A pause. He pressed his forehead against the wet and unyielding iron, swallowing blood. They had told him there would be twenty-five lashes. Were they showing some mercy, at last?

Two sets of boots stamped past in opposite directions.

‘That were weak, Georgie. My turn. Gi’ thee weedy arm a rest.’

Chapter 38

Harriet woke early to a silence so deep she knew immediately that Walter was dead.

She swung her feet out of bed and stood on the rug, suddenly at a loss. What should she do? Alert the doctor. Then tell Polly and her cousins. No, no, that wouldn’t do. Tell Polly and the children first, then send Sadie for the doctor when she arrived for work. Harriet looked at the clock. It was five in the morning, still dark. What had woken her? The absence of sound. She had fallen asleep listening to Walter’s weak coughs and groans through the ceiling, his drowning lungs effortfully dredging up the frothy phlegm that made the sheets stink. It had been a week since the doctor said he could do nothing for Walter other than increase his medication. Her uncle had already been drinking enough laudanum to make into gibberish the few words he was capable of saying. Harriet threw a shawl over her nightgown. She could not risk one of the boys discovering their father dead and she could not trust that they would remain sleeping until it got light.

That meant she must go immediately into her uncle’s room, to confirm what she already knew.

Harriet lit a lamp and climbed the stairs quietly. She could hear Polly snoring in the master bedroom. There was no sound from the boys’ rooms. She hesitated, clutching the cool porcelain of the doorknob to Alice’s room, trying to picture the scene, to ready herself. He would be lying on the sickbed that had replaced his daughter’s smaller cot. Would he be safe under the covers, or half out of bed, his head hanging limply over the bucket, the white nape of his neck exposed? She closed her eyes, relinquished the doorknob and instead knocked gently on the door, clinging onto the hope that she might be wrong. No sound from within. She could not delay any longer. Harriet eased the door open, leading with the lamp. In the dim light, Walter was a hunched shape on the bed, his face turned mercifully away.

‘Uncle?’

The room stank of sweat and vomit and something rotten. Breathing shallowly, Harriet screwed up all her courage and reached out to touch his shoulder. The thin material of his nightgown was damp and chill.

‘Uncle Walter?’

A choking sob broke the deathly silence. Harriet realised the sound had come from her and clasped her hand over her mouth. She backed away quietly, keeping her eyes on the shape in the bed, her heart hammering, waiting for him to rise up and point an accusing finger. She was to blame. He had saved her and lost Alice and was finally a victim of the flood, condemned to the slowest of deaths by drowning.