We’re following the road to the village, the trees drawing closer with every step. It’s not quite what I’d anticipated. The map in the study conjured images of some grand labour, a boulevard hewn from the forest. The reality is little more than a wide dirt track, wretched with potholes and fallen branches. The forest hasn’t been tamed so much as bartered with, the Hardcastles winning the barest of concessions from their neighbour.
I don’t know our destination, but Evelyn believes we can intercept Madeline on her way back from the hunt. Secretly, I suspect she’s simply looking for an excuse to prolong her absence from the house. Not that any subterfuge is necessary. This last hour in Evelyn’s company is the first time since waking that I’ve felt myself a whole person, rather than the remnants of one. Out here, in the wind and rain, with a friend by my side, I’m happier than I have been all day.
‘What do you believe Madeline can tell you?’ asks Evelyn, picking a branch off the path and tossing it into the forest.
‘The note that she brought me last night lured me out into the woods so somebody could attack me,’ I say.
‘Attack!’ interrupts Evelyn, shocked. ‘Here? Why?’
‘I don’t know, but I’m hoping Madeline can tell me who sent the note. She might even have peeked at the message.’
‘There’s no “might” about it,’ says Evelyn. ‘Madeline was in Paris with me. She’s loyal and she makes me laugh, but she’s an atrocious maid. She probably considers peeking at other people’s mail a perk of the job.’
‘That’s very lenient of you,’ I say.
‘I have to be, I can’t pay very well,’ she says. ‘And after she’s revealed the contents of the message, what then?’
‘I tell the police,’ I say. ‘And hopefully put this matter to bed.’
Turning left at a crooked signpost, we follow a small trail into the woods, dirt tracks criss-crossing each other until the way back is impossible to discern.
‘Do you know where you’re going?’ I ask nervously, swiping a low-hanging branch from my face. The last time I entered this forest my mind never made it back.
‘We’re following these,’ she says, tugging at a fragment of yellow material nailed to a tree. It’s similar to the red one I found when I stumbled upon Blackheath this morning, the memory only serving to unsettle me further.
‘They’re markers,’ she says. ‘The groundskeepers use them to navigate in the woods. Don’t worry, I’ll not lead you too far astray.’
The words are barely out of her mouth when we enter a small clearing with a stone well at its centre. The wooden shelter has collapsed, the iron wheel that once raised the bucket now left to rust in the mud, almost buried by fallen leaves. Evelyn claps in delight, laying an affectionate hand on the mossy stone. She’s clearly hoping I haven’t noticed the slip of paper tucked between the cracks, or the way her fingers are now covering it. Friendship compels me to play along and I hastily avert my attention when she looks back towards me. She must have some suitor in the house and I’m ashamed to say I’m jealous of this secret correspondence and the person on the other side of it.
‘This is it,’ she says with a theatrical sweep of her arm. ‘Madeline will be passing through this clearing on her way back to the house. Shouldn’t be too long now. She’s due back at the house by three to help finish setting up the ballroom.’
‘Where are we?’ I ask, looking around.
‘It’s a wishing well,’ she says, leaning over the edge to peer into the blackness. ‘Michael and I used to come here when we children. We’d make our wishes with pebbles.’
‘And what sorts of things did young Evelyn Hardcastle wish for?’ I ask.
She wrinkles her brow, the question flummoxing her.
‘You know, for the life of me, I can’t remember,’ she says. ‘What does a child who has everything want?’
More, just like everybody else.
‘I doubt I could have told you even when I did have my memories,’ I say, smiling.
Dusting the grime from her hands, Evelyn looks at me quizzically. I can see the curiosity burning inside her, the joy at encountering something unknown and unexpected in a place where everything is familiar. I’m out here because I fascinate her, I realise with a flash of disappointment.
‘Have you thought about what you’ll do if your memories don’t return?’ she asks, softening the question with the gentleness of her tone.
Now it’s my turn to be flummoxed.
Since my initial confusion passed, I’ve tried not to dwell upon my condition. If anything, the loss of my memories has proven a frustration rather than a tragedy, my inability to recall Anna being one of the few moments when it’s seemed anything more than an inconvenience. Thus far in the excavation of Sebastian Bell I’ve unearthed two friends, an annotated Bible and a locked trunk. Precious little return for forty years on this earth. I don’t have a wife weeping for our lost time together, or a child worrying that the father she loved might not return. At this distance, Sebastian Bell’s life seems an easy one to lose and a difficult one to mourn.
A branch snaps somewhere in the forest.
‘Footman,’ says Evelyn, my blood immediately running cold as I recall the Plague Doctor’s warning.
‘What did you say?’ I ask, frantically searching the forest.
‘That noise, it’s a footman,’ she says. ‘They’re collecting wood. Shameful, isn’t it? We don’t have enough servants to stock all the fireplaces, so our guests are having to send their own footmen to do it.’
‘They? How many are there?’
‘One for every family visiting, and there’s more coming,’ she says. ‘I’d say there’s already seven or eight in the house.’
‘Eight?’ I say in a strangled voice.
‘My dear Sebastian, are you quite all right?’ says Evelyn, catching my alarm.
Under different circumstances I would welcome this concern, this affection, but here and now her scrutiny only embarrasses me. How can I explain that a strange chap in a plague doctor costume warned me to keep an eye out for a footman – a name which means nothing to me, and yet fills me with a crippling fear every time I hear it?
‘I’m sorry, Evie,’ I say, shaking my head ruefully. ‘There’s more I need to tell you, but not here, and not quite yet.’
Unable to hold her questioning stare, I look around the clearing for a distraction. Three trails intersect before striking off into the forest, one of them cutting a straight path through the trees towards water.
‘Is that—’
‘A lake,’ says Evelyn, looking past me. ‘The lake, I suppose you’d say. That’s where my brother was murdered by Charlie Carver.’
A shiver of silence divides us.
‘I’m sorry, Evie,’ I say at last, embarrassed by the poverty of the sentiment.
‘You’ll think me awful, but it happened so long ago it barely seems real,’ she says. ‘I can’t even remember Thomas’s face.’
‘Michael shared a similar sentiment,’ I say.
‘That’s not surprising, he was five years younger than me when it happened.’ She’s hugging herself, her tone distant. ‘I was supposed to be looking after Thomas that morning, but I wanted to go riding and he was always pestering me, so I arranged a treasure hunt for the children and left him behind. If I hadn’t been so selfish, he’d never have been at the lake in the first place, and Carver wouldn’t have got his filthy hands on him. You can’t imagine what that thought does to a child. I didn’t sleep, barely ate. I couldn’t feel anything that wasn’t anger or guilt. I was monstrous to anybody who tried to console me.’
‘What changed?’
‘Michael’ – she smiles wistfully – ‘I was vile to him, positively horrid, but he stayed by my side, no matter what I said. He saw I was sad and he wanted to make me feel better. I don’t even think he knew what was happening, not really. He was just being nice, but he kept me from drifting away completely.’
‘Is that why you went to Paris, to get away from it all?’
‘I didn’t choose to leave, my parents sent me away a few months after it happened,’ she says, biting her lip. ‘They couldn’t forgive me and I wouldn’t have been allowed to forgive myself if I’d stayed. I know it was supposed to be a punishment, but exile was a kindness, I think.’
‘And yet you came back?’
‘You make it sound like a choice,’ she says bitterly, tightening her scarf as the wind carves through the trees. ‘My parents ordered my return, they even threatened to cut me out of the will should I refuse. When that didn’t work, they threatened to cut Michael out of the will instead. So here I am.’
‘I don’t understand, why would they behave so despicably and then throw you a party?’
‘A party?’ she says, shaking her head. ‘Oh, my dear man, you really have no idea what’s happening here, do you?’
‘Perhaps if you—’
‘My brother was murdered nineteen years ago tomorrow, Sebastian. I don’t know why, but my parents have decided to mark the occasion by reopening the house where it happened and inviting back the very same guests who were here that day.’
Anger is rising in her voice, a low throb of pain I’d do anything to make go away. She’s turned her head to face the lake, her blue eyes glossy.
‘They’re disguising a memorial as a party and they’ve made me the guest of honour, which I can only assume means something dreadful is coming for me,’ she continues. ‘This isn’t a celebration, it’s a punishment, and there’ll be fifty people in their very finest clothes watching it happen.’
‘Are your parents really so spiteful?’ I ask, shocked. I feel much as I did when that bird hit the window earlier this morning, a great swell of pity mingled with a sense of injustice at life’s sudden cruelties.
‘My mother sent me a message this morning, asking me to meet her by the lake,’ she says. ‘She never came, and I don’t think she ever meant to. She just wanted me to stand out there, where it happened, remembering. Does that answer your question?’
‘Evelyn... I... I don’t know what to say.’
‘There’s nothing to say, Sebastian. Wealth is poisonous to the soul and my parents have been wealthy a very long time – as have most of the guests who will be at this party,’ says Evelyn. ‘Their manners are a mask, you’d do well to remember that.’
She smiles at my pained expression, taking my hand. Her fingers are cold, her gaze warm. She has the brittle courage of a prisoner walking their final steps to the gallows.
‘Oh, don’t fret, dear heart,’ she says. ‘I’ve done all the tossing and turning it’s possible to do. I see little benefit in your losing sleep over it also. If you want, you could make a wish in the well on my behalf, though I’d understand if you have more pressing concerns.’
From her pocket she pulls out a small coin.
‘Here,’ she says, handing it to me. ‘I don’t think our pebbles did much good.’
The coin travels a long way, hitting rock rather than water at the bottom. Despite Evelyn’s advice, I hitch no hopes for myself to its surface. Instead, I pray for her deliverance from this place, for a happy life and freedom from her parents’ machinations. Like a child I close my eyes in the hopes that when I open them again, the natural order will be overturned, the impossible made plausible by desire alone.
‘You’ve changed so much,’ mutters Evelyn, a ripple of emotion disturbing her face, the slightest indication of discomfort when she realises what she’s said.
‘You knew me before?’ I say, surprised. Somehow it never occurred to me that Evelyn and I might have had a relationship prior to this one.
‘I shouldn’t have said anything,’ she says, walking away from me.
‘Evie, I’ve been in your company for over an hour, which makes you my best friend in this world,’ I say. ‘Please, be honest with me. Who am I?’
Her eyes criss-cross my face.
‘I’m not the right person to say,’ she protests. ‘We met two days ago, and only briefly. Most of what I know is innuendo and rumour.’
‘I’m sitting at an empty table, I’ll take whatever crumbs I’m fed.’
Her lips are tight. She’s tugging her sleeves down awkwardly. If she had a shovel, she’d dig herself an escape tunnel. The deeds of good men are not related so reluctantly, and I’m already beginning to dread what she has to tell me. Even so, I cannot let this go.
‘Please,’ I plead. ‘You told me earlier I could choose who I wanted to be, but I cannot do that without knowing who I was.’
Her obstinacy flickers, and she looks up at me from under her eyelashes.
‘Are you certain you wish to know?’ she asks. ‘The truth isn’t always a kindness.’
‘Kind or not, I need to understand what’s been lost.’
‘Not a great deal in my opinion,’ she sighs, squeezing my hand in both of hers. ‘You were a dope dealer, Sebastian. You made your living alleviating the boredom of the idle rich, and quite a living it was too, if your practice on Harley Street is anything to go by.’
‘I’m a...’
‘Dope dealer,’ she repeats. ‘Laudanum’s the fashion I believe, though from what I understand, your trunk of tricks has something to cater to every taste.’
I slump within myself. I wouldn’t have believed I could be so wounded by the past, but the revelation of my former profession tears a hole right through me. Though my failings were numerous, against them was always stacked the small pride of being a doctor. There was nobility in that course, honour even. But no, Sebastian Bell took the title and twisted it to his own selfish ends, making it perverse, denying what little good remained to him.
Evelyn was right, the truth isn’t always a kindness, but no man should discover himself this way, like an abandoned house stumbled upon in the darkness.
‘I shouldn’t worry about it,’ says Evelyn, cocking her head to catch my averted eye. ‘I see little of that odious creature in the man before me.’
‘Is that why I’m at this party?’ I ask quietly. ‘To sell my wares?’
Her smile is sympathetic. ‘I suspect so.’
I’m numb, two steps behind myself. Every strange glance over the course of the day, every whisper and commotion as I walked into a room is explained. I thought people were concerned for my well-being, but they were wondering when my trunk would reopen for business.
I feel such a fool.
‘I have to...’
I’m moving before I understand how that sentence ends, my body carrying me back through the forest at an ever increasing pace. I’m almost running by the time I arrive on the road. Evelyn’s at my heels, struggling to keep up. She’s trying to anchor me with words, reminding me of my desire to meet Madeline, but I’m impervious to reason, consumed by my hatred for the man I was. His flaws I could accept, perhaps even overcome, but this is a betrayal. He made his mistakes and fled, leaving me holding the tatters of his scorched life.
Blackheath’s door stands open and I’m up the staircase and into my room so quickly the smell of damp earth still clings to me, as I stand panting over the trunk. Is this what drove me into the forest last night? Is this what I spilled blood for? Well, I’m going to smash it all, and with it any connection to the man I was.
Evelyn arrives to find me ransacking my bedroom for something heavy enough to break the lock. Intuiting my purpose, she ducks into the corridor, returning with the bust of some Roman emperor or other.
‘You’re a treasure,’ I say, using it to hammer the lock.
When I yanked the trunk out of the cupboard this morning, it was so heavy it took all my strength to lift, but now it’s sliding backwards with each blow. Once again Evelyn comes to the rescue, sitting on the trunk to keep it in place, and after three enormous strikes, the lock clatters to the floor.
Tossing the bust on the bed, I lift the heavy lid.
The trunk’s empty.
Or at least mostly empty.
In a dark corner is a solitary chess piece with Anna’s name carved into the base.
‘I think it’s time you told me the rest of your story,’ says Evelyn.