He was imagining things. There was no music – how could there be anyone here playing the flute? How could the Captive be in the attic, in any case? He would have heard something in the day time. When he’d been in the house, in his bedroom, he’d heard nothing above him apart from the groans that the ancient beams made and the rushing and sighing of the wind through the chimneys.

Slowly, and very carefully, he made his way back to his room, and was obscurely relieved to find that it was exactly as he had left it. Leana was still curled up by his pillow. The cover on his bed was turned down, the imprint of his body exactly as he had lain. He threw himself onto the mattress.

He would try upstairs again when the sun was out.

Before he undressed, he looked out of the window, out across the moat, in which the moon’s shimmering reflection hung, and found himself uttering the words of a prayer, which he had not done since he was a little boy at school.

‘And deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.’

When he’d finished, his mind jumping to the last time he’d seen his parents, he went to where he had hidden the flute, taking it out of the drawer. To his surprise, it was warm, as if it had just been played. He slipped it back in the drawer, under the photos and letters.

He slept with his bedside lamp turned on, the golden wash of light making a pool on the scuffed wood of the bedside table. He was gladder than ever for Leana.

Chapter 11

8th June, 1846

The day of the wedding draws nearer. The cake has been ordered. Cousin Millicent is to be bridesmaid. Her giggles are grating. I have not yet tried on my dress. It hangs in the wardrobe, limp and white. I stare out of my window whilst mother fusses with my clothes. I believe Rohenga has forgotten me.

— From the diary of Margaret Ravenswood

The next morning, when Tom came into the kitchen at just past eight, he saw that Kit was out already, tending to the horse in the field beyond the moat.

Zita, the silver bracelet still on her wrist, was stirring a bowl of porridge slowly, muttering something to herself. There was a sick, tight feeling in Tom’s stomach. He listened carefully to the sounds of the house, dreading Jack’s heavy step down the stairs.

And yet at the same time he longed to be transported back, to feel the weight of modernity fall away, to the house as it had been in the year it had been built.

He yawned.