“Here you are,” Anna said. She had brought the books and was holding them out to her teacher.
“Thank you, Anna,” Jessica said. She let Peter go and stepped back, taking the bundle of books from the girl. Peter turned away from her and wiped his eyes. Jessica pretended she hadn’t seen him crying, busied herself with ordering the books in their small stack. Anna brushed the back of Jessica’s long coat where she had fallen.
“Come, children,” Jessica said. “Let’s have no more of this nonsense.”
She led them away from the mouth of the pit, listening to make sure they followed. Beneath the footsteps of Peter and Anna, Jessica thought she heard something else, and she almost turned back, but forced herself to keep moving. She spoke into the night, without looking at either child, hoping her words would cover that strange soft sound before the children heard it, too.
“I know what the other students are saying,” she said. “But there is no such thing as Rawhead and Bloody Bones. It’s a silly thing that was made up to scare children. Children much smaller than the two of you, anyway, and I’m surprised you would put any stock in the notion.”
She waited for them to catch up to her and walked on between them toward the Price house on the hill. She felt the darkness of the pit behind her and increased her pace.
“I promise you, you’ll see your mother and father again. And little Oliver as well.”
She glanced down to either side and saw Anna nod. Peter was ramrod straight, marching forward with no sign that he heard her at all.
“You’ll see them soon,” Jessica said.
But she could hear the lack of conviction in her own voice. It was nothing, she thought. But however hard she tried to push it out of her mind, she knew what she had heard. Something had moved down in the tunnel, something had responded to Peter’s voice, had shuffled toward them from somewhere below and had dislodged a rock from the tunnel wall. She had heard the rock clatter and echo, however faint or far away.
She set her jaw and led the children onward through the scatter of snowflakes and ash in the night air, and she did her level best to put thoughts of childhood monsters out of her head.
Rawhead, indeed, she thought. Nonsense.
She shivered again and hurried the children away down the path.
10
The bowls Bennett Rose brought his guests were full of something thick and brown and hot, with thumb-size chunks of beef floating amidst cubes of onions and leeks. It was exactly what was called for on a dark snowy evening in a strange place. Sharing the tray with the two bowls was a half a loaf of good bread and a pair of beer steins filled with dark ale. Rose instructed them to leave the tray in the hall when they were finished, where it would be picked up by the scullery girl in the wee hours.
“You can always wait and tackle them woods in the morning,” Rose said. “I expect you’ll sleep hard tonight.”
“There’s no time to waste,” Day said. “We’ll eat and freshen up a bit and be right down.”
“I’ll tell the others you’ll be ready to go in a bit,” Rose said. He smiled and bowed and left the room, closing the door behind him.
Hammersmith took a bowl and sat in the room’s single straight-backed chair.
“You eat,” Day said. “I’m more thirsty than I am hungry and I want to unpack now while I have the energy. By the time we get back tonight, I suspect I’ll want nothing more than sleep.”
“I’ll wait for you.”
“No, eat.”
Hammersmith shrugged and sniffed the bowl. He levered a spoonful into his mouth and frowned.
“Where’s your suitcase?” Day said.
“In my room.”
“I never saw you go to your room.”
“I was there long enough to set my suitcase down. I’ll worry about unpacking it later.”
“Your clothing will be wrinkled.”
Hammersmith smiled, and a moment later, Day laughed. Hammersmith’s clothes were always wrinkled, whether they came from a suitcase or a closet.
“Well, try not to spill any of that on your shirt.”
“I make no promises. Pudding stains go quite well with tea stains.”
“It’s a pudding?”
“Rose said it was groaty dick,” Hammersmith said.
“Groats?” Day said. “That’s bird feed.”
Hammersmith shrugged. He tore off a hunk of his bread and used it to soak up some of the stock. He popped the soggy bread into his mouth. Broth dribbled down his chin and narrowly missed the front of his shirt. He leaned forward so that it would drip into the bowl and then wiped his chin on his sleeve, realizing too late that he’d only altered the location of the stain rather than avoiding it. He sighed and set the bowl aside. “I was watching,” he said. “Looking your way when the vicar’s wife gave you something.”
Day held up a finger and went to the door. He opened it slightly and looked both ways down the hall, then shut the door again. He reached for his stein. He took a deep swallow of beer and licked the foam from his upper lip. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper, creased and wadded and still damp from Mrs Brothwood’s sweaty hand. He pushed aside the washbasin and laid the paper on the vanity. He carefully unfolded it, teasing the edges so that the soft paper wouldn’t tear. There was scratchy handwriting on one side, ten words, broken up into three short lines, hurriedly written in violet ink. Day took the scrap of paper by one corner and flipped it over. The back side was blank. He turned it back over and both men leaned in close to read:
She is under the floor.
He means no harm.
Please.
They both read it silently, and then Day read it out loud. His voice was hushed but clear in the small room.
“She is under the floor. He means no harm. Please.”
He backed up to the bed and sat down on the edge of it.
“What does it mean?” Hammersmith said.
“Should we assume it’s the missing Mrs Price?”
“I think if it were all of them, the whole Price family, she would have worded this differently, wouldn’t she?”
“But under the floor? What floor?”
They both looked down at the smooth wooden planks beneath their feet. Day shook his head.
“We were in the common room, near the hearth,” he said.
“Mrs Price is under the hearth?” Hammersmith said. “That makes no sense.”
“No, you’re right. I don’t think that’s what the note means,” Day said. “That’s where we were when she gave this to me, but she can’t have written it there, can she?”
“Why not? Before we arrived.”
“Her husband would have seen. And so would Calvin Campbell, and the schoolteacher, the children, Bennett Rose. There were a lot of people in that room. They all would have seen her write it.”
“Maybe they did see her.”
“I don’t think so,” Day said. “She was nervous. She handed this to me carefully, as she took my hand to say good-bye. She didn’t want anyone else to see. If she wrote it in front of them all, why keep it a secret afterward?”
“So she meant this for you.”
“For us.”
“She wrote it somewhere else and brought it with her.”
“She may not have even made up her mind about whether to give it to us. She might have waited to decide until she met us.”
“Then the floor she mentions could be anywhere. Why not be more specific? It’s not much of a clue, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“I think she would have given us more information if it had occurred to her. It must have seemed quite obvious to her as she wrote it. She was in a hurry to write this before being discovered doing so and she was thinking about a place so familiar that it didn’t enter her mind that we wouldn’t know it, too.”