I wake before them, with the first hazy light. I have heard about the price of consuming alcohol, but my head is clear and my blood oddly eager, embracing its fate. I do not get dressed at once. The two Irishmen made no attempt to rob me: Nótt kept watch. Besides, we are friends now. Daniel and Stephen. From Donegal.

The knife cuts Daniel’s throat like butter. The blood spurts up, onto the mask: smears against the eyeglass, seeing red. What’s in my lungs, what’s rising up the insect’s snout and coating my mouth, has no need for sight. It guides my hands by touch. As for the boy beneath the mask, he has no wish to see.

Stephen I beat with the barrel of my gun. He wakes on the second blow and is dead on the third. Pale green eyes; the eyelashes sticky with sleep.

I leave them with ten silver guineas. The rifle I also leave behind, slip it loosely into Daniel’s hands so that his fingers rest on the silver butt he so admired. Two dead Irishmen with money in their pockets and a foreign gun. Show me a magistrate in England who can’t close an inquest based on evidence as good as this.

By the time dawn proper breaks I am two miles west. Snow is coming down in thick, wet flakes. It will be rough going today. There is not a soul to be seen. It is midmorning by the time I realise I am still wearing the mask. Its buckles are stiff under my frozen fingers.

“Abomination,” I rage as I wrestle to take it off. “Freak, monster, elephant man.”

Soon it will own me, body and soul.

Perhaps Mother would help me. I could still turn around.

But there is no time.

Charlie Cooper is spreading stories about me down the road.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

When Charlie wakes the room is flooded with daylight. He senses rather than sees it, has trouble opening his eyes. His body does not follow orders, lies leaden under the down bedding, a stranger to his will. He mutters in surprise and finds his tongue sitting dry and heavy in his mouth, so swollen he has to breathe around it. No sound will come. As he struggles against his eyelids’ weight, a soothing voice sounds close by.

“Easy now, Mr. Cooper, take your time. There was a sleeping draught in the milk. You were in need of rest. Here, I will help you sit up.”

The dark shadow of Renfrew bends over him, slips a second pillow behind Charlie’s back, then sits down again on the stool he has drawn up to Charlie’s bedside.

“There, that’s better.”

Renfrew reaches forward with a washcloth and wets Charlie’s lips.

“You must be quite parched. It is one of the draught’s side effects.”