24

February 1644

North Norfolk

The journey north was interminable. Milton rode a small white mare, slower than Ben, and carried side satchels crammed with books and papers, food enough to feed a regiment, and several bottles of good wine. I bit back comments about travelling fast and light. He was willing to come, that was all that mattered, and for the first time since I had encountered the mutilated remains of my father’s flock, we were moving forward. Still, I was horrified by any delay. Milton, being older and no longer in the best of health, could not ride from dawn to dusk. Yet, desperate to see familiar spires and woods about me, I entreated him to eat and drink in the saddle, to go on just that little bit longer before stopping for sleep. We could not afford to squander a moment.

The intimacy of the library, the near friendliness I had experienced from my old tutor, pursuing a shared goal in the company of old books and a high fire, had evaporated. Milton appeared deep in thought, and spoke little as we rode. When I tried to talk of Esther, or the creature, he wished to talk of other things, and we did: the war, Parliament, and Milton’s travels on the Continent.

‘You truly met Galileo?’ I said, awestruck.

‘Yes. First, of course, I met his son, Vincenzo. The son introduced me to the father.’

‘And Galileo was imprisoned for heresy?’

‘Oh, yes. He was a very great heretic. His son was a talented lute player,’ he added, in the mildest of tones.

My mind staggered at the idea of meeting such intellectual giants, the celebrated geniuses of Florence and Rome. ‘It was his contention, was it not, sir, that the Earth revolves around the Sun, rather than the other way about?’

‘It was,’ came the answer, as though this were no very great matter.

‘What do you think of that?’

Milton drew to a halt. We were at a crossroads. ‘I do not know these roads,’ he said. ‘Which way is north-east?’

It was still early, and the sky was lit by stars and moon. Looking up, I could see the pattern of the Plough in the Great Bear, showing the way to the North Star. I pointed, quickly, north-east. ‘That way,’ I said.

‘Then let us be about it,’ said Milton, digging in his heels and picking up the pace. I shook my head as I followed, reminded of Milton’s worst habit – that of not quite answering a question put to him, and expecting the listener to know what he meant anyway.

It took five days to get to Norfolk, and by the time we approached Worstead, the middle days of February were upon us. Milton showed pleasure at sights he had seen before, remarking on the prosperous old churches and weavers’ hamlets that lined the way back to the farm. Here, thankfully, there were few signs of the war; it felt much as it always had – peaceful, sedate, unchanging.

Yet, as we passed St Walstan’s, I grew ever more wary. I had carried my nerves close on the journey, but now we were so near home I could not dispel the thought that something had gone wrong, that I had been foolish to leave Mary and Henry for so long. I could not stop picturing Esther waking up, escaping her bonds, or – and I did not know which was worse – her body reacting badly to a dose of the dwale.

But as we approached the house, a figure stood in the doorway, tall, wearing a striped gown and apron, dark hair pinned neatly, and no cap. Mary watched quietly as we directed the horses up the path. I met her eyes as I dismounted, and was aware again of what I had been able to forget in Milton’s company: the fear, the dark circles beneath her eyes, the strain in the set of her mouth. I wanted to run to her and take her in my arms, take the fear from her in any way I could. I wanted to sink to my knees and feel her long arms about my head and neck, to rest on the softness of her stomach. I wanted to sleep beside her, a deep sleep, clouded by no dreams.

Milton, dismounting, had a small smile on his face as he saw Mary, and watched me watching her.

‘Mary, this is Mr Milton,’ I said. ‘My old tutor.’

‘Sir,’ Mary said. ‘Thank you for coming here.’

‘Good morning, Mary,’ said Milton.

‘Is Esther…?’ I asked.

‘She still sleeps,’ said Mary.

‘We must cease giving her the sedative at once,’ frowned Milton, picking a stray hair out of the pottage in front of him and trying to wipe it on the linen without Mary seeing. ‘It is the only way we shall reach the truth of what it is, of what has possessed her.’

I hesitated as Mary turned from the stove with freshly baked, black-topped bread. It thumped as it hit the table. I smiled encouragingly. She did not smile back, and looked unhappy. ‘The drug has worked so far,’ she said. ‘She has not stirred since we began to administer it. Even Henry has been prepared to remain in the house without further fear, but that will change if she wakes.’

Henry certainly seemed more confident. He had assisted Mary in preparing a meal, gulped his own food down and now was in what seemed to be his favourite place: the stables, where he had offered to feed and brush down the horses while the adults talked.

‘That is so. And yet her body will be building a tolerance to its agents,’ Milton advised. ‘Soon more and more will be required to achieve the same result, and then there will be no amount which will do so short of killing her.’

Their eyes came to rest on me. It was my decision. I reached for the bread, cutting a thick slice, smearing it with too much butter to compensate for the charcoal taste. As I ate, I kept my eyes on the table, thinking Mary was right; it was dangerous to wake Esther, and the drug was doing the job it had been designed for. But equally, we could not leave her under its influence forever. In the end, it would threaten her life. And what sort of life would it be anyway, caught in perpetual sleep, never to see the sun or feel the wind on her face?

I addressed Milton. ‘Do you think we can make any difference by speaking with it, sir?’

Milton shook his head. ‘I cannot say. I do not wish to raise any hopes.’ But he could not disguise the lustre behind his eyes: here was knowledge, here was the possibility for discovery.

I turned back to Mary. ‘You have given me more than I could have asked, by caring for my sister in my absence. Most would have run from this. You have earnt the right to speak your mind. What, in your opinion, should I do?’

She seemed to waver, and I saw her bite back her instinctive response. What was she thinking? That an overdose of the drug would allow Esther to slip away, painlessly? That, dead, she could present no further danger? That I was a fool to risk all our lives, and who knew how many others, just to save one young woman who was not even my sister?

She sighed. ‘You must try,’ she admitted, and I breathed again. She saw my relief, and a smile, very slight, appeared at the corners of her mouth. I smiled back.

Milton coughed. ‘Then we are agreed? We will cease the delivery of the drug and, when she comes fully round, approach her?’ I nodded. ‘And which of us will be present? I would very much like it if I…’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You will be there, sir. I will need you in this.’ Milton looked relieved. I turned to Mary. ‘But I do not want Henry here when this happens, so you cannot be here either.’ She started to object. ‘I know,’ I interrupted. ‘You have done more than any of us – so long alone with her, and caring for Henry and this house, too. But now I must insist on Henry’s safety. I would ask you to take him and shelter in the church – there’s said to be a priest’s shelter in the tower, through the vestry, and nobody will know you are there – until we come for you. Until we know, one way or another, what we deal with, and what we must do to overcome it.’

Reluctantly, she agreed. Did she know that my fear was for her, as much as for her brother? I couldn’t bear the thought of harm coming to her.

Milton rose, dabbing the unpalatable stew from the sides of his mouth with a linen square. ‘I will visit the privy,’ he said. ‘Then we will see her, and guess how long it might be before she wakes.’

Alone with Mary, I thanked her for the meal, but didn’t compliment it; she was, truly, a terrible cook. She made faces as she ate from her own bowl and, after a failed attempt to finish it, pushed it away, laughing. ‘I never had much opportunity to learn,’ she said. ‘Henry has a better grasp of the art than I.’

‘And I. He’s a good boy,’ I said. ‘And his life has been hard.’

More soberly, Mary nodded. ‘It is of great regret to me that I have not been able to give him something better.’ She looked about the kitchen. ‘He likes it here, even given what we face.’

I watched as she began clearing the bowls and spoons. I should have been helping, but allowed myself the brief luxury of thinking forwards, to the years ahead, perhaps, with Mary still here, moving around this table, but this being her kitchen, now, and several energetic forms crowding about her feet. She would bend down, and her dark hair would fall like a velvet curtain, caressing the cheek of a toddling child as she rose with it in her arms, kissing it. She would hand me the child and I would feel the passing touch of her fingers like lightning.

Beneath that, like a sea-siren, another image was rising. A ship, huge, and pitching on wind-roused waves. As if my mind’s eye could see through the boat’s hull, I peeped inside, and there we were, like a set of tiny dolls: Mary, Henry, Esther and I, the demon banished, England behind us, the prow set for the New World. From somewhere in the darkness came the sweetness of a psalm, sung as the night watch was set. Esther held her hymnal close and Henry sat on my knee, a little seasick, as his sister spoke to him of the adventures we would have, and how he would have a horse of his very own. I turned to Mary in the half-light, took her hand in my own, and kissed her…

I stopped. Foolish imaginings, I scolded myself. This was a cursed house, and if I could keep Mary in it another day, I would be lucky.

I realised she was speaking to me, that she had said my name more than once. I started, embarrassed by my fantasies. ‘Forgive me. I was caught by my thoughts.’ For a moment she looked curious, and I believed she would ask about them, but she did not.

As Mary and Henry put together their few possessions, some water and a little food, and left to seek shelter for the night in the church, Milton and I mounted the stairs.

Mary said Esther had not stirred at all since being fed the dwale, so there seemed no reason now to lock or close the door.

The liquid had been given daily, along with water. After the first attempts at feeding her, Mary feared she would choke if she tried to force porridge or even a thin gruel down her throat. As a result, Esther’s body had begun to collapse in on itself. She appeared to shrink before my eyes. Her limbs, always slender, now resembled those of a newborn calf or deer – just bones and sockets. Her shoulders were tiny, like a small child’s, holding up a head that seemed to have ballooned to twice its former size. I pulled the covers up to warm her, or perhaps to distract myself from what I did not want to see.

‘It’s hard to believe such a face could disguise evil,’ Milton said, sitting in the chair by her bed.

‘It doesn’t,’ I said, firmly. ‘Esther is the sweetest of girls. A man could not wish for such a sister.’

Indeed, there was something saintly about Esther’s face now. It seemed to glow in the thin rays of the winter sun that lanced the little room like spears. Her hair shone in a halo around the pale repose of her head on the pillow. Her closed lids were lined with tiny blue veins that trembled with each breath. They might have been closed in prayer. I perceived that the thread-like veins glistened, and knew, now, that I was not imagining the smell of the sea around her: salt and wind and brine.

‘Do you think she dreams?’ I asked Milton.

‘Perhaps of Heaven,’ my tutor replied, softly, leaning forward to watch her more closely. ‘Or the motion of the spheres.’

While Esther dreamt, we waited. Outside, the sun had long attained its height and begun to fall before she breathed a little more lightly. Her hands stirred before the rest of her, the fingers gathering against the linen and leaping in tiny convulsions, minutes apart at first, then closer together, as if she returned to life just as something on the other side of the veil sought to keep her from us. I did not exhort her to wake. I did not know whether I truly wanted her to do so.

We had brought water and wine, and left a chamber pot just outside. I had explained to Milton what Not-Esther had done with Rutherford and the Gedge women, how the voice had twisted them to its will; we had decided neither one of us could be left in its conscious company without the other.

But Milton must have been growing bored. As the sun started to set, he stood and stretched his limbs and splashed his face with the warming water from the jug. He approached the window and peeped through the nailed planks on the outside, across the fields. ‘You can see the church from here,’ he commented. ‘Which is it?’

‘St Walstan’s,’ I said.

‘Ah. Patron saint of farmers and labourers. Not picklocks, though.’

I had told Milton about Mary during my initial telling of the story in Chalfonte, and now regretted it, but did not rise to the bait. ‘No, just farmers,’ I said.

‘Do you know my wife is called Mary, too?’

‘I did not know you had taken a wife,’ I lied.

‘Oh, certainly, you did,’ Milton answered, with a frown. ‘Mistress Bern is the greatest gossip in three counties.’

Not wishing to lie again, I said nothing.

‘And you know my Mary has left me,’ Milton continued. ‘Gone back to her people, at least until we see the outcome of this war.’

‘Will she come back?’

‘I do not know. Don’t marry, Thomas,’ he said, his face showing a rare flash of humour. But it was a hard humour, offering no reassurance that he did not mean it. ‘Far easier to be alone.’

‘My father said a good marriage is like having a constant song in one’s heart,’ I said, rubbing away a growing stiffness in my lower legs. How long had we been sat here? It felt like days.

‘Well, your father had sound taste in music,’ Milton said, dourly.

The matter that had lain silent for so long between us was surfacing. I could not help my next question. ‘I have wanted to know… Do you blame me for Elizabeth, sir? I could not fault you if you did.’

Milton seemed far more interested in the view from the window. His voice was unruffled as he eventually said, ‘We can blame no man for the plague. It is God’s will. She died because she had always been destined to die, and nothing you or I could have done would have changed that.’

‘But…’

At that moment, Esther made a small, gasping noise, like a kitten’s mewl. We turned to see her arching her back, clawing at the sheets with white-tipped fingers. She was in pain. I rushed to her side. ‘Esther!’ I pressed her hand, too hard, to see whether I might persuade her to open her eyes. In my heart bloomed the smallest of hopes: what if, when she woke, she was Esther again? My sister, pious and gentle, and entirely herself.

I held my breath. I was afraid as I touched her clammy skin, not knowing whether I touched her or something far more ancient, and more malevolent.

Milton stood back. His face betrayed his curiosity. I remembered that I had often found my tutor cold – Milton wanted to know, to discern truth, but often it was as if he himself were unaffected by what he discovered.

Slowly, Esther stirred from the land of dreams. Her lashes fluttered. She murmured something I could not hear.

‘Will she take water?’ Milton held the jug and a cup, which he now half-filled, pressing it into my hand.

I lifted the cup to my sister’s lips. She struggled to control her mouth and could barely hold her lips against the rim. This was how my father had concluded his days – chained in a second childhood.

But she was surfacing. She cleared her throat and accepted more water. Moment by moment, a shaky awareness returned to her expression. I could see no malice in her face. And, for a few wild, untethered beats of my heart, I wondered… Tremulously, I said, ‘Sister, it’s me. It’s Thomas.’

But when she spoke, it was in the voice I had dreaded, the voice that had turned my sleep to torment and my hopes to ashes. ‘Everything turns yellow. It is as if they look directly at the sun. Old and young burn to death, white bones are scattered over reddish rubble. The survivors cling to the earth and forget to cry. Autumn rain falls on a city of blood.’ She was hoarse from sleep and her breath foul. I squeezed my eyes closed, sagging so that my forehead touched her hand.

Milton moved closer. He was close enough to smell her, not just the watery scent of her, but the essence of stale sheets and uncleansed skin. He said, ‘What do you see?’

‘Everything,’ she – it – whispered. ‘The whole life of man.’ Her brow was tightened, crumpled with pain.

Milton’s voice throbbed. ‘You spoke of a city. Where is it?’

‘Do you like cities, John Milton?’

I heard a swift intake of breath. ‘Yes.’ I wanted to stop them, to call out an objection, to say that this exchange was not helping us discover what we did not already know.

It said, ‘I will show you a city rich with streets of trodden gold.’

‘Where?’

‘You would see it?’ came the quick reply.

‘I would see everything.’

‘Here, then. A foretasting of the darkness that waits for you.’

Esther flicked her free hand and though it rose just inches from the bed, Milton recoiled, lifting his clenched fists to shield his eyes. He cried out, pressing his hands into the sockets as if they had flooded with bile.

I released Esther and ran to Milton, who had fallen back into his seat. ‘What is it? John? What’s happening?’

He writhed, his mouth gaping and twisting. I gripped his shoulders and tried to still his struggles. ‘Speak!’ I commanded. But Milton could not speak. As I exerted all my force, pulling his hands away from his eyes, I saw they were staring and open, rolling back in their sockets, clouded over and corrupted. Milton was blind.

As I called his name over and over in an effort to calm him, I glanced back at the bed to see Esther’s reaction but instead saw only rumpled sheets. A half-second later, I heard the unmistakeable sound of the door closing, and a key turning in the lock.