The Essex Serpent(52)

Mr Caffyn, both outraged and afraid, plucked at his tie and cried, ‘Stop this! Stop this!’, looking furiously at their troublesome visitor, who’d gone very white and stood gripping Joanna’s hand in hers. Then a girl doubled over, laughing so violently her chair toppled and she fell to the floor with a yell that pierced the muddle of foolish laughter, which immediately began to recede. Naomi put a hand to her neck – ‘It hurts,’ she said: ‘Why does it hurt? What have you done?’ and looked around at her classmates, blinking and shaking her head, bemused at their tear-streaked faces. Little Harriet twisted the yellow hem of her dress and had a fit of the hiccups, and one or two of the older girls had gone to comfort the weeping child who cradled a swelling wrist beside an upturned chair.

‘Joanna?’ said Naomi, looking at her friend, ‘What’s wrong? Was it me? What have I done this time?’





Cora Seaborne 3,

The Common

Aldwinter 15th May Luke – You’re basking in your celebrity I know and are probably up to your elbows in a chest cavity somewhere, but now WE need you.

Luke, something’s going wrong. Today something went through the children here as fast as fire – not sickness in the way it’s usually meant, something in the mind, and down they all went like dominoes. By evening all was well again but what could have done it – was it my fault?

You understand these things: you had me under hypnosis when I would not believe that you could – had me walking over the heath to my father’s house while I lay there on the couch – won’t you come down?

I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid of anything anymore: that all got used up a long time ago. But something’s here – something’s going on – something isn’t right …

Besides, you must meet the Ransomes, and most of all Will. I’ve told him about my Imp.

Can you bring more books for Francis? Murder, please, and the bloodier the better.

Love,





CORA





Luke Garrett MD

Pentonville Rd

London N1

15th May Cora – Don’t fret. There are no mysteries anymore.

One word: ergotism. Remember? Black fungus in a crop of rye – a pack of girls hallucinate – Salem hangs its witches. Check their lunches for brown bread and I’ll be with you by Friday next.

Enclosed: 1 x note for Martha, with Spencer’s regards. Something about housing: he bores me and I don’t listen.





LUKE





George Spencer MD

10 Queen’s Gate Terrace

15th May

Dear Martha –

I hope you are well. How is Essex in the spring? Do you miss civilisation? I thought of you when I saw the gardeners out in force in Victoria Park, and how neat the flowerbeds are. I don’t suppose Aldwinter is growing tulips in the shape of a clock face.

I’ve been thinking about our chat. I’m glad you shook me out of my complacency and made me look elsewhere and ashamed it took you to do it. I’ve read everything you said I should read, and more. Last week I went to Poplar and saw for myself the state of their homes, and how they live, and how the one feeds the other.

I’ve written to Charles Ambrose, and hope he’ll write back. He has more influence than me, and understands better how government works, and I think he can be useful. I’m hoping he can be persuaded to come with me to Poplar or Limehouse and see what you and I have seen. If so, might you come too?

I’ve enclosed a clipping from The Times I thought might cheer you: it seems the Housing of the Working Classes Act is at last making itself felt beyond the city. The future’s coming to meet us!

With good wishes,





GEORGE SPENCER





4


Luke came to Aldwinter in triumph and a new grey coat. For all that his success had not proved a cure to all his own ills, it was useless to deny that this evidence of his skill and courage gave him stature. Over in Bethnal Green the heart of Edward Burton beat stronger by the hour: he’d taken to making drawings of the dome of St Paul’s, and was likely to return to work by midsummer. Luke felt Burton’s heart beat beside his own, so that he walked with the vitality of two; and though he knew how pride precedes a fall, it seemed so novel to have any distance to tumble he willingly faced the risk.

In the train from London and the cab from Colchester he’d thought of Cora, and smoothed her letter on his knee: we need you, she’d said, and scowling he wondered whom she meant by ‘we’: was it also this parson of hers, who peppered her correspondence, who’d drawn her away from London into the Essex mud? The envy he’d felt watching her stoop over her husband’s pillow and kiss his greasy forehead in the final days was nothing to what went through him when he saw that name in her handwriting. First she’d written of Mr Ransome, the title keeping him at arm’s length; then The Good Reverend, with a mocking fondness that had made him uneasy; then – lately, and easily, with no warning – Will (and not even William, though that would’ve been bad enough!). Luke scoured the letters for evidence of any feeling on Cora’s part that might indicate a connection beyond cheerful friendship (he grudgingly conceded she’d a right to other friends), and found none. But even so Luke looked out at the fields scudding past the window, and his own dark reflection laid over them, and thought: Let him be old, and fat, and smelling of dust and Bibles.