Alice scoffed.
“Your injury, rather,” corrected Dr. Berghast. He bent over the little wood desk and poured out a jar of iron filings. He took a magnet from his pocket and held it between thumb and forefinger for Alice to see, and then he waved it over the filings. “See how the iron seeks the magnet. That is what Jacob’s dust does, with him. It is a part of him. And he left some of it inside you, when he attacked you.” Berghast’s voice was calm but his eyes were bright, too bright. “You doubt me, of course. But close your eyes, Miss Quicke. Reach out. Let yourself feel him. Can you feel him?”
Warily, she did as he asked. Standing there in the glasshouse, her lips dry, eyelids fluttering. She could feel something, a prickling that wasn’t there before. It felt like a fishhook in her ribs, tugging. She didn’t like it.
Berghast was watching her. “The two of you are connected.”
She was shaking her head, increasingly angry. She felt violated, disgusted. She let her gaze slide over to Mrs. Harrogate, waiting still in her traveling clothes, both hands clutching the little case in front of her. “If I do this, if I find him for you … what will you do with him?”
“I will kill him,” said Mrs. Harrogate.
“How do you kill a thing like that?” Alice looked at the doctor. “I assume you have a plan.”
“Not I,” said Dr. Berghast.
Mrs. Harrogate smiled thinly. “There is a way. If you will trust me, Miss Quicke.”
Alice looked at the clay pots, stacked in their rows. She looked at Dr. Berghast. His hard gray eyes, his mouth hidden by his beard, the power in his neck and shoulders. The sun came from behind a cloud and lit the glass around him so that suddenly she couldn’t see his face.
Fuck it, she thought. She turned to Mrs. Harrogate.
“I’m going to want my gun back,” she said.
20
THE DISAPPEARED ONES
Charlie had been at the institute almost two weeks, sleeping badly, when he first encountered the dark carriage.
It would prove his first glimpse of the other Cairndale, its invisible twin, identical down to the framed watercolors in the halls, the dust curling in its corners, but somehow sinister, as if filled with intention. And after that he started to wonder just what exactly was going on and how much he wasn’t being told.
Alice had left for London a week before, in the early gloom, under a reef of red clouds in the east. She’d held Marlowe, held Charlie, while Mrs. Harrogate watched impatient from the footer, her veil at her face, her eyes hard as marbles. After that it was just him and Marlowe, just the two of them. Things between them turned more tender, tender the way a bruise is tender, tender like there was a deep ache inside it all and to touch it was to be reminded of the hurt. Komako and Ribs would show them around, and sometimes the pudgy Polish boy, Oskar, too, with his white-blond hair and his deep shyness, and his wet fleshly giant copying his every gesture. But Marlowe kept close to Charlie all the while, closer than usual, pulling his chair very near when they ate in the dining hall, climbing up into Charlie’s bed after the lights were extinguished, that sort of thing, exactly like what a kid brother would be like, and Charlie was grateful for it. For the first time in his life, he didn’t have to be alone.
But one night, after Alice had left, Charlie awoke and saw Marlowe silhouetted at the window seat, his knees folded up to his chest, his face turned to the gloom.
“What is it?” whispered Charlie. “You get a bad dream?”
The boy looked at him, his dark eyes soulful. “I heard horses.”
Through the open window, Charlie heard it too: the faint whickering of horses. He got out of bed. Their room overlooked Loch Fae and the dock and the dark island out there with the twisted silhouette of the ancient wych elm. There was nothing to see though; Cairndale’s courtyard was on the other side of the building, below the girls’ quarters. In his nightshirt, Charlie shivered and folded his arms.
Marlowe chewed at his lip. “Where do you think Alice is right now?”
“In bed. If she’s got any sense.”
“Charlie?”
“What.”
“Do you ever wonder how things could be different?”
“Sure.” He sat down beside him, sighed. “But that kind of thinking is crazy-making. It doesn’t help. You want me to get you a glass of water?”
But the boy folded one foot over the other, itching, and wouldn’t be distracted. “I mean, what if Brynt hadn’t taken me in? Or if she’d run from Alice back at Mr. Fox’s? Or if Alice hadn’t got me out of that hotel before Jacob Marber got in? If you just make anything just a little bit different…” His soft face was troubled. “Do you think we’re supposed to be here? Is that why it is the way it is?”
“Not everything’s got a reason for the way it is.”
“My mama used to say, ‘There’s always a choice.’ Brynt said it too. But it’s not true, is it? We never chose to come here, not really.”
“I did.”
The boy thought about it. “Because of your father,” he whispered.
Charlie nodded. “Not just that. But, yeah.”
“Are you going to show Miss Davenshaw the ring? Maybe she can tell you what it is.”
“That’s a secret, Mar. Okay? I need you not to tell anyone about it. Not yet.”
“Why?”
But Charlie just sighed heavily. “I don’t know,” he muttered.
The night was black in Marlowe’s blue-black eyes and he blinked his long eyelashes and then he looked up at Charlie. He looked at him with a deep pure trust. “You know what, Charlie? I’m glad all those things happened the way they did,” he whispered. “I’m glad because you’re here with me now.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” said Charlie. He gave the boy’s shoulder a squeeze. “Except to get you a glass of water. You go on back to bed, now. I’ll be right back.”
He went out into the corridor, silent as smoke. The wall sconces had been snuffed. There was a cut-glass jug of water on a pier table at the far end for all the boys to drink from and a tray of glasses overturned on a dish towel, but the jug was empty. Charlie thought about it and then padded on down the cold hall and turned left, into the corridor where the girls slept. A second table stood there with a jug half-full and it was while he was pouring out a glass in his nightshirt and bare feet that Charlie looked out and saw the carriage.
The window faced the courtyard. A carriage had stopped near the entrance to the east wing. There must have been a light burning below, for a red glow reflected dully in the windows and Charlie could clearly make out the drawn curtains, the brass door latch, the footer unfolded beneath the door. Black wood siding glimmered in the shine. Otherwise, all was darkness and gloom. Its side lanterns were shuttered, its horses nickered softly in their traces.
He furrowed his brow, moved closer. His face was almost pressed to the glass. He was standing like that when he saw two men emerge from out of the east wing, carrying a long coffin-like box between them. They loaded it into the carriage on the far side and then stood talking near the horses. The driver was wrapped in black woolens with his face obscured by darkness and a rain cloak drawn over his head, his breath steaming in the cold. Something passed between the men, a small pouch. Then the driver climbed heavily up, unslung the whip. There came a jangle of harness, the squeak of ironshod wheels.
It was the passenger, though, that caught Charlie’s eye. He’d turned to climb up also and for just a moment Charlie saw him clearly, his features lit up in the faint red light. A scarred face, beardless. Hard eyes. The man looked around, then raised his eyes. He glared directly up at Charlie.
Whether he’d seen him or not, or just the shape of him there, Charlie couldn’t know. He felt a sudden deep fear. But it was then, sharply, with an unexpected force, he felt a hand on his sleeve and he stumbled and was pulled away from the window, into shadow.
He found himself staring into the face of Komako.