Weyward — Chapter 49: Violet

49

VIOLET

The key turned in the lock. Violet pulled her nightdress on hurriedly, dizzy from the effort. She sat back down. The darkness was there still, at the edges of her vision. Perhaps it would be easiest to give into it, she thought.

To let it take her away, before Father and Doctor Radcliffe did.

The creak of the front door, and then the wind roared into the cottage.

She heard Father’s voice, raised above the storm.

‘Graham? What are you doing here?’ ‘Father – I can explain—’ ‘Where is the girl?’ She recognised Doctor Radcliffe’s voice, cold and clinical.

They were in the room, the rain glittering on their overcoats. Violet looked down at the floor, stained pink with her blood. ‘She’s lost the baby,’ Graham said quietly.

Father didn’t ask him how he knew about the baby. Violet felt his eyes on her and looked up. There was no concern, no tenderness in his gaze. His mouth curled in disgust. ‘I’ll need to examine her,’ said Doctor Radcliffe. ‘Take her to the bedroom and have her lie down.’ Graham slung Violet’s arm around his shoulders and lifted her to her feet.

Neither Father nor Doctor Radcliffe made any effort to help. Violet closed her eyes, and imagined she was in the beech tree, feeling the summer breeze on her face. In the bedroom, the small window flared bright and the air crackled with electricity. A thunderclap. God moving his furniture, Nanny Metcalfe used to say. Nanny Metcalfe. She would be ashamed, Violet knew.

God, too, perhaps. She had committed a sin.

After she lay down, Doctor Radcliffe asked Graham and Father to turn around, before lifting the skirt of her nightdress. His nostrils flared at the smell of blood. It hung in the air, sweet and metallic. Looking down, Violet saw that her thighs were ringed red, like the inside of a tree trunk. She suddenly felt very old, as if she’d lived a hundred years instead of sixteen. ‘Can you explain what happened?’ Doctor Radcliffe asked. It was the first time either he or Father had addressed her directly. ‘I felt a cramping, this morning,’ she said. ‘Like I get with my monthly curse, but stronger …’ ‘I found her as it was starting,’ Graham interjected, still staring at the wall. ‘She began losing blood not long after I arrived. And then, with the

blood … it …’ ‘The baby,’ said Doctor Radcliffe. ‘Yes, the baby … the baby came out … there was so much blood …’ Graham retched, and Violet knew that he too was thinking of that mottled twist of flesh. The spore, the rot.

Violet felt tears sting her eyes, blurring her vision so that Doctor Radcliffe’s face swam before her. ‘Is that what happened?’ he asked her. ‘You did not do anything to bring about this miscarriage? You didn’t take anything?’ ‘No, I didn’t,’ Violet said softly, the tears wet on her cheeks. The darkness was there again, and she rolled towards it. Fragments of conversation drifted towards her as she fell, the air rushing at her. ‘Lost a lot of blood,’ Doctor Radcliffe was saying. ‘A week of bed rest, at least. Plenty of fluids, too.’ ‘Can you be sure, Doctor?’ Father asked. ‘Can you be sure she didn’t bring it on herself?’ ‘No,’ Doctor Radcliffe said. ‘We have only her word for that. And the boy’s.’ She was flying now, the wind singing on her skin. She slept.

Graham was there when she woke up, sitting on the bed opposite, watching her. Everything was quiet and still. The candle had burned down to the wick. She could hear a fly outside, buzzing past the window. ‘They’ve gone,’ Graham said, seeing that she was awake. ‘They left last night. You’ve been asleep since. Father said I could stay with you. He had to keep up appearances in front of Doctor Radcliffe, I suppose.’

Violet sat up. Her body felt hollow and light. ‘They’ll be back in a week, to see how you’ve recovered. Father’s writing to Frederick. I expect the wedding’s off.’ The feeling of lightness again. She heard a redstart sing and smiled. It was a beautiful sound. ‘I don’t think Father believed us,’ said Graham.

Violet nodded. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘As long as Doctor Radcliffe did.’ ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said. ‘Father would hardly go to the police of his own accord. The scandal.’ They were quiet for a moment. Violet watched a thin ray of sun dance on the wall. ‘Do you know what this place is, Violet?’ ‘Yes. It was our mother’s house,’ she said. ‘Her name was Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Weyward.’ Graham was quiet. It took Violet a moment to realise that he was crying, his hunched shoulders shaking, his face hidden in his hands. She hadn’t seen him cry since before he left for boarding school, years ago. ‘Graham?’ ‘I thought …’ He took a deep, steadying breath. ‘I thought you were going to die, too. Just like she did. Our – our mother.’ They had never spoken of her before. ‘That’s why you hate me, isn’t it?’ Graham lifted his face from his hands as he spoke. His pale skin was mottled with tears. ‘Because I – because I

killed her.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She died having me.’ ‘She didn’t.’ ‘Don’t, Violet. I know. Father told me years ago.’ ‘He lied,’ she said. And then she told him the truth – about what Father and Doctor Radcliffe had done to their mother. About the grandmother who had tried to reach them, the grandmother they had never known. ‘So you mustn’t think it’s your fault anymore,’ she said, afterwards. ‘And you mustn’t think I hate you. You’re my brother. We’re family.’ She touched her necklace as she spoke. The locket was warm against her fingers. She felt stronger, knowing that the key was safe inside. She

considered telling him the rest: about Altha’s manuscript, locked away in the drawer. After all, the Weywards were Graham’s family too.

But Graham was – or would soon become – a man. A good man, but a man all the same. It wouldn’t be right, she knew. ‘How did you know to use the – what was it?’ ‘Tansy.’ She paused. ‘Just something I read somewhere,’ she said.

Graham stayed with her for a week. He helped her mend the latch on the window of her bedroom, so that she could breathe clean air every night.

Together they scrubbed her blood from the floor of the kitchen, until the wood glowed rich and brown. The cottage looked good as new.

There was a carrot plant in the garden, tangled up with the helleborine – though the carrots were misshapen and pale, unlike any she had seen before. There was rhubarb, too: she pulled the stems delicately from the soil, careful not to disturb the worms that lived nearby.

They ate the carrots with the eggs Father had brought. They no longer turned her stomach, now that the spore was gone.

Graham found a rusted axe in the attic. He chopped the branches that had been felled by the storm into firewood. ‘To keep you warm in winter,’ he said. They both knew she would never return to Orton Hall. Not after everything that had happened.

Graham used some of the wood to fashion a small cross and drove it into the soil where he had buried the spore, down by the beck. Violet thought about asking him to take it down, but she didn’t.

Father came back, with Doctor Radcliffe. ‘She seems to have recovered well,’ Doctor Radcliffe said to Father. ‘You can have her brought home, if you wish.’ Doctor Radcliffe left, and it was just Father, Graham and Violet in the cottage. They were silent as they listened to the sputter of Doctor Radcliffe’s car engine. ‘I am sure you understand’, Father began, looking past Violet at the wall, ‘that I cannot allow you back into my house after what you have done. I have arranged for you to be taken to a finishing school in Scotland. You will stay there for two years, and after that I will decide what is to be done with

you.’ Violet heard Graham clear his throat.

‘No,’ she said, before her brother could open his mouth to speak. ‘That won’t be acceptable, I’m afraid, Father.’ His jowls slackened with shock. He looked as if she had slapped him. ‘I beg your pardon?’ ‘I won’t be going to Scotland. In fact, I won’t be going anywhere. I’m staying right here.’ As she spoke, Violet became aware of a strange simmering sensation, as though electricity was humming beneath her skin.

Images flashed in her mind – a crow cutting through the air, wings glittering with snow; the spokes of a wheel spinning. Briefly, she closed her eyes, focusing on the feeling until she could almost see it, glinting gold inside her. ‘That is not for you to decide,’ said Father. The window was open, and a bee flitted about the room, wings a silver blur. It flew near Father’s cheek and he jerked away from it. ‘It’s been decided.’ She stood up straight, her dark eyes boring into Father’s watery ones. He blinked. The bee hovered about his face, dancing away from his hands, and she saw sweat break out on his nose. Soon it was joined by another, and then another and another, until it seemed like Father – shouting and swearing – had been engulfed in a cloud of tawny, glistening bodies. ‘I think it would be best if you left now, Father,’ said Violet softly. ‘After all, as you said, I’m my mother’s daughter.’ ‘Graham?’ Violet smiled at the note of panic in Father’s voice. ‘I’m staying, too,’ said Graham, folding his arms across his chest.

Violet heard Father’s shallow, rasping breaths. Several of the bees were dangerously close to his mouth now. ‘The front door key, please, Father,’ she said. It landed on the wooden floor with a dull clank. ‘Thank you,’ she called, as Father, pursued by the bees, slammed the door behind him.

Violet held out her hand, and a lone bee came to rest on her palm. ‘You’re not afraid, are you?’ she asked, turning to Graham. ‘They won’t

hurt you this time.’ ‘I know,’ said Graham.

He put his arm around her. They stood still for a moment, listening to the car rumble away.

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