“Suddenly we weren’t good enough anymore. Cast out,” Lillian continued. “I ask you, Heather, is that fair? After all the work we’d done, the hours we’d put in? All these years we’ve kept track of the children of Fiddler’s Mill. We’ve practically been like second parents to them. And apparently your father approved of our dismissal. He agreed that we should be removed from the boy’s life, even as he himself sat moldering in prison.” She grunted. “When we realized that dear, sweet Colleen had lied all along, well, we thought wouldn’t that make a fitting little present for Michael?”
“The daughter he didn’t know, murdered by his precious son,” the other woman grinned. “Although of course he hasn’t fucking managed it. Should know better than to trust men to do anything right.”
“What do you know about my mother?”
Lillian bared her teeth. “Everything. We’ve always known where she was. We thought of her fondly, of course. We went to see her, didn’t we, Lizbet? Once we realized what she’d done, what she’d been getting away with all these years. We asked her about it, about you, and all the years in between, and she told us everything. After a fashion. After a little … encouragement. She told us about the man who raised you, the birds, how you pushed him to death’s door …”
“Fuck you.”
“And we told her some things, too—about the upcoming harvest, and the role she’d played in it. I have to admit, I wasn’t dreadfully surprised when I heard she’d killed herself. No one wants to find out they birthed a monster. Or a pair of them.”
Heather didn’t move. She couldn’t look away from the point of the knife where it pressed into Lillian’s sagging neck. A little more pressure, just a little, and this revolting woman would never utter another word. Somewhere above them, a seagull cried out, and she moved back, horrified at what she had almost done.
“This is all insane,” she told them. “You are all insane. I’m going in there to get my friend. If you come after me, if I ever see your twisted old faces again, I will kill you.”
Something about this answer pleased the women. She saw them exchange a glance; their eyes bright.
“Like father like daughter,” Lillian said.
Heather left them standing by the car. On the far side, facing the woods, she found the door to the Folly standing open. Inside there was a curiously empty space; flagstones dusted with sand and dead leaves, and curling up the inside of the tower, a set of spiraling stone steps. The smell of salt and blood hung heavy in the air, a silvery kind of light filtering in through dirty windows. She had her foot on the first step when she spotted a pile of old hessian mats in the corner—the furthest one was half folded over, as if someone had thrown them over something in a hurry. The knife still held in one fist, she left the stairs and went over to the mats, dragging them away to reveal a trap door flush with the flag stones.
It revealed another staircase, this one spiraling downwards. There were bright, modern electric lights fitted to the walls, and from somewhere far below, she could hear soft noises—someone moving, the faint sound of crying.
“Nikki?”
Her voice sank into nothing, but below her the noises increased. Heather headed down, one hand braced against the wall, until she came to a nondescript wooden door. Beyond it was a dank, cold little room, and in it Nikki and another woman she didn’t know huddled together on the floor. At the sight of her, the other woman moaned, a desperate, terrified noise, but Nikki sat up, her eyes very wide. They were both bound with nylon rope, hands cinched tightly behind their backs and gags around their mouths, and Nikki was sitting slightly in front of the other woman, as though to shield her from something.
“Christ.” Heather went to them, bringing up the wicked little knife, and the woman behind Nikki wailed behind her gag. “It’s all right, I’m just going to cut you loose.”
There was a noise on the staircase behind her. Heather turned, the knife held up again.
“Here you are, lass. I suppose it was inevitable you’d get here eventually.” It was the old man who had given them tea; the small, bent old man who peered at them out of one eye and had seemed so frail and fragile. Now, standing in the doorway and blocking the staircase, he did not look frail at all. His dog, the huge shaggy black creature, was standing at his knee. Bert smiled and nodded, as though confirming something. “Jesus wept, but you look like him. Like both of them. Where is my boy, eh? What have you done with him?”
“He’s dead,” said Heather. “Who are you, really?”
The old man shrugged, taking a further step into the room. Behind her, the two women were silent.
“You can’t save them,” he said quietly. “Especially not my Cathy. Cathy belongs here, do you understand? She belongs to me.” The eerie contentment on his face began to fade, to be replaced by something else. “I made her. I brought her parents here, I gave them this free world to live in, and the fruits of that are mine. All of them …”
“The women were all born here, at Fiddler’s Mill. And then what? Taken away? Adopted out?”
Bert smiled. “The Bickerstaff sisters you just met were nurses, did you know that? Or at least, nurses in training. I’m not sure they ever qualified though, or whatever you might call it. They knew the drugs to use, they knew how to deliver babies onto pure, black earth.
