Read Online The Comet Seekers: A Novel by Helen Sedgwick - Free Book Online

but it was OK, somehow. He said he hadn’t found his home, not here. She looks at Severine with a fresh worry in her eyes. Do you miss him?
    Severine smiles, shakes her head. It is her granny that she misses.
    You can’t miss someone you never knew, she says.
    Her mama thinks that, actually, you can; she has watched her own mother go mad with longing to speak to members of her family that she never knew.
    Where did he go?
    Across Europe first, she says, then . . . Africa, South America.
    You didn’t think about going with him?
    Her mama smiles then, and shakes her head.
    Because you needed to be with Granny, after Antoine . . .?
    Because I had a home, and I had you, and I’d married a man who was too restless to ever stay in one place.
    What was he like?
    He was gentle, but distracted. And he was always whistling.
    Her mama’s expression changes, as if another forgotten memory has been rekindled, and it makes her face softer.
    I always thought I wanted to travel, she says, it was part of why I loved him in the first place.
    So what changed?
    Life, she says, but Severine knows from the look in her eye that she means a new life; she is talking about what happens when you have a child. And what happens when you lose one.
    It’s colder now, she says. Time to head in?
    Severine nods, allows herself to stop questioning.
    There are fewer ghosts in Severine’s room that night. The night before she was overwhelmed with how much family was around her; tonight she feels overwhelmed by the loss of them.
    Some of you have left already? she asks anxiously. You’ll come back, won’t you?
    With the next comet, says a ghost who hasn’t spoken before.
    Which one are you? asks Severine, but she regrets the question as a shiver of fear passes through her body. She knows who this must be.
    If you stay here, in Bayeux, says Brigitte, holding out her hand.
    Severine recoils. The skin on Brigitte’s arm is weeping, red raw and peeling back in places to expose shrivelled muscle and blackened bone.
    Brigitte stands where she is, stands taller, her arm still held out towards Severine, who finds her back is pressed hard against the wall. Brigitte’s burns are spreading and her hair – a minute ago wild dark curls down to her waist – has caught alight and Brigitte’s head, her face, is turning from a vicious red to the black of ash as her eyes still stare, open and pleading.
    Severine clasps her arms around her belly, turns away – she can’t help it, can’t stand to watch this horror, and she has to protect her child.
    Please, no, she says. Leave us alone . . .
    But as she rushes for the doorway she sees the tall woman in the golden dress, a red shawl wrapped around her head and neck, a gentle smile on her face.
    Hello, Severine. It’s all right now.
    Her accent is strange, foreign but not foreign; an inflection to her words that Severine has never heard before.
    I am sorry, she says. I didn’t realise what I was creating.
    Severine looks around the room, but Brigitte has gone and everything is calm again.
    I don’t understand.
    That’s why I’m here, tonight.
    Severine wishes she could kiss her cheek to welcome her, but instead she gestures towards the old chest by the window and with that Ælfgifu sits down and starts, softly, again, to tell her story.
    Severine dreams that night of hundreds, no, thousands of ghosts clamouring to be heard, breaking from their disorderly queue and talking all at once. You’re like children, she says, waving her hands around her head as she’d seen her granny do so many times, trying to swat the voices away like insects; you’re just like children.
    She wakes to silence in the night. Stands at her window for a moment, but it is not enough. She creeps down the stairs, avoiding the step that creaks, holds her breath as she passes her mother’s room and pulls a coat over her nightdress. She turns the key in the back door as quietly as she is able to; she doesn’t want anyone to follow her out