‘I will not abandon you.’ Verity turns on the journalists. ‘Leave us, you vultures.’
‘Your names are Constance and Verity? Any surnames you’d care to help us with, ladies? Are you related? What happened under the ice? Who is the boy? You were under for over ten minutes – how do you explain it? Might you give us a word or two?’
‘Come. Let us be away from here this instant,’ Verity says.
Constance casts one more lingering glance into the crowd of dispersing people. For the second time they have lost him.
‘I curse the Thames, the lake, I curse all bodies of water.’ Constance tears through the house discarding her clothes, leaving them where they fall. She waves away the new maid who wishes to help her, and stands in her chemise at the top of the stairs. Her skin has a bluish tint and her veins add green to her alabaster skin.
Verity climbs midway up the stairs, stops short and gasps at the sight of her.
‘Well. What?’ Constance is furious. ‘What do you think you looked like the night you decided to join our dead family?’
‘That again,’ Verity says.
‘You should have gone after him.’
‘I made a choice, Constance.’
‘Yes, you did. The wrong one. Always, the wrong one.’
Verity shrinks from her sister’s stinging truth.
‘We have lost him again. We must begin searching again. I wasn’t going to die today, Verity. All of this …’ Her arm sweeps to emphasize her point. ‘It has all changed. I was in no danger. I was just bloody freezing. It was stupid of you.’
‘That is cruel, sister,’ Verity says softly.
‘No. I shall tell you what is cruel, shall I? The poor boy had marks and puncture wounds on his arms and his neck.’
‘Wounds?’ Verity stammers. ‘Such as what – bruises, or swellings?’
‘Such as cuts from lancets, and wound marks on his temples … like punctures! His hair …’ Constance shrinks at the memory. ‘His hair was floating up in the water, swishing every which way, and when I held him to me his head turned and I saw that a patch had been cut close to his scalp. They are taking pieces of him, Verity. And you let him go. He is with his monster mother now.’
‘Oh, Constance. Oh, no. Why would she do such a thing? We must pray, we must go to Mass and ask God …’
‘God? There is no God. What kind of God would allow this?’
Verity crosses herself. ‘Constance. You are not well. I shall call for Percy.’
‘Oh no. No, no, no. I am absolutely crystal-headed and fit as a race walker.’
‘Surely, sister, you do not mean it.’
‘Do not tell me what I mean. Please leave me now.’
‘Shall I bring you tea, or cocoa, something warm, or brandy?’
‘Go away, Verity.’
Exhausted, Constance changes into her dressing gown, grabs a blanket and waits to hear Verity retire. She eases down the steps with a lamp and into the drawing room to her writing desk. It takes the best part of two hours to gather her thoughts to compose a letter to Benedikt. When she’s conquered the words, the nib flies as she relays her version of the day’s events, her fears for Rafe, and a plea for Benedikt’s assistance in locating him. She explains that when he was first taken they had no wish to keep him from his mother; they only asked to be a constant in his life. Now, she writes, she is certain the child is subjected to something devious.
And finally,
I am shaken with the anomaly of our situation. It will take some time to adjust. How ironic, for we have plenty of that stuff now. All the time. Time and nothing but time.
I better understand your purpose and the clandestine way in which you go about it. I wonder how many of us exist and of those, the count for good and compassion, and the count for evil …
Constance falls to sleep at last while contemplating the Serpentine. She took life back from it today. The boy would have lived, of that she is certain. But there was something about the actual taking of him that allows her to rest.
The next morning the newspaper hawkers begin their work, feeding the hungry public with the previous day’s mysterious and miraculous events at the Serpentine. The amazing rescue garners unwanted attention to all involved.
Thomas, his arms full of tools, cannot quite meet their eyes at breakfast. His morning greeting is subdued and he goes quickly to work on the balcony repairs.
The privacy that residents on the street treasure and guard is sorely missing today at Lawless House. The maids cannot get on with their work for answering the door to callers who wish to steal a moment to congratulate Mrs Fitzgerald on her brave rescue of the boy. Constance turns them all away. She goes from room to room closing the shutters, drawing the curtains. Today, she intends to live the few precious hours of daylight in seclusion.
‘Did you mean the things you said last night?’ Verity asks her.
‘Don’t I ordinarily?’
‘Yes, but these are extraordinary times.’
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
‘Owen was never secretive. Or nervous … He seems so very nervous.’
Nora Mockett has taken up talking aloud when she is alone. She finds it calming and is able to sort through her troubles and those things that niggle her.
‘It is most certainly to do with the back room,’ she says, as she repositions the Mockett’s Mandrake Pills beside Mockett’s Balm for the Skin. ‘I do not know what it is he does back there in his inner sanctum, toiling away like a possessed sorcerer.’ Her head bobs along as she resolves.
‘And the Fowler boy, there is something not at all right about the Fowler boy.’
The screeching of the paperboy interrupts her monologue. He gives full range of his lungs with a gulp of the mucky air.
‘Moooorning Chronicle! Times! Times! Former Limehouse Convict’s Son Saved by the Sisters Fitzgerald!’
Nora throws open the
