Ember Island (45 page)

The cool air stirred with a wind from the sea. A sailing ship glided past in the distance, between the island and the mainland, all its sails gleaming white in the autumn sunlight. The bay was green-blue, thumping. Tilly hoped the wind would calm by this evening, that the swell would settle. She didn’t relish the idea of being out there on a small boat.

She took the road down towards the beach and then came around the rocks and into the swamp. The sun fell vertically through the trees onto the dank mud. The tide was up, so she had to make her way between the trees rather than along the shore line. Her skin shrank against the bugs and creeping branches. It was slow going and she made a note to herself to leave plenty of time this afternoon. It would be better for her to arrive before Hettie, to greet her and put her at ease.

For a long time she didn’t think she would see the tree with the blue ribbon. She wondered if it had blown away into the water, but the tide was up so the tree was a lot further out than she remembered, standing in the salt water with the bright ribbon rattling in the wind.

She saw the boat a moment later, as she’d left it. She made her way over, and placed the picnic basket and blankets in it. Then stood for a moment looking out through the trees at the water, catching her breath and her thoughts. The minutes and hours were buzzing past. Soon it would all come to fruition.

•

On returning to the house, Tilly’s first order of business was to change into a clean dress and shoes. Mud had spattered the ones she was wearing. Nell was a curious girl and Tilly hadn’t the energy for a series of plausible lies. From outside her door, she could smell food and it made her stomach rumble. She stepped out into the corridor and down to the dining room, where Nell sat alone at the dining table with a tureen of tomato soup and a plate of bread rolls in front of her. Tilly stopped in the threshhold.

“Are you feeling any better?” Nell said, her eyes revealing a hint of suspicion.

“Not much.”

“Will you eat? There’s more than enough. Papa has some business over at the stockade and couldn’t join me and I do hate to eat alone.”

Tilly wouldn’t be here for dinner and food might be scarce over coming days, so she said, “Yes. Yes, I will.”

She pulled out a chair and served herself some soup, dipped the warm bread into it, pushed it in her mouth. Took a moment to savor it. “Did you write?” she asked Nell.

“I only stopped because I was so hungry,” Nell answered. “I have had a breakthrough. I believe I’ll finish it this afternoon and can read it to you tomorrow. Provided you are well, of course.”

“Who knows what tomorrow will bring?” Tilly said lightly, between mouthfuls.

Nell was quiet a few moments, then said, “Tilly?”

Tilly’s skin prickled. “Yes?”

But then Nell shook her head. “Nothing. It’s good soup, isn’t it? Cook never makes it too salty. We once had a cook that added so much salt to everything that sometimes my tongue would feel thick after a meal.”

And on she went, making small talk. Tilly nodded and made noises in the right places, all the time her mind a whirl of other, darker thoughts.

After lunch, she returned to her room and went through her belongings. While she couldn’t be seen with a suitcase, she had a cotton bag that she could sling over her shoulder and take with her, so she slid her inlaid writing box into it: the last remnant of an old life that receded further and further into her memory. What would Grandpa, not quite a year dead in his grave, think of this turn of events? What shame he would feel,
knowing she had fallen so low and was preparing to take such desperate steps.

“I’m sorry, Grandpa,” she said, under her breath, caressing the box. Then she put the bag down near the dresser and knelt by her bed and, for the first time in many months, began to pray.

It was while she was begging for forgiveness and clarity that a knock sounded at her door. She stood, smoothed down her skirt and said, “Come in.”

It was Sterling, in his dark blue vest and shirtsleeves. His familiar smell—skin, soap, leather—washed over her and she had to restrain herself from leaning towards him to take a deep breath.

“I am terribly sorry to bother you,” he said, “but we’ve had our mail and there’s a letter for you.”

“For me?”

He held out the envelope. He was curious, she could tell. The handwriting was familiar and the return address was the same as the last. Laura Mornington had written again, via Mrs. Fraser’s. The series of crossings-out on the envelope told her it had been passed on to Mr. Hamblyn’s before being redirected here. “Thank you,” she said, in a tone that was as neutral as she could manage.

“Where precisely is Guernsey?” he asked.

“It’s an island in the English Channel. I lived there for a time,” she added boldly. There was no point in hiding it. “Very unhappily, I might add.”

“So you are no stranger to islands, then,” he said gently. “Perhaps that is why you fit in so well here.” His eyes lit on the dress and shoes that lay in a pool on the floor. “Is that mud?” he asked.

“I’ve been down to the mangrove forest,” she said, heartbeat twitching in her throat.

“For fresh air?”

“I was thinking of taking Nell down there next week. For a
science lesson. I wasn’t prepared for quite how muddy it was, so I turned around almost immediately.”

“Don’t take Nell down there, please,” he said. “It’s neither safe nor pleasant.”

“I am unwell,” she said coolly. “I won’t be at dinner. And I’ll be resting all afternoon and don’t want to be disturbed.”

He blinked rapidly, taken aback. “Of course.” He gathered himself, resolved. “I’ll let Nell know. Good day.”

She turned away so she couldn’t watch him leave. When the door had closed she said, “Good-bye, Sterling,” and tears welled and spilled over. She sat on the bed with her face in her hands and let the tears fall. Tears of love and loss and fear and strain. Tilly cried for nearly half an hour, then turned to Laura’s letter.

There wasn’t the urgency opening it this time, for she suspected it would say much the same as the first. In fact, she almost didn’t read it. It wasn’t for her at all. But then she thought that a fresh stab of guilt over her crime may be necessary to get her through the evening. She tore the envelope and unfolded the pages within.

•

Dear Chantelle,

It has been some time since I last wrote, and I waited in vain for a letter from you to reassure me. I can see now why you didn’t write back, and perhaps this letter will disappear into nowhere because you have already moved on, as you must, given how culpable you are.

Since my last letter, things have come to light that were not apparent to me before and I feel such a fool for trusting
you, giving you the benefit of doubt, and even defending you to the very woman who suspected you wanted to destroy her happiness. Now I know you would have willingly destroyed her happiness and destroyed her along with it.

After the fire, when the police came, they found love letters between you and Jasper in your room. They found no passport, and we all presumed Jasper had broken it off and you had fled. No suspicion over the fire was laid upon you because the cause was found to be simply a broken lamp in a downstairs room. Perhaps the curtain had caught it. The window had been left open and the curtains appeared to be the first thing that went up. I was glad when the police had told me all this because I had been so worried that the timing of your leaving would cast suspicion on you. “She is a good woman,” I had told the police so many times. “She is an orphan and I have done my best to help her.”

And so I went on, believing you innocent of all sin, suspecting only that you had run off with a broken heart and didn’t even know about the accidental fire at Lumière sur la Mer. I worried for you, nearly every day. I even kept your room for you, until it became impractical. My daughter Maria and her child have now moved in with us, and we needed to hire more servants. It was time to clear out your room.

I had a few sad moments as I packed up your dresses and shoes, your hair clips and toiletries. Much of it I have thrown away or given to charity. As a servant, you had nothing fine. Or so I thought.

On the final day, before the two new beds were to be moved in to a room you had luxuriated in alone—thanks to Jasper, and to Tilly’s great dismay—I checked the dresser
drawers one last time. I noted that the bottom drawer was shallower than the others, and in investigating this irregularity, I discovered the drawer had a false bottom. When I lifted out the flat panel of wood, I found all your secrets.

Not just jewelry—jewelry a woman of your station could never afford—but the other letters, the wicked letters as I’ve come to think of them. Every single one of them from Jasper, but do not think that you are not implicated in every wicked line.

Some made me blush with their lascivious details. I wonder if you wrote such shocking and improper letters in return. I read through them, even though they made me ill. What I thought were fantasies on the page turned out to be memories. The fact that you saved such lewd and indecent writings from him says something of your character, Chantelle.

But there was much worse to come.

Other letters, hidden also. The letters you wanted to save but wanted nobody ever to find. Letters that spoke of love and lust, but also spoke of plans for murder. When I think of poor Tilly coming to me for comfort and how I simply told her that husbands have affairs and it means nothing and she should go about her life expecting happiness . . . it makes me want to sob with guilt and anguish. That poor young woman, played like a fool by Jasper, egged on by you, with the goal of taking her money and then making her appear to be going mad, and ultimately . . . would you have really done it, Chantelle? Would you have really gone through with poisoning her? Pushing her out a window? Drowning her in the sea? These were all suggestions Jasper had made, and the letters indicated that you were avidly involved in arguing
the details of these acts with him. Would you have really stood by as Jasper spoke to the authorities of her repeated attempts to take her own life? She had no family left to speak of; I suppose you might have got away with such a lie. And then would you have set up house at Lumière sur la Mer with Jasper as though you somehow deserved it?

What a horror you are. What a ghastly last few weeks in this world poor Tilly must have experienced. Well you might run, Chantelle Lejeune. You had much to run from.

Ralph insisted I burn the letters, so you need not fear the interest of the police. His reasoning was that Tilly is dead now, and unable to be saved. That Jasper, too, will never answer for his crimes. And that he wants to think of it no more, and he doesn’t want the trouble and shame of an investigation. I disagreed with him, but did as a good wife should and followed his directions. All those letters were burned in my hearthplace, and I swear they smelled of brimstone as they went up: that is how much evil was in them.

But although you need not fear the judgment of the earthly law, Chantelle, you will face the judgment of God on your final day. That gives me comfort. And writing this letter has given me a chance to express my horror and anger. I wish you only misery. I wish you an awful life.

Laura Mornington

•

Tilly refolded the letter with shaking hands.

Jasper and Chantelle were plotting to murder her. Perhaps that
night was the night they intended to go through with their plans, perhaps not. Nonetheless, they were not innocent. Certainly, it was not for Tilly to decide their punishment, but she hadn’t, had she? She had decided nothing.

Now that clarity was pushing through the guilty mud in her brain, she saw the fire differently. Fighting Jasper off. Him knocking the lamp over. That room full of old papers because there was no furniture left to store them in. Yes, she had locked him in, but she had feared for her own safety. The moment he was free, he had gone upstairs anyway because his lover was hidden in the house. A congregation of events, set in chain by Jasper and Chantelle and their murderous plans, that ended in their accidental deaths.

Tilly didn’t kill them. She had tortured herself with guilt for months with no good reason.

And now time ticked by on her last day here, on her plan to help Hettie escape so that she could absolve herself: there was no absolution necessary. How she longed to call it all off. To stay here and resume teaching Nell and wait for Sterling to come back to her arms. She choked back a sob.

It was too late. She couldn’t go and face Hettie and say, “No, we are not proceeding.” Hettie’s mind was already fixed on holding her children again. Besides, the matching dress was under the hedge, the boat was in place loaded with supplies. Tilly’s crimes had already been committed, and she wouldn’t be able to stop Hettie now. And if Hettie escaped, Tilly couldn’t stay on the island.

The only way out was escape.

L
ike a condemned woman going to the gallows, Tilly silently left the house at the appointed time and made her way down towards the cane fields. The shadows were long, the air cool, the dusky sky turning pink. She wondered how Hettie had got on, escaping from the garden in her matching dress and matching scarf tied down over her hair and low across her face. Had anybody called out to her? Waved and expected a wave back and been startled by those big rough hands?