Ashamed and afraid, that’s what her mother’s letters convey. Wringing her hands over the Atlantic. Afraid of life, of anything that isn’t neat and proper, of Sylvia’s ferocity most of all. Bombus impatiens. Bombus perplexus. Bombus fervidus. Sylvia buckles the girth, pulling it snug around the mare’s generous belly. One notch at a time—don’t pinch. Gently she slides her fingers under the wide band, smoothing the leather and skin. Sylvia has nothing to fear; she’s come through a Kesselschlacht, a burning cauldron of hell, her own Stalingrad, and she’s pure passionate righteousness on the other side. No apologies. She’s finished proofreading the pages of The Bell Jar. The book has already gone to the printer; there’s no turning back. She wrote “Daddy” the day after Ted left, “Medusa” last week during her fever. She’s purged of sufferings. The sacrifices are over.

“All right, you sprite,” Sylvia addresses the elderly horse, her tone low and soothing, as she hangs the loose halter over the wall of the stall and takes the reins in her right hand, leading the saddled mare out through the doorway and into the silvered yard. The night sky is withdrawing by degrees, the broad dome of Cawsand Hill a languorous, ultramarine sweep hovering over the corrugated tin roofline of the stable. Ariel’s shoes click on the cobblestones. Sylvia swings the stock gate open and leads the horse out onto the bridle path that runs, bordered by impenetrable hedgerows, between the paddocks down to the river. A grizzled granite fence encloses the stable: the fence, the stone side of the barn, the bare limbs and rough trunks of the trees, the pitch of the roof closest to the moors all blanketed by avidly green moss. At the fence post, where Sylvia turns her horse around and ties her to the gate for mounting, a flaking hand-painted sign warns ALL RIDES AT OWN RISK!! Beside it, hung along the length of the fence on barbed wire, are the mossy skulls and curling horns of bygone Dartmoor sheep, their perfect, human teeth gleaming in the emerging pale blue light.