The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps by Michel Faber Page A

seagulls, the harbour. The town and its environs had held its breath while they were kissing; now it was letting it out.
    â€˜Where shall we meet?’ said Mack.
    Siân thought for a moment.
    â€˜The Whitby Mission. They let dogs in there.’
    He opened his mouth to argue, then grinned.
    â€˜The Whitby Mission.’ His right hand, whose warm imprint still tingled on her back, reached down to Hadrian, grabbing the dog by the scruff of the neck. ‘They’ll let you in there, did you hear that?’ he announced, pulling the handful of hair teasingly to and fro. ‘And we’ll find out what that bad man did with the body, eh? Won’t that be exciting?’
    Hadrian wasn’t convinced, baring his teeth and twisting his head in frustrated pursuit of the badgering grip.
    â€˜Rough!’ he complained.
    The inner layers of the scroll were, contrary to Siân’s expectations, the most damaged. Something had leaked into them at some stage in their two-hundred-year confinement, something more corrosive than simple moisture or the intrinsic hazards of the gelatine and the ink. Try as she might to peel the pages apart with no damage to the integrity of the fibres or the calligraphy, there were small mishaps along the way: an abrasion of the paper surface here, a comma or a flourish lost to impatience. She took a swig of brandy straight from the bottle, and worked on, sweat trickling into her eyes.
    â€˜Come on, you!’ she muttered, as she laboured to unfasten, millimetre by millimetre, the page she already knew from the page she hadn’t read yet. ‘Explain yourself.’ There must surely be a reason behind Thomas Peirson’s actions, a better reason than mere evil. Decent, godfearing 18th-century men were not psychopaths, plotting their motiveless murders for the future delectation of Hollywood.
    But with every word that came to light, Thomas Peirson’s soul emerged darker and more disturbing. Sentence by sentence, he painted himself to be exactly the remorseless monster she’d seen reflected in Mack’s excited eyes.
    When the deed was done, I was in a frenzy of haste. Mary’s body I swaddled in waxed sailcloth and hid in a chest; then I washed clean of blood my self, the copper, the knife, and the floor; whereupon I took my place at table downstairs, affecting to be busy with accounts.
    The remainder of that day, and the next day after it, were a torture greater than any I expect to suffer in the Time-To-Come, even if it should please God to banish me from his mercy and cast me to the Devil. While Mary’s carcase lay stiffening in my sea-chest, I joined my worried wife and daughter, all throughout the streets of Whitby, searching for our lost lamb. We questioned folk on the East side and the West side; we walked till we were weary.
    She has run away with that William Agar, my wife says. He has taken her, the blackguard.
    So, we visited William’s mother & axed her what she knew, and she replied with such a skriking as set our ears ringing. My boy is gone up to London, she says, and you are deceived if you think he would dream of taking your daft daughter with him. My boy has been fair driven away, to get peace from all her fond stories & her lies – I have had the poor lad beating his brow, saying, Mother, are all girls so cack-brained, to see love where none was ever offered? Now he is free of her mischief at last, and if she means to follow him to London, I pray her wiles get her no farther than a whorehouse in York!
    After this exchange, I took Catherine home in a terrible anger, and indeed this gave her a certain courage for a while, but then we fell again to waiting for Mary to come home. Hour upon hour, all three of us strained our ears for the footsteps I knew would not sound. She has come to harm! my dear wife wept, wringing her hands. She has come to harm, I know it! Nonsense, woman, I said, inventing a dozen comforting stories with happy