And Aoife… my grandmother had the best use of her little spy and didn’t think she’d need her again. Perhaps she was jealous, herself, of my closeness with Brigid when she’d not had anyone like her. Perhaps – and I thought this might well have been the most likely – she was just so enraged that I might be like Isolde, that I might so easily derail her plans by opening my legs too soon, so she visited a revenge on me that she hadn’t been able to deliver to my mother. Because Isolde had a baby inside her and the O’Malleys’ salvation depended entirely on new blood and that could not be risked.
‘I didn’t know,’ continued Brigid, ‘that she’d done this. I… I only knew that you didn’t love me anymore and it hurt.’
I sat on the edge of the bed and ceased trying to contain my own weeping. We held hands and sobbed. We cried until there were no more tears, and it felt – for me at least – as if poison had been drawn from a wound.
‘Where will you go?’ she asked at last.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know, but it’s best if you have no idea. If Aidan thinks you know, do you think he’ll stop at anything to get the information out of you?’
‘No. You’re right.’ She put the fingers of one hand around the wrist of the other as if soothing bruises.
‘But I need to get away from here, by a means he can’t easily trace.’
‘I… I can get you to someone who can help. He can take you elsewhere, then…’
‘I can make my way from wherever to wherever.’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you, Brigid.’
‘Will you… will you perhaps write to me? One day?’
‘One day. When I’m safe.’ I almost said One day I will send for you, but refrained. Who knows what might happen to either of us? I would not make promises I might not be able to keep.
While she dressed in dark clothes, I surreptitiously took the little doll from beneath her pillow and threw it onto the flames in the hearth. It went up terribly quickly, with a snap and a pop like bones breaking.
‘What was that?’ she called from the dressing room.
‘Something in the fire,’ I said, then under my breath, ‘bad dreams and ill wishes.’
* * *
In the little courtyard at the back of the Paragon Theatre, the troupe was moving to and fro, packing their carts and wagons, seven in all, when we arrived. I waited in the shadows while Brigid approached. It seemed strange that they’d be preparing to leave so very late – or rather, so very early for it was almost 3 a.m. – but my cousin had said Ellingham liked to get a head-start on their travel. They always departed after the final performance so they weren’t trying to exit a city in the morning at the same time as every other merchant or caravan.
‘Mr Ellingham,’ she called, and the little man’s head popped up immediately from the group of men hefting a shiny box the shape of a coffin but twice as wide onto a covered cart.
‘Miss Fitzpatrick!’ His face lit up with genuine pleasure as he approached her and I noticed Brigid’s mien took on a similar glow. ‘I did not expect to see you here again, not so late. Have you changed your mind?’
His tone was so limned with hope that my heart hurt a little. Why, cousin, how sly! Aidan clearly did not know. Were all the women in Aidan Fitzpatrick’s life destined to defy him in one way or another? Then she shook her head regretfully and his joy disappeared.
She drew him away from the light, from his fellows, to where I waited in the shadows. Her hand on his arm, the movement of her lips and the way his eyes followed her very breath were all so clear to me – how could Aidan not know? Because he does not look, does not care to, has no concern for what anyone else wants or needs. Ellingham’s expression as Brigid speaks gradually changes and he searches for me. I step forward into a patch of lesser darkness.
‘Miss O’Malley,’ he says haltingly. ‘Brigid tells me you are in need of aid.’
‘In need of a swift and clandestine way out of Breakwater, Mr Ellingham. Can you assist?’
He pauses as if considering, then nods. ‘We make for Lodellan, but you may leave us anywhere along the way, as you choose.’
‘Thank you, Mr Ellingham.’
‘It will not be comfortable, at least not for a while, if you wish to depart covertly.’
‘I’ll make no complaint.’
‘Then come with me, we’ll not let my people know for the moment. A secret seldom survives being shared.’ The troupe had dispersed, back inside the theatre to gather final possessions, and he escorted me smartly across the courtyard to one of the covered carts.
And that is how I came to be lying in the dark beside the automaton, Delphine.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here; I napped, I think, soon after Mr Ellingham closed the lid on me. So tired, I barely had time to feel afraid of the inert thing beside me, of the blackness that closed in with the falling lid, and the snick of the latch. I remember hearing the city guards call as we rolled out beneath the gates and Ellingham answered cheerily that they would return next year in the same season with a new show, new performers, but always his beautiful Delphine. The soldiers cheered; apparently anyone could be thus affected by the glorious singer and her strange arias.
A few minutes later, drained of all adrenaline, my head resting on my duffel, all memory ceased.
When I woke
