Chapter Six #3
As I am sure was apparent when we met, I set no store by magical theories or the supernatural, least of all as a way in which to restore health when medical science has failed.
The ‘mystical’ waters of the Hallewell Spring did nothing to cure Rosalind of her disease.
When one so young and so very good is taken, it is hard to believe in anything much at all, truth be told.
Yet my wife did believe that the waters and the prayers might save her.
I would say she was happier during our stay with you than at any other time this past year.
She went to the spring every day – did you know?
To perform the ritual you taught to her.
She took flowers as an offering, and a handkerchief, and even a small cup of wine.
Though it seemed preposterous to me, she said it gave her hope – as though hope were a cure in itself, which, assuredly, it is not.
In any event, she bade me send you her pendant to show her gratitude, and to remind you that there is always hope of a reprieve.
She was quite taken with you, Miss Hallewell.
She liked the way you did not speak if you had nothing to say – so few people will not simply fill a silence with empty prattle, young women being particularly guilty of this.
Around the time we left Hallewell we heard whispers of a tragedy, and Rosalind noticed a change in you.
She was concerned for you. Have her necklace then, and if there has indeed been some unfortunate happening there, then I hope it will turn out well enough in due course. Rosalind would have hoped it too.
Yours et cetera,
Dr. Albert M. Mackie
PS. It occurs to me that Rosalind died with no knowledge of the end being upon her. She went to sleep secure in the belief that she would wake again, and so wasn’t in the least bit afraid. Perhaps that was what hope did for her, and perhaps I am merely angry and in despair to dismiss it so.
Theo read the letter three times. She tried to imagine Rosalind Mackie dead and cold and underground, just like Missy.
She remembered the exaggerated heave of her ribs as she’d fought for breath, and pictured those ribs now stopped, still, forever.
She could make no sense of it. She put her fingers between her teeth and bit down until it hurt.
How could it ever be that her fingers would feel nothing?
That they would be bloodless flesh, shrinking to the bone and then dropping off it, without the power of touch or movement?
But it had happened to Missy; it had happened to Rosalind.
Theo caught the stale smell of herself, and her sweaty nightdress. She got up, revolted, and rang down for Kitty to draw her a bath.
She didn’t wait for more than two pails of hot water, so the bath was cool.
It sent shivers all over her, stirring the blood in her veins.
She looked down at her pale body, distorted beneath the surface – a woman’s body.
Narrow in the hips and small-breasted, but definitely a woman’s, not a child’s.
She tried to grasp the meaning of it; she tried to understand.
Missy had been granted fewer years than her; Rosalind Mackie only a handful more. Amy far, far fewer.
‘“The stream will cease to flow”,’ she murmured, ‘“The wind will cease to blow; The clouds will cease to fleet; The heart will cease to beat.”’ She sank to her chin, and her breath made tiny ripples on the water.
It was one of the first poems she’d memorised, a mirroring partner to the one about endless life that she’d stolen for her midsummer invocation.
As a child, she’d given no thought to the meaning of the words, only to the sound and rhythm of them.
‘“We are call’d – we must go. Laid low, very low, In the dark we must lie.”’
Theo sank beneath the surface. The world blurred, booming with the sound of her blood, crackling as her ears filled with water.
Lungs straining, body craving air, she clenched her fists and weathered it.
Ophelia had died like this; and Maggie Tulliver; and countless shipwrecked sailors.
When she could stand it no longer she sat up violently, slopping water on to the floorboards.
She was not dead, or dying, so perhaps there was still hope – hope of a reprieve, for herself and for Kit.
Perhaps there were things she could do; ways in which Toby might come to forgive her, and all could be made right.
And none of it could be done by lying in her bed, paralysed with misery. Her mother was right about that.
She still felt weak but she scrubbed herself clean, got dressed, and styled her hair as best she could without help – parting it in the middle, twisting the side portions into ropes and fastening them at the nape of her neck.
Then she rummaged through the drawers of her dressing table until she found a pale grey ribbon, and tied the butterfly pendant around her neck.
A neck in which the blood was still quick, and warm.
Looking closely in the mirror, she saw the subtle twitch of the pulse beneath the skin.
Hunger knotted her stomach. She would write back to Albert Mackie, and she would go to see the Meriwethers, even though she shrank from the pain she’d caused them.
Uncle Crudge had written to tell her about the judge’s arrival in Dorchester, and the date on which Kit’s trial would begin.
It was fast approaching; time was short.
Toby had a clear memory of Theo swaying on her feet in front of the magistrate.
He hadn’t tried to see her again since being turned away from the big house.
The rumours, which always leaked from any house with servants, were that she was still ill, and in bed.
That she had been driven mad by what had happened.
He didn’t believe that; it was most likely just embarrassment at losing her nerve in public.
Impatience gnawed at him – time was running out.
He needed her to get well, and practise her testimony.
So she was overdue, when she finally turned up.
She came after school hours, when all three Meriwethers would be home, and though her clothes were smart the rest of her was not.
Sallow skin, dull eyes, cracks at the corners of her mouth.
She and Toby simply stared at one another from either side of the doorstep, neither smiling nor speaking, until Mona came to see who it was.
‘Miss Hallewell!’ She seemed taken aback. ‘Won’t you come in?’
The four of them sat on the small settees, and Mona didn’t offer tea. Toby noticed that Theo couldn’t look his parents in the eye. That she looked wretched, and unwell. The prickle of sympathy he felt only made his anger stir.
‘It’s nice to see you up and about,’ Mona said. ‘Are you recovered from your bout of illness?’
‘I . . . I cannot say,’ Theo said, with a tremulous hint of a smile. ‘But since resting has not worked, perhaps it is better to try a return to . . . activity.’
Toby wondered if she’d been about to say normality. They could never go back to that.
‘At least, that’s what the doctor says,’ she added.
‘Well, he probably knows best.’
Silence fell. Toby fought to keep still.
He felt like Kit must always have felt, with his fidgeting and his sudden explosions of movement.
There was too much to do, too much to contain.
Theo kept touching a gold pendant that hung between her collarbones, and it irritated him.
Such trinkets hardly mattered. Such girlish vanity.
‘My uncle wrote to tell me the date of the trial,’ she said quietly. ‘The seventh of October.’
‘Yes,’ David said.
‘Kit is quite looking forward to the train ride,’ Mona said. ‘He’s never been in one before.’
He would be taken by wagon to Semley station, since Shaftesbury was too steep to be on the railway, and then to Dorchester via Yeovil Junction. Mona clasped her hands in her lap, then unclasped them and laid them flat.
‘Of course, he doesn’t really understand––’
‘I wanted to ask if there is anything I can do to help,’ Theo blurted.
‘Anything at all. You must please let me know, however small or large it may seem.’ She took a breath.
‘I am so very sorry for the way I failed with the magistrate. I cannot explain what happened. Only that I . . . I have never been able to . . .’
Toby held his breath but she stopped short of telling his parents she had lied in her statement. That she had, in fact, seen Kit throw the stone. He hadn’t told them – he couldn’t bear to – and had no idea if they suspected as much.
‘Noah Cornwallis suggests that you practise what you will say at the trial,’ he said. ‘So that nerves will not be such a factor, when the time comes.’
Theo turned to stare at him. ‘I . . . I cannot speak at the trial!’
‘But . . . you must,’ Mona said.
‘My dear.’ David laid a hand on his wife’s arm. ‘Let’s hear what Miss Hallewell has to say.’
Theo looked stricken. ‘You were all there,’ she said. ‘You saw what happened. I cannot speak before the judge; I would make it so much worse for Kit if I did. If . . . the same thing happened again.’
‘Perhaps it would not, if you were to prepare in advance as Mr Cornwallis suggests,’ David said encouragingly. But Theo was shaking her head, her gaze darting from one face to the next as though too afraid to land.
‘You just asked what you could do to help Kit,’ Toby burst out. ‘You were there that night. The best – the only – thing you can do is speak up for him!’
‘No – don’t you see? I can’t! I would get it all wrong again, I know I would! I would make it worse for him, and I couldn’t bear that. Please believe me—’
‘Then you will let Joanna Bowen’s account go unchallenged?’ Mona said.
‘They . . . they have my written account.’
‘That will not carry the same weight with the jury! How could it?’ Toby snapped.
‘They will find me out,’ Theo whispered.