My steps are heavy as I go up to the attic; I’ve not been here before, there’s been no need. Checking on Luned means I don’t have to think about Leonora and Albertine, at least not yet. The girl doesn’t answer when I knock. I put my ear to the wood, hear the sounds of harsh breathing, grunts and groans. If I didn’t know Luther was away I might simply turn and leave. So, I open the door and peer inside.
‘Luned? Luned, are you well?’
The small room is close and the air stinks of blood and excrement. Dormer windows with drawn curtains, a fire barely breathing in the hearth, a chest of drawers, a tiny desk, and a narrow bed in the far back corner. I can make out a tangle of white sheets; there are blankets on the floor. I lift the lantern high, then approach the bed.
Luned lies in a mess of linen and bodily fluids; a slim young woman, her stomach is distended. Not hugely, but she’s much further along than she admitted. Three months, maybe four. A corset’s amongst a pile of clothes on a chair by the bed – it’s been wrapped tight about her day in, day out, to hide any swelling that might be noticed by a sharp-eyed Mrs Charlton or Tib Postlethwaite – or even Leonora if she took a moment to notice a servant. Luther… Luther wouldn’t notice for a while longer; might tell her she’s getting fat without twigging. But one thing’s for sure: she’s too far along for the mix I gave her to be at all gentle. At this point it’ll be death for her as well if she’s not tended.
‘You stupid girl,’ I whisper. I pull her up onto the pillows, tidy the bed as well as I can, all the while she hisses profanities at me because I’ve found her like this.
‘I’d rather die than to have to thank you,’ she grunts.
‘I can leave you here, Luned, if that’s what you want. If you want to die in your own blood and shit and piss. Die here and let Burdon find you in the morning when he realises you’ve not done your duties. Find you like this and you’ll be six feet beneath the earth by the time Luther Morwood comes home and starts to look for his next silly little whore.’ My voice breaks a little on that last word. I’m meaner than I might be because I’m scared and tired and stretched to my final nerve. ‘You,’ I tell her, ‘are the last thing I feel like taking care of, so what’s it to be?’
She sobs. ‘Help me.’
I pour a glass of water for her from the carafe that’s located on the desk – not within easy reach – and hold it to her lips. When she’s done, I say, ‘Wait here.’
‘Where the fuck else am I going to go?’ she spits then begins another series of moans and grunts that she swallows – Burdon’s room is on this level, at the far end of the attic. Hopefully he’s already in the embrace of his favourite brandy.
In the kitchen I fill a ewer of hot water, take an armful of sheets and rags from the laundry room, then to my own room to gather my satchel and its potions and powders. Back up the stairs as fast as I can.
Luned’s gritting her teeth – I hand her a flat piece of wood. ‘Bite down on it. You’re too far along – you’re already in labour. Stop fighting because it’s coming out one way or another.’
I’ll give it her: she didn’t scream once, not even as she tore. Not even as the little scrap (with those few strands of bright red hair) slid out into the world. Not even when she asked me in a ragged voice if the child breathed and I said No. I wrapped it gently and held it out to her. She wouldn’t look. It was so warm in my hands, this small thing who shared my blood, her blood.
‘You’ll regret it,’ I said. ‘Not now, perhaps not for weeks or months, even a year. But you will at some point. You’ll regret not holding it. You’ll always remember that you didn’t do that. I’ve seen it time and again. You might not want the child, but you will regret this.’
Reluctantly she accepted, let it rest against her chest. I watched a while and could barely breathe for the lump in my throat for someone I didn’t like and a child I’d helped to get rid of. But she hadn’t been wrong. Luther would have set her aside the way he had every other woman in the Tarn who’d been fool enough to lie with him. She’d have gone back to her mother’s inn in shame, tied there forever.
While she’s holding the child, I stitch her up, make sure she won’t bleed to death in the night. I think about what I could take – birth blood, the sac, the first-last breath if it had been alive – things to use in dark magics, things hard to find, things I do not want. Luned’s breath hitches as I apply a poultice, then I make her drink a mixture to fight off a fever from childbed, yet another to make her sleep. I help her into the chair while I remake the bed with clean sheets, wash her down as best I can with a cloth, put her into a fresh nightgown and settle her back under the covers. I pour her another glass of water, leave it and the carafe on the small bedside table. I open a window so fresh cold air flows in, then I build up the fire, and when it’s blazing I put the ruined sheets on top. They begin to smoulder, still damp, and so I do something Luned can’t see, something I couldn’t in the surgery when Leonora Morwood watched: I whisper a word and a wish, twitch my fingers, and the flames blaze up, eat the sheets in a trice.
When she’s ready, I take the baby from her. ‘I’ll tell you where it lies.’
‘Don’t.’ She shakes her head. ‘I don’t want to know.’
In the time it takes for me to nod, Luned’s eyes are closed, either already asleep or pretending so she doesn’t have to watch me leave with her child.
* * *
I find a shovel in the stables then, out behind the surgery, I bury the remains. The earth is winter-hard but I persevere, digging the grave not far from where I buried the fox all those nights ago – why does it feel like a lifetime? In spring, I think, I’ll plant lavender over the grave – then I remember I won’t be here. I’ll not throw it away like Archie. I’d say a prayer if I had any to give, but I don’t so I just say I’m sorry.
I return the shovel to the stables, then go to Eli’s cottage. He’s already asleep when I arrive, but he wakes as I slip naked into bed beside him. ‘Shit, you’re cold.’
‘Warm me.’
* * *
In the morning, I don’t rush. I roll over, touch his face. Listen to the noise his stubble makes beneath my fingers, scratch him like he’s a dog until he wakes. He growls, ‘I’ll bite you,’ but smiles as he says it. I slither on top of him and wake him properly.
When we’re done, I nestle in his arms, run my finger along the healing scar I gave him.
He grins. ‘My aunt says you’re dangerous.’
‘I thought you were alone in the world. You said you were the last of the line.’ I prop myself on one elbow, look into his face.
‘The last of the blood, I believe, was the phrase.’
‘Semantics.’ I poke his ribs. He grunts. ‘Who is your aunt, then?’
‘Aunt Tib.’ The grin fades. He gently touches the fading bruise on my temple.
That explains some of her hostility. She thinks I’ll hurt her boy; she’s not stupid. ‘Ah.’
‘Don’t worry, she didn’t like the previous governess, either.’ He puts his hands behind his head and I swing out of bed, begin looking for my clothes. When my expression is neutral, I turn back.
‘Why didn’t Aunt Tib like my predecessor? Does she simply suspect every young woman of setting her cap at you?’ My fingers fumble at the buttons of my skirt.
‘She said the girl was uppity.’
That’s more than possible. I think of Mater Hardgrace and her manners – all learned, all better than her beginnings, all to impress her clients. She’d have passed them onto her niece. And Miss Hilarie Beckwith might have made the mistake of thinking she could get away with being rude to anyone she considered beneath her. A shiver of guilt goes through me: I was meant to be looking for her, discovering her fate so I could write Mater Hardgrace before I disappeared and set her mind at rest; whether good news or bad, at least she would know. But I’ve been too busy pursuing my own course.
‘How long did she last, Eli?’
He answers without hesitation. ‘Not long. Two weeks, perhaps? Then she turned around and left. Family emergency Mrs Charlton said.’ He shrugs. ‘Asked for her bags to be sent on, she was in that much of a hurry. I dropped them at the inn to be put on the next carriage to Whitebarrow.’
‘Oh.’
He watches me dress. ‘Did you know her?’
‘No,’ I say quite truthfully. And I know that no baggage was ever returned to Mater Hardgrace’s Academy because the principal herself told me. All she’d ever had was a letter from Leonora saying that the girl had proved flighty and left. No one’s told Eli to keep this knowledge to himself. I’ll ask no more questions, it would draw attention. But I wonder if Archie’s things will disappear the same way the governess’s did?
* * *
After dinner, Leonora hands me an envelope and tells me it’s to go to Zaria Taverell first thing in the morning. I do not point out that she is becoming very cavalier with the children’s education – I might be a pretend governess, but I’ve always taken the job seriously. If nothing else comes of this adventure, at least the Morwood children would have learned something – hopefully not simply to distrust governesses.
I nod and say Of course. When I’ve herded the children to their beds and read a story, I go up to the attic. Luned’s not eaten the soup I brought earlier, so I sit and spoon-feed her. She doesn’t mention the child, doesn’t ask where it sleeps, and I don’t bring it up. I give her more medicine, change her nightgown again, empty the chamber pot.
As I’m leaving, she says almost in a whisper, ‘Why are you doing this?’
And I say, as truthfully as I can, ‘I don’t know.’
* * *
Later still, when the house is entirely quiet, I go to my mother’s room and open the door. I’m careful not to disturb the salt crystals. She’s sitting by the window still. I wonder if she’s been there ever since I locked her in.
‘Hello, Mother.’ I sit on the edge of the dusty bed again and look at her. I could never watch her enough when I was a child, she was so beautiful. Sometimes she’d get annoyed, then angry, but I couldn’t help myself. Who wouldn’t want to gaze upon such perfection, something that rewarded the eye so?
I don’t want to stare at her now; she’s not the lovely girl in the portrait Leonora keeps hidden in her room. She’s the woman who died screaming and gasping for air, in a sack of a nightgown, her hair wild. And she’s not solid – I can see through her to the chair she’s sitting on, to the wall she’s in front of. The spectral bones of her face still show a hint of what was there, the architecture of her loveliness, but it’s been eroded by the pain of her last years and, of course, death.
But after her passing, she was not gone from me. Her ghost – this thing before me – shared the boarding room with me, my own special little haunt, voiceless, aimless, waiting for me to do as I’d promised. Staring her reproach at me. And when I moved into Archie’s fancy house, she followed me soon enough, took up residence in the attic there; sometimes I’d wake to find her watching me as I slept. Archie never saw her, sometimes would simply walk through her, disrupting the substance of her as though she was nothing more than a fog he might encounter on the street. I always found it interesting that he had no sense for anything eldritch – a ghost lived in his house! – yet he believed utterly in me and my ability to make something magical happen.
‘Do you remember, Mother? The day you died? Do you remember the days before it? The promises you wrung from me?’ Heloise looks at me. I wonder, Does she even understand? She’s just a ghost, a thin skin left behind; sometimes they are powerful things, sometimes there’s a something left clinging to them – it depends on the circumstances of their life and death, the strength of the person, the determination – and with a skerrick of soul still in place such a spectre is more… themself. But she’s just an echo left behind with enough spite to target the weakest person in the house, poor Jessamine. I whisper, ‘Do you remember, Heloise?’
She turns away, attention back out the window.
I stare at her for a while longer – so I recollect, recall, everything – because soon enough she’ll be gone.