“Now, put your left foot in the stirrup there. Always mount from the left side.”
“Why?”
“Actually, I’m not certain. I was just taught that way. I assume it has something to do with the aristocracy, but I have no idea what.”
“Well, far be it from me to want to disrespect anything to do with the aristocracy,” Jack said, his eyes finding Hazel’s.
With surprising grace, Jack smoothly pulled himself onto Betelgeuse’s back. “Aha!” he cried. “I did it!”
Betelgeuse leaned down to chew on some yellowing grass, and Jack gripped the reins in terror. “It’s in your thighs now,” Hazel said.
Jack cocked an eyebrow.
“Squeeze from there. And keep your back straight. And try not to be afraid. Horses can sense that sort of thing.”
“Right. Yeah. Fearless.”
“You dig up dead bodies in the middle of the night in graveyards, and you’re afraid of riding a horse?” Hazel asked.
“See, here’s the thing,” Jack said as Betelgeuse decided to start drifting off to the left. “Dead bodies are never going to bite you. They’re never going to do anything to you. It’s living things that hurt you.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” Hazel said.
Hazel mounted Miss Rosalind, and after a bit of effort, the two of them managed to get their horses walking side by side down the long Hawthornden drive.
“That’s probably all we should hope for today,” Hazel said when they made it back to the stables. “But if you want, you could come back tomorrow. It could be good for my studying—taking a break, getting some fresh air.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “That sounds about right.”
* * *
THE SECOND TIME THE PAIR WENT riding, they made it all the way to the edge of the farm the next property over, where sheep grazed placidly against the rolling green hills. After that, Hazel took Jack on the narrow path down through the woods to the back of Hawthornden, along the stream.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” Hazel asked as they passed the imposing cypress trees by Hawthornden’s back gates. She had always imagined it to be a foolish question, the type children whisper to one another while playing, but the past few weeks fixated on the human body made her more curious about death, and what happened beyond the veil.
“Why do you ask?” Jack said. He rubbed Betelgeuse’s neck. The horse wasn’t so scary once you got to know him, he found.
“I’ve never seen any evidence for them myself, but I suppose there has to be something more than electricity animating our flesh. A soul that lives on.”
Jack’s expression tightened. Death had always been a constant in the Old Town, but over the past few weeks, the streets had become eerie with a new silence, thick as candle wax. No one talked about it, but Jack knew: the disappearances were continuing. It wasn’t just resurrection men—the girl who worked at the fishmonger’s, who used to wink at Jack whenever he passed the market, was gone, and the man behind the counter had just shrugged when Jack asked about her. No one had seen Rosie, a prostitute who used to smoke cigars with the actors at Le Grand Leon, not for months. Once word got out that the Roman fever might be back, no one asked too many questions when the narrow, crowded rooms of the Old Town contained a few fewer bodies.
“I dunno,” Jack said. “I think I do believe in ghosts. But I don’t think ghosts would be in kirkyards.”
“Why? Something about it being hallowed ground?”
“No,” Jack said, plucking a leaf from a passing tree and rolling it in his fingers. “I just don’t think ghosts would want to be reminded of death. I figure when they get out of their bodies, they want to get as far away from them as possible. I’ve dealt with my fair share of corpses, and I can tell you there’s no reason anyone would want to hold on to that. We’re rotting bags of meat is all, and we start going bad pretty quick. Ghosts can go anywhere, right? No reason to stick around their bodies being eaten by worms.”
“That is a rather bleak outlook,” Hazel said. “But I suppose it has a sort of poetry to it.”
They rode in silence until they reached the point in the woods where the stream diminished into a thin trickle and then stopped altogether.
“The stream doesn’t end here,” Hazel said. “Not really. It goes under the earth, I think, or just becomes too thin to really be called a stream anymore. But beyond those trees—see, look, by that ravine there—it starts up again.”