After Dr. Berghast had left, Susan Crowley rose swiftly and threw on a shawl and lit a candle and went to the door. She listened. He was gone.
So. He wanted to send the baby away.
The wrongness of it startled her, angered her. She wasn’t used to feeling angry, it wasn’t an emotion that came easily to her, she’d lived all her life being told what to do and where to go and how to get there, and the right to be angry wasn’t something she knew much about. But this filled her with a quick surprising heat. What did Dr. Berghast know of babies and their needs, their safety? He refused even to hold the child. She was blinking sharply, trying to think it through.
It’s not like she hadn’t imagined it, sometimes, fleeing with the baby into the night, away from Cairndale, away from Dr. Berghast. But always the baby was older, less delicate, hardier. And she knew, too, that her fantasies were only just that: fantasies.
She went quickly over to the cradle and checked that he was sleeping safely and then she went out into the hall. She was looking for Miss Davenshaw, not sure just what it was she’d say, but sure that the older woman would have something worth the saying. She knew Miss Davenshaw had her own misgivings about Dr. Berghast, and the way Cairndale was run. Oh, it was nothing the blind woman had said out loud—she was far too discreet for that—but rather the silences, the disapproving frowns.
But Miss Davenshaw was not in her rooms. Susan passed two girls, talents she did not know by name, hurrying down the hall, both in their nightdresses and looking guilty. She gave them a weak smile. They blushed, hurried on.
She knew that feeling, that fear of getting caught, whatever it was. Strange to think she was only a few years older than they.
On the landing she caught a glimpse of a woman in black, her face veiled. It was that grim woman up from London. Susan nodded politely, hurried past. That woman frightened her. She was a confidante of Dr. Berghast and did his bidding in the capital and was not to be trusted.
In the foyer, Susan found Miss Davenshaw seated on the long sofa, in front of the fire, her hands clasped in her lap. She might have been waiting for Susan, so quiet and patient did she appear.
“What is the matter, Miss Crowley?” the blind woman said, even before Susan could speak.
She cleared her throat. She didn’t know how to begin.
“I find,” said the older woman, “the easiest way to begin a sentence, is by opening one’s mouth and speaking.”
“Yes, Miss Davenshaw. I’m sorry. I just … I just had a visit from Dr. Berghast. He said he intends to send the baby away.”
The blind woman turned her face. “Away?”
“Yes. He didn’t say where.”
“He wishes you to accompany the child?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there is that, at least. When are you to depart?”
Susan shook her head. It wasn’t what she wanted to say at all, it was coming out all wrong. “I don’t want to go, Miss Davenshaw. That’s what I mean. I don’t think the baby should be sent anywhere. He’s so small, still.”
Miss Davenshaw lowered her chin. “And yet babies do travel, Miss Crowley.” She smoothed out her dress. “Did he give you any explanation, any reason? No?” When Susan said nothing, the older woman lowered her voice so that Susan had to lean in to hear her.
“It is my own feeling, Miss Crowley,” she said darkly, “that the child would be better off anywhere but at Cairndale. If you take my meaning.”
* * *
The air under the earth grew thicker. Jacob spied the glow of the lantern, its splash across the tunnel walls and ceiling, long before he saw the man himself. He blew out his own candle.
“Hello, Walter,” he said quietly.
The man gave a start and peered frightened around. He was short, slight of build, with a sickly pallor in his cheeks, as if he were already leeched of life. Jacob knew he was dying of consumption. His hair had thinned on top though he was not much more than thirty, and he wore it long around the crest of his scalp as if to compensate. More likely, he just didn’t much care. Large nervous eyes. A tremble in his gullet. He believed Jacob his friend and Jacob knew this; it was pitiful; it was pathetic.
“Jacob? Is it you?” he whispered.
Jacob stepped out of the shadows, letting the dust dissipate, so the man could see him clearly. Walter peered up at him, half in awe, half in fear.
“I come to where you said to,” said Walter. “I did. I been here I don’t know how long. But I brung the lantern, like you said. You’ll take me with you, this time? You promised, Jacob—”
“We haven’t much time,” said Jacob.
Walter nodded vigorously, but he didn’t move. “Yes, yes, of course, you’re right,” he mumbled. “We must hurry. Yes.” But then he cast a sly anxious glance sidelong at Jacob. “But you will, won’t you? Take me with you, I mean? It’s just—”
“Yes, Walter.”
He swallowed. “Tonight? You’ll take me tonight? Should I pack anything, a bag, maybe—”
Jacob looked down at the man, shivering with cold or fear or something else. He said nothing. He could feel his irritation rising.
“It’s just, my lungs don’t feel so great,” Walter continued. “And you said, I mean I don’t know if you remember it all that clear, but you said you’d um, help me with that? There was a way to—”
Jacob glared pointedly past the man, up the tunnel.
“It’s just um, you’re my friend and, I mean, you said you would—”
“Walter,” Jacob said coldly. “I am your friend. Your one true friend. I have come for you, also. Now. You must go on ahead and make sure no one is near. I cannot be seen. Will you do that for me? When I have what I came for, we will go together.”
The small man nodded and nodded. “Right, yes. The baby. Yes?”
“Yes.”
Walter gulped. “Oh, yes, yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. Yes. I’ll go on ahead.”
And he scurried off down the tunnel, in a queer ratlike fashion, the lantern swinging dangerously from his outslung hand. And Jacob followed.
The child was near. He could feel it.
The darkness in the tunnel grayed. Ahead was an opening. At last Jacob slipped noiselessly through a broken wall, into the murky cellar of Cairndale. The familiar smell. The old creak of its floorboards. Walter was nowhere to be seen. Jacob brushed a gauzy web from his face, and a rush of memories came back to him, so that he stood at the threshold and swallowed and closed his eyes.
Home. He was home.
* * *
Abigail Davenshaw rose from the sofa in the foyer, where she’d been waiting well over an hour now, and she started grimly for the dining hall. Enough fretting, she told herself.
The children would arrive. They always did. If not tonight, then in the morning.
The dining hall was quiet, dark. It had been cleared hours ago. She had no appetite but perhaps a pot of tea would calm her nerves, allow her to sleep. She had asked to have something put aside for the children when they arrived but though she called out, no one answered. She made her way through to the back kitchens. They had all gone.
But as she was turning to leave she felt something, a faint chilled breeze, coming from the cellar. She thought at first a door or a window had been opened or broken. But the air smelled strange, damp and sour, like an emptied grave.
She made her way down the stairs, into the cellar. She did not know this storeroom well, and went with care, feeling her way along the shelves, following the breeze. And then she came to a shelf that had been clearly moved aside, and felt the cold edges of the tunnel entrance, and understood.
She’d been at Cairndale long enough to have heard the stories of tunnels under the manor. She knew Dr. Berghast had an underground passage leading from his study across to the island, to the orsine there. But she’d not heard of a tunnel here.