by Jess Kidd
‘My name is Kemp.’ He glances at Gideon. ‘We know the truth of what you did.’
Gideon smiles. ‘Oh, the truth of what Bridget Devine did!’
He pushes Myrtle from his lap and stands, holding his hand out to the little girl, who immediately takes it.
He leans down to the child’s ear. ‘Shall we show Bridget Devine the refurbishments?’
Myrtle gives a shrug and a skip.
Gideon nods. ‘Do the honours, Kemp.’
Kemp, his cigar clamped between his teeth, opens the double doors to the late Dr John Eames’s laboratory.
Bridie is astounded. The old laboratory has been vastly extended. Floors and ceilings have been removed to give the space a stunning, echoing height. An abundance of windows rain-drummed now. White marble steps lead into a confusion of ladders and paint pots, wrapped objects and opened crates. A museum and a laboratory combined; empty tanks and display cases jostle with cabinets full of bottles and apparatus.
Gideon strolls down the steps, Myrtle cantering ahead. Bridie follows and Kemp slinks behind.
‘We are still rather disordered,’ Gideon remarks. ‘But you get the impression.’
Bridie follows Gideon through a lacquered room divider, some kind of medieval hell scene, the rich colours all the more striking in the pale surroundings.
‘This area is almost completed. You’ll notice, Bridget, that some of our exhibits are already at home here.’
Bridie looks around at the specimens on stands or in jars: strange wonders. There are aquariums along the wall replicating a range of watery abodes, from fens to rock pools. There is an ornate glass casket containing the stolen bodies of Margaret Kelly and her offspring, still in their crypt wrappings. Margaret’s merrow infant swaddled and no bigger than a turnip, its tiny teeth clamped around its mother’s finger. To the left of the casket is an upright cabinet, glazed on all sides. Inside, a single specimen: the Winter Mermaid.
‘You stole that from me – you sent that bastard—’
‘And you stole it from Berwick,’ says Gideon, his face impassive. ‘Centrepiece, over there.’
At the middle of Gideon Eames’s Great Exhibition is a tank surrounded by rows of bentwood-framed chairs. Pentagonal in shape, like the armour of a sea urchin, the tank is constructed from sizeable sheets of glass. Beside the tank there is a movable staircase with an extendable walkway to reach over the top. Nearby there is an operating table and a cabinet containing medical instruments. Bridie notices a glass bottle of chloroform and a mask, along with restraining garments with leather bands and loops.
Bridie feels a sudden revulsion. She turns to Gideon. ‘What is all this equipment for?’
‘Vivisection.’
‘You’re going to kill her.’
Gideon takes a seat on one of the bentwood chairs and Myrtle flutters down beside him.
‘Any investigations will be made with the sole purpose of prolonging her life and understanding her species.’
‘She’s a child.’
Gideon rubs his forehead, his expression suddenly weary. ‘No. She isn’t.’
Bridie gestures to the chairs. ‘And these . . . You’ll have an audience for the carving up of a child?’
‘We are a collective; men of science, who wish to learn about a valuable new species.’
‘And that’s what you tell yourselves, is it?’
‘Come, Myrtle.’ Gideon stands. He leads the child to the tank and lifts her up onto the staircase. He stands back, surveying the structure.
‘River water feeds it at a constant flow but there’s no egress. The enclosure is made perfectly secure by the use of electrical currents.’ He turns to Bridie. ‘You are familiar with the work of Duchenne de Boulogne?’
Bridie looks puzzled.
‘Electrical probes, facial grotesques, gateway to the soul?’ Gideon pauses. ‘No? No matter.’
‘If she tries to escape,’ Kemp skulks out from behind the tank, ‘the electrical current will convulse her.’
‘Just so.’ Gideon turns to Myrtle and gestures up the stairs. ‘Get in the tank.’
Myrtle widens her eyes and shakes her head.
‘You are supposed to demonstrate, remember?’ Gideon turns to Bridie. ‘We had a time getting hold of the Bantry Bay mermaid. Dr Harbin dealt us a deal. But he wasn’t the only traitor in our midst. Like father like daughter.’
Myrtle buries her head in her netting skirt.
Gideon retakes his chair, gesturing at Kemp.
Myrtle starts to cry as Kemp approaches. He grabs hold of her arm.
‘Leave her alone,’ says Bridie.
‘She’s a chattering bird, you know,’ Gideon muses. ‘Flitting around Cavendish Square, selling secrets for ribbons and toffees.’
Kemp climbs the steps, dragging Myrtle after, the child too alarmed to cry.
Bridie takes out her pistol and cocks it, aiming it at Kemp. ‘Let her go.’
‘Put Myrtle down, Kemp,’ Gideon commands. ‘Bridget has a gun.’
Kemp lets go of Myrtle’s arm; she runs to Bridie.
‘Put the gun away.’ Gideon’s voice is calm but his face tells another tale. ‘There’s no need for that.’
Myrtle screams and pulls on Bridie’s skirts. Kemp is edging nearer with a bayonet of sorts connected to a wire.
‘No nearer,’ warns Bridie.
Kemp keeps moving, his expression one of malevolent intent.
Bridie fires.
Gunshot and the spiralling echoes of it in Gideon’s high-ceilinged hall. Then: nothing.
Then a bright ringing, as of a goblet hit with a spoon.
The clear panes of the tank begin to craze, a series of dull crackles, followed by a grand splintering.
Gideon frowns.
With an explosion of glass and water, the tank shatters.
Kemp crumples and slides across the floor, a baffled expression on his face. The floor is awash with river water. Chairs are bowled over. Gideon stumbles to his feet.
Bridie picks up the barefooted child next to her and runs.
Chapter 42
Cora listens at the closed door. She still has a fighting grip on her poker, although she has met with no real opposition as she’s searched the house, only nervous servants.
She opens the door to a nursery, in a style decades out of date.
The child sits on a nest of cushions inside a slim-barred wrought-iron cage. She wears a pale blue dress and her hair is tied back with a blue ribbon. Ordinary clothes which only serve to heighten her difference: the unsettling perfection of her features, her white hair. Her eyes, palest grey, seem to rapidly darken. Likely a trick of the light, which is dim in the room as the day is made sullen with rain.
‘You are Sibéal,’ says Cora.
The child doesn’t answer; she leans her head against the cage and runs her teeth along the bars.
‘You want to get out, of course.’
The child looks at Cora blankly.
Cora examines the lock. It’s beyond her skill. She assesses the fabrication of the cage, judging where to bend. She cannot move the bars with her hands; they may be thin but they are strong. Using her poker, Cora levers them apart but soon they will widen no more.
‘Can you slither out? You have just enough room, being a little thing.’
Sibéal tries to edge forward. Cora sees with a rush of pity how thin her legs are, and her arms, and how weak the child is.
‘Oh, the bastards.’ Cora shakes her head. ‘They have kept you in a cage.’
Sibéal regards her, unblinking.
‘Come to the edge and I will lift you out. Do you understand?’
The child begins to move towards the gap.
‘Right so, Sibéal. I am going to reach in and pull you out, gently, gently. No biting.’
And then the child is through and in her arms and no weight at all; there is nothing of her. Cora feels the ridges of her spine and sees the cut of her cheekbone and she fights against tears of pity. This
child is dying.
‘Shall we take you to the river?’
Sibéal presses her face against Cora’s arm.
‘That’s the ticket, isn’t it?’ says Cora.
Bridie pushes Myrtle behind a wall of stacked crates. She stands listening, hearing nothing but her own held breath and her own heartbeat. They have run out of the exhibition space, down a flight of steps and into what looks to be a storeroom. Soaked from the tank, they leave footprints, that can’t be helped.
Bridie tries to think and tries to breathe. Myrtle glances up at her with a small, brave smile. The child is shaking with the cold and the wet and the shock.
Ruby emerges from a bank of boxes; his face grave and his tattoos skeeting about his body.
‘There’s a locked door behind the crates there, Bridie, and a passageway to the garden. You’re below ground here, but if you can open that you’ll be up and out.’
Bridie holds a finger up to her mouth and Myrtle nods. They edge round the crates to the door. In her pocket Bridie finds, with relief, the skeleton key. When she applies it to the lock she sees that her hands are trembling.
Cora steals through the house with Sibéal in her arms. Down the main staircase and through the drawing-room and out onto the terrace, moving as quickly and quietly as she can.
Through the door, into the passageway, they run. Myrtle lagging, the sound of her bare feet slapping stone, Bridie pulling her onwards. Up the steps and to the lawn will be ahead of them.
Bridie, slowed by more than her wet petticoats. He has a grip of the back of her, now his arm goes across her breast. The shock of his touch.
She tells Myrtle to run. But Myrtle, sobbing with fear, hangs from her.
She cannot see what is coming next.
Bridie screams at her and the child does run.
It’s an ignoble tussle. Bridie has one thought: getting up the stairs and out onto the lawn where Gideon Eames is less likely to kill her. And she does reach the lawn, but when she does he has her pinned entirely, the bulk of him upon her. His hand on her skull pushing her face into the grass. Her, biting soil. And the rain pelting on the pair of them.
Then all at once he lets go and is gone.
Leaving Bridie on the ground as slack as a snapped-necked rabbit.
She looks up and sees nothing but Cora running with a bundle in her arms in the direction of the river.
Cora sees the river through the rain. The downward slope of the lawn speeds her on her way. With the first blow, aimed low to her back, her face crumples, but still she holds on to the child. With the second and third blows she realises that these aren’t blows with just a fist.
Shielding Sibéal with her colossal body, Cora pounds her attacker to the ground, but he has hold of her waist. He stabs at her skirts again and again. Cora barely believes all the blood.
Cora drops the child. Her right arm is shredded but she lays a downer on Gideon Eames with her left that sends him skidding. And here is Bridie, running over the lawn.
Gideon Eames is a man like any other, Bridie tells herself, as her fist makes contact with the underside of his jaw. Then he’s on her, his hands on her neck and he will kill her.
Cora, bleeding heavily, crawls towards them and, with the last of her strength, holds Gideon by the neck in the crook of her great arm.
‘Take her.’ Cora nods to the river. ‘There.’
There is a wooden landing-stage, just down from a willow tree, which spreads over the water. A sheltered spot, with a rowing boat moored there. One craft alone with no craft to follow, Bridie sees that.
Sibéal lies on her side eyes closed, white hair, blue dress. Bridie puts her arms under her, lifting her awkwardly. Sibéal, slippery with rain, is not heavy but Bridie is spent. The child is rigid, as an animal stunned: not resisting quite, but not helping. And so cold to the touch, her breath chill on Bridie’s cheek.
Bridie half carries, half drags Sibéal. Behind them, the grounds are full of running, shouting men. Above them, the sky is all cloudburst and reeling, screaming gulls.
Bridie steadies herself at the river’s edge: she will lower the child into the boat, the boat filling with rainwater, and get in after. There are oars. She leans out.
Sibéal thrashes and twists in her arms with sudden, startling strength.
The child falls between landing stage and boat.
She sinks in an instant.
With one breath between them, Bridie follows.
February 1837
Chapter 43
Gan Murphy wrapped her in a blanket, gave her a carrot and carried her onto the ship. The ship that and rocked and strained, her funnel sent great sooty belches into the sky. As Bridie crossed the walkway in Gan’s arms she peered down at the water below, sure she would never see land again.
The weather was savage and the sea should not be crossed – everyone said it. But sail the boat would, because the weather could hardly get worse and may be a long time getting better. Gan said they would take their chances. High peril on the open sea would be safer than Dublin Port.
They had waited for a steam-packet for weeks. There were others to go before them and the ship could only hold so many, although it was three times as many as a ship like that should hold. Gan would spend the fare on the drink, disappearing for days to earn it again. Coming back smelling of earth and whiskey, or sweat and brimstone. They lodged in a place of low inns and hovels, puddled cobbles and freezing winds. But Gan lived in the snug at Maguire’s, a squat, frowning place at the end of a blind lane. There he smoked with his hat pulled down over his eyes. Bridie ran about the lanes with the other children. They were a bedraggled tribe made of rags and snot. They would chase one another, calling godless curses across the courtyard and tenements, until they were slapped and thrown out to roam the streets again.
Bridie had no real friends and nor did she want for them, until the day she came across a fight in the courtyard. All of them were going on the one boy, hanging off him, biting lumps out of him, beating the hell out of him. The boy, outnumbered, was falling under.
Without thinking, Bridie picked up a bucket of water and threw it over them, to scatter them like fighting dogs. A few left off but the others paid no mind, so she picked up a piece of wood and waded in.
This set them laughing. At the tiny, grim-faced girl waving a bedpost the same height as herself. The boy on the ground took his chance and was off without a second glance, climbing up over the roof of the privy.
‘That’s Ronan,’ they had said. ‘He’s a little bastard.’
And he was.
Ronan would hit you as soon as look at you. He was no more than eight, fought like a man and was made for trouble.
He was strong; he could lift Bridie easily. He showed her, later, when he crept back into the courtyard. And, Jesus, he was fast: she watched him run and climb and punch the air. After that they spent every day together and when it was time to sail they were loaded up together, Ronan close at Gan’s heels as he carried Bridie on board, but nowhere to be seen when the officials came around.
Gan paid deck fare and found a corner. When the storm worsened he was still asleep with his hat over his face. He couldn’t be woken even though the ship bucked and swung and the waves rinsed the deck. Gan slept on, while all around the people wailed and retched and prayed.
At each tip Bridie screamed, at every plough she sobbed, until she felt a hand in hers and saw his face. Long-lashed liquid brown eyes, bright black hair.
‘If we live we’ll get married,’ he said. ‘Will we?’
Bridie nodded. ‘We will, Ronan.’
‘Grand, so.’
The ship lurched, an impossible angle, and the whole expanse of the sea rose up to claim them.
‘Can you swim, Bridie?’ he asked.
‘I can’t, can you, Ronan?’
‘Like a bloody rock.’
And they had laughed.
They were counted off the steam-packet at Liverpool Dock, like a delivery of sheep. Only
they were filthier than sheep, the feckless Irish. Reeking of peat-smoke and firewater, loaded with lice. Bridie looked around for Ronan. She began to despair of ever seeing him again when she did see him: being dragged down the gangplank by a port official who had caught himself a stowaway.
Bridie let go of Gan’s hand and ran towards Ronan. A man grabbed her and she bit his arm, so that he dropped her and she fell.
The shock of the water – her eyes opened wider than wide and she bobbed like a bottle.
Ronan saw her, rushed to her, jumped into the water for her.
She saw that. And then she was under.
She was landed on the dock vomiting salt water, Gan or someone crouching, rubbing her back, sitting her up, her skirts heavy and one boot gone, trying to crawl between the legs of onlookers to where she could see him.
‘He can’t bloody swim,’ she screamed, only the words came out as a sobbing croak.
‘He can’t bloody swim.’
‘I was no more than a girl,’ whispers Bridie into the darkness.
‘I was no more than a boy,’ the darkness whispers back.
She can feel his breath on her face.
October 1863
Chapter 44
Bridie is drowning with her eyes open. She sees nothing but rushing river. She hears nothing but rushing river. The noise and the ferocity under – you would never know it from above.
Nearby, Sibéal wakes in the water.
She watches a figure sink past her, strange fish.
Sibéal follows, nudging this curiosity with her shoulder and with her forehead. But still she sinks; the small woman, with her skirts swelling and her hair spiralling and the bubbles popping from her nose and mouth.
Sibéal swims down alongside; she touches the woman’s face with her fingers and looks into her eyes.
*
Bridie is born coughing onto the bank, downriver from the mooring. She sees the rowing boat along from her, hardly rocking, not even at a bob now, as if nothing at all has just happened. An the rain ceased and the sunlight, weak, through the willow. She crawls forward, stopping to untie with numb fingers the cords on her petticoats. They slump back into the river like glean. At the sound of shouting she looks up. Gideon is coming down the lawn. He limps to the mooring, then up and down it. He scrutinises the water near the boat. And then he sees Bridie.