‘It’s because he’d hunt you down, Mr Ellingham, trust me.’ It’s important to me that he know the truth, that he doesn’t think the worst of Brigid. I’m unaccountably sad for both of them. Ellingham’s not finished, though.
‘All I know is that since Bethany Lawrence took over Breakwater, Aidan’s coffers are overflowing. Woman’s got her knife at the throat of the city, no commerce comes in or goes out that she doesn’t get a cut of… and she sends her minions into the world to make sure she cuts a cut of whatever dark business goes on there too.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Ah, you know what happens when no one owns the truth: rumour swirls up like poisonous fog. Some say she’s from Lodellan, the cathedral city. That her family was a good one, but there was some scandal with her sister. They say the woman burned to death on a prison hulk in Roseberry Bay. A family destroyed, a fortune lost, a reputation in tatters. Yet here comes Mistress Lawrence to Breakwater, two nephews and a niece in tow, and no shortage of funds to buy property, pay others to do her deeds.’
‘If she’s caring for the children…’
‘Ah, but there’s only the oldest lad still left; and she’s got a little one of her own. The other two disappeared early in the piece and no one the wiser as to their whereabouts.’ He shrugs again. ‘Perhaps she’s had nothing to do with any of it. Perhaps they’re a most unfortunate family. But if not? If her closest blood can be treated like that? Why would she care for anyone else in the world? She only preserves those of use to her and I hope Aidan keeps that in mind in his dealings.’
There’s a long pause while I feel the threat of my cousin and that ruthless woman hanging above me. Then I shake myself: what value could I possibly have to the Queen of Thieves, me with no more than a crumbling mansion and two lost ships to my name? Aidan just wants a trophy to bring him Hob’s Hallow, the O’Malley name of which he’s been deprived. Anything more is just my imagination, stirred by Ellingham’s rumours.
I clear my throat and say, ‘Where did you find her?’ and tap on the top of the casket behind us. I ask because I don’t want to hear any more about how Aidan Fitzpatrick was once a likeable man; he may well have been likeable to a man, yet have always been anathema to a woman.
Ellingham smiles fondly. ‘She saved me, my little singing angel, just at a time when I thought I’d have to sell up, send this lot off to make their fortune elsewhere. But I found her and there’s nothing like her in all the world as far as I can establish.’
He gives me a sideways glance, as if deciding whether or not to trust me; then realises I already know more than enough to get him into trouble all because Brigid asked him to help me. ‘We went off the beaten path, took a wrong turn, and came to a deserted house, tumbling down, no roof to speak of. It had been a mansion, once, but no longer. I found a trapdoor in the floor of a great hall. Down there she was, on a chair, covered in mould and with vines wound about her, sitting there like she had been waiting for someone for so very long. I touched her and suddenly this voice came out, such a beautiful thing. I took her with me.’
‘I’m glad,’ I say, and I am. I hate the idea of her alone in the darkness forever. Bad enough she’s in a box all day. Then Ellingham darts back to our earlier topic.
‘I take it you weren’t interested in marrying Aidan?’
‘That’s an understatement, Mr Ellingham. My grandmother wanted it, she thought it would save the family fortunes.’
‘They say the O’Malleys have funny ways.’
That makes me laugh. ‘Oh, yes.’
You have no idea. I finger the spot on my hip where the mermaid scar is. I think of the third child, the one for the sea. It had not been done in so long I thought it was finished. I thought it was something from the old times when the O’Malleys could get away with anything. I didn’t think it would ever be something I would be expected to do. Didn’t think I’d ever be Gráinne making a terrible choice, giving birth with the intent of throwing a child away. Myself, Isolde, we only survived because we were sole children; and Aoife, forced to marry her own brother in the hope of more pure O’Malley offspring.
‘So, you’ve journeyed a lot, seen many places big and small?’ I hesitate but sooner or later I’m going to have to ask someone.
‘Aye, same route, every year and about.’
‘Have you ever heard, Mr Ellingham, of an estate called Blackwater?’
‘Blackwater?’ Ellingham’s brow furrows as he thinks, but eventually he shakes his head. ‘Don’t believe so.’
I could tell him that Isolde’s last letter mentioned the name of the house she and my father had built, of the estate that had spawned a village: north of Bellsholm, more or less, she wrote. From Óisín’s lessons, I know Bellsholm as a small port town on the Bell River, nothing so large or busy as Breakwater, but of Blackwater I’d never heard. No real surprise for my mother made it. But if I tell him north of Bellsholm, more or less then he might tell anyone else who comes looking for me. So I simply say, ‘Oh.’
‘The others might know, I’ll ask them tonight.’ He smiles at me. ‘Subtle like.’I grin. ‘Someone will know, Miss O’Malley, don’t fear.’
He’s a kind man and I’m sad to think Brigid cannot be with him.
16
It’s six days before we reach Bellsholm. We arrive late at night and camp on a flat grassy patch of land on the outskirts of the town. On our route there are many small villages and hamlets, nowhere big enough to justify taking the automaton from her box. Ellingham is very aware that one day she’ll stop working. He doesn’t know how old she is, or much at all about her inner workings because he’s never been brave enough to take her apart for fear he won’t be able to put her back together again; he does remove the front panel from her chest and dust regularly, however. Instead, the inhabitants of those tiny locales have had to be content with songs and jokes in whatever passes for a tavern, and some small skits that the actors seem to know like the backs of their hands. There have been no complaints because anything is better than nothing in places where you have to make your own fun most of the time. People who appear with the express purpose of entertaining you? Now, that’s something special. The troupe has been paid in eggs and homemade breads, lengths of fabric and balls of wool, in rapid shoe repairs and vials of perfume and medicine. Anything but coin, but no less valuable.
We’re not far from the harbour, where I can see the lanterns which illuminate the docks, their reflections in the water moving constantly. Viviane, the woman with red and white hair (costume mistress and cook), sits with me by the fire and tells me about the town. She was born here though it’s so long since she left, she no longer has family or a house to visit here.
‘It’s smaller than Breakwater, but it sprawls lazy as a big port,’ she says as she mends one of the costumes. ‘See those lights?’ She points away to our right. ‘Houses crawling up into the foothills; farms too and a foundry, tannery, carriage maker, carpenters and joiners, a hostelry too for those who can’t be bothered to come into town. To the north is the Singing Rock.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Ah, now don’t go wandering there, that’s where the rusalky gather.’
I sift through my memories and come up with one of Maura’s warnings: rusalky aren’t creatures who begin in the water, but end there. Maidens murdered and those who take their own lives, all ill-fated in love. Some can’t pass on and remain in their watery grave, transmuted into something else, creatures with a malign will. Their only goal is to bring others to drown. I say ‘Ah,’ and Viviane sees that I understand.
It’s better organised here than Breakwater, she boasts: the wharves are overseen by a strict harbour master, the streets leading away from the water and winding their way to form a grid. The only strangeness is the Vines District, an created island in the middle of the town where the richest have their grand mansions. It’s surrounded by a diverted channel of the river, and accessed by only six tidy bridges, each one guarded by an armsman day and ni
ght to ensure the wrong sort don’t cause mischief for their betters.
Ellingham has taken Ben, who’s given me a wildflower every day, has hairy palms and index fingers longer than his middle ones, to see the owner of the Aoide Theatre, where they will soon settle in for an eight-week season. It’s not quite in the Vines District, but located a stone’s throw from one of the bridges, making it one of those places the rich and poor may mingle, should they so choose. Ellingham told me he’s training Ben to become the manager for the day – far distant – when Orin himself decides he’s had enough. Ben’s a good lad, always quick with a joke and a helping hand. Thus, everyone else has departed to find their own peculiar brand of amusement for as of tomorrow everything will be about the performances to earn their keep. So, tonight is for their rest and my last night with them.
I could have gone with them and enjoyed a meal in a tavern and the company of others. I could have patronised one of the finer brothels for women on the far side of Bellsholm – where the men are handsome and do as they’re told (Viviane had said this wistfully). But I chose instead to remain with Viviane, who knows much and is good company, and who has trusted me with the least onerous of the mending so I might do something useful. Ellingham won’t accept anything from me, no matter how I insist.
‘What will you do, tomorrow?’ asks Viviane. ‘When will you leave, Miss Molly?’
‘I’ll visit the jewel-smith Ellingham recommended,’ I say. Bellsholm is a better spot to dispose of some of the pieces; let them be taken apart and made unrecognisable. I’d love to be rid of the engagement ring, but it’s too unique and too difficult to get the right price for here. I need a bigger city, perhaps Lodellan itself, though I’ve no plans to go that way, so the thing must remain with me a while longer. ‘I’ll buy a horse, food. Choose a road.’
‘Looking for Blackwater,’ she states. Not a question. I know Ellingham’s asked his people as if it’s his own enquiry, but no one’s come up with anything. And everyone’s looked at me once or twice, as if to ask how can we think them so stupid as to not connect my sudden presence with Ellingham’s sudden queries?
There’s not much point denying it. I nod.
Viviane says, ‘Best to ask any tinkers you meet on the road. We tend to travel the same route, year in, year out. We seldom go off the beaten path because we don’t need to. We stay where’s safest, although I’m not saying sometimes we haven’t gone out of our way from desperation and met with trouble in the form of robbers and the like.’
‘What’s happened?’ I ask.
She laughs. ‘Orin Ellingham can talk almost anyone around. Instead of stealing from us, all three times we’ve been fed and performed for them.’
‘Even blackguards need amusement, I suppose.’
‘Do you have a knife? Some kind of weapon?’
I pull out the pearl-handled pocketknife and she laughs again.
‘I know it’s not much,’ I say, ‘but it’s hidden and unexpected.’
‘True. That’s your backup, though. You need something bigger, something that might act as a deterrent.’ Her hand moves swiftly to the boot peeking out from beneath her skirts, then there’s something silver and sharp in her fingers. ‘There’s a weaponsmith next door to the jewel-smith in the Vines. Tell him I sent you.’ A swift flick and the knife disappears again.
We settle into silence for a while, both of us drawing thread through fabric with her brass needles; the firelight’s not ideal but this isn’t fine work. Then she says, ‘Who are you running from?’
‘A man,’ I answer, then, not wanting to continue that line of conversation, ask, ‘Why did you leave Bellsholm?’
‘A man.’
We snort.
‘A man I didn’t want to marry,’ I admit.
‘A man I did want to marry,’ she answers.
‘Did you?’ I ask. ‘Marry him?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘And it was a bad decision. When I left him and our house in Briarton I joined this lot.’ She nods. ‘Now that was a good decision. I hope yours is too.’
I think about Aidan’s fingers around my wrist, about his insistence that he knows best. I think about what he’d do if he knew what I’d done with the green-eyed man, and that makes me smile, until I remember what I suspect the green-eyed man did to Aoife. Then I think again that he freed me, at least in part, from my grandmother. It’s hard, still, to feel grateful for that.
‘I do believe so.’
* * *
I was out of Bellsholm before midday, heading north according to the signpost by the hostelry on the outskirts. My freshly acquired grey horse would excite no envy; I carried a bedroll, a tinderbox and charcloth for the starting of fires, a pocketwatch, three knives (one at my belt, one in my boot, one slid into a concealed compartment on the saddle), and my duffel was filled with a plentiful supply of bread and dried meat, and a full water skin. I’d exchanged an emerald necklace of Aoife’s for more than enough money to buy my new possessions, and for the leftover to jingle fatly in my purse. Viviane sewed most of the rest of the pieces into the hem of my coat where they’ll be harder to find should someone try pickpocketing me, or anything more violent. Before I left, I took one of the earrings I’d worn to the theatre that night with Aidan and wrapped it in a piece of silk. I hid it beneath the pillow of the cupboard bed in Viviane’s wagon; it will help when times are hard.
That was six hours ago and, apart from one event, it’s been without incident. I’ve found a clearing off the road where I might make a small fire without attracting unwanted attention. The final floral tribute from Ben has wilted, but instead of throwing it away, I put it into a pocket. I can’t bear to get rid of it; such small beautiful simple gifts made me happy for a time.
I’m sadder now than I was at my farewells, for tonight Delphine will be brought out of her casket and set up on the stage. Viviane has made a new dress for her, orange silk and gold lace, with an underskirt of deepest purple. The automaton’s hair has been brushed and reset into a high style rather like the one I wore to the Paragon Theatre that single night, and I wonder if it was done on purpose or unconsciously. I’ll miss hearing her sing. I think, sometimes, of those hours in the box beside her, of the sliver of soul inside her. How much awareness went with that little piece of spirit? How must she feel to be sealed in there? Would she weep or scream if she could?
I shake my head as if the thoughts will be dealt with so easily, and for a while, they are, purely because I replace them with something worse. The road I chose, heading towards the mountains Ellingham said. It goes north (north of Bellsholm, more or less); one would like to think my destination will be easy to find. It also passed by the Singing Rock where Viviane warned the rusalky spent their days. I might not have gone so close, but then again I might, curious to see another sort of water creature. Perhaps because they were once human, girls like myself, who’d met a terrible end, I somehow thought they’d be less dangerous.
Perhaps it was simply that I heard them singing and wanted to hear better, for the sound was divine. Mostly, Maura had said, they can talk a person into the water, wishing to visit a little rage on anyone who’d not passed on as they had. But I’m an O’Malley, there’s salt and who knows what else in my veins, so their airs did no more than delight me. I tied my horse to a tree and found a rocky outcropping to perch upon as I watched them sing.
Their skins were all colours, as was their hair; I seemed to discern that not all were beautiful in life but their deaths had conferred some sort of loveliness, a strange vibrancy. Yet there were moments when I could see through them, see the scars their lives and demises left upon them, I could see the rot beneath the ripeness.
They saw me too, but I didn’t seem to bother them, although one or two appeared put out that I was not ensorcelled, that I did not leap into the water – and a lucky thing that was, too, for after a while three heads bobbed to the surface, nothing like the rusalky, or perhaps their foreignness struck me because I did not expect to see them,
not again.
The mer from Breakwater, I believe the same who’d pulled me in, drifting and showing me their teeth. Then the rusalky noticed them and the commotion began. The dead girls climbed up their rocks in the middle of the river much like ladies threatened by scampering mice, yet they hissed like cats as they prepared to launch themselves at the mer. They’d not left the river out of fear but merely to get a better purchase for a leap. They transcribed a perfect arc, each one.
Their illusions were lost and all I could see for the longest time were creatures of green and black putrescence, shaped roughly like humans, and a stench rose from them that was enough to make me gag. I scrambled from my roost and ran to my horse. I didn’t need to know who won.
It was hours before I allowed my poor mount a respite; it seemed hours before I stopped shaking. And I was careful when choosing this camping spot to make sure there were no lakes, ponds or streams nearby. That might well keep me safe for a while, but how can one run away when all the waters in the world are joined?
17
On the afternoon of the third day out of Bellsholm, I reach a crossroads, a major one with a signpost at its centre bristling with so many wooden arrows that it looks like an elongated hedgehog. There are the four compass points at the apex, placenames cascade down beneath. I examine each board with its neat black writing – Cwen’s Reach, Bitterwood, Tally’s Tarn, Silverton, Gevern’s Mount, St Allard’s Way, Heloise’s Grove, Foxfire Ridge, St Sinwin’s Harbour, Lodellan, Seaton St Mary, Able’s Croft, even Breakwater – yet not a one says “Blackwater”. I chew my lip, trying to decide: North of Bellsholm. But what if I make my way northwards, more or less, and find myself lost and none the wiser? I might head towards Lodellan, the cathedral city, and perhaps improve my chances of finding someone who has heard of my destination. More taverns, more coffee shops and tea houses where folk of all manner gather and talk, exchange information and stories. Somewhere I might find a hint of what I need? Perhaps it would throw Aidan off the trail, should he somehow divine my direction.
All the Murmuring Bones Page 14