Ernest awoke at the first glimmer of dawn, when the gulls began to screech. He did not object. Sleep, when it came, was no relief. His wife flitted through his dreams. Not as she had been in life but radiant, transformed into an angel. A mirage he could not touch.
That image remained in his mind as he returned to the house and spoke with his patient before she began her daily tasks. He realised that his own grief was giving him a unique insight into Creeda’s troubled world. He could comprehend, when others could not, how the demands of sensibility might have caused her to weave elaborate stories for comfort.
Such as her tale of ‘changelings’.
‘Sometimes they swap,’ she had told him, as matter of fact as if she were asserting the time of day. ‘See, they get the sickly fairies, ones that are of no use, and they put a charm on them.’
‘What kind of charm?’
‘One to make them look like us. So you could be gone, taken away underground, but there’d be a fairy in your place, wearing your own face. No one would know,’ she added, her voice tight and afraid. ‘No one would even know to come and find you.’
Swapping the sick for the healthy. An ingenious concept. He almost wished he could do the same.
‘And you believe that these sickly pixies—’
‘Fairies, sir.’
‘Pardon me, fairies. Do they die?’
She shrugged. ‘I expect they would. They can’t stomach our human food.’
He thought of his men on the beach, struggling to consume the milk and broth he had brought them. ‘But in your mind, the person concerned is not actually deceased? Although their double expires, they remain . . . in fairyland?’
She nodded. ‘Under the ground. Where I was.’
‘There is no method, I suppose,’ he had asked almost jokingly, ‘of switching back?’
‘Water,’ she replied at once. ‘You banish the fairy with water or fire.’
‘You kill them,’ he said flatly.
‘Yes, sir.’
An altogether more pleasant exchange took place at the end of the interview. He left her with her daily ounce of distilled vinegar, and in return she handed him a small wooden casket. ‘Your order, sir.’
He opened the lid. Inside were two small vases. Cobalt blue flowers surrounded the rims, but the curved bodies were a fretwork of strange vines, intricately twined.
Mopsy would have adored them.
And she would have been pleased too, he thought as he climbed the stairs, that he had procured another present for Louise. Towards the end, she had always been pestering him to leave her and tend to the children instead.
He stopped outside Louise’s bedroom and was reaching for the door handle when it struck him that perhaps he should knock. She was a young lady now, after all . . . But he could not quite bring himself to swallow that, so he entered the room boldly as usual.
The ash tree outside the window was bursting into leaf. Morning light filtered through the branches and gave everything a greenish underwater tint. Louise sat at her dressing table, wedging some extra hairpins through her cap.
She did not pause in her toilette or show the least surprise at seeing him.
‘Sorry, Papa, I fear I am running late. I meant to be at the caves an hour ago. Creeda did not wind my clock.’
‘It is of no matter. I wanted to speak with you.’
‘And I with you.’
Her dressing table was very sparse, he noticed. None of the lotions and powders Kitty would have thought necessary. And then there was the room in general. It was neat as a pin. He thought with shame of the chaos that reigned inside his own chamber. How devilishly tricky it was without Mopsy to keep things in order.
Louise reached for her spectacles. ‘What have you there in your hand?’
‘A gift.’ He smiled and laid the box down on the dressing table. ‘It occurred to me that my last was perhaps not fitted to our current circumstances. We are hardly likely to receive guests for tea! I hope you will like this better.’
She opened the casket and withdrew one of the vases.
Ernest had thought the vases were identical to the toile-de-Jouy in which he had decorated the rooms, but now he saw the paint was a darker blue, the colour the sea turned when you were beyond the shallows and venturing out of your depth.
‘How exquisite.’ He was disappointed to hear the detachment in her voice. Her smile did not reach her eyes. ‘I can pick the wildflowers that grow on the cliff and display them.’
‘Precisely.’
Louise looked at the base of the vase and saw the Nancarrow factory stamp. ‘Another from Creeda’s family?’
‘Yes. I asked Mr Nancarrow to send a pair that your maid had decorated herself.’
She let out a slow sigh. Despite the cap she wore, he could see the worry bunching in her forehead.
‘You . . . do not care for them?’
‘Oh, Papa!’ she cried. ‘It is only . . . Forgive me, Papa, it is not the present that is at fault. It is . . . Creeda.’
‘I see.’
‘I do not mean,’ she explained haltingly, setting the vase down, ‘to question your judgement. Creeda is a very diligent worker. I can see how on first application, she might appear . . . However, I am sorry to tell you that I have observed the girl closely and reached the conclusion that she is not suitable to work inside our home.’
So many thoughts were blazing through his mind: the caves, the smoke, the phthisis . . . He needed time to consider his words. But there Louise was, blinking up at him, expectant.
‘Would you care to explain your reasoning, my dear?’
Louise wet her lips. ‘I did not wish to tell you. It seems unkind, akin to gossip, and yet . . . Well, I shall give you some examples. First, she collects animal bones from the clifftop and boils them clean. Not for soup. She just boils them, in our kitchen . . . And then, she is always trying to give me handfuls of ash. She says it will protect me from . . . something or other.’
‘That is certainly peculiar, but—’
‘You have not heard the worst of it. Last night, I happened to mention her heterochromia. I cannot even recall what I said, it was a careless remark about her eyes. But she told me that she was not born that way. That, if you can credit it, her aunt found her on the factory steps one day and her eye had turned from brown to blue.’
He tried to chuckle. ‘Impossible, of course, but Creeda is not to know that. Perhaps it is merely an anecdote her family have passed on.’
‘I would agree with you, except for what she said next. Papa, she . . .’ Louise dropped into a whisper. ‘She thinks she uses her blue eye to see into fairyland. I am afraid that she is quite mad.’
Bizarrely, he felt a spurt of irritation with his daughter. It passed; he held up his hands in surrender and sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘I know it, Louise. Her mind is not sound. That is why she is under my care.’
‘Papa!’ Just one word, but it made him wince. The reproach – no, worse than that. The disappointment in it. ‘She is a patient of yours? You did not tell me!’
‘I told you she came from the factory to be your maid, which is true. I exchanged correspondence with the Nancarrow family. They heard of my imminent arrival from their workers at the nearby clay setts. You see, Creeda’s behaviour had been causing difficulty at the porcelain manufactory. Her family wished for her to be watched by a professional. Away from wagging tongues.’
Louise swivelled round on the stool. ‘But Papa, you are no mad doctor.’
‘No,’ he admitted. ‘That is exactly the point. Should you like Creeda to have her head shaved and rubbed with vinegar? To see her chained and doused with ice water?’
Her mouth fell open. ‘Truly, she . . . she is a young girl, to suffer from delusions,’ she stammered. ‘What can she be – fifteen, sixteen?’
‘Kitty’s age.’
Louise was silenced.
Ernest noticed his hands were shaking. He tried to take a breath, but his throat was painfully tight. ‘Louise, I want you to imagine for a moment that you are a woman, not advanced with the experience of a great many years, responsible for the well-being of a small child. A child, shall we say, of about five. This poor little creature has endured a travail, the likes of which would fell grown men. Naturally, the child seeks to find meaning for her suffering; she wishes to know what has caused it and yet . . . How do you explain such depravity? The meaningless cruelty of the world, when she is obliged to go on living in it? How are you to tell her when you scarcely know yourself . . .’ He stopped, aware he had grown excessively animated. Louise was staring. He gulped another breath. ‘Now, if you were this woman, would you relate the cold, immovable facts as you understand them to the child? Or would you not rather couch them in terms she is more likely to comprehend? A fairy tale with wicked imps, for example. Something altogether more . . . palatable.’
‘I do not understand you, Papa.’
His darling girl. He wanted to shield her from this. ‘My dear, I am speaking of Creeda’s aunt. I am afraid she was put in this very position when Creeda was abducted in her youth. The child went missing for an entire year.’
‘Good God,’ she said with quiet feeling. ‘Abducted by whom?’
The twisted blackguards who paid for such things. Many had come to his door with their chancres of venereal disease, exclaiming that even lying with a child had not cured them. It had taken all his restraint not to run them through with his lancet. They might pollute those poor children, but he was damned if they were going to sully the innocence of his own daughter.
‘That remains unclear. But one of the brutes had an attack of conscience and fetched her back home.’
When Creeda spoke of her rescuer, she described snowy white skin and a red mouth like a wound. Rather like a consumptive. Or a whore, powdered and rouged.
He felt a reluctant admiration for this brave prostitute. In all likelihood, her madam would have beaten her to death for saving the child.
Louise had turned very pale. ‘Merciful heavens.’
‘Creeda did not know her mother. She looked to her aunt to explain her experience and I am afraid that . . . It was ill advised, but understandable in the circumstances. The aunt told Creeda that she had been taken away by the fairies.’
‘And the poor girl still believes it,’ Louise breathed.
‘Yes. That is the reason for her somewhat – indecorous – behaviour. The Nancarrows pay me well to watch her, but that is of no consequence if she causes you distress.’ He twisted his fingers together. The mourning ring glinted. Hair trapped beneath glass. ‘Do you want me to send her away, my dear?’
‘No.’ Louise rose sadly to her feet. ‘Good gracious, no. She is an unfortunate soul. We must help her, Papa.’
His kind girl. He only hoped his ability was equal to her compassion.