‘You have to wake up, Aiden. Aiden!’
Swallowing my tiredness, I blink at my surroundings. I’m in a chair, clammy with sweat, my clothes twisted tight around me. It’s night time, a candle guttering on a nearby table. There’s a tartan blanket over my lap, old man’s hands laid across a dog-eared book. Veins bulge in wrinkled flesh, criss-crossing dry ink stains and liver spots. I flex my fingers, stiff with age.
‘Aiden, please!’ says the voice in the corridor.
Rising from my chair, I move to the door, old aches stirring throughout my body like swarms of disturbed hornets. The hinges are loose, the bottom corner of the door scraping against the floor, revealing the lanky figure of Gregory Gold on the other side, slumped against the doorframe. He looks much as he will when he attacks the butler, though his dinner jacket’s torn and caked with mud, his breathing ragged.
He’s clutching the chess piece Anna gave me, and that, together with his use of my real name, is enough to convince me that he’s another of my hosts. Normally, I’d welcome such a meeting, but he’s in a frightful state, agitated and dishevelled, a man dragged to hell and back.
Upon seeing me, he grips my shoulders. His dark eyes are bloodshot, flicking this way and that.
‘Don’t get out of the carriage,’ he says, spittle hanging off his lips. ‘Whatever you do, don’t get out of the carriage.’
His fear is a disease, the infection spreading through me.
‘What happened to you?’ I ask, a tremor in my voice.
‘He... he never stops...’
‘Never stops what?’ I ask.
Gold’s shaking his head, pounding his temples. Tears stream down his cheeks, but I don’t know how to begin comforting him.
‘Never stops what, Gold?’ I ask again.
‘Cutting,’ he says, drawing up his sleeve to reveal the slices beneath. They look exactly like the knife wounds Bell woke up with that first morning.
‘You won’t want to, you won’t, but you’ll give her up, you’ll tell, you’ll tell them everything, you won’t want to, but you’ll tell,’ he babbles. ‘There’s two of them. Two. They look the same, but there’s two.’
His mind’s broken, I can see that now. There isn’t an ounce of sanity left to the man. I reach out a hand, hoping to draw him into the room, but he takes fright, backing away until he bumps into the far wall, only his voice remaining.
‘Don’t get out of the carriage,’ he hisses at me, wheeling away down the corridor.
I take a step out after him, but it’s too dark to see anything and by the time I return with a candle, the corridor’s empty.
33
Day Two (continued)
The butler’s body, the butler’s pain, heavy with sedative. It’s like coming home.
I’m barely awake, and already slipping back towards sleep.
It’s getting dark. A man’s pacing back and forth across the tiny room, a shotgun in his arms.
It’s not the Plague Doctor. It’s not Gold.
He hears me stir, and turns around. He’s in shade, I can’t make him out.
I open my mouth, but no words come out of it.
I close my eyes, and slip away again.
34
Day Six (continued)
‘Father.’
I’m startled to find the freckled face of a young man with red hair and blue eyes inches from my own. I’m old again, sitting in my chair with the tartan blanket across my lap. The boy is bent at ninety degrees, hands clasped behind his back as though he doesn’t trust them in company.
My scowl shoves him a step backwards.
‘You asked me to wake you at nine-fifteen,’ he says apologetically.
He smells of Scotch, tobacco and fear. It wells up within him, staining the whites of his eyes yellow. They’re wary and hunted, like an animal waiting for the shot.
It’s light beyond the window, my candle long gone out and the fire down to ash. My vague memory of being the butler proves I dozed off after Gold’s visit, but I don’t remember doing so. The horror of what Gold endured – what I must soon endure – kept me pacing into the early hours.
Don’t get out of the carriage.
It was a warning and a plea. He wants me to change the day, and while that’s exhilarating, it’s also disturbing. I know it can be done, I’ve seen it, but if I’m clever enough to change things, the footman is as well. For all I know, we’re running in circles undoing each other’s work. This is no longer simply about finding the right answer, it’s about holding onto it long enough to deliver it to the Plague Doctor.
I have to speak with the artist at the first opportunity.
I shift in my seat, tugging aside the tartan blanket, bringing the slightest flinch from the boy. He stiffens, looking at me sideways to see if I’ve noticed. Poor child; he’s had all the bravery beaten out of him and now he’s kicked for being a coward. My sympathy fares ill with my host, whose distaste for his son is absolute. He considers this boy’s meekness infuriating, his silence an affront. He’s a failure, an unforgivable failure.
My only one.
I shake my head, trying to free myself of this man’s regrets. The memories of Bell, Ravencourt and Derby were objects in a fog, but the clutter of this current life is scattered around me. I cannot help but trip over it.
Despite the suggestion of infirmity given by the blanket, I rise with only a little stiffness, stretching to a respectable height. My son’s retreated to the corner of the room, draping himself in shadows. Though the distance is not great, it’s too far for my host, whose eyes falter at half the span. I search for spectacles, knowing it’s pointless. This man considers age a weakness, the result of a faltering will. There’ll be no spectacles, no walking stick, no aid of any sort. Whatever burdens are heaped upon me, they’re mine to endure. Alone.
I can feel my son weighing my mood, watching my face as one watches the clouds for an approaching storm.
‘Spit it out,’ I say gruffly, agitated by his reticence.
‘I was hoping I might be excused this afternoon’s hunt,’ he says.
The words are laid at my feet, two dead rabbits for a hungry wolf.
Even this simple request grates upon me. What young man doesn’t want to hunt? What young man creeps and crawls, tiptoeing around the edges of the world rather than trampling across the top of it? My urge is to refuse, to make him suffer for the temerity of being who he is, but I bite the desire back. We’ll both be happier beyond each other’s company.
‘Very well,’ I say, waving him away.
‘Thank you, Father,’ he says, escaping the room before I can change my mind. In his absence my breathing eases, my hands unclench. Anger takes its arms from around my chest, leaving me free to investigate the room for some reflection of its owner.
Books lie three thick on the bedside table, all dealing in the murky details of law. My invitation to the ball is being used as a bookmark and is addressed to Edward and Rebecca Dance. That name alone is enough to make me crumble. I remember Rebecca’s face, her smell. The feeling of being near her. My fingers find the locket around my neck, her portrait cradled inside. Dance’s grief is a quiet ache, a single tear once a day. It’s the only luxury he allows himself.
Pushing aside the grief, I drum the invite with my finger.
‘Dance,’ I murmur.
A peculiar name for such a joyless man.
Knocking perforates the silence, the handle turning and the door opening seconds later. The fellow who enters is large and shambling, scratching a head full of white hair, dislodging dandruff in every direction. He’s wearing a rumpled blue suit below white whiskers and bloodshot red eyes, and would look quite frightful if it weren’t for the comfort with which he carries his dishevelment.
He pauses mid-scratch, blinking at me in bewilderment.
‘This your room is it, Edward?’ asks the stranger.
‘Well, I woke up here,’ I say warily.
‘Blast, I can’t remember where they put me.’