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She remembered the dark glisten of blood on Jem’s ashen face. The bloom of bruises on his chest. Wherever he was now, she knew what state he was likely to end up in if Henderson stayed up alone to ‘deal’ with him.
Grasping her skirt, she raced up the stairs and slipped soundlessly along the ladies’ corridor, where the lamp burned low outside Lady Hyde’s rooms. She held her keys to hush their jangle as she unlocked the door to the nursery wing, and shut it carefully behind her, feeling her way through the dark to the stairs. Her hands shook as she turned the key in the door that led outside.
The wind was as sharp as a blade and the night was full of noise. The house was a blank black slab above her, blotting out the moon-marbled clouds. Keeping close to the wall, she put her head down and hurried through the shadows to find somewhere to wait.
Eliza lay under her blanket, listening to the glass rattle in the window frame.
The giant fist squeezing her guts had loosened a little, but she didn’t dare move in case she disturbed it again. In the bed a few feet away, Abigail sighed and turned over, altering the rhythm of her soft snores. Wide-eyed, tensed against the waves of nausea that battered her body like the wind battering the house, Eliza had never envied her more.
She had taken two more pills, as the leaflet instructed, after lunch and tea, and had begun to wonder if Octavius Pink was no more than a charlatan. She had asked Mrs Furniss for rags, ready to express confusion and dismay that it was only a little over a fortnight since she’d last requested them (she’d been careful to maintain the fiction of needing them), but Mrs Furniss, who seemed vague and distracted these days, had handed them over without challenge.
Nothing had happened.
Until they had been clearing up after dinner upstairs, when the sickness hit her like a fist in the stomach. She’d made it to the privy at the back of the stable yard and thrown up the bread and cheese they’d had for tea, and then the dinnertime mutton stew. In the reeking darkness of the earth closet, her hair wet with icy sweat, helplessly tumbled in wave after wave of retching, she had felt a glimmer of relief. This must be what the leaflet meant by ‘obstructions removed.’ She had sent a silent apology to Octavius Pink, for doubting him.
She had felt better after that. The nausea had abated and she felt lighter. Freer. It wasn’t until they had washed up the coffee service and were preparing the early morning tea trays—always the last job before turning in at night—that she had felt a twist in her guts and the sensation of her stomach turning to water and fled back across the yard.
‘It must have been that mutton,’ she muttered when she finally came upstairs, to find Abigail waiting up for her. The candle stub showed shadows of concern on Abigail’s face.
‘Really?’ she said doubtfully. ‘I feel right as rain.’
‘You wait—everyone’ll be the same by the morning.’
But morning seemed like a lifetime away. Abigail was asleep within minutes of blowing out the candle, while Eliza lay rigid, the blankets bunched in her fists. Outside, the treetops heaved, and clouds churned across the moon, and it felt like her insides were performing much the same movements. Hauling herself up and clutching her stomach, she grabbed her shawl and shoes and slipped out.
At first, it seemed pitch black on the back stairs, but it wasn’t really, not when her eyes adjusted. Besides, she’d toiled up and down them enough to know every step blindfolded. The kitchen passage was dark too. The shapes of familiar things—the table outside the scullery, the staff photographs on the wall, the row of silent bells—loomed dimly as she passed them, bent double against the griping in her stomach. There used to be a spare key for the back door, kept for emergency purposes under the mat (the old baronet had been paranoid about fire), and she prayed it was still there. As she groped for it, she felt the burn of acid in her throat and, shoving back the bolts, threw herself outside, coughing a stream of vomit onto the cobbles as she ran to the privy.
Slumped on the wooden seat, she listened to the wheeze of her breath. It was like being wrung out from the inside, she thought, and an image of the laundrywomen’s mottled arms, twisting and pulling wet sheets, swam into her head. Oh God… She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.
Perhaps she dozed. The next thing she knew there were voices, though she couldn’t tell if they were just a trick of the wind. Shivering violently, she pulled her shawl around her and listened.
Nothing. Only the muted roar of the night. And then, unmistakably, footsteps scuffling on the cobbles of the yard.
‘Gimme a second.’
It was Jem’s voice, slurred. In the icy darkness, Eliza felt her eyes widen and she started violently as the door to the adjacent privy slammed hard against the dividing wall, making it judder. She heard the sound of liquid splattering on the soil in the trench below. And then another voice, close at hand, low and soft.
‘It’s past eleven. Are you in trouble? What happened?’
Eliza’s mouth fell open.
Mrs Furniss?
‘What happened?’ Jem repeated with a strange sort of laugh. ‘What happened? Such a simple question, so bloody impossible to get an answer.’
‘What do you mean?’
Mrs Furniss was good at controlling herself. Eliza had never heard her lose her temper—not properly—but you could tell when she was angry because her voice went all clipped and cold. It wasn’t like that now.
It wasn’t like that at all.
‘Nothing,’ Jem mumbled. ‘You shouldn’t have waited up. I would have slept in the stables and faced Goddard in the morning.’
‘It’s not Mr Goddard I’m worried about. Henderson’s onto you. He’s waiting.’
‘Bastard—I’ll fucking kill him—’
‘No! Jem—no. Shhhh…’ There was another scuffle of feet and the huff of heavy breathing. Cowering in the dark, Eliza could tell that Mrs Furniss was restraining him, that they were grappling together. ‘Don’t give him the satisfaction. This is what he wants—an opportunity to pin something on you. An excuse to give you another battering. Stay out of his way. I’ve unlocked the door to the nursery stairs—go to bed quietly. Make him wait for nothing and find that you were where you should be all along.’