ONE

‘Dearest Robert, I am alive …’

My head was throbbing, my pulse hammering in the bulge behind the top of my left ear. If I touched it, the area felt as hard as a tortoise’s shell, a mass of dried blood and hair. How long had it taken to dry out and harden? One day, two? The iron taste of blood was still in my mouth, or perhaps only a memory of it. This was like trying to set up signposts in the sea – a dark sea and blank signposts.

‘It’s implied. I’d hardly be writing if I weren’t alive.’

My voice seemed to be from another life – controlled, almost amused. I’d protested, just to hear myself say it, though I knew it would be no use.

‘Write what I tell you.’

A woman’s voice, authoritative and deep, but not ladylike. The sort of voice you might expect in a prison wardress. Forty or older. They’d had to bring in a candle so that I could write, so I could see more of her than before. She wore a black wool dress and an outdoor bonnet with a thick veil coming down over her face. The candle was a cheap one in an enamel holder and, after the near dark, the light of it was hurting my eyes, making my head throb more. It was beside me on the table where I was writing, with the sheet of paper on an old blotter. The woman and a man had carried in a small table and chair for me to write. Until then, the only furniture in the room had been a thin pallet by the wall. The chair was hard through my petticoat and my back ached. How long had I been curled on the pallet, unconscious or drifting in a semi-conscious haze, before they came and made me stand up? I had no idea. The woman stood just behind my shoulder. I turned suddenly, sending pain jabbing through my head, but managed to see a gleam of eyes through the veil, as intent as a robin’s on a worm. Her smell was old sweat, onions and a naphtha whiff of mothballs. So the black wool dress had been brought out of storage – it wasn’t her everyday wear. She might even be a man in disguise. She was tall and heavy enough, and the voice might have been put on. When I thought about it, the sweat had the sweetish candlewax smell of a man’s sweat. Or perhaps that really was the candlewax, or from the man standing behind my chair. I’d caught a glimpse of him in the candlelight before he moved behind me – younger than the woman, long black hair, a pale, intense face that might have been appropriate on a poet, and arched eyebrows. His boots squeaked, and the leather looked cheap and yellowish. New boots. In spite of myself, my mind was trying to get back to its own skills, but feebly and not usefully. The woman shifted to one side of me when she saw my eyes were on her, but I caught an impression of a forehead that bulged out like Minerva’s in a helmet on a statue. She went on dictating.

‘If you wish to see me again, tell nobody. You will be contacted by people who will tell you what to do.’

‘If you’re thinking of a ransom, you’ve chosen the wrong people,’ I said. ‘We’re not rich.’

Robert would pay every last penny we had, I knew that. Raise more from his brothers if necessary. Perhaps by some people’s standards we might even be considered quite rich, but not enough to make us victims of a simple kidnapping.

‘Write.’

I wrote. My left wrist, holding down the paper, was hurting. It must have been sprained when they attacked me. Did I have a memory of somebody grabbing it before the blow came? I couldn’t distinguish between real memory and my mind’s desperate attempts to put anything in place of the great blank. Unconnected scenes or bits of conversation had swum up to me when I was half-conscious, like fish behind glass, mouthing then finning away.

‘… Stood to reason, railway shares wouldn’t go on rising forever …’

A woman’s lower arm, white out of green silk. ‘More syllabub? The cream’s from the dearest little Jersey. Cook keeps her in the garden.’ Not a young arm; there were some faint brown age spots on the white.

Then a child’s face, pink and tearful. ‘Going out again. Always going out.’

Of course, we weren’t. It was our first evening out for ten days. I remembered counting with him. Harry could get up to ten, usually, but it didn’t pacify him.

The smell of leather. Where did that come from? No leather in this room. Was it leather upholstery in a coach they’d used to carry me away? I had a sudden memory of new red leather – a lot of it – but that couldn’t be anything to do with it, because how would I have known the colour? Insensible. Before they hit me, the man had said Harry had been taken ill. A lie to get me out of the house; I was sure now that he’d been lying. I’d had to ask him to repeat what he’d said because of the noise of dogs barking, several of them at the back of the house, and voices shouting. Then the blow and instant darkness, not even the sensation of falling, though I surely must have fallen.

‘Then sign it as you’d usually sign a letter to him.’

The voice had a strained quality. I hesitated. There were so many ways we signed off our letters – lovingly, jokingly, in haste. I wrote: With all my love, Libby. I could feel her eyes on me, then her hand came over, picked up the thin sheet of paper, pressed it face down on the blotter and snatched it away. Minerva, I’d call her. She went, taking the candle, and the poet followed her. They shut the door and one of them turned a key in the padlock. I knew it must be a padlock because it thumped back against the door once the key had been turned. They left me the table and chair. The two pairs of steps went only a short distance away, then another door opened. They weren’t far off. I could hear them moving about, just on the other side of the wall, a plain wall of vertical planks, roughly whitewashed. With the candle gone, I could just make out the colour of it, so a little light must be coming from somewhere, from up above me, I thought, but it hurt my head too much to look up. They might at least have helped me back on to the pallet so that I could curl up again and sleep. I had to do it myself with shaky legs, supporting my weight with a hand on the table, then something between a stagger and a fall on to the pallet. I was more feeble than a day-old pup. Helena and Harry kept bothering us for a puppy. I could think of them, imagine every detail of their faces down to the last hair of an eyebrow, but trying to remember anything else was like heaving a load up a hill. Perhaps I was in a basement. This wasn’t a large place, by the sound of it. I’d noticed a whiff of damp and bad drains, so perhaps it was a rented place that had stood empty and had been taken by Minerva and friends for this. A cheap place, judging by the thin wall. But where was it? If I knew how long I’d been unconscious, I might have some idea. Westminster was where it started, I knew that much, but I could have been taken anywhere. It took the Royal Mail one day and nineteen hours to get from London to Edinburgh. How could I remember that when there was so much I couldn’t remember? Could I have stayed unconscious for nearly two days in somebody’s fast coach? Perhaps, yes, if I’d been drugged, which might explain why my mind was so much at odds. I pulled the damp and uneven blanket up over me, cried and slept again.