The Dark Unwinding (8 page)

I ran, pushing past Lane, fleeing headlong through the chapel and into the corridor, away from the broken, blinking eyes, every rational thought sucked away into the void of terror that was now my mind. I stumbled through my turns and up the two sets of stairs, careening down the hall of the portraits until I had twisted the knob to Marianna’s chamber. I flung the door shut behind me, panting, my hair unpinned and the rose-spattered walls turning circles around my head. I saw Mary straighten from the fire she’d been building, and then I watched her straighten up again, and again.

“Oh, Lord,” her voice said. The words echoed in my ears. “She’s gone and gotten tipsy. Tipsy …” I heard her repeating. “Mum told me about such things. There now, don’t fall, Miss. I’ll be taking care of you….”

I let her hands tend me, her prattle fragmenting into meaningless sounds as she put me to bed and pulled the blankets up to my chin. The trogwynd blew that night, howling outside the window. I clung to the coverlets, shaking and sweating, as if they might keep out what haunted me, watching the bed curtains writhe in their own phantom breezes before sleep took the visions away.

I
stayed late in bed the next morning, waving Mary away when she tugged at my blankets and brought me tea. My memories were uncharacteristically muddled, vague as if seen through steam, though I was certain I remembered Lane and the tunnel, and something about the chapel, and the parson’s eyes.

I turned on my side, letting my head sink into the pillow. I had never believed in the infamous “overwrought nerves” of a female, though I had certainly found it a convenient excuse once or twice. But last night, I conceded, could have been nothing else. The strangeness of my surroundings, the heaviness of the choice I would be forced to make, it all must have overwhelmed me. I knew I could not have seen that broken parson blink, and therefore, logically, I had not seen it. That was very simple and very believable in the normality of the morning sunshine. I threw back the covers, my limbs tired and heavy, and went to sit at the dressing table.

I looked at myself while I worked out the knots in my hair, through glass that was now clean and shining. It was not the reflection, I decided, of someone without a firm grip on their faculties. I ran the brush down the length of my hair, all the way to the ends that touched the cushioned bench, and was pinning it all up again when I noticed a small square of paper lying on the floor. Someone had slid it beneath the door. A large hand had written:

MR. ADOLPHUS BABCOCK, SOLICITOR

WODEHOUSE, BABCOCK, AND KNOTTS

15A NORTH AUDLEY ST., HANOVER SQUARE

LONDON

Lane was keeping his word, then. What he had made of my bizarre exit from the chapel was beyond imagination. And mortifying. I put it from my mind. “Mary!” I called.

The shaking of the floorboards told me Mary was on her way through the connecting rooms before the door to the bathing room burst open. “I’m that glad to see you awake, Miss. Are you —”

“Mary, how do you receive your post, here?”

“Post? Do you mean letters, Miss? ’Cause if you’re meaning letters, we get them off the riverboat, Miss, or put them on it, though most of us don’t have anybody on the outside to be writing to, if you —”

“When does the boat leave?”

“The letter boat leaves late morning on Thursdays, Miss, like always. What do you —”

“Is today Thursday?”

“Yes, Miss. I —”

“Then fetch some ink, quick as you can, Mary. I need to write a letter, and I don’t want it to miss that boat. But bring a cup of hot tea first, if you will. I’m sorry, but the one from earlier has gone cold.”

“I’m certain it has, Miss. I’ll go double quick. Likely you’ve got a head fit to bursting, if you don’t mind me saying, but I’ve got some tea put back special in my room, so as not to always be running down to the kitchen. Mrs. Jefferies don’t know what’s what, she don’t, so I’m doubting she’ll miss it, and then I’ll be finding the ink.”

She tore out the door, nearly careening into a chair in her effort to hurry. I went to my trunk to rummage for paper and pen, wondering just why Mary would think I had a headache.

When I stepped down the path to the Lower Village, Mary running fast ahead for the letter boat, the first man I saw spat at me. Or rather, he spat at the ground, but the act had been deliberate, his eyes on my face. I walked on, pretending not to have seen, though we both knew I had. Lane and Ben Aldridge were deep in conversation before the green-painted door, their talk stopping abruptly when I approached.

“Good morning,” I said, and pushed past into my uncle’s sanctum before either could reply.

My uncle wasn’t there, and neither was he in the workshop. The room was empty and dim, with none of the engines running; it was quiet enough to hear the gas hiss. I pulled off my bonnet, wandering past the tools and benches to the far end of the room, to my uncle’s menagerie. I touched the head of a monkey, the fur real and coarse, then let my fingertips brush over the woolen jacket of a towheaded boy holding a top. The glass eyes stared back at me, expressionless. And he didn’t move. Not one of them moved. Of course they did not, but I was relieved all the same. I wondered if I turned the boy’s key if he could spin the wooden top; I wondered if he was my father.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” the low voice said, echoing against the walls. I had known Lane wouldn’t leave me on my own for long, but the tone made me bristle. Or maybe, another part of me warned, it was my own embarrassment for my inexplicable behavior the day before. I ran my hand over the boy’s hair. Real, of course.

“Where is my uncle, Mr. Moreau?”

“It’s clock-winding morning. He’ll come when he’s finished. Why did you —”

“And at what time, precisely, will that be?”

He took a moment to answer. “Half past one.”

“And since we are both aware that he will not arrive a moment sooner or later than his set time, that gives me nearly three hours, Mr. Moreau, to do as I wish.”

“She’s right, you know,” Ben interrupted, his head poking through the doorway. “There’s no point in keeping her out —”

Lane’s voice was sharp, cutting Ben’s words. “The workshop belongs to Mr. Tully, not her!”

I took my hand from the boy’s head and spun around.

“And might I remind you, Mr. Moreau, that neither this workshop, nor anything else at Stranwyne, actually belongs to you. I assume you receive your wages here, just like everyone else?”

A dead silence followed this, and I stood motionless, struck by a lightning bolt of guilt that shocked me from my head to my feet. I had heard Aunt Alice use those very words once, while sifting through a housemaid’s personal belongings. Lane’s gaze of granite examined me for one more heartbeat, and then he turned, slid past Ben, and after a few moments I heard a slam and a harsh jangle, as if the little bell outside the green-painted door had just been flung to the ground. Ben shook his head.

“You are correct, of course,” he said. “But he will not forgive you for that. Not readily.”

I turned back to the boy with the top, my eyes stinging. I knew full well that Lane considered himself more family than servant to my uncle, and that my uncle felt the same; the only real question was who considered himself the father and who the child. I pressed a finger against my temple. I might be many things, but never, ever had I thought I could be like Aunt Alice. “Mr. Aldridge, I’m …” I steadied my voice. “I am glad to see you this morning. I wonder if you happen to know who is in charge of paying the men? I would like an introduction, if at all convenient.”

Ben spoke from the workshop door. “There is a committee in charge of things like that, one for each village, I believe. But feelings being what they are, I … I don’t know that a meeting with any of them would be pleasant, or indeed even wise, Miss Tulman. Not at the moment, at least.”

“I see,” I whispered, thinking of the spitting man. I may not have had Mary’s headache before, but my head was pounding now. “Then please feel free to look about the workshop, Mr. Aldridge. Take out the fish, if you like. I don’t think Mr. Moreau or my uncle will be back for some time.”

“Miss Tulman, could I interest you in a walk beside the water?” Ben didn’t wait for me to respond, but came across the room. “You seem flushed, and the wind is much cooler on the path. I’m sure it will do you good.” He smiled down at me, offering his arm. “Come on, then.”

“Thank you, Mr. Aldridge. But … would you mind giving me a moment to … to put on my bonnet?”

“Of course. I’ll wait outside.”

As soon as the workshop door closed I took a deep breath, thoughts and feelings churning in random disarray. This would never do. What difference could it possibly make if the servants, or the villages, or every soul on the Stranwyne estate thought badly of me? Hated me, even? It would not change what I had come to do. But it did make a difference. To me. And it would have been so much easier if it didn’t.

I stepped out of the workshop, wiping my cheeks, my mind on the way a gaze could change from storm cloud to stone, and paused. The hallway was wrapped in silence, heavy and thick like dust. The door across from me stood slightly ajar. “Mustn’t touch,” I heard myself say, and saw again Lane’s jerk of discomfort at the sight of my hand on the latch. I listened for another moment to the quiet, to the reckless curiosity now buzzing through my head, to the breath of temptation whispering along my neck. I hurried across the hall, and slipped inside the door.

Sunshine flooded through two open windows, muslin curtains swaying in a breeze that was both hot and fresh. The room was simple, with walls of plain gray stone, iron pegs driven in where spare shirts and a jacket hung. A pair of darned socks lay on the floor, boots sat askew by the bed, rumpled linens and a depression in the mattress showing where a body had recently been. I looked quickly away from this, heart thudding, and gave my attention to the other end of the room.

A workbench stood there, but there were no paint spatters, only some small, sharp tools, metal filings, and an amber substance that I discovered, upon touching, to be beeswax. And then I found the shelf. On the wall above the bench stood a row of little figures, miniature and gleaming in silver, the polished surfaces reflecting dully in the light from the window. There were perhaps a dozen of them — horse, stag, hound, and owl — beautifully crafted, and each drew my eye and held it, not just with the intricacy of its design, but with the story it told. The wolf bared its teeth, body tense, hackles rising in threat, and then the owl seemed to catch sight of me, twisting its head. I touched one finger to a falcon, wings out and back in a plummeting dive, feathers ruffling in an imagined wind. The metal seemed alive almost in the same way as one of Uncle Tulman’s toys.

My eyes drifted downward, and I saw a square of white plaster on the workbench, the impression of a sleek, winged form in its middle. I picked it up, touching the indentations, running my thumb over the painstaking cuts of each individual feather. Splashes of bright, hardened silver dotted the plaster on one end. My gaze darted back to the falcon. Lane had made these things, carving them from wax to make a plaster mold, and pouring molten silver after that. I pictured the way he must look when alone in this room, the gray gaze neither angry nor cold, only sure and calm, carving delicate wings, telling stories to himself with a single object. It was a vision I could not reconcile with the way he looked at me.

I set down the mold carefully and took a step away from the workbench. Now I knew exactly why Lane had not wanted me in this room. I had seen something that was far more personal than an unmade bed or some discarded clothing. I had glimpsed a private piece of his soul. And it would be for what I’d seen, not for what I’d said, that he would never forgive me. I ran quickly back into the empty hallway and let the door click shut behind me.

I found Ben waiting outside, as promised, and we strolled the path beside the water, beyond Lower Village and the busy docks. He had been correct. A cooler breeze blew here, soothing my head.

“I wonder if you realize, Miss Tulman, what a feat of engineering you are looking at?” I followed Ben’s gaze as it swept over what I had been calling the river. “This is a man-made canal, very clever, though it predates the current Mr. Tulman by centuries. There is a water gate at the head, where it branches away from the river …” He waved a hand. “… maybe a mile or less behind us, so the canal can be drained for repairs and what have you, and look at this….”

He indicated the stretch of water we were approaching. The path we walked was steadily descending, but the canal remained at the same height, rising farther and farther above our heads, held in place by a dike of stone.

“This wall protects the entire lower portion of the estate, and has done so for more than two hundred years.” Ben grinned at me apologetically. “You will have to pardon my enthusiasm, Miss Tulman. But I have been fascinated with this canal ever since I was a child.”

I tried to put an answering smile on my face, to not seem sullen and out of sorts to the one person who was actually doing me a kindness. I groped for a subject. “I believe you said your aunt was the housekeeper here at one time, Mr. Aldridge?”

“Yes. Old Daniels. My father’s spinster sister.”

“And did you visit her here?”

Small lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes. “Why, I lived here, Miss Tulman. For two years.”

“Really?”

“In the Upper Village. It was very new then, built around the old servant and farm cottages, and the workshop was just being constructed. I never saw Mr. Tulman, of course. Only certain people had run of the big house. Miss Marianna was gone by that time and keeping house servants was rather difficult. But Old Daniels stayed on. And Mrs. Jefferies.”

“Then you knew Mr. Moreau?” The idea of Ben and Lane being children together seemed strange to me. But then again, I was learning there was much I didn’t know, perhaps about either of them.

“I only knew him a little. He was five years younger, and even then your uncle’s keeper. Not that Aunt Daniels would have allowed me his company in any case. I’m sure he …”

My obvious surprise made him pause, and his smile broadened.

“Why, I would not have been allowed his company because his father was a French soldier, Miss Tulman. Jean Moreau had fought with Napoléon Bonaparte all the way across Europe, right to the French defeat at Waterloo. Not a few in the village had family blood poured out on those battlefields, so you can imagine the sentiments. It’s a wonder Miss Marianna allowed the man here at all, really, but she always was one for doing things her own way, or so my aunt Daniels said.”

“But these ill feelings do not seem to be present now, Mr. Aldridge.”
Now they are all reserved for me
, I thought bitterly.

“Very true. Perhaps as time went on and Jean Moreau was gone they forgave the son the sins of the father. But that change would have been after my time. My own father was at sea with the Royal Navy — protecting the coasts from those ‘dirty French frogs,’ to quote Aunt Daniels — and it was relative to relative for me, until I was sent away to school. So only a short stay, I’m afraid. Though I never forgot it.”