“What is the matter, Miss Crowley?” the blind woman said, even before Susan could speak.
She cleared her throat. She didn’t know how to begin.
“I find,” said the older woman, “the easiest way to begin a sentence, is by opening one’s mouth and speaking.”
“Yes, Miss Davenshaw. I’m sorry. I just … I just had a visit from Dr. Berghast. He said he intends to send the baby away.”
The blind woman turned her face. “Away?”
“Yes. He didn’t say where.”
“He wishes you to accompany the child?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there is that, at least. When are you to depart?”
Susan shook her head. It wasn’t what she wanted to say at all, it was coming out all wrong. “I don’t want to go, Miss Davenshaw. That’s what I mean. I don’t think the baby should be sent anywhere. He’s so small, still.”
Miss Davenshaw lowered her chin. “And yet babies do travel, Miss Crowley.” She smoothed out her dress. “Did he give you any explanation, any reason? No?” When Susan said nothing, the older woman lowered her voice so that Susan had to lean in to hear her.
“It is my own feeling, Miss Crowley,” she said darkly, “that the child would be better off anywhere but at Cairndale. If you take my meaning.”
* * *
The air under the earth grew thicker. Jacob spied the glow of the lantern, its splash across the tunnel walls and ceiling, long before he saw the man himself. He blew out his own candle.
“Hello, Walter,” he said quietly.
The man gave a start and peered frightened around. He was short, slight of build, with a sickly pallor in his cheeks, as if he were already leeched of life. Jacob knew he was dying of consumption. His hair had thinned on top though he was not much more than thirty, and he wore it long around the crest of his scalp as if to compensate. More likely, he just didn’t much care. Large nervous eyes. A tremble in his gullet. He believed Jacob his friend and Jacob knew this; it was pitiful; it was pathetic.
“Jacob? Is it you?” he whispered.
Jacob stepped out of the shadows, letting the dust dissipate, so the man could see him clearly. Walter peered up at him, half in awe, half in fear.
“I come to where you said to,” said Walter. “I did. I been here I don’t know how long. But I brung the lantern, like you said. You’ll take me with you, this time? You promised, Jacob—”
“We haven’t much time,” said Jacob.
Walter nodded vigorously, but he didn’t move. “Yes, yes, of course, you’re right,” he mumbled. “We must hurry. Yes.” But then he cast a sly anxious glance sidelong at Jacob. “But you will, won’t you? Take me with you, I mean? It’s just—”
“Yes, Walter.”
He swallowed. “Tonight? You’ll take me tonight? Should I pack anything, a bag, maybe—”
Jacob looked down at the man, shivering with cold or fear or something else. He said nothing. He could feel his irritation rising.
“It’s just, my lungs don’t feel so great,” Walter continued. “And you said, I mean I don’t know if you remember it all that clear, but you said you’d um, help me with that? There was a way to—”
Jacob glared pointedly past the man, up the tunnel.
“It’s just um, you’re my friend and, I mean, you said you would—”
“Walter,” Jacob said coldly. “I am your friend. Your one true friend. I have come for you, also. Now. You must go on ahead and make sure no one is near. I cannot be seen. Will you do that for me? When I have what I came for, we will go together.”
The small man nodded and nodded. “Right, yes. The baby. Yes?”
“Yes.”
Walter gulped. “Oh, yes, yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. Yes. I’ll go on ahead.”
And he scurried off down the tunnel, in a queer ratlike fashion, the lantern swinging dangerously from his outslung hand. And Jacob followed.
The child was near. He could feel it.
The darkness in the tunnel grayed. Ahead was an opening. At last Jacob slipped noiselessly through a broken wall, into the murky cellar of Cairndale. The familiar smell. The old creak of its floorboards. Walter was nowhere to be seen. Jacob brushed a gauzy web from his face, and a rush of memories came back to him, so that he stood at the threshold and swallowed and closed his eyes.
Home. He was home.
* * *
Abigail Davenshaw rose from the sofa in the foyer, where she’d been waiting well over an hour now, and she started grimly for the dining hall. Enough fretting, she told herself.