Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Minerva sent Kitty and Nessa to the village after breakfast. Kitty did not ask why. She only said, “Come, Nessa. I believe we must purchase a great many things today.”
Nessa looked confused. “I went to the market just three days ago.”
“You did,” Kitty agreed. “But I find I am in need of…some liniment. And a tin of pastilles. And—” She glanced at Minerva who only shrugged in answer.
Kitty hooked her arm through Nessa’s and said, “Come along.”
The door had barely closed behind them when Dashiell arrived.
He came through the garden and in the kitchen door and when he reached her, he pulled her to him and kissed her, slow, certain, his mouth on hers saying everything neither of them had words for this morning.
When he drew back, she offered him a small smile.
His answer was a spare curling of the corners of his mouth.
He took a candle from the shelf and lit it, the flame small and steady in the morning air. He took the trowel and oilcloth that she had set out and tucked them under his arm and then he opened the cellar door.
He stepped down first, Minerva close at his back, one hand on the wall. She could feel the warmth of him ahead of her in the biting cold that arrived at the second stair, seeping from the walls. As it had before, her breath puffed white and her fingers and toes lost sensation.
The pendant was an ember at her throat.
As they reached the bottom, Dashiell stopped and turned to her, the candle between them casting his features in eerie relief, leaving his chin and jaw illuminated, shadows beneath his eyes.
She moved toward the far corner, the north corner, Dashiell at her side, the candle casting a paltry circle of light, the Occupant lurking in the darkness beyond.
The cold fed upon itself, swirling around them, icing the tips of Minerva’s nose and ears.
She could no longer feel her toes or fingertips. Each icy breath made her teeth ache.
The pendant was a live coal against her skin. The ring scalded her finger.
She took another step forward. She did. She meant to. But her limbs refused to move. She felt heavy, weighted, moving so slowly she wondered if she moved at all.
Dashiell lifted the candle higher, the ring of light reaching all the way to the wall now. She could see the north corner. It was perhaps seven steps away. She walked toward it, one foot in front of the next but no matter how many steps she took, the corner was still seven steps away.
Her heart raced. Her breath came fast, as though she had walked a brisk mile.
“This is not real,” she whispered, the sound of her own voice calming her. “This is not real.”
The candle died.
The darkness that followed was inky and all encompassing, thick and oily, stinking of rot and…roses. Old roses, long dead, left in rank water.
The Occupant was there, in the dark. Or perhaps it was the dark.
She froze, fear rising in her, choking her.
But she was not alone. Dashiell was behind her. She could hear his breathing, feel the warmth of his body in the icy chill. He was her anchor.
Fire encircled her right ring finger. The pendant burned like a brand.
She focused on the burn, only the burn, and took a step forward, dragging her leg through what felt like thick slime.
She knew it for the lie it was. She took another step and another, the Occupant wrapping her in horror and fear, pulling on her grief, her memories, the pain of a thousand losses both large and small.
Whispers snaked through her thoughts, not from outside but from within. Doubt flooded her. She was no one. Nothing. She could not succeed where generations before her had failed. She was not special, not unique. She was a girl whose father had not loved her enough to leave her protected.
They all failed. Every woman before you. They died on this cliff and in this house and nothing has changed and nothing will change and you will die here as they died here and the stone will pass to the next woman and she will fail as you are failing now.
The doubt was a tide, spreading through her like frigid water finding a path, drowning her.
You cannot do this.
Almost did she succumb. Almost did she collapse to the ground and say, enough.
Then she reached down and tapped her fingertips on her thigh, counting. Counting.
Her thoughts jumped between Catherine’s journal and her letter and the plan she and Dashiell had constructed.
She stopped fighting.
She felt the change at once, both pendant and ring no longer pushing the Occupant away but drawing it in. Her breath left her in a sharp exhale.
Relief was strong and sweet. For a moment.
And then relief evaporated.
The Occupant did not come.
She felt it move against the drawing, against the pull, against everything she had thought opening the stones and herself would accomplish. It snaked through her with terrible patience, pushing at every soft place, every wound, every hidden scar.
The pendant burned hotter than it ever had. Scalding. Blistering. Hotter than the cliff path. Hotter than the first cellar descent. Hot enough that she smelled it, a choking metallic burn.
She was going to fail.
The thought arrived as a simple truth.
“Dashiell.”
She had not planned to say his name but once it was free, hanging between them, she knew he was the answer. The anchor. That was what Catherine had said.
His hand, steady and warm, clasped her shoulder.
She was not alone.
His palm skimmed her arm, the warmth of his touch tracking along her skin through her sleeve, and then his fingers found hers, twining together and he brought her hand—their joined hands—to the pendant. He closed their clasped hands around the hot gold, the ring and pendant physically touching now.
The shift was sudden and intense, a white-hot burn.
She heard a howl of rage and pain. No, not heard. Felt it in the very marrow of her bones.
The Occupant flooded her, vast and without mercy, hate and malice and darkness crushing her beneath their weight.
It flooded the stones, pouring through the amethyst on her finger to the one at her throat.
The cold was a howling beast, around her, through her, a storm stronger than any she had ever known.
The stones burned white. Her blood burned white.
She fought a scream, pain tearing her apart.
But still she held on and Dashiell held on and together they stood against a thing so vile she had not the words to name it.
He wrapped his arms around her, holding her against him, his hand around hers and hers around the pendant.
And then it stopped. Everything stopped.
Her hands shook as she uncurled her fingers from around the pendant. Dashiell’s arms were still around her and she stood in the safety of his embrace for a moment, the air around her cool and still. Cool, not cold. A little damp. A stone cellar. That was all.
She heard the scratch of a match.
The flare was shockingly bright in the darkness, the smell of sulfur sharp and familiar. Minerva blinked at the bright haloes obscuring her vision. Dashiell held match to candle and the flame caught, the details of the cellar revealed around them. Rough walls, low ceiling.
She removed the pendant and held it in her palm.
“Dashiell, look,” she whispered, turning her hand so he could see.
The stone was black, absolute and lightless, the surface swallowing the light of the candle flame, reflecting nothing back.
“The Occupant is in the stone. Trapped,” he said.
“We did it,” she said, and made a short laugh, more incredulity than mirth.
Dashiell took the pendant from her and wrapped it in the oilcloth.
Then, together, they went to the north corner where he crouched and worked the trowel into the seam of the stones until the mortar gave.
It was slow work but after a time, he wriggled free one of the stones.
Beneath it was hard packed earth. He worked the trowel until he created a shallow hollow.
She crouched beside him and laid the pendant in the hollow, resting her palm above it for a moment. The candle threw their shadows against the walls and ceiling, the smell of freshly dug earth rising around them.
“The old ones knew,” Dashiell said, and Minerva recognized the line from Catherine’s journal.
“What do you think she meant?” she asked.
“Centuries of belief put north as the direction of binding and constraint. The old ones knew this corner,” he said, his voice low. He covered the oilcloth with dirt, then placed her hands next to his on the stone and together they pushed it back in place.
Then they climbed the stairs and left the cellar behind. She closed the door but did not bother to latch it. There was no longer a need.
In the kitchen, she touched the hollow of her throat. It felt strange, bare. She looked at the ring on her right hand. Still there.
Dashiell pulled her into his embrace and held her, just held her. She breathed in the scent of him, citrus and bergamot, and then tipped her face up for his kiss.
Minerva walked beside Dashiell with her hand in the crook of his arm and her face turned to the sun.
The afternoon was mild, the breeze gentle, the sea calm and blue.
Ahead of them on the path, Kitty walked with Thom.
Her laugh carried back, bright and unguarded.
Thom’s response was too low to hear but whatever he said made her laugh again.
“A note came this morning from Jago,” Dashiell said.
She looked at him.
“He writes to say they leave for Exeter at the end of the week.” A pause. “He thanks me for the introduction to Dr. Marsh.”
“It was kind of you to arrange it,” she said.
“I made inquiries,” he said, though she knew he had done more than that.
“Marsh trained under Conolly at Hanwell. He does not use restraints. He believes in modern methods, that the mind can be treated with care rather than confinement.” He kept his gaze on the path ahead.
“Tamsyn asked to go. She has been carrying a weight not wholly of her making for eighteen years. Jago is hopeful she can recover.”
“Good,” Minerva said, and meant it.
They walked on, the path curving around the outcrop of granite where the headland opened and the ocean came into view on three sides.
This was where the brothers had stolen her will, where Kitty’s arm had caught her, where Teague had attacked her.
Minerva stopped, closing her eyes and tipping her face to the sun.
When she opened her eyes once more, she turned her head to find Dashiell watching her.
“They are not here,” she said. “None of them are here anymore.”
“The Lady Jane has gone as well,” Dashiell said. “I have not seen her since that morning and I will not see her again.”
Minerva did not question him. He simply knew as she knew, there were no more ghosts here.
“Come,” she said. “Kitty will want to tell us about her visit with Thom’s parents.”
Dashiell smiled, that spare curling of the corners of his mouth.
And then they walked on.