God forgive me.
Now all is quiet. The sparrow sits motionless in his cage. Around the house, bodies stiffen and corrupt while Hetta’s blood creeps across the floorboards to the feet of the companions, her only true friends. I watch the red pool curdle with the vines and turn to a rusty brown – the same brown as the potion I drank, so long ago.
I know what will happen to me: Josiah and his men will find me alone in a house of death. They will send for the witch-finder. The whispers have followed me for long enough. I shall burn.
It is the most horrific of all deaths. I could avoid it – the knife is still sharp. I should draw the tacky blade across my wrists now and save myself. But that would be too good for me.
I summoned the demon. I need the cleansing fire of God’s wrath.
I need to feel the flames.
THE BRIDGE, 1866
Morning came and the clock in the Great Hall chimed ten before Sarah returned. Sunlight streamed through the open curtains and stretched her shadow, bending it up the wall. In her lavender gown, her frame appeared shrunken. She did not smile as she came into the room, trailing bandages as if she were a mummy burst from the tomb, and holding a bowl of water.
‘Sarah, thank goodness. I thought I should never see you.’
‘I’ve come to change your bandages,’ Sarah answered, loudly. ‘It must be done to avoid infection.’ She kicked the door shut and dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘There, that will buy us a bit of time.’
Elsie watched her lay the linen strips and the bowl on the dressing table. ‘What is it, Sarah?’
Sarah glanced at the door. ‘In a moment. Come, give me your hand.’ She sat beside the bed and took Elsie’s hand into her lap.
Elsie winced as Sarah peeled a piece of fabric, dried on with blood, away from her palm. ‘I read the diary,’ she whispered.
‘And? Tell me!’
She paused, knowing she would never be able to convey the despair and chilling guilt in those last pages. The voice she needed belonged to Anne, belonged to another time. ‘You were right. About Anne. She never intended to cause harm. It was all one terrible string of events she could not control.’ Her breath snagged, but she did not need to conceal it – at the same moment the bandage fell away, exposing her wounds to the air. Most had scabbed over, but one or two still wept.
Strange, that Elsie’s hands were healing faster than Sarah’s single cut. Even an infection should have settled down by now.
‘But what happened to poor Hetta?’
‘Anne . . . Anne killed Hetta.’
‘She killed her own child!’
‘She had to!’ A defensive flare that had nothing to do with Anne. ‘The evil you spoke of. Something about a potion and a spell? It was in Hetta. Bound up in her. Anne had to kill her and save what remained of her family. She had to save her boys.’
Sarah frowned, thoughtful. She wet a cloth in the bowl of water and passed it gently over Elsie’s palm. The wounds sighed with relief. ‘Then it is not Hetta’s ghost, haunting us?’
‘Not that exactly. It is more than that. I think . . . The companions were there when Hetta died. Anne wrote that her blood flowed to the feet of them. They absorbed it, do you see? The evil moved into them.’
‘But what does it want?’
‘I have no idea.’ Did evil have wants and needs? Surely not, surely that would make it too human. No longer a tug from the depths of the abyss, but something sentient that could surface in anyone. In her.
‘Perhaps the evil is seeking something.’ Sarah’s breath came hot against her skin. ‘Seeking . . . a more permanent host.’
A queasy silence fell as they considered the implications of that. Splinters. On Rupert, on the baby. Something trying to get in.
Sarah unrolled a fresh bandage and pressed it to the centre of Elsie’s palm. ‘While it stays in the companions, it is trapped inside the house.’
‘Then we have to stop it, before it can escape.’
Sarah bound up Elsie’s wounds and tied a knot in the bandage. Then, at last, she exhaled. ‘We cannot stop it. We do not have time. All we can do is flee.’
‘Flee?’ Elsie cried. ‘We can’t just run! What if it hurts other people?’
‘Perhaps it will hurt other people, Elsie! But I am not concerned for other people. I am only concerned for you.’ Elsie wanted to withdraw her hand. There was something in Sarah’s eyes that demanded too much. ‘Listen to me, please. I have been alone all my life. You could not call Mrs Crabbly family, not with her scolding and her horrid cross ways. And Rupert . . . Well, there was a time when I thought Rupert might marry me. I thought he might sweep in and save me from the life of a lady’s companion. But you know what happened there.’
Elsie did not know what to say.
‘Then I met you. And you were kind to me. I started to think perhaps . . . you might let me be your friend, after all. That I could be of use to you.’
‘You have been, Sarah. You are the only person in the world who believes me, who understands. You have been the best of friends.’
‘I have never had a friend before.’ Her grip on Elsie’s injured hand was painfully tight. ‘And I’ll be damned if I let them take you away from me.’
‘The companions?’
‘Not the companions! The doctors!’
Her body stiffened beneath the sheets. ‘Why would . . . why would doctors take me away?’
‘I’m sorry, Elsie. I didn’t want to tell you, but Mr Livingstone has made up his mind. He said it himself, at dinner last night. He’s written to an asylum.’
Panic stretched its arms deep into her chest. It must be a mistake. Of course, it must be – Jolyon would never have her committed! But Sarah’s depthless brown eyes told another story.
‘What, exactly, did he tell you?’
‘That you were very ill.’ Gently, she folded Elsie’s hand back onto the bed. ‘He said he had suspected it for some time. Then he asked me to pack up all of your things because some men were coming, some medical men, to examine you. That they would take you with them and you would probably be gone for a good while.’
Falling – that was what it felt like. Plummeting off the side of a cliff with nothing but rocks below. Jolyon, betray her? The boy she had bled for, surrendered her youth to raise. No, he would never . . . Unless. Unless he had not been asleep after all.
‘You are sure of this, Sarah? You are absolutely sure?’
Sarah nodded. Strands of hair drooped, listless, fallen free of their pins. ‘I went to the library. I saw the letters he has written.’
‘But you know I am not mad!’
‘Of course I do. And that’s why I’ve decided.’ She threw her chin up, defiant. ‘I am going to get you out of here. Tonight.’
Elsie had a terrible urge to laugh. That shocked, hysterical laughter that only came when all hope was gone. ‘How do you propose to do that? Think of my leg.’
‘I’ve found a walking stick. You can use it to lean upon.’