Page 24 of Bane Bloom

“Well, he seemed a steady young man when he arrived. Serious and bookish, but polite. The last time I saw him, he was different. Nervous and distracted, feverish in his gaze. I wondered whether he was ill.”

“Did you mention that to the constable?”

She nodded. “But I think it only strengthened his notion that the poor man had wandered up into the fells and met his end.”

“I see.” What kinds of ways did one meet one’s end in the fells? It had been late enough in the year that he might have died of exposure. Or he might have taken a fall.

Annie frowned and laid a hand on her belly. “I like to think he just got homesick. If not for London, then maybe for where he came from. Somewhere on the Yorkshire moors, he told me. It might take a long time for word to reach us that he’d been found, if it reached us at all.”

This mirrored some of my own earlier musings about Carroll. I could imagine the dramatic landscape of this area might begin to feel oppressive to someone raised in open country, especially in the darker months. And for a Londoner, the society here was very confined.

“I hope you’re right,” I replied.

We drank our coffee, and after a moment, Annie brightened again and said, “Will you tell me something?”

“Of course.”

“Why in heaven’s name does your father call you Cricket?”

I laughed, and the mood lightened. The hot coffee, the fire, and the company had chased out the chill, too. “There’s a story behind it that I can share, if you really want to know.”

“Yes! I’ve wondered about it ever since you told me.”

“Well, one summer night when I was a girl, a cricket got into my room and made such a racket that I couldn’t sleep. It went on and on, and I grew more and more vexed, until finally I got up and made a search for it. And I found it, pretty as you please, sitting on the windowsill in the light of the full moon. I’d brought my slipper to whack it, but it just sat there watching me, waiting for the end.”

Face bright with mirth, Annie said, “You couldn’t do it!”

I shook my head. “I sat down at the desk under the window and sketched it instead. When I finished, I gave it a nudge with the end of my pencil, and it scurried out. The next morning I showed the drawing to my father, who’s a painter, and he was quite taken with it. I’d used a shading technique he’d taught me the day before. He was so pleased and proud he called me Cricket forever after.”

Smiling broadly, Annie said, “What a lovely story. Thank you for telling me. We’ve been talking over names for ours for months, so I was curious.”

“Would you like a girl or boy?”

She gave a small shrug. “I know Bill and his mother are hoping for a boy, but a girl would be good company for me.”

Her eyes met mine briefly, and color tinged her cheeks as she looked down. I thought she might be remembering that I didn’t have a mother, and I said, “Well, either way, your little one will be lucky to have you.”

The longcase clock in the entryway struck the half hour, and my spirits sank as I thought about how the house was going to seem even quieter once my new friend was gone. Who knew how long it might be before I had another chance to speak to her?

“Annie,” I said with a quick glance toward the kitchen, “I know you’ll need to be getting back, and I don’t want to hold you up, but I wanted to ask—do you know much about Thomas’s mother? Did you ever meet her?”

Her brow furrowed. “I never did, no. I grew up on Derwentwater, near Keswick, and by the time I married Bill and moved here, Thomas was handling all her business in the village. She died not long after. Bill has spoken of her from time to time, though, and there’s plenty of village gossip.”

“Because of her son, you mean.”

“That, but also people who grew up here were afraid of her as children. Bill says he and the boys that he ran with believed she was a witch.” One corner of her lips twisted. “But you know how children are. They’d dare each other to row up to her beach at night, and she’d come out and chase them off.”

“What about Thomas? Did he mix in with the other children at all?”

She gave her head a firm shake. “Not ever, as I understand it. The Banes mostly kept to themselves, and that was even more true after Thomas was born. I’m afraid people would have shunned him anyway.”

“Due to the mystery of his birth.”

“That’s right.” Her brows lifted. “I imagine things are very different here than in London.”

“Not so different, though in the part of London where I live, things are somewhat more . . . relaxed.”

“That must be nice,” she said, a wistful note in her voice. “I can’t see how the world is made better by people being awful to each other.”