The Tallow-Wife

Cordelia does not think about the things she has lost.

She does not think on the children, or her husband, or the fine house in Lodellan. She does not think on the jewellery, or the dresses, or the shoes. She does not think on her former status, on the Sunday afternoon teas, the Saturday morning bruncheons, or the Friday night balls. She does not think of her sister, or her friends, or the shades of her dead parents who surely grow even paler with shame. Nor of all the handkerchiefs with knots tied in them to ensure good luck, every one of which failed dismally to do its allotted task.

No, Cordelia thinks only of the lengths she must cut with the dull knife. Of the quantities she must measure so carefully to ensure neither wastage, nor excess. The turnkeys who appear daily at the barred window only ever hand out the precise amounts needed to create three dozen candles at a time.

Any less and there will be trouble. Any more will be an equal calamity, for it means she’s skimped on the quality and girth, that the women who want these things will know they are lesser . . . women like she once was . . . and they will not buy them. Or, worse still, they will buy them, find them wanting, and return them, demanding their good gold back. Either way Cordelia will be punished.

She wishes the candles were of a much different sort.

But at night, after she extinguishes the tiny ceramic stove where she melts the wax, when she closes her eyes, when sleep will no longer be denied, when the groans of other inmates and creaks of the old prison ship recede, when the rock and pitch of the hulk is gentle as a cradle, then she dreams. When she fingers the raised edges of the scar on her shoulder, traces the rough petals, the scabby stem. When she curls herself into a cold ball, settles her hands on the concave stomach that should by now have been convex, then she dreams of all she has lost. She dreams and it feels so real that she prays not to wake up. She prays that sleep will take her and hold her and keep her. She prays death will come while she slumbers so the memories she carries with her into darkness are those of life before.

The front parlour is cold when Cordelia enters, and she glances immediately at the hearth, which is stacked full with logs, none alight. She rolls her eyes; the tweeny cannot take instruction, or refuses to do so. Not enough lightwood, again. Not enough care or attention paid when Cordelia has gone to the trouble of crouching beside her and showing her how to do it properly. The girl is sullen, or has been noticeably so for a sennight. Cordelia refrains from thinking stupid, for it seems unfair—she’s seen Merry embroider some exquisite kerchiefs and shawls, make cutwork and bobbin lace finer than anything they’ve ever imported, sew the most sublime dresses and frockcoats. Not stupid, no, but perhaps merely resentful of things that do not revolve around her talents.

Cordelia sighs and kneels, removes the excess wood, replaces it with extra kindling: twigs, shreds of old broadsheet, and the tiniest length of char cloth. She breathes the prayer Mrs Bell taught her when she was little, an invocation to the hearth-sprites. She finds the flint and steel where Merry has discarded them, and strikes, once, twice, then the tinder takes. Soon delicate golden flames are licking at the larger pieces, seducing them, convincing them to burn. Cordelia smiles. This is her favourite task, though it’s beneath her nowadays. She loves the simple ritual with all its power and import. So elementary, yet so essential.

She gives the blaze a last nod, a grateful thanks whispered, then stands, her palms rubbing against each other to remove any dirt or dust, finally smoothing out the cream and blue skirts of her dress, making sure no soot has impressed itself on the fine fabric. She won’t speak to Merry, no, but she will tell the housekeeper, Mrs Bell—the tweeny’s aunt—to tend to this chore herself. They have an understanding: Mrs B had worked for Cordelia’s parents, tended the girl from her cradle, then accompanied her when she’d come to Lodellan to marry. Sometimes Mrs B still called her “dearling” when no one else can hear. Cordelia does not wish Merry removed or harshly berated—gods know she wishes the girl some happiness!—but she would like on winter days to come down in the mornings to warmth and a fire crackling sweetly.

Out in the hallway, there is a breeze, colder even than the unlit parlour was, and Cordelia frowns. She soon finds the source. One panel of the front double-doors with its frosted and etched crystal panes is wide open, chill pouring in and bringing with it the smell of newly baked bread wafting up from Bakers’ Lane. She makes an exasperated noise—not a curse for that would be ill-bred—and bustles forward. Merry is too careless; with the recent robberies in their neighbourhood this is utterly reprehensible! Despite Cordelia’s weakness for lame ducks and a belief that better human nature can always spring forth, given the right encouragement, she does have her limits. But when she steps onto the black marble stoop (which gleams—for all her faults, Merry keeps it brilliant, as well as rubbing coarse salt into it once a month to keep away ill luck), she loses impetus.

The clamour of carriages and horses masks Cordelia’s footfalls, and Merry, whose attention is focused on the lad at the bottom of the stairs, does not hear her. The youth is tall, flame-haired, sapphire-eyed, milk-skinned. Cordelia recognises him only because she’s seen him at Belladonna Considine’s home. A footman Bella had apprenticed to the aging valet whose service was coming to an end. The boy would learn from and care for the old man at the same time, ensuring that the House of Considine was always tended by loyal staff. Cordelia had hoped for something similar with Mrs B and Merry, which is why Annie, the parlour maid, has been freed of several of her duties: so Merry might learn by doing. Cordelia believes strongly that managing can only be done when you understand a task fully through experience, and if Merry is to replace Mrs B in the fullness of time, she must be properly prepared.

This young man is certainly pretty to look at, definitely prettier than their own footman whose plainness of face is quite astonishing. But this one, oh this one! the breadth of his shoulders, the slenderness of his waist and hips, the length of his legs in the fitted trews, demand attention. Pretty, yes, but oh! Now Cordelia notices that Merry is shivering in her mint-green brocade frock with white lace at the collar and wrists. No, worse, more than shivering, this is a tremor, the girl is shaking from head to toe as if in the throes of a fever. Cordelia raises a hand, opens her mouth—

—the boy spies her and the shift in his gaze makes Merry turn. Cordelia feels all her annoyance drain away. The girl’s face is deathly pale, her eyes red-rimmed, and tears have drifted down her rounded cheeks. Her dirty-blond hair is untidy as if she’s run troubled fingers through it, and her bottom lip trembles. Cordelia is face-to-face with another’s agony and it makes her throat seize up. And Merry, poor Merry does not wish to be seen like this. Her gaze at first burns with hatred and resentment to be found thus, then it softens as pain comes to the fore, overwhelms her pride.

At last Cordelia swallows, once, twice.

“Don’t forget to lock the door when you come in, it’s cold,” she says quietly and Merry nods, as if grateful to have an excuse to cut short whatever is passing between her and the pretty boy at the bottom of the stairs.

Inside, Cordelia rests her head against the wood of the doorframe, listening carefully as if she might hear something from the mummers left on the stoop, but there is nothing, merely the noises of the street, strangely louder.

“What are you doing, Dellie?”

Cordelia jumps, pushes away, and moves down the hallway to where her sister waits at the entrance to the library. She doesn’t want Bethany to see Merry’s pain; she’s been aware for some time now that the two do not get along. Nor do they need to, she supposed, Bethany isn’t a servant and Merry is, but sometimes Bethany goes out of her way to be mean. Perhaps it is because they are closer in age, because Merry grew up in Cordelia’s house and Bethany came to it somewhat, although not much, later.

Bethany’s golden hair is several shades darker than Cordelia’s, and her eyes a paler shade of green, but there is no denying they are sisters. Bethany is taller, despite being the younger; where Cordelia is buxom, Bethany is a willow; where Cordelia will pour oil on troubled waters, Bethany will often put a match to the oil purely for the sport of watching things burn. But not all the time; only when she’s taken by a spirit of mischief. There’s no true harm in her sister, thinks Cordelia.

“What are you doing, Dellie?” repeats Bethany, a novel in one hand, her burgundy skirts bunched in the other as if they are an impediment to movement, though the young woman is quite still. “Is it Merry mooning over that boy again?”

Cordelia does her best not to show surprise, but of late her sister has been different. She wonders if it’s Bethany’s age, though she herself was married and a mother by the time she was eighteen. Once they shared everything, now it seems Bethany keeps secrets and lets them out only when it will embarrass others. Cordelia has often thought this behaviour stems from her sister feeling untethered in the household and their best efforts, hers and Edvard’s, to make it otherwise, appear to have failed. Or sometimes at least.

It’s not as if Bethany’s some penniless maid who must marry where she can for security. Cordelia and Edvard have always made it clear they plan to settle a considerable sum on her as well as a house—not one in the Cathedral Quarter, no, but certainly a more than respectable merchant’s abode, something only Bethany will own—either upon her wedding or her eighteenth birthday, the latter event being but a few weeks away. The former is a different matter entirely: the marriage proposals, which once flew thick and fast, have become rarities. The bucks of the city initially thought Bethany a challenge, yet the sheer constancy, the unwavering tenor, of her refusals had beaten them down. Cordelia has heard her sister described as an unwedable, unbedable Atalanta, and worse, when the men who come to drink her husband’s brandy and smoke his cigars think she cannot hear. She wonders if Bethany has heard them, too.

“I thought I would take the children to the fair after lunch, Bethany. Will you come with us?”

“I’m otherwise occupied, Dellie, I’m sorry.” She smiles impishly, a child again. “But will you bring me a bag of sweeties? The hard sort, the rock that crunches between your teeth and makes your tongue fizz so! You know I love such confectionery.”

Cordelia laughs; her concerns melt.

“Of course! I—”

A clamour comes from the floor above, from Victoria’s bedroom by the sound of it. Cordelia’s only daughter is shrieking, a sound so high-pitched she can barely discern any words at all—her tone, and projection demonstrate the singing lessons have not been wasted. In response Torben shouts he didn’t take her precious brooch, and Victoria parries that he did, he did, he did. Whatever thoughts Cordelia might have expressed to her sister are lost, and she gently touches Bethany’s shoulder in apology, then picks up her pace, mounts the gold and black coloured wrought iron staircase, girding herself for the battle.

The travelling show comes to Lodellan once a year, and Cordelia is sure she recognises faces amongst the older members of the troupe. The children look forward to the event, although Henry’s expression is torn between excitement and embarrassment, as if he feels himself too told to enjoy such pastimes. But he did not refuse to accompany his siblings, and he has his arm linked with hers as they walk beneath the makeshift archway the travellers erect every year to claim their space outside the walls of the city. Merry, her expression serene and sweet as if nothing untoward occurred this morning, walks a little ahead with Victoria and Torben, one on each side, their hands in hers. Cordelia drops several coppers and one quarter-gold into the palm of the wizened woman at the entrance and her generosity is rewarded with a smile, no less genuine for its lack of dentition.

Around them is all manner of noise: laughter, shrieks of shock and delight, howls of terror from children who pretend to mislike strangeness, gasps from women and guffaws from men. The carnival is small, but takes up more space than it seems it should. Everything is rich and colourful, if a little worn in places; a maelstrom of movement and light, hue and shadow. The Parsifals pass stalls packed with impossible amounts of things: bottles of perfume and potions, tonics and tisanes; scarves and dresses, cheaply and sloppily made, but bright and pretty, items poor girls would be perfectly happy with if given as gifts by otherwise inattentive suitors. Cordelia wonders if Merry’s ever received such things from the boy on the front stoop.

There are stands with sweet-smelling soaps, and flowers carved so finely the wood might be paper. Some merchants offer knives designed to deliver injury and cutlery for meals, plates of metal brightly polished. There are pots and pans, tobacco and cigars, pipes of ivory and horn and stone. One hawker shows jewellery she claims has magical properties, made by the hands of the finest jewel-smiths trained, she so swears, by those who once lived in the city of Cwen’s Reach before the Great Fall of the Citadel—such women could have coaxed the sun and moon into something more lovely if they’d but taken the notion. Another stall has only boxes, but all manner of them, made of materials imaginable and otherwise: ceramic, glass, bone, quartz, skin (not animal), hair, silk, all stiffened and held in shape by strange means. This’un, promises the salesman, is made of naught but breath and wishes. Cordelia examines it as closely as she is allowed, but remains certain it’s simply extremely thin-blown glass.

They pass from the merchants to the showfolk, and this is where the wonders are.

On a slapdash stage is a boy, a youth really, of middling height with blond curls, whose face is not his own. He remakes it at will into imagined creations or does a fair imitation of someone in the crowd—male or female—which is never quite right and guarantees a laugh. His cerulean velvet frock coat is very fine, embroidery creeping across the lapels: leaves in green, cherries or apples in red, creatures that begin as birds but flow into beasts, all picked out in silver that catches the winter sun whenever it peeks from behind the clouds.

Elsewhere is a man who juggles stone spheres in a three ball cascade. At the end of each circuit in the air, one of the rocks becomes a bird which flies into the sky, wings flashing with quartz, then returns to settle in a basket at the man’s feet so he may reach in for new material. On another platform a woman swallows glowing coals, then spews forth great gouts of fire as if it is nothing out of the ordinary; beside her an old man drinks water from a bucket then farts out cubes of ice that clatter from his trouser legs and onto the stage. Yet another has two young women, scandalously under-clad in the cold, their breath steaming around their heads like dragons’ exhalations; they throw frayed-looking ropes upwards, which become still and stiff and remain where they are put. The young women smirk at the observers and shinny their way up the strands, the sequins and fringes of their tiny frocks waving at the crowd as the girls reach a particular height and then evaporate, becoming pale mists of pink and purple.

“Oh! Fairy floss! Mama?” Torben is the one who shrieks, but Victoria’s expression is equally avid.

“Don’t spoil your dinner,” Cordelia says automatically, but reaches into her reticule and pulls forth bits of coin. “Henry, you’re in charge. Not too much.”

Her eldest child gives a sweet smile and leads his siblings off to where two middle-aged women, their white aprons stained with the bright food colours they add to the candy cobwebs they make apparently from air. She senses Merry standing beside her, fidgeting as if unsure whether to follow the children or not; Henry is at that in-between age where he is being given more responsibility, but the bounds of it are as yet uncertain.

“Merry?” says Cordelia

“Yes, Mrs Parsifal?”

“Merry, are you happy here? With us, I mean, in Lodellan.” The scene she witnessed this morning coupled with her own concerns about the girl’s behaviour in past months, have sat heavy on Cordelia’s mind. The girl gives her a blank sort of look. “I only ask because you’ve seemed out of sorts lately. If I can help in anyway, tell me.”

The girl’s lips open and close but no sound comes.

Cordelia is aware she’s starting to feel foolish, which makes her annoyed at herself; her tone is clipped as she asks, “Do you need new things? New tools for your work? New things for you personally? Would you like to take a trip somewhere, perhaps to learn from the Master Seamstresses of Mistinguett’s Lace, or somewhere else? We would be happy to send you, to pay your expenses . . . or do you . . . do you perhaps wish to leave us? Find a position elsewhere?”

“Whyever would I want to leave? Whyever would I want to leave you and my aunt and the kiddies?” Merry’s pale hazel eyes fill with tears, as if she’s astonished that Cordelia has asked. As if she’s not considered the idea herself, not even once. And then, with dread, “Do you want rid of me, Mrs Parsifal?”

“Oh no!” Cordelia’s distress is sharp, high-pitched. “I hope you never leave us! Even if you marry, I hope you’ll stay with us, Merry.” She grasp the other’s hands, feels the calluses and places where needles and pins have left their mark over the years. “I only want you to be happy, Merry, and I feel as if you’ve not been. Never think I want you to leave or that I’m trying to get shot of you. Let us say no more of it, but you must promise to tell me if you think of anything that will make you happier?”

Merry nods, sniffs back her tears. Cordelia gives her a little push towards where Victoria and Henry are bickering over who gets which hue of floss. “Kindly deal with them, Merry.”

The girl moves away. Cordelia takes a deep breath and rolls her shoulders to loosen the tension gathered there; she lacked the courage to ask about the boy. She closes her eyes for a moment, and another and another, only opening them when a voice grabs her attention.

“Difficult when there are so many paths in front of you.”

Cordelia looks around, finds a woman to her left, tending a cart. The flat surfaces are stacked with candles every colour of the rainbow. The woman sits in front of it, on a low stool by a small fire, over which is suspended a pot. The woman holds a long white strand of what looks like string and every few seconds she dips it into the contents of the pot. With each immersion, the string comes out thicker, the blue of it intensifying.

Wax and wick, Cordelia realises. The woman is a tallow-wife, a candle-maker.

“Pardon?” Cordelia steps closer to watch the work.

“So many choices for you and yours at this moment. Who can know which is the right one?” says the woman pleasantly. She’s got a cloud of ashen hair with small silver charms and favours woven through it; there are bells which give a tiny but clear peel when she sits up, stretching her back and allowing the candle a few moments for the latest layer to dry.

“My, what patience you must have.” Cordelia looks at the range of the woman’s wares, thinks they would be lovely in the sitting room and on the dining table for formal dinners with the Agnews and the Considines. “I’d never be able to wait for so long.”

“Ah, we never know what we can do until need forces it upon us. What will you have, mistress?”

“The jade and the lavender, please,” she says reaching into her purse, but the woman is shaking her head, her mouth pulled in a sad smile.

“Ah, they’re not for the likes of you, the green and purple. The green is for fertility and I doubt you need that, and the purple’s to make a woman cautious, but you’re too far gone for that, my dear. There’s blue to lift a heart, yellow to bring light into a life, and the reds make passion blaze. But you . . . best to take the black, they’ll do what needs doing, they’ll find out the darkness at the heart of your path.”

Cordelia’s hands begin to shake. What does this woman know of her? She doesn’t appear to offer a threat, but her words imply she wishes Cordelia ill . . . or believes it will befall her. She is about to ask what is meant by the unpleasant words the old woman had uttered, when Victoria’s voice carries clear to her: “Mama! Mama!” Primed for fear, prepared for the worst, Cordelia looks up, desperately searching for her children, but sees them precisely where they were, eating the coloured floss, Merry watching over them like a hawk, while a man stands beside Henry, speaking earnestly with him.

It takes a moment for Cordelia to recognise him. Mr Farringdale. Edvard’s factotum, a man of many talents who acts (as his own father did, rather less successfully, for Edvard’s father) as a mix of legal advisor, accountant, and personal secretary. Not, as Cordelia’s momentary panic would have her believe, someone new, a stranger, a peril; the candle-maker has her at sixes and sevens.

Isambard Farringdale has been in the Parsifals’ lives for so long they can barely remember a time when the short, dapper man was not there. As she watches, he hands Henry a leather-bound journal, Torben a model ship, then turns to Victoria and offers a doll; not one of the rag moppets suspended from various stall roofs and marquee support poles, or sat in the forks of trees. No, this is a porcelain treat with auburn curls and creamy kaolin clay skin, a dress of red and purple in satin and lace. Cordelia sees tiny black leather shoes with silver buckles peek out from beneath the hem as her daughter takes the doll with a delighted squeal. Cordelia says under her breath, “How kind.”

“Come now, mistress, take ’em as a gift.” The old woman’s voice intrudes. “I don’t often give my wares away. Only when there’s need.” In the woman’s voice there is bitter amusement and sadness and Cordelia cannot think why. She only knows she wishes to be elsewhere.

“Thank you, but no,” mutters Cordelia.

“Mark my words, there’s fire and water and air coming for you, mistress!” But the woman sounds resigned now, as if she’s done her best and a refusal is not her fault.

Cordelia moves away from the tallow-wife and stumbles towards her children. Unnerved by the candle-maker’s words, her steps are less assured than she would like. She wonders if the woman makes more money from scaring people than her selling her candles, fleecing the gullible. Does she double as a fortune-teller or is her portrayal of a distraught prophet of doom merely part of her sales technique? What can that woman know of Cordelia and her life, her family, her future? Cordelia fixes a smile and holds her hand out so that Mr Farringdale might bend gallantly over it and press his thin lips to the cool kid of her gloves.

Although Edvard is some twenty years her senior, Cordelia has never truly felt the age difference, never thought of him as an old man, until tonight. In their shared bed with all its hangings and posts, high firm mattress and fine snowy linens, he is propped against pillows, a book in his nightgown-covered lap, eyes closed as if asleep. She regards him in the dressing table mirror as she brushes her hair, applies night-cream, and she can see from the rise and fall of his chest that he is still awake. That his breath has not yet settled into a rhythm of which he himself is unaware, yet she knows well from the hours she’s watched him sleep and dream.

His features have not relaxed despite the shuttered lids; they remain taut, the muscles standing at attention. His brow is lined, the fine skin beneath his eyes dark and thin and dry; his lips, rough when he kissed her cheek earlier, are peeling as if from sunburn. Patches of grey have infiltrated the ruddy brown locks she loves so. He is a man under a burden, she decides, and though she does not know what it is, equally she does know he will not tell her.

Her husband’s firm beliefs are as affected by change as the path of the sun around the Earth, which is to say not at all. Edvard holds that a marriage has two participants, two spheres of influence, and the captain of one shall never set a hand to the tiller of the other. In all their time together he has never confided anything to do with Business (and it is always Business, not merely business) to his wife. The responsibility for making money, ensuring they are financially secure, is his, and an entirely unsuitable thing for her to learn about; in his endeavour he is helped by Mr Farringdale. Her task is to tend their home and raise their children, ably assisted by Mrs B. In this way and this way alone does their partnership function.

When Cordelia was younger and braver, wilder, she tried on a few occasions to adjust his attitude. She’d reminded him, when they were first married, how her parents had given her charge of dealing with the buyers who came to the Singing Vine Vineyard as soon as she’d turned thirteen. How her presence and charm had ensured greater sales every year. She bid him remember that was how they met, that his order for the SV Rouge Felix was the largest there’d ever been. Edvard, far from convinced, had spent days voicing his disapproval of her father for allowing a child—and a girl-child at that!—to be exposed to commerce in such a fashion.

Cordelia let the matter drop, let his umbrage subside, learned to quietly do what she was allowed. Then, just after the birth of Henry, thinking that surely her husband would soften since she’d provided his heir, she tried to cajole Edvard into teaching her about import and export, the ships and their ventures, all the ins and outs of their shares in the Antiphon Trading Company in far-flung Breakwater. He’d refused, gently at first, citing her fragility. She, annoyed, pointed out that as she’d had the fortitude to push his gigantic son through a very tiny fundamental hole, she was certain she could weather the rigours of buying and selling. He’d been so offended by the coarseness that he’d refused to speak with her for a week and, only after she’d apologised in floods of tears, had he relented.

Her parents, when discussing dowry terms with Edvard, had frequently praised her biddable nature: Cordelia has the habit of good behaviour, they would say, though they did not mention she’d learned it through hours locked in a cupboard, with belt-stripes across her backside. She found in obedience a form of camouflage, and she’d taken refuge in it as soon as she’d discovered her husband to be no more flexible than her parents. Apart from the occasional moments of rebellion, which never lasted too long, she’d done her best to behave as a dutiful wife. Her mask was so effective that she managed to convince even herself, forgetting for long periods who she was, what she’d wanted.

In some ways the habit has stood her in good stead as far as a contented marriage was concerned, although it has blinded her to other matters, and given her a firm conviction that her abilities are limited, her capacity for suffering and pain minimal, and her resilience non-existent. She tells herself she does not resent Edvard for she made the choice to let the less docile aspects of herself go, to bury the knowledge of her own strength and resource. To let them wither, if not die. She could have fought, certainly, until their life together was a scorched earth; she could have won if she wished, but she made the decision to be submissive and that at least was her choice alone. Cordelia is nothing if not fair-minded.

“Are you all right, my love?” she asks quietly. He startles, as if he’d forgotten she was there, jerks his knees so the book in his lap falls, and stifles a curse. In the looking glass she sees the pages in brief flashes, numbers and columns, until the ledger hits the thick carpet with almost a sigh. There is a flare of annoyance on her husband’s face, then he laughs and his eyes light up. He swings his legs off the bed, fine ankles on display, and bends to retrieve the tome, which he tucks into the top drawer of his bedside table.

“Of course, my dearest. Just mulling over some figures.” He crosses the room to stand behind her, his hand caressing her waves of hair, smiling at the reflection of her green, green eyes. She smiles back, thinks how handsome he still is, and he slides his other hand over her shoulder, down to cup her breast, leans in to whisper, “Come to bed, my good wife.”

Afterwards, when she knows he is sleeping, when she recognises the tiny catch that presages the loud snoring she has learned to block out, she rises, sweat cooling rapidly on her naked form even with the fire blazing in the hearth. She quietly extracts the ledger from the drawer. It’s curiosity more than anything, a tiny rebellion; but she doesn’t understand what she sees. So many digits, neat and tidy, most in black but some in precise red, which come more and more frequently the closer she gets to the last pages. All those ciphers so conscientiously written in Mr Farringdale’s tight little script. She shakes her head, thinking with a small grief that she has left it too long to learn these things, has let her mind atrophy, let too much of her intellect run out with the breast milk she’s given generously to their three children. Too much energy put into selecting weekly menus and daily dresses, planning parties, running a household.

Cordelia returns the book, careful to make sure it’s in the exact position she found it. Her mind may feel stagnant, but she is no fool.

In Cordelia’s dreams, Bethany is small, so small, nothing but a little girl, her parents’ late bliss. The child she’d bade farewell to when she left Singing Vine to marry. The child she hardly knew, for such little folk are barely formed before they are five; the fifteen year age gap made her sister a beloved stranger, someone for whom she had affection as a result of obligation rather than any great knowledge of who Bethany truly was.

Cordelia conjures a time she knows only from Bethany’s occasional tales, stories sobbed after waking from nightmares. Of the time when the Blight came, traipsed in on the boot of some traveller, or dropped from the beak or shit of some bird flying from one land to the next. How it came mattered not at all; that it happened is all that mattered. She dreams of parents who, she tells herself, are not the ones she knew, not the people who shared their good fortune with those who wandered, footsore and starved, from one place to another; whose prosperity enriched the town huddled at the foot of the hills upon which Singing Vine was set. She dreams of a man and woman who’d become thin and malnourished, their mouths sunken where teeth had fallen out, bellies swollen with hunger, hair falling in clumps as despair made its home in their hearts.

She dreams of the night when the Lawrences drank down the last of the vineyard’s best reds, all liberally laced with a gentle poison that made them think themselves young once more. She imagines her sister, only ten, accepting but not drinking the draught offered by loving hands. She imagines Bethany watching their parents die. She thinks of the little girl found by neighbours unable to feed another mouth, who sent her off to an orphanage in Seaton St Mary. A little girl who, when finally located almost twelve months later by Mr Farringdale’s exhaustive investigations, stared at her elder sister with a gaze so empty and old that she was barely recognisable as the golden-haired cherub who lived in Cordelia’s memory.

Cordelia thought that child would never forgive her, but then Bethany had fallen ill with fever and spent nigh on a month in bed. Sitting beside her, night and day, almost ignoring her own offspring, Cordelia waited to see which side of the divide between life and death the girl would choose. When Bethany at last awoke, her eyes were clear and new, and she smiled at her sister as if she was the loveliest thing ever seen. For the longest time, though, Cordelia was roused by terrified screams as the nightmares rode Bethany hard, and there ever remained some questions about life at the orphanage which her sister refused to answer.

In the small dining room, not the formal one, Victoria sits beside Cordelia and glares at her younger brother. The brooch has not been found, nor has Torben admitted his crime. Unable to find any evidence of his culpability, Cordelia will not mete out punishment; she spoke quietly with him earlier, emphasising her disappointment if he had taken the trinket. Henry, at fourteen, has grown out of tormenting his sister, yet Torben, at seven, still finds joy in the act. However, he swore his innocence, green-brown eyes awash, and she chose to believe him.

Edvard, at the head of the table, has been discussing with Henry the next stage of his schooling.

“Whitebarrow, Father. Or St Isidore’s Mount, at a pinch.”

Edvard, as yet not convinced the boy truly wishes to become a medical man rather than a merchant, lifts a brow and suggests Pennworth. Henry, tall and handsome, already a copy of his father, manages to keep his expression neutral and nods consideringly. Cordelia frowns for the both of them: Edvard had agreed to abide by the boy’s wishes. Pennworth is not noted for its medical curriculum, but commercial . . . that and the fact that it is known to be . . . economical, the sort of place people lower on the social scale than the Parsifals send their sons in the hope they’ll learn to make money. Such an alma mater may well cost a young man certain positions, certain advancements. Henry’s tutors have given glowing reports of his abilities, supported by the results of the entrance exams he’d sat some weeks ago, which showed he was more than capable of undertaking the studies at Whitebarrow.

Cordelia smiles at her son, encouraging, hoping he will remain strong, and not be swayed by another’s wishes. Stronger than she has chosen to be. The problem with appeasing others, she thinks, is that it becomes a hard habit to break. Should she tell her boy this sooner rather than later, or point out to Edvard that he has three heirs, not simply one, if he would but open his eyes? Torben will settle, when he’s older. Victoria . . . she gives her daughter a surreptitious glance and worries that she’s made the girl too readily into what she herself has striven, by denial of self, to become. Is Victoria helpless, will she drift until she finds a husband to tell her who to be, what to do? Cordelia swallows the disquiet and resolves to speak with Edvard after dinner, to remind him of his promises; remind him if she must that, according to his own rules, the children are her purview and she will see them follow their hearts.

Bethany’s place is empty but Cordelia gives Merry a nod to serve the rare roast she’s been carving at the sideboard. Cordelia rubs her stomach surreptitiously; a new life is growing there. She wasn’t certain until this morning, when her bloods failed to appear—she has been regular as the moon ever since her twelfth year—and now she knows. She is unsure how she feels: three children have done enough to drain the life from her. It’s not that she doesn’t love them, but she’d thought Torben the last. She has been looking forward to a time when she might convince Edvard to let her travel with him, to leave landlocked Lodellan and go thence to the sea. Perhaps even to make the journey home, up into the mountains to where the old vineyard lay, to see what might be salvaged, perhaps to try her hand at a new venture and see if her parents’ sacrifices might still be worth something. She hoped, when the children were independent, but this . . . this would delay that at least another fourteen years.

She squeezes her eyes shut, keeps them that way until she senses someone at her elbow. Merry stares at her, a little moodily, a little concerned, the fresh pot of coffee in a pin-and-needle pricked hand. Cordelia smiles and nods for her to pour the steaming bitter brew. Edvard has always disdained her habit of drinking it with dinner, but he has ceased to comment. She adds cream, but no sugar, and sips; feels the thing in her stomach, however small—two months, no more—squirm and protest. All her children were thus, all objecting in utero to the beverage; to this day Victoria screws up her nose at the smell. And every day Cordelia bids her not to do so for the wind may change and leave her face all a’turn. Well, the girl would not need worry soon enough, for this new pup will curtail her mother’s customs if she wishes to keep any food down at all.

She wonders if she might refuse to go through with it. She is thirty-two, almost thirty-three: hasn’t she done enough? Hasn’t her body done enough? How many more dark purple veins will pattern her hips and thighs? How many more crêpe-ripples will emboss her breasts, her belly? How much higher will her hairline reach, how much thinner will her hair get, how much will fall out this time? And will it recover as well? Will it regain its thickness, its sheen, its weight? Who would I go to? Who might know of such things? Nowadays the city is filled only by male physicians; the cunning women have been hunted, driven to ground, and are few and far between. Magic and old medicine have become elusive, rare, endangered. Even Mrs B’s little habits and rituals, her acts of household magic—hanging a toadstone pendant around the children’s necks when they were ill; putting little purses of graveyard dirt beneath pillows when a member of the household could not sleep; all the tisanes she brewed for any number of ailments—all are carefully hidden lest someone see and talk.

Her reverie is broken by Bethany’s bright greeting, and she removes the hand from her stomach so no one might notice. Her sister offers an envelope to her, and an inky broadsheet to Henry. Cordelia recognises the lilac stationery and gold wax seal, and breaks into a relieved smile, which Edvard echoes. She barely notices her sister’s excited glow as she sits beside Henry, hand lighting on the lad’s shoulder so briefly. The boy buries himself in the news, while Bethany’s attention is concentrated on Cordelia.

This missive is coveted in Lodellan: a summons, really, to the Winter Solstice Ball thrown by the Princess Royal. This is the second occasion in a row that the Parsifals have garnered such favour. To be invited one year and forgotten the next, replaced by newer, richer, more amusing callers, is to be dreaded! A second request means one automatically passes onto the repeat guest list. It is precisely the sort of invitation Edward spent so many years seeking—subtly, of course, without appearing to do so. He’s rebuilt the family fortune his grandfather frittered on dancehall girls who were more expensive than one might have expected, racehorses that were slower than they should have been, and a variety of alchemical experiments meant to create diamonds and gems and gold by the molehill, by the mountain.

“What will you wear, Dellie?” asks Bethany, tone sly. “Though why I ask when you’ve spent so much of your time on this important decision . . . ”

Cordelia chooses to ignore the dig, and toys with the envelope flap, reluctant to break the resplendent seal; then she carefully slips the length of her pink nail beneath and gently encourages the wax up, all in one piece. The small triumph makes her smile. “The purple, I think.”

The dress has often felt like a daring, audacious thing, made in hope. Merry has been working on it for months and Cordelia watched the last stitches being placed in the hems not two days ago. She has worried, sometimes, that it has been too cheeky, a challenge to fate; others she simply revels in how lovely it is and that it is hers.

“A decision worthy of the intellect devoted to it,” says her sister, as if it’s a joke, as if there’s no edge to her words, and nods at Merry. The girl brings the wine decanter, pours for Edvard and Bethany; a half-glass for Henry, which is then topped up with water. Cordelia shakes her head when the girl lifts the vessel in offer.

“Then this is the perfect time, my love,” says Edvard. Cordelia concentrates on him, on his eyes, mouth, then glances at her sister’s avid expression as she, too, watches Edvard. It makes Cordelia uncomfortable; it brings to mind this afternoon when she came upon her husband and sister, standing close and whispering, huddled like conspirators, Bethany’s posture reminiscent of the women on Half-moon Lane, those not fortunate enough to have a place on Courtesans’ Row. She pushes aside the fears that have crawled up her spine, have curled in the pit of her belly. She brightens her gaze, widens her smile.

In Edvard’s hand is a burgundy velvet box.

“For you, darling, to ensure you are the belle of the ball.”

Her fingers slip and shake as she accepts, and seeks the latch. By clever design, the lid flips open when the catch is released and inside, lying on a bed of dark red, is a necklace. Her sister smiles and claps with delight, but no surprise. This, Cordelia thinks with relief, is why her husband and sister have been speaking secretly. Her relief is too great, but she chooses not to examine what that might mean, and concentrates on the gift.

An enormous amethyst is the heart of the piece; it is glorious, cut many times over to give the perfect shape, to glean every bit of light from the candles, the fire in the hearth. It seems to have impossible depths, a darkness and a lightness dancing within and without its hallucinatory purple hue. It is surrounded by a band of alternating emeralds and diamonds, set in an opening lily of white-gold, each petal perfectly recreated. All hangs from a chain of tiny elegant interlocking silver spirals.

Cordelia drapes it around her neck, ensures it’s secure. It feels warm against her flesh as she rises to stare at her reflection in the gilt mirror above the small fireplace. A few dark spots on her creamy skin distract her—a sure sign of a babe on the way; lemon juice solution will help. She attends to the necklace again, primps and preens, smiles at her second self in the mercury, the one who is free from all the burdens she bears, all the burdens she has consented to. Her smile dims when she recalls that the Winter Solstice Ball will be the last time she can fit into the dress for a long while. She touches the amethyst absently.

Edvard calls, “To the table, my love, and your dinner. You must eat, you need your strength.”

And Cordelia realises, then, that he knows. His smile is too smug, his words too weighted. He won’t mention it yet, will consider it something for her to announce, but his knowledge gives her no options, other than deceit. The thing around her neck turns cold as she recognises it as a bribe, a sop, a pretty thing to wear while she grows fat yet again. While all her chances for change disappear. Still, Cordelia is skilled at hiding her true self, and she smooths her expression until it is pleasantly bland, then takes her place beside her husband.

Merry brings out the first dessert and places it on the sideboard. The boys eat quickly and will be through their main course well before the rest of the family.

“Henry,” Cordelia says, noticing the broadsheet beside his plate leaves smears on the snowy cloth. “Put that away, you’re making a mess.”

“The Agnews,” he says sombrely, folding the pages and handing them off to Merry without even looking at her, as if she’s not there. Cordelia is caught between reprimanding him for that small impoliteness, and preoccupation at his words. Preoccupation wins.

“What of them?”

“They’ve been murdered—Master and Mistress, Mrs Agnew’s parents, the four children, and the three servants.”

Cordelia’s hand goes to her throat, finds the gem, grasps it. The amethyst curls into her palm as if it belongs there. She seems to feel the echo of her heartbeat deep in the stone.

“Do they know . . . ” begins Edvard, unable to finish a question with so much potential, so many gaps, and mysteries, and lacunae, so many possible answers. The Agnews were one of the city’s most prominent families, certainly one of the richest; not bad folk, generous to those beneath them, kind to their servants and those in their employ, charitable, philanthropic. The robberies have been bad enough, but now, this.

Murder.

And not a slaying in the road, not a battle of lowlifes, not a fight between tarts that’s gotten out of hand, not an over-enthusiastic debt-collector, nor a constable taking his duties too seriously. But a killing in a fine house barely three streets away. A killing of a fine family who should have been touched by no more than time and the rigours of old age, not by violence. Not by something so . . .

Henry clears his throat, he is pale; he’d been friends with the oldest Agnew boy. “A robbery gone wrong. There was another body. They think someone interrupted the thief, who tried to eliminate all witnesses. Perhaps Mr Agnew managed to kill him even as he himself was dying.”

“Who?” asks Victoria through her tears. She would no longer play with Ozanne and Oriel Agnew, her closest companions.

“An employee of the Considines’, their valet-in-training . . . Japheth something or other.”

Cordelia’s twists in her seat, gaze going immediately to Merry, who has dropped the second dessert tray. Meringue and cream and fruit compote spread far and wide across the expensive silk carpet. The girl holds both hands to her mouth, face drained of all colour, and Cordelia thinks, foolishly, that she is quite lovely when not scowling. Merry’s eyes are huge, the pupils so large there is almost no white left around the irises that at this moment look more green than hazel. Before Cordelia can go to her, the tweeny flees, sobs trailing behind her like black mourning ribbons.

The last notes of the requiem mass still hang in the air when the Parsifals leave by the great arched doorway of Lodellan’s cathedral, passing by the six ghostly wolf-hounds—age evident in their fading outlines—that guard the holy house. The family is in the front half of the dolorous procession following the archbishop; the line of mourners snakes across the portico, down the stone steps, then along the footpath to where the lychgate breaks the walls surrounding the graveyard. Cordelia looks up at the elaborate roof and see shadows shifting in the steep angles there; then the moment is gone, and she is through the strange bottleneck and pursuing the safest paths. The ground is treacherous in places, the unwary who wander are likely to find themselves breaking through the crust of the earth and turning an ankle in an unsuspected grave, or worse. The trees, mainly yew and oak, are ancient, branches and roots entwine from one tree to the other, and thick bushes fill any space in between; beneath the canopy the shadows are cold, and Cordelia hears the chattering of teeth behind her. One of the children, she thinks, Victoria.

Ahead, she sees the flickering torch the archbishop carries to light his way into the Agnew vault.

The cortège sweeps past the graves of the poor, marked by simple white crosses or piles of stones. Next come the merchants’ plots, which are tidier and larger, the slabs and headstones made of better material, more marble and granite, the statuary showing signs of artistry. There is Micah Bartleby’s tomb, black quartz glistening in the skerrick of sunlight that’s fought its way through, and here an angel leans drunkenly, its features all but erased by the elements and the only trace of a name left is Hepsi . . . tyne.

At last they come to the mausoleums, where Lodellan’s richest and best lie, and the great snake of mourners splits around the pink marmoreal structure where the Agnews will take their final rest, and forms a line either side. No distant cousin or such can be located—the family has been utterly annihilated—so Belladonna Considine, wrapped in shimmering black bombazine, undertakes funereal honours. She wears a veil of netting so thick one can barely make out her features.

How must she feel? wonders Cordelia. Knowing her own servant visited such catastrophe on her dearest friends? Belladonna takes the fat golden key from the archbishop’s hand and inserts it in the lock, then gives the heavy door a good push. There is neither creak nor groan of hinges, for the structure is kept in good repair. Belladonna steps aside, into her husband’s politely waiting arms, and the clusters of pallbearers trail the archbishop and his blazing brand down into the darkness of the crypt.

Cordelia is grateful she does not have to go beneath, to feel the blackness pressing in from all sides. She puts an arm around Victoria, who stands close, shivering. The cold on the girl’s shoulders is so intense it bites through the leather of Cordelia’s glove. She looks at her daughter and sees, to her left, in the space between Victoria and Torben, a pale white formless mist. Cordelia blinks, but is careful not to draw attention. She glances at the crowd then realises no one else can see the icy cloud; she manages a motion that is part-rub, part-wave, and her fingers pass through the thin fog, leaving traces and trails in the air. Soon it dissipates and Victoria’s tremors ease.

Cordelia takes a relieved breath and finds Bethany, who holds Henry close, looking at her. Cordelia smiles and focuses once more on the mouth of the sepulchre, where the first group of attendants returns to the light, quickly stepping aside so the next can deposit their own burden. She’ll not tell her sister about the mist or how it felt; Bethany needs no encouragement to laugh at her. She does not wish to be regarded as mad as well as weak, but Cordelia knows as surely as night follows day that around them, in the trees and foliage which weaves their way through the graveyard, there are things, other things, which move and watch, breathe and sleep, dream and desire. Things that the clever rich folk of Lodellan don’t believe in for it is not fashionable. But those with less money and more sense still leave offerings on the graves; the sexton still plants lavender over the common burial pits where the indigent and unloved lie, in hope of ensuring they rest in peace; and mothers in the slum quarters still warn their children not to listen to the sound of the jingling copper bells hanging from some of the yews and oaks in the bone orchard. Though she’s told no one Cordelia has seen them on occasion, the things that shift and threaten, when she’s come to visit the grave of one friend or another. She holds her daughter closer.

Later, at the wake at the Considine house, Cordelia finds herself alone with Belladonna. A small bubble of quiet, of suspended time, forms around them; outside it there is well-mannered noise, conversation, people attired in haute couture black weeds moving in a strange kind of dance. Cordelia touches her friend’s hand gently and says how sorry she is. Belladonna pauses, tugs at her veil and shows her face. The transformation is terrible: the once-silver eyes are dead grey ice; the elegantly high cheeks are hollowed and the skin drawn tight, with a yellow tint; the pouting mouth is slack, the lips strangely thin, and poised as if a howl might force its way between them at any moment. There is such guilt and such burden.

“How can I go on? Knowing we—I—harboured a viper in our bosom?” Belladonna’s voice is so low that Cordelia can barely hear. She squeezes the other woman’s arm tightly, hoping for sympathy and strength to flow into her. She thinks, although she tries not to, how Bethany told of the boy Japheth’s body: thrown onto the midden heap outside Lodellan’s walls. While she can understand the urge, she still considers such an act vindictive and short-sighted: no carefully constructed coffin to either help him rest easy or keep him from haunting the city until the last trumpet sounds.

“My dear Bella, you have no need of guilt. You did not employ him in an ill house, did not subject him to evil influences. However his heart and mind were turned, the cause was not here. Not you.” Cordelia lightly strokes the other’s sleeve. “Mourn your friends by all means, but you had no role in their deaths, please set aside that woe.”

Tears flood the other woman’s eyes, as if the kindness is unbearable. She pulls from Cordelia and flees, to the upper levels of the house, covering her face as she goes. Cordelia feels empty, bereft. She shakes her head; her mind is adrift, her emotions high with the tragedy striking so close to home. She just needs time, as does Bella, to recover, to feel as if the ground is solid beneath them once again. Blinking, Cordelia turns to the ballroom—the only room big enough to hold the crowd—now hung with black crepe and wreaths of lily and rowan, acanthus and asphodel.

Henry, Victoria, and Torben will be in one of the auxiliary parlours, playing in desultory fashion with what pass for friends amongst the children of the rich. Across the room Cordelia spies Edvard, part of a group of sombre-looking men. Their expressions are carefully maintained, but she suspects she knows what they hide: a combination of judgment and fear. Judgment of Leon Agnew, that he did not protect his family, and fear that he could not do so. Fear that there but for the grace of God went each and every one of them. Edvard has spent the past few days ensuring weapons are hidden throughout their house, that Henry knows where they are and so do the coachman and footman. Not Cordelia, though, nor Victoria nor Bethany, nor Mrs B, nor Merry, for if the menfolk failed to defend them, what could women possibly do?

One of his companions says something and Cordelia watches as Edvard’s face pinches, sours. His reply makes the other man wither and shrink, and she wonders what has lit her husband’s serene temper so quickly. She senses someone beside her: Bethany, pale and lovely, hair beneath an ebon lace mourning bonnet, her dress of charcoal satin with tight pintucks that Merry’s clever fingers took hours and hours to achieve. At her breast is an oval broach, glass-fronted, showing the coil of blond hair that belonged to their mother. By rights it should have been Cordelia’s but it was the sole possession Bethany managed to keep during her stay at the orphanage and Cordelia never had the heart to insist when her sister had already lost so much.

“What do you think he said?” she says idly, wistfully. “What are they discussing?”

“Surely, sister, you’ve enough gumption to find out?” Bethany’s tone is sharp and it cuts. Why don’t you ask him yourself? Keep at him until he answers?”

Cordelia knows her shock and hurt are writ large on her face; Bethany shows no sign of caring, and continues, “Why do you insist on being wilfully ignorant? I swear, Cordelia, you were never such a fool when we were small.”

Cordelia thinks that unfair; Bethany was so young when her older sister left Singing Vine. What recollections could she possibly have? She has the uncomfortable feeling, though, that Bethany is right; as a child and young woman Cordelia was outspoken and inquisitive, insistent, and always, always gained the knowledge she wanted, needed. She did not dwell in ignorance, and no one ever told her certain things were not her concern. How did she become as she is now? Did she give up all at once? Or bit by bit, unaware of how she was changing? Lessening just to make life easier? She turns her mind from the idea of growing dim, of diminishing. It seems too hurtful, too fearful. She blinks, feels Bethany’s hand on her arm.

“I’m sorry, sister, I should not have spoken so. It is . . . the grief.” Bethany bats away tears or so it seems. “They speak of men’s matters, of commerce and the like. They will discuss Agnew’s failure as man and husband, protector and guardian of his family. They’ll opine how terrible a monster that boy must have been to do this thing, to overcome one such as Leon. Then they will grow quiet and discomforted until someone mentions a mistress to break the tension, the residence he keeps her in on Courtesans’ Row, the clever things she does, and how happy it makes him to know she is his refuge from a demanding wife and puling offspring.”

Cordelia wonders if Edvard is one of those men, if he visits another woman in a tall house that she can imagine all too vividly: red velvet drapes, luxurious sofas, beds hung with silks and fine netting, walls decorated with erotic frescos from which inspiration might be taken. Cordelia shakes her head; Mrs Bell sewed a swan’s feather into Edvard’s pillow the day of their marriage, a sure way to ensure fidelity she’d said. Cordelia feels quite unstable already without the weight of Edvard’s possible secrets tumbling onto her. She absently pats Bethany’s cheek and moves off before her sister can say something even more disturbing; she feels, yet again, that she no longer knows the girl she raised as her own. It is her age, she thinks, she is finding herself. It will settle, eventually, and they shall rub along nicely once more.

Cordelia tries to change the direction of her dreams, encourage them back towards happier terrain; she knows, though, that they will not obey her entirely, or indeed for long. But still it seems she succeeds as the days before the Winter Solstice Ball run together. In her sleep, she could swear the fire is real, that the scent of burning wood and roasting chestnuts tickle her nostrils. She picks pleasant scenes as she once did the sweetest cherries from a bowl. She is sure she can hear the crackle and snap of twigs, the small avalanches of cinders and glowing coals through the grate, that she can hear the laughter in the house. She turns in her slumber, enjoying the warmth, the memory . . . yet that changes once again all too soon.

The air in the house is thick with mourning. Cordelia finds it hard to breathe, harder still to see the expressions of shock on her children’s faces. They’ve never been faced with loss or grief in their short lives; she feels she has failed to prepare them. Edvard’s parents were long-dead by the time he married, and her own parents’ deaths occurred when Henry was very small. Their world has been intact, hermetically sealed from heartache, and she searches desperately for a way to make them smile again. Cordelia leaves Merry at home, does not even mention that they are going out. The girl has been heavy-eyed, inattentive, hard of hearing since news of the Agnews and their murderer was heard; she has refused to discuss the matter though Cordelia has tried to offer comfort. Even Mrs B has failed to draw anything from her, or so she has told Cordelia. Cordelia wonders if the girl has been outside the city walls, walking the paths that have been worn through Lodellan’s great midden heap by scavengers who go on two legs as well as four, looking for the body of the boy she loved.

Yet taking the children to the carnival the morning of the Ball is a mistake, which she understands only as they step beneath the archway entrance, and she once more trickles coin into the toothless old woman’s hand. This is the final day, the crowd is thin, and the troupe are already packing up: there are fewer toys and gewgaws on the stalls, most of the makeshift stages have been pulled down and only the girls who climb the enchanted ropes are performing. Their air is one of boredom, barely concealed impatience; they’re the last act, thinks Cordelia, the one most likely to attract attention. Does this happen every time the show moves on or is there a ballot and the girls drew the short straw on this occasion?

Her offspring remain listless, indeed their languor seems to increase as if infected by the apathy of the dying carnival. Cordelia sighs heavily and Bethany, strangely compassionate, takes her arm as they wander aimlessly through the partially deconstructed landscape. Torben, Victoria, and even Henry amble in front of them like lambs. Bethany does not even rouse herself to make disparaging remarks and Cordelia is grateful her sister has at last developed some kind of restraint.

The sight of her babies so passive, so downhearted, is depressing. Normally she would have to shepherd them, drag them back into easy reach, or have Merry do it. The longer she watches, the heavier the oppression becomes, but she fights it until she sees the cart with the coloured candles—much fewer than last time, whether due to sales or packing she cannot know—and the woman who makes them, the tallow-wife, who stares at her with an unfathomable gaze. That is when she feels her chest compressing, compacting, growing tighter; finds the air harder to pull into her lungs no matter how deeply she breathes.

“Take care of them for me, Bethany,” she gasps, pulling away from her sister. “I must walk.”

And Bethany nods and lets her go, as if recognising what Cordelia needs most right now is solitude, not worry nor sympathy.

Cordelia pushes and shoves her way through the dwindling crowd as if she’s a fishwife on the docks of some town that actually has an ocean, has something more than the river that’s become sluggish and brown over the years. It’s all she can do to keep from breaking into a run. She’s out now, beyond the enigmatic gaze of the tallow-wife, gone from the press of bodies; the noise and chatter diminish behind her as she walks faster and faster and her ladylike shoes beat a desperate rhythm of escape along the main road.

Farther away from Lodellan, she feels she can breathe again, and she slows, stops. Between the trees is a building, a low dilapidated affair of wood bruised by time and weather. Cordelia moves toward it; the roof has fallen in at some point, a tree grows through the western wall, the door hangs by one tenacious hinge alone, and the windows have long been shattered. She searches her memory and finds something at last, snags it, draws it up. Tales of a woman many years ago, the city’s finest coffin-maker though none recall her name. Her demise was murky and led to whispers and rumours about her true goings-on, though Cordelia cannot recall precise details try though she might.

She looks at the tumbledown structure, at the wreckage of what someone sought to build. She thinks of her parents, of the Singing Vine and what its loss meant to them. She thinks of the Agnews, how their lives were lost but their possessions remain, to do no good to anyone. She thinks that the destruction of things should not mean the ruination of a life.

Cordelia looks over her shoulder, looks at the road that leads away, is struck by the scandalous idea that she could simply keep going.

Then she remembers the child that grows inside her, remembers the children she has already birthed, recalls Mrs B and Merry, Edvard and Bethany. She thinks on the pillars of her existence and is ashamed she could contemplate such cowardly flight. Cordelia turns on her heel and returns to the carnival.

The old woman on the gate lets her through, waving away the coins she offers. More, she points the direction in which she might find her family. Cordelia gives the candle-maker a wide berth.

She espies the children at a tiny petting zoo. Victoria and Torben seem more animated as they fuss over the baby animals: there’s a bear cub, a pony, a lamb, a calf, and a wolf pup; kits of snow fox and badger. Henry kneels, with no thought for his expensive kerseymere breeches, beside an exotic kitten with fur of black and orange stripes, which eyes the other animals as if they might provide its luncheon.

For a few moments she cannot see Bethany and anger begins to boil at the perceived lack of responsibility. Then she is there, her tall slender sister with her golden curls held in place by fine black netting, wearing yet another exquisite black mourning gown made by Merry’s clever, miserable fingers.

Bethany is gesturing at someone Cordelia cannot see until her sister moves aside and there is Mr Farringdale once more, this time gripping a magnificent bouquet of flowers: red roses, asters, carnations, daffodils, daisies, forget-me-nots, and hyacinths . . . in fact so many blooms that are out of season Cordelia wonders how he got them and how much this tribute cost. This token of his affection, however, goes unnoticed, uncollected, unaccepted, and Cordelia is pierced by the expression of loss on the little man’s face.

Oh, poor Mr Farringdale, to hold a torch for such as Bethany. Bethany, who’s refused the richest, handsomest, finest bucks of Lodellan. What chance could he possibly think he might have?

And her sister turns then, as if she senses Cordelia’s presence, her thoughts. And in that moment Bethany’s face is naked: Cordelia doesn’t recognise this girl whose expression is so fierce and feral, shows too many wishes and wants, too much greed, lust, abandon, arrogance, and pride. And in that moment Cordelia feels as though there is more, much more than an age gap between them . . .

. . . then Bethany sees her and grins; she is herself again, sweet though mischievous, sometimes cruel but never too much so, a little bold, but not too bold, eyes warming and dancing. She is Cordelia’s little sister once more, not a woman standing on the precipice between light and shadow. Cordelia tries to smile, finds her lips stiff and unwilling, for the memory of her sister’s changed face is too fresh, too raw; it leaves a residue of fear that Cordelia cannot comprehend. She forces the corners of her mouth upwards; dismisses the moment for it is too unreal.

As she approaches, Mr Farringdale scurries away, no doubt to nurse his heart with the aid of the mulled cherry wine and blackberry port of which he is so fond. Cordelia will speak to Bethany, yes, but not today, not tonight. Tomorrow, after the Ball. There has been enough unpleasantness, and Cordelia is determined to rebuild her family’s happiness. They will stay here as long as the children wish, as long as she can see their joy returning if only in some small measure, for it is a start.

And Mr Farringdale, poor Mr Farringdale . . . she will make enquiries and investigations. There will be women in Lodellan who would welcome his suit, who would see him as a good, solid investment, someone who would appreciate their kindness and wifely efforts on his behalf. Someone who would mend what Bethany in her youth and hubris has injured.

Tonight is the winter solstice: the longest night. Tomorrow will be a time of new beginnings, the day to start over. Yes. Everything can be fixed.

The dress is exquisite, a raw silk that contains within its warp and weft all possible variations of purple: lavender, lilac, fuchsia, violet, amaranthine, magenta, periwinkle, mulberry . . . every tone and shade and hue. It skims Cordelia’s trim-for-now figure perfectly, though Merry has had to let it out twice in the fortnight before the ball. She has done so with lips pursed, gaze judging, as if Cordelia has been overeating, doing it on purpose. Alas, all the adjustments—and Merry’s grieving inattention—have left one of the appliquéd roses, which encircle the waist and trail down the skirt like a cascade, somewhat loose. A few quick stitches are required before Master and Mistress Parsifal depart.

Cordelia’s hair is swept up onto the crown of her head, pale sunlight curls tumbling artfully, although it took more than two hours to get them to look so casual. The gown shifts and changes its colour and mood with every movement, and the necklace, oh the necklace! It is pure magnificence. There will be nothing like it at the Ball.

Merry’s room is at the top of the stairs, a large attic space fitted with rugs and hangings to keep out the winter chill, a comfortable bed with a richly embroidered quilt full and fat with goose down. Part of the area is set aside for the girl’s sewing: there are three tailor’s dummies, a workbench for cutting patterns and material, a series of shelves with skeins of silk, and drawers wherein lie needles and pins and scissors of various size and shape and sharpness, each intended for a different purpose. But of Merry herself there is no evidence, which makes Cordelia puff an exasperated breath. Yet she’ll not entrust this small task to Annie the parlour maid’s ham-fisted efforts.

No matter. A tack or two is all that’s needed, a service she did for her own mother many years ago. As long as she is careful not to prick herself and bleed on the fabric, it will be a simple task. She eyes the range of threads and finds the correct hue, then opens the drawers one after another seeking the right gauge of needle. In the last compartment something catches her eye, a flash of silver and green and nacre, a small brooch in the shape of a spray of lilies. The one she gave Victoria for her thirteenth birthday, on the eve of her Presentation Ball, the item the girl wore on the pearl organdie gown with argentella lace. The very brooch Torben has been accused of stealing.

And it is here.

In this drawer.

In this room.

In the possession of this girl . . .

Cordelia’s throat tightens as she thinks of having this girl, this dangerous girl, this sullen, angry, moody girl in her house, near her family. This girl . . . this girl whom she’d welcomed when Mrs B had taken in the orphaned niece as a baby, who’d been raised beside the Parsifal children, to whom she’d given a position, a wage, and much patience. The thought that this girl should so requite her kindness in a petty dishonest manner, that this girl had been associating with a killer . . .

Her fear makes her angrier than she might otherwise be; it washes reason and kindness away. Deliberately, Cordelia reaches into the drawer and finds a tiny silver pin. Her hands shake as she fastens the wayward rose in place, and it’s only by sheer force of will that she completes her task without drawing blood. The she picks up the brooch, all her anger, her fear, her umbrage, pooling, roiling and boiling as she makes her way downstairs to the basement kitchen.

Once again there’s no sign of Merry, but Mrs Bell is tidying after supper, grey-gold tendrils peeking from under her mob cap. She smiles as Cordelia enters, eyes lighting up, expression fond as fond can be, but finds no answering grin. Cordelia holds out her fist, fingers opening like petals to show the spray of gilded lilies there. Mrs B is perplexed.

“Where did you find it, madam? Did Torben—”

“It was in Merry’s room,” says Cordelia tightly.

Mrs Bell stares, then shakes her head. “She’s a good girl, Mrs Parsifal. I know she’s had a hard time of it and she’s been a challenge for you, but she’s a good girl for all that.”

“She has to go.” Cordelia’s tone is arctic, and it chills the housekeeper who’s never heard such a sound from her mistress’s lips.

“Perhaps Miss Victoria misplaced the brooch when she was in for a fitting . . . ” The excuse is weak even to her ears: Victoria hasn’t had a new dress in months. “You’ve known Merry all her life, Mrs Parsifal. She’s not bad, no more than Miss Bethany’s ever been. I’m sure . . . ”

The older woman’s pain begins to crack Cordelia icy determination, but she steels herself: she will not be defied. Not in this. The house is the one sphere over which she has control. Her husband keeps secrets from her; her sister is becoming a stranger; this is the sole change she can enforce.

“Make sure she’s gone by the time we get back tonight, Mrs Bell,” orders Cordelia, blinking hard to keep the tears confined. They cannot be allowed to run or they will take the black lash powder and eye-paint with them, cut swathes through the glimmering pearl foundation powder, drop onto and ruin her dress. “I’m sorry, but I really must insist.”

“There’s no bad in my niece, Mrs Parsifal.” Mrs Bell wrings her apron with dry, red hands. “I beg you to reconsider, my dearling.”

“Not much good either it seems,” snaps Cordelia, fighting the effect of her childhood nickname, then watches as Mrs B’s aspect freezes. All her affection drains from it. She speaks quietly.

“If Merry goes, then so must I, Mistress,” says Mrs Bell, her own tears utterly unfettered, pattering on the white of her apron front. Cordelia is stunned, hurt, possibly as stunned and hurt as Mrs B, but this doesn’t occur to her, nor will it for weeks to come. Her face burns while her heart closes—that her old nurse would choose such a girl over her!—and she draws herself stiff and straight.

“Do what you must,” says Cordelia, breaking a lifetime’s bond too easily, and spins about, hurries up the stairs into the hall where Edvard waits impatiently. Annie, beside him, has her mistress’ fur-lined cloak waiting. She drapes it around Cordelia’s shoulders as she gently draws on the lavender silk gloves that are meant for show, not warmth; then Annie disappears, subtle as a ghost. Cordelia keeps her head down so Edvard cannot see her expression, will not ask what is wrong and delay their departure. Had she but taken the time to steal a glance at him she would have observed his distraction, his pallor, and the fact that his eyes do not quite light upon her at all, as if she is simply an amorphous thing on which he cannot focus. But, caught up in her own web of upset, she does not notice that her husband is distressed to the point of inattentiveness as they step outside to where their coachman awaits with a carriage and four.

In her sleep, Cordelia imagines the baby is still inside her. She feels it turning and twisting, making her stomach bubble as if in the grip of terrible indigestion. As if a small sea creature does somersaults in the very pit of her. She could swear it’s real, could swear it’s solid and true—though it’s months since her belly carried anything but hunger. She imagines that when she wakes it will be to the sweet, demanding cry of a newborn seeking milk, of a child wanting the comfort of its mother’s arms, the warmth of her familiar flesh.

She dreams that the unwished-for child is still hers to have and hold.

The coach takes them the short distance to the palace, pulls up outside the grand wing which Armandine, the Princess Royal, has made her own since her brother’s marriage. Though the Prince of Lodellan will not be in attendance tonight—he seldom partakes in his sister’s soirées—his wife will be, for this is the woman with whom Armandine herself was, and still is, in love.

Some whisper the prince’s bride has no aristocratic lineage at all, that she was selected for her peasant heartiness, the width of her hips, the generosity of her breasts—for her perceived fecundity. Thin blue blood, fussy breeding habits, and limited marriage pools have failed the ruling family, and the days of large broods are done with. It is said that Princess Armandine gave up her lover only in the daylight hours when propriety still held some sway, that she and Ilse yet meet on all but those nights when the royal physicians deemed her most likely to conceive. As a result, Ilse is round, set to provide the longed-for, much-needed heir, an heir with his mother’s robustness, born of a woman whose bloodline has not been weakened by its purity.

But Cordelia doesn’t think of the rumours. She doesn’t think on the importance of this invitation, of the culmination of Edvard’s ambitions, of the beauty of her dress and the splendour of the necklace lying cold around her throat. She thinks only of Merry and her betrayal, of Mrs Bell and her ill-placed loyalty. She thinks of a home without Mrs B’s warmth, of the absence of a woman she only now admits she loves better than she ever did her own icily beautiful mother; the woman who protected her from the worst of her maternal parent’s rages and punishments. She shakes herself as the footman rolls out the metal steps, and Edvard helps her from the carriage. She makes a concerted effort to forget all that’s happened, to concentrate on the Ball, on being Edvard’s fine wife, on doing him justice.

They sweep in through the first set of doors, wood and fittings faded by the elements, up stone steps covered in a red carpet for this eve only, along a phalanx of men-at-arms in shining livery, and join the receiving line waiting outside a second set of doors, great arched things of highly polished ebony banded with gold. Cloaks are taken by maids and whisked away. When their turn comes, Edvard offers the pale purple leaf to the chief doorman, whose expert eyes scan the contents. Satisfied it’s no forgery, he gives a nod to the lesser doormen, who push open the panels and let them through. Their card returned, they step inside, onto a landing high above the ballroom floor. A herald, now, takes the invitation and reads out their names at the top of her lungs, so all heads swivel to look, to see, to judge.

Proceeding down the red marble staircase they are engulfed, briefly, by friends before joining the next section of the receiving line. Cordelia notes, amongst the already-arrived, already-welcomed guests, Belladonna Considine in an exquisite sable gown covered with shimmering jet beads. Her very public mourning is tasteful, understood, yet no one would expect her to forego the Winter Solstice Ball. Cordelia fixes a smile for her, part greeting, part sympathy, and flutters her fingers to catch the other woman’s eye. Belladonna’s lips begin to lift in answer, then stop, her glance hooked and caught by . . . something. Cordelia wonders if she’s been found somehow unfit, her dress has been compromised by errant snowflakes, stained or marked in the kitchen during her confrontation, but a downward glance reassures her.

Belladonna moves off, swiftly. Is she embarrassed by her outburst at the wake? Before Cordelia can comment to Edvard they are swept onwards to a raised dais where the Princess Royal, platinum-blond locks carefully braided into a crown studded with gem-encrusted pins, awaits on a high-backed chair. Beside her, on a chaise longue set slightly lower, lounges a woman with fiery red hair and bored yellow eyes that glitter at the sight of Cordelia’s gems. Her cheekbones are broad, her head quite round but for the sharp little chin, and a heavy belly presses against the fine chiffon underskirts displayed through the slit of her amber high-waisted outer gown. It’s all Cordelia can do to resist the urge to touch her own stomach in sympathy.

Edvard bows and Cordelia curtsies. The Princess Royal’s appreciative glance takes in the dress and necklace. She offers her hand, long and pale fingers weighted down by many rings. First Edvard, then Cordelia, bow over them, kissing the cool stones and even cooler flesh. One of the diamonds catches Cordelia’s bottom lip, just a little and she feels a tiny cut, and a minuscule spring of ruby red. She licks it away and raises her head to meet Armandine’s gaze.

“What a delightful ensemble, Mrs Parsifal. You must tell me the name of your seamstress.”

“A girl of our household, Your Highness,” she replies, the lie heavy in her mouth.

“You must let me borrow her,” says the princess.

Cordelia nods. “Of course, Your Highness.” She does not know how she will make this happen.

“And come visit with us, take tea.” She waves a hand at the thin woman in green standing behind her chair, book and pencil in hand. “Rada, make arrangements for next week.”

The clerk nods, and the Parsifals are moved on. No one bothers to introduce them to the woman with auburn hair and yellow eyes. The woman who is ostensibly the reigning Princess of Lodellan, the mother of the city’s next ruler.

Now they are free to mingle in the to-and-fro of the crowd’s waves, to shift and dance across the mosaic floor of gold and gem tiles that shows scenes from the city’s history, good and bad: the miracle of the twice-born prince; the queen who let a dark woman lead the violet-eyed royal children astray and ended her days walled into her chamber; the troll-wife who almost stole the crown and her defeat at the hands of the unloved princess; the archbishop who raised the new cathedral yet disappeared before its completion; the lost children turned to wolves by the bite of a grieving widow; the bakeress whose creations caused more trouble than they should . . . all this and more collected in the stones beneath them, now ignored by heedless feet whose owners no longer find miracles and magic fashionable.

The Parsifals gravitate towards a group of friends—two groups, really, the men and women forming separate circles close enough that they might each hear the others’ conversation, but not take part. While she chats with the wives, Cordelia begins to relax, almost forgets the drama leading up to this point. She basks in compliments about her dress and necklace, although part of her is dedicated to listening to her husband’s discussions, determined to learn any way she can the things he keeps hidden. Determined to prove Bethany wrong.

“The profit we made on that latest Antiphon expedition has equipped three more ships!” bleats one youngster, hair black and thick as a fleece, but with no discernible moustache or saving sign of a beard. A son of one of the merchants, too foolish and wrapped up in himself to keep his boasting more private.

Edvard frowns. “You turned a profit?”

The gentlemen around him nod. He seems confused. “But we lost money on the deal.”

The others, older and wiser, look elsewhere so he might not see their pity. Their lack of comprehension. He shakes his head and the young cumberground laughs loud and spiteful. “Forgotten how to count, old chap? I’d find a new accountant if I were you.”

And Cordelia watches as the blood leaves her husband’s face and he shakes as if suffering a sudden palsy, as if a terribly misplaced trust has been revealed. She tries to go to his side, but a hand grabs her arm, nails scratching the skin. She turns and meets the eyes of Belladonna Considine, filled with hatred and grief so palpable that Cordelia feels the gaze almost as a physical force. Then she notices the men-at-arms on either side of the woman, stern-faced, implacable.

Belladonna points at Cordelia, at her throat. “That’s it. Odela Agnew’s necklace, Leon had it made especially for this ball. She showed it to me not two days before the murders.”

Cordelia says gently, though her voice trembles, “No, Bella, you are mistaken. My Edvard gave it to me.”

Belladonna shouts, “Do you think I wouldn’t know it? Do you think I’d not recognise it? How dare you? How dare you do this and come here wearing the spoils of your evil labours?”

“There must be some mistake. Edvard, tell them . . . ” Cordelia looks to her husband for support, but sees he is in the custody of two guards, taller even than himself, as though specially chosen for his apprehension. “Edvard, tell them!”

But though he struggles, though he tries to throw off his captors, though he shouts their innocence, their outrage, no one listens. The crowd around them simply grows, as if the Parsifals form the vortex of a whirlpool from which there is no escape; in which the couple will be dragged a’down.

Finally, one of the guardsmen, tired of Edvard’s dissent, draws back a meaty fist and hits him square in the mouth. There is blood, a tooth flies across the gathering to be lost in a sea of shoes, and her husband crumples so he must be carried from the ballroom. Cordelia, dragged along behind and protesting all the way, finds herself drained of sympathy. She wants to shout at him, to rail, pull a response from him, but he has left her to face this shame on her own.

As they pass through the crush, people step away as if a stench has attached itself to the Parsifals. Cordelia hears the whispers, the snippets that cut like cold winds, like sharp knives: financial problems, lost his edge, murders, living beyond their means, thieves, shame, driven to it by her demands.

And then out the doors they’d so recently entered in triumph, taken across the courtyard with its frozen air, marched over the uneven flagstones to the entrance of the palace gaol. Snow and sleet come down hard, chilling them, marking them. The dread iron gate is opened, then closed behind them with a terrible clang, and in a dingy chamber rough men strip them of all belongings but their clothing. The cool absence of the necklace makes her flesh burn. Next it is down, down, a’down into the dungeons that stretch beneath the city. It is barely warmer here than in the winter wind outside. They are delivered to separate cells so far from each other that even if he would answer her cries, Edvard could not hear them.

It is almost a week before Cordelia sees anyone other the gaoler and his hateful wife. That woman brings her stale bread, stew that smells richly of ferment—of which Cordelia eats no more than she must—and water that is sometimes fresh, most often not, but cannot be ignored. Though she isn’t supposed to talk to the prisoner, Mistress Lamb does for the first few days, taking time to spout spite as she shoves the food through the bars, happy to see someone like Cordelia fallen so far, so fast.

The pieces have been put together, she says with glee. The broadsheets have traced the coincidence of the Parsifals’ waning finances with the spate of robberies. No one, of course, believes her guilty of being but an accessory—anyone who knows Cordelia Parsifal swears she’s too dim to think up anything so devilish clever. But then equally, the woman continues, no one believes she did not know what he did. No one believes a husband wouldn’t confide his deepest failures, his darkest solutions, to the woman he loved, and their devotion is well known, sneers the gaoler’s helpmeet.

But why? asks Cordelia when she can get a word in edgeways, Why would we do all this and then flaunt the spoils in such a stupid manner?

Oh, she says, the penny-papers know that’s where they ran aground! The necklace was new, assumed unseen by anyone but the dead. Edvard rashly, arrogantly, presented it to her. How fortuitous that Mrs Considine—wonderful woman, devoted friend—had been shown the thing by poor Mrs Agnew!

Where are my children? asks Cordelia, over and over, never getting an answer, but it does not stop her asking again.

By the third day, though, the goodwife has worn out her bile, and even in her malicious stupidity she realises that Cordelia’s hurt bewilderment is not an act; no mummer, this sad and terrified captive. She has stopped spitting in the water and simply hands over the meals, although their quality remains unimproved. And still Cordelia has seen no one, no lawyer, no representative of the courts, no friend or acquaintance, no priest to offer succour or damn her soul, not even Mr Farringdale—who could surely clear up any financial questions!—has come. No one has formally presented the charges to her, though she cannot help but know of what she is accused. She’s wondered if all matters have simply been addressed to Edvard, if she’s been wrong in her anger towards him; if her husband is negotiating—nay, fighting for—their futures. Their lives.

On the sixth day, when the gaoler’s wife brings the morning repast, she also leads in Bethany and Cordelia dares to hope.

“Bethany! Are the children all right? Are they safe?”

“They are safe, sister, never fear. I have the care of them.”

The tears she’s held in—even two days ago when she began to bleed and cramp, and knew the child—suddenly, strangely precious—was gone—spring at last. Cordelia’s heart, so battered and bruised, leaps, certain somehow that she is saved.

But Bethany’s mournful expression tells her soon enough that this is not over. They hold hands through the bars, and sink to sit: Cordelia on filthy straw, Bethany on cold stone flags. The goodwife watches for a few long moments, then shuffles away. From her beaded velvet purse, Bethany pulls a wrapped napkin and passes it over. Knowing that the children are in no danger makes Cordelia ravenous, and she wolfs the smuggled pastries so quickly that she feels sick.

“Have you seen Edvard?” she asks, watching greedily as Bethany hands her another napkin, more pastries. “Has he spoken to the lawyers? To Mr Farringdale? How much longer will this misunderstanding go on? I simply don’t understand, Bethany, how it happened, why Bella would say such a thing.”

“Dellie, you must prepare yourself. Life is going to be very different.”

“It will take a long time for us to live down the humiliation, certainly. But once we’re released, once people realise this has all been a terrible mistake . . . ” she takes a sharp breath. “A trial . . . ”

“There will be no trial, Cordelia,” Bethany says. “There will be no public shaming—or at least nothing worse than there has already been.”

“We may be grateful for that small mercy then.”

“But they say there must be seen to be a reckoning.”

“But we are innocent! Bethany, you know we are!”

“Yes, sister, I know you are. But . . . ”

“What of Edvard and Mr Farringdale? Are they not mounting a defence? Edvard was with me on the night the Agnews were killed.”

“Ah, but you would say that, wouldn’t you?” Bethany’s eyes are weirdly bright, then she looks away. “Or that is what they will say—and the newsmen have already judged you—what dutiful wife wouldn’t lie for her husband? And they consider you a dutiful wife, Cordelia, if a stupid one. They think you merely obeyed your master’s wishes.”

“But what about Edvard? What has he told them?”

Bethany pauses, as if choosing her words carefully to spare feelings, then realises that there is no gentle way forward. “Dellie, my dear, your Edvard is dead.”

Seeing incomprehension, she goes on, kindly, “He took his own life, hung himself.” She points to the wall behind Cordelia where there are metal shackles set high, but not so high that a man of Edvard’s height couldn’t reach to loop his own belt, then wrap it around his neck and lean forward slowly, oh so slowly, until all his breath was gone in a terrible, slow asphyxiation. “It’s as good a confession as anything, Cordelia. He gave up his right to defend himself—and you.”

Edvard is gone. He’s left her alone, alone in this hole, in this morass. Her husband, her protector, the man who could not bear to allow her a speck of independence, is no longer here—by his own choice.

“He was weak, sister, like they all are: with fortune frittered away, he was a failure as businessman, husband, and father.” There is a flash of contempt, quickly covered, as if she realises now is not the time. “And all the humiliation of the past days, having everyone who counts think he’s a thief and a murderer . . . ”

“But you do not, do you?” asks Cordelia quietly.

“Of course not. But with his money gone through bad investment, wasted on foolish ventures it certainly makes him look guilty. For God’s sake, Dellie, he was the only man not to make a profit from the Antiphon venture!” Bethany says in disgust and the comment hooks into Cordelia’s memory; she begins to think, trying to swim through the numbness. She is not really listening.

“I have some money put aside, I can take care of the children. Henry can still go to university. I will teach Victoria to be self-sufficient. And Torben will learn to grow up soon enough.”

“How did you know about Antiphon?” asks Cordelia.

Bethany pauses, thinks, answers, “Edvard told me.”

“No, he didn’t,” Cordelia says. “He didn’t. He didn’t tell me, he certainly wouldn’t have told you. I heard them talking at the Ball: everyone else made money, but he seemed to think we had not.”

Bethany remains silent.

“The woman here tells me we’d been having financial problems, problems Edvard never mentioned.”

Her sister’s face freezes, as if she’s deciding what to do, then she finally smiles: the deception is no longer worth her effort. The mask peels away, leaving the true Bethany utterly unveiled before her, the Bethany Cordelia has only glimpsed as if in a bad dream.

“Oh, sister,” she pleads, “what have you done?”

“What I wanted to.”

“Why, Bethany? We never refused you anything!”

“I lived as a beggar in your house! Everything I had I had to ask for—you gave me nothing of my own! Always let me live on your charity.”

Cordelia’s mouth moves, but no sound comes.

“So I started taking what I needed at first, then what I wanted. Others have been willing to help . . . and those who were not were easily enough disposed of.”

“That boy . . . ”

“A pretty distraction, useful until he got squeamish, until your Merry maid gave him a conscience. He didn’t want to . . . ” says Bethany, almost reluctantly. She looks at Cordelia, shakes her head, and repeats, “He didn’t want to hurt them. Wasn’t averse to stealing, but he lacked the backbone to kill, even though leaving them alive would mean our discovery. Men are weak like that.”

“You gave Edvard the necklace. You stole it from the Agnews, murdered them . . . ”

“He told me to find something special for you. Fool. Didn’t ask where I’d found it, didn’t question the amount I demanded.”

“He set aside his pride, asked for your aid. He opened his home to you and you . . . ” Cordelia seems to feel the sticky warmth of Odela Agnew’s blood on her neck where her jewellery had once sat. “How did you . . . how did you take our money? He’d not have asked your advice about investments . . . ”

“Mr Farringdale can be most accommodating when given the right incentive.”

“Mr Farringdale . . . ”

“I have found, sister, that once you discover someone’s secrets you hold their heart in your hand.”

Cordelia thinks of Mr Farringdale and his spurned suit, his hopes and heartache; how long has Bethany strung him along? What promises has she made that he would betray his employer? “My children—”

“—will be safe so long as you are compliant. I have enough money to save the house, indeed, to buy up all those buildings Edvard owned and rented out to butchers and bakers and candlestick makers!—they will be sold cheaply to get rid of them, to wipe out the shame. Mr Farringdale will kindly see to that.”

“Why would he—”

“Have you ever been to an orphanage? Have you visited the one in this fair city?” Bethany rocks back a little as if easing the stiffness of sitting on the floor. “Oh, I know Edvard gives—gave—regular donations, but I don’t think either of you ever actually went to see the conditions. Of course, it is considerably better than the place you left me for over a year.”

“We came and got you! As soon as we knew what had happened we came! As soon as we could.”

“But you didn’t, did you? You didn’t come. You sent Mr Farringdale, didn’t you? Thin, yearning Mr Farringdale, with his darkest of desires, desires that could only be sated on a child . . . but you sent him.” She gives a bitter laugh. “Oh sweet sister, how innocent you are. Now consider Victoria: she’s older than I was when he came for me . . . perhaps she’ll be safer.” There is a moment when every particle of Bethany’s hurt, her agony, shows in her eyes, and Cordelia thinks the girl might cry; she reaches a hand to her sister, all scratches and grimy nails. Bethany pulls away, straightens.

“Bethany, I’m so—”

“Don’t say you’re sorry, sister, it’s far too little, too late,” she quietly says, then hisses, “Bad enough you left me with Mother in the first place! Bad enough you took Mrs Bell with you when you left, took away the only person who might have protected me!”

Tears pours down Cordelia’s cheeks, washing through the filth. She thinks on her own hours locked in the cupboard by their mother, learning hard lessons that made her only too glad to escape . . . not caring who she left behind, not caring that whatever she escaped would be visited on her sibling. She takes in the change in Bethany’s face, the expression that says her sister is an empty shell hollowed out by her past, eternally washed through by need and greed; a shell that can never be filled. There is a light in her eyes that says her steps across the precipice have been taken, that she’s chosen the dark over the light.

“And when—oh when, sister!—I at last arrived here what did I find but that you’d all but adopted Mrs Bell’s bastard daughter! Don’t look like that, Dellie. What an idiot you are: can you not see it in their faces? Their eyes? That little nose with its tilt? Oh, you’re so blind you deserve everything that happens to you!” Bethany sits back from the bars, shaking, and Cordelia isn’t certain whether it is from laughter, sadness or hatred, or perhaps some strange mix of all three. “You’d taken in that little accident, that stray, that base-born by-blow, and left me to the tender mercies of Mother, then Mr Farringdale!”

“Oh, Bethany, I’ll tell. I’m going to tell.” But Cordelia is trembling, rocked by her sister’s revelations and betrayal, by her own crushing guilt.

Bethany shakes her head a little sadly. “No, you won’t, Cordelia. You really won’t.”

“I will shout until someone listens. Edvard still has friends, influential friends—”

“Edvard is dead, sister. He is a disgrace; all those friends have distanced themselves from you both.” She smiles, as if reasonable.

“Mrs Bell—”

“Is gone, sister, as is Merry. Clever tarts, scarpering like that.” She laughs, mirthless.

“The brooch . . . ” says Cordelia, wishing she could apologise to Merry for every ill thought she’d ever had about her. Feeling the loss of her and Mrs B almost as keenly as that of her children.

Bethany’s eyes are lit with malevolence as she answers obliquely, “Little sweet thing with her principles. The moment Japheth set eyes on her, spoke with her, he turned soft. He was as bad as you, setting me aside for Merry.”

“It wasn’t enough to take him from her?”

“It’s never enough, sister!” shouts Bethany, spittle shooting from between her lips to splash hot on Cordelia’s hand. Then she calms down, takes a deep breath. “You are utterly without allies. Everything you once had is mine. Now, think on this: what will you do to keep your children from harm?”

Cordelia says nothing, feels ice forming in her throat.

“Your husband took the easy way out. Perhaps you might do the same? A strip from the hem of your gown would be a tidy noose. No? Then as I said, there must be a public shaming, justice must be seen to be done. If you confess to being Edvard’s accomplice, I will take care of your children. Keep your mouth shut, sister, and your babies will be safe.”

Cordelia stares at Bethany, trying in vain to see the little girl who’d come to live with her so long ago. She thinks of Merry rubbing salt into the doorstep to keep wickedness at bay, all for naught when they didn’t know the wickedness was already inside the house.

Bethany leans forward again, her voice soft. “One word out of place and I will drown the little darlings, I promise you. It won’t matter if anyone believes you because by then your darlings will be dead, I swear.” She fixes Cordelia with a hateful glare and speaks in a clipped fashion. “The prince has agreed: one year in the Rosebery hulks if you confess. Not such a long time. One year and your sweetings returned to you. What do you think, Cordelia? Willing to risk it?”

Before dawn, Cordelia is woken and her dress, now a ruined purple rag, is taken and in its place she is given a bleached calico shift, rough and itchy, and a coarse woollen cape too short to offer any real warmth. Other women are led up from the depths beneath Cordelia’s cell, and she is chained to them. Their ankles are fitted with shackles already speckled with rust and dried blood, which immediately bite into tender flesh, drawing new vital fluid to add to the old. Cordelia, eyes grainy with an excess of tears and a lack of sleep, not to mention the dust that rises constantly from the flaking stone walls and the straw on the floor of her cell, can feel only the sting of the rose tattoo they applied to her shoulder as soon as she gave her confession. Though the process took barely five minutes, the scarring burns constantly, as if the acid is daubed over and over.

The women, all twelve, are hustled out through the cobbled courtyard. As they wait to be loaded into an enclosed dray, Cordelia looks around, sees the portcullis, and in the voids between the metal latticework finds two faces, familiar and drawn: Mrs B and Merry. She’d know them anywhere though they’ve covered their bright hair with scarves and have thick travelling cloaks drawn around them. Both reach a hand through the bars as if to touch her, as if to throw something to her. Cordelia clasps her own hands and presses them to her heart; fights the urge to run to them, screaming questions, begging. Instead she nods, then the gaoler prods her in the back hard enough to leave a bruise, and she mounts the rickety stairs up into the body of the dray with thin wooden benches on either side, and only one window, set in the door, too high for any of the seated passengers to see much but the blue of the sky. Six a side, those at the farthest end must stretch their legs to accommodate the short reach of the shackles. Cordelia, at the end of the human chain and nearest the door, is spared that at least. The woman beside her has no front teeth and her breathing is harsh, the exhalations rotten. Two inmates across from her begin to talk, low voices, low words. They gossip because it makes them feel better, to know someone is worse off than they are.

“The rich ones got no guts, not strong enough to live through loss,” one says, and laughs to show she too has no front teeth.

“Position’s all they care about. When they lose their place on the ladder . . . ” the other shrugs, looks at Cordelia as if she knows who she is, leans in to speak directly to her. “Well, they’re brave enough to do their terrible deeds, but too weak to take responsibility for ’em.”

Cordelia merely stares. She stares so long that they become uncomfortable, they shift and shuffle, avoid her gaze, stop talking.

And though she wants to, she still does not fight. She does not scream or shout or leap to her feet. She feels instead a stiffening in her back, realises it’s the spine Bethany always said she’d lost. She knows pleas will fall on deaf ears, that no one will believe the tale she might tell. She does not fight because of her children, because in her silence lies their salvation.

So she says nothing, ignores the gibes and the acid-burn of the tattoo. She sways with the motion of the carriage, all the rattling, rolling, clattering way to Rosebery Bay. Three days with the other women and the smell they make, not allowed out for piss breaks except in the morning and the evening, fermenting in the back, the rank stench of body odour and shit and vomit.

All on the road to Rosebery Bay.

Cordelia dreams of the fire, of the warmth and the heat, of the sound of the logs as they crackle and burn and weaken, shifting as they become less solid. She dreams of the time that Henry once tucked chestnuts in the coals. In reality, they popped and exploded, giving all and sundry a fright. In her fancies one flies from the hearth, is propelled towards her skirt. The fine lace, highly flammable, takes the spark like a lover and the trail of flame speeds up her dress, up the bodice, then up the left sleeve. She uses her right hand to try to pat out the flickering red-gold, and succeeds only in burning her fingers. The dream-flames bite into her upper arm, her shoulder.

She does not like this fantasy—it is not the refuge she has come to expect, to desire, to need. She shakes herself awake and finds, much to her distress, that the flames have jumped the slender gap between sleeping and waking; she can see them through the barred window, an orange glow brightens her tiny cell despite the white-grey billowing in the passageway, trickling under her door. She has woken to shouts and cries and screams and coughs, but no sound of the turnkeys coming to release any of the women on this ship.

Cordelia curses, despairs that the smoke did not take her as soon as it could, that it did not kill her while nestled in the memories where she wished to lie. She backs into a corner, and the space she has just vacated is gradually filled again: at first there is ash, then cinders, then embers, and finally blackened and half-eaten planks as the ceiling caves in. She stares through the dust that shifts on the breeze, giving her glimpses of the open maw of the night sky, with its twinkling teeth of stars.

Freedom, above.

So far away.

Briefly she thinks of stepping into the smoke, breathing deeply. Or onto the flaming timbers that begin to crackle once again, slowly burning their way through the floor on which they’ve landed. Asphyxia or incineration are her only choices.

But no. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knows that if she’s survived everything thus far, she will not give up lightly. She pulls the thin straw-filled sack of a mattress from the bed she’s slept in all these months—not a proper bunk as she’s in one of the last cells to be added to this ship, which does not sail anywhere, so no care has been given to ensuring beds are nailed down and secure—and exposes the slats she feels against her bony back each night. Cordelia throws the mattress-sack away; it lands on the pile of planks and the fire grows large with new fodder. She heaves the rickety frame onto its short end and prays it will be strong enough and long enough.

As she steps to the first rung, her skirt kicks back with the movement and brushes against the inferno of the mattress. The line of flame she’d only imagined becomes a reality, leaping up her poor calico gown, strangely focused as it moves to her left forearm, upper arm, shoulder, nibbles at her hair. She hears the creaking and complaining of the ship as its body is consumed and in the coldest part of her brain she knows that if she stops to swat the flares, she will surely die; she will lose her chance, her momentum, her precious few seconds to get out.

A burning brand of a woman, she scampers up her makeshift ladder, and scrambles onto the deck, which is beginning to tilt. The flames on her shoulder are eating, eating, eating at the rose tattoo that was put there to show her as a thief, a sneak, a convict, a murderer for all they said “accessory.” It scorches like the acid used to etch the design there in the first place. She bats at the tiny, deadly flashes as her eyes take in the swaying masts, the last of the dirty canvas sails, that are orange then black, then crumble in the wind. She wheels and turns like a dancing doll, out of control, turning in a decaying spiral that finally sees her at the rails. She hits the strakes, loses her balance, and pitches headfirst over the side.

For moments she is free, she flies, the fire seems to pull away from her and her skin does not know that it’s been hurt, then the waters of Rosebery Bay meet her, hard black glass. At first she is against it, then she is through it, and finally she is lost, travelling a’down, a’down, a’down, farther and farther from the dark sky and its starry teeth. Farther and farther, to where dreams no longer live.

A’down, a’down, a’down, and Cordelia Parsifal, wife, mother, sister, tallow-wife, lets go of all that she is, of all that she has been. She is free, suddenly light, spinning away as if a great pressure had been released . . . yet in a moment there is a change, vital and irresistible. She hears the voice of the woman in the prison coach, her sly dig that The rich ones got no backbone, not strong enough to live through loss. Something finds her, pulls at her, drags her back to her body, insists her spirit remain.

She does not have the energy to fight life anymore than she did death. The impulse will not let her go, it takes possession of her limbs, her aching arms and legs, and makes them move, kick and stroke, kick and stroke, kick and stroke.

Up and up and up. Above her the surface of the water is silver and midnight blue, where the moon sits and waits for her return. Waits for her to make herself anew.