The man’s chin dipped and Michael leaned closer, expecting some explanation—My boy, you’ve been in a dreadful accident but all will be well. When the man’s mouth opened, however, a torrent of sound—the Noise!—came pouring out of him. If Michael had been pinned at the bottom of a waterfall, the sound could not have been any louder; it was the fury of sea waves assaulting the cliff face. He clapped his hands over his ears but it made no difference. The circular windows roared like the mouths of cannons. Michael writhed on the bed and drew himself into a ball. The Noise continued to pulverize him. Not until the old man shut his mouth did the sound wane, though it did not cease entirely, but merely seemed more distant, as if he were in a cottage above the sea rather than chained to the rocks below.
Not a doctor at all, Michael thought. A torturer, that’s what he was. But he also had to admit a third possibility, that the old man was an angel of the avenging variety. That would explain the white clothes, the voice like a thousand brass cymbals. He had not seen it immediately because he had always thought of angels in flowing robes with brilliant halos and massive wings of white. Still, that cravat troubled him: it was black, as were those hard owlish spectacles. Could the man be a devil? Or a pooka, of the sort he’d heard in the stories told by the woman who did their washing back in Ballyrath?
Ballyrath. The word jarred something loose: that was his home. The woman—Mrs. Greavey, that was her name. The washing on the line, like white pennants strung between two posts. The cottage with its white walls and thatched roof, and the green hills in all directions. This and more came rushing back at him. Ballyrath. He had been a boy there, and he had left home for the seminary with its gray stone and gaudy stained glass, its black cassocks and narrow cots. The long tables, the gloopy eggs and gristly rashers of the morning meal. He could smell the sugared fumes rising from the censer during the consecration, could feel the pages of his Augustine and Aquinas; each leaf crackled when turned, as if the books had been waterlogged and poorly dried. All of this had bloomed suddenly in his head, but none of it explained how he had arrived here, or where here was.
He had his name, he had these moments in time, but there was an unfathomable gap between there and here. He thought about finding a mirror, hoping his appearance could offer some clue, but he couldn’t make his body do its part. He wasn’t paralyzed—he had figured out that much. But he felt so heavy, so tired, as if the effort of remembering had sapped him. He took a deep breath and let his head loll on the pillow. The old man—not a doctor, possibly an angel, likely a devil—remained in his chair. If this was a visitation by some divine or demonic presence, then Michael had to ask: What had he done to deserve this pain? He felt sleep coming on again, the exhaustion of his limbs overtaking him, and in that moment he stumbled on one last question: Am I dead?
FRANCIS EASED THE door open, just wide enough to slip through the gap. He didn’t want to risk waking Michael if the mercy of sleep had been granted to him. And if Michael was awake, or in that half-aware state that had gripped him since the accident, then the light from the corridor would only increase his punishment. Sound didn’t bother him—he seemed deaf as a post, to be honest—but Francis had seen the way sunlight or a bright room could send him into spasms. In the quiet of the cabin, Francis removed his tuxedo jacket and black trousers and hung them in the closet, next to the three suits he had bought for the trip. In the days before the Britannic set sail, he had stashed Michael in an upmarket quarter of Cork where he thought it least likely anyone would look for them. He had heard praises heaped on a local forger while he was in Mountjoy, and while he waited for his false papers from the man, he found a tailor who could provide him with clothes befitting his new station. He had paid a small fortune for the passports and a smaller but still substantial sum for his new wardrobe, but that investment was already paying dividends. More than looking the part, he was the part. For Michael, he had pulled two changes of clothes from the racks of a men’s shop, guessing at the sizes. He would tell anyone who asked that his brother had lost so much weight that nothing fit him right. Michael had always been a stripling, but honestly, he was a skeleton now.
Just as Francis turned out the bedside lamp, there was a soft rapping at the door, barely audible but insistent enough to catch his attention. His heart skipped and he cast about for something, anything, he could wield in his defense—but no; if it was the visit he was dreading, it would not come with a genteel knock. That would be a foot-against-the-door sort of visit. He rose and pulled on his dressing gown, another new purchase, and cautiously turned the knob.
Anisette stood in the corridor, her fist poised for one more dainty knock. At the sight of Francis, she beamed; she had a bright, chipper, Oh, there you are! way about her.
“Sir Angus,” she said, her expression shifting from smitten to solemn. “You must forgive me—well, forgive all of us. Here we were at the table, gabbing away about nonsense, while you carry this terrible burden. Not that your brother is a burden—far from it, I am sure—but you must think us the most insensitive, callous, heartless—”
“Really,” Francis said, “it’s—”
“Deplorable,” she said, with a note of finality. “That’s the word for it.” Anisette lowered her voice to a whisper. “If I may ask, is everything… all right?”
“Yes, quite,” he said. Since becoming Angus, he had come to rely on that word. “Or as well as can be expected, under the circumstances.”
“Our sympathies are with you. We—well, I—I wanted you to know that.”
This business of dining with heiresses was new to him. Should he be flattered by the attention or was this part of the routine? An after-dinner visit to a young man’s bedroom seemed like a bold stroke, but perhaps in the world of the bejeweled and be-moneyed these late-night tête-à-têtes were as commonplace as Pimm’s Cups and tea sandwiches. Anisette stood before him as if at a garden party; it was almost midnight and she looked as dewy as the morning. If she lowered her voice, it seemed not out of deference to the hour and the possibly scandalous nature of her intent, but rather out of a well-bred wish to respect Sir Angus’s privacy regarding matters medical. The young Miss Bingham exuded calm and good grace, blithely unaware of—or, he had to consider, completely uninterested in—the disordered state of his robe and pajamas.
“Thank you for your concern,” he said. “You’re very kind.”
She pressed one hand over her heart and canted her head to the side. Her lips puckered into something between a kiss and a pout. Tears were a distinct possibility. “No,” she said. “You are very kind.”
Before Francis could continue the volley of mutual admiration, her mood shifted: in a flash she was again all smiles and dry eyes, a vision of milk and apples. Her fingers plucked the sides of her gown and she bobbed, just slightly. Was that a curtsy?