Yarra in Melbourne, on a stormy night in early Feb, whether in or out of the water I cannot be sure — there is one witness, the agent of the troupe — the General has put about some cock & bull story of a rescue from drowning & a miracle of his electric potency — no one believes him, except for his lady — I sometimes think she does not understand country matters — they say that dwarfs are not overly intelligent … The mermaid’s history is unknown — she claims to be a widow & an orphan & a governess — possibly she is a trollop hired in secret by the General to bear his child — or possibly all was devised by the wardrobe mistress, a cunning and formidable guardian …

I paused, passed a hand over my face. Surely these were not Franz’s thoughts — an evil spirit had possessed his hand. I turned back to the second folder.

A mermaid that has bred with a little fellow such as your General would be a treasure indeed. Not the fishy part, the little part. I would hazard much for a living, healthy child of such a union. It might be born small, ready for preservation in its pristine state. Or it might be born full size, and would only show its heritage as it grew. About four years old, I think, would be the perfect age. Secure it for me and I will build it a glass Iranistan, a beautiful grotto, I will preserve and plait and perhaps regraft locks of its hair …

My fists clenched on the desk. On the blotter was the first sheet of paper that I had picked up from the floor. I smoothed out the crumpled page.

her freedom is intermittent — the General’s lady & her sister adore her & cosset her like a puppy at one moment, & then expect her to trot about serving them at the next — she is guarded — the wardrobe mistress has a stern eye — but she is not a prisoner — the General watches her as a man might watch a fine mare with a racing foal on the way — as to my relation to the mermaid, it is entirely honourable — I have taken care that we should not fall under suspicion — I have been circumspect at all times — she is sometimes complacent, sometimes confused & frightened for her future — with all due modesty I should add that I have her eating out of my hand …

The words blurred before my eyes. So the wedding had been a sham, and everything had been planned to one evil end. Why had I concluded that Ned was my betrayer? Because love was my weakness, my downfall.

I thought of what must have happened as I lay in a swoon: the doctor’s clean white hands, pushing open my thighs, drawing out his prize, and I reeled with faintness and nausea.

After a while I gripped the desk and looked about me at the monster’s den that masqueraded as a gentleman’s study, and I remembered another such study in Athena Hall where I had feverishly written in a memorandum book and the kind doctor, who in those days had a huge white ruff of hair and beard, had shown me a much larger ledger with the same tiny handwriting. A room full of treasures, some of them in drawers, some hidden behind a burgundy velvet curtain. I stared towards the far end of the room: the sun’s midday rays fell on the Japanese screen drawn in front of the shelves. It conceals my most precious specimens. I cover them to protect them from light, and also because, to the unscientific eye, some can appear … well, they are not for the eyes of the fair sex.

I took a few deep breaths and arose, walked to the Japanese screen and folded it back. On the wall it had covered was a shelf at head height, holding seven glass jars, all slightly different sizes, all topped with glass domes in the style of an Arabian Nights palace. Each one was full of liquid, with a shape crammed in or floating inside, too cloudy to distinguish, except for the central three jars, the largest on the shelf. Inside the left jar was a little brownish creature in human form but for its face: it had a blank space where the eyes should be, yet below a stump that passed for a nose was a single eye on a patch of red skin, as if the eye were an inflamed wound. Inside the right jar was a similar creature: its face and closed eyes were perfect, but at its waist, instead of legs, it grew a stumpy tail. The largest creature nearly filled the space of the central jar. It was the colour of Lavinia’s pink pearls. I leaned forward, my breath on the glass, and Thomas gazed back at me with a steady, milky look in his lidless eyes, his great round head bowed in thought, his arms and feet neatly folded to fit inside his glass coffin, his neck and wrists and ankles shackled with strings of black and white beads. As my gaze locked with his, he recognised his mother the gullible mermaid, who had betrayed him, and he opened his mouth in a high wail.

‘No, Thomas. No.’ I clamped my hands over my ears, dug fingers into my skull, but the wail went on, piercing me through and through. It was real, I realised. Not from a specimen in a jar, but from a real baby.

The grandfather clock began to strike. Twelve chimes. Far away, a door slammed, but I scarcely heard it. I was back in the house in my dream, with the blossom wallpaper and the tiny closed door, and Thomas’s wail would not let me wake. My nipples tingled, my stomach cramped and a warm dampness spread across my bodice. My body knew him. But he was not there: I had to find him. I made my way from the room, the letters, the terrible jar, hand over hand on the velvety walls. The wail, the animal mew of an infant, came from higher up the stairwell. With an energy I did not know I had, I ran up two flights, along a landing, into a small, bare room with a tall unbarred window that looked out onto a dim lightwell. On the floorboards stood a child’s cradle, crudely made. I crept closer and looked inside. It held only a small rug, but it was very gently rocking. I picked up the rug, inhaled warm, sweet milk.

So close. But where? I threw up the window sash. Below were bare walls, a three-storey descent to basement level, a lightwell with no doors. Gulls cried, carriages rattled in the distance, a tugboat horn blared. No one could escape from here. Somewhere else in the house, then. But as I turned back towards the door, heavy steps came, and then they were in the room with me, the faces that had hovered over me while I lay squeezed by the python and poisoned by the ceiling rose. So they were not apparitions of madness — unless I was still mad. I retreated to the window.

‘Don’t come any closer,’ I told them.

‘Mary Ann …’ Franz did sadness so well, I almost loved him again. When he took a step forward, I kneeled on the sill.

‘If you come any closer I’ll jump off.’

Horror filled their faces. Let them believe me mad, then.

‘Come away from there,’ said Franz. ‘You are not well. You must go back to bed.’

‘Bring me my baby.’

‘Mrs Richardson,’ said the doctor, ‘I am afraid you are mistaken. You have no child.’

‘He is here, somewhere.’ There were no calm, sane words for my need.

‘I am sorry to say your child passed away shortly after it was born.’

That lie again? ‘No. Thomas is here.’

‘Come, Mrs Richardson.’ The doctor reached out his hand, his voice low and gentle. ‘We mean you no harm. Step away from the window.’

I looked down into the lightwell: a man with a ladder stood there. Some servant, cutting off my one retreat.

I turned back to the men in the room: the priest from the crypt, smearing his hands on his apron. The doctor, shorn of his white ruff. Franz, all sweat and wretchedness.

‘I have read your letters, I have seen the jars, and I know you all for what you are. Kidnappers. Deceivers. Murderers.’ My words rang around the room, they would keep me strong, would stop me listening to their lies, would strike down the villains with their electricity. I shifted on the sill, glanced out the window and down. The servant, his face hidden under his hat, had propped his ladder on the wall and was climbing towards the window. He was short but muscular: he would be hard to fight. I turned my gaze back to the room; they were all dogs I could stare down. They were snarling into each other’s faces.

‘You should have followed my advice and thrown her into the harbour,’ said the priest. ‘It’s not too late.’

‘Don’t listen to him, doctor. Remember, you promised me she would not be harmed —’

‘But you said —’

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen.’ Dr Musgrave held up his hands. ‘Let us be reasonable. Let us be civilised. What do we do with poor deranged women?’

‘You humour them,’ I said. ‘You give them what they want.’

Dr Musgrave gave me a smile, shook his head. He was a cat releasing a mouse, then lazily stretching out its paw.

The servant’s head appeared at the windowsill next to me; bearlike, heavy brows, a dark chin. I gasped with recognition. Broad shoulders followed, and a small, thickset body in a brown leather vest, a muscled forearm pointing a silver pistol into the room.

‘Get back, the lot of you.’ Rodnia swung a leg over the sill.

Why had I not known him at once? I wanted to cheer, dance, hug my stubby bushranger. I did not move.

‘What is this?’ said the priest in a thin voice. ‘We have no money here, nothing of value.’

‘Rodnia,’ said Franz, ‘you are making a mistake.’

‘You know this man?’ said Dr Musgrave.

‘He is Nutt, the Commodore’s brother. He drives the little coach.’

‘I thought you got rid of that Bleeker fellow.’

‘I did. But this man —’

‘He followed you here?’

‘Climb down,’ whispered Rodnia to me, without taking his eyes off the men. ‘Take care, don’t be over-hasty. I’ll keep these folks busy.’ Then louder, to Franz: ‘You blackguard, I ought to kill you for what you’ve done to her.’

‘I can’t go,’ I whispered to Rodnia. ‘Thomas — my baby — is here. I must find him.’

‘I did nothing, I swear,’ moaned Franz. ‘It was her own wish. We are married.’

Rodnia went very pale. The doctor turned to him, raised a saintly hand. ‘Poor Mrs Richardson is deranged from the shock of losing her baby. We caught her trying to steal another woman’s child.’

‘It’s a lie,’ I shouted, my fists clenching.

Rodnia rested against the window frame, folded one arm across his chest, kept his pistol aimed. ‘The child is Bridget’s, the servant, she has just taken it away to nurse it,’ Dr Musgrave persisted. ‘Mrs Richardson is not herself. She threatened to throw herself down the lightwell.’

‘Then you must’ve frightened her,’ said Rodnia. ‘Who is this wizard, Richardson?’

‘Rodnia,’ said Franz, ‘listen to me —’

‘Be quiet,’ growled Dr Musgrave. ‘Mr Nutt, I am a doctor. I delivered Mrs Richardson’s baby, which unfortunately did not survive, despite all my efforts. I implore you to put down your weapon and help us to help her, before she does herself any harm.’

Rodnia looked hard at me.

‘You mustn’t believe these lies,’ I cried. But I sounded shrill, and Dr Musgrave sounded wise. My defiance had held me together, but now I was breaking into pieces. My mouth opened, but all that came out were whimpers, and my hands clutched at the air, tore my hair from its pins, reached out groping in front of me to hold emptiness. Dear God, was I raving? Rodnia watched me steadily, and something twitched under his stern brows. Not pity, not that. At last he addressed Dr Musgrave. ‘She’s never harmed anyone. But I’ll do for anyone who harms her, so help me.’

‘Harm is what we aim to prevent, Mr Nutt …’

‘Why should I believe you when you’re in league with that blackguard of a pianist?’

Yes, yes, he saw things my way.

‘We are not in league,’ said Franz. Dr Musgrave turned to him, dark eyebrows raised. ‘We are not in league,’ Franz repeated. ‘I’ve had enough of your promises and reassurances, doctor. I don’t think you ever meant to send me to Mr Liszt. You have used me ill.’

‘You wrote to me and you believed me because you are a dreamer,’ Dr Musgrave said with a half-smile. ‘For a while, our dreams have run together like horses in harness. They can continue to do so, I assure you.’

‘I have lost a steady job because of you.’ Franz shook his head. ‘And the trust of my employers, my good name.’

I stared at him. There must still be some good buried in him. Perhaps I could unearth it.

‘Franz.’ My voice cracked, then steadied. When his sorrowful eyes met mine, I prepared to withstand the melting wave that always swelled inside me, but this time it did not come. ‘I know you care nothing for me now. But if you ever cared for me, even a little, then I implore you to help me find my child and let us both go.’

‘Don’t trust the villain,’ hissed Rodnia.

Franz stared at me for a moment, then dropped his eyes, ran his hands through his hair.

‘I don’t think your husband will be any help,’ Dr Musgrave said in his soothing rumble. ‘I regret to tell you that he never cared for you. Lovely as you are, Mrs Richardson, his tastes run elsewhere. You are — how shall I put it — too ripe for him.’

The mysterious words meant nothing to me. But Franz’s face reddened, his eyes narrowed. The older man stood back and folded his arms, his head cocked on one side. ‘I know why you were dismissed from your conservatory and your teaching jobs,’ he said composedly.

I watched Franz shake his fist at the doctor and shout, ‘How dare you?’ but I was in a daze, my hands still groping for an invisible child.

Then Rodnia gave me the slightest of nudges with his elbow, jerked his head a little towards the window. ‘When you get down,’ he whispered, ‘carry the ladder across and climb the opposite wall.’

‘But I can’t — I mustn’t —’

‘How d’you think you’ll ever live to be a mother if you don’t get out of here? Move. Now.’

My whole body was frozen. Why did Rodnia not understand, I could not leave while Thomas was in the house? But I had heard no more baby’s wails since that moment when I had rushed from Dr Musgrave’s study. Maybe they had smothered Thomas in his still-warm crib and had taken the body away, before I could find him.

No, no grief. Not yet.

Rodnia’s finger was on the trigger of his fine silver pistol, and such a hurricane of rage swept through me that I yearned to snatch the weapon, shoot all three of my captors and run through every room until I found the body of my child. Then I remembered the little hands of Charlie and George, holding silver weapons aloft on the beach, and I knew where I had seen that gun before. The duellists’ weapons had not been loaded. How long could Rodnia bluff them with a useless weapon?

If I did not leave now, this very moment, I would never survive to take my revenge.

‘So, the dreamer wakes,’ Dr Musgrave was saying to Franz. ‘I note you do not complain that you have lost a wife and child.’

I stepped backwards over the sill onto the top rung of the ladder. The air sucked at me from a horrible depth. I clung to the ladder, my head all swirls.

From inside the room, Franz’s snarl: ‘Doctor, I should knock you down for that. You said you would not hurt her.’

‘It’s a little late to play the injured husband, particularly as your wife has read our letters.’

‘And she is escaping!’ came a panicky cry from the priest.

Surely they would stop me, or push my ladder away. But still, Rodnia’s pistol kept them at bay.

‘Let us all stay calm,’ said Dr Musgrave. ‘Mr Nutt, please listen to me …’

Slowly my foot descended. One step. I could do it if I thought there was only one more step to take. One step. Above me Dr Musgrave droned on, but I could no longer make out the words. One step. Then I was at the bottom, moving the ladder to the opposite wall, as Rodnia had instructed. So leaden, scraping reluctantly across the stones. Would it tip and fall? I hauled with all my strength, got it into place and climbed once more. When I reached the roof, I paused to get my breath, looking down across the lightwell at the window where I had begun my climb, but from this height only a dark square showed, and nothing in my ears but distant squabbling gulls. I told myself to run across the roof, find a way down, get as far away as I could, but my feet would not move. As I stared at the blank window, a shot rang out. In a moment they would realise he had fired a blank and they would rush to overpower him.

Rodnia appeared at the window. He crouched on the sill, then leaped into the void. I screamed. A distant crash, the crunch of flesh on stone.

An updraft buffeted me, a rising wind of rage at the villains and rage at myself, and I fought to stay on my feet. It did not matter whether he had believed me about Thomas, he had believed in me enough to save my life and sacrifice his own, and what had I done? I willed myself to creep forward, to stare down into the lightwell. Now Franz’s red head appeared at the window, he too was staring at … nothing: the small stone square at the bottom of the lightwell was empty. I looked further over the wall’s edge, at the ladder I had left below me, and there was the little groom, halfway up, a spider clinging to the rungs. What a miracle, where had he … but of course, Mr Lillie’s circus, the trapeze apparatus. He was still the secret star.

He climbed towards me. I held out my arms and helped him over the edge onto the roof. He breathed great gusts, shivered his flanks like one of his horses. Together we pulled up the ladder, Franz’s twisted white face watching us from the other side of the lightwell.

He shouted at us: ‘She threw your rabbit away!’

There were no words, only running. I followed Rodnia as he carried the ladder across the flat roof, dodging chimney stacks. How to explain how I could run and climb when my limbs had only just begun to work again, when my fear urged me to crouch and freeze? At the far edge of the roof, Rodnia lowered the ladder, and I peered down. A long way below stood a cab and a man who held the bottom of the ladder.

‘Be brave, Missus Carroll,’ said Rodnia. He helped me over the edge; my foot felt the first rung. One step, one step. Above me, a few rungs higher, his down-at-heel boots, his pistol thrust into his belt. When we had both climbed down, the man who held the ladder tipped his battered hat.

‘Remember me, ma’am?’

‘This is Mr Dennis Watts,’ said Rodnia. ‘The cabbie who brought you and Richardson here.’ I stared at the man’s shy smile. ‘Never fear, he’s my friend now,’ Rodnia went on. ‘Here’s his cab. Hop in, quick.’

‘No. You will take me back to the General and Mrs Stratton. I will not go and you can’t make me.’

‘I’m only going to take you to Dennis’s place. I figured you’d had enough of being the goose with the golden egg.’

‘Thomas was … is not an egg.’

‘Oh, you poor goose. Well, come on. Let’s get to safety and we’ll talk about it.’

Was he lying? Was he really going to take me back to Charlie? But that was yet another thing I could not believe. So I climbed up, but refused his helping hand.

The cab went past a sign — Cumberland Street — and then another sign pointing backwards to Lower Fort Street, and then down a hill. It rattled past streets of cramped, mean houses: Gloucester Street, Miller’s Buildings, Long’s Lane. Rodnia patted my hand, then retreated to his corner of the seat. I wanted to weep, but the lump in my throat refused to soften, and a curious numbness was stealing over me, as if I were being wrapped in tight bandages.

‘Feeling better?’ said Rodnia. I nodded, though it was not true. It was more as if I had just run out of any feeling at all.

‘Thomas —’ I began, but Rodnia held up a finger.

‘Hush. I reckon it does you no good to talk about it now. You must wait a bit.’

I sat back and held my straying hands tight in my lap, and Rodnia began to tell me how he had found me, and I knew I should be grateful, but it was like he was talking from a very long way off. He said something about how the cabbies at the market had directed them to a gentleman’s residence — Isis House, at the top of the hill in Cumberland Street — and Mr Bleeker had insisted on going in alone, and Franz met him, told him a sorrowful story. But Rodnia had not believed I was safe and came back to try to discover a way to get me out.

‘… And then that pale fellow with the spectacles crept up on me and tackled me,’ he said. ‘I was sure they’d push me out the window. So I jumped first.’

I tried to open my mouth to praise his courage, but the numbing bandages had spread to my face.

‘Dennis and his missus’ll look after us for a night or two. He’s a good fellow: he took me in and stabled Zep for me. He got me the ladder and helped me build up a barrier to their door. And someone was fool enough to leave a key in the back door. Those blackguards won’t get out for a while. When they do, they won’t have a clue where to find us.’ He kept his eyes on the road, his voice level. ‘D’you still care for that Richardson?’

Care? What was care? I stared out my own window at more prosperous streets. Where to start unravelling the dark tangle of feelings, all tightly bound in their new dressings? Better not to pull any threads.

‘Sorry,’ said Rodnia. ‘I won’t ask you again.’

I turned, gazed at the centaur’s snub nose and bristling chin. There was one small thing I could offer him.

‘I did not throw your rabbit away at Seymour, Rodnia. It hopped off the tray, and I didn’t find it again.’

‘It went back to the boy. It was his pet, I’d got it down for him.’

‘The Reverend Cameron’s boy? You got his pet down from the cherry tree?’ I fought to rouse myself from lethargy: once I had heard a different story. ‘And you got Mr Cameron and the boy down too? And the woman, and her five children?’ He nodded warily. ‘Oh, I had thought …’ I groped through the numbness as the memory slid away and another came.

‘Thomas played with me,’ I said. ‘I was in the room with the poisonous rose, and Thomas was outside dancing in the sky and the water.’

Rodnia closed his eyes and the lids trembled a little. Then the cab pulled to a halt, and he was out the door, shouting to Dennis.

Mrs Watts gave me a hot milk drink and said I should rest, I had had all manner of dreadful shocks, and not so long since my confinement, poor lamb, I must not take ill. I lay on my back in a small sagging bed, and my breasts were hard, painful mountains. The numbing bandages had spread, swathing my whole body, tying me down to the mattress.

Rodnia sat on a small, hard chair beside the bed with his hat in his lap as if visiting an elderly invalid. ‘Can I get you anything?’

‘I want Thomas,’ I said, very softly. ‘But he won’t come anymore.’ When I had been drugged, or mad, in another bed, he had come to me. Now there was nothing but glancing light through the half-closed curtains and the sound of hooves and shouts outside, and Rodnia’s breathing.

‘Mary Ann.’ He took my hand. ‘Consider. Your bab’s gone to heaven.’

‘He was in the house. I heard him cry. I saw his cradle rock. I smelled his blanket.’ There, that was well done. No hysteria. My voice calm, my evidence clear. It seemed that I would not, could not believe that he had been murdered after all.

‘But that wasn’t your child. It belongs to the servant, Bridget. That doctor fellow said so.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘No reason to doubt it. There’s a Bridget, isn’t there?’

‘Yes, but —’

‘I don’t believe that rot about you trying to steal her child, or anything else those liars said. But I think … you haven’t been well, you’re not quite yourself, you made a mistake.’

‘Rodnia, he is in that awful house, I know it. We must go back and find him.’

‘God’s teeth, I’ve just got you out of there. Who knows what they were plotting to do to you. They might’ve thrown you out the window. And you want to go back?’

I nodded dumbly. I wanted to get off the bed and shake him, but the bandages held me tight, and it would burn my flesh to try to break free.

Rodnia bristled, clenched his fists tight, looked ready to battle a host of men. Then he sighed, shook his head. ‘Mary Ann, listen to me,’ he said, slow yet urgent. ‘Mr Bleeker went to that awful house first, without me. Franz told him the bab had passed away at birth. He showed you to Mr B. You were sleeping peacefully. Mr B didn’t meet the doctor or that other fellow. But he happened to see a servant girl nursing her baby downstairs.’

‘But don’t you see? That wasn’t her baby, that was —’

‘I talked to Mrs Watts. She used to work as a midwife. She says sometimes, when babs pass, the mothers can’t believe it for ever so long. They talk to the mite as if it were still there.’

‘It is not like that.’ My hands flopped on the bed like empty gloves.

‘Maybe not. But consider. Here’s my plan. When you’re up to the journey, we can go to the Blue Mountains. We should be safe there.’

The Blue Mountains. A fairytale place. Once there was a little boy blue who blew his horn … Thomas the mountain boy … Oh, why was I so drowsy? Had Mrs Watts put something in my drink?

Rodnia was talking on, something about how we could not return to the troupe, but he’d get work somewhere, he’d look after me, don’t get me wrong, you’re a married woman, whichever way you look at it, I just want to be a brother to you, like I was to Tiny George …

‘Yes, Rodnia,’ I murmured, like a good child. ‘Can I sleep now?’

I went alone to the Blue Mountains: they were a deep azure, a frozen sea, and on the pinnacle of the highest mountain stood a palace of glass, its domes and minarets glittering in the sun.