Once Mother and Father were clean, I sponged them down with wood ash, and Agnes brought up a little dish of nut and linseed oil, which I dabbed lightly all over with a feather to make them shine. While I worked I glanced here and there out of the window at the street below, noticing nothing unusual, apart from a man who stood for five or ten minutes on the opposite side of the street against the railings, smoking tobacco. He was sallow-skinned, with very dark hair and eyebrows, wearing a black coat and cap, but what made him unusual was the unlit torch in his hand. Clearly he was a linkboy waiting for someone, or else waiting for darkness, though it was a few hours off yet. With every draw from his pipe, he held the smoke in his mouth for so long I began to think he’d swallowed it, but then it would tumble from his lips in a cloud. After two or three or these, he must have sensed he was being watched, and looked up, finding me in the window. I did not move, but he did, drawing the pipe from his mouth, pulling his cap down and ambling lazily away. I could not think of a worse job than his, creeping around in the darkness, not knowing what lay ahead or behind.
By the time I hung my parents back again, an hour and a half had passed. I put away the cloth, apron and gloves, suddenly feeling very tired. I told Agnes I would not have tea that day, because my stomach would not take it. I sat in the withdrawing room, looking at the newly varnished pictures, and waited. The brandy had lulled me. With the small fire burning the air was still and warm, and I felt my eyes closing, and let myself be carried to sleep.
A disturbance. I felt the air stir, and opened my eyes to dimness; night had not yet fallen, but the curtains had been drawn partway across the windows.
Three figures were crouching over me, wearing masks.
I came to consciousness slowly and then all at once, feeling as though a pistol had gone off inside my chest. Terror flooded me, pinning me to my chair and tipping the room upside down, spinning my head in dizzying circles. I opened my eyes again and found I was not dreaming; they were there still, leering, waiting, grinning behind their dreadful disguises, like ravens’ beaks. Three men, ready to kill me. Someone was screaming, and I tried to get up, the room bouncing around me like a ball. They had come back for me. They had returned. It was happening. I had no faculty of my limbs, did not know if I was sitting or standing or falling or rising, but suddenly they were grabbing at me, and I was tearing at them, clawing and screaming and dying. The shot would sound at any moment; I knew it was coming, and every line in my body was primed for the fire. I was pinned to a carriage seat, stiff and wet from my own piss, as my parents lay either side of me with the life bleeding out of them, thick and red and staining everything, leaking over their clothes from the holes blown into them: Mother’s head and Father’s chest. My face was warm with their blood; it was in my eyes and mouth and I had to swallow it down. The men: there were three of them. One had climbed into the carriage, filling it with his dark bulk, combing my parents’ bodies, unfastening rings and necklaces, even my mother’s hairpin. I felt her hair tumble downwards and brush my shoulder. He took Father’s buckled shoes from his limp feet, and Mother’s dainty slippers, and the pocket from her dress, grunting and cursing from behind his black mask and throwing things out of the door to the others. All the while my parents leaked and leaked, their blood pooling in the footwell, running beneath our feet. Their eyes were open and glassy.
My ears still rang from the shots, louder than anything I’d ever heard, filling my whole head with a deafening ring. Distantly, a child was crying. But that was not part of the memory; I had not cried, and Ambrosia had been at home with a cold. Who was weeping, then? They had not shot me yet, and perhaps they wouldn’t, if only I could—
‘Mrs Callard!’
They had seized me, and I fought with all my might. I kicked and bit and punched and tore, and then I was on the floor, my cheek pushed into the carpet. I could see nothing, but then my arms were released, and in a moment I was crawling and reaching, finding the poker before the fender, and gripping it hard in my palm. I began swinging and jabbing, roaring for Agnes and Maria at the top of my lungs.
‘Alexandra, no!’
The poker crashed into an almighty fist, and was wrenched from my hand. I clung and pulled, but he was stronger. All I saw in my blind, sick panic was the terrible black mask, and a man’s hat and a green coat. And then the poker was being flung to the floor, and my arms forced against my sides, and I realised two of the figures were wearing skirts. My eyes grew more used to the darkness, and I could see the taller one had her arms wrapped around a girl, who was crying.
‘There’s a child in there,’ one of the men had said, thirty years ago on that road in Derbyshire, which wound like a river through green peaks and gorges. And now there was a child here, in my withdrawing room, and the mask was being pulled from her face, and it was Charlotte. The woman holding her was Eliza, her nursemaid, and the man grasping me was my friend Doctor Mead. I looked at each of them in confusion, in terror. Were they changelings, or was I? Was I a child of ten, or a woman of forty? Their faces darkened as the light faded, and the room began to turn once again, and I felt myself falling, falling, falling.
I woke in my bedroom, as Doctor Mead was lowering me onto the bed. He removed my slippers, attending to the task with great care and attention. He had not realised I had woken and was watching him, and when he saw me his face was so full of sorrow it broke me in two. I began to cry: great, howling, racking sobs that came from somewhere deep, deep down – that chink, that keyhole of grief that I could never open because who knew where it ended and I began?
‘Mrs Callard,’ came his gentle voice. ‘Here.’ He passed something beneath my nose and told me to sniff, and an icy wind blasted through my senses, cleansing my mind and making my eyes water. He was sitting on the side of the bed with a warm hand on my forehead, and gradually my dreadful choking noise stopped. He cleaned my cheeks and nose with a handkerchief, then put it into his pocket. When I had finished, I could not look at him. He was sitting too close; his presence was invasive, cloying. I wanted him out of my room, and my house.
‘Leave,’ I told him.
He stiffened, and the bed creaked beneath him. I turned and stared at the wall on my left, at a picture of two milkmaids on a lane.
‘Mrs Callard,’ he spoke quietly, passionately, ‘I am deeply troubled by—’
‘Leave now,’ I whispered, staring hard at the milkmaids’ pails, their dream-like expressions. ‘Now.’
He remained sitting for a moment or two, then stood shakily, his hands dangling at his sides. ‘I will come back with a tincture,’ he said.
‘You are a cruel man.’ I turned to look directly at him. His face was more awful than it had been after his grandfather died. His hair was messed, his collar torn, as though he had been in some common tavern brawl. I realised with horror that I must have done it. His pea-green frock coat was nowhere to be seen, discarded, no doubt, to lift my body upstairs. I blushed with shame and revulsion, and his mouth opened noiselessly.
‘We thought we might surprise you,’ he stammered. ‘We bought masks at the gardens; it was my design.’
‘You know, do you not, that my parents were murdered before me by highwaymen? Three of them, in fact, wearing masks, who pillaged their bodies while they were still warm. I was sitting between them.’
His face collapsed, written all over with sorrow and regret. ‘I did not,’ he said thickly. ‘Daniel did not tell me.’
‘Really,’ was my sour reply. ‘How regrettable. If only he had, we might have avoided this experience altogether.’
‘He told me they died in a carriage accident.’
My hair had fallen down from its pins. As if I was not humiliated enough, I was lying in bed, with it all about my shoulders, and my gown rucked up around me, with a man in my room. Only hours before I had told him our friendship was cast in marble, injuries in dust. I had tried to lift his spirits by letting him go out with my nursemaid and daughter. And here I was, washed up like river debris, empt
y and hollow and drenched in shame. Icy anger coursed through me, and I bade him leave again. He tried again to remonstrate with me, but I remained silent, and finally he left with a humble bow. I heard the door close softly behind him, and the pain of my past lapped gently at my feet, inviting me to bathe in its tempting waters, and I sank back into it, and let it carry me down.
CHAPTER 14
Doctor Mead tried to visit five or six times over the next few days, but I would not admit him. I stayed in my bedroom, moving in an unhappy triangle from the bed to the chair at the window and sometimes the floor, looking at the things in my ebony box, reading old letters, or sleeping. Sometimes I stared at the sky, and did not move until the light faded and the windows of the houses opposite lit up, their shadowed occupants moving unguardedly. I ate in bed, and got through a bottle of brandy, which Agnes refilled discreetly when my bed hangings were closed. At night, I heard men on the stairs. I saw them at the window in black crow masks, their beaks tapping the glass as they peered in. Once I woke in the night convinced someone was under my bed, and lay in the darkness, weeping like a child, too afraid to check the black space beneath. When all I found was dust clumps that clung to my fingers, I did not know whether to laugh or cry harder. Thirty years had dissolved in a matter of days, casting me back to that windy morning when my life had ended with three bangs. Now I was stuck like a fly in wax. Each time I looked down at my nightgown I expected to see a rose-pink silk dress with little black boots sticking out from my skirts. The dress had been drenched with blood, as though a carriage wheel had torn through a great puddle of gore while I’d been standing by the roadside. In my fitful sleep I heard the gunshots and the horses neighing, and felt the wind whistle in from the peaks.
On the fourth day, I slept till noon. My room was stale, and I threw the window wide to let the air in. It was a thick, heavy sort of day, with rain in the air and no breeze. Agnes brought me a breakfast tray, and I asked her to send up a bath and water so I could wash. I took my time soaping my hair and skin and rinsing it clean, and I sat in the tub until the water turned cold and I was shivering. I eyed my nightgown on the bed. The idea of putting it on again depressed me.
By now it was late afternoon, and I could smell food from the kitchen. That made my mind up: I was ready to leave the fug of my bedroom and sit straight-backed at a table, instead of eating in bed slumped like an invalid. I dressed and went downstairs, passing the dining room to do a cursory check of the front door before I ate. The candles were lit on the hall table, and the door was indeed locked. All was in order, but something was different. I glanced up and found myself looking into a great big pair of eyes. On the wall, above the hall table, was a large portrait, framed in gilt, of a woman in a red dress petting a dog. I moved very slowly towards her, trying to recall how she came to be there, and failing. Her expression was vibrant and playful, and she had a scroll at her right elbow, as though she had at that moment been interrupted reading a letter. A large cross sat at her neck, papal in its lavishness, and she wore a white indoor bonnet. Then I noticed something else, which at first I thought part of the painting: a note was tucked inside the frame, wedged between canvas and wood. I took it out and unfolded it.
Dear Mrs Callard,
You spoke of a desire to adorn your hallway with a painting of my choice from my grandfather’s collection. This, of the late Mary Edwards, by William Hogarth, is my favourite, and I believe she will feel much at home with you. Something of her manner reminds me of yours. I sincerely hope you will admit me presently. I wish more than anything to offer my deepest apologies in person, because a letter – and indeed a painting – just won’t do.
Yours faithfully (in marble),
Elliott Mead
So, he had given me a Hogarth. Removing a work of that value from his grandfather’s estate would have been no small matter. I imagined his mother alone would have put up an enormous resistance, matched only perhaps by the auctioneer. Yet here it was. I examined the subject, whom Doctor Mead had compared to me, yet found no similarity between us. I did not even like dogs.
At the dining table, Eliza and Charlotte looked up in alarm as I entered the room. They were hunched over their plates, knife and fork in each hand, deep in conversation. Charlotte was speaking quietly, a small, easy smile on her face, which vanished when I came in. I took my usual seat and waited for Agnes’s idle hum in the hall, knowing she would be carrying my dinner tray upstairs. When I heard it I called her. There was a short silence, followed by: ‘Madam, is that you?’ A silver tray appeared at the door, bearing a bowl of broth and a bit of bread and cheese – a servant’s meal, which I had been eating for days, and quite unlike the hearty liver and onions Charlotte and Eliza were enjoying.
‘Madam!’ she crowed. ‘You are better. I’m very glad to see it. Let me set these down for you.’ She began arranging my place with the napkin and bowl.
‘I am not an invalid, Agnes; nor do I wish to eat like one any longer. I will have some liver, if you would be so good as to fetch the china.’
She began taking up the things at once, a blush spreading to her neck. ‘Right away, madam. Glad to see your appetite is restored.’ She hurried from the room with the broth rattling on the tray, and the three of us sat in unpleasant silence until she returned with the dinnerware, setting it out around me in a fussy little ceremony. I sat stiffly until the final spoon was placed, and she closed the door very quietly behind her in the manner of someone leaving a sickroom.
‘Are you better, madam?’ Eliza asked gently. Her eyes were solemn.
I said nothing, and began spooning cabbage onto my plate. I had not yet looked at Charlotte, afraid to see myself reflected in her eyes. She had knocked gingerly on my bedroom door once or twice over the last few days, no doubt encouraged by Eliza, but I had not admitted her.
‘Madam.’ Eliza spoke again. ‘Forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn, but I’m sincerely sorry for the other day. We didn’t know it’d cause such distress.’
I looked sharply at her. ‘What did Doctor Mead tell you?’
A little frown pulled at her eyebrows. ‘Only that you thought we was intruders, and that’s why you . . .’ She swallowed. ‘It was thoughtless of us. We didn’t know we’d frighten you so.’
I stared hard at her, and wondered if Elliott Mead had told her the truth. From the corner of my eye I saw Charlotte’s pale face and wide, dark stare.
‘This cabbage needs more cream,’ I told Eliza. ‘Would you take it back to the kitchen?’
I could not bear the force of her abject pity. It was worse, even, than the fear I’d seen when she’d taken off her mask. I felt the smallest tug at my seams, as though I might unravel again. Eliza got up and left with the platter of cabbage, closing the door behind her.
I heaped food onto my plate, though I was thoroughly unappetised, and said: ‘Tell me, Charlotte, how did you find the pleasure garden?’
Sitting opposite me in her snow-white dress, she kept her gaze on the tablecloth. Her hair tumbled in a braid down one shoulder, a pink ribbon woven through it.
‘Was it not pleasurable?’ I prompted. Her jaw hardened, and she glanced at the door. I threw my fork down.
‘Do not look for your nursemaid; answer me.’
‘Yes, Mama,’ she said miserably.
‘What did you like about it, exactly?’
She stared at her lap. ‘I liked being outside. There were lots of people there.’
‘And were they all wearing masks?’
‘No,’ she whispered.
‘What else did you see?’
Alarmed by the direct questioning usually reserved for lessons, Charlotte rubbed at a stain on the tablecloth. ‘Lots of things,’ she said. ‘I saw a funny dog, like Aunt Ambrosia’s. And there was an orcha . . . orchist . . .’
‘Orchestra?’
‘Yes, playing music, like at church. And people were eating food standing up.’
That was when I noticed it: the gap at the front of her mouth.
Her pink tongue poked through it like a reed, softening her speech. A cold shard of terror spiked through me from the head down as I remembered the poker, and grabbing it, and smashing it . . . where?
‘When did you lose your tooth?’ I spoke harshly, and her apprehension turned to terror. At that moment Eliza returned, and the way Charlotte’s expression plunged into relief . . . She was afraid of me now, and always would be.
‘Charlotte’s tooth is missing,’ I said, trying to sound calm. ‘When did she lose it?’
‘Oh, only yesterday, madam. It was wobbly since Monday, wasn’t it? And last night it jumped out by itself.’ She was bright and cheerful, as though relieved to be talking of something else, and came to stand behind Charlotte and hold her shoulders. ‘We saved it – didn’t we? – to show you. We thought you’d like to see it, as it’s her first one.’
I had not struck her in the face with a fire iron, then.
‘Charlotte was telling me about the pleasure gardens,’ I announced drily. ‘Tell me, does everybody there wear masks?’
‘No,’ said Eliza.
‘I find masks dangerous things. They conceal. Concealment is a very dishonest thing, don’t you agree? Why might a person hide who they are, unless they were up to no good?’ I chewed a mouthful of liver, finding some gristle and removing it with my fingers. ‘I have no idea why they are worn at balls and the like. Surely one would prefer to know whom one was addressing.’
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