“She was having God’s child?”
“That’s what she told Roxborough.”
‘She could have been inventing it all, just to keep him from hurting her.”
“I don’t think he’d have done that. In fact I think he was half in love with her. He said in the confession he felt like his friend Godolphin. I’m broken by a woman’s eye, he wrote.”
“That’s an odd phrase,” Jude thought, thinking of the stone as she did so: its stare, its authority.
“Well, Godolphin died obsessing on some mistress he’d loved and lost, claiming he’d been destroyed by her. The men were always the innocents, you see. Victims of female eonnivings. I daresay Roxborough’d persuaded himself that walling Celestine up was an act of love. Keeping her under his thumb forever.”
“What happened to the child?” Judith said.
“Maybe she can tell us herself,” Clara replied.
“Then we have to get her out.”
“Indeed.”
“Do you have any idea how?” “Not yet,” Clara said. “Until you appeared I was ready to despair. But between the two of us we’ll find some way to save her,”
It was getting late, and Jude was anxious that her absence not be noted, so the plans they laid were sketchy in the extreme. A further examination of the tower was clearly in order, this time—Clara proposed—under cover of darkness.
“Tonight,” she suggested.
“No, that’s too soon. Give me a day to make up some
excuse for being out for the night,”
“Who’s the watchdog?” Clara said.
“Just a man.”
“Suspicious?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well, Celestine’s waited a long time to be set free. She can wait another twenty-four hours. But please, no longer, I’m not a well woman.”
Jude put her hand over Clara’s hand, the first contact between them since the woman had touched her icy fingers to Jude’s cheek. “You’re not going to die,” she said.
“Oh, yes, I am. It’s no great hardship. But I want to see Celestine’s face before I leave.”
“We will,” Judith said. “If not tomorrow night, soon after.”
She didn’t believe what Clara had said about men pertained to Oscar, He was no destroyer of Goddesses, either by hand or proxy. But Dowd was another matter entirely. Though his facade was civilized—almost prissy at times— she would never forget the casual way he’d disposed of the voiders’ bodies, warming his hands at the pyre as though they were branches, not bones, that were cracking in the flames. And, as bad luck would have it, Dowd was back at the house when she returned, and Oscar was not, so it was his questions she was obliged to answer if she wasn’t to arouse his suspicions with silence. When he asked her what she’d done with the day, she told him she’d gone out for a long walk along the Embankment. He then inquired as to whether the tube had been crowded, though she’d not told him she’d traveled that way. She said it was. You should take a cab next time, he said. Or, better still, allow me to (hive you. I’m certain Mr. Godolphin would prefer you to travel in comfort, he said. She thanked him for his kindness. Will you be planning other trips soon? he asked. She had her story for the following evening already prepared, but Dowd’s manner never failed to throw her off balance, and she was certain any lie she told now would be instantly spotted, so she said she didn’t know, and he let the subject drop.
Oscar didn’t come home until the middle of the night, slipping into bed beside her as gently as his bulk allowed. She pretended to wake. He murmured a few words of apology for stirring her, and then some of love. Feigning a sleepy tone, she told him she was going to see her friend Clem tomorrow night, and did he mind? He told her she should do whatever she wanted, but keep her beautiful body for him. Then he kissed her shoulder and neck and fell asleep.
She had arranged to meet Clara at eight in the evening, outside the church, but she left for that rendezvous two hours before in order to go via her old flat. She didn’t know what place in the scheme of things the carved blue eye had, but she’d decided the night before that it should be with her when they made their attempt to liberate Celestine. . The flat felt cold and neglected, and she spent only a few minutes there, first retrieving the eye from her wardrobe, then quickly leafing through the mail—most of it junk— that had arrived since she’d last visited. These tasks completed, she set out for Highgate, taking Dowd’s advice and hailing a taxi to do so. It delivered her to the church twenty-five minutes early, only to find that Clara was already there.