The Vanished Bride by Bella Ellis

Author:Bella Ellis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

22

Emily

Early-morning mist still puddled in the dips and crevices of the valley as Emily made the last few steps towards home, Keeper trotting at her side. Just as she was about to let herself in at the back and claim she’d been for a dawn walk, she spotted her father’s sexton, John Brown, deep amongst the tabletop tombstones.

“Good morning, John,” Emily greeted him as she walked down to see what he was about, Keeper taking himself inside for his breakfast.

“Good morning, Emily.” John Brown looked up from the grave he was carefully reopening, where, Emily knew, there would already be several family coffins, in varying states of decay, piled one atop the other. On this early morning that held the promise of a bright, warm day, John would do his best to make room for yet another. Her father regularly petitioned the bishop to consecrate more ground for the dead of Haworth, for soon their bones would be poking up through the freshly dug earth. “You are up with the dawn again, I see.”

“I saw the sun rise, John, and very fine it was too,” Emily said, her head full to the brim of everything that she had seen last night—things so strange that, should she not have been so certain of her wakefulness, she would have considered the whole adventure to be a most extraordinary dream. Emily tilted her head to read the name on the flat stone. “Another Pickford child, John? Papa had hoped the little one might yet be saved. Will the burial be today?”

“Indeed,” John nodded. “At midday.”

“I shall attend.” Emily nodded. “This last year has cost the Pickfords dear.” She reached into her pocket and produced the pebble. “John, would you be so kind as to examine this stone for me and give your thoughts as to its origin?”

“A stone, you say?” John climbed out of the grave, wiping his hands on his breeches. If he had an opinion on Emily’s bare head, her unruly hair and torn and muddy dress, he didn’t feel the need to venture it, which was one of the many reasons that Emily liked him. Their maid Martha’s father, he was a steady man, and a decent one, and for a man that lived amidst death every day, a surprisingly cheerful one too.

“If you would,” Emily said, dropping the pebble into his palm.

“Well,” the sexton said with a deep frown, “it’s definitely a stone.”

“You are amusing, John Brown,” Emily said. “Can you discern where it might have originated? I fancy it is too light a grey, and too smooth, to be from anywhere nearby.”

John Brown looked at the stone for some moments more.

“It’s smooth,” he said with a shrug, returning the pebble to her, “so I’d guess it’s been in running water, a river or perhaps the sea, but more than that I cannot tell you, Emily.”

“Thank you nevertheless, John,” Emily said. “Now where might I find an expert to identify this stone? I will have to write letters to

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