Louise’s hand hurt. That was the sensation that pulled her back to consciousness. It rested on the arm of a chair. Small white fragments, like the teeth of a tiny creature, were embedded in the knuckles. She watched with strange detachment as blood oozed from her skin.
Through her left eye, the image was clear. But in the right it doubled, quadrupled, splintered into a thousand pieces. It took her a moment to realise it was her spectacles: the right lens had cracked.
The chair she sat on was made of horsehair. It moulded to her body, cradled her. She wondered if she should try to stand, but the desire evaporated before it was fully formed. She felt sewn in. Carefully contained. One false movement would ruin the balance.
Pompey mumbled at her side. He was staring opposite, at the empty hearth and the china Creeda had displayed upon it. Reaching up to her face, Louise removed her broken spectacles. Without them, she could not discern the individual shapes, only smudges of blue. Cool, elegant blue. It doused the red that threatened to spread across her mind.
‘Did everything ee asked, Creeda.’ It was Gerren, his voice distant, like everything else.
There was a gentle scratch inside her head. Gerren . . . he should not be there. Had she not told Creeda to send him to town? She tried to remember, but could not. Memories slipped through her hands like sand. It did not matter. Nothing mattered, now.
‘Smashed the dam,’ he went on. ‘When the tide come in, happen it’ll look like an accident.’
‘It’s only the doctor they’ll mind.’
‘Rock might’ve hit un,’ he suggested. ‘Swept by a wave and . . . bam!’
She flinched.
‘They shouldn’t ask too many questions,’ Creeda assured him. ‘It’s no wonder to have a group of consumptives die. It’s only the doctor’s head we’ll need to explain, and he was living in a cave full of convicts. If the coroner won’t believe an accident . . . Well, it won’t take much to persuade him one of them criminals hit our master.’
Once, Louise would have told her that the coroners were not medically trained. That even if they suspected murder, it would take a rich and interested party to pay before they sought prosecution. But her worldly knowledge no longer seemed important. It felt like a story she had read long ago.
‘Loss of blood, were it?’ Gerren asked softly.
‘Think so. Who can know? It wasn’t human, Gerren. At the end there . . . that was a fairy.’
The idea did not seem so very unlikely to Louise now. There was certainly something, peopling the silence; she could feel it, as surely as she had felt death prowling around the men.
‘Their bodies.’ She sounded listless, unlike herself. ‘What will you do with the bodies?’
A hand stroked her arm. ‘Hush, now.’
‘The money it would cost to bury them all . . .’
‘There’s more than one way to dispose of bones, miss. I know just what to do.’
Of course she did. Creeda knew. She knew all the things Louise did not.
‘He is dead, then. My . . .’ She trailed off. She had not noticed before that this room resembled the cave, when the light was shut out. Dark brown walls pressing close. The gloom and the chill. She had loathed that cave, but now it made her feel better. It reminded her of being with Harry.
‘Miss, it wasn’t your father,’ Creeda insisted. An edge of panic crept into her voice. ‘Don’t you see? They got the men and then they came after you. They wanted you and me.’
Louise exhaled. Even that was an effort. She wanted to see them, to see the fairies dancing. The pretty, dainty fairies she had read of as a child. Not cruel and savage like that man on the beach.
‘Has my father been taken by the fairies, Creeda?’
‘Yes, miss. I’m afraid he has.’
Her ribs seemed to scrape against her heart. ‘And I’ll never see him again.’
‘Well . . .’ Creeda took a breath. ‘I don’t know about that. Maybe you will. I came back, didn’t I? One of them brought me back.’
Back from under the ground. Could it happen? She did not see why not. Everything else Creeda had said had come to pass.
‘You could . . . stay here,’ Creeda went on, tremulous. ‘In this house, close to the cave. Just in case. But you’d need me here. To protect you from them.’
She could not imagine parting with the girl now. Could not imagine a future at all. Vague images of chains and straw flickered in her mind. That was right. Creeda had been threatened with incarceration in the madhouse.
She thought of medicine and it was like mourning for a lost love. A sweetheart whose true colours gave only disillusionment. Mama, Kitty, Francis, Harry, Papa . . . physic had not saved a single one of them. It had left her with nothing, not even faith in the science that had once been her passion.
‘Will your father not come to fetch you away from here?’ she asked wearily.
‘Not if you write,’ Creeda pleaded. ‘Not if you tell him you’re a nurse, and you’ll care for me now the doctor’s gone. He’s got plenty of money, he’ll keep paying for me . . .’
Louise sighed. ‘I will write whatever you wish. Sign whatever you want me to.’
‘We’ll look after each other, miss. We’ll wait for them to be returned. What do you say?’
She could believe that Harry was gone forever, his life a pointless waste; that her beloved father, driven mad with grief and illness, had committed the gravest of sins; and that she had murdered both. There was no heaven, no forgiveness, for any of them.
Or there was Creeda’s way. She could believe they were coming back. Stare deep into the china and picture two men blinking, stumbling into the light and the welcome spray of the waves.
‘I will wait,’ she said. ‘I will wait as long as it takes.’