I walk so quickly from the Lewis cottage that by the time I’m within sight of the Grange I’m puffing; but that’s the manner of things: the road home from a new location always seems shorter than the journey there in the first place. Though I listened so hard my ears ached, there’s been no sign of pursuit the whole way. With a sigh of relief I’m about to step from the small clearing onto the fields that lead up to the rear of the house.
Before I manage that, however, I’m broadsided.
I fall to my right, the breath knocked from me. I smell… smoke and dog. I sit up, look around. Nothing. Getting to my feet, I run towards the gap between the trees. I’m hit again, and I rise again, this time managing to get my hand in my pocket. Fingers curling around the leather hilt of my long knife, I slide it out, concealing it by my side. I take steps again as if to attain the gap, then feint back as the scent becomes stronger. I whip the blade up, feel it connect with something in a long slice.
There is a yelp and a silver-grey something flying past me. A body hits the grass and slides to the base of one of the larger trees with a whimper. Except by the time it fetches up against the roots, it’s no longer lupine in shape, but human. A long-limbed male, naked as the day he was born. Eli Bligh gives a cough, raises his head, and coughs again.
‘Bitch’s bones,’ he moans. ‘That wasn’t meant to happen.’
My fear and disbelief burn up as a flame of rage consumes them. The sort of rage I’ve kept under control all these years no matter what’s happened because I learned early on the consequences when I did not do so – as did the lad in Whitebarrow who told me my mother was a whore. Then I’m sitting astride Eli before the crimson in front of my gaze fades and there’s just the utter shock on his face. I’m holding the dagger so close to his left eye it must be all he can see.
Then he laughs; like an idiot, he laughs. As if this is the funniest jape ever.
I drop the dagger and tumble off him, crawl a few yards away. I want to be sick; fury always has that effect. Slowly he sits up, dabbing at the cut across his chest. It’s bleeding well, but I don’t think it’s deep; his momentum, the angle of my blade, saved him that.
I feel hollowed out by truncated ire. ‘Why? Why?’
‘What?’
‘What was the point of that?’ I shout.
He looks abashed. ‘A bit of fun. Tormenting you.’ I stare at him, open-mouthed. ‘The day you arrived, walking along the drive, you were so… full of yourself. So stiff and proper and uppity. Assured when you shouldn’t have been. Queen of the bloody forest, as if you belonged here. Even when I shifted and let you hear me… gods, you were afraid, I could smell it on your sweat, but too proud to run.’
‘Fun,’ I say, wishing I’d stabbed him properly. ‘I should have flayed you alive and hung your skin on a branch to see if you had fur on the inside as well.’
I don’t look at him again – do not ask him about what he is, it’s clear enough – just pick up the knife and wipe the blade on the grass until it’s clean. Then I return it to my pocket; I check the contents of my bag and find the wrapped bundle of the water sample miraculously intact. I rise and stride towards the house without a backward glance; at least there’ll be no more stalking of me around the estate. It’s a little while before I realise my face is stinging. It only occurs to me later when my mind isn’t so frazzled that Eli might be the one person who’ll tell me the truth about the other governess – and that I should have asked him when I had him at a disadvantage.
* * *
‘Miss Todd, you look as if you’ve been dragged backwards through a hedge.’
I come in through the kitchen garden, hoping to avoid anyone, but the housekeeper is there, preparing the evening meal. Mrs Charlton’s customary brusqueness is overt, but when I’m close enough she softens. ‘Oh, your face!’
Broad fingers touch the spot on my right cheek where the skin has peeled off from contact with the ground. My hair’s fallen mostly out of its bun, the pins dislodged annoyingly easily, and locks curl down to my waist. There are grass stains on my white blouse, dirt marks on the green of my skirt and short jacket. The mourning ring is still on my finger and that’s all that matters.
‘What happened?’
‘I got a little lost in the woods and panicked. I tripped and fell. Sometimes I’m terribly clumsy.’ I lie easily; I’m good at it.
‘Let me clean that up. Sit.’ She pulls a chair out from the stripped pine table and there’s no gainsaying her. Soon she has a bowl filled with warm water from the pot over the hearth, a clean white rag and a small jar containing purple ointment. She sees my gaze and says, ‘Lavender,’ as if I wouldn’t know it from a lump of coal. I lift my face so she can get to the wound better.
‘Mrs Morwood − the elder − has been asking for you,’ she says.
I don’t remind her this is my day off; we both know it. I keep my head still as she gently bathes the graze, making sure to remove any fragments of grass and dirt with a tiny pair of silver tweezers. When she’s satisfied, she dabs the ointment onto the wound and the smell of lavender is so strong that I’m thrown back to a sickroom in Whitebarrow, a room where my mother lay dead and I’d brought armfuls of lavender to ensure her spirit remained quiet for as long as I needed it to. In my memory her eyes fly open, though I know they never did. I gasp.
‘Did I hurt you? I’m sorry, hen, sausage fingers.’
‘No, it’s not your fault.’ I grab at her hand, hold it for a moment, then release her as I stand. ‘You’re very kind and I appreciate it. Thank you, Mrs Charlton. I’d best go and see Mrs Morwood.’
She says lightly, ‘You hardly seem a one to panic.’
‘Anyone might do so, Mrs Charlton, in an unfamiliar place.’
‘Fell, did you?’ she asks.
I throw a smile over my shoulder and say, ‘Like a stone.’
To my surprise she yells, ‘You pair!’
I follow her gaze to the laundry room; two round faces peer from the doorway, expressions guiltily blank. Identical. They come into the kitchen only when she waves violently. They walk in step, which takes some doing given how tentative they are, yet they still manage to synchronise, even when stopping a few yards from us.
‘This is Miss Todd, the governess. Asher, these are the Binion twins, Solenn and Tanet. If I’m not around, seek her out and listen to her. Understand?’
It’s like watching a mirror image as their neatly braided red heads dip in a nod. Both slender in black sack dresses with white aprons showing the dirty fruits of their labours as they’ve cleaned the manor under the housekeeper’s direction. They might be about sixteen.
‘Hello, Solenn. Hello, Tanet.’ I smile at them, but there’s just that shared stare that goes on for so long I become uncomfortable. I wonder if they can see something they shouldn’t.
‘Shoo, off you go now, home time,’ says Mrs Charlton. ‘Don’t forget to take the basket with the bread and your payment. Straight to your gran now.’
When they’re gone, I ask, ‘Are they…?’
‘No more simple than anyone else. Just quiet, I think.’ She answers a question I didn’t ask. I’d meant Are they Luther’s? but I think it’s clear they are. I could tell they were a little afraid of her, but I don’t think she’s cruel to them; don’t think she blames them for what they cannot help. ‘You won’t see them much, but just in case – they’re good cleaners, follow directions well, don’t need supervision.’
I nod. ‘Good to know.’
‘Now you’d best—’
‘—get to Mrs Morwood.’
* * *
‘Will it hurt?’ Leonora asks, although there’s no hint of fear in her tone. Her nerves, I suspect, were forged in fire. She ate dinner early, knowing this would be how she would spend the evening.
‘It will sting, I am told,’ I say as I stir the poultice; five days of ferment and it’s a bright bloody pink and it stinks. ‘But far less than an operation I have seen performed.’
‘Can you do that? That operation?’
‘I will not. The eye must be cut. You must remain awake for it. You’d be tied down, held down. It is dangerous and so is the risk of sepsis from such an invasive procedure.’
‘Does it succeed?’
‘For a time, but I never yet saw a patient who did not suffer an infection and die in terrible pain a few months later.’ I whisk the mix around and around to make sure it’s blended properly. ‘A few months of perfect sight is, I think you will agree, far too high a price to pay for an agonising death.’
I took the time to tidy myself up before coming to Leonora’s room, but there’s no hiding the graze on my face. When I walked in she was snippy until she noticed, then she was all solicitous. Her hand on my cheek was cold but gentle and for a moment, I leaned into the palm, just as Sarai had to mine not many days since. For a second, it was like the touch of a grandmother, one of the kindest things in the world, or so I’ve been told by those who have them. Then I pulled away and to forestall queries I said, ‘I fell in the woods,’ and she did not ask any questions.
‘Come along,’ I say and hold up the small mortar, ‘it’s time.’
She wrinkles her nose at the smell coming from the contents but says nothing else. I follow her to the bed, and give the poultice one last stir.
‘Remember, you must keep your eyes open while I apply this, Mrs Morwood. It will not be entirely pleasant, but you’re a woman of will. I’m told it will hurt less than childbirth and you’ve done that once!’
She does not contradict my joke – does not sigh Twice – merely says, ‘Yes.’
‘Hold still, it must remain for an hour.’ And I gently begin to layer the paste, careful to pull back the lids as far as I can to ensure coverage.
Leonora Morwood makes no sound beyond a single sharp intake of breath. I am quick and efficient, and soon she lies still as a statue on a tomb; the two pools of bloody-pink mix make it appear as if her eyes have been carved out.
I ring the rope beside the mantlepiece; down in the kitchen a bell will sound.
‘What shall I read, Mrs Morwood?’
‘Whatever you choose, Asher.’ The sign of distress: she always has strong opinions about what’s read, always makes the choice, and I am never troubled for my suggestions. A rare chance, then, for most of the books here are strangers to me and I learn something new every time. I select Murcianus’ Book of Curses. Upon opening it, I discover it’s not, in fact, a list of hexes, but rather stories involving such things. I should not be as disappointed as I am, and choose a page, begin at random:
Once upon a time, there was a queen. She was beautiful as they all must be, but she was sad as they aren’t supposed to be. Her husband loved her and he wanted children. She did not. In the course of time, though, she fell pregnant and two daughters were born.
The pain of the first, the pale twin, she tolerated, but the second caused her such agony, such a rush of hate, that she cursed the child. The dark twin did not cry; she was and always would be a well of silences and depths no one could plumb. The other was shiny and shallow, a sprite of light and laughter. Two babes of the same womb, of the same birthing, should have been loved equally, but they were not. We were not. I was not.
Ultimately, love hangs on acts, however unimportant they may seem at the time. It attaches to what people do or say and our memory of those things. Gestures that travel to the heart and lodge there for a while at least. They build a foundation for kindness and love from which a child can learn.
I have no memory of such acts. I remember the chill of indifference. I remember living in the shadows of my mother’s unhappiness. I remember being famished my whole life, yearning for a crumb of affection, just one that might somehow quell the hunger inside me.
But I starved. My sister ate her fill and her heart grew expansive and happy. She did not know want, she did not know how sharp your soul grows when it’s deprived, how its ribs stick out like dead trees on a bare landscape. She did not know what it was to never be sated. She could no more escape her fate than I could, but even knowing this, I hated her. Hate her still, I think; perhaps more than I hate our mother. I don’t know why; I just know that I do.
‘Mothers shouldn’t favour one child over the other, but somehow we always do,’ muses Leonora, sleepily; the posset I gave her earlier is doing its work.
Before I can ask more, say, ‘But you only had one, did you not?’, there is a knock and I go to answer. Burdon awaits, his expression saying he is not pleased to have had to mount the stairs for anything other than going to bed at night or attending to Mr Morwood’s gentlemanly requirements. His job is not on the upper floors; he is the butler, he buttles below, the entry level is his domain. But he smiles when he sees me.
‘Miss Todd.’
‘Burdon. Has the medicine I brought for you helped?’
‘Undoubtedly, Miss Todd.’ He eyes the mark on my cheek, but makes no comment. ‘Thank you.’
‘Would you be so kind as to bring up a bowl of warm water and perhaps six soft cloths? I’m sorry, I should have thought of it before I began.’ I smile. ‘Or send Luned, perhaps.’
‘Luned is indisposed,’ he says in lofty fashion.
‘She’s not returned from the Tarn?’ I ask.
‘Luned has other duties of a Sunday evening, Miss Todd.’ And his lips clamp tightly together and I know better than to try to prise them open, but I can guess that Luned is pursuing her plan to have more than just the Tarn. Does she think Luther will set her up as his mistress? Buy a fine townhouse in Bellsholm or elsewhere to visit once a month? What does she think will happen?
‘Then I shall see you again soon, Burdon. Thank you.’
When he returns and I have tidied up my mess, when Leonora’s breathing is low and even I stop reading and put the book aside. I take one of the candles from the mantlepiece and pick my way across the floor, to where the doors of the dressing room lie. Inside: dresses of silk and satin, velvet and bombazine, cotton and wool. On the floor, three long rows of shelves where all manner of shoes wait; and a recess with drawers and hooks whereon hang necklaces and bracelets, tiaras and rings. So many gems and jewels, enough to fund a lifetime or more. When did she wear these? I pick through my memory for mentions of balls held here or in the larger cities; she’d have travelled when she was young, seeking a husband, and then again looking for a wife for Luther.
I think, for a moment, about setting all these dresses alight. I raise the taper higher and see what is at the back of the space. A rectangle. Gold-framed. A portrait.
I think of the spot on the wall out in the hallway, where the colour of the panelling shows something once hung. I move closer: the sharp pale features, the blue eyes, the line of the jaw, the red, red hair. A green gown, a necklace of pearl and emeralds. The breath punches out of me, my knees feel weak. The face I’ve not seen in two years, but so much younger, before I knew her. Black dots gather at the corners of my vision; there’s not enough blood getting to my head and I’m so faint. I lurch forward, put out a hand, miss the wall, get the painting instead. The canvas shifts beneath the weight of my fingers; I feel a tear, and pull away. I examine the portrait closely. The rip is so small no one would notice it who isn’t looking for it. I hope. I back away, not taking my eyes from the thing until I can close the doors behind me.
* * *
Back in my room, I lever up the floorboard and look at the items all huddled together in the bottom of the hidey-hole. Two tasks. I reach in, take up the one that means the least. I open the letter again, pull out the drawing of Mater Hardgrace and her niece, Miss Hilarie Beckwith. I must start asking questions about her but be careful how I go.
I look down at the other things, my duty, and sigh. That will take some time yet. Cannot be rushed.