‘So what do you need me for?’
‘Damned if I know. I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to be doing. The book says to bring you here at this time, but’ – she sighs, shaking her head – ‘that was the only clear instruction, everything else is gibberish. It’s like I said, you weren’t exactly lucid when you gave it to me. I’ve spent most of the last hour trying to decipher the pages, knowing if I read them wrong, or arrive too late, you’ll die.’
I shiver, unnerved by this brief glimpse at my future.
The book must have been given to Anna by Gregory Gold, my final host. I can still remember him raving at Dance’s door about the carriage. I remember thinking how pitiable he was, how frightening. Those dark eyes wild and lost.
I’m not looking forward to tomorrow.
Folding my arms, I lean against the wall next to her, our shoulders touching. Knowing you’ve killed somebody in a previous life tends to narrow possible avenues of affection.
‘You’ve done a better job than I did,’ I say. ‘The first time somebody handed me the future, I ended up chasing a maid called Madeline Aubert halfway across the forest thinking I was saving her life. I nearly frightened the poor girl to death.’
‘This day should come with instructions,’ she says glumly.
‘Do whatever comes naturally.’
‘I’m not sure running and hiding would help us,’ she says, her frustration punctured by the sound of hurried steps on the staircase.
Without a word we scatter out of sight, Anna disappearing around the corner, while I duck into an open bedroom. Curiosity compels me to keep the door open a crack, allowing me to see the butler limping down the corridor towards us, his burnt body even more wretched in motion. He looks balled up and tossed away, a collection of sharp angles under a ratty brown dressing gown and pyjamas.
Having relived so many of these moments since that first morning, I would have thought I’d become numb, but I can feel the butler’s frustration and fear as he races to confront Bell about this new body he’s trapped within.
Gregory Gold is stepping out of a bedroom, the butler too preoccupied to notice. At this distance, with his back to me, the artist seems oddly shapeless, less a man, more a long shadow thrown up the wall. There’s a poker in his hand and, without any warning, he begins striking the butler with it.
I remember this attack, this pain.
Pity takes me, a sickening sense of helplessness as blood is sent flying by the poker, freckling the walls.
I’m with the butler as he shrivels up on the floor, begging for mercy and reaching for help that isn’t coming.
And that’s when reason washes its hands of me.
Snatching a vase from the sideboard, I burst out into the corridor, advancing on Gold with hell’s own wrath, and smashing it over his head, shards of porcelain falling around him as he collapses to the floor.
Silence congeals in the air as I clutch the broken rim of the vase while staring at the two unconscious men at my feet.
Anna appears behind me.
‘What happened?’ she says, feigning surprise.
‘I—’
There’s a crowd gathering at the end of the corridor, half-dressed men and startled women, roused from their beds by the commotion. Their eyes travel from the blood on the walls to the bodies on the floor, latching onto me with an unbecoming curiosity. If the footman’s among them, he’s ducked out of sight.
It’s probably for the best.
I’m angry enough to try something reckless again.
Doctor Dickie is rushing up the stairs and unlike the other guests, he’s already dressed, that huge moustache expertly oiled, his balding head gleaming with some lotion.
‘What the devil happened here?’ he exclaims.
‘Gold went mad,’ I say, bringing a tremor of emotion to my voice. ‘He started attacking the butler with the poker, so I—’
I wave the rim of the vase at him.
‘Fetch my medical bag, girl,’ says Dickie to Anna, who’s positioned herself in his eyeline. ‘It’s near my bed.’
Doing as she’s bid, Anna begins deftly sliding pieces of the future into place without ever appearing to take control. The doctor requires somewhere warm and quiet to tend the butler, so Anna recommends the gatehouse while volunteering to administer his medications. By simple expedient of having nowhere else to lock him up, it’s decided Gold should be taken over to the gatehouse as well, with sedatives to be administered regularly until a servant can bring a policeman back from the village – a servant Anna volunteers to find.
They descend the staircase with the butler on a makeshift stretcher, Anna offering me a relieved smile as she goes. I meet it with a perplexed frown. All this effort, and I’m still not certain what we’ve accomplished. The butler will be consigned to bed, making him easy pickings for the footman this evening. Gregory Gold is going to be sedated and strung up. He’ll live, but his mind is broken.
That’s hardly a reassuring thought considering it’s his instructions we’re following. Gold gave Anna that book, and while he’s the last of my hosts, I have no idea what he’s trying to accomplish. I can’t even be certain he knows. Not after everything he’s suffered.
I dig through my memories, searching for the pieces of the future I’ve glimpsed, but not yet lived. I still need to know what the ‘all of them’ message Cunningham delivers to Derby means, and why he tells him he’s gathered some people together. I don’t know why Evelyn takes the silver pistol from Derby when she already has the black revolver from her mother’s room, or why he ends up guarding a rock while she takes her own life.
It’s frustrating. I can see the breadcrumbs laid out ahead of me, but, for all I know, they’re leading me towards a cliff edge.
Unfortunately, there’s no other path to follow.
45
Freed of Edward Dance’s advanced years, I’d also hoped to shed his niggling pains, but my night in the cupboard has wrapped my bones in brambles. Every stretch, every bend and twist brings a jolt of pain and a wince, piling some new complaint atop the mound. The journey to my bedroom has proven unexpectedly taxing. Evidently, Rashton made quite an impression last night, because my passage through the house is punctuated by hearty handshakes and backslaps. Greetings lie scattered in my wake like tossed rocks, their goodwill bringing me out in bruises.
Upon reaching my bedroom, I throw off my forced smile. There’s a white envelope on the floor, something bulky sealed inside. Somebody must have slipped it under my door. Tearing it open, I look up and down the corridor for any sign of the person who left it.
You left it
begins the note inside, which is wrapped around a chess piece that’s almost identical to the one Anna carries around with her.
Take amyl nitrite pearls, sodium nitrite and sodium thiosulfate.
KEEP HOLD OF THEM.
GG
‘Gregory Gold,’ I sigh, reading the initials.
He must have left it before attacking the butler.
Now I know how Anna feels. The instructions are barely legible, and incomprehensible even once I’m able to untangle his terrible handwriting.