The Bone Garden: A Novel

your hair.

— Over here's my bed! — declared Billy, and he plopped down on a pile of straw. — If we shut the curtain, we'll make a pretty room all to ourselves. You can sit there, sir. Old Polly won't notice that anyone's been using her bed. —

Norris did not look at all eager to settle onto the bundle of rags and straw. As Rose slid the sheet across to give them privacy from the dying man in the corner, Norris stared down at Polly's bed, as though wondering how many vermin he might pick up by sitting there.

— Wait! — Billy leaped up to fetch the water bucket, which he brought sloshing back to their corner. — Now you can put the candle down. —

— He's afraid of fire, — said Rose as she carefully set the candle on the floor. And well Billy should be, in a room strewn with rags and straw. Only when she settled onto her own bed did Norris resignedly sit down as well. Curtained off in their own corner of the room, the three of them formed a circle around the flickering light, which cast spindly shadows on the hanging sheet.

— Now tell me, — she said. — Tell me what happened to Mary. —

He stared at the light. — I'm the one who found her, — he said. — Last night, on the riverbank. I was walking across the hospital common when I heard her moans. She'd been cut, Miss Connolly, the same way Agnes Poole was cut. The same pattern, slashed into her abdomen. —

— In the shape of a cross? —

— Yes. —

— Does Mr. Pratt still blame papists? —

— I can't imagine that he does now. —

She gave a bitter laugh. — Then you have your head in the sand, Mr. Marshall. There's no charge so outrageous that it can't be flung at the Irish. —

— In the case of Mary Robinson, it's not the Irish on whom suspicion falls. —

— Who would Mr. Pratt's unlucky suspect be this time? —

— I am. —

In the silence that followed, she stared at the shadows playing on Norris's face. Billy had curled up like a tired cat beside his water bucket and now lay dozing, each breath rustling the straw. The consumptive man in the corner kept up his ceaseless coughing, his moist rattles a reminder that death was never far away.

— So you see, — he said, — I know what it's like to be unfairly accused. I know what you've gone through. —

— You know, do you? Yet it's myself who's looked at with suspicion every day of my life. You have no idea. —

— Miss Connolly, last night I saw the same creature you did, but no believes me. No one else saw it. Worst of all, the hospital groundsman saw me bending over her body. I'm looked at with suspicion by the nurses, the other students. The hospital trustees may banish me from the wards. All I've ever wanted was to be a doctor. Now everything I've worked for is threatened, because so many doubt my word. Just as they doubted yours. — He leaned closer, and the candle's glow painted his face with gaunt and spectral shadows. — You've seen it, too, that thing with the cape. I need to know if you remember the same things I do. —

— I told you that night what I saw. But I don't think you believed me then. —

— I admit, at the time your story seemed like? —

— A lie? —

— I would never make such an accusation against you. Yes, I thought your description far-fetched. But you were overwrought and clearly terrified. — He added, quietly: — Last night, so was I. What I saw chilled me to the bone. —

She looked at the candle flame. And whispered: — It had wings. —

— A cape, perhaps. Or a dark cloak. —

— And its face glowed white. — She met Norris's gaze, and the light on his features brought back the memory with startling clarity. — White as a skull. Is that what you saw? —

— I don't know. The moon was on the water. Reflections can play tricks on the eye. —

Her lips tightened. — I'm telling you what I saw. And in return, you offer explanations. ?It was just the moon's reflection'! —

— I'm a man of science, Miss Connolly. I can't help but seek logical explanations. —

— And where is the logic in killing two women? —

— There may be none. Only evil. —

She swallowed and said softly: — I'm afraid he knows my face. —

Billy groaned and rolled over, his face slack and innocent in sleep. Looking at him, she thought: Billy understands nothing of evil. He sees a smile and does not understand that darkness may lie beneath it.

Footsteps thumped up the stairs, and Rose stiffened as she heard a woman's giggles, a man's laugh. One of the female lodgers had lured a client upstairs. Rose understood the necessity of it, knew that a few minutes with your legs spread could mean the difference between supper and a growling belly. But the noises the couple made, on the other side of that thin curtain, brought a mortified flush to Rose's cheeks. She could not bring herself to look at Norris. She stared down at her hands, knotted in her lap, as the couple groaned and grunted, as straw rustled beneath rocking bodies. And through it all, the sick man in the far corner kept coughing, drowning in bloody phlegm.

— And this is why you hide? — he asked.

Reluctantly, she looked at him, and found his gaze unflinching, as though he was determined to ignore the rutting and the dying that was happening only a few feet away. As if the filthy sheet had curtained them off into a separate world, where she was the sole focus of his attention.

— I hide to avoid trouble, Mr. Marshall. From everyone. —

— Including the Night Watch? They're saying you pawned an item of jewelry that wasn't yours. —

— My sister gave it to me. —

— Mr. Pratt says you stole it. That you stripped it from her body while she lay dying. —

She gave a snort. — My brother-in-law's doing. Eben wants his revenge, so he spreads rumors about me. Even if it was true, even if I did take it, I didn't owe it to him. How else was I supposed to pay for Aurnia's burial? —

— Her burial? But she? — He paused.

— What about Aurnia? — she asked.

— Nothing. It's just?an unusual name, that's all. A lovely name. —

She gave a sad smile. — It was our grandmother's name. It means ?golden lady.' And my sister was truly a golden lady. Until she married. —

Beyond the curtain, the grunts accelerated, accompanied by the forceful slap-slap of two bodies colliding. Rose could no longer look Norris in the eye. She stared down instead at her shoes, planted on the straw-littered floor. An insect crawled out from the straw where Norris was seated, and she wondered if he noticed it. She fought the urge to crush it with her shoe.

— Aurnia deserved better, — Rose said softly. — But in the end, the only one standing at her grave was me. And Mary Robinson. —

— Nurse Robinson was there? —

— She was kind to my sister, kind to everyone. Unlike Miss Poole. Oh, I had no love for that one, I'll admit, but Mary was different. — She shook her head sadly.

The couple behind the curtain finished their rutting, and their grunts gave way to sighs of exhaustion. Rose had ceased paying attention to them; instead she was thinking of the last time she had seen Mary Robinson, at St. Augustine's cemetery. She remembered the woman's darting glances and jittery hands. And how she had suddenly vanished without saying goodbye.

Billy stirred and sat up, scratching his head and scattering pieces of dirty straw from his hair. He looked at Norris. — Are you sleeping here with us, then? — he asked.

Rose flushed. — No, Billy. He's not. —

— I can move my bed to make room for you, — said Billy. Then added, with a territorial note, — But I'm the