It’s not my intention to make her fret, but after I finished scattering letters across the house, including the one in the library revealing Cunningham’s parentage, I retired here with a decanter of whisky from the drawing room. I’ve been drinking solidly for an hour, trying to wash away the shame of what’s coming, and though I’m drunk, I’m not nearly drunk enough.
‘What’s our plan?’ I hear Rashton say to Anna.
‘We need to keep the footman from killing the butler and Gold this morning,’ she says. ‘They’ve still got a role to play in all this, assuming we can keep them alive long enough.’
I take another slug of the whisky, listening to them talk.
Gold doesn’t have a drop of violence in him, and it would take a great deal of convincing to make him hurt an innocent man. I don’t have time for that, so I’m hoping to numb him instead.
I’ve not having any luck so far.
Gold beds other men’s wives, cheats at dice and generally carries on as though the sky is going to fall any minute, but he wouldn’t crush a wasp that stung him. He loves life too much to bring pain to anybody else’s, which is unfortunate, because pain is the only thing that will keep the butler alive long enough to meet Anna in the gatehouse.
Hearing his dragging steps outside the door, I take a breath and stride into the corridor, obstructing his path. Through Gold’s strange eyes he’s a beautiful sight, his burnt face a joy, so much more engaging than the bland symmetry of most people.
He tries to back away from me with a hurried apology, but I snatch his wrist. He looks up at me, mistaking my mood. He sees anger when all I feel is anguish. I have no desire to hurt this man, yet I must.
He tries to move around me, but I block his path.
I despise what I must do, wishing I could explain, but there isn’t time. Even so, I can’t bring myself to raise the poker and strike an innocent man. I keep seeing him lying in bed, swaddled in white cotton sheets, beaten black and blue, struggling to breathe.
If you don’t do this, Daniel wins.
Just his name is enough to stir my hate, my fists balling by my sides. I think of his duplicity, fanning the flames of my rage by remembering every lie he told me, drowning all over again with the little boy in the lake. I remember the feeling of the footman’s knife as it slipped between Derby’s ribs, and slashed Dance’s throat. The surrender he forced on Rashton.
With a roar I vent my anger, striking the butler with the poker I took from the fireplace, catching him across the back of the shoulders, sending him crashing into the wall and down onto the floor.
‘Please,’ he says, trying to slide away from me. ‘I’m not—’
He wheezes for help, holding out an imploring hand. It’s the hand that pushes me over the edge. Daniel did something similar by the lake, turning my own pity upon me. Now it’s Daniel I see on the floor, and my anger catches fire, boiling in my veins.
I kick him.
Once, then again and again and again. Reason deserts me, rage pouring into the void. Every betrayal, every pain and sorrow, every regret, every disappointment, every humiliation, every anguish, every hurt... all of them, they’re filling me up.
I can barely breathe, barely see. I’m sobbing, as I kick him over and over.
I pity this man.
I pity myself.
I hear Rashton an instant before he hits me with the vase. The crash echoes inside my skull as I fall and fall, the ground catching me in its hard arms.
57
Day Two (continued)
‘Aiden!’
The voice is distant, washing over my body like water lapping a beach.
‘God, wake up. Please wake up.’
Wearily, ever so wearily, my eyes flicker open.
I’m staring at a cracked wall, my head resting on a white pillowcase spattered with red blood. Tiredness reaches for me, threatening to drag me back under.
Much to my surprise, I’m the butler again, lying in that bed in the gatehouse.
Stay awake. Stay still. We’re in trouble.
I move my body a fraction, the pain in my side leaping as far as my mouth before I bite it back, trapping a scream in my throat. If nothing else, it’s enough to wake me up.
Blood has soaked the sheets where the footman stabbed me earlier. The agony must have been enough to knock me unconscious, but not enough to kill me. Surely that’s no accident. The footman has ushered a lot of people into the afterlife and I doubt he got lost this time. The idea chills me. I thought nothing was more frightening than somebody trying to kill me. Turns out, it’s more a matter of who’s doing the killing, and when that’s the footman, being left alive is far more terrifying.
‘Aiden, are you awake?’
I turn over painfully to see Anna in the corner of the room, legs and hands tied by a length of rope, which is knotted around an old radiator. Her cheek is swollen, a black eye blossoming on her face like a flower in the snow.
Night shows through the window above her, but I don’t have any clue what time it is. For all I know, it’s already eleven and the Plague Doctor is waiting for us by the lake.
Seeing me awake, Anna lets out a sob of relief.
‘I thought he’d killed you,’ she says.
‘That makes two of us,’ I croak.
‘He grabbed me outside the house, told me he’d kill me if I didn’t come with him,’ she says, struggling against her bonds. ‘I knew Donald Davies was safely asleep on that road, and that he couldn’t reach him, so I did what he asked. I’m so sorry, Aiden, but I couldn’t think of another way.’
She’ll betray you.
This is what the Plague Doctor warned me about, the decision Rashton mistook for evidence of Anna’s duplicity. That lack of trust nearly sabotaged everything we’ve been working for throughout the day. I wonder if the Plague Doctor knew the circumstances of Anna’s ‘betrayal’, hiding them for his own ends, or whether he genuinely believed this woman had turned against me.
‘It’s not your fault, Anna,’ I say.
‘I’m still sorry.’ She flicks a frightened glance at the door, then lowers her voice. ‘Can you reach the shotgun? He put it on the sideboard.’
I glance across towards it. It’s only a few feet away, but it might as well be on the moon. I could barely roll over, let alone stand up to get it.