Weyward(26)

‘And when did the doctor and the Kirkby boy arrive?’

‘Not long after, sir.’

‘Did the doctor say anything to you?’

‘Just told me what I already knew, sir. My John were gone. There were no bringing him back.’

The little head bowed again. The shoulders quivered.

‘Thank you, Mistress Milburn. I can see that having to relive this grave tragedy has been wearing on your spirits. I thank you for your courage and assistance in this matter. I have only a few more questions to ask before I can release you.’

He paced back and forth before the bar, before speaking again.

‘Mistress Milburn, how long have you known the accused, Altha Weyward?’

‘All my life, sir. Same as with most others in the village.’

‘And what has been the nature of your relationship with her, during your acquaintance?’

‘We were – friends, sir. As children, that is.’

‘But no longer?’

‘No, sir. Not since we were thirteen, sir.’

‘And what happened, when you and the accused were thirteen, that caused the friendship to abate, Mistress Milburn?’

‘To – what, sir?’

‘To end. What caused the friendship to end?’

Grace looked at her hands.

‘My mother fell ill, sir. With the scarlatina.’

‘And what did that have to do with the accused?’

‘She and her mother—’

‘Jennet Weyward?’

‘Yes – she and Jennet, they came to treat my mother.’

‘And could you tell the court, please, the outcome of that treatment?’

Grace looked at me before she spoke, so quietly that I had to strain to hear her.

‘My mother died, sir.’





14


VIOLET


Violet was looking for something to wear.

Father had said that they were going to go clay pigeon shooting with Frederick after breakfast. Violet wasn’t fond of shooting. She’d never shoot real pigeons, of course (even Father knew better than to ask her to do that), but she still didn’t like the way that the gunshots startled the birds in the trees. Besides, she always worried that a bullet intended for a clay pigeon would find a real one instead. She loved wood pigeons, with their pretty plumage and gentle songs. She could hear them now, cheering the morning.

She wondered if Frederick liked birds and animals as much as she did. The thought of Frederick – the heat of his eyes on her – made her stomach flip. She both dreaded and longed to see him. The previous year, she had read about magnetic fields in one of Graham’s schoolbooks, and it seemed to Violet that Frederick had his own such field; that it pulled at her like a tide.

She could speak to him today. Over breakfast or while they were shooting. But would he want to talk to her? She may have been sixteen, but Violet still felt – and, worse, looked – like a child. She frowned at the looking glass. She had put on a scratchy tweed skirt and jacket, with her stiff brogues. The jacket and skirt were slightly too large for her (Nanny Metcalfe ordered everything a size too big, promising that Violet would ‘grow into it’), which made her seem even smaller than she was.

Her hair fell past her shoulders in shiny dark waves. She wished she knew how to put it into an elegant chignon – or even pin curls, like the modern-looking women who smiled from the advertisements in Father’s newspapers – but the best she could manage was a clumsy plait. She could have passed for twelve.

Before giving up and going downstairs, she made sure her mother’s necklace was tucked securely beneath her blouse. Father didn’t even know she still had the necklace. He’d made Nanny Metcalfe confiscate it when Violet was six (fortunately, the nursemaid had taken pity on her sobbing charge and returned it). Had it pained him to see it, she wondered now?

She had almost put the feather in her pocket again but thought better of it. What if Father saw? It was too risky. Instead, she’d briefly pressed it to her nose, inhaling its dark, oily scent, the sweet hint of lavender, before tucking it back into its hiding place inside the Brothers Grimm.

Violet still hadn’t figured out why that word – Weyward – had been scratched into the wainscoting. She’d stayed up until almost one in the morning hunting for more clues in her room, but had found nothing apart from dust and a scattering of mouse droppings. If Weyward was her mother’s last name, and if she really had been the one to score it into the paint, Violet couldn’t for the life of her work out why. Could the room have once belonged to her mother? Violet assumed she would have shared Father’s room … though the thought of a woman in that draughty, tartan-draped space was somehow wrong, like a robin singing out of season.

Violet had slept in the nursery while her mother was alive, and had been too young for her to remember now what her current room was used for back then. She could still recall the ache she’d felt when she was moved from the nursery, just after the incident with the bees. She had missed its enormous sash windows and the gentle rhythms of Graham snoring at night. Her new room was the smallest in the Hall, with walls painted a greasy yellow that reminded her of fried kippers.

Over time, though, it had become as familiar to her as part of her own body, with its slanting ceiling, chipped enamel washstand and frayed curtains (these, too, were yellow). She’d thought that she knew every inch of it. She couldn’t quite believe it had been keeping secrets from her for all these years. It felt almost like a betrayal.