Jane Steele(40)

Kneeling before her, I seized her elbows. “Listen to me. You’ve always listened to me, and I’m sorry I lied about the watch, and—”

“Being sorry for lying about murdering our headmaster might be more—”

“He was killing you.” The tears which had risen were not lies, reader. “He would never have let you eat again, and I went to the study, meaning to alter his food supply records, and he caught me, and I never meant to hurt him.”

“By hurt him, do you mean stab him in the neck with a letter opener?”

Laughing again did not help my cause. “I’m sorry, that was—I’m so sorry. Please understand, I had to choose between being sent to an asylum or watching you starve. What could I have done?”

“Attempted escape?” she offered hoarsely. “I would have gone with you, you know. Into the woods, the faraway cities. I would have gone with you anywhere.”

The past-tense construction of this sentiment spread invisibly around us, graphic as a battlefield.

Disengaging herself, Clarke pulled off her robe and her nightdress; I stayed on the floor, too numb to move as I watched her cover her creamy skin with her underthings and one of her daytime frocks, methodically shoving the others hanging in the wardrobe into her carpetbag. When this horrifying ritual had been completed, she retrieved a few songbooks and snapped the latch on the bag, which sounded to me like a pistol shot.

“Please don’t do this,” I begged.

Clarke paused, looking down at me almost regretfully. “Do you remember what I just said about Mrs. Grizzlehurst?”

A sob rose in my throat, for I did.

She’ll never be able to look him in the face again without knowing—can you imagine the torment?

“I lied at school every day.” I sounded angry; but I was not angry, never that, only trying to haul myself out of the rubble. “I lied for you constantly, lied for everyone—and even if you never lied, you stole, and if I would lie for you, and you would steal for me, why . . . why not this too?”

Clarke’s eyes had grown dragonfly bright, but there was something else there, an emotion I could not pinpoint, one which looked like shattered glass.

“Because I don’t know who you are,” she rasped. “You were always so cunning at school, but so gentle, as if you couldn’t bear to watch anyone go hungry. Even the beastly ones, like Taylor—yes, she was, Taylor was horrid, only you never noticed—and, oh, I so admired you. You have a terribly romantic air about you, you know. And I knew you carried secrets, you’ve no notion of how sad you look at times, but I thought that if I took enough care, you might trust me one day. I only wanted to know you, the heart of you, for you to show me. But . . .”

Trailing off, Clarke glanced at the desk where a stack of half-finished broadsides sat, my odes to every variant of death and damnation.

“I saw that room, after the murder,” Clarke said softly. “And I don’t know you at all.”

She turned to go. At the last moment, she snatched up The Garden of Forbidden Delights, hastily shoving it amidst her clothing as if the binding were aflame; then she departed, closing the door behind her.

? ? ?

I did not go to bed; instead I dressed and, at seven in the morning, I brushed a hand over Bertha Grizzlehurst’s arm. She seemed alert in a way she had not been the night before, absent-eyed and weeping like a lost soul.

“Has the bleeding stopped?”

She nudged her head against the pillow, indicating it had.

“Have you anyone to go to? Clarke has received terrible news,” I lied. “Her mother is poorly—I intend to offer what solace I can, I’ll be quite at home there, and that means we shan’t be living in the upstairs room.”

Bertha Grizzlehurst absorbed this information. Had she not been quite so mousey or quite so silent, she might have been a friend, I thought, for she took in blows and bitter news with a stoicism her husband entirely lacked.

“What happened last night—that changes everything. Now he has wounded you, who is to say how far he can go?”

She said nothing, but her face grew whiter than the leadworks dust which blew down Elephant Lane.

“This is for you.” I pressed the cursed silver watch into her hand, exactly as Clarke had wanted me to do. “No, no! You’ve been feeding us supper for two years without payment. I ought to have made you take it before now—forgive me. If you pawn this, you should have enough money for travel expenses and some left over to settle elsewhere. After, you’ll have to take life as it comes, but we all do, don’t we?”

She gave me a thankful blink; I brushed her cheek and she took the watch, tucking it into the bosom of her dress.

“My brother has a farm near Canterbury.” Her voice always grated unexpectedly in my ears, as if a toast rack had spoken. She sat with an effort; apart from her other unspeakable injury, her lip was fat as a bloodworm and her ribs much abused.

“I’ll help you sort everything. Come.”

“What will Hugh think?” She sounded as if he were a small boy who needed minding.

“I’ll take care of Mr. Grizzlehurst,” I vowed. “You may count upon that.”

? ? ?

You will see Bertha again soon enough. She needs time to recover,” I soothed, pouring two more generous glasses of head-splitting gin.