Seven-year-old Joan was causing a scene while the other wards of the Brewer-Rawle house hawked coifs to earn their keep for the spinsters who fostered them.

“The willy-whips are real!” cried Joan.

Edda shook her head. At the wise old age of fifteen, Edda had matured past trying to scare Joan. Well, mostly.

“Who told you that? Blythe? Kenley? You know they love to tell stories,” Edda said.

“It wasn’t me!” Kenley protested.

“I wouldn’t fill her head with such nonsense,” Blythe said.

“I heard it from Anne. She’s not like the rest of you, she’d never lie to me,” Joan said, sniffling. “She snuck out to see the Tucker boy and saw the willy-whips in the graveyard by the Church Virgin.”

“Will-o-the-wisps,” Blythe said at the same time Edda said “Church of the Virgin.”

“That’s what I said! Willy-whips at the Church Virgin,” Joan said.

“What’s that Tucker have that I don’t?” Kenley muttered. “’Sides a family, that is.”

“And an inheritance, and an apprenticeship,” Blythe said under her breath.

Edda ignored both of them and leaned over, hands on knees, to be eye level with little Joan. If the story came from Anne, she was more inclined to believe it.

“When did Anne see the willy-whips?” she asked.

“You’re making fun of me,” Joan said, upturning her nose.

“No, Joanie, promise.”

“What are you thinking, Ed?” Blythe asked.

“Arabella’s promise. It’s the anniversary soon,” Edda said, holding Blythe’s eyes over Joan’s head. “Go on, Joanie. Tell us everything.”

Joan opened her mouth to speak, but then her eyes went wide and she shrank away, hiding behind Blythe’s skirts. Edda turned to see a constable walking up to their gang, brows furrowed and looking very severe. She straightened to her full height and adjusted her cap over her shorn hair.

“You there. What is your name?” the constable demanded.

“Edward Clarke, sir,” Edda asked, pitching her voice low.

“There’s no begging here without proper identification. Do you have a badge?” he asked.

“We aren’t begging, sir, we’re selling our wares for the seamstresses Ms. Brewer and Ms. Rawle,” Edda said.

“I’m familiar with their boarding house. How old are you, boy?” he asked.

“Nineteen, sir.”

The constable peered hard at her face, but she didn’t break. When Edda had first been surrendered to the Brewer-Rawle house, there hadn’t been a single dress that could fit her tall frame, every skirt barely covering her shins, and so she’d been given clothes from one of the older boys who had moved on. She’d been promised a proper dress once one of the women could find the time to make her one, but then Ms. Rawle had asked her to impersonate an older boy and escort the younger orphans to sell goods, just the once. Once turned into thrice, and then the women had realized how convenient it was to send Edda out to mind the others, and so she cut her hair and became Edward Clarke in public. Sometimes the women forgot Edda wasn’t really a boy and called her Edward at home.

Edda didn’t mind it and answered to both names. She’d never felt right in a dress and found trousers and jackets more comfortable, and it was safer for her to walk the streets that way, besides. It wasn’t that she wanted to be a boy, or that she felt less of a girl, but it felt right.

“A little old to still be a ward. I hope Ms. Brewer and Ms. Rawle are not fraudulently taking shillings from the parish for you,” the constable said.

“Of course not, sir. I earn my keep and help them run the boarding house,” Edda said, which was true. “Is there anything I can help you with, sir?”

“A gentleman’s watch has been taken from his very pocket, he suspects by a young boy. I need you and the other one to empty your pockets,” he said.

Edda didn’t risk a glance at Kenley, and complied, turning out her trouser and coat pockets, revealing she only had a small bag of money from their customers. Kenley did the same, and blessedly, they were empty. She relaxed her shoulders.

“As you can see, sir, we are honest folk,” Blythe said.

The constable didn’t even look at the other girl and grunted, then went to harass someone else minding their business.

“What a churl,” Kenley grumped.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Blythe said.

Kenley grinned and shook his boot.

“Silver watch, under my heel. They never think to look there.”

Edda groaned and shook her head. One day he was going to get them all in trouble. She turned her attention back to Joan, who was still clutching Blythe’s skirts.

“Joanie, the graveyard?” Edda asked.

“It was the other night, in the woods. Anne saw a few lights coming from the graveyard. She heard strange noises, too,” Joan said.

“Sounds like graverobbers, not ghosts,” Blythe said.

“You think it’s the Widow Robins making good on her promise? She died around this time, didn’t she?” Kenley asked.

“Who is the Widow Robins? What’s this promise?” Joan asked.

Edda took a deep breath, wondering how she could explain the tragedy of Arabella Robins in a way that wouldn’t terrify Joan. How warm Arabella had been to Edda and her gang, paying them more than they deserved for small odd jobs around her house and feeding them home cooked meals after.

“Arabella Robins was a kind woman who used to take care of us, but then she met a bad man,” Blythe said, glancing at Edda. As the two oldest, they remembered her the best.

“She used to make us pot pies and we’d talk about all kinds of things, Purgatory and Heaven and Hell. She told us she didn’t believe in ghosts, as her husband never came to see her after he passed, but we all still believed,” Kenley said.

“The rest of you believed,” Blythe corrected.

“Yeah, well, you’re a spoilsport. Anyway, Widow Robins promised that if ghosts was real, she’d come to us. And now it’s the fifth anniversary of her death and there’s lights and willy-whips,” Kenley said.

“Will-o-wisps!” Blythe said.

“Maybe she’s tried to reach us before, but she can’t go far without her bones. What would it hurt to go and see?” Edda asked.

“And if it’s graverobbers?” Blythe asked.

“Then we’ll be careful,” Edda said.

“Can I go too?” Joan asked, and all three of the older orphans yelled, “No!”

***

After midnight, Edda and her gang sneaked out of the boarding house and into the woods surrounding the Church of the Virgin’s graveyard. Anne and Blythe had both dressed in second hand boys’ clothes like Edda in case they were caught by the watchmen; it would be better to be caught as boys out at night than as girls. Kenley had offered to dress as a girl as a lark, which would have defeated the purpose.

“I really wish we weren’t doing this. We could still go home,” Anne said.

“Just show us where you first saw the lights; you don’t have to go all the way to the graveyard,” Blythe said.

Anne sighed and very reluctantly took the lead, picking her way down a deer trail off the main path. As they neared the graveyard, they saw the curious lights flickering low to the ground. They weren’t lanterns held by graverobbers, like Blythe had suggested. They were small and yellow, creeping by the dozens. Edda’s mouth dried. The willy-whips were real.

“Can’t you feel that?” Anne whispered, rubbing her arms.

Edda did feel it. The air was heavy with dread. Even Blythe was quiet, offering no theories as to what the lights truly were.

“Do you think it could really be Widow Robins?” Kenley asked.

“She did always like pretty things. Would make sense if she came back as pretty lights,” Edda said.

“Pretty? They’re terrifying!” Anne said. “I can’t stand this anymore. I want to go home.”

“Go on then, if you’re scared, but I came to learn the truth behind these lights,” Blythe said.

“By myself?” Anne squeaked.

“I’ll go back with you. To protect you,” Kenley said.

“Course you will,” Blythe muttered.

“Thanks Anne. Kenley, make sure she gets home safe. We’ll go on ahead,” Edda said, before Blythe could say something else rude.

Anne was already leaving before Edda finished, Kenley close on her heels. Edda and Blythe approached the willy-whips, keeping behind the trees. Though she acted brave for the others, Edda felt her heart hammereding in her chest, and she was ready to bolt the moment a specter of any kind appeared. As much as she would like to see Arabella in the spirit, she wasn’t sure if she would be able to survive it.

But when they came upon the lights, they found no ghost. No spirit or specter. No will-o-the-wisp. The truth was far stranger.

“Crabs?!” Blythe blurted.

Edda picked one up, carefully avoiding the crab’s flailing pincers. A small candle had been tied to it with string, melting wax dribbling down its carapace. Dozens more crabs were scattered throughout the graveyard, bumping into each other, futilely attempting to pull off the candles, but their pincers couldn’t reach. Edda plucked the candle off her crab and let it go.

“Who would do this? What for?” Edda asked.

“To get someone like Anne to talk about ghosts? Or maybe… to scare people away?” Blythe suggested.

“Scare them away from what? The graveyard? Everyone’s already afraid of graveyards,” Edda said.

Blythe shrugged.

“Let’s find out. We’ve come this far,” she said.

They entered the back of the graveyard, looking for anything amiss—besides the hundreds of crabs eerily scrabbling about with candles on their backs, rustling in the dead leaves. Edda heard dull thunks and grunts, low voices. She looked back at Blythe, whose eyes were as big as Edda’s felt. It was then she realized there were, perhaps, scarier things than ghosts to discover in a graveyard after midnight. But Edda was the leader, so she got control of her face, furrowed her brows, and nodded at Blythe in a way she hoped would make her look brave.

Crouching down, Edda and Blythe used the tombstones as cover until they came across a group of flesh-and-blood men digging up a grave, a cart at the ready nearby. They ducked behind a mausoleum, peeking around the corner. Only two of the men were digging: the other two were arguing above them, a bishop in his frock and a young man dressed as if he’d never known an honest day’s work his whole life. Blythe elbowed Edda and, smirking, mouthed, “Graverobbers.”

“We’ve settled this, Mr. Dawe,” the bishop said, exasperated.

“We haven’t settled anything. I should have a bigger share of the costs saved from having to reconstruct a box of bones with wood and plaster. It’s only right; it is my wife, after all,” the young man said.

“Careful not to let your greed get the better of you. Have you wasted the estate of the late Mrs. Dawe already?” the bishop asked.

“What estate? Her first husband had so many debts, there was hardly anything left. If not for the sale of her jewelry and finery, none of it would have been worth the trouble at all. More the reason why I should have a bigger share of the donations,” Dawe said.

“It is hardly my fault or concern if you married poorly and squandered what you inherited. A third of the donations reserved for reconstruction is more than fair. If we cannot reach an agreement, then we will end this partnership here and I will find someone else to be the holy body,” the bishop said.

“Every other body you’ve dug up has been worse than that box. You think you can walk away and leave me with dregs, when you married us? No, Father Thomas, we are in this together to the bitter end,” Dawe said.

Edda shared a look with Blythe. Heat flamed up her neck as she realized who the young man was. Blythe was furious, face twisted in a scowl. Chilton Dawe was the man Arabella Robins had suddenly married within a week of meeting him. She’d died in her sleep only days after they had married, and he’d stripped her home of all valuables. Ms. Brewer and Ms. Rawle had tried to tell the constable that something was amiss, that Arabella Robins was in good health and besides, had sworn to never remarry after losing Mr. Robins to disease, but their concerns had been laughed off.

“Blythe, is that really her?” Edda asked, but she already knew.

Blythe, the only one in their gang who could read, narrowed her eyes and shuffled a little closer to read the tombstone.

“Arabella Dawe, Wife,” Blythe whispered.

The graverobbers at last broke into the coffin, and with Father Thomas and Chilton Dawe, they lifted Arabella Robins’ body out of her grave and onto the ground. She had been buried in black linen, which Father Thomas unwrapped for inspection.

“Mostly intact, should only require a bit of wiring and glue. A fine specimen. Bring her in—carefully, now, we don’t want to damage our newest saint,” Father Thomas said, and the man laid Arabella on the cart.

“Saint? What are they doing with Arabella?” Blythe whispered.

As the men took away Arabella’s body, Blythe darted out from behind the mausoleum and followed. Cursing under her breath, Edda chased after.

Father Thomas led the others back to the priory, taking a route that was quiet and dark. They disappeared into a small building, and then emerged not long after, Father Thomas locking the door behind him. Edda and Blythe kept to the shadows, holding their breath as the men passed by.

“Let’s get out of here while we can,” Edda whispered, tugging Blythe’s hand.

“We’ve already come this far. Come on, Ed,” Blythe said.

Edda sighed, unrolled her lockpicking tools from the scrap of leather she kept them in, and went to work on the door while Blythe kept watch. The lockpicks were secondhand, like everything else, given to her by an older boy who had taught her how to use them before he left the boarding house.

The lock clicked. The door opened.

Arabella was laid out on a long table in the center of the room, still wrapped in black linen, surrounded by treasure. There were boxes of jewels, pearls, gilded wire, colorful ribbons, and bolts of cloth. A wooden chest nearby was bound with red ribbon and sealed with a wax insignia, now broken. When Edda looked inside, instead of finding more treasure, she only found brittle bones broken into pieces, and a skull with a large hole in the back. Blythe, meanwhile, was busy studying parchment she’d taken from one of the shelves.

“Does it say what this is?” Edda asked.

“It’s a receipt for carpenters and artificers. Wooden finger bones and rib cages, a plastered skull, dowels and nails and gauze and so on. All for ‘the holy body of Saint Lucina,’” Blythe said.

“The Bishop threatened to find a different ‘holy body.’ And they’d save the cost of putting together a box of bones. This must be St. Lucina,” Edda said, looking back at the wooden chest with the red ribbon.

“The receipt is dated a week from today. It’s a forgery,” Blythe said, understanding. “They’re going to use Arabella, instead of fixing up Lucina, and keep the money saved for themselves.”

“How much is the receipt for?”

“Three hundred pounds.”

“Three hundred! We could clothe and feed every orphan in the town for years with that,” Edda said.

“And those two men are going to keep it all to themselves,” Blythe said bitterly.

“Poor Arabella,” Edda said, touching the skeleton’s hand through the linen. “First they trick her into marrying that brute, then they rob her estate, and even in death they’re still abusing her.”

“It’s not right. She doesn’t deserve this,” Blythe said.

Edda thought of Arabella in her drawing room, serving Edda and her gang high tea like they weren’t nameless, unwanted bastards. She’d taught Blythe how to read. Had bought Edda a new cap to hide her hair under, before she cut it, the same cap she wore now. Edda clenched her fist.

“They won’t get away with it. Not this time,” Edda promised.

***

“They’re fake,” Kenley said.

“They’re not fake, they’re from the church,” Blythe said.

“They’re fake,” Kenley repeated, holding up one of the rubies Edda and Blythe had stolen from the building where Arabella had been taken. “It’s just cut glass, with a bit of metal leaf pressed to the bottom to make it shimmer. Look.”

And then, with his own nail, Kenley scraped the metal leaf away from the ruby and held it up to the sunlight streaming through the window. The scratches were clear, while the rest of the gem kept its red color. Edda picked up a sapphire and tested it, and sure enough, blue leaf peeled away and got stuck under her nail.

“What about the pearls?” Anne asked, handing Kenley a string of them.

Kenley promptly put the string in his mouth and ground his teeth on them. He shook his head and handed it back.

“Fake. Real pearls are gritty, but these are perfectly smooth. Try it for yourself,” he said.

Anne hesitated, but Joan happily took the string of pearls and chomped on them.

“It’s like a marble,” Joan said.

“Joanie, don’t chew on those,” Edda said.

“Fake jewels for a fake saint. We can’t even fence these,” Blythe said.

“At least the crabs were real. We’ll eat well tonight,” Edda said.

“My teeth hurt,” Joan whined.

“What do we do about this, Ed? Do we go to the constable and tell him what we saw?” Blythe asked.

“Constable’s not going to help us,” Kenley snorted.

“He’s right. The constable won’t believe us over Father Thomas, and he’d probably accuse us of stealing,” Edda said.

“Well, you did steal, even if it is all fake,” Anne said.

“We can’t let it go. You said it yourself last night, Ed. We have to do right by Arabella,” Blythe said.

“And we will,” Edda said. She’d barely slept, her mind spinning with ideas, a plan taking shape.

“What are we going to do, Ed?” Blythe.

Edda grinned.

“We’re going to haunt Chilton Dawe.”

***

The first night of the haunting, only Blythe and Kenley went with Edda. Five years had passed since the gang had been invited to Arabella Robins’s home, but Edda still remembered every nook and cranny. Chilton Dawe had sold almost everything and replaced the furnishings with plainer, uglier versions, and the back garden was a weedy mess. But the trellis could still bear their weight as they climbed up to the roof, though it wobbled a bit.

Blythe pitched her voice high and sang wordlessly down the chimney. Then Edda and Kenley stomped as hard as they could on the roof. They ran back and forth, and then they stomped again. Eventually, they heard banging from inside the house: footsteps thundering up the stairs, going into the attic. Edda and Kenley concentrated their stomps, following the sounds from the attic as Chilton Dawe shouted, “Who goes there! Show yourself!”

Dawe came outside to investigate, a sword in his hand, but Edda and the others crouched low and stayed out of sight. Cursing loudly, Dawe eventually went back inside, and once there was no more sound from within the house, the three climbed back down and went home, avoiding the watchman.

“Do you really think some noises and singing will do anything?” Kenley asked.

“Maybe not tonight, but over time, he might well go mad,” Blythe said.

“Mad enough to confess, even, and not to a priest,” Edda said.

And so, the three returned to Dawe nearly every night to stomp on his roof and sing into his chimney. Anne came after the first few nights, running around the sides of the house and tapping on windows and walls. If Dawe came close to discovering her, Kenley would pelt the garden with stones to draw his attention away from Anne.

Chilton Dawe began patrolling his home at odd hours, looking for the source of the noises. Lanterns stayed lit in the windows late into the night, and Dawe was spied in the town muttering under his breath, dark bags under his eyes from lack of sleep.

That’s when Edda decided it was time to make things worse.

The gang deployed throughout the town. Kenley and Anne kept an eye on Dawe from afar while they hawked coifs, while Blythe waited around the bend from his home, ready to run and warn Edda the moment she saw him to warn her of his return. Edda, meanwhile, sneaked into the home Dawe had robbed from Arabella, making easy work of the side door lock.

She stepped out of her boots, which she left outside to avoid tracking in dirt. She went to the bed chambers, pulled back the blankets, and sprinkled rose thorns throughout the sheets before remaking the bed. She sprinkled more around the chamber pot.

Then Edda rifled through the jewelry box, finding men’s watches and pocket squares, but the real prize was a long string of pearls. Arabella’s own pearls, a gift from Mr. Robins when they had first married, their initials engraved in the silver clasp. Arabella had worn those pearls every day, a reminder of happier days and the man she loved, and had told Edda and the others she wanted to be buried with them one day. That the pearls sat discarded and forgotten in the bottom of a wooden box seemed unbearably sad to Edda.

Edda took the pearls and left them looped on the pillows, as if Arabella herself was sleeping there. And then inspiration struck her, and she used a thorn to prick her thumb, and squeezed blood onto the pearls.

“Ed! He’s coming!” Blythe cried from down the stairs.

Edda ran back down, trailing rose thorns behind her until her bag was empty. Fast as quicksilver she had her boots on, and then she and Blythe ran away from the house in the opposite direction before Chilton Dawe came up the hill.

It was past dark before the others returned to the boarding house, big grins on their faces.

“What took you so long? Why didn’t you return straightaway?” Edda asked.

“We waited to see how he’d react. He screamed when he went upstairs, and we heard weeping. Those thorns must be sharp,” Anne said.

Edda and Blythe grinned at each other. He’d found the pearls.

“Now what, Ed? More thorns? Drums?” Kenley asked.

She worried the pinprick in her thumb until it welled with blood again.

“We wait and see what he does next. If he doesn’t surrender himself to the law, we’ll make him wish he had,” Edda said.

***

Anne and Joan went on reconnaissance. Anne was barely fourteen, but with a bit of creative make-up and a bonnet pulled low, wearing Ms. Brewer’s clothes they had ‘borrowed,’ she could almost pass for an older woman, Joan posing as her daughter. Edda and Kenley had worked on turning a bit of wire into a fake gold ring for Anne to wear, which Kenley had very shyly given her. Having donned their disguises, Anne and Joan began to attend daily mass at the Church of the Virgin, keeping their eyes open for either Chilton Dawe or Father Thomas.

They didn’t have to wait long. Only a few days after Edda had left Arabella’s bloody pearls on the pillows, Dawe attended Mass. When he went to receive Communion from Father Thomas, he whispered in earnest to the man, and Joan had caught the words “tomorrow” and “extra sister.”

“Extra sister?” Edda asked as they debriefed after the spinsters had gone to bed. She looked at Blythe.  “What could that be?”

Blythe rubbed her chin, deep in thought.

“Exorcism?” she suggested.

“Yeah! That’s it! Extra sister!” Joan said.

“An exorcism tomorrow, with Father Thomas. Maybe the bishop will convince him to confess to the constable,” Anne said.

“The bishop is guilty too, at least of graverobbing. He may only perform the exorcism and wash his hands of it,” Blythe said.

“So we make sure the bishop is haunted, too. Right, Ed?” Kenley asked.

“That’s right. Tomorrow we’ll scare them near to death.”

***

The gang finished their morning chores as quickly as possible, and slipped away to sell in the market before the spinsters could say otherwise. Anne and Joan donned their mother-daughter disguises again, taking a leisurely stroll through the neighborhood while the others prepared for Father Thomas’s arrival. It was a dreary, gray day, thunder threatening rain, but they only needed the weather to hold long enough for Father Thomas and Chilton Dawe to return.

Kenley climbed the stairs to get the pearls, while Edda and Blythe went to the drawing room. They found Arabella’s Bible, tucked unforgotten on the shelf, and Blythe quickly searched for the appropriate verse.

“Here! This one,” Blythe said.

Edda unstopped the vial of blood she had brought, drained from the chickens they’d had for dinner not four nights ago, and placed a few drops around the verse, gilding it with blood. They laid the Bible in the ashes of the hearth, and Edda left a trail of blood from the drawing room to the front door.

Kenley still hadn’t returned. Edda ran up the stairs to help, but found him pocketing the watch and cufflinks from the jewelry box.

“We could fence them,” he said defensively.

She clicked her tongue. She should have known he would be distracted by shiny things. At least he’d found the pearls, though, which he’d set out beside the box.

“Just don’t take so much they think this was only a robbery after all. Remember this is for Arabella,” Edda said.

Guiltily, Kenley put back the cufflinks, but the watch he kept while Edda took the pearls. Kenley took out his pocket knife and scratched a long line all the way down to the first floor where Blythe waited for them. Edda looped the pearls around the door handles to the drawing room, and shook out the last drops of blood from the vial over them.

Joan and Anne suddenly came running into the house. They doubled over, panting.

“They’re almost here! They’re in a carriage!” Anne said.

“How close?” Edda asked.

“Right behind us!” Joan said.

Edda pulled aside a corner of the drapes and cursed under her breath. A black carriage had arrived, the coachman standing out in the street, while Chilton Dawe and Father Thomas climbed out. The coachman had a view of both the front and the side door, and the two men would be inside in moments.

“Quick! Everyone hide!” Edda said.

The gang scattered. Joan folded herself into a cabinet in the kitchen. Anne and Kenley crouched inside the cupboard under the stairs. Blythe and Edda went to the back of the house, looking for a window to open into the garden so they could all escape. But the wood was warped, the windows stuck.

“If they catch us—” Blythe whispered.

“I know, I know! We have to find a way out!” Edda whispered back.

The front door swung open, and they became still as stone. The two men spoke in low, hushed tones, quieting as they saw the trail of blood. Edda pressed up against the wall of the dining room, listening in.

“There! On the door! Those are her pearls!” Dawe said.

“You are quite sure you did not leave them there?” Father Thomas asked.

“Of course I’m sure! For what reason would I tie them around the handles? When I left this morning to fetch you, they were safely packed away. I tell you, we must return Arabella to her grave. We’ll find another to take her place,” Dawe said.

“She has already been sent to the convent, and the nuns have made much progress decorating her skeleton. It’s too late to replace her,” Father Thomas said.

Dawe removed the pearls and entered the drawing room. Edda crept along the wall and stared in through the gap between the opened door and the frame. Blythe bumped into her, and they huddled together.

Father Thomas was removing the Bible from the ashes of the hearth. He paled as he found the verse dotted by blood, and looked up at Dawe.

“Well? What is it?” Dawe asked.

“You shall not hurt a widow or an orphan. If you hurt them they will cry out to me, and I will hear their cry,” the bishop said.

The two men stared at each other, and then suddenly they were yelling, enraged.

“This is the result of your greed! You could have courted Mrs. Robins properly, but you were too impatient! Plying her with drink, keeping her drunk for days until she couldn’t speak, paying another woman to say her vows for her and sign the marriage certificate—vile, wicked man!” Father Thomas said.

“And who was it that married us, while she was unconscious in the chair? Who was it that told me of the widow in the first place? You had no qualms when I let you have your pick of her jewelry. None of this would have happened without you!” Dawe said.

“I was only trying to save her from herself, lest she turn to whoredom! I never told you to kill her!”

Dawe was silent. The calm that settled over his face was far more terrifying than the rage that had possessed him before. He advanced on the bishop, and the bishop stepped back. Lightning flashed through the windows, and thunder shook the house.

“I didn’t kill Arabella, Father. Why would you think that?” he asked.

“I’m no fool; she didn’t die in her sleep, she had bruises on her neck. I know what you did to her. If I hadn’t spoken to the constable, you would have been sent to gaol and hung from the gallows,” Father Thomas said.

“That makes you as guilty of her death as I. We are both damned, Father.”

Suddenly, Dawe grabbed the fire poker from its stand and stabbed it through the bishop’s heart. Edda jerked back from the door and stumbled over an upturned corner of the rug. She kept from falling, but her foot came back down heavy as she regained her balance.

“Leave me be, Arabella! I will not quit this house!” Dawe cried.

Dawe threw the door open the rest of the way, and paused as he stared at Edda and Blythe, and they stared back, frozen in time. His lips curled up in a sneer, and his eyes turned black with fury.

“What are you doing in my house?” he bellowed.

“Murderer!” Blythe bellowed back. “We heard your confession, we witnessed you murder the Holy Father—you’ll hang!”

“Ah, well. I’m already consigned to hell—what’s two more?” he said to himself, and then he swung the poker.

Edda jerked Blythe down to the floor with her, the poker slashing through the air over their heads. They scrabbled backwards out of Chilton Dawe’s path as he swung down, and the tip of the poker tore a line of blood down Edda’s shin. She cried out, her leg burning with pain.

Anne and Kenley burst from under the cupboard, throwing shoes, moldy books, and anything else they could find at Dawe, who was momentarily stunned by an old boot striking his head. Joan ran out from the kitchen and pelted him with cups. Blythe grabbed Edda under her armpits and dragged her away across the rug while he batted the cups aside. Dawe whirled back on the two of them and, ignoring the others, charged forward with the iron poker held high.

Lightning struck the roof and the very foundation shook. Every glass window shattered; every lantern went out. The wind howled, throwing back the curtains. From the fluttering linen emerged a pale woman with dark, billowing hair, purple bruises on her neck.

Arabella had kept her promise.

“No. No!” Dawe cried, dropping the poker as he stumbled back.

The late Arabella Robins glided across the floor, staring down her murderer. Dawe hit the wall, screaming in terror as she approached. His screams faded to gasps, and he clutched his chest, slid down the wall, and crumpled on the floor. His wide eyes stayed on Arabella, and then he simply deflated, and he did not draw another breath.

Chilton Dawe was dead.

When Arabella turned to the others, Edda wasn’t afraid. She breathed easy, no longer feeling the pain in her leg. Arabella regarded them all with one of her warm, kind smiles, and between one flash of lightning and the next, she was gone.

***

The new saint was finally interred in the church, and Edda and the rest of the gang joined the procession with the townspeople. Paraded in a gold-gilded glass shrine, Arabella’s skeleton was resplendent, jewels and pearls sewn on the gauze wrapping every bone, sapphire eyes in golden starbursts gazing out at the parishioners. The glass shrine was installed on the altar, where anyone could see Arabella in all her finery.

The deaths of Father Thomas and Chilton Dawe were the talk of the town. The investigation had led to the conclusion that Chilton Dawe, possessed by a devil, had murdered Father Thomas during a failed exorcism, and then God had struck Chilton Dawe dead. A tidy, closed case. It didn’t quite feel like justice: Arabella was still dead, and Father Thomas’s reputation intact, but at least neither he nor Dawe could hurt anyone else.

When at last Edda and the gang were able to approach the shrine, she gave Blythe’s hand a squeeze, both a comforting gesture and a moment of gratitude towards the other girl for tenderly wrapping new gauze around Edda’s healing leg every night. No, it wasn’t quite justice, but Edda felt at peace.

Saint Arabella watched over the orphans now with her sapphire eyes, her string of pearls returned to their rightful place around her neck.