NaGeira (11 page)

Mary looks up at her older sister, her eyes as wide as saucers. She shrinks away from me a little.

“And I heard a curious thing,” Emma continues, clearly not expecting any answer from her younger sister. “Mother telling Aunt about something this old woman said, something about how Sara had never come to visit her. That is odd, isn’t it, since Sara told me she intended to come up here and confront the old witch?”

“How long have you been standing there?” I ask the child, trying hard to sound more angry than frightened. But there is a quaver in my voice.

“Long enough to tire of your snoring,” Emma answers.

Emma, like her sister Sara, shows not the slightest sign of fear or self-doubt. Also, like her sister, she is pretty with perfect rosy cheeks. What I would not give to slap them! But I do nothing; I know she holds all the power.

“What do you want from me?” I ask quietly.

“Information, for a start.”

“Information about what?” I ask.

“Why, about the disappearance of my sister, of course.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” I say quickly. It was convincing enough, but I can feel my heart beating. I am trapped, and merely wish for this all to be over. Burn me, hang me, but get me out of this unnatural situation.

“Oh, I think you do know, old woman.”

Suddenly, my sinews tighten and the fear falls away from me like water running off from a breeched awning. “It’s Sheila, not ‘old
woman,’ and I don’t care what you think you know. Get out of my cabin.”

Emma takes a step backwards as though reading my intentions. I was indeed about to strike her.

“There’s no need for that,” she says, smiling. “If I’d wanted to give you away, we could have done so already.”

“What do you want, then?” I swing my legs to the floor and raise myself into a standing position.

“I told you. Information.”

Emma takes a sideways step as I make for my chair. She pulls her sister with her as though she were a rag doll.

“I told you I don’t know about Sara,” I say, lowering myself onto the chair.

“Oh, I don’t care about that, although I have to admit I’m curious.”

I stare at the girl’s smiling face for a moment. Mary is still frightened. She sucks her thumb and nestles into her older sister.

“You don’t care?”

“No, why should I?” she asks briskly. “We didn’t really get on, you know. Well,” she adds with a smirk, her speech slowing, “if I’m honest, it’s not entirely true to say I don’t care. I do, but not in the usual way. I care that she’s gone because it makes my life so much easier. Looking for two wealthy husbands to take on the business will be much easier for my father than looking for three. And as you can see, I’m the older and I’m very pretty, so I should have the best chance.” She smiles a little more broadly and wrinkles her brow. “What are you looking at me like that for?”

I am not aware of looking at her in any particular way, but I know I am in shock, and have been, perhaps, since the moment of
my awakening. I never thought I could come across a young woman more arrogant or cruel than Sara Rose. But here is such another before me, in a form even more angelic, the candlelight playing on her golden curls, her green eyes like a calm sea at sunset.

“I know what you’re thinking. What a little monster! Everyone thinks that about me, except for Mother and Father, of course. They adore me. But it’s just as well I am a little monster, isn’t it? If I weren’t, I’d have already told everyone about Sara going to see you last night.”

“You don’t know that,” I venture. She seemed to imply as much earlier, and I don’t want to be at this girl’s mercy.

“Not absolutely conclusively, no. I know she intended to come and see you. And I know she’s missing now. I would be worried about that if I were you.”

“And how will you explain your own silence up to now?”

“Oh, when your name is mentioned, Sheila, you may be sure my father will forget every other detail.”

“Why?”

Already I wished I had not spoken.

“Oh, you’ve no idea! He’s terrified of you! He has nightmares about you.”

Something in my chest rolls like a battle drum.

“What kind of man is terrified of an old woman?” I say. Mary cowers into her sister. Emma merely smiles as before. “What have I ever done to him?”

“Pathetic, isn’t it?” says Emma. “A grown man!” Then she laughs out loud. “And him so holy, so respected … There you go, staring at me again! I’m supposed to live in this place with nothing but rock and ocean and uncouth boys with broken teeth, yet I’m
supposed to be sorry when my chances of escape suddenly increase twofold or more. And I’ve got a father who wails in the night of the witch who will destroy him, and I’m supposed to honour him like it says in the Bible. Even you expect me to do so—the witch herself wants me to respect such a man!”

Emma lets go of her sister and collapses onto my bed in laughter, the candle wavering in her hand. Mary comes close to the bed and her sister’s side; she throws me terrified glances.

“You see,” says Emma, noticing this, “Mary’s frightened of you too!” She tugs her little sister’s shawl until Mary sits down beside her on the bed.

“What do you want from me?” I ask, repeating the only question that may get this girl out of my cabin.

Emma stops laughing at last. She clears her throat and stares at me hard. “I want to know about Mary and me.”

“What about you?”

“My father is convinced the Roses are cursed, that they will never have male children.”

“Yes,” I say wearily, throwing my eyes to the ceiling.

And as subtle as a twitch of a bird’s feather, Emma catches it.

“You’ve heard this story before,” she says, her gaze steady in the candlelight, her face fixed like marble. “I wondered about that.”

“How could I have done?” I say, but my cheeks are burning and I know it is too late.

“My mother is very nervous, isn’t she? You’d think that would make her more careful to make sure she isn’t followed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t lie about Mother coming to visit you or I’ll know for certain you’re lying about Sara too.”

I take in a slow breath.

“Well, what about it?”

“The way it stands now, I and my little sister here could do quite well off this curse. It makes us my father’s heirs. We might make some kind of marriage that can get us to another place in return for the business.”

“What are you worried about, then?”

“Oh, we’re worried that the curse will lift, that Mother may be with child already. I have heard her retching in the morning. If she is with child, it’s vital to us the baby not be a boy. A boy would be a little prince, and all Father’s favour and energy would be devoted to him. I could forget about an advantageous marriage then, couldn’t I? Father would already have his heir.”

“You must know your mother is too old to be with child,” I say quickly. But I can feel my eyelids batter and I can see the disbelief on the girl’s face.

“It would be very foolish to try to lie to me again,” Emma says quietly, holding the candle very still. “I’m the only friend you’ve got.”

I know I am undone this time. My confidences must be spilled to this girl like fish guts to the knife. She holds me utterly in her power. “Yes,” I say with a sigh, “she’s pregnant, and I don’t know whether the curse will be lifted. I tried. I told her I thought it would work, but I’m not sure.”

Emma jumps off the bed and tugs on Mary’s dress. The little sister follows. “Good,” she says. “I was going to set light to your bed if you’d told another lie. It would have spread and burned your cabin down in no time at all. I’m glad you decided to trust me.”

She leads Mary around me and gains the doorway. “All I’ll ask
for now is that you keep me informed about Mother. Tell me as soon as you know the sex of her child. I may require your help.”

She opens the door, turns back, and smiles at me oddly.

“Do you believe my parents are cursed?”

It takes me a while to answer. The girl’s expression, though frivolous, challenges me again to be truthful.

“Not the way your mother thinks, no,” I find myself saying.

I thought Emma would not understand my meaning. However much I dislike her, I have no wish to insult the person who holds my fate in her hands. But it’s obvious straight away that she does understand. Far from being insulted, my admission has had the opposite effect. The girl’s eyes glisten with delight.

“I know exactly what you mean,” she says. “What could my parents have done to deserve such children? That’s what you are thinking. With what manner of changelings have they been burdened?”

She stares at me for a moment longer. Then, grabbing hold of Mary’s hand, she lets out a laugh and disappears with her candle through the open door.

I am left in darkness.

———

I drop the last of the firewood David Butt collected into the hearth. Tomorrow it will be gone and I must start to forage again. The very idea makes my bones ache and I would like to save some fuel. But tonight I must stay warm, as I cannot sleep. Emma Rose has murdered sleep.

The sentence stops me for a moment. I hold from striking the
flint again so my thoughts can settle. Apt though it is, the idea of “murdering sleep” isn’t mine. I crouch in darkness, allowing this echo to lead me back to its source. I find myself sitting on a hard stone floor in a small damp cell. The playwright’s cell is much worse than my original room in Newgate, but it surprises me how much I appreciate the company. I could do with a cellmate now, rather than the odd parade of people who come and go like characters in a nightmare. I think of my former prison companion and wonder how long he lived. He’s bound to be long dead by now, of course, or else he’d be more than a hundred years old. Everyone from my golden years is gone. The only companions I have now are the dry sticks at my feet. I strike the flint hard and the twigs take. Smoke wafts up as I poke the burning stick ends under the pile. My chest heaves as I cough, splutter, and cough again.

The room takes on the gold of the flame and, as if my hearing were awakened by light, I distinctly catch a plaintive call of “Sara … Sa-ra” from below. The sound, I realize, has been there all the time, as constant and as unnoticed as my own breathing.

———

Mr. Jarvis’s description of ungodliness and sedition had prepared me for something more than the harmless-looking man whose cell I was to share.

I was worried enough when the guard, Gilbert, gripped my upper arm with one hand and unlocked the cell door with the other. The clank of the lock sent reverberations through my heart. The guard pushed open the door and made a bit of a show of hauling me roughly into the cell, though his heart wasn’t in it—I could tell—
and his grip was rather loose. When I had got my bearings, I turned to see the playwright sitting on a blanket in the corner.

“What’s this?” he asked the guard. He frowned at my presence as though surveying a mangy animal he had been asked to purchase.

My first thought on looking him over was one of amazement that such a slight and insubstantial creature should have so upset a man like the governor, so full of power and importance. My second thought was one of indignation that his looks and words should have disparaged me before I had had the chance to disparage him.

“Governor’s orders. She’s to share with you.”

The stranger looked at me once more and groaned. Then he gazed up to the tiny barred window through which daylight scattered. “You took away a hundred faithful bedfellows and replace them with only one. Why must you cut me off so savagely from all society?”

“What nonsense is this?” the serving woman demanded. “You had no company before.”

“The blanket of which you robbed me, madam, housed so many fleas that each night seemed an orgy.”

“None of your filth!” she snapped. “You should be glad we took the blanket away if it was infested. If we’d known you were using the tiny creatures to gratify yourself, we would have taken it away earlier.”

The stranger raised his eyebrows and smiled at me.

The serving woman looked in my direction. “I’ll be bringing food for both of you later on,” she said. “Everything will work out fine,” she added softly.

“Thank you,” said the playwright, waving at them both and
smiling in an exaggerated fashion. “Thank you so much for not starving us!”

The serving woman gave the playwright one more forbidding look and followed Gilbert from the cell. The door clunked shut. Then came the sound of the bolt being drawn. I remained where I was, not more than four yards from the stranger. For a moment there was not the slightest sound. Then the playwright drew up his knees slowly and clasped his hands together in a steeple.

“Well,” he said without taking his eyes from the window. “What manner of jape in life’s comic dance brings you to Newgate prison?”

I backed away to the opposite corner and sat down. “It’s not a joke and I don’t find it funny.”

He lowered his gaze to meet mine. An earring almost lost in the curls of his reddish hair lent him a roguish look his delicate frame could not quite sustain. Thin lines formed about his eyes as his lips curled into a smile. His was a face accustomed to laughter, it seemed, and the thought scared me. If ordinary things like humour could exist here, this meant people must cease to see the horror around them. In turn, that meant they saw this place as home.

“Oh, but you are wrong,” he said with a hoarse laugh. “We must take what merriment we can. Life makes little sense if you try to take it too seriously.”

I had never met a playwright before, but even at thirteen I found this man fitting into my preconceived notions—his affectation, his inability to see things as they are, as though life were only a performance. “That’s nonsense,” I said. “I do take it seriously and I hate being here. So should you.”

“You know that I am a poet and a playwright?” he asked with quiet pride.

“Yes,” I replied sullenly. “They told me.”

“Know, then, that I view misfortune differently from most people.” He gazed at the steeple of his hands as he spoke. “I’ve come to see life itself as a play, a play with random and unplanned scenes.” His voice rose dramatically and he paused for an instant before continuing. “Life is like a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.”