The Painted Bridge (28 page)

Anna had agreed with Louisa that she would go back to Lake House and wait for the doctors to come. But she had no intention of returning. She was going to deliver Catherine almost to the gates then hurry back to the village and pick up the stagecoach at the inn, traveling on along the great north road. Make her way to her eldest sister’s house, in Northumberland. Lavinia would shelter her for a little while at least, once she heard what had happened. Her husband, Jim Lillywhite, was a mild man who fell in with Lavinia’s wishes and had done ever since they married.

Far from London, Anna would be able to think clearly and decide what to do with her life. Currently, all she was certain of was that she would not return to the Vicarage. She was beginning to feel as if she had never known Vincent at all, as if she knew him better when he was a stranger, and once she married him, began to unknow him. One thing she was familiar with was his view on divorce. He told her the day before the wedding that he considered it a cardinal sin, that he would die before he would divorce.

Catherine’s head slipped forward onto her chest. Her face looked younger than ever, her high white forehead blue-veined with the blood that pulsed inside. The wheel of the bus hit a rut and she opened her eyes and looked around, her expression startled.

“Where are we?” she asked, sitting up. “I was dreaming.”

“What about?”

“The Fasting Girl.” Catherine leaned her head back on Anna’s shoulder, slipped an arm through hers. “I can’t stop thinking about her. Do you think dreams can be more real than life, Mrs. Palmer?”

“Perhaps.” Anna rested her head on the top of Catherine’s. “What
would be the nicest dream you could have for your life when you’re a woman? Tell me about it.”

Catherine began to talk about pomegranates and cypress trees, high-walled houses perched on top of mountains and terraces where fountains splashed in the night air. She smiled and her face looked restored.

“Next time I escape, Mrs. Palmer, it will be forever,” she said.

*   *   *

They climbed down from the bus at Highgate and set off out of the village on the road that led to Lake House. The tall trees on either side of the way were black-limbed, glistening and still. The ice had thawed and the grasses and hedgerows looked subdued and ordinary, stripped of their glittering crystals, their coat of armor. They walked past the allotments, past a boy cutting the tops off Brussels sprouts, swiping at them with a sickle. Anna took Catherine’s arm.

“Ben will be happy to see you home again,” Anna said.

“I know.”

“He must have missed you.”

“Yes.”

Catherine’s voice was monotonous. Anna took hold of her hand and kissed it. They were within half a mile, she estimated, of Lake House. She would not go any nearer. She stopped in the road.

“Are you strong enough to walk alone from here?”

“What do you mean, Mrs. Palmer?”

“Catherine, I’m not coming any farther.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m going to stay with my sister. Another one of them. I can’t take you with me this time. And you know I can’t come back to Lake House.”

They heard the clip of metal striking on stones and both looked up. Makepeace was coming toward them along the lane, dressed in a black cape and felt bonnet and using a furled black umbrella as a walking stick. At the sight of her, Anna felt fear run through her like a tide.

She reached under her cloak for the St. Christopher and clenched her fingers around it, her hand pressed against her neck. St. Christopher was the patron saint of travelers. Silently, she asked him to help
her. She would hand Catherine over to Makepeace and leave. She’d keep her distance, wouldn’t get close enough for Makepeace to grab her.

Catherine’s voice shook. “What’s going to happen to me?”

“Nothing will happen, Catherine. Don’t be afraid. You’re going home.”

Makepeace was approaching steadily—she had seen them now and her walk was more purposeful although still slow.

“Good-bye, Catherine,” Anna said.

“I’m glad, Mrs. Palmer,” Catherine whispered, “that you’re not coming back.”

Anna and Makepeace faced each other by the side of the road. Makepeace seemed shorter than she did in Lake House. Her eyes were swollen, their rims red, and something about her reminded Anna of another encounter, in another place.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Makepeace.”

“Miss Abse, Mrs. Palmer.” She nodded at them in turn, drew a black-edged mourning handkerchief from her reticule and shook it out.

“What’s happened?” said Catherine, in alarm. “Is it Mother?”

Makepeace shook her head.

“Mrs. Abse is prostrated. That will pass.” She turned her head away and let out a sob. “But this … this will not pass.”

The survivors from the wreck, Anna thought. Makepeace reminded her of the sailors. Their dazed faces and the sense that they inhabited a different reality. She had a growing sense of unreality herself. The white sky, the stillness and the shivering crows planted along the verges of the road, were dreamlike.

Makepeace stood as if rooted to the ground, the winter light reflecting off her stricken face. She had aged in only a couple of days and Anna felt a surprising stirring of pity for her. She wondered who had died. Hearing the rumble of cart wheels in the lane behind her, the soft clop of a single horse, she took a deep breath, still keeping her distance. She would make a dignified good-bye then run for it, all the way to the village, jump on the first coach that presented itself.

“I’ve brought Catherine back to her family, Mrs. Makepeace. I shall leave her with you.”

“Very kind, Mrs. Palmer, I’m sure.”

Makepeace’s voice was iron hard. She put away her handkerchief and looked at Anna with something of her old mix of malice and resentment. Anna’s legs were trembling. She was too close to Lake House, must leave while she still could. She kissed Catherine on both cheeks. The cart had pulled up behind them.

“I’m going now, Catherine. I’ll write to you.”

She hugged her a last time, turned, and ran headlong into the massive figure of Jethro Fludd.

“No,” she shouted. “No.”

The cart was filling the lane. She tried to dart around the other side of it but Fludd laughed, reached out one massive hand and caught hold of her arm. Leaving the cart standing, the reins of the horse hanging loose, he began to drag her along the road toward the gates as easily and carelessly as if she had been a puppy. Catherine ran along beside, weeping and kicking at his ankles, while Makepeace walked behind, looking on with an expression of dull satisfaction.

Fludd’s grip was viselike, but Anna scarcely felt it. Her head was full of her sister. Makepeace and Fludd must have known that she and Catherine would be on the road, that they would be able to capture her. Only one person could have told them. Louisa.

Anna picked herself off the floor and shook out her cloak. Nothing in the room had changed. The slippers were side by side, the bed neatly made and the photograph still propped on the mantelpiece. She picked it up and scanned her white face, the fern, the weave of the canvas backdrop. She wasn’t looking for herself. She was looking for Lucas St. Clair. A thumbprint had appeared in one corner, oblong and complicated, like a map of a maze. She fitted her own thumb over it.

Anna had been to his hospital, after she left Maud Sulten’s house. She’d had an idea that she could appeal to Dr. St. Clair more freely outside Lake House, that he was the one person who might be able to help her. She wanted to see him. She got as far as the gates of St. Mark’s, heard the cries floating over the walls, saw the high chimneys of the laundry, and turned around, feeling sick. She couldn’t voluntarily step inside such a place. It might have been better for her if she had.

She replaced the photograph and hugged her arms around herself. The room was colder than ever; the chill seemed to issue from the walls. She sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled out the pins, undoing Louisa’s work, returning her hair to its usual plain arrangement in a bun on the back of her head, held by her tortoiseshell combs. Collecting what remained of the money out of her boot, she lifted the leg of the bed, felt in the empty hollow with her fingers. She reached in farther with a hairpin and shook the frame. Only the handkerchief fell out. She wrapped the money in it and tucked it up as far as she could. She was distracted, wondering what could have happened to the knife and who could have found it.

Anna got into bed, fully dressed, lay still and looked at the watery light falling on the wooden panel on one side of the dormer, uncertain which seemed more unreal. The fact of having been outside Lake House. Or the horror of being back in it.

Lovely woke her, standing over her with a candle in one hand and a plate in the other.

“Bread and jam for dinner tonight, miss. Cripes. It’s colder in ’ere than what it is outdoors.” She put down the plate by the bed, brought in a scuttle from the passage and began laying the fire, crouched in front of the grate. “I didn’t expect to see you back.”

“I was bringing Catherine home and they caught me.” Anna hesitated. “I have a feeling my sister may have been in on it.”

Lovely’s hands grew still as she turned her head to Anna.

“Don’t tell me she let yer down?”

“She didn’t let me down, exactly. It’s just that she doesn’t always see what is the right thing to do. Did you get into trouble, Lovely?”

Lovely shook her head as she resumed the construction of a small pyramid of twigs.

“I slipped over, on the ice. Took a moment to get my breath. I looks around and you’ve gone. Vanished into thin air. I never saw Miss Abse.”

“Mrs. Makepeace believed you?”

“For now. They’re short of hands, remember.”

“I thought you’d help me if you could. But I didn’t know if you could risk your job. Thank you.”

The twigs caught, the kindling blazed. Lovely dropped single lumps of coal on the fragile heap of sticks and dusted her hands on her apron. She sat on the end of the bed and ran her feet in and out of her clogs.

“I’m about ready for a change, anyways.”

“What’s happened here?” Anna asked, seeing a black ribbon tied around the arm of Lovely’s dress. “Has someone died?”

Lovely made an odd, inconclusive movement of her head.

“Is it—was it—old Mrs. Valentine?”

“No, miss. Not Violet.”

Lovely led Anna into the corridor, opened the door of the adjacent room, and walked into it, holding the candle in the air. The curtains
were closed and there was a cloth thrown over the mirror. As Anna’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw a pot of rouge on the washstand with a few spent matchsticks heaped next to it. She took the candle from Lovely and held it to a painting on the wall. It was a portrait of a man, dressed in a purple tunic patterned with gold. His eyes were piercing, his skin brown and he had a red dot between his eyes. He looked like a prince. Miss Batt’s lover.

“Oh, no,” she said. “No. Please. Say it isn’t true.”

Anna made herself look down at the iron bed pushed up against the wall. There was a form on it, covered in a sheet. The shape cast a shadow on the wall like a range of low hills, the outline trembling with the movement of the flame. The form itself did not move. Lovely stepped forward and lifted a corner of the sheet.

“She’s at peace now, miss.”

Anna brought the candle closer and saw a pair of dark eyebrows in a high white sky of forehead over Talitha Batt’s curved, closed eyes. Lovely brought the sheet down farther. There was red pigment gathered in the cracks of Batt’s purple lips. Anna pressed her hand against the cheek. It was waxy and unyielding, more solid than Batt had ever seemed in life. She touched her hair and took in the sight of the distinct, dignified profile, the pleated ruff high and tight under her chin. Anna felt empty. Too empty to scream or cry. Miss Batt was not there. Only a body remained.

“I done the best I could with her. Dr. St. Clair wanted to make a picture.” Lovely twitched the cloth back over the face. “Now you’ve seen it, miss. Whatever they say downstairs.”

Her voice was odd, almost angry. She pushed Anna back into her own room, dragged out the straw mattress and flung herself down on it, launched into the Lord’s Prayer. Anna sat on the edge of the bed and waited for the Amen.

“How did she die?” she asked, after it came.

Lovely was under the blanket with her head hidden and only her feet in their woollen bed socks still showing.

“Like anyone else. Her heart stopped beating.”

*   *   *

Anna couldn’t sleep. She lay in the hollow in the mattress, listening to Lovely’s breathing and to the silence beyond it. The wall between her room and Talitha’s seemed to dissolve in the darkness; Anna pictured the three of them, three women lying side by side in their different states, all entombed in Lake House. Lovely, forced to work in it for her living. Herself, captured. She closed her eyes and prayed that Talitha was free.
Woken from the dream of life.

Seeing her had made Anna think of her mother. Dying, Amelia Newlove became pretty again. Her face grew younger as her mind ranged over the years. She had an airiness about her, an absence. She mistook Anna for her own mother, asked her to sing to her, reached for her breast. Then she bit her, accused her of lying. Shouted at her that she had stolen away her child. She shouted all the time, while she still had the strength. Couldn’t hear herself through the cork stoppers. Anna had stood at the door of her mother’s dark room, holding on to the frame and feeling unsteady on her feet, in her self. The flint house was a ship, foundering.