Liston halted rather abruptly ahead, his hand on the latch of the chamber, head bowed. Even under the blanket that he wore as a makeshift shawl, Anne could see that he was trembling.

“Shall we go in, my friend?” Branwell asked gently after a moment, placing his hand on Liston’s shoulder. “For if it must be done, ’twere well it were done quickly.”

Liston took his hand from the latch and stepped back, turning his face away from the room beyond.

“I cannot.” He shook his head. “I cannot go in and face it again.”

“You need not,” Branwell assured him.

“This was my ma’s chamber,” he told them. “Even to look upon the closed door is to remember the worst hour of my life, never mind the terrible discovery that lies behind it. It is difficult to find the will to open it once more.”

“I understand, Liston,” Anne said sombrely. “Yet we must make ourselves unafraid. We have come on behalf of that poor lost soul, and on behalf of our father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë, and under the protection of our Christian faith. We are armoured with all the courage we need.”

Nodding, Liston opened the door and stood aside.

First Branwell, then Emily and Charlotte entered the room. As she was about to go in, Anne heard something like a gasp, something like a sob, come from one of her sisters, and she stopped at the threshold, looking up at Liston, caught in a moment of uncertainty. Liston offered her his hand, but Anne shook her head.

“This is a task I am equal to,” she asserted, more to herself than to Liston, and went in. Behind her she felt Liston follow, though he stayed by the door.

Snow gusted in through the broken pane of the mullioned window. It was so cold it felt as if they were standing out on the hillside, and quite a drift had formed on the rotting floorboards. The sisters reached for one another’s hands as Liston drew ragged but heavy curtains over the gaping glass and, once the howling draught was muted, lit some candles, though they threatened to gutter and blink out at any moment. Only when each of them was assembled around a small table did Liston remove a sheet that had been kept in place with loose stones. In silence and shock, they observed the remains.

Anne was unprepared for the swell of grief that rose within her, for she had not anticipated the skeleton to be so small in stature. She had not been prepared to see the bones of a child of perhaps ten years.