“There was talk back when I was in the Masons,” Branwell said with a rather oblique waggling of his eyebrows. “Nothing to do with the lodge—that was entirely respectable—but there was a cohort of local gentlemen who formed a sort of Hellfire Club and engaged in rather hedonistic activities.”

His sisters looked at him blankly.

“You surely know what I am implying without my having to soil your tender ears with more detail.”

“Please do,” Emily said with an entirely straight face.

“Well, one heard of very . . . loose behaviour at immoral gatherings . . .” he stumbled on. “Individuals disrobing and engaging in—”

“Oh, Branwell! Stop soiling my innocent ears!” Emily cried, pulling down her bonnet with her hands and making Anne burst out laughing.

“You are a pair of hoydens,” Branwell said, smiling begrudgingly at his sisters’ merriment. “However, it is possible that a decent young woman like Agnes Fielding would have been very shocked to see such events.”

“But we cannot know or guess at what she saw, whether it be violence or seduction,” Anne said. “All we know is that this seems to be a sacred place for those who still follow the old ways. If the bones and the markings on the fireplace have something to do with a pagan ritual of some kind, then perhaps the gatherings Agnes spoke of—the feasts of food and wine—were held here. Perhaps the Hellfire Club you mentioned, Branwell, was a sort of version of ancient ritual used as an excuse for debauchery.”

“Well, they never invited me,” Branwell sighed.

“We do know Clifton Bradshaw was a changed man just before and after his wife’s death,” Emily said thoughtfully. “And we know that whatever is written on the torn-out pages of the book is a charm that claims to raise the dead. Rumours have persisted that Clifton Bradshaw sold his soul to the devil. But perhaps he was so crazed by grief that it wasn’t his soul he was trying to sell; perhaps he was trying to buy back another—his wife’s. And perhaps the poor child whose bones we found paid the price of that transaction.”

“I know that I stand to lose the feeling in the lower half of my body if we stay here a moment longer,” Branwell said. “If you are determined to drag me around from place to place, can we at least go and visit the witch now, and give me something to look forward to?”

“It is an hour’s walk, Branwell,” Anne said. “Do you wish to go home?”

“I do not,” Branwell said with some determination. “For I miss the time when my sisters and I shared every thought and every secret, and we were always a four-cornered house. I miss the times when we told one another everything and never kept secrets from one another.”

He looked pointedly from Anne to Emily.