Chapter 34

Harry was the last to be treated with her rue posset. He had not emerged from his hut the entire morning.

Louise knocked upon the wooden door, nervous about what she might find inside. But Harry opened it straight away, upright and dressed. His eyes gleamed in the low light. Even now they were better acquainted, she could not be certain of the exact colour of his irises. They were changeable, like the ocean: mutable depths of green, blue or grey.

‘Louise.’

‘Miss Pinecroft,’ she corrected, less firmly than usual.

‘Please, come in.’

Why did it feel different to be alone with him? She nursed the other men without a thought, only turning away when Papa was obliged to administer the clysters. But as she negotiated the step inside the hut, she felt self-conscious. Perhaps it was the similarity in their ages.

‘You need to drink this,’ she said, proffering the jug. ‘I have sweetened it with honey, so there is no need to pull that face.’

‘What’s it for, Louise?’

She gritted her teeth. ‘That mark I saw on your hand. It is the worm. We need to purge you of it.’

He held out both palms to her and turned them over. ‘Don’t trouble yourself. See? I don’t have it any more.’

‘Not on that hand, but what about the rest of your body?’

He smirked. ‘Do you want to check?’

‘Why must you be so—’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he laughed, sitting down upon his cane chair. ‘There’s no sport in this place. Let me joke and look at a pretty girl for a minute, would you?’

‘I have not the time,’ she replied shortly.

His smile faded, and his face became solemn once more. ‘You can sense him, can’t you?’

‘Whom?’

‘Death.’

Louise swallowed. She did recognise this strange, charged atmosphere: she had felt it while watching Kitty sleep. A presence, where none was to be seen.

But that was folly. They were all starting to sound like Creeda.

‘I’ve never been white-livered,’ Harry went on. ‘Death don’t scare me much. Things look brighter. Livelier. They do, when you know you’re going to lose them all.’ He shrugged. ‘But I’m stuck here in this hole. Time’s running out and the only beauty I get to look at is the ocean . . . and you.’

She glanced away, touched in spite of herself. ‘This cave is better than a prison, Harry. You should count yourself lucky.’

‘I do,’ he said softly.

His wooden cup lay in the corner on the floor. She bent and scooped it up, filling it with posset from the jug.

‘Here.’

Harry grimaced but took the drink, their fingers touching briefly.

‘How are you so brave?’ he asked suddenly.

She snatched her hand away. ‘What?’

‘For a maid. You . . .’ For the first time, he appeared unsure of himself. He lowered his eyes to the posset. ‘Down here, day after day. Don’t you fear you might . . . catch it?’

‘I am not sure that I can catch consumption, Harry,’ she sighed. ‘I was the only one of my siblings who did not sicken. Perhaps I have a resilience to it. And there are even physicians who say that consumption is not infectious at all, but a tendency we are born with.’

He shook his head. ‘Hell of a risk to take.’

‘Well, I am not “white-livered” either.’

Harry grinned. ‘No, you an’t.’

Perhaps something of her disquiet showed on her face, for Harry became intensely interested in his drink. She watched him to make sure he swallowed it all.

His forehead was still marked with bruises, and his nose crooked at an angle, but for all that he was peculiarly attractive, marked with the beauty of a dying thing. Sharp cheekbones, enhanced by the wasting. Wine-red lips and burning eyes.

His throat bobbed as he downed the final drops of the medicine.

‘Not so bad for the rest of them, is it?’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘They’ve lived. Especially Seth. I would have liked to see battle. Had a wife. Maybe a brat to bounce too.’

‘There was little chance of you achieving any of those things in gaol,’ she reminded him.

‘Ah, but I wouldn’t have been in there forever. A brand and six years: that was my sentence.’

‘You might not be here forever, Harry.’ She took the cup gently from his hand. ‘I will admit the treatments have not progressed as we planned, but you are looking stronger than the other patients. If I had to place a wager on a man likely to survive . . . it would be you.’

He did not smile. Did not even look at her. ‘That’s kind of you, Miss Pinecroft. But I know where I’m headed.’

‘None of us can presume to know—’

‘You think it’s deep underground here,’ he said bitterly. ‘But it an’t. There’s another space, even darker, six feet under the soil. Who’s going to keep me safe from the worms then?’

Fire and water. Ernest possessed them both now. Flames capering, malicious and gleeful in the stone circle; a tripod above them, supporting the bowl of water and rosemary. Fire and water to rid yourself of fairies, of worms.

They were banishing nothing. Only bringing memories back.

Rosemary had been the scent of their wedding day. Her clothes smelt of it, her hair. She carried sprigs in her bouquet. ‘Rosemary to bind us,’ she had said.

And they were bound, still.

The water started to bubble, tinkling against the bowl like a fall of rain.

He tore leaves of rosemary between his fingers and threw more in. Thought of the rosemary and the lavender he had used to conserve the three bodies until their burial. He had seen them laid in that churchyard himself, but he knew his family were not truly there. That was mere bones and flesh.

They had been taken from him and yet . . . He felt them. Always. They were not gone, so where were they? He considered the ring on his finger, the remnants of them trapped behind glass. Just as he was. Seeing them, hearing them everywhere, never able to reach . . .

It seemed his blue devils had finally won.

One by one, he took up the pamphlets and treatises on the ground and fed them to the flames. Stray words stood out. Phthisis . . . Balsamic . . . corrects acrid Ichor . . . stuffed Bronchia . . . dissipates crude Tubercles . . . lungs strengthened with cold . . .

Everything he thought he had known. How quickly it curled and blackened.

Ash left to the wind.

His cheeks burned from the heat. The scent of rosemary soared, spiralling towards the back of the cave.

Kneeling down, he took the last few scraps of paper, scrunched them into a ball and threw it into the heart of the flame. It uncurled, crackled.

There was just one item left. A slim volume, bound in cloth. Ernest picked it up and brushed off the cover.

Folklore.

He had forgotten this. He must have gathered it in the great bundle from his desk.

Another failure. Creeda was no better. She remained as convinced of the existence of fairies as ever. He envied her that certainty.

Hesitantly, he held the book towards the flames. Pulled it back.

He remembered that day in Falmouth. Yearned to be again the man who searched its stalls and purchased this book. A man focused on the future, envisioning a new horizon where consumption was no more.

Much as he tried, he could not swallow the idea that it was truly over. How could it be that he had wanted it so much, worked so hard, and still not found the cure?

He had believed greatness was within him. Still believed. It was his destiny to go where others would not. If only he could turn the key, unlock the answers . . .

What was it Creeda had said? A new way of seeing.

Ernest raised his eyes, searching.

He could see nothing through the smoke.