The next day passes in a blur. I pay little attention to what’s said to me, to what I do or say. I smile and nod while my mind picks at the knots I must undo to untether myself from Morwood. Before I go to bed that night, I rationalise my possessions. What can I possibly do without, what must I take with me. In the end it’s very little. Just what I can fit in the carpet bag and the satchel. The trunk must remain, and there’s nothing in it that I can’t shed like a spare skin. I’ll dress in my trousers and boots, coat and one of the jumpers I’ve stolen from Eli. After midnight, I’ll take Luther’s black stallion from the stables and disappear into the blackness like Luned. I might even take the same path as her, to St Sinwin’s and out to sea. Or Breakwater if I feel brave, though I’ve heard it’s anarchy there since the death of the Queen of Thieves.
* * *
‘Did you make Luned go away like you made Mama go away?’
I’m not prepared for Sarai’s question as we file into the classroom the next morning, although perhaps, all things considered, I should be. She was so quiet at breakfast, neither Luther nor Leonora in attendance. I almost admire her concerted dislike of me. I sigh and lie. ‘No, Sarai. I didn’t make either of them go away.’
I pick through the pieces of chalk in the box on the little desk, searching for I don’t know what. None of the colours make sense to me. ‘Your mother will return soon.’
‘What about Luned?’ she pursues. Luned, I think, thought not one moment about leaving you behind.
‘Sarai,’ says Albertine. ‘Stop being so rude to Miss Asher.’
‘You’re being mean, Sarai,’ says Connell.
They’re both so wrong and I do love them for it. Such kind children in spite of everything: a cruel father, a distant grandmother. But they have a mother who loves them, a mother who only left them because I promised I would look after them. And I have done to the best of my ability.
‘It’s alright,’ I say. ‘Sarai is missing her mother, and her friend. I understand.’
I finally choose a blueish-white stick and write mathematics questions on the board. I tell them to first of all write out the times tables from 1 to 10 in their books, then answer the questions when they are done.
I take Sarai a fresh notebook and some new watercolours and lean down to put them in front of her. She whispers, ‘You said you would go.’
I nod, whisper back, ‘And so I shall, very soon.’
I promised Jessamine I would watch over them. Watch over them in the mess I have created, all at my mother’s behest. But as long as I’m here, the danger to Albertine remains. When I am gone—
The door opens, and Burdon pops his head in. ‘Miss Todd, Mrs Morwood would like a word. She is in her rooms. Now.’
I nod, suppress a sigh, and instruct Albertine and Connell to keep on with their work, tell Sarai not to make a mess, and pick my way up to Leonora’s suite. I knock, hear her curt permission, and go in. She’s standing by the window, rather like the first time I saw her, the corona of bright morning light making of her a silhouette. Except this time, when she steps closer to me, I can see she’s wearing a winter-weight riding habit I’ve not seen before. She’s been out; she’s shaking.
‘Mrs Morwood, are you well? Have you been in the cold? Have you caught a chill?’
‘I have been into the Tarn, Asher Todd, and seen Zaria Taverell. Who has seen neither hide nor hair of you in days and days, which is curious as you told me you had delivered my instructions to her some while ago.’
Of all the times for her to decide to undertake her own errands. What to say, what to do?
‘Mrs Morwood—’
‘It’s my son, isn’t it?’
‘Mrs Morwood—’
‘He’s turned your head. Turned your heart against me. What has he promised?’ The colour in her cheeks is very high, but her lips are pale and bloodless. Her voice is rising. ‘What have you agreed to, your perfidious whore?’
‘Nothing has been agreed upon—’
‘Oh, so you have discussed the matter!?’
‘No!’
‘And this ritual you promised me, this renewal – lies, no doubt. Some little tricks to string me along like a fool, like I’m as stupid as that doctor-professor! Promising me Albertine’s body, my time over again!’ Yelling so I wonder who else might hear everything she says.
‘No, Mrs Morwood—’ No, you demanding it.
In a few long strides she’s in front of me and her hand whips up to slap my cheek, once, twice. Then a barrage of blows that make my brain rattle and my face burn as much with humiliation as with injury. And she’s shouting. Shouting how she never should have trusted me, that I’m a charlatan and a thief, an evil influence, that I never intended to help her and she will see me hanged for the murder of Archie O’Sullivan, or better still burned for witchcraft. How she will make me pay.
She’s stronger than I’d have thought, and her anger gives extra force to the hits. I raise my hands to try and protect myself but she’s now pushing, and I fall over a footstool. Then she starts kicking in earnest, my legs, stomach, working her way up to my ribs and aiming at my head. The last time I was attacked like this I was thirteen and it was Heloise delivering the beating for some offence or other. I cringe and curl into a ball for cover.
Then the kicks are suddenly gone. I unfurl slowly in case she’s trying to lull me into a false sense of security, peek between my arms, and see a man’s shoes. And several inches above the floor, a woman’s riding boots, shiny and black, doing an unhappy little jig, a sort of circular motion that loses its force, gets slower and slower, the rotations sloppier and sloppier.
I look up and see my mother-uncle’s face, red with rage and very like Leonora’s was only moments ago. Her large man’s hands are around her mother’s throat, throttling like she’s a chicken for Sunday lunch. Soon, Leonora’s feet swing gently from side to side.
‘Mother! Mother! Mother!’ I say and realise that I’m not the only one saying it.
Heloise-Luther’s lips keep moving, and her hands keep squeezing.
I scramble to my feet, pull at her arms, but they’re stiff and strong and steel, her grip on Leonora inexorable. The old woman’s head is tilted to the side, eyes and tongue bulging, lips blue, cyanotic, elegant hairstyle falling loose of its pins and tumbling down her shoulders.
She dies without ever knowing who I am. I’m uncertain whether that’s a cause for sadness or relief.
‘Mother. Mother, you must let her go.’ I pry at her trap of fingers. ‘Mother, please. Mother, she’s gone. Leonora is gone.’
And all of a sudden, Heloise releases the old woman, who drops like a stone and hits the carpeted floor with that strange heft of the dead, as if their weight has suddenly increased with the loss of their soul. My mother stumbles back, falls into a chair, staring at her own mother’s body. I kneel and touch Leonora’s throat. The skin’s still warm, but there’s no pulse, and she’s staring at me, as if to remind me even in her death what a liar I am. As if she knows, now, what I’ve done.
‘Oh, Mother,’ I say. ‘What have you done?’
‘She was hurting you,’ she says in a hoarse voice. I cannot tell if my salvation came from genuine care or a sense of ownership – that she was the only one who might treat me like a possession. Perhaps I was simply something her mother was interfering with, and all these years of resentment were simply a powder keg waiting for a spark.
‘Oh, Mother.’ I sit back on the floor, holding my head in my hands.
‘The quarry. Like that girl. We’ll drop her in the water, weigh the body down.’ She doesn’t even bother to remember the name.
‘No, Mother. No. Leonora cannot disappear. She will be missed, there will be a search. She isn’t a person of no consequence; you cannot murder her so easily.’
Heloise-Luther stares at me, then nods. She rises and I feel a wave of dread. Stooping, she picks up her mother as if she is nothing more than a sack and carries her from the room. I scramble to my feet, muttering Mother, Mother, Mother like a desperate prayer, but she doesn’t answer. I make it into the corridor, limp along to the stairwell just in time to see my mother heft her mother over the banister. I scream – as if this is the worst thing I’ve seen!
The sound of Leonora hitting the marble floor in the foyer below is sickeningly loud even two storeys up. I run over to join Heloise-Luther at the railing.
‘She appeared to grow faint, she lost her balance as we watched. We were too far away to help. There was nothing we could do,’ Mother says coldly, quickly.
I stare at her. How deep a hole will she dig for me? How long will I allow her to do so? How long will I let her wield the shovel?
From below come shouts and shrieks: Burdon and one or more of the Binions. Luther and I rush down the stairs. He kneels by his mother’s body, gathers her up and howls. I stammer out the tale he’s concocted; there are tears on my cheeks and they are genuine.
* * *
Later, much later:
Leonora is laid out on her counterpane, the terrible head wounds cleaned and bandaged so her skull stays in place (and I have dressed her in a high-necked dress to cover her son’s fingermarks).
The children are put to bed with gentle explanations and sleeping draughts.
Eli sent into the Tarn to order a coffin swiftly made.
A letter written by Heloise-Luther to Zaria Taverell to advise that his mother’s last executed will is to stand.
Heloise-Luther and I sit by Leonora’s bedside, one to the left, one to the right. This death-watch being done by her closest family though she did not truly know it. Part of me wonders if, when they bury her, they might discover my father’s remains. The winter chill will have slowed his decay; surely the stink will be no more than one would expect in a closed tomb.
‘Who will conduct the funeral?’ I ask, as much to hear a voice as out of curiosity.
My mother shrugs. ‘I’ll say the words. We can do something proper when a new one is sent.’
‘I don’t know if she’d decided to report his disappearance to the authorities in Lodellan or if she was waiting to see if he came back.’ I clear my throat. ‘You should do that.’
‘You can do that for me, my Asher. You’re so good at arranging things.’ She smiles at me from across the bed. ‘I’ll need your help in running things here.’
I close my eyes, drop my head backwards to stretch my neck, roll my shoulders, pray to sleep forever. ‘Mother—’
‘I will need you, Asher, at my right hand. And I will most certainly need you when I tire of this body and wish to migrate to Albertine’s. What a cunning old bitch my mother was.’
Leonora and her shouting, her very loud voice. My mother and her tendency to listen at doors, to harvest secrets that she might use. A sliver of ice slips into my heart and I freeze. Cold, cold, so cold.
She continues, ‘Should have thought of it myself. I mean, I’ve had fun in this body – and will have more besides – but what an ingenious idea. A while longer of this, then I can be a girl again. Imagine, all my chances anew, to be a rich heiress, owner of this place, a husband of my choosing, children that I wanted!’
And, oh how that hurts. Even after everything that’s happened, that still rips and tears and stabs at the heart of me. It will forever, I suppose; that mother-wound will always be raw.
‘No, Mother. No more. I’ll not do this again. You have what I promised you: another opportunity. Your brother’s life in return for everything he stole from you. Let that be enough.’
She shakes her head. ‘No. Not enough. Not ever. But you will obey me or I will shake the boy and the littlest girl. I know you’re fond of them. You’re soft and you won’t want to hold their still little bodies, not when you can save them so easily. You will do as you’re bid, Asher, my Asher, you will stay with your mother and help me. And so, you will unpack that bag you’ve hidden in your room because you are not going anywhere.’