We left London on a morning the colour of dishwater. I had walked to The Black Dog alone. The streets were still half-dark, though the hour was late enough for carts and costermongers. A thin rain hung in the air, not falling so much as settling, and by the time I reached the tavern door my coat was heavy with it. The windows were fogged. Through the glass, the room beyond looked small and warm, like a lamp burning inside a church. I stood there a moment, watching Iona move behind the bar. She was setting clean mugs on their hooks, her sleeves pushed back, her hair pinned loosely at the nape of her neck. I almost did not go in. I might have stood there until Edmund came looking for me. But then she looked up, and her eyes found the door, and I pushed it open. The smell of yesterday's ale and this morning's bread wrapped around me. Iona stopped what she was doing. She did not speak at first. She only studied me, the way she had done the first time I came back to her covered in dust and old blood. "Come here," she said. I crossed the room. The bar was between us, but she came around it and stopped close. She was wearing an apron over a grey dress, and there was flour on her wrist. Her face was steady, but I saw the question she would not ask. "I can't stay long," I said. "I know." She reached behind her neck and unclasped something. For a moment I thought it was her hairpin, but then she took my hand and pressed a small rosary into my palm. It was made of dark wood, the beads worn smooth, the cross no bigger than my thumb. It was warm from her skin. "I want you to have this," she said. "It was my mother's. She used to say it's better to carry someone else's prayer than none at all." I looked down at it. The wood was old, but it had been oiled by years of handling. It didn't feel like an object. It felt like something I had been trusted with. "Mrs. Marsh," I started. "Iona," she said. I looked up. "Iona," I said. She rose onto the balls of her feet and kissed my cheek. It was quick, but not hesitant. Her lips were soft, and the warmth of them stayed on my skin after she pulled away. Then she put her arms around me, and I stood very still, because I did not know what to do with my hands. She let go before I could embarrass myself. Her eyes were bright, but she did not cry. "Whatever it is you're going into," she said, "come back." I couldn't speak. I only nodded, and turned, and walked back out into the grey morning. The rain had stopped. It left the streets shining, and the city seemed to hold its breath around me. I touched the rosary through my coat pocket and kept walking. --- Edmund was waiting at King's Cross. He stood near the third-class gate, his black cassock hidden under a heavy travel coat, his collar just visible at the throat. A single bag waited at his feet. He looked like a man who had already counted the hours to Crawmoor and found them all unpleasant. "You saw her," he said as I approached. I didn't deny it. He didn't smile, but something in his face softened, just for a breath. "Good," he said. "Now let's get this over with." The train was already hissing when we boarded. We found an empty compartment near the rear, and I stowed our bags while Edmund took the seat by the window. The glass was streaked with old rain, and the city beyond it looked like a drawing that had been smudged before it dried. The whistle came. The carriage lurched. Then London began to slide away. Edmund didn't speak for a long time. He pulled Croft's papers from his coat and unfolded them on his knee, though I knew he wasn't reading. His eyes moved over the same lines again and again, the way a man watches a locked door. I sat across from him, the rosary a small weight against my chest. I didn't mention it. I didn't take it out. I only sat with my hands in my lap and watched the city loosen its grip on us. Houses gave way to yards. Yards gave way to fields. The tracks ran north, and with every mile the sky grew wider and paler, until it was no longer sky but a great grey lid laid over the world. --- We changed trains twice. The first time, I lost the name of the station before I had finished reading it. The second time, I didn't try. There were fewer people now, and those who remained looked at us too long. A woman with a basket of dead herring stared at Edmund's collar as if it offended her. A man in a patched coat asked if we were bound for the coast, then made the sign of the cross over his chest when I said we were. "Crawmoor?" he said. "There's no work at Crawmoor." "We're not looking for work," Edmund said. The man shook his head and moved down the platform, and I did not watch him go. --- The last leg was by cart. A boy no older than me met us at the final station, if it could be called that. It was a stone platform and a wooden shelter with no roof to speak of. The boy had a pony and a cart and a face like he had already seen whatever we were about to meet. "You're for Saint Aldric's?" he asked. "Yes," Edmund said. "I'll take you as far as the moor road. Won't go past the old sheep gate." "That will do." We climbed into the cart. The pony set off without a command, and the station fell away behind us, small and grey and already half-forgotten. The land here was not like London. It was not like Blackwood, either. The moors rose on either side, low and wet, and the road was little more than a strip of black earth between stone walls. After a while, I stopped hearing birds. Then the wind began to carry a new smell: salt and wet rock, and beneath it, something softer, like flowers left too long in water. It made the back of my neck prickle. "Crawmoor," Edmund said quietly. I looked past him. We had crested a rise. The road dipped away between two black crags, and beyond it, for the first time, I saw the sea. It was not blue. It was not green. It was the colour of old iron, and it stretched to the edge of the world without a ship or a bird upon it. Even from this distance, I could see that the water was too still. It did not break. It only lay there, flat and shining, like a skin stretched over something too large to move. And above it, on a black shelf of land at the cliff's edge, stood a church. Saint Aldric's. Its tower was dark, and its windows were empty, and the sea behind it went on and on without a sound. I touched the rosary through my coat. Iona had asked me to come back. But looking at that place, I understood for the first time that no one who went there had ever done so. The cart rattled on. The sea did not move. The road fell away before us, and we went down into it.

Chapter 23: Until The Coast