Turning the Stones Read online

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Heron Books

  An imprint of Quercus Editions Ltd

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  London

  W1U 8EW

  Copyright © 2014 Debra Daley

  The moral right of Debra Daley to be

  identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  HB ISBN 978 1 78206 989 8

  TPB ISBN 978 1 78206 990 4

  EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78206 991 1

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  To Chad,

  and to Finn and Beau

  Contents

  The House of Kitty Conneely, Connemara

  PART ONE

  Mayfair, London

  The Cursing Stones, Connemara

  Night Coach to Reading, Berkshire

  The Port of Bristol

  The House of Kitty Conneely, Connemara

  PART TWO

  Sedge Court, Cheshire

  The Schoolroom and the Parlour

  The Servants’ Hall

  Mrs Waterland’s Apartment

  Miss Broadbent’s Closet and the Summer House

  PART THREE

  The Seal, The River Avon, Bristol

  The Seal, Open Sea

  The House of Kitty Conneely, Connemara

  The Orchard and the Stables, Sedge Court

  The Seal, The Atlantic Ocean

  Weever Hall, Cheshire

  The Summer House and the Servants’ Hall, Sedge Court

  The Master’s Storehouse, Parkgate, and the Parlour

  The Day Coach from Chester to London

  The Paine Townhouse, Soho, London

  The House of Kitty Conneely, Connemara

  The Seal, South of Galway Bay

  PART FOUR

  The Long Strand, Connemara

  The House of Mary Folan, Connemara

  The Stormy Peninsula, Connemara

  Carlisle House, Soho Square, London

  A Trail to Cashel, Connemara

  The House of Kitty Conneely, Connemara

  The House of O’Halloran, Connemara

  The House of Kitty Conneely, Connemara

  The Cove of the Curlew, Connemara

  The Cliona, Bertraghboy Bay

  Author’s Note

  The House of Kitty Conneely, Connemara

  April, 1766

  Do you know what I am going to tell you? This is it now: a vision of the missing child has come to me.

  How did the vision arrive, you will want to know. Lookit, as I have grown older my powers have amplified. You would not know me now to look at me, I have withered in the face and there is a head of hair on me as white as foam, but the goings-on inside my mind are so full of wonders you would not credit. How else may I talk to you, friend of my heart, save through the marvels of the mind, for we have long been parted?

  You could say that in my own way I have migrated to the deep, just as you have. I see things behind my eyes as if reflected in water. I send out invisible feelers from the sprit of my head like a lobster into the currents around me and from time to time I receive a transmission.

  In that way, last night, I saw the child. She was in a place far from here. She is grown now, but hang me, Nora, if I did not recognise her.

  I must tell you that she is frightened and in danger. She has been ill-used and by the blood of Brigid I will not stand for it. When I saw her plight I was swept anew by fury. Indeed that vengeful tide has been long rising to its occasion.

  Seventeen years have passed since that terrible afternoon on the strand and the loss it left behind. I have had a poor time of it since then with only bitterness and wrath for company. It was my wish to bind a curse on those villains at that time, but I feared that it might by chance harm the child. And to tell the truth, my powers were weak then. I had lost the force of them. I suppose you may be surprised by that. You always knew me as a sure woman who had many people cured with herbs, and I could talk well-shaped stones out of their hiding places under the earth. Many a neighbour man came to me for help in that regard when he was building a house.

  But you will remember, Nora, how I suffered for my ways of knowing. People in the parish said I would pay a price for my knowledge and God help me, I did. They say that a woman with powers must sacrifice something to them, and so it was.

  I found I could not conceive a child. Sure though, you knew that. But what you do not know is this: I made a promise at a holy well to give up making cures. In return I asked the well to let me get a little babe.

  I put away my herbs, Nora. Yet no child came to me.

  But now that I have entered my late years, I find my powers are renewed. Perhaps God has taken pity on me for all my years of emptiness, sure that is it. There is nothing I cannot do these days, my friend, once I set my mind to it, bar flying up in the sky. And so those sinful people must watch out for me! Had they cherished the girl, in spite of what they did, I might have thought to stay my hand.

  But what am I thinking to let them off the hook? I have brooded too long on the greediness of those who believe another’s life is theirs to spend. And I have felt every class of despair at the desperate want of justice in this world.

  I know, Nora, that dark ways were never to your liking, but I declare in all sincerity that strong measures are called for to punish those who harmed us.

  I myself, Kitty Conneely, am able for the task. That woman there and that man there will pay for the past. They must pay a penalty. I will bring back our girl, if I can do it, and take their daughter away from them. In that way, the grief will be put off me and cast on to them. Sure, it will not be an easy thing to bring off. A soul of iron is needed for such work. I know right enough that the words that are used to bind a curse are violent and irrevocable.

  But God forgive me if this is not deserved three times over.

  PART ONE

  Mayfair, London

  April, 1766

  With brutal suddenness my mind wakes from its stupor and surprises a girl in the looking glass. Her face is as white as paste, her black hair unravelled.

  She stares at me with eyes that are dark pools.

  Her shift slides from one lascivious shoulder, gaping open at the front, nakedness beneath. I see that her pockets are still securely tied around her waist, a detail that strikes me as absurd given the air of desecration that hangs over her. There is a string of tiny teeth, or pearls rather, at her throat. She raises her hand to the necklace – which I recognise, it belongs to Eliza Waterland – and my own hand touches the pearls.

  Oh, God. My own hand.

  The wretched reflection belongs to me.

  I am shocked to find myself in such a state, my brain untethered, my senses at a stagger. Do I even know where I am? In a closet, evidently. It belongs to a gentleman, I see. Shaving brush, soap, cologne laid out on a silver tray in front of the looking glass. A pitcher and a basin. I reach with shaking hands for the pitcher.

  Because I must wash away the blood smeared on my chest and on my for
earms and on one of my feet. I seem to have trodden in blood.

  In a wild movement I dash myself with water. As I scrub my skin with the hem of my shift, the numbness begins to lift. Many parts of me inside and out are hurting. I cease my foolish laundering. Because now I understand that I am in a place of danger and I must make an escape.

  Quitting the closet, I rush to a door at the far end of – of, I see it is a bedchamber. There is a bedstead. Rumpled linen shows behind ponderous velvet hangings. I do not care about the bed. I want the door.

  But the door is fast. Who has locked me in?

  I tug at the handle, a sob trying to scramble up the walls of my throat. It threatens to burst from my mouth with a howl that will bring servants running. I swallow it down, but still, panic flops around in my stomach looking for a way out.

  I turn to face the chamber. I do so with extreme reluctance as if there is something there I do not wish to see. The light is dim – the candles have consumed themselves – and the air is stale and sickening. The window curtains are drawn, but blades of light show between them. The sly gleam of a steel chimney piece catches my eye. Could he have left the key there? (And who is this he? I do not know.) Alas, there is no sign of a key on the chimney piece or on the hulking bureau. But my search brings me in proximity to a couch.

  I cannot avoid noticing that my clothes are lying in a distressed strew on the floor and that, oddly enough, someone has dropped a bloody razor on the tangle of my stockings. My gaze fixes on the blade and then insists, against my will, on travelling towards the thing over there between the couch and one of the windows.

  Oh, dear God. There is the he. Lying face down where he fell. He must have been there for some time because the blood that spurted out of him has turned black upon the carpet like a monstrous blot. I swear that I did not kill him. I do not believe I did. I couldn’t have. I do not even recognise him. I cannot say that I know who he is. I cannot admit that I know who he is.

  But now I am awake to my predicament. It does not take a genius to foresee how this picture will be interpreted when the door is cracked open by constables. They will make a connection between the dead man and me that will bind me as a murderess and the thread of my life will end in a noose or transportation.

  I need the door-key.

  There is a coat here, tossed over the back of a chair. Reaching into the slit of its pockets in search of the key I am overwhelmed by a sensation of disgust and then suddenly I am burning, inexplicably, with shame as if it is my own fault that I have come to this. I snatch away my empty hand. Oh, Lord, the key, where is the key? Did it fall from his pocket to the floor? My hand, floundering about, brushes against something beneath the couch that feels like a dead mouse. With a choking cry I draw back – and the abruptness of my movement sweeps an object into view. It is a suede moneybag. A glance shows the glint of a guinea or two and a few shillings and pennies. I shove the bag into one of my pockets and now I think to step into my crushed gown and petticoat. Tie the petticoat clumsily. Where are my shoes? Here they are near the bureau. Was I wearing a hat? My mantle is missing, too, and my hairpins are lost. I cannot put up my hair. No matter, it really is of no matter at all to go abroad with my hair undressed. And my bloodied stockings – I will leave them off.

  Suddenly, a noise comes to my ear and with it a wash of horror. I freeze, the nape of my neck prickling, and eye the door. Someone is tapping at it.

  As the tapping sounds again, a whimper of fear escapes from my mouth. I stand, rigid with tension, waiting for discoverers to burst in and drag me away.

  Tap-tap, tap-tap.

  And then it dawns on me that the sound does not come from the door at all, but from quite the opposite direction.

  I tread a line of watery light towards one of the window curtains and heave it to one side. The tapping comes from a sycamore that is scratching at the glaze with its fingertips as if it is trying to attract my attention. On throwing open the window, I find that I am on the third storey of a house in an unfamiliar street of handsome townhouses. The street lies half in shadow. The pavement is unattainably far below. Craning my head to look towards the roof of the house, I see no way out in that direction either. The sky seems lower than usual as if it has been crammed into a space too small for it. There is a cloud directly overhead threatening rain.

  I can feel hysteria gathering itself for an assault on my reason, but before it can pounce, the sycamore comes to my assistance. The young leaves in the topmost branches begin to rustle loudly, which draws me to stare into the green crown. With my ear alert to the excited whispering of leaves and the murmur of branches, a thought sparks in my mind.

  And all at once, I am inspired to a course of action. There is a possibility of escape!

  Withdrawing from the window, I scan the chamber for the material I need. My gaze slides over the bloodied shape on the floor and rests on the bedstead. I dash towards it and seize one of the velvet bed-curtains. The thing resists me at first, but it is easily defeated by the rage that surges through my arm and it dives with a wrench from its fixings, its brass rings clanging against the bedpost.

  But as I flounder with the bed-curtain, I hear a muffled metallic groan. The handle of the door is moving. Someone in the hall is trying to enter.

  Fear flutters in the pit of my stomach. In the deathly silence of the bedchamber I have the impression that the lurker at the door is straining to make out, as closely as I, what is happening on the other side. Then there is a vague sound, which I take to be a receding footfall. Surely it is a servant who has gone now to fetch a key and a superior. In a cold sweat I spring to my task, dragging the curtain to the window. I struggle to wind the velvet around my torso, leaving my arms free. I wriggle on to the sill like an insect half-emerged from its cocoon and without thinking, and yet with an arm flung across my forehead to protect my eyes, I throw myself out of the window into the void.

  I feel, for an instant, gloriously light and liberated.

  Though it is a harebrained hope, I have placed my faith in the tall sycamore growing by the window. It may just possibly break my fall, but I will not be surprised if instead I should meet the paving stones below with a crash and be struck dead. That, too, would be a form of escape. It is a fate that seems likely as I pitch into the sycamore’s up-reaching arms. The tree fumbles its catch and the scrabbling branchlets in the canopy fail to detain me. With a cracking, snapping, down-rushing sound, I slither through the branches in a blur, my hands grasping futilely at sparse leaves and springy green twigs. Fortunately the tree grows more dense towards its lower branches and the stuff wrapped around me snags on them, slowing my fall – and then all at once my tumbling ceases and I find myself lodged about twenty feet above the ground in the sycamore’s twisted arms. For a few minutes I am afraid to move.

  A gentle rain begins to patter among the leaves.

  Footsteps approach and fade in the street and there is the clip-clopping of horses’ hooves and the thrum of wheels, but I remain unremarked. No one turns their gaze skyward to discover what has littered the footpath with vegetation. I reach for the branch above and manage to depend from it, my feet groping for a foothold below. My velvet casing collapses in folds beneath my knees and I kick free of it, wriggling through the branches. There is a drop of about ten feet to the ground. I wait for a passing chaise to quit the street – in fact the postilion spots me, his mouth falling agape, but he must ride on – and then I let go first my shoes and then myself.

  The fall knocks me off my feet and jars my knees, but I am in order, I find. I suppress my jubilation, because I must armour myself against emotion, absolutely, and I retrieve my shoes and the bed-curtain, which I drape from my shoulders to serve as a cloak.

  Where should I go? What shall I do?

  I stare through the drizzle at looming houses with smooth facades the colour of curds. They are much grander than Mr Paine’s house in Poland Street. Even if I could find my way back to Soho from this unknown quarter, there is no going
home for me. I must accept that fact.

  Suddenly I sense movement from behind a tall ground-floor window and glimpse a shadowy figure in the house in front of me. God’s teeth, how could I be so stupid! Here is the dwelling from which I have only now escaped. You fool, Em! Someone in there has seen you loitering in the street. Run for your life!

  I dash towards the nearest corner.

  As I round it at a scurry, a glance over my shoulder shows a person in livery emerging from the house, his head turning in my direction.

  I break into a sprint up a street with a slight ascent, searching urgently for a way to duck my pursuer. I plunge into the narrow entranceway of a mews – and at once someone paws at my arm. It is a cadger, after a coin. I cry, ‘A shilling for you if you will show me shelter from the rain!’ The cadger points vaguely towards a door that stands ajar and I run towards it. The door admits me into a dismal hall that smells of ashes and mould. I have the impression of household offices at the rear of a dwelling. Pulling the door to, I shoulder past a threadbare curtain. There is a flight of stairs ahead, ending in a closed door.

  Through the flimsy door I hear the sound of footsteps striking the cobbles in the mews. They come ever closer. Surely they must belong to the servant of the house I have just fled. The footsteps stop and I listen with bated breath to the burble of men’s voices. I can hardly hear them over the drumming of my heart. Doubtless the cadger will give me away if he is offered money. My hope is that the footman, who has left his post in haste, will not have a coin to hand.

  Silence falls. Then the creak of the opening door. As a figure darkens the doorway I form my hands into puny fists, determined that I shall not be taken without a fight.

  It is the cadger, with his hand outstretched. Is there anyone with him? No, he only wants my shilling. He snatches the coin I offer without meeting my eye. In a whisper, I ask if he will tell me my whereabouts, since I am practically a stranger to London, but he affects not to hear me. Instead, he lifts an arm and gazes in consternation at a stain on the sleeve of his grimy pink suit, as if he had just noticed this taint on an otherwise spotless ensemble. Strings of damp hair cling to his pate and he has the air of a man beyond all hope. He looks nervously over his shoulder and says that he will escort me outside so that I may be on my way. But that jumpy glance has told me all I need to know. Behind the door, my pursuer lies in wait.