My less-than-triumphant return

Wednesday, November 1st, 1893? – or something to the gist

I ought to be glad of today’s working arrangements. My duties – for the first time since my arrival – have allowed me a chance to document the day (at least, the first half of it) during the day, as opposed to my usual candle-gobbling scribble. But where it may yet allow me a decent night’s sleep – figs, that’s it! That’s quite the only silver lining! It’s just notched past midday, and in every other respect – well –

Plums. Well.

I gave in last night, and slept in my uniform. The wretched rag of my chemise was halfway to paper, and the temperature had tumbled in October’s wake, and – the Division was already a bastion of eccentricity! Gertie Skull laughed outright to see me curled up in full-buttoned jacket, when the raw morning tapers betrayed my shivering state. She was sleeping in her cardigan, which I’d not seen her remove for at least a day – though it would quite be the pot calling the nettle black for me to disapprove. One look at my hair – there were still bits of towpath and willow contained therein – sent her swinging under the bed for her ablutions jug, thrusting it and the bowl at me with a meaningful eyebrow. I flushed to my ears as I slopped the worst of the dirt off, and she watched me amusedly: “Christ, Hyssop, you look like a bloody hedge!”

Septimus was waiting for me at the desk, picking at the burgundy fabric of her cuffs. The reception-room was quite as freezing as the dormitory, for once. Not a soul had lit the wood-burner, and the cold slunk in through the swinging doors, as Millicent and Oliver shivered past into the grey outside.

But it wasn’t just the doors. One of the windowpanes had been smashed, shards of glass kicked into the corner, the jagged hole gasping in cold twinges of breeze.

There wasn’t any sign of Cassandra. I was a veritable tangle of heaven knows what: relief, to get Septimus alone – and wanton fear, of what she might think of me, of what Lorrie might have said to her – and unease, to think that the entire exchange was happening in a room with a broken window – with a window that must have been broken, deliberately, in the vicious blur of last night. But she was pointedly ignoring the shattered glass, and I quite didn’t feel I could mention it.

“Henry.” She glanced me over, arched an eyebrow. “You look a wreck.”

It wasn’t so horribly picturesque as a bloody hedge, but it stung thrice-over. And this was purely based on my matted hair, the cuts and bruises splattering my face and hands, the stubborn smudges of mud on my jacket and skirt. How much more she might have said, had she known of the torn-up stockings, the emaciated chemise, the ongoing lack of corset!

I was entirely crimson, and entirely wrong-footed with regards to a response. Was I to admit, finally, that I’d no access to ready money? Was I to – as if I wanted her to know! – confess what I’d done the previous night, with the bicycle and the towpath and the interminable tumbles?

“But it ain’t your fault,” she added quickly, catching my horror. “You’d a mort of criminals at your back, and you took a nasty fall in Lorrie’s hallway – ”

(And you did too, because I knocked you over!)

“ – so! I’ve got a plan. You’re going to be staying at the desk today. Give you a chance to recover – away from the worst of the public. If you’re learning about the Div, you might as well try the boring side. There won’t be much going on in reception, but you can sit, and there’s the fire, and – ” – bewilderingly, she flushed – “ – and I thought that’d be nice for you.”

I gaped at her. Did she want rid of me? Was she so repulsed by the hedge-haired wreck before her that she would rather I stay here – with Cassandra, who thoroughly despised her, and wouldn’t skimp to tell me as much – instead of accompanying her? And she was still banned from the bicycle-shed – which left her, what? Sallying on foot into the same throng that gave her the yellowing bruise? Dodging the town’s disapproval? Facing down the Sweetings? Snatching a precarious chat with Lorrie, and a cheery flirtation with Nick Fitzdegu?

All of which she’d done, for as long as she’d worked here, before I turned up to spoil everything.

“But – but – I – erm – are you sure – you – you won’t be – ?”

“I’d rather be alone.”

I was ready to collapse into exhausted sobs – and stunned, I confess, by the viscerality of my reaction – until she heard herself, and her eyes widened, and a bristle of explanation jolted up her throat.

“That is – well – I – it ain’t that I’d always rather be alone – just that, sometimes, I need it. It ain’t a reflection on you. You’ve been making progress, you have, and you can make even more when you’re back out tomorrow. Yes! But today, you need to rest! Clear?”

I forced a breath. She doesn’t mean it as an estimation of your worth to her, she’s entirely said as much.

“Clear – yes – quite – ”

“Good.” She flashed me one of her swift sharp smiles – figs! “You’ll need a day to calm down, if we’re trying you on the cycle soon.”

“Oh – erm – of course – ”

“About that.” Her teeth dashed over her lip, tracing the shape of the smile. “Lorrie did mention what you were up to last night. With the cycling. And that.”

Persimmons.

Words of sheer insanity sprang out before I could bite down on them.

“I – but – it was supposed to be a surprise!”

Now she stared, a stark ring of white round each navy eye. My every fidgety theory from the previous night darted about her expression. Had I been right? Had she never had a pleasant surprise prior to this (albeit profoundly botched) attempt? Or perhaps such an assumption was wildly off-key. Perhaps there had been surprises, and each of them had been ghastly, and the last thing she ever wanted was another round of tactless wretches crashing bicycles in her name –

“Right,” she managed, collar twitching as she swallowed. “I see. I – yes. Well. Good. I mean – idea. Good idea. The cycling. But you don’t have to – I mean – I’m glad you did – but – ”

She cleared her throat. “But with all that’s happened, safest you don’t go off on your own to do it. We’ll get the cycles back soon enough – I’m working on it. I’ll teach you then. Alright?”

Peaches – what?

But I’d – the whole affair had been a disaster – and – yet here I was, struck slack-jawed in front of a hopeful modulation –

“I – yes – alright,” I stammered, words taut as a string of stitches. “Yes!”

She nodded. “That’s a job for later, then. Right! Today! I’m off, but first – here’s breakfast, if you’ve a mind to eat. No – I insist you eat. Here!”

She flung a hand out, and a marvellous scent swirled up to grasp hold of me. Fresh-wrapped in crisp market packaging, she’d managed to obtain a bacon roll – a warm bacon roll, seeping its warmth through my fingers. I lifted a fingertip from the paper, and the sheen of melted butter glistened on my skin.

Quite abruptly, I wanted to sob again.

“Right!” she declared. “Yes! Eat, and I’ll see you later!”

I managed an astonished smile, and then she was gone, striding out through the double doors into a sullen rainy morning.

The doors had barely swung once before Cassandra appeared in them, too bleary-eyed and scarf-muffled to notice Septimus departing, a brace of logs jostling under one arm. Quite of an instinct, I whipped the bacon roll behind my back. If Cassandra guessed that her rival had obtained it for me, there would doubtless be sardonical consequences.

But she didn’t seem of a mood to notice. I could have pranced across the room twirling the roll atop my head (in a hypothetical world in which I possessed the capacity to express unfettered exuberance), and she still might not have noticed. There were weary shadows bruising her brown skin, smudging her freckles and hollowing her eyes. When she eventually spotted me – after she’d all but staggered into me – that tired stare shot wide with suspicion.

“Why are you still here? I don’t care what Javert thinks – no one said you could filch my job!”

I swallowed. “I – erm – I’m supposed to be helping – at the desk – ”

“Helping?”

She scoured her eyes with the fingers on her free hand, where they showed inkstained and nail-bitten above her fingerless gloves. “Like you did yesterday? When you sprint-scribbled like a demon just to show me up?”

“I – that wasn’t – no! I – I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to – I – ”

She was still glowering. Persimmons, what would mollify her?

“I don’t have to – to write anything more – I don’t think the Director would want me to – after she saw my handwriting – ”

“Spare me the humility, Hyssop,” she snapped. “Mother can’t get enough of your unprecedented speed – she’s put it in the Record. But – look – ”

She tipped towards me, lanky and scowling and profoundly aflame beneath her exhausted edges, dipped her voice to a shaky mutter. “I’m the writer at the Division. I do it, and I’m good at it, and as far as Mother’s concerned that’s all there is to it. So you find something else to be incongruously good at. Draw the pictures, crash the cycles, whatever – but not the writing. Got it?”

It was all I could do to meet her glare, to scrape words from my trembling thoughts and stammer them out to her satisfaction. “I – quite – of course – ”

Her whole stack of logs came tumbling down into my spare arm with half a second’s warning. “Good. I’ll have you on burner duty, then. Get a fire going – and mind you keep the ash off my papers. It’ll smoke like anything, but you try keeping the wood dried out in weather like this. Why is it so cold in here?”

I managed a feeble nod to the sharp-toothed remnants of the windowpane. “Oh – erm – there’s been – discontent expressed – ”

She stared at it, eyebrows pinching in alarm. “About the head?”

I was almost grateful. At least this was a problem against which we could stand in some kind of alliance. “I – I think so – well – in point of fact, yes – did – did you find it last night?”

For a moment, there was stark silence. Staring into this unwelcome development gave me Cassandra, blinking at me as if I’d just hoisted up the logs and struck her in the chest with them. Only for that moment, before she swallowed hard, and her reply faltered out.

“No. I thought I – no.”

Her eyes narrowed, skittering away from mine. “Got the same treatment as everyone else, didn’t I? Lots of angry civilians, and not a scrap of missing evidence. But I thought everything would simmer down by this morning. The town can’t have forgotten all that we’ve done for them, even if Javert’s done nothing but fail them for months – ”

She set her teeth. “If we get any more of this, it’s her fault, not mine. Now – have you ever made a fire before?”

“I – ”

“Scrape out the ash first,” Gertie Skull called suddenly, sauntering out of the dormitory with Life and Limbs bookmarked in her fingers, her bushy plait burrowing in a knitted snood. “There’s more logs out front when you need them. Oh, and check the burner for dead mice before you light it. I had one in each of my shoes this morning. Don’t know why no one’ll tell me where we’re keeping this Div cat!” – and, sainted medlars, she winked at me with enough conspiratorial relish to freeze every ounce of my blood.

Cassandra rolled her eyes. “Much as I don’t want to puncture your joy – there’s no cat. Think about it. Would Mother really put up with anything half so chaotic as a pet?”

“’Long as there’s mice, there’s hope, eh? Also, Cass – meant to ask last night, but you were out – what’s the next bit of the new lyrics? When I sally forth to make cravats, I await the sergeant’s next attack – what?”

“I – oh.” Cassandra affected an insouciant smirk, though there was hardly any sinew to it. “I haven’t found the rhyme yet. Give me time.”

Gertie threaded past me, brushed a half-knitted hand along Cassandra’s sleeve, dropped her voice a notch. I dashed round the desk to kneel at the wood-burner, scrabbling the logs into a hasty stack beside it. I could still hear their every word, though the market was louder than the usual morning hush, the babble wriggling unfettered through the hole in the window – but in this position it would at least appear as if I was trying not to eavesdrop. (More to the point, it would also be possible for me to sneakily wolf the bacon roll.)

“You alright, Cass? You look bloody ghastly.”

I pinned my gaze to the wood-burner, freezing cold and feathery with ash, snatched a tentative bite of my glorious breakfast. The roll promptly knocked me into ravenous delirium. I couldn’t eat it slowly, not for fruit nor worlds.

“When am I ever not alright?” Cassandra retorted briskly, striding to the desk. Gaunt over my head, she unbuttoned her cape, unpinned her hat, untangled her bright mauve scarf until it sat on the counter in a bulging heap. “I just had a grim night. If I look anything, that’s why.”

“You were hunting for the head, weren’t you? Did you – ”

“No! Can you all just stop asking? I didn’t find the head!”

She’d essentially shouted it. Gertie’s voice, when it came back to her, was quite as bewildered as could be expected. I’d finished my roll, and in its absence I was more than at leave to share her confusion. “Cass?”

Cassandra sighed. “Sorry. Anyway. Hyssop – are you this slack with Javert? Get the fire up, now!”

All that shivering effort with Gertie Skull’s ablutions jug quite went for nothing. By the time I’d scraped the ash (mercifully no dead mice), and crammed in the spindliest logs, and torn up my roll’s wrapping for kindling, and dropped lucifer after lucifer into the damp heap, I was stiff with dust to my elbows, and grey patches smarted in my skirt. The fire, fortunately for my blackened fingernails, was finally blazing, enough for Cassandra to stop glaring at me.

Not that she’d been able to do so in any sustained manner throughout the morning. As soon as Gertie sauntered in search of a kettle, Cassandra darted round the desk, scrabbled through the drawers under the counter, yanked out fistfuls of loose pages and folded them inside the cover of her marbled notebook. She was away down the corridor at a hasty trot the moment she’d finished with the desk, reappearing with yet more paper crammed between the book’s covers. Only once the notebook was back in her pocket did she seem at all satisfied. Now, she was curled on her stool with her scarf back on, sipping morosely at her belated tea, whilst Gertie swung on the other chair and gulped down more of Life and Limbs.

My job, it seemed, was to crouch beside the wood-burner like a skivvy (we’d run out of chairs), picking splinters off the last unburnt log to make more kindling. My eyes streamed – from the smoke, and from the ever-thickening nudge of heat – though it was a feeble relief to feel the burner waking up. Gertie had had trouble enough heating the water for Cassandra’s tea, and our servings were still simmering in the kettle. Until it boiled, there was little to do but stare out the sullen flames.

Septimus – where would she be now? Still in the market square, chatting to Lorrie about his Frederic audition and his mysterious sweetheart? Stalking out to Pole Place for a rodent-based rendezvous with Nick Fitzdegu? Squelching along the towpath, wondering what could have gashed such rents in the willow’s trunk? Ahead of the snarls and derision? Safe?

“The hell?”

Gertie sprang off her chair, scrambling round the desk, clutching the novel like a miniature glaive. “Alright! This time I’ll give it to them – ”

“Gertie!”

As Cassandra had leapt from her stool too, I stumbled upright from my ashy cave. Pears, but only then did their frantic exchange make sense. There was a pale envelope jutting through the broken windowpane – Gertie was wrestling the double doors open – Cassandra was racing to grab the letter – it could only have been another of those letters. The anonymous letters accumulating in Mr. Adelstein’s desks. The missives demanding the disbanding of the Division.

“Gertie, wait!”

Cassandra snatched Gertie’s arm before she could fling the doors wide, clutching the envelope in her other hand. “You don’t know who might be out there – it’s not safe!”

Gertie twisted free, dashed around her to squint through the broken window. The world subsided for a minute to her furious gasping breaths, spliced through with the crisp ticks of the clock – before she slumped into a groan, and whacked the windowsill open-palmed.

“Nothing but the bloody market. Could’ve been any of them!”

“I’ll check what it says,” Cassandra declared, cracking the seal with her thumb. “More than one of us should go, if you think we ought to search. We could get Hyssop to stay with the desk. The one moment in my life I need Javert’s menace and she’s nowhere to be – ”

She trailed off. Her face spasmed, eyes lashing over the letter. Bewilderment, fear, panic – in short, every twitch an expression with which I’d long been familiar, all squirming for supremacy. Without warning, she clenched her hand into a shaking fist, crumpled the paper to pulp inside it.

“Cass – ”

“Yes,” she blurted dazedly, gaze swimming up to Gertie’s. “Yes, it – another letter. Same as last time. Nothing new – and I don’t want Mother seeing it. Best not to mention it at all, I think.”

She stalked across the room. For one terrifying moment, I thought she meant to confront me with it – but then her stare veered downwards, past my skirts to where the wood-burner blazed, its door still swinging wide from the last damp log. I saw her plan on the instant, and – for all that she frightened me – gaped at her incredulously. I couldn’t pretend to any expertise in Divisionary matters, and I’d irritated everyone under this roof far too much already, but – surely burning the letter hardly solved the problem? Surely Septimus would want it, to deliver to Mr. Adelstein, to provide yet more distraction for the detective before he delved too thoroughly into my case? Surely –

Cassandra shouldered me aside, veered round me and stooped to the wood-burner. Short of open confrontation, there didn’t seem any way of delaying her –

“Cass, spin round and say hallo to your ma, why don’t you?”

Gertie Skull had hollered it, a perfect yelp of warning. Cassandra whirled about, springing to her feet, thrusting the letter towards the burner as she went. “Mother!”

Heart distinctly higher than my ribcage, I twitched my eyes down. Figs, she’d botched the throw. A snowball of letter shivered at my feet, fluttering in the draught. Seconds, Henry, seconds –

I kicked it. It skittered under the burner, out of sight.

“Cassandra? Is something amiss?”

Cassandra forced a strained smirk. “No! All fine here! Did you want something?”

The Director blinked at her distractedly, spectacles dangling from her ear. “I – no. I thought I heard the front doors, that’s all. Your father was of a mind to drop in – but clearly he has decided to listen to me and keep his distance.”

Cassandra stared. “He – what?”

“Just a precaution,” her mother explained smoothly, pasting on her serene smile. “Tom has been fretting over the Division of late, and expressed a wish to manifest today for some – I quote – moral support.”

“And – you told Dad not to come?”

The Director’s smile twitched. “Public feeling towards the Division is – ah – a little fractious at the moment, as I am sure you must be aware. Tom’s apothecary is thriving, and Johannes is so enjoying his studies with Adelaide, and I don’t wish our present misfortunes to compromise either of those things – ”

“By having the rest of our family publicly associate with us?” Cassandra finished indignantly. “Mother, that ship sailed years ago! It’s hardly as if the town’s brimming with Black families – and, in case you hadn’t noticed, you’re just a bit notorious – Dallyangle’s not exactly going to forget who is and isn’t married to Keturah Ballestas! Or who her children are, for that matter!”

“Director Ballestas in here, if you would, Cassandra,” she murmured. “I simply meant that, until this head has been retrieved, we might have to be more careful. For their safety. But I am sure our caution need only be temporary. The town was fractious before we caught our first poachers, and they changed their minds swiftly enough after that. And Johannes has his governess to keep him occupied – Adelaide is more than capable of shielding him from any difficulties we may have to deal with. What we must concentrate on is stopping the Sweetings, and finding that head – as quickly as we can.”

Cassandra gaped at her. Her eyes were slack and wide, her hands gripping the nearest ledger in taut-knuckled fists. “But – surely – ”

“Surely, this is not a topic appropriate for this setting,” the Director retorted crisply. “Well, then – you’re quite certain we have had no visitors?”

Cassandra, in a staggeringly unusual occurrence, seemed entirely devoid of words – so much that Gertie was obliged to leap in, to patter vague excuses in her stead. Whilst Gertie held her mother distracted, Cassandra’s gaze darted back down, behind her skirts to the wood-burner and its splayed door. I wasn’t sure whether she’d be able to glimpse the lack of charred letter atop the logs, but dropped to my knees even so, set my elbow to the door and pushed it shut. She frowned at me. It was all I could do to pinch my face to a terrified smile, to gesture at the slow-boiling kettle by way of a flimsy ruse.

“So all’s been quiet,” Gertie prattled cheerily. I couldn’t see her or the Director whilst crouched over the wood-burner, but the former’s ongoing spiel was sufficiently absorbing to drag Cassandra’s eyes away from me. “Just been sat with a novel, we have – ”

“What novel?”

A rustle at the desk. Gertie must have been waving Life and Limbs at her. Cassandra hissed, a spasm of wordless caution, not that her colleague seemed to heed it. “Same one as usual, ma’am! Nothing too taxing, just a bit of romance and severed limbs – ”

The Director’s voice was a dagger. “I do not think it wise for you all to be wasting the Division’s time with that idiotic book. Especially not when the drivel makes light of severed limbs, in the face of our present – ”

Thwack over my head. I nearly toppled into the wood-burner.

Footsteps, several of them, smacking over the floorboards.

Figs – whatever it was – I decidedly wasn’t standing up to meet it!

I ought to defend myself, and insist in no uncertain terms that my reluctance to emerge from behind the desk wasn’t driven purely by cowardice. The panicky patter approaching from the front doors didn’t match Septimus’s stride, and there were more than enough Divisioners stood up to handle any disaster. The Director et al hardly needed my staring incompetence to solve their problems. Besides – as long as they all remained absorbed in these new arrivals, it gave me quite the impeccable moment to thrust a sooty arm under the wood-burner (wincing as my bare hand brushed the scorching metal) and extricate the crumpled letter. For want of any more intelligent hiding-place, I simply shoved the paper into my pocket.

“Adelaide?” The Director’s tone was puzzled, still trying to slip out of its last sharp edges. “Is something wrong at the house? Who are your companions?”

“Begging your pardon, Mrs. Ballestas – Cassie – but it’s this gentleman and lady here you ought to be worrying about. What did you say, madam – someone had snatched your purse?”

Even with the burner’s heat scraping at my face, I shivered. This new voice had a chill to it that outmatched the breeze through the broken window, icy and level and light as a lyric soprano. There was an accent, the faintest thing, too faint to decipher, almost flattened away. It was the sort of voice that could – not so much shatter glass, as turn things to glass, freeze them in their tracks and leave them trapped like an insect in amber.

Not getting up was my most sensible idea yet. If this Adelaide was the Ballestas family governess, I could quite only imagine the terror of the bedtime stories for Cassandra’s younger brother.

“Calm yourself,” the Director managed, note-perfect professional at last. “You did right, Adelaide, to bring them here. Sir – madam – as you may be aware, this is the Dallyangle Division, and I am its Director. We exist to provide protection suited to this town’s particular needs. If you could just tell me what happened – ”

“You!”

This sudden shriek must have been from the visitor – the purseless lady. There was a man’s voice sharp at her heels, stiffening into a growl –

“You, girl, you said you were taking us somewhere that could help!”

Adelaide’s icicle voice cut through the air again. “I thought the Dallyangle Division could assist you, sir. Do you not agree?”

“No!” the be-thieved woman snapped, without hesitation. “No, I do not! This motley group have done nothing to stop the burglaries – and they can’t even keep hold of a man’s remains!”

The Director’s voice scrambled up in retort, over a snarl of protest from the beleaguered couple. “I assure you both, the only thing hindering investigations into your stolen belongings is your lack of confidence in my Division’s abilities – ”

“Is she blaming us?” the man spluttered. “Do you want us to find that head and catch your killer for you, while you’re at it?”

“I want a policeman,” the woman declared, her voice fading as the footsteps rattled the floorboards once more. Limes, the two of them were leaving. “The constable who patrols through Gulmere. I want him. We can be there in twenty minutes if we take the carriage!”

The Director sounded quite as incredulous as we all must have felt. “But – madam – what on earth would be the point in going twenty minutes to a different village, on the off-chance that a constable might be – ”

“It’s gone too far!”

Cherries, the purse-thwarted woman wasn’t wrong! The debacle seemed to have sprung out of nowhere, to have escalated at the same horrendously swift rate!

“We’ve had to have New Women, lady thises and lady thats, lady professors and lady bicyclists and lady inspectors – but not lady directors! Not to protect us! It might have started as a novelty, but the joke has more than worn off! So yes, madam, I will go to Gulmere – because your people haven’t done anything useful for months, and now you can’t even manage your job! Perhaps it isn’t meant to be your job at all!”

And the slam of the doors came smarting up through the floorboards before the Director could stop it, jolting a cindered log to pieces in the grate.

I gasped a steadying breath, uncurled my fingers from my elbows. If the words alone had frozen me to a huddle of panic, I could only imagine what they must have done to everyone who had been at the same height as them.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Adelaide murmured into the sudden silence. I flinched – I hadn’t realised the governess had lingered. “I didn’t know they were of an opinion with the rest of the town – ”

“That is not the case!”

The Director’s voice struck the room with exasperation enough to make us all jump, every gaslamp and flame decidedly included. Cassandra’s hands were clenched behind her back, smarting at the knuckles, inkstained fingertips burrowing into her palms. She was staring fixedly towards that icy voice, her features pinched somewhere between a glare and a plea. The kettle began to shriek, a knife of steam jerking up above the desk.

“Enough of this. We have other things to be getting on with.”

Word by word, the Director was ironing her tone back to composure. “Adelaide – you have your duties and my son to attend to. Gertrude – see to the kettle, put that poisonous novel down and – and concentrate on your job. There is not time, under present circumstances, for you and Cassandra to be frittering your energies away on such frivolous brain-rot. Now, is there anything else that requires sorting?”

Gertie kicked me. I took the hint, skittered upright. “I – erm – ”

“Oh – Miss Hyssop.”

The Director swallowed. Her golden eyes darted over me, took in my pallid terror with strained frustration. Perhaps she’d wanted to meet a stern steady gaze, unfazed determination, unbroken resolution. Something, in short, more akin to Septimus.

“Just – ah – fetch us more logs, please.”

Outside the doors was a thicket of rain. Icy, yes, stinging down the back of my collar, setting my eyelashes fluttering like fractious moths, worming into my pocket to soften the creases of the stolen letter – but driving great cracks through the dust on my sleeves, until the beginnings of the brown fabric emerged again. It was probably the closest I was ever going to get to a bath. I closed my eyes, tipped my head back and let it drench me. My teeth rattled with the chill, whilst sodden tails of fringe pressed themselves to my forehead, and slaps of wind stiffened my skin.

I’d find the log-shed in a moment. After the Director’s despairing look, I imagined I had as long as I wanted to fulfil my paltry task – as long as felt productive. She’d set Cassandra and Gertie to a similarly assiduous purpose as I scurried out of the doors, ordering both to copy things into various ledgers. Simple jobs, easy jobs, just so that we could feel we were doing jobs.

Perhaps it isn’t meant to be your job at all!

Passionfruit, but I missed Septimus.

Then my eyelids twinged, through the lashing of the rain, enough to smart my eyes open. Something – what? Something to jolt me out of my slack daze – something that hadn’t touched me, but – even so –

I was being watched. Gaze straight as a steady pistol-shot across the square, through dripping awnings and puckered umbrellas and the geese-ridden clamour of the market-traders. A pale young woman, maybe ten of Septimus’s strides away from me, skewering the Division in a freezing stare.

I blinked at her. She didn’t disappear. If this was Adelaide the governess, she quite matched that unnerving icy voice I had just heard, with her silver-blonde bun, the dull grey shimmer of her gown, and her unwavering scrutiny. Unless, of course, the girl was simply a ghost – a possibility which I confess I couldn’t entirely dismiss. But if she was Adelaide, then what – I don’t know! – did she expect me to run and fetch the Director? Was there more to say, after the nightmare she’d just instigated? And if that was the case, why didn’t she wave – speak – anything?