The Dark Unwinding

by Cameron, Sharon

  I stopped myself. “Before I go” was a forbidden subject. “Would you come with us? I’d like to make a day of it, for both of them, but if something were to happen, if my uncle …”

  Again, I left my sentence short, but Lane had known exactly what I meant, on both counts. He said, “You think you’re going to get Mr. Tully to hike up to the castle.”

  “Of course. You think I can’t?”

  “I reckon you can, actually.” Uncle Tully was leaning back now, his beard wide with satisfaction. Whatever had been amiss with my father was obviously corrected. “Oh, I nearly forgot,” Lane said, digging down into his pocket. “Is this yours?”

  I stared at the plain strip of white satin in his blackened hand. It was the ribbon that had held my nighttime braid.

  “You don’t usually wear ribbons, do you? But I couldn’t think who else it might belong to. It was on the floor of the chapel.”

  “No, it’s not mine,” I lied.

  “And have you tried the fish yet, Mr. Tully?” Ben said. The question had seemed to burst from him almost unintentionally, and I jumped at the sound. I’d almost forgotten he was in the workshop. “I wondered if the new cap I suggested, if there was less leakage of the air …”

  My uncle moved willingly enough toward the water trough with Ben as I watched my father’s movements slowly wind down.

  Lane said, “It’s a long walk out to the water gate, you know. There are lots of hills, with boggy patches in between if they haven’t dried out. And Davy and I, we have ways of making our own fun up on the castle hill. All that to say, we’re likely to get you a mite dirty. But I don’t think you’ll mind that, will you now?”

  “Of course not,” I said, lifting my chin. The last time Lane had used that tone I’d gotten more than I bargained for. But the game was different now. And the only thing that truly mattered was making my uncle happy.

  I untied my wrist in the chill hour before Monday’s dawn, too full of anticipation to sleep, and by the time the sun was peeking over the hills I had tidied myself and again put on Mary’s old dress, leaving the corset in the bottom of my trunk. I hurried down to the kitchen for the basket of lunch I had packed the night before. It was a bit heavier than I’d anticipated. Resolving that Lane would have to be the one carrying it on our walk to the castle, I turned from the garden door and carried the basket through the house to the chapel instead. I pushed open the hidden door, ignoring the certainty of Uncle George’s glass stare on my back, and stepped inside. The sounds of the clocks came through the walls, striking six of their seven morning chimes as I went down the stairs and began the much shorter, straighter walk through the tunnel to the workshop.

  I made slow work of it. The basket was difficult to manage, but in truth, I dawdled, suddenly worried that in my eagerness not to be late that I would instead be far too early and catch both Lane and my uncle asleep. Davy might be there, though. He was an early riser, assuming he had understood the note I left him, and I had the feeling he would understand it quite well. His presence, or lack of it, would certainly confirm his reading skills to me one way or another.

  I was thinking this, meandering around the tunnel’s only curve, when I caught a glimpse of a man, a small, thin figure in a trailing coat, coming fast from the workshop end of the tunnel. I immediately stepped back again, out of view, stiff with surprise. I was not certain whether he had seen me or not, but I certainly had not recognized him. I waited until I could hear his footsteps, a soft, quick clip on the wet stone, and tried to think of what he might be doing here, and what I might say when he came around the bend.

  The footsteps got closer, the clip becoming more of a slap that indicated a run, and then … he did not come. The tunnel was silent, and when I dared peek around the bend again it was also empty, nothing but the reflections of gas flickering in small puddles on the flagstones. I leaned back against the wall, heart beating hard in my chest. What if there had been no man? If he was just another phantom of my mind? I set the basket on the floor, hating myself for not being able to trust my own eyes, and moved quietly to the place I thought the man had been.

  And about halfway there I saw something I’d not noticed before. The shadowy place between two sconces of gaslight was not a stone wall, but another opening, another branch of the tunnel not even a quarter as wide as the one I stood in, and unlit. I slipped inside and moved as fast as I dared in the darkness, trailing one hand along the damp wall, stepping lightly to keep my footfalls silent, though there wasn’t much need. The floor here was dirt, not stone.

  After only a moment or so, I heard the creak of hinges come echoing down the passage, and then the click of a latch. I hurried, one hand in front of me, now fully prepared when the passage ended in a door. I felt through the darkness for a handle or a knob, marveling that so far I had felt no fear whatsoever of the man. All I wanted was the sight of a body, to know that my mind had not lied to me again. And I wanted it desperately. I pushed open the door just a little, and put one eye to the crack.

  What I saw, to my shock, was the ballroom. The chandeliers were not sparkling, but a dim daylight came down through the glass cupola far above in the gardens, and there, making his way to the opposite end of the room, was a man. I held in my sigh of relief, and at the same time realized that he was not a stranger at all; I knew his twitching gait. It was Mr. Cooper, the surgeon. Then another mirrored piece of the wall opened, and Mrs. Jefferies’s wide body filled the gap, beckoning. Mr. Cooper twitched his way through, and she closed the door quickly behind the two of them.

  I waited for a few moments, then stepped into the empty ballroom to examine my door. It was not exactly meant to be secret, I decided — the handle was in plain view below the mirror — it was just … unobtrusive, as was the way to the kitchen. I’d never noticed either. But what business could Mrs. Jefferies have with Mr. Cooper?

  There could be a medical condition, I supposed, or maybe something to do with the Upper Village. Or perhaps they were having a torrid affair. I shook my head. Whatever their reason, it could be no business of mine. I doubted Lane or my uncle would have been happy to know that Mr. Cooper was sneaking through the tunnels, but I could think of no reason they need know it from me. I shut the door softly and went to retrieve my basket.

  “Come along, Uncle! Let’s count steps!”

  Once again the sun was climbing upward, yellow and hot, though the breeze held a slight promise of something cooler. I’d never known such a stretch of time with no rain, but today I was glad of it. Davy was beside me, his hand warm in mine, the sky was a bowl of blue, and Lane came behind us, carrying the basket and looking none too pleased about it. My uncle huffed and wheezed on my other side as we climbed the first hill, and it was taking all my powers of distraction to convince him that he was having a good time. Though I rather enjoyed that process, too.

  “No! No, no!” my uncle was shouting, or as much as he could with his short breath. “It’s a day for new things, Simon’s baby! New things! Going to the castle is not new. Not new!”

  “But you have never been to the castle with me, Uncle,” I said serenely. “That is the new part.” Uncle Tully appeared to be thinking about this, so before he could think any harder I began counting our steps at the top of my voice. “Seven, eight, nine, ten …”

  “No, no!” he panted. “Not steps, little niece! It’s too late for steps! You haven’t counted the first one hundred and eight of them. Count hills! Nineteen hills by the short path, twenty-eight by the long, and when you take the short, it’s twelve small and seven big ones, that makes nineteen, and …”

  “One!” I shouted as we started our descent. “And how many rests do we take, Uncle?”

  Uncle Tully trotted down the hill, the inevitable coattails flapping. “Three rests by the short way,” he huffed, “five by the long, though Marianna liked six. Marianna liked six by the long….”

  “Two!” I shouted, swinging Davy’s hand as we crested the next rise, happy to be doing something my
grandmother had done, though I did look back at Lane over my shoulder, questioning.

  “We’re on the short way,” he assured me, and sighed.

  When we reached the bottom of number nineteen, my uncle sat himself carefully on the blanket I gave him while Lane threw himself down on the grass and lay there. Davy ran ahead, Bertram bouncing patiently on his shoulder. I took off my boots and tried to wipe away the mud — some of the little valleys had indeed been fenny — gave up, tossed them aside, and looked about us, shielding my eyes.

  The “castle” appeared to be nothing more than one partial wall and a pile of varied stones on the top of a particularly large hill, the river water dancing below it in the sun. When I looked back the way we’d come, I could see where the river met the canal, a bit of stone-work at the junction that I assumed must be part of the water gate, the mechanism that could close off the flow of the river. Beyond that, the hills rolled, fading away to mix with the sky. Stranwyne and the villages were hidden from me.

  I turned at the sound of soft muttering and found my uncle sitting cross-legged, exactly as he did in the workshop, bits of fashioned metal he must have had secreted in a pocket already in his hands, being fit and refit together in some mysterious way. Lane lay still in the grass, arms behind his head, eyes closed, the red cap flung aside. I watched a small smile form at the sound of my uncle’s chatter, but after a moment the brows came together and the smile fell away, an outward picture of some darker frame of mind.

  And for exactly thirty seconds, I allowed myself to wonder what might happen in this moment if I were not Katharine Tulman or even one of those creatures of organdy in the park. If I was just a girl, like the ones Mary told me about — the ones who giggled about Frenchmen and had no responsibilities beyond their own hearth fire — would I go right now and sit down on the grass beside Lane? Or would I stretch out beside him, the sun full on my face, and cushion my head in that nook at his shoulder? If today were only one tick in a room full of clocks, unchanging and unhurried, would he let me make him laugh, put my hands in his hair, take away that lingering melancholy that I could see tingeing the edge of his thoughts?

  Lane stirred in the grasses, and I looked quickly somewhere else, anywhere else, fully myself again. Katharine Tulman was not one of those girls. She was the clock, a clock that had lost its key, unwinding in the dark. And she had better make the most of the time she had left. When I looked up, I saw that Davy was up on top of the castle hill now, pulling something large, round, and flat from behind the ruined stone wall. I couldn’t see Bertram.

  “Not already,” I heard Lane say. He was up on his elbows now, eyes on the hill. I turned just in time to see Davy sit on whatever it was that he had retrieved, give a scoot, and come flying down the long grass of the steep slope, the bottom of the hill gentling just enough to slow his speed and keep him from being flung headlong into a rock. My uncle clapped.

  “Tell me,” I said, raising a brow at Lane, “that is not how you and Davy ‘make your own fun.’” But the slow grin on his face told me that it was.

  By fifteen minutes before teatime, the sun was lowering and we were walking the hills again, much slower this time, counting backward until we reached the house, where my uncle could forgo the ordeal of walking through the village and take the tunnel to the workshop. I had more bumps and bruises than I could count, though my uncle informed me that I had slid twenty-eight times down the hill, and tumbled over on twenty-two of them. Evidently, steering a disc of polished brass while moving at high speeds down a grassy hill took skills I did not possess. I’d never had so much fun.

  “Three, Uncle,” I said, swinging both Davy’s hand and his. Uncle Tully must be very tired, I thought, to allow me to hold his hand. “Should you like honey in your tea this afternoon?” My uncle chatted on about motion and wheels and something about spinning — nothing to do with honey — while Lane, the nearly empty basket balanced on one shoulder, held an armful of flowers I’d picked for my room, my mud-crusted boots swinging by their strings from the same hand. I had the most curious feeling then, stronger than my little flight of fancy when we’d arrived at the hill, and the very opposite of my first day in Stranwyne. Instead of moving backward through time, I felt as if I’d moved forward, and to a place that was mine, where all was as it should be. I breathed in the warm afternoon, kicked the grasses with my bare toes, and enjoyed every second of my lie.

  I saw my uncle safely to his sitting room with his tea and toast, and hurried back to the house, thinking only of a bath and bed. I was flitting through the half-lit morning room, humming, when someone rose from a chair in the shadowed corner.

  “Mr. Aldridge,” I gasped, startled. He bowed, his brushed coat and trimmed whiskers making my half-pinned hair and Mary’s grass-stained skirt — a condition I’d been entirely comfortable with seconds earlier — feel out of place even among the dirt and the dust sheets.

  “Forgive me, Miss Tulman, but I was hoping you might come this way. I wondered if I might crave a moment of your time.”

  My brows rose slightly. But I came and sat on the chair he indicated with as much dignity as I could muster, placing my dirty boots on the edge of the nearest dust sheet, tucking my bare feet beneath the skirt, the flowers in my lap. Ben cleared his throat, straightened his jacket, and eventually sat opposite me, but then he only cleared his throat again, and remained silent. My spark of curiosity fanned into flame.

  “Miss Tulman,” he said finally, “I hope you know I only wish to be a true friend to you in every way.”

  I waited, my back very straight in the chair.

  “I’d like to speak to you about certain … connections you seem to be forging with the servants.”

  Now my brows were at their full height. I waited again, but Ben seemed to feel that the obligation to speak was with me. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean, Mr. Aldridge.”

  Ben sighed. “Oh, come now, Miss Tulman. Everyone knows that you’ve been rolling about on those infernal wheel contraptions with Lane Moreau. It is forgivable, even harmless, perhaps. But day-long assignations? That is most … unwise.”

  Assignations? All at once my disheveled state took on new meaning, and heat came creeping to my cheeks. I tucked a wayward curl back into place, trying to think how I might explain myself with delicacy. But before I could, Ben took a slip of paper from his pocket and held it out to me. I unfolded it, leaned to the gaslight, and read:

  Come to the workshop after breakfast on Monday,

  and we shall have a day of play on the moors.

  Katharine

  Such a twist on my note to Davy was so ludicrous I might have found it funny if Ben’s face had not been so grave. But when I opened my mouth to set his mind at ease, I found I had to shut it again. There was no name on this note other than my own, and Davy’s ability to read was a secret most likely known only to myself. I dithered, thinking, and wondered suddenly if this rumor had anything to do with Mr. Cooper’s visit to Mrs. Jefferies, Lane’s aunt. My flush deepened, and I saw that both my color and hesitation had been well noted by Ben. I lifted my head.

  “Mr. Aldridge, I am sorry you’ve gone to such trouble, and regret having caused you any discomfort, but the outing referred to in this note was also attended by my uncle and was meant as a particular treat for him.” And with those words any little bit of amusement or even embarrassment I might have experienced gave way to irritation. How was it Ben Aldridge’s business, in any case? “Where did you come by this note?”

  Ben did not answer. He was leaning forward in the chair. “For Mr. Tully, you say? You say you took Mr. Tully out on the moors?”

  “Certainly.” It didn’t seem that odd to me, but evidently it did to everyone else. “And Davy, too. As well as Mr. Moreau. We had … a lovely walk.” I was not about to admit I’d been sliding down hills.

  Ben got to his feet and walked to the dead hearth, where he stood gazing, apparently, at the soot stains. “Miss Tulman,” he said, “I’ll ask you to f
orgive me again if you find me forward, but … are your plans unchanged?”

  I gathered my flowers and stood, Davy’s note crumpling in my hand. “I don’t know what you can mean, Mr. Aldridge.” I knew exactly what he meant, of course. He meant did I intend to commit my uncle to a lunatic asylum and remove the means of living from more than nine hundred men, women, and children, including Lane and Davy. “My plan is to spend a quiet evening in my room, and to hold a birthday party in thirteen days’ time. I hope you will attend. As far as anything else you might be referring to …” My back stiffened. “… as I have never had any choice in their formation or execution, I do not think it would be accurate to call those plans ‘mine.’ But you can be assured, Mr. Aldridge, that I will always act in a manner that is prudent for my own future. Good night.”

  I snatched up my boots and hurried away, out the door and up the stone stairs, not pausing until I was in Marianna’s bedchamber, the door behind me locked.

  I left the flowers on the dressing table and sat down on the cushioned bench where I could examine myself in the mirror, tilting my head this way and that. I had one or two new freckles, but other than that and some very unruly hair, I was unremarkable, the same girl I had been in London. But it had not escaped my attention that Ben Aldridge had just accused me of an “assignation,” therefore implying that I was a girl capable of having such. When I got past my vexation, his naïveté pleased me. I tacked this pleasant lie onto my growing list of fantasies. When the morning came, I would have twelve more days.

  I spent my last twelve days not just living my lies, but reveling in them. Ben bore me no ill will for our disagreement, evidently, as he was in the garden the next morning, ready to walk me to the workshop, and at the workshop again in the evening, to walk me back again. I was polite, as always, friendly even, amusing myself by imagining what Aunt Alice or Mrs. Hardcastle might have said had I been one of their lady friends’ nieces or daughters. How they would have bandied Ben’s merits, pursing their lips over their sugar spoons, weighing his eligibility as a suitor.