The attic room where I slept—with its cobwebbed, drafty corners—was next to the one where Johanna and her baby had died. And after Sally told me this story, I began to hear Johanna cry out through the walls, late at night. It sounded like she was crying for me, crying my name. On occasion, I heard what sounded like rushing water, and a thumping, like the baby inside her belly was trying to break his way out with his little balled-up fists.

“Who was the father?” I had asked Sally in the cellar.

She looked hard at me, like I should already know.

Eventually, I worked up the courage to reveal to Mrs. Amwell some of what Sally had told me of Johanna, but my mistress insisted no girl was pregnant in the house, and certainly no girl had died. She tried to tell me that Sally was envious of my place in the house, and the thumping was my own terrified heart—little more than bad dreams.

I did not argue with Mrs. Amwell. But I knew what I heard late at night. How can one mistake the cry of their own name?

Now, as I waited in the dining room with my back to the wall, watching Mr. Amwell chew away at his eggs, it was this set of events that left me unsteady—so much so that I had to place my palms against the wall to balance myself. I did not regret what I’d done; I only hoped the poisonous eggs would kill Mr. Amwell quickly, and in daylight, for I could not bear the idea of another voice calling my name through the walls. I prayed Mr. Amwell’s wretched spirit would not release in this very room, or if it did, that it would not dwell long.

I didn’t understand this kind of magick. I didn’t understand why Johanna’s spirit was still stuck or why she haunted me as she did, and I feared Mr. Amwell’s spirit might soon accompany her in the hallways.

I was brave about some things, yes, and poisons didn’t scare me. But unchained, angry spirits could bring me to my knees.

He clutched his throat halfway through the second egg. “My God,” he cried. “What is in the gravy? I’ve a furious thirst.” He downed half the pitcher of water while I remained at the edge of the dining room, waiting to remove the plates.

The mistress’s eyes grew wide. She touched the pale yellow ribbing of her bodice; did I imagine the tremble in her wrist? “Dear, are you quite all right?” she asked him.