‘An’t thee ever seen a bible-ball?’ Merryn’s bemused smile is tinged with pity. ‘I thought folk had every manner of thing in London.’
We are sitting at the oaken table in the servants’ hall, awaiting our dinner. Aromas of butter and warm fish emanate from the kitchen where the cook, Mrs Bawden, carves up her famous Stargazey Pie – a dish I have yet to sample. The family ate mutton. I have already spent half an hour pulping meat and forking it into Miss Pinecroft’s mouth. What with that and the sacrilege before me, little of my appetite remains.
‘Of course we had Bibles in London, Merryn, and Salisbury too. But we would never dream of desecrating them in this wicked manner.’
Mrs Quinn sits at the head of the table, as befits her rank. Rather than crying out aghast at the bundle of mangled Scripture I have produced, she appears embarrassed. Her eyes focus on a deep whorl in the wood of the table.
‘We lived near Bodmin Moor when I was young,’ Lowena tells me. To my eyes she is still extremely youthful, I cannot imagine what age she is referring to. I had thought, with her tawny skin and slight accent, that she might be one of the Spaniards fleeing from the Peninsular War, but clearly I was wrong. ‘Everyone in Bodmin used to take a bible-ball with them on a long walk, especially after dark. They didn’t mean any harm by it. They trusted its holiness to protect them.’
That is what Rosewyn said: for protection. I wish a few torn pages could save me from my fears.
‘To protect them from what, Lowena?’
‘There are strange things on the moors. Noises and mists, lights.’
‘Lights?’ I sit forward with interest.
‘They seem to . . .’ She wiggles her fingers above the table ‘. . . float. Will-o’-the-wisp. If you follow them, you end up in a bog. People we knew drowned that way, Miss Why. Drowned in mud.’
Her words conjure the sensation of soil on my tongue. Dinner seems a less and less appealing prospect.
‘How dreadful. But you do not truly believe that fairies led them astray? It was just a terrible accident, surely.’
Lowena shrugs. ‘No, not really. Could be anything. A trick of the eye. But Creeda and Miss Rosewyn, they’d believe it. They’d believe all sorts.’ Her dark glance drifts to Merryn and sparks with amusement. ‘We once thought we’d invent a fairy of our own and see if we could make them fear it . . .’
She tries to tell me more, but the rest of her sentence dissolves under giggles. Merryn’s shoulders shake. The memory is clearly a comical one, and I find myself smiling with them. Mrs Quinn rattles out a quick, ‘Girls, remember yourselves!’
Then Gerren, the man who drove me from Falmouth, lumbers into the hall and the laughter stops.
He takes a seat at the other side of the table in silence. His jacket carries a fug of hay and pipe smoke. By daylight, he looks different. His wrinkles are like cracks in leather. I think it is exposure to the weather that has aged him, rather than long years. No one could suppose him a young man, but I would not place him far above fifty. He is certainly younger than my mistress.
Mrs Quinn pours him a drink. ‘Get you warm, Gerren. It’s a chilly day’s work out there. A body’ll catch their death.’
His thick lips twist, as if only women or delicate dandies would consider it cold today. ‘Nay. Been too hard at un for that. But me nose smells snow. Won’t be long afore I’m diggin’ me way out to that horse.’
‘True enough. I made Mrs Bawden salt some more pork so we’ve provisions laid by. Still, if it don’t start by Monday, we’d better do a last run to town. Miss Why, you’d be welcome to join us and gather any bits you need.’
A spasm in my chest.
The plan does not commend itself to reason: I should remain concealed. And yet . . .
My mouth waters at the image of a dark green bottle filled with elation.
Just one bottle to see me through the blizzards. I shall be able to manage if I can procure just one bottle of gin from town.
Or perhaps two. For certainty.
‘Thank you, Mrs Quinn. That is a sound idea. I may well need to call in at the apothecary.’
Mrs Bawden shoulders her way through the door and plonks a dish in the middle of the table. I recoil.
This is surely not dinner. It is an aquatic graveyard.
Dead pilchards poke their heads out from holes in the piecrust. They grimace, as if they have been baked alive. Into each pained mouth Mrs Bawden has threaded a sprig of parsley.
Seeing my hesitation, Gerren supposes I cannot reach the pie. He spoons a wedge onto my plate with a wet slap.
Mrs Quinn forks a whole fish head into her mouth. The sound of her mastication makes my stomach turn. ‘Oh, that’s another thing, Miss Why,’ she says as she swallows. ‘I didn’t tell you about tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow . . .’
‘Sunday,’ she prompts.
‘Of course it is.’
‘We take Miss Rosewyn to church in the morning, but poor Miss Pinecroft isn’t strong enough.’
More likely she refuses to leave her china collection. Her body was strong enough last night when it resisted my attempts to move her.
‘I don’t want to deprive you, Miss Why,’ she continues, ‘but I’d take it kindly if you stayed with her. I don’t like to leave her unwatched.’
‘Naturally.’ I cut up my pie. It is better this way. I have no wish for my face to become familiar to the locals. We shall be content together: she with her collection, me with my opioid. ‘I am quite willing to make sacrifices for the good of my mistress.’
Paper crinkles as the bible-ball slowly begins to unfold in front of me.
‘ ’Tisn’t a great loss, for our good curate, Mr Trengrouse, is sure to come and administer the sacrament to the mistress. Sometimes he’ll pray with her or read a psalm. You see, we’re not so heathen as you think.’
I cannot tell if this is playful or tart.
‘No, indeed. I never meant to imply otherwise.’ I still have not taken a bite of dinner. A pilchard leers on my plate, parsley dribbling from its lifeless lips.
I am the first to ask Mrs Quinn to be excused. The need for my hip flask is knocking, knocking again. She grants my request happily, seeing only loyalty to my mistress.
But as I rise to my feet, Gerren grabs my wrist.
I am so shocked that I cannot speak. His weathered hand feels as rough as a shackle.
‘Forgetting aught, Miss Why?’
For the first time, I notice a band of dirty metal on his ring finger – is this man then a husband? At any other time it would be comical to imagine him acting the lover, but now I can only shrink away with distaste from that hardened, calloused skin.
‘I beg your pardon?’
Mrs Quinn averts her eyes. The maids are absolutely silent.
Unhurriedly, he leans across the table and picks up the bible-ball with his free hand. ‘Keep it. Keep ee safe.’
He was not this solicitous for my welfare on the journey here. I would have much preferred his help with my trunk than this pagan offering.
Why does Mrs Quinn not upbraid him?
‘Nonsense,’ I declare.
Gerren narrows his eyes. He is taking the measure of me, but I cannot see his conclusions. He proffers the paper again.
‘It’s maids they want. Healthy-like. No blemishes. I’m thinkin’ they’ll be after ee.’
‘Now, now, Gerren . . .’ Mrs Quinn begins, but she does not have the courage to finish.
I am unsure what amuses me most: that Gerren deems me young enough to be referred to as a ‘maid’, as the Cornish call their girls, or that he thinks I am without blemish. Then I catch sight of Merryn’s downcast eyes, the movement of her throat as she swallows, and all the laughter drains out of me. No one would call her unblemished. She will have endured teasing and worse, living with a port-wine stain like that. I wonder how Gerren can be so unfeeling.
I snatch the bible-ball from him and pull my wrist free. ‘Sir, I have lived to the age of two-and-thirty without meeting the requirements of a human bride,’ I retort. ‘I have no reason to fear a supernatural suitor.’
Turning my back on him, I stalk from the room, flinging the paper into the fire as I go.