The Silent Companions

‘This is my fault. It is all my f-fault.’

‘How can you possibly think that?’

Sarah’s jaw quivered. ‘I – Oh, how can I tell you? It was me, Mrs Bainbridge. I t-took your d-diamonds!’

Vomit rose to the back of her throat. Mabel did not steal the diamonds: she was innocent. Innocent and pushed to a desperate act through Elsie’s mistake.

‘I just wanted something f-from my f-family. Then Mabel got into trouble and I – I didn’t know what to do. I never thought . . .’

Blood, running hot over her hands.

‘I was going to tell you at Easter,’ Sarah gabbled on. ‘I was going to tell everyone the truth, I swear it. But then Helen decided that the companions must have stolen the necklace! She . . .’ Sarah screwed up her mouth, pained. ‘She wanted to burn them again. She took Hetta from me and threw her onto the kitchen fire!’

Weak and sick, Elsie pressed her hands to her temples. ‘I don’t understand. Why did she suspect the companions?’

‘That’s what Mrs Holt didn’t tell you. There was a companion, Elsie, in the kitchen with Mabel. One I have never seen before, some kind of cook.’

Pinpricks ran up Elsie’s arms. ‘I saw a companion of my own mother, Sarah, standing in the window. Right where the handprint was.’

‘You see? They are multiplying. I think fire only makes them more powerful. And there never would have been a fire, were it not for my stupid, stupid—’

‘You could have asked me for the diamonds,’ Elsie cut in. ‘I would not have refused you.’

Sarah hung her head. ‘I am so ashamed. It is almost as if . . . I could not help myself. But it is not only me. Hetta was obsessed with them too, obsessed with the companions and the diamond necklace. I’ve been looking at the records Mr Underwood brought, finding out all I can about Anne. Usually there is scant material to go on for a woman in the sixteen-hundreds, but I found records on Anne because . . . because of the way she died.’

Elsie could not bring herself to ask.

‘She was burnt,’ Sarah whispered. ‘Burnt at the stake for a witch.’

‘A witch? She is the witch the villagers still fear?’

‘Yes. And with good reason. The records say she killed people, Elsie. But in the diary, she is not wicked. She thought she was using white magic, the old herbal remedies of the wise-women. But she must have made a mistake. Her poor daughter was born without a proper tongue and something else, something evil . . .’

Elsie didn’t want to believe it. At the factory, she had talked herself out of believing it. But here, back in this house where Rupert had died, where his siblings had died, she could feel it. The old, old fear. No amount of reason or logic could erase that feeling. She had known evil from a child – recognised its velvet voice.

A knock fell on the door. They both jumped.

‘Hot posset.’ Mrs Holt.

‘Come in,’ Elsie croaked.

The steam entered first, laced with warm nutmeg and treacle. Mrs Holt appeared carrying a tray and a cup spilling over with clouds of heat. New lines dragged around her mouth and made it look hinged. The whites of her eyes, always jaundiced, were now shot with ribbons of red.

Elsie took the cup. Milky, sweet scents teased at her nostrils. Her stomach begged for sustenance, but she couldn’t bring herself to drink. She didn’t want to swallow anything from this house. She didn’t want it inside her.

‘Miss Sarah, I think you had better leave the mistress be for now. Remember, she needs her rest. The doctor said so.’

‘But—’ Sarah started.

‘I really must insist. Pardon me, miss, but Mr Livingstone will never forgive me if he arrives and finds I haven’t followed the doctor’s orders.’

Sarah stroked Elsie’s hair. Leaning in close to her ear, she whispered, ‘I will be back later. We should sleep in the same room from now on. I don’t feel safe alone.’

Elsie nodded. She did not ask what Sarah meant by alone. No one was truly alone. Not ever, not in this house.

Sarah swept up her skirts and left the room. Elsie heard her footsteps, treading the familiar boards to the library. Mrs Holt remained.

The housekeeper’s gaze possessed a hardness Elsie had not detected before. ‘Will there be anything else, madam?’ The madam was a forced, horrible sound.

‘Oh, Mrs Holt. I am so sorry. I cannot imagine what you are feeling. First Mabel and then Helen.’

‘I loved those girls like my own daughters. There was no harm in them. And now they are stiff and stretched in the cold larder, and I will have to bury them. Both of them!’ Mrs Holt broke down. Elsie averted her eyes and let her cry it out. The noise alone was terrible.

‘I was wrong to blame them,’ Elsie ventured at last. ‘They did not trick me or kill my cow. I know that now. There is something else at work, something in this house.’

A spasm crossed Mrs Holt’s face. ‘I have kept this house for nigh on forty years. We never had any hauntings or deaths before you came along.’

‘Before Rupert came along,’ Elsie corrected her softly.

‘They’d still be alive if it wasn’t for you. If you hadn’t come storming in, clomping about, throwing open doors that were meant to stay shut.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Mrs Holt snatched her eyes away.

‘“Doors that were meant to stay shut?” I don’t understand you. Are you talking about the garret?’

The elder woman’s ribcage rose and fell, jangling her cameo brooch. ‘I was meant to keep it secret. The old Mr Bainbridge ordered me, right from the day I arrived here, to keep the garret locked and never discuss it.’

‘But why?’

‘I don’t know. He said there were things in there, things that troubled his wife. Books.’

‘A diary?’

As she said that, she remembered that there were two diaries. Two volumes. Sarah did not mention if she had ever retrieved the second one. Perhaps it was still there.

‘Maybe. I don’t recall what books they were. I never had reason to recall until you turned up.’

Elsie’s grip tightened on the cup. ‘What – what happened to Rupert’s mother? How did she die?’

‘Blessed if I know.’

‘You must have an idea. What were her symptoms?’

‘I tell you, I don’t know! For all anyone told me, she could be drawing breath yet.’

Elsie lay stunned. ‘You were there,’ she said, incredulous. ‘You said. You talked of when you lost the mistress.’

Mrs Holt closed her eyes, seemed to wrestle with her memories. ‘No. No, she didn’t die. She was . . .’

‘What?’

‘We lost Mrs Bainbridge, but it wasn’t to death. It was her mind. Her own mind got her in the end.’

Elsie’s hands started to shake. The cup clattered against the saucer. ‘Are you saying that her husband put her in an asylum?’

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