I

1888. A workhouse not far from the city of Leeds.

At dead of night I dropped out, on to a cold stone floor. She licked the slime from my head. But there were others to see to. Five of us in all. So I pulled myself up into a ball and waited. This was good. Wait, and you’ll see things far beyond the imagination. Find yourself a quiet spot. And watch. That’s where it’ll happen. In front of your nose.

By the time Joseph Markham was ready for his early-morning tea, the new arrivals had been discovered, in a small closet room which gave on to the scullery. The workhouse’s much loved ratting cat, never before pregnant, was given a plate of milk. There on the bare stone floor! people cried in pity, and did what they could to make her post-natal sprawl more comfortable. Rags were fetched to form a makeshift cushion. And numerous scraps of food were left on the rim of the plate. Eventually, she fell asleep, sated on bacon rind, milk-softened bread and sweet biscuit.

Meanwhile, her new ginger-and-white miniatures had become the centre of attention. Workhouse staff crowded in, gripped suddenly by a desperate urge to pick one up and coddle it. But clamour, as with all things in that place, was determined by seniority. So it was Markham, the superintendent, who took his turn first. A single kitten was placed in his arms. It lay there, quite motionless, a tiny lump of fur about as big as a screwed-up handkerchief. But warm. It warmed him right through, until he lost his usual stiff severity, and those around him in the scullery chuckled to see it. Then, in a rare moment of gentleness which fell like a thread of gossamer on the air, so transitory that its memory began to fade instantly, he lowered his chin to the animal held against his chest and gave it a kiss on the top of the head, as fondly as a child seeing its newborn brother for the first time.

Next, it was the turn of the clerk. He had only poked his head into the scullery to see what all the fuss was about. But Markham, a glint of delight in his eye, beckoned the clerk in and pushed one of the kittens into his unsuspecting (and as it happened, asthmatic) breast. From the clerk they were passed to the overseer, to the cook, and thence to a groom who happened to be there on an errand from a local benefactor’s house, but who took his rightful place in the hierarchy.

With great care all four of the animals were now lifted from the floor, one at a time, as if at any second these small, living things might shatter into a thousand pieces. They were held up proudly like fragile prizes, to a chorus of cooing and breathy sighs of amazement. Then, as they were passed around from one pair of anxious hands to the next, wonder turned slowly to amusement; with growing confidence people began to handle them two at a time, laughing out loud as they struggled with their delicate haul. For the men in the kitchen the feat of holding two kittens in one hand seemed to have an added significance, and each of them had a go, grinning with pride, their brace of kittens hanging from a single arm.

Around the animals went, back and forth in all combinations. A clumsy first-timer would take one, holding it up for all to see as if the warm little mystery packet had only at that moment been discovered; with growing confidence, he would beg for more to be piled into his arms, until cries of caution were raised. The kitchen’s two scullery maids, knowing that their turns were still some time off, clucked and gasped the loudest of all, and in the end they too found themselves holding a pair of kittens each. But this was not enough and they did desperate, squabbling battle to hold all four at once.

Tea was poured, as if in celebration of the new arrivals, but also to bring these unusual festivities to a close. A general mood of reflection fell about the place. They’d have to be drowned, someone whispered, and others, unable to refute the idea absolutely, looked down at their tea. As the horror of the thought set in, they began talking of who might take one.

‘Mrs Thacker’s a widow now,’ said Cook, and almost immediately it was agreed that Mrs T would have at least one. Of course she would, a bit of company for her. Eyes were drawn inevitably back to those four vulnerable mounds of white and ginger, to their helpless yet quizzical one-day-old faces, and it seemed impossible that homes would not be found. At the back of their mind, though, each person knew that later the same morning an old flour sack would be filled with rocks from the workhouse grounds.

The superintendent drained his cup. Each of those around him took the hint and had their own final sip. Only the two scullery maids, who had endured the longest wait, continued fussing with the kittens.

Markham’s fondness for cats had previously been limited to the satisfaction of finding his workhouse free of vermin. He would eye his big ginger ratter with pride each time she dragged in another slain rodent, perhaps thinking that he himself deserved some credit for the kill. But now he was full of admiration for the poor thing, who had carried four kittens to term without anyone noticing, and had delivered them alone on the stone floor. He stole back into the closet where she slept, resolved to give her an affectionate stroke. And there he made a discovery. A fifth, dead kitten. He stood in the doorway, looking first at the mother, sound asleep on a heap of old cloths, and then at the small lump of fur in the corner, obscured almost to black invisibility by the dark shadows in the windowless room. How much better it would be, he thought, to take the little carcass out now, an act of kindness to the mother, who would thus never have to see her own dead child. Quietly, he crouched down and pulled at one of the rags, drawing it slowly from under her, his eyes never leaving the dead kitten. As he prepared to stride across to scoop up the dead body and wrap it in rag, one of the maids bustled into the room, all four of the new kittens in her arms, and a pout on her face. She deposited them on the floor like a child with a new toy which is suddenly no longer amusing. She turned and left without a word, ignoring Markham entirely, a small insubordination which he hardly noticed. But the interruption had stopped him in his tracks.

Markham returned to the scullery. He noticed that even at this early hour there was a sense of unease, as people prepared to get on with the day’s work. An old sack had been brought in from somewhere.

‘John,’ he said to his overseer, ‘there’s a dead kitten in there. Must have died last night. She had five, not four. Go and clear it up, will you?’

The sound of his voice was a sort of announcement. Markham it was who must order the drowning. There, his tone seemed to say, the truth is we’ll kill ’em. So no one was saddened at the discovery of a fifth, dead kitten; that was the lucky one.

The overseer disappeared whilst Markham fidgeted with the length of rag, which he found was still in his hands. Those who remained now almost craved a sharp word from him: Go on then! What’re you all staring at? they wanted to hear him shout, as a kind of release, an admission of guilt. But he said nothing, and continued toying with the cloth. People began to slip away.

Then John returned.

‘It in’t dead, sir,’ he said, ‘an’ it in’t a kitten!’

Markham stood for a moment, mouth pushed out in a moue of concentration.

‘What do you mean? It was dead when I saw it.’

‘Well, it in’t now!’

What was the point, though? Dead or alive, it made no difference.

‘Oh, let’s keep it!’ cried one of the maids. She had worked out what the sack was for, and now spoke as if the other kittens were already dead and gone, although they were at that moment only three strides away, enjoying their first taste of life.

John stuttered, shaking his head. ‘I … w … w … wouldn’t …’ but could make no more progress than that.

‘Spit it out!’ Markham said, but hadn’t the patience to wait for a reply. He marched straight to the door, John jumping clear out of his way, and stepped again into the small room.

There he saw it, still in the shadows, but moving, nuzzling against its mother’s side. A kitten it was, and alive. But it had wings. Two extra limbs stood proud of its body in the space between head and shoulder. They were thin and clawless, and shorter than legs, as if the paws had been cut away and the fur pulled tight over the stubs. From each of these little limbs, attaching itself to the side of the kitten’s back, grew a triangle of skin. And whereas the limbs were heavily furred in white and ginger, the wings themselves were more sparsely covered, the fleshy hue of fawn-pink skin discernible underneath.

Markham’s eyes glazed over, fixed so intently towards the corner of the room that for some time he was unable to move them. His mind began playing tricks. He blinked, and when again the kitten came into focus he felt a flicker of familiarity. For an instant he saw nothing unusual, and, somewhat disoriented, asked himself why he was in the scullery looking at a kitten. But then something unnerved him and again he saw that the little thing, alone amongst its siblings, had two fully formed wings on its back.

Its mother stirred, and at that moment Markham’s mind span three ways at once, leaving only twisted confusion where sober logic had once reigned. He saw himself in the presence of the animal which had given birth to an abomination. A fine ratter she may have been, but surely possessed by the Devil. The wicked mutant kitten that she had secreted within her evil womb was an offence in the eyes of God. No doubt about it. An a-bo-mi-na-tion, he repeated to himself, breaking it down into syllables, as if in this way the word was compounded and multiplied until its damning resonance became unequivocal. A-bo-mi-na-tion.

But then a small shadow of doubt. Cats have no souls. Do they? Surely not. So what part might the Devil have played in this? A soulless cat? In what way might … how might the Lord …? But even now the superintendent’s mind had become wrapped up tight in the matter, and his thoughts span and twisted by reflex alone, without any reason or sanity. On the fifth day (or was it the sixth?) didn’t He create animals? The exact day was unimportant. What mattered was the question of whether this could be the Devil’s work. The Bible. The Bible! What did it say? Markham, like everyone else, had heard of mutants, such as that five-legged calf born at a nearby farm a few years back. The mere description of it, he recalled, had been horrific, and the poor animal soon found its throat cut by a farmer too unworldly to know that people in towns and cities pay good money to see such things. Mutations were one thing. Deformities of one sort or another were no rarity. But this could hardly be counted as an accident of birth. The wings were so perfectly formed that they seemed to bring with them the sardonic cackle of witchcraft. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine a cat in flight. The wings were the same, the way that the animal drew itself smoothly through the air was utterly natural. No; by some dark, evil design had this admixture of beings evolved, concocted by who knew what malignant spirit, sent to haunt Man on Earth. And by whatever cruel plan, for whatever reason, it had been visited on the workhouse.

There he remained, until his silence attracted the interest of those who were still in the kitchen. Each person gave out a little gasp of astonishment as, one by one, they crowded into the doorway and stared with disbelief at the winged kitten, which was now more animated and had even begun to move its wings fractionally as it stretched its four legs. Behind Markham people pushed nervously, eager not to set foot in the room, but with an equal desire to see the profane and horrible sight within. As they pushed, Markham himself had no choice but to move forward, so that in the end there came a point when the whole body of dumbfounded onlookers moved en bloc through the doorway. The ratter, still indolent after her ordeal, but now taking care of her litter with what energy she could muster, jumped up suddenly, jaws spread wide, hissing furiously. She moved back, shoulders dipped, until the object of interest was hidden beneath her, the kitten’s little wings brushing its mother’s underbelly, its tiny head between her two front legs.

With shivery screams and whoops of fear, the crowd retreated to the far end of the scullery, where they flapped and winced in a kind of jittery, light-headed panic. The maids had to be sent out into the yard to calm down. Poor John the Overseer could say nothing more than It’s t’ Divil come! over and over, until even the less susceptible amongst them began to believe it. Why had they been chosen? Why had the coarse hands of demons touched them, why this beast in their midst, in their scullery? But also, as their comprehension failed to find even the most transitory moorings, another thought crossed their minds, though it remained unsaid; as the morning progressed, and the existence of the little mutant kitten slowly became a reality, the question spoke louder and louder to each of them: would it fly?

Only Markham remained, looking straight back at the ferocious ratter, and from time to time catching sight of the kitten’s quick little eyes which – could it be true? – had begun to open. The other four kittens crawled aimlessly about, unnoticed by their mother, whose whole attention was taken up in the protection of this one offspring. In her body there was a warning, visceral and persuasive, something which he had never seen before in an animal; were the kitten to die, then its mother would die first.

Markham withdrew to the scullery in search of milk. He went almost unnoticed, since the hullabaloo was now at its height, and the two maids seemed to be in danger of becoming hysterical. Returning to the cats he crouched down in front of the ratter, whose defensive stance had not changed, and drew the now empty plate towards him. He poured more milk, whilst the ratter looked on with interest. And then, the plate once again full, he pushed it very slowly in their direction. The mother, seeing him get too close, began to hiss, her voice curdling to a low groan, and as he got right up to them he felt her hot, metallic breath touch his face. Though only inches separated them, and every hair on her body stood up from the skin, he finally delivered the milk to the kitten, letting the plate come to a rest with its rim touching the ratter’s forelegs. A little of the milk spilled, and immediately the kitten sniffed at it with an alertness far beyond its few hours of life. Above, its mother hardly moved, her voice still audible, her body calm but tense, waiting for the inevitable: when Markham made his grab for the kitten, at that very moment she would sink her front claws into his eyes and her back ones would tear at the soft, wobbly pads of flesh on his cheeks. She watched his pupils flutter from side to side. She had picked the spot. She was ready for him.

Markham didn’t grab the kitten, though. He just looked.

My four brothers and sisters disappeared. Not me, though. No one would have dared to, I suppose. So there I stayed, and my mother took me as her own, which I almost was.

Markham gave orders that if possible homes were to be found for the four kittens. Alice, the younger of the two scullery maids, was dispatched to go about the district knocking on doors and offering them for adoption. But she had no luck. Even since their discovery word had got around: the workhouse had mutant kittens to give away, and people had their excuses ready when she called with the offer of free pets. Late that afternoon Markham collected the four healthy animals, he being the only person who the mother cat allowed into the closet room. He took the kittens without looking at their mother, and showed them the darkest kind of death. After that he could hardly look at his ratter again, since guilt ran through him like the shingles. And the sadness of watching that heavy sack drop below the water’s surface, the confused movement of drowning bodies discernible as with a flourish of bubbles the sack disappeared from view, returned to haunt him for years afterwards.

The question of the flying cat caused no end of ill feeling, and even prompted a rare complaint from the inmates of the workhouse. But Markham gave strict instructions that the poor thing was one of God’s creatures and was to be put up with out of compassion. On this point of theology not all were in agreement, and soon afterwards the pastor of a local Baptist congregation (of which John the Overseer was a member) came calling to establish once and for all whether the kitten was indeed one of God’s creatures. However, although he stayed half the afternoon, and ate his fill in the kitchen, the winged cat and its mother never made an appearance. In the end he left, his time wasted, and perhaps believing that the whole thing was a hoax. Markham expressed his regret, and explained that though the kitten was only a few days old, it was already strong and alert enough to accompany its mother on her ratting duties, which extended to all parts of the workhouse and its outbuildings.

It was in one of these buildings that the two outcasts lay hidden for those first few weeks. Markham, fearful of the actions of his staff, had sought some kind of sanctuary for the kitten and its mother. He had finally managed to coax them out from the scullery, waiting until the evening of the second day, by which time people had got somewhat used to the kitten, everyone having stolen enough glances now that the initial shock had worn off; some people even managed a wry smile at the sight of those perfectly formed wings – they were certainly original, however devilish. After dusk, with great patience and understanding, Markham led the cats to the outbuildings in the grounds. They were old stables, already there when the land for the workhouse had been bought, and were now used only for the storage of that special class of object: things beyond repair but which no one wants to throw away. Inside were rotten cartwheels and rusted, decaying ploughheads; tossed into the back corner of one stable was a heap of ragged tarpaulin which seemed to be there for the sole purpose of attracting vermin, and indeed had long been the ratter’s most productive hunting ground; old iron buckets lay about like fallen soldiers, some of them more holes than bucket, and there were odd fragments of farm machinery and stabling equipment that had perished beyond recognition, now little more than strands of sinewy dust and brass buckles gone black with tarnish.

Mother and baby were installed in the stable furthest from the workhouse, where almost no one ever went other than to deposit for all time a cracked demijohn or a chair carrying irreversible injuries. And though it was also the stable with the rat-infested tarpaulin in one corner, any place where not one but two cats live (and one of those with wings) might reliably be said to be vermin-free.

However, this was not quite the case. At first the rats were curious, and would come close, perhaps thinking that wings put an animal at a disadvantage. The kitten would stand there, shivering with fright as the rats crept gradually closer, sniffing the air to see whether it might be edible, or a figment of their imaginations, their brown-grey bodies twitching, fleshy bulbs of muscle and at the back a tail dragging like rope. But the old ratter taught its young kitten how to be bold and cautious, a good combination. It soon discovered how easily a rat’s neck would snap under its paws, and how, though the rats were quick and often got away, by stealth and timing it could make a kill.

For the next four years the two of them lived there in relative peace. Markham would make sure that although the winged cat was never loved, nor in that time did it ever feel the caress of a human hand, nor hear a single fond or affectionate word, there was always some scrap of food left for it and its mother in the little windowless room off the scullery. And between them the two cats repaid their debt to Markham in regular instalments.

Then my mother died. One day she was alive, mauling a family of mice until their heads came away from their bodies, and the next she was dead. And death eats into life, destroying and rearranging whatever it likes; afterwards the world is a slightly different place. And a crueller one.

Markham dragged the dead ratter by its tail all the way to the furnace room in the basement of the workhouse. Preferring not to handle her big body more than that, he used a coal shovel to throw her in. There he stood, watching the white-and-ginger fur blacken and turn to smoke. The heat of the yellow coals ate into her body and she twisted so grotesquely in the flames that he panicked, thinking she might still have been alive. Then, the fire having taken her completely, he turned from the furnace with a sense of foreboding, as if in those flames the truth about the cat was finally revealing itself.

He turned. And there it was. Far against the wall, illuminated by the flickering red light of the furnace. The winged cat, looking on as its mother burned. Flecks of light from the fire danced in its wide, terrified eyes, and behind it the exaggerated shadows of its two wings cavorted on the wall, as if playing out some announcement of horrible intent. Such was the aspect of death there in the shadows that Markham was suddenly in no doubt; he had harboured a devil-creature, misled in his own weakness, beguiled by the quiet, unassuming face of evil itself. And now, with the flames of the furnace on his back and that thing between him and the door he understood the fearful gravity of what he had to do.

For the next few days the strange, mutant orphan had no choice but to hide in the darkest corners it could find, shivering at the sound of every footstep, pulling its deformed body ever further from sight. Markham was resolved to be rid of the demons which had seized him, to rid the world of the abomination he had tolerated those four years. With a purposefulness which bordered on insanity he patrolled the workhouse and its grounds for three days solid, a loaded shotgun in his hands. He turned up barrows and buckets, and poked the newly oiled barrel of his gun into every last inch of the place, ready to blast the cat into a thousand pieces, ready even to have its evil presence smeared on to the walls of his workhouse, its wings torn apart with lead, there to be scraped away like caked-on bird droppings. For three days he did nothing else, from first to last light. And those around him seemed to understand, because they also became uncomfortable with the idea of having that monstrous cat about the place without its mother, as if it was only the old ginger ratter that had kept the evil spirits of her malformed child at bay. Even the more charitable of them accepted that there was no alternative but to kill the thing, and on that basis they preferred to mourn the mother rather than the child. What none of them knew, though, was that as Markham stalked the cat in every last spot he could find, in his jacket pockets he carried with him a Bible, a small cross and an entire head of garlic.

Try as he might, though, he could not find the creature. After three long days of unsuccessful hunting it was assumed that the winged cat had perished, lost and defenceless without its mother’s protection. Slowly, as more days passed, Markham perceived a certain lifting of spirits around the place, a lightening, a freeing-up which culminated, not more than three weeks later, in the news that Alice, by now a young woman of twenty, was engaged to be married to Tom, a groom from a nearby estate, the very same groom indeed who had been present at the discovery of the mysterious litter of kittens four years earlier. In those four years he had persisted in a campaign to woo Alice which had recently come so close to full fruition that he now believed an offer of marriage was his only hope.

Alice has discovered a new sense of adventure. The engagement has been announced, and memories of the cat are already fading. It is a strange feeling, as if she has stepped across an invisible line, and now needs some means of proving to herself that she will never step back. Since it is the height of summer, the old outbuildings are dry and habitable, if not for regular living, then at least for the use of courting couples. The most comfortable of these has the remains of an upper level, like a hay loft but smaller, perhaps a stable lad’s quarters in earlier times. Tom and Alice have been using this place for secret half-hour trysts, unaware that every last member of staff knows not only where and when their visits take place, but, through the automatic transmission of confidences which pass between Alice and a younger maid in service, the full extent and detail of everything they get up to.

On the very first of these meetings after the engagement is announced, the two of them find the loft hotter than usual, the air stiller and more compelling, and even a little difficult to breathe. In the heat they are soon half naked. And at this point Alice quite calmly decides that since on the last few occasions her lover had seemed unable to wait any longer, then she might as well be unable to wait as well. What with the wedding just around the corner, she reasons, a single transgression is almost a rightful kind of anticipation. She resolves in her mind to keep the whole thing secret, though all the time knowing that it will be the very first thing she tells her friend. There on the wooden planks her body now yields an extra measure, and she draws him on to her a fraction more than normal. He stiffens, pushing himself against her thigh through their remaining layers of clothing. Then she surprises both of them by reaching beneath herself and pulling down her drawers. The air throbs with the frantic beat of his heart as it throws itself almost clear out of his chest, and his breath is quick and irregular against her neck as he fidgets to free himself of his trousers. There is little ceremony between them, both too tense to stop and look at each other, more desperate, indeed, to avoid looking, as their bodies meet and rub together for the first time, wet and tingling for that magical dream-second before the enormity of expectation overpowers sensation.

He enters her slowly, careful not to put all his weight on to her. She feels some pain, and he is ready to withdraw. But she shifts her legs and holds him there and finally he lowers himself all the way down until their hips touch. And they lie quite still, hardly breathing, as if they can remain like this for ever.

Then her body tightens, and as she shifts beneath him he feels himself move inside her.

‘Listen!’ she whispers, her attention taken by a sound nearby. He doesn’t hear, and begins moving in and out of her, drawing himself up on his arms, his face now towards the ceiling, his eyes closed.

‘Listen!’ she cries again, more insistent, tears welling in the corners of her eyes. She twists her torso desperately to shake him off her. But he pins her down so hard that she can hardly move. Someone is there, and she begins to sob at the thought of being discovered, that dreadful fear in her stomach of something long waited for going irretrievably wrong. The sound again, to her left this time, more distinct, louder, closer to the ear. She throws her head sideways and there, not a foot from her face, is the cat, wings at full stretch, eyes big and burning behind a skeletal face, its body withered from hunger, the skin drawn close to the bones on its cheeks and pulled tight down its neck, its fur thin and matted.

She screams, drawing in her arms to cover her chest, her legs kicking out as if in the throes of a fit. Tom also cries out, but from ecstasy not fear; his eyelids flutter and instinctively he covers her mouth with his hand as he thrusts again and again into her, unable to stop.

After he has finished he notices that, though she has turned silent, she is whimpering beneath him. Then he too sees the cat, which is still there, its head slightly to one side, purring quietly. Alice shakes like an epileptic. But Tom in his confusion finds it impossible to blame the cat, for he sees no connection, no culpability. Unlike Alice, who will never recover from that horrendous sight, the horrible vision of wickedness that greeted her as she stepped finally out of childhood; unlike Alice, then, he at first does not understand. But as he grows small inside her, then pulls himself out, he realises why she is hysterical, their precious moment turned evil.

He swipes out at the cat. Through tear-filled eyes he misjudges his swing, smashing a hand into a wooden pillar with enough force to crack two knuckles. He rolls off his fiancée and into a ball of self-pity on the wooden floor.

Within a week Alice has been admitted to an asylum, her descent into madness as sudden as it is inexplicable. She is cared for at the expense of a trustee of the workhouse, whose generosity in the case owes more to pragmatism than compassion: Tom works for him and it is feared that unless his fiancée is got rid of soon, then the boy might also turn mad. Later, when Alice miscarries, she understands nothing of what has happened to her.

Tom is never told.