Free The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry Page B

that he gave a quiet shout (and was it also one of warning or challenge, in case there was after all a wild dog loose?), and ran the half-mile home. John was waiting, standing one-footed on the gatepost in his white nightclothes. Seeing Will he roared, ‘ By the pricking of my thumbs! ’ and buried his face in his father’s coat. Feeling the rabbit fur on his neck, he said: ‘You’ve done it! You’ve brought me a pet!’

 
    Cora Seaborne
c/o The Red Lion Inn
Colchester
    14 th February
    My dear Imp!
    How are you? Are you keeping warm? Are you eating properly? How’s your cut – have you healed? I’d’ve liked to have seen it. Did it go very deep? You must keep your scalpels sharp and your wits sharper. Oh dear: I do miss you!
    We are well, and Martha sends her – oh, you won’t believe that, will you? Francis doesn’t send his love at all, but I don’t think he’d mind seeing you again, if you were to come down, and that’s as much as any of us can hope for. WILL you come down? It’s cold, but the sea air is good, and Essex nowhere near as bad as they say.
    I’ve been over to Walton-on-the-Naze and out to St Osyth and I haven’t found my sea-dragon yet – not even a bit of crinoid sea-lily! – but you know I don’t give in easily. The man who owns the hardware store here thinks me mad as a hatter, and has sold me two new hammers and a kind of suede belt to hang them from. Martha says I never looked odder or uglier, but you know I’ve always thought beauty a curse and am more than happy to dispense with it completely. Sometimes I forget that I’m a woman – at least – I forget to THINK OF MYSELF AS A WOMAN . All the obligations and comforts of womanhood seem to have nothing to do with me now. I’m not sure how I am supposed to behave and I’m not sure I would, if I knew.
    Talking of distinguished: you’ll never GUESS who accosted us in the High St just as we were looking for a civilised place to wait out the rain? Charles Ambrose, looking just like a parrot in a flock of pigeons, bustling about in his velvet coat! He’s adamant I need an Essex friend, to keep me from broken limbs out on the mudflats or worse (he tells me the River Blackwater is menaced by a beast, but I will tell you all about it when I see you next). He has threatened to put me in touch with some rural vicar, and though I’m half tempted to take him up on the offer purely for the pleasure of shocking whatever poor old fellow he has in mind, I really would rather be left to my own devices. WON’T YOU COME DOWN, DEAR? I miss you. I don’t like to do without you. I don’t see why I should.
    Love,
    CORA

 
    Luke Garrett MD
Pentonville Rd
N1
    15 th February
    CORA –
    Hand better, thanks. The infection was useful – I tested out my new Petri dishes and made some bacterial cultures. I thought you would have liked them. They were blue and green.
    Coming down with Spencer probably next week. See you then. Hold off the rain if you can.
    LUKE
    PS: Technically, that was a Valentine. Don’t deny it.

4
    Five miles east of Colchester, Cora walked in fine rain. She’d set out with no destination in mind and no thought to how she’d come home, only wanting to get out of the cold room in the Red Lion where Francis had cut his pillow to retrieve and count the feathers. Neither she nor Martha had been able to explain why it was that he ought not to have done it (‘Yes but you can pay for it, and then it will all be mine …’), and rather than listen to her son’s patient totting up – one hundred and seventy-three as the door had closed – she’d belted up her coat and run downstairs. Martha heard her call ‘I’ll be home before it’s dark – I have money with me – I’ll find someone to bring me back,’ and sighing had returned to the boy.
    Colchester had dwindled behind her in a matter of half an hour, and she’d walked east, almost persuading herself she could reach the mouth of the Blackwater before she grew tired. She