She lies down in her room with the door bolted shut. It is acceptable and expected for a woman of her standing to be an invalid. At first she wore only her shift, then drew the curtains closed and stripped down to nothing at all. She is sick of her stays, the lacing and unlacing they require, the way they push her breasts out and lift them up in a display appetizing to most men. She stretches her arms and legs out as far as they will go and meets with nothing, no wall of flesh blocking her way, but she is less alone now than she ever was when she shared the bed with her husband. Sounds follow her always, human voices that crowd in on her when her thoughts are idle and recede when she tries to grasp them. The voices are African and they hate her.
The servants don't bother her. They sit in the kitchen and eat and gossip all day. Her late husband used to browbeat them for the smallest of things: a dropped plate, an "insolent tone", any show of concern for his wife. Their new mistress is kind in comparison, barely asks for anything in fact, and if she's short with them immediately remembers to blame it on her grief. For them the house is quiet now, even peaceful.
She frantically shuts her ears against the voices, but it is no use.
They are in her soul, which is also her brother's—he said it wasn't, not anymore—if it is not then why does she hear them. James believes her dead now, presumably. She distantly wonders if the news was enough to break his stone face.
Laudanum quiets the voices a little bit. More, it quiets her. Without it she might pace the room and cry out. Without it she feels fragile, as if a casual touch might shatter her, yet at the same time as if she might run out this house and try to break the next man she sees (remembering again the feel of that night, the terrible joy in her hands), and what good would that do her? She never went to military seminary. Never went anywhere really, almost ten years sitting in this house, praying and embroidering that's what she did. No use to think about it now, no use to think. Better the laudanum. She's careful with the dosage though, never taking too much. There are two diamonds locked in a drawer in the sitting-room, reminding her to never take too much.
She takes just enough to silence her own screams, to bury them in a deeper grave, until no one at all can hear them, not even her. Until she is free to let the African words wash over her as meaningless as dreams or the slap of waves on a ship, and just lie there, waiting as she has done for ten years—waiting for her brother to come home.
…
And then, at last, she hears it again: not a ghost-voice but a witch-voice, a penetrating voice that cuts through her sleep. She recognizes it at once as James, not by the tone but by the language. "That awful bird-cackling," Mother had called it, when they were children.
"No, Mummy, Mummy, look!" Zilpha had said. It was not long after Mother had stopped letting her wear her hair in plaits. "Eepinis!" she'd said, grabbing an apple from the sideboard and holding it up proudly.
"Put that down Zilpha, you know it's not dinnertime yet." James, being older, had been whipped for not speaking proper English. She'd ran her fingers along the scars.
By the last days of her marriage she'd forgotten most of it, but remembered just enough to understand what needed to be done.
Kill him now and be free, the voice had told her, and she had obeyed.
If Horace had died while I was still alive, the voice says now, I would not be spending my days in bed. I would take his coin and go to war against them, as your brother has done.
Another veil in her mind is torn open, and she remembers: a woman's dark eyes somewhere above her, a face so much like hers as to make her heart break. Crying and hitting her brother with childish fists because he wouldn't take her upstairs anymore. Mother telling Father in an angry whisper, "At least one of your children should be brought up decently." This has been her life, her entire childhood: lies upon lies.
"Um-iiqsu!" she cries out, her face wet from crying, then claps her hand over her mouth—the servants will hear. She will have to think of something to tell them, to justify herself, or they will spread rumors all over London of her madness. And she already knows what is done to women who are mad. The voices are receding now. Her mother is dead. Only one phrase remains like an emissary across vast oceans, dazzling and radiant in three languages, words to be remembered and loved. It is not wrong to go back for that which has been forgotten. Would James really consign her to that life again? To be a proper English widow and pray on her knees each Sunday? She needs to see him again, to ask him. And she will, she realizes. She will.
It was his desire, fierce and unrelenting, that brought her to this place. His desire, slipping through the cracks in her dreams, pulling her up out of her sleep with ruthless and indomitable will. His desire that opened her eyes...
And now her eyes are open. What is done cannot be undone.