My gaze snags on Madeline’s cap and apron, which are hanging off a chair.
As if slapped, I immediately return to myself, the uniform summoning Anna’s face, her voice and touch, the peril of our situation.
Clinging to this memory, I manage to elbow Gold’s personality to one side.
I’m so filled with his hopes and fears, lusts and passions, that Aiden Bishop had felt like a dream in the morning light.
I believed I was no more than this.
Edging off the mattress, I knock over a pile of empty laudanum vials, which roll away across the floor like fleeing mice. Kicking them aside, I go to the fire where a single flame licks the embers, swelling as I add more tinder and wood from the pile. Chess pieces line the mantelpiece, each of them hand-crafted, a few painted, though splashed in colour might describe them better. They’re only half finished, and lying beside them is the small knife Gold is using to carve them. These are the chess pieces Anna will spend the day carrying around, and the blade is a perfect match for the slashes I saw on Gold’s arms yesterday.
Fate is lighting signal fires again.
Madeline’s retrieving her clothes, which are scattered across the floor. Such haste speaks of an unruly passion, though there’s only shame at work within her now. She dresses with her back to me, eyes on the wall opposite. Gold’s gaze is not so chaste, gorging on the sight of her pale white flesh, her hair spilling down her back.
‘Do you have a mirror?’ she asks, doing up her dress, the lightest touch of a French accent in her words.
‘I don’t believe so,’ I say, enjoying the warmth of the fire on my bare skin.
‘I must look terrible,’ she says absently.
A gentleman would disagree out of respect, but Gold is no gentleman and Madeline is no Grace Davies. I’ve never seen her without powder and make-up, and I’m surprised by how sickly looking she appears. Her face is desperately thin, with yellow, pockmarked skin and tired eyes rubbed raw.
Skirting along the far wall in order to stay as far away from me as possible, she opens the door to leave, cold air stealing the warmth from the room. It’s early, still hours until dawn, and there’s fog on the ground. Blackheath is framed by trees, night still draped around its shoulders. Given the angle I’m seeing it from, this cottage must be somewhere out by the family graveyard.
I watch Madeline hurrying along the path towards the house, a shawl pulled tight across her shoulders. If events had followed their original course, it would be me stumbling into the night. Driven mad by the footman’s torture, I’d have taken the carving knife to my own flesh before climbing Blackheath’s stairs to bang on Dance’s door, screaming my warning. By seeing through Daniel’s betrayal, and overwhelming him in the graveyard, I’ve avoided that fate. I’ve rewritten the day.
Now I have to make sure it has a happy ending.
Closing the door behind Madeline, I light an oil lamp, pondering my next move as the darkness slinks into the corners. Ideas claw at the inside of my skull, one last half-formed monster still waiting to be dragged into the brightness. To think, when I woke up that first morning as Bell, I fretted about possessing too few memories. Now I must contend with an over-abundance. My mind is a stuffed trunk that needs unpacking, but for Gold the world only makes sense on canvas, and it’s there I must find my answer. If Rashton and Ravencourt have taught me anything, it’s to value my hosts’ talents, rather than lament their limitations.
Picking up the lamp, I head towards the studio at the back of the cottage to search for some paint. Canvases are stacked against the walls, the paintings half-finished or slashed in a fury. Bottles of wine have been kicked over, spilling across the floor onto hundreds of pencil sketches, scrunched up and tossed aside. Turpentine drips down the wall, blurring a landscape Gold seems to have begun in a flurry and abandoned in a rage.
Stacked at the centre of the squalor like a pyre awaiting the torch are dozens of old family portraits, their woodworm-riddled frames ripped off and tossed aside. Most of the portraits have been destroyed by turpentine, though a few pale limbs have managed to survive the purge. Evelyn told me Gold had been commissioned to touch up the art around Blackheath. Seems he wasn’t terribly impressed with what he found.
Staring at the pile, an idea begins to form.
Rummaging through the shelves, I snatch up a charcoal stick and return to the front room, placing the lamp on the floor. There’s no canvas to hand so I dash my thoughts across the wall instead, working within the small pool of dancing light cast by the lantern. They arrive in a frenzy, a lurch of knowledge that wears the stick down to a nub in minutes, forcing me into the gloom to scavenge another.
Working downwards from a canopy of names clustered near the ceiling, I feverishly sketch a trunk of everybody’s actions over the course of the day, the roots stretching back nineteen years, burrowing into a lake with a dead boy at the bottom. At some point, I accidentally reopen an old cut on my hand, smearing my tree red. Tearing the sleeve from my shirt, I bandage the wound as best I can before returning to my labour. The first rays of the new dawn creep over the horizon as I step back, the charcoal stick dropping from my hand and shattering on the bare floorboards. Exhausted, I sit down in front of it, my arm trembling.
Too little information and you’re blind, too much and you’re blinded.
I squint at the pattern. There are two knots in the tree representing two swirling holes in the story. Two questions that will make sense of everything: what did Millicent Derby know and where is Helena Hardcastle?
The cottage door opens, bringing the smell of dew.
I’m too tired to look around. I’m melted candlewax, formless and spent, waiting for somebody to scrape me off the floor. All I want to do is sleep, to close my eyes and free myself of all thought, but this is my last host. If I fail, everything starts over again.
‘You’re here?’ says the Plague Doctor, startled. ‘You’re never here. By this time, you’re usually raving. How did... what is that?’ He sweeps by me, his greatcoat swishing. The costume is utterly ridiculous by the light of a new day, the nightmarish bird revealed as a theatrical tramp. Little wonder he makes most of his house calls at night.
He stops inches from the wall, running his gloved hand along the curve of the tree, smudging the names.
‘Remarkable,’ he says under his breath, looking it up and down.
‘What happened to Silver Tear?’ I ask. ‘I saw her shot in the graveyard.’
‘I trapped her in the loop,’ he says, sadly. ‘It was the only way to save her life. She’ll wake up in a few hours thinking she’s just arrived and repeat everything she did yesterday. My superiors will notice her absence eventually, and come to free her. I’m afraid I have some difficult questions ahead of me.’
As he stands in communion with my painted tree, I open the front door, sunlight drawing across my face, warmth spreading down my neck and bare arms. Squinting into the glare, I breathe in its golden light. I’ve never been awake this early before, never seen the sun rise over this place.
It’s miraculous.
‘Does this painting say what I think it says?’ asks the Plague Doctor, his voice tight with expectation.
‘What do you believe it says?’
‘That Michael Hardcastle tried to murder his own sister.’
‘Then, yes, that’s what it says.’
Birds are singing, three rabbits hopping around the cottage’s small garden, their fur made rust-coloured by the sunlight. If I’d known paradise was on the far side of a sunrise, I’d never have wasted a single night on sleep.
‘You’ve solved it, Mr Bishop, you’re the first one to solve it,’ he says, his voice rising in excitement. ‘You’re free! After all this time, you’re finally free!’ He removes a silver hip flask from the folds of his robe, and presses it into my hand.
I can’t identify the liquid in the flask, but it sets fire to my bones, jolting me awake.
‘Silver Tear was right to worry,’ I say, still
watching the rabbits. ‘I’m not leaving without Anna.’
‘That’s not your choice,’ he says, standing back to better see the tree.
‘What are you going to do, drag me out to the lake?’ I ask.
‘I won’t need to,’ he says. ‘The lake was simply a meeting place. The answer was all that ever mattered. You’ve solved Evelyn’s murder and convinced me of the solution. Now that I’ve accepted it, even Blackheath can’t keep hold of you. Next time you sleep, you’ll be freed!’
I want to be angry, but I can’t rouse myself to it. Sleep is tugging at me with soft hands and every time I close my eyes it becomes that much harder to open them again. Returning to the open door, I slide my back down the frame until I’m sitting on the floor, half of my body in gloom, the other half in sunshine. I can’t bring myself to abandon the warmth and birdsong, the blessings of a world so long denied.
I take another sip from the flask, forcing myself awake.
I’ve still got so much to do.
So much you can’t be seen to be doing.
‘It wasn’t a fair competition,’ I say. ‘I had eight hosts whereas Anna and Daniel only had one. I could remember the week and they couldn’t.’
He pauses, considering me.
‘You had those things because you chose to come to Blackheath,’ he says quietly, as if afraid of being overheard. ‘They did not, and that’s all I can say on the matter.’
‘If I chose to come here once, I can choose to come again,’ I say. ‘I won’t leave Anna behind.’
He begins to pace, glancing between me and the painting.
‘You’re afraid,’ I say, surprised.
‘Yes, I’m afraid,’ he snaps. ‘My superiors, they’re not... you shouldn’t defy them. I promise you, after you leave, I’ll offer Anna all the assistance it’s in my power to grant.’
‘One day, one host. She’ll never escape Blackheath, you know she won’t,’ I say. ‘I couldn’t have done this without Ravencourt’s intelligence, and Dance’s cunning. It was only because of Rashton that I started looking at the clues like evidence. Hell, even Derby and Bell played their part. She’ll need all of their skills, just as I did.’
‘Your hosts will still be in Blackheath.’
‘But I won’t be controlling them!’ I insist. ‘They won’t help a maid. I’ll be abandoning her to this place.’
‘Forget about her! This has already gone on long enough,’ he says, swinging around to confront me, swiping his hand through the air.
‘What’s gone on long enough?’
He’s looking at his gloved hand, startled by his own loss of control.
‘Only you can make me this angry,’ he says in a quieter voice. ‘It’s always been the same. Loop after loop, host after host. I’ve seen you betray friends, make alliances and die on principle. I’ve seen so many versions of Aiden Bishop, you’d probably never recognise yourself in them, but the one thing that’s never changed is your stubbornness. You pick a path, and you walk down it until the end, no matter how many holes you fall down along the way. It would be impressive if it weren’t so intensely irritating.’
‘Irritating or not, I have to know why Silver Tear went to such lengths to try to kill Anna.’
He offers me a long, appraising look, and then sighs.
‘Do you know how you can tell if a monster’s fit to walk the world again, Mr Bishop?’ he says contemplatively. ‘If they’re truly redeemed and not just telling you what you want to hear?’ He takes another slug from the hip flask. ‘You give them a day without consequences, and you watch to see what they do with it.’
My skin prickles, my blood running cold.
‘This was all a test?’ I say slowly.
‘We prefer to call it rehabilitation.’
‘Rehabilitation...’ I repeat, understanding rising within me like the sun over the house. ‘This is a prison?’
‘Yes, except instead of leaving our prisoners to rot in a cell, we give them a chance to prove themselves worthy of release every single day. Do you see the beauty of it?’ The murder of Evelyn Hardcastle was never solved, and probably never would have been. By locking prisoners inside the murder, we give them a chance to atone for their own crimes by solving somebody else’s. It’s as much a service, as a punishment.’
‘Are there other places like this?’ I say, trying to wrap my head around it.
‘Thousands,’ he says. ‘I’ve seen a village that wakes up each morning with three headless bodies in the square, and a series of murders on an ocean liner. There must be fifteen prisoners attempting to solve that one.’
‘Which makes you, what? A warden?’
‘An assessor. I decide if you’re worthy of release.’
‘But you said I chose to come to Blackheath. Why would I choose to come to a prison?’
‘You came for Anna, but you got trapped, and loop after loop Blackheath picked you apart until you forgot yourself, as it was designed to.’ His voice is tight with anger, his gloved hands clenched. ‘My superiors should never have let you inside, it was wrong. For the longest time, I thought the innocent man who’d entered here was lost, sacrificed in some futile gesture, but you’ve found your way back. That’s why I’ve been helping you. I gave you control of different hosts, searching for those who were best equipped to solve her murder, finally settling on the eight of today. I experimented with their order to ensure you got the best out of them. I even arranged to have Mr Rashton hidden in that cupboard to keep him alive. I’m bending every rule possible so that you can finally escape. Do you see now? You must leave while you’re still the person you wish to be.’
‘And Anna...?’ I say haltingly, hating the question I’m about to ask.
I’ve never allowed myself to believe that Anna belonged here, preferring to think of this place as the equivalent of being shipwrecked, or struck by lightning. By assuming her to be a victim, I took away the niggling doubt of whether this was deserved, but without that comfort, my fear is growing.
‘What did Anna do to deserve Blackheath?’ I ask.
He shakes his head, passing me the flask. ‘That’s not for me to say. Just know that the weight of the punishment is equal to the crime. The prisoners I told you about in the village and on the boat received lighter sentences than either Anna or Daniel. Those places are much less harrowing than here. Blackheath was built to break devils, not petty thieves.’
‘You’re saying Anna’s a devil?’
‘I’m saying thousands of crimes are committed every day, but only two people have been sent to this place.’ His voice is rising, racked with emotion. ‘Anna’s one of them, and yet you risked your life to help her escape. It’s madness.’
‘Any woman who can inspire that loyalty has to be worth something.’
‘You’re not hearing me,’ he says, his fists balled.
‘I’m hearing you, but I won’t leave her here,’ I say. ‘Even if you make me go today, I’ll find my way back in tomorrow. I did it once, I’ll do it again.’
‘Stop being such a bloody fool!’ He thumps the doorframe hard enough to bring dust down on our heads. ‘It wasn’t loyalty that brought you to Blackheath, it was vengeance. You didn’t come here to rescue Anna, you came for your pound of flesh. She’s safe in Blackheath. Caged, but safe. You didn’t want her to be caged, you wanted her to suffer – so many people out there wanted her to suffer, but none of them was willing to do what you were, because nobody hated this woman as much as you did. You followed her into Blackheath and for thirty years you dedicated yourself to torturing her, as the footman tortures you today.’
Silence presses down on us.
I open my mouth to respond, but my stomach’s in my shoes, my head spinning. The world has upended itself, and even though I’m sitting on the floor, I can feel myself falling and falling.
‘What did she do?’ I whisper.
‘My superiors—’
‘Opened Blackheath’s doors to an innocent man intent on murder,’ I say. ‘
They’re as guilty as anybody in here. Now tell me what she did.’
‘I can’t,’ he says weakly, his resistance all but spent.
‘You’ve helped me this far.’
‘Yes, because what happened to you is wrong,’ he says, taking a long swig from the flask, his Adam’s apple bouncing up and down in his throat. ‘Nobody objected to my helping you escape because you weren’t supposed to be here anyway, but if I start telling you things you shouldn’t know, there’ll be repercussions. For both of us.’
‘I can’t leave without knowing why I’m going, and I can’t promise not to come back until I’m certain of why I came in the first place,’ I say. ‘Please, this is how we end this.’
The beak mask turns towards me slowly, and for a full minute, he stands there, deep in thought. I can feel myself being measured, my qualities weighed and set aside, my flaws held up to the light that they might be better judged.
It’s not you he’s measuring.
What does that mean?
He’s a good man. This is when he finds out how good.
Bowing his head, the Plague Doctor surprises me by taking off his top hat, revealing the brown leather straps holding the beak mask in place. One by one, he begins undoing them, grunting with the effort as his thick fingers pry at the catches. As the last clasp comes loose, he removes his mask and pulls down his hood, revealing the bald head beneath. He’s older than I would have imagined, closer to sixty than fifty certainly, his face that of a decent, overworked man. His eyes are bloodshot, his skin the colour of old paper. If my tiredness could take a shape, it would look like this.
Oblivious to my concern, he tilts his face to catch the early morning light seeping through the window.
‘Well, that’s done it,’ he says, tossing the mask onto Gold’s bed. Freed from the porcelain, his voice is almost, but not quite, the one I know.
‘I don’t imagine you were supposed to do that,’ I nod towards the mask.
‘It’s getting to be quite a list,’ he replies, sitting down on a step outside the door, positioning himself so that his entire body is bathed in sunlight.
‘I come here every morning before I start work,’ he says, taking a deep breath. ‘I love this time of the day. It lasts for seventeen minutes, then the clouds gather and two footmen resume a quarrel from the evening before, ending in a fistfight at the stables.’ He’s peeling his gloves off, finger by finger. ‘It’s a shame this is the first time you’ve been able to enjoy it, Mr Bishop.’
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Page 38