‘And what are we to make of this event?’ Amelia asks, frostily.
‘That perhaps by the constraint of our own … natural rhythms … with social rules and conventions, we remove ourselves yet further from the elemental plane, and the divine processes of nature,’ Robin says, his voice entirely innocent of any impropriety. ‘The ecstasy of the undines visibly nourished the water and the plants surrounding the stream. They absorbed this gathered life force upon its release.’
‘Are you suggesting that … humans might achieve something similar to this?’ Amelia asks, though Hester inwardly implores her to desist. Robin glances from Amelia, to Albert, to Hester, who feels his gaze upon her and can’t help but look up.
‘I’m suggesting … it couldn’t hurt to try,’ he says. In the silence, the moths and flies buzz and bump against the glass chandelier, making the little drops twist, sending small sparks of light to bounce from the walls. Albert clears his throat.
‘Another slice of bread, Mrs Entwhistle?’ he says softly.
Cat does not sleep on Saturday night. She thinks of the moths in the dining room, which will be sleepy and dazed or dead by the morning, clinging to the folds of the curtains and the corners of the casements. For some reason it bothers her, that they’ve been lured in and imprisoned on the whim of the vicar. The sister is very beautiful, with the same blue eyes as The Gentleman. Cat was taken aback when they first swept over her, first locked onto her own eyes. She expected to be scolded, or instructed. She expected to be recognised, but the blue eyes carried on, brushing lightly, carelessly over her features in the way the rich always look at servants; and she was pointlessly affronted. Long after midnight there is a loud bump from the floor below. Cat winces, her pulse speeding up. It could be one of the children, out of bed; it could be Robin Durrant, sneaking about for whatever reason. Beautiful, careless, treacherous Robin Durrant. What does he want? She had wanted to sleep a little. George is due back the following day, by noon. In the evening she will see him, and she had not wanted to look haggard; to look grey or flat. But sleep will not come. She is waiting, listening too intently.
Death comes to stalk her room, to offer cold company. Cat slides into an exhausted trance, and returns to her mother’s deathbed: gloomy and dark behind drawn curtains, the iron smell of blood in every corner and the lurking reek of death behind that, not improved or hidden by the flowers she bought and set about the bed, or the herbs she threw on the fire. Her mother’s pillow was encrusted with crimson. Each time she coughed, more bright red sputum came up. She turned her head weakly to the side, let it soak into the cotton sham. They had given up trying to blot it with handkerchiefs. They did not own enough of them. She could no longer lift her head to spit into a bowl, and Cat could not lift her to do so, not every time. So many times. Consumption, the doctors pronounced, months before, with no hope or promise or hint of comfort in their voices. And it did consume her – she was a wraith by the end, sunken in on herself, robbed of speech, of strength. Her eyes dulled to grey, like her hair and her skin. One more shadow in the room. So unlike herself, so lifeless already that Cat only knew she had died because the scraping of her lungs quietened, and then stopped. There was no change in her appearance. Cat stood and watched her for a while, and was not sure what to do. That ragged wet rattle of air, as regular as her own heartbeat, had been her company for so long that the silence unnerved her. She stood, and she trembled, and she listened until the silence hurt her head. She had been twelve years old at the time.
At the first lightening of the sky, Cat is up, shaking off the impression insomnia gives of years having passed, of ages of man dawning and dying whilst the night has ticked slowly by. There are kinks in her spine, knots in her muscles from working all day and then lying too long in one position. When she stretches, joints pop. She arches her back like a dancer, feels the sinews burning back to life. Cat washes her face, the trickle of water into the basin as loud as thunder cracks; combs the raven feathers of her hair; dresses in silence and slips down the back stairs on the softest feet. The house is silent now, no movement of person or structure, of trapped moth or sleepless child. The air is as still and smooth as a silk blanket, softly grey. Cat lifts the latch on the back door as carefully as she can, skirts the edge of the garden until she can escape through the side gate, into the lane. The sky glows palely, a non-colour somewhere between grey and yellow and blue; the sun is not yet near the eastern horizon. With her stomach hot and empty, Cat thinks back, tries to remember when she last ate. She picks a handful of wild strawberries from the hedge, and bites each one deliberately, liking the sharp burst of juice between her teeth.