There was a letter waiting for me at Wilkes’ Manufactory of Limbs. Eb Wilkes showed me the letter and told me it had been forwarded by a nurse at Harewood. Wilkes then gazed at the child.
I made a face by way of stemming the tide of his inquiries and then squatted down and tugged the boy’s woollens into some kind of order. They were soiled, I noted, and smelled strongly of urine. I looked back up at Wilkes. “Sorry,” I said.
Eb just waited for me to continue, his eyes flickering first to Charles, then to me. Eb couldn’t quite look me in the eye. What was it about me, I wondered, that made me so unpleasant? “Am I sickly?” I asked. Gears. An awful sound travelling my circulatory system, like crashing waves. “I have killed someone,” I muttered leaning toward Eb.
It felt like a respite to
