‘Was there a storm?’ I ask as another thought hits me. The strangeness of it is clear from their expressions. ‘The night before my parents supposedly left. Was there a wild storm?’
Lazarus nods. ‘I thought… I thought I could hear voices in it. We’re used to strong weather up here, but it was… unusual.’ He reddens, ‘It was another reason I didn’t go out. It was still raining.’
Even away from the sea, Isolde was an O’Malley, there was salt in her veins just as there is in mine. The sea mourns when we die, we female O’Malleys, for whatever reason. Perhaps because we produce the children, the tithe we feed to the waters. Perhaps that’s why we are a loss. And all the waters in the world are joined, Blackwater lake is salty – salty! – and surely they speak to each other, in those places where fresh meets salt, siblings. Somehow, no matter where we are, the sea knows and it sends a tempest to weep for us.
And I know for certain that my mother is as dead as I’ve always been told she was. I don’t know where she rests or why they separated her from Liam. But she’s no longer breathing above the earth or below it. She was dead before I left Hob’s Hallow. If I’d only found the letters sooner… then again, she’s no more dead now that I thought she was my entire life. Yet still it hurts sharp as a knife.
‘Is there… is there another way into Blackwater?’
Lazarus looks as if I might be mad with all these random questions, but there’s a method to my madness. He nods. ‘A track leads from the smelter through the woods, through the back part of the estate, to the road to St Sinwin’s Harbour. Ten days’ journey, but that’s where the dealers are and where the silver ships from. We live here in secret, Miss Miren, that was part of our agreement with your mother. Most of us, we don’t out beyond the hedge, only Oliver Redman sends the Cornish brothers with deliveries.’
‘And you didn’t go down to open the breach in the hedge for them that dawn?’
‘Your father knew well enough how to do that. I didn’t watch.’ And Liam would have told his new best friend, wouldn’t he? All the things about this place, or almost. This man he’d invited into his life.
‘So, whoever was dressed in my parents’ clothes might have simply gone along the road until they found that junction and re-entered from there. Their horses, I suppose, were left to wander away.’
Jedadiah and Lazarus sit back in their chairs, stunned. Their mouths move as if to argue, but they know that if Liam Elliott is lying discarded deep in the earth, then he could not have ridden a horse out the hedge gate three months ago. They look at me at last, holding their breath, and when I remain silent, Jedadiah almost bursts as he asks, ‘What do we do now?’
* * *
Jedadiah escorts me back to the big house around four in the morning. We barely speak, but walk close beside one another. When we almost reach the front lawn, we keep to the trees just in case (although no one wakes early in this house), and go around the side, into the shadows of the kitchen garden. I push open the door, then take his hand and pull him in behind me. I cannot confront my uncle, not yet. I want to know what happened. I want Ena safely out of Nelly’s hands. I want to be in a position where I can prove all my accusations. I want to know where my mother’s buried. So much I want to know, but I must play this game to its end.
But this… this is something I can do, a means of marking my rebellion.
He doesn’t pull away, doesn’t ask stupid questions, simply follows along behind, careful to keep his footfall light as we go. I lock the door to my chamber… the first time I have done so here, the first time I have felt my sleep might not be peaceful or safe.
In my room… in my room it is much as it was with the green-eyed assassin, but for longer. Also, there is tenderness this night, whereas the other was all heat and hunger. He strokes my back, traces the marks my grandmother left, but does not mention them. Jedadiah asks me what I want, then gives it to me.
He also asks, in quiet moment, about the mer.
‘I don’t know why, exactly, but they followed me from Breakwater. They tried to drown me once.’ But, I think, did they? ‘My family made their fortune from the sea, but there’s not many of us left. Just me, now, of the direct line. Many cousins with thinned blood, but I’m the last O’Malley. I thought there was my mother too, but…’ I swallow. ‘I don’t know what they want.’
I don’t tell him of their song, that when I’m gone, they will be free, because trust is something that needs to be earned and I will only give so much.
And after he leaves in the strange greying light just before dawn, I touch the place where he lay until I can no longer feel the heat of him. I lie there and pull my thoughts away from his broad shoulders and deep chest, from the scars on his torso that perhaps I will ask him about one day, and perhaps he will explain. I think about what I need to do, and I ponder how to do it. At some point I go to sleep but it’s not many hours later that I wake, sweating, having dreamed myself in the hole in the earth beside
