“How late are they?”
“Fifty-six minutes.”
“Ah.” Mrs. Harrogate cleared her throat. “Where is Mr. Laster? Not at the gatehouse, I have just come from there. If there has been any word, he will have received it.”
“There has been no word, Mrs. Harrogate. The carriage is simply … late.”
Abigail heard steel in the older woman’s voice when she replied. “You may choose to wait for word, Miss Davenshaw,” she said. “But I do not care to sit idly by, doing nothing. I shall inquire of Mr. Laster. And inform you if there is news.”
Abigail Davenshaw inclined her head. A long silence followed.
“Good evening to you,” said Mrs. Harrogate, at last.
“Indeed.”
Abigail turned her face as the older woman’s footsteps crossed the foyer, heading outside toward the courtyard, toward Walter Laster’s gatehouse beyond. She breathed calmly. Only when the front door had boomed shut, and she was certain she was alone, did she allow herself a quick, unhappy grimace.
The carriage was never late.
* * *
Impatiently, Walter Laster shut the gatehouse door behind him, locking it fast. Then he hurried across the courtyard to the delivery entrance, casting wary looks all around. It was growing dark.
No one saw him go. He was watching for that woman up from London, the Harrogate woman, the one in black with her veiled face, who seemed always to be observing him. As if she knew. At the delivery entrance he paused, quickly crushing a handkerchief to his mouth, muffling his cough. He felt his body spasm with pain. When he took the cloth away, even in the faint light from the manor house, he could see the blood flecking it. His mouth and lips tasted of iron.
The carriage up from Edinburgh hadn’t arrived. That had been the sign. His heart was pounding, he shook his head weakly as he worked through the ring of keys, finding the right one. He had to hurry. If all would happen as he’d been told, then Jacob would be coming within the hour.
At last he found the key he was looking for, and slipped inside the delivery entrance, and stood listening. No one was near. He hurried through the back halls and down the steps into the cold cellar, finding the old lantern he had hidden behind a shelf. He struck a safety match, lit the oil with his back to the cellar.
Jacob, Jacob. His dear and only friend.
Walter had always been small, crooked due to a childhood injury, a loner who suffered for being alone. He had long greasy hair cut by his own hand with a pair of shears borrowed once a month from the gardener’s shed, and small hands, and two teeth out in back. He watched the kids at Cairndale cautiously, keeping clear of them, disliking the way they laughed around him, knowing the unnatural things they could do. But most of those at Cairndale paid him no mind—he was just queer Mr. Laster, who lived in the gatehouse and took care of any arrivals or departures that came through.
But Jacob hadn’t been like that, no. Jacob, when he was at Cairndale, had immediately been drawn to Walter, or Walter to him—it was hard to know exactly—and it wasn’t only that they were both different from the rest, or friendless in the same way. No, it was a deeper bond, not like friendship, more like what brothers could be. Or so it had always felt to Walter.
When Jacob had gone missing and not returned, Walter’d known something bad had happened. He’d watched that Mr. Coulton depart in a coach for Edinburgh, scarcely able to conceal his dislike. Maybe the man had abandoned Jacob, or killed him even, left his body in an alley somewhere. Certainly Coulton was the kind capable of it.
That was around the time the disease made itself felt. Consumption. He’d coughed sharply into his hand one winter and his hand had come away wet with blood and he’d seen it and known what it meant. Give him one year, give him five, it didn’t matter. It would kill him sure enough.
But then came the dreams.
Jacob, whispering to him. Visiting him. Sitting with him, calmly, gently. His old friend, his only friend. And promising him that he could help, that he could make him better, make him healthy and no longer alone. That he was coming back to Cairndale. And he would take Walter with him, this time, when he went.
A door opened somewhere in the pantry overhead. Walter stood very silent with the lantern raised, listening, and then he continued to the cellar wall. It was cut into the rock, lined with shelves. He fumbled for a catch in the third shelf and found it and then the shelf slid smoothly forward, as if on rails, and then swung aside. A foul damp air poured past.
Walter was staring down into the utter darkness of a tunnel. It was perfectly round, as if it had been bored from the rock by a massive industrial drill. He wet his lips, nervous. Jacob was waiting for him, depending on him.