‘You look awful, Asher.’
‘I believe “tired” is the polite term, Mrs Morwood,’ I say evenly. But Leonora’s right. I do look awful, dark circles under my eyes, dry lips, wisps of hair escaping my usually immaculate braid, and I spotted a stain on the cuff of my white blouse well after we’d left the house, too late to change. All I can do is tug down the sleeve of my short jacket and hope no one notices; it’s bad enough I know it’s there. I’ve been pulled from my teaching duties to accompany her this fine morning. We could have taken the caleche, but she felt like walking and I cannot blame her after all those years confined to her rooms. ‘I did not sleep well.’
Again. My mind leapt between the memory of my father trying to kill me and my lover killing him. Of gathering his final remains in an altar cloth and stuffing him into my grandfather’s coffin. I wonder how they’ll slumber like that?
‘Burdon tells me there was a commotion the other night.’ She lifts her face to the sun. In the full light her wrinkles are clear, the tiny crevices that furrow the lips she’s daubed with a bright tint. I’m glad she can’t see herself like this. There’s nothing bad about how she looks, but I have realised how very vain she is.
So. Burdon heard it all and chose not to appear. Too drunk? Or perhaps Mrs Charlton told him?
‘The younger Mrs Morwood had a nightmare.’ I feel protective towards Jessamine; mind you, it would do me no good to tell the truth.
She arches a brow at me, tastes the lie. ‘A nightmare? I was given to believe it was more than that. An episode. A fit. Hysteria.’
‘She was afraid. Mrs Charlton and I managed.’ And I regret saying that because it sounds as if we needed or wanted help, as if we did the next best thing to failing.
‘Jessamine has ever been delicate. She had episodes after the birth of every child, and we were all obliged to be patient.’
I suspect Leonora was not.
‘I’ve seen enough women suffer such things after childbirth, and worse still if they lose a little one in the birthing bed.’
‘I think you have seen many things, Asher Todd,’ she muses and gives me a sideways look to tell me she’d like to pull the secrets from me.
‘At Whitebarrow, it was hard to avoid such knowledge, Mrs Morwood. The clever doctor-professors regarded women from the lower orders as little more than experimental subjects, unworthy of compassion. Fit only to be rendered down to note form in their diaries and journals, their books and gazettes. Discussed and laughed about over port and cigars.’ My voice sounds too high-pitched so I stop speaking, rein the anger in.
‘One day, you will tell me about your education there.’
‘How are your eyes, Mrs Morwood?’ I ask as we pass the church. I imagine the priest standing in the graveyard pulling up blood-bell flowers. I wonder what he’d have said if he could see Leonora Morwood walking beside me, resplendent in a crimson silk gown, and a jaunty black hat of tulle scrunched into the vague shape of a rose and dotted with rubies. It offers no shade from the sun, merely sits on an elaborate pile of curls. Well, we’ll never find out now.
Casually Leonora turns her head and spits over the low stone wall. It’s a neat trick, a skilled shot, decidedly unladylike; I can’t help but admire it. I wonder how long before the god-hound is missed?
‘My eyes are exceedingly fine, thank you, Asher.’ She smiles, smug, as if it’s her just reward. ‘So fine in fact I can see someone trying to change the subject a mile off. Jessamine was ranting about ghosts, wasn’t she?’
‘She… said she thought she saw someone.’ I pause. ‘A woman with red hair,’ take a chance, ‘and blue eyes.’
Leonora seems to stiffen, there’s a hitch in her stride, but that’s the only sign of a reaction.
I carry on, ‘She was overly tired. And perhaps, such old houses, they keep echoes.’
‘There are no ghosts at Morwood Grange, all have been exiled long ago.’ Leonora speaks in an even tone. But I wonder what she’s thinking. If she’s pondering the chance that her only daughter is dead and has come home to haunt her. Will she look in that room? What will she see? Not everyone can discern ghosts, even if the spectre wants to be seen – whereas some folk see them whether they wish to or not, others only when the phantasm desires. Would Heloise want her mother to know she’s there? To know how she looked when she died?
I note she doesn’t say “exorcised”, as if spirits can be banished so easily with neither bell, nor book, nor candle to send them on their way. No ritual, merely a demand to vacate. I don’t tell her that I’ve brought a ghost with me – or rather that it followed me and the things I carried. I don’t tell her that my ghost is hers as well. I simply say, ‘Mrs Morwood is delicate, yes.’
‘Luther is not kind.’ She says this with a sigh, as though he won’t share his pudding. As though it’s something trivial. ‘And Jessamine is tender.’
‘Was Master Luther always that way?’ I ask casually.
She shakes her head. ‘He is always like his father in that he’s displeased to not get his own way. He’s spiteful if denied.’
I think of Donnell Morwood throwing good money after bad when his son disappointed him, gambling away what little was left. I hesitate, then say, ‘He was your only child?’
‘Yes.’ There’s not even a pause before that single word, no hesitation before the lie. That’s three times she’s denied my mother.
‘His father spoiled him and he was never disciplined until it was too late. But perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered; perhaps the rot was always there.’
As my mother told it, Leonora was as indulgent of her son as their father. Yet he turned on his own mother the moment she showed weakness. And Leonora will not forget that.
‘Did he ever travel from home? Apart from Bellsholm to woo Jessamine?’
‘To your hometown, Asher. He was meant to study at Whitebarrow. His father indulged his whims. Luther thought himself medically minded. How wrong he was.’ She sounds as if a short temper is on its way. She does not mention how he shamed the Morwood family name.
‘Ah.’ I clear my throat, decide I cannot get away with further questioning, not without raising suspicions. ‘How long is it since you’ve been into town, Mrs Morwood?’
‘Three years? I stopped going in, then I stopped leaving my room.’ We pause at the boundary of the village and she surveys it like a potential buyer. ‘But I recall it well enough. Walk with me to the solicitor’s office, then you may amuse yourself for two hours I shouldn’t imagine. Don’t indulge in idle gossip with anyone, Asher.’ She gives me a glance.
‘You can trust my discretion, Mrs Morwood. I think you know that by now.’ I do not keep the reproof from my tone and she gives a broad grin. I don’t ask her why she’s going to see a solicitor, but I cannot imagine it will please Luther. What will happen if she cuts him from the will? I must admit that every red-headed child I see has me wondering if it’s a little Morwood bastard – and could anything I say be worse than what’s already been done by Luther? Well, of course it could, but she doesn’t know that. I simply walk her down the main street to the tall thin building that houses the lawyer. As we go, people stare. It’s not entirely bustling, the main street, but there are enough folk to notice us. Notice her.
The people of the Tarn curtsey and bow, offer greetings and delight – and not a little shock – to see Leonora Morwood. They ask after her health; she tells them it is all down to me and my skills. People begin looking at me with a curiosity I’d managed to avoid before now, in my sparrow’s skin. But this is a place without a doctor, with only some hedge-witches to quietly do what they can. At last we break free and make our way to the solicitor’s office.
At the door, Leonora waves me away before she enters. I smile, thinking she likes her secrets.
‘I too have errands to run, Mrs Morwood.’
‘I think, Asher Todd, we shall meet in the coffeehouse for lunch at midday.’
When she’s disappeared inside, I make for the apothecary across from Heledd’s house. A bell rings over the door, and I spend almost an hour in there, an amount of time that might seem excessive but for the range of products he keeps in stock and tightly packed on shelves. I’m in need of some dry ingredients but also more calendula ointment for the bruises my father left on my throat. To look at anything requires the little man with his half-moon glasses to take things down for my close inspection. At first he was irked, but eventually realised that my purchases were going to be considerable − and that I was knowledgeable about my subject, sending him away when he offered me coltsfoot root in place of dandelion root − and by the end I part with two of the Witches’ coins (which made his eyes widen) before he carefully places everything in the wicker basket I brought with me. He throws in a small jar of lavender salve and points at the almost-healed graze on my cheek and whispers, It has a little rosemary as well to prevent scars, as if it’s our secret. His farewell and exhortation to return soon are genuine.
On my way out the door, I pause. ‘Oh. Mr Morwood asked if you might compound that same mixture he purchased a few months ago?’
The old man’s expression is puzzled. ‘Why would he say such a thing? He’s not been in this shop in years, girl!’
‘Ah. My mistake. I must have misheard him.’ I smile like a silly chit and leave. Wherever Luther got his medicine for the Lewises, it wasn’t here.
I did not fail to notice the faces that passed by the shop window, and did their best to see inside, to stare at me. I’d brought Leonora Morwood’s sight back, what else might I do? I resisted the urge to poke my tongue out at every curious expression. Next, I knock on Heledd Jones’s door.
Heledd, dressed in a sky-blue frock covered in golden roses, breaks into a smile as soon as she sees me. She folds me into a hug.
‘Thank you!’ she says. ‘Thank you so much. My parents cannot sing your praises enough.’ She pulls me across the threshold and into the small sitting room. I’m pushed into a springy armchair and she whirls about, into the kitchen then returning with two small crystal glasses filled with dark crimson liquid. ‘Damson brandy.’ She hands me a shot and we clink the pretty glasses carefully. They look like heirlooms, something from great-great-grandmothers, handed down and down and down. ‘You’re a miracle worker.’
‘I thought it was meant to be our secret.’ I sigh, almost to myself. ‘Although it hardly matters with Leonora Morwood prancing up and down the high street.’
She giggles and it’s clear she’s already party to that bit of gossip. ‘I can never thank you enough.’
‘Well, you might try,’ I say and grin. ‘A favour.’
‘Anything,’ she says and I wonder at her willingness to say so. She’s brave or foolish, perhaps a dash of each.
I produce the little tin filled with wax and the impression of the key. ‘Can you have a copy of this made?’
She takes the item, looks at it and me speculatively. The wax tablet is a burglar’s tool and she’s too smart not to know it. I don’t try to lie to her, not about this. I don’t do anything but let the request hang between us. She says, ‘It will be ready in two days.’
She can take it to the locksmith here and no one will question her, or ask what the key is for – if they do, it’s easy enough for her to lie. If I were to do so, however, it would be the talk of the town and who knows where the information would end up? I hand her three gold coins – overly generous but it will buy silence as much as a key – and say, ‘I’ll come and collect then.’
* * *
I meet Leonora in the street outside the coffeehouse, and we enter together. The hum of noise ceases almost immediately.
Leonora’s lips quirk up, but she doesn’t give them the satisfaction of a full smile. She simply nods at the woman in a pink faille dress with a white apron over the top who is clearly the proprietress, and we are led to a table in the window, all the better for us to see and be seen. There are two girls, not much more than twelve years, dark curls beneath mobcaps and like enough to be twins, different enough to be distinguishable one from the other. They continue ferrying plates and platters to the packed tables, but they stare at us – mostly at Leonora.
Leonora orders lunch without reference to me or the parchment menus: finger sandwiches and cake and a silver pot of coffee. Leonora Morwood shall have what she wants. Food appears as if by magic. We eat under the weight of gazes sly and shy. The noise level grows as they become used to us.
‘Did you have a satisfactory meeting with the solicitor?’ I ask.
Leonora nods. ‘But I would be pleased if you did not mention this visit to anyone.’
‘I’ll say naught; your business is your own, Mrs Morwood. But as you know, more than one person saw you enter those offices. I cannot vouch for their tongues.’ I start with a slice of cake, eating my dessert first like a child.
She raises an eyebrow, whether at my choices or my comment is unclear, until she says, ‘You’ll find that the people of the Tarn know how to keep their mouths closed. Their loyalty is to me.’
‘Your son… is not popular?’
‘As I’ve said, Luther has his father’s tendencies; he does not have the right touch with those for whom he is responsible. He sulks, loses his temper easily. I am a proper Morwood, born on this land. Luther is too much of Donnell. You’ve seen how they look at me?’ I nod, although I think perhaps we’ve interpreted these looks differently. ‘They are happy I’ve returned. To see me well. To see me in charge once again.’
‘That is comfort, surely.’ And how will Luther feel about that? Will he surrender power willingly?
‘And you’ve given me that, Asher Todd. Don’t think I’ll ever forget that. Just remember whose side you’re on.’
‘Of course, Mrs Morwood.’ And in truth I do not. But I wonder often if that side is ever to be my own, or am I always to be labouring for another’s desires? What might such freedom be like?
‘Leonora!’ Almost a shout, it distracts us from our conversation.
A large woman approaches. She has hair so black it can only be a dye. Her face is overly powdered a dead white, and rouge has made two circles of high colour on the apples of her cheeks. Untinted lips, however, and her eyebrows and lashes are an ashy grey. The turquoise dress is richly made, embroidered with silver tulips; almost as excessive as Leonora’s crimson gown. Her reticule is a black velvet thing embroidered with colourful blossoms, and clutched tight in beringed fingers. She fair lunges at our table, at Leonora, mostly ignoring me but for a single double-take of a glance.
‘Margery, what a pleasure.’ Leonora’s tone says it’s anything but, yet the woman blushes with delight. Acknowledgement of any sort makes some folk happy no matter what its source.
‘How wonderful to see you out and about, my dear. Your eyes?’
‘The work of Miss Todd, here. Miraculous, as I’m sure you will agree.’
‘I look forward to a visit very soon! A dinner party!’ The woman turns to me. ‘You must bring Luther and Jessamine and… why, I don’t know who this young woman is but she looks charming.’ She smiles brightly, brittlely.
‘Miss Todd is governess to the children, Margery, but has some medical skill, as I am fortunate to have discovered. If you will be so kind, we are in something of a hurry and would finish our lunch quickly and in privacy. I shall arrange for an invitation to be sent to your home at a time convenient to myself.’
The woman seems caught between disappointment at the dismissal and glee at the promise of an offer. She drops a curtsey, and her expression says she did not intend it, that it’s made her lesser in this interaction. But it’s too late now. Margery straightens and moves away. She leaves the coffeehouse entirely; I suppose it is the only action open to her.
‘Margery Marston was ever a gossiping shrew.’ Leonora spits the words. I wonder at the intensity of her judgement; is it likely those flaws of which she accuses someone else are her own in some measure?
‘You can hardly blame her curiosity when you’ve been absent so long, Mrs Morwood. You’ve observed yourself how happy people are to see you.’
‘Better if I didn’t wear my years so heavily,’ she complains. ‘Better if I looked no older than when I last set foot here. Better still younger than that.’
I point to the basket beside our table. ‘I cannot reverse time, merely soften it. I hope to help with that as well, but you must have reasonable expectations.’
‘Whatever you can do, Asher Todd, will please me.’ She smiles and there’s truth in that, although how much is difficult to discern. I wonder what will happen when I am, inevitably, unable to fulfil her wishes.
‘I shall do my best.’
‘Excellent. Now, finish up. I tire of eating under such scrutiny.’
Ah. So even Leonora Morwood’s taste for attention might wane given time.