“Not one,” Miss Goddard said. “Besides, his person told the truth of it. He was bruised and scratched all over, his head cut, arm and ankle broken. He still smelt of ether, a scent I know from my time working in an infirmary. And he still had about his neck something . . . I had never seen before—something he said the ‘monster’ must have put on him.”

The sisters looked from one to the other. Could it be . . . ?

“Do you still have it?” Charlotte asked.

Still holding Tom’s hand, Miss Goddard went to a bookcase and, taking out a prayer book, opened it to where a chain was enclosed between the pages. There lay a miraculous medallion atop the words of the Lord’s Prayer.

Emily picked up the pendant, running her thumb over the clumsily etched date—the same date that was on the pendant left in Joseph’s place when he was taken.

“What can it mean?” Anne asked. “Why is the year marked?”

“I believe it represents the year a boy is taken,” Charlotte said, a great sense of dread spreading through her. “Tom was meant to be taken and kept until tonight’s new moon, but he escaped. . . .”

Charlotte looked up at her sisters with dismay.

“And it would seem that our Joseph is a replacement.”

43

Emily

They were bone-tired as they finally reached the back of the parsonage. Then Emily heard a cry from somewhere beyond the house, followed by a shout of something like terror and fury combined.

“Papa! It’s Papa!” Recognising his voice at once, Emily gathered up her sodden skirts and broke into a run, followed at a similar pace by Anne, Charlotte lagging somewhat behind.

“Keeper!”

Emily called to her dog as she passed the backyard, and as he joined her, he yelped with joy and then perhaps a little fear as they bowled down the alley that ran alongside the parsonage and found a crowd of people thronging between the schoolhouse and the graveyard, jostling and shouting.

“What is this?” Emily demanded, shouldering her way into the angry mob. “Out of my way at once. Where is my papa?”

Emily elbowed, and Keeper, considering it all a marvellous game, nipped at shins as he and his mistress fought their way into the eye of the storm, the centre of the crowd that had spread between the graveyard and the schoolhouse At last Emily set eyes upon the poor creatures who were the subject of such vitriol: it was the Brontë men—well, for the most part anyway.