Myrrha had taken to removing the King of Spades from her pack of playing cards, because she couldn't stand knowing the future where he was concerned. Robin had always been her blind-spot in life, so she supposed it was fitting he should be her blind spot in fortune-telling.

She could, in theory, have compensated for her ignorance by finding out about Ellini, because it seemed they were always together these days. But the last time she had dealt out the Queen of Spades, it had caught fire. Now it was charred and black and didn't yield any visions at all. Ellini had found some way – perhaps without knowing it – to screen herself from Myrrha's divination.

She really was a provoking woman. After decades of reading the most dangerous books and never doing anything with her knowledge, she finally chose to apply the things she'd learnt at a time when Myrrha could really have used a clearer picture of what was going on.

But no – she didn't want to know what was going on as long as it involved Robin. There were enough reminders of him here, especially since she was occupying the state bedroom she had shared with him in happier days.

Everything in Pandemonium had been modelled on Versailles, except the windows. These were small and shuttered and ideally suited to keeping out the sunlight. So the palace was filled with crystal chandeliers and gilt furniture, but the only light that could play across these objects was the candlelight, which dulled their sparkles to a queasy kind of sheen.

Fabienne had been bustling about trying to modernize the place, suggesting things such as gas-lighting and indoor plumbing. But until she could prove that they'd had such things in hell, the inhabitants of Pandemonium didn't want to hear about them.

Fabienne bustled into the bedroom now, opening the shutters with a bang, and spilling sunlight all over Myrrha's cards. It couldn't have been more off-putting if she'd emptied a jug of water over them, but Myrrha kept her temper, because watching Fabienne banging about in a bad mood was one of her favourite pastimes, and it was best enjoyed with a clear head.

You could tell she was in a bad mood because she sat heavily on the edge of the bed, causing the mattress to exhale dust clouds. 

"Your relatives are primeval," she said, lying back on the bed, with her cigarette-holder clenched between her teeth. "They've never heard of carbolic soap, and they still think disease is caused by bad smells. When I tried to tell them their well was much too close to their privy, they just suggested hanging some posies of lavender round it."

Myrrha shrugged. "It couldn't hurt."

"That is not the governing precept on which medical theory is based."

"Quite the opposite, in fact," said Myrrha, trying not to let Fabienne see how much she was enjoying herself. "You can put up with them for a few more weeks, Fabby." She glanced into the mirror to try and gauge her friend's expression, but could only see the cigarette holder, with its intermittent puffs of smoke, poking up from Fabienne's position.

"What about you?" said Fabby at last. "Have you-?" Her voice grew uncomfortable, as it always did when she was forced to allude to Myrrha's magic. "Have you been keeping an eye on the little mother? Does she still only have John Danvers for company?"

"It's not such a hardship," said Myrrha, with a faint smile. "He played a decent game of Questions and Commands."

"And does it seem as though she's going to call up the infernal legions and make war on us?"

"She's more interested in reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica. You know, that's more or less what happened last time. But back then, being a woman who read was an act of war on its own."

Myrrha paused, eager but casual. She had made a discovery, and she wanted to boast about it, but she wasn't sure where the conversation might lead. Still, being unsure of anything was an exotic luxury when you were as old as Myrrha, so she licked her lips with a touch of excitement before going on.

"It's interesting that she's blind. Everything else in her body apparently regenerated, but not her eyes."

Fabienne didn't stir from her prone position on the bed. "Why is that interesting?"

"Because I know what happened to her eyes."

The next card she put down was the Ace of Spades. For a moment she looked at it with a kind of smug despair, exulting in the fact that Eve wasn't connected to her. None of the numerous lights that twinkled on Eve's skin corresponded to the lonely life of Myrrha Crake. And, as they went out or winked into existence, she was just the same: just as old, just as young, just as dependent, just as independent. Just as Myrrha.

"Are you going to tell me what happened to her eyes?" said Fabienne irritably.

"Certainly, if you like. I don't know how much you know about the events after Eve's execution. Even the most morbid historians tend to skip over that part, although the records are there for anyone who wants to read them."

"Do you mean how she was embalmed?" said Fabby. "And positioned in that glass case?"

"Exactly. After she was hanged, there was a lot of debate – one of those tedious theological controversies – about what should be done with her body. To bury it or burn it would have seemed like returning her to the demons, since they lived underground in a realm of fire. They wanted to keep her isolated. And above all, they wanted to ensure she wouldn't rise again. That seems like a reasonable precaution, given what we know, but remember, they knew none of this. They might have suspected that a demon would be hard to kill, but they had no idea that Eve's life was cyclical rather than linear."

"Now, the bishops who condemned her to death didn't have the courage to do the actual executing, and neither did they have the courage to cut her up afterwards. Instead, they determined to use people they could control, but who they wouldn't miss if there should be any kind of infernal retribution. That meant poor people, or women – ideally both. In the end, it was decided that all the embalmers should be women in any case, because it was thought that, even in death, Eve's beauty could bewitch men to their doom."

Fabienne snorted, but Myrrha decorously ignored her.

There was the question – as there always was with Fabby – of how much to tell her. Myrrha respected her, in a way. She respected her sheer, contemptuous independence, because it was exactly what she herself had been cursed with. And Fabby made it seem like a cheerful state of being, instead of an endlessly lonely one.

She enjoyed giving Fabby little hints, seeing how far her intelligence would take her. And there would be some entertainment value in telling her that she had been part of that all-female embalming committee three hundred years ago, just to see the look on her face. But there would be no other reason to confide in her. And, besides, her carefully preserved ignorance was more entertaining than any shocked expression could be.

"It was actually a very important step along the road to allowing women to train as surgeons," Myrrha went on. "It's also the reason why there are some spiteful touches in Eve's treatment after her death that are peculiarly feminine. It was their idea, for example, to embalm her in that snarling pose, with her teeth bared, so that she'd always be remembered as a monster. At any rate, the embalming-process was like nothing else the church had sanctioned, before or since. The bishops, as I said, were determined to try everything to ensure she didn't rise again. Proud, high churchmen resorted to spells and incantations and old wives' tales. They set up an embalming room equipped with herbs and garlic and wax dolls – all the folk remedies they could think of to deter the dead from rising from their graves. And then they set their female surgeons to work."

Myrrha paused, her eyes shining. Oh, the equipment in that room! Knives of brass, knives of gold, knives of silver. Knives sharpened at the full moon, or tempered in the blood of a virgin. They had rubbed the corpse with every herb they could think of, had stuffed her mouth with poppy seeds, and staked her heart before removing it. Then they had buried it at a cross-roads. It had all been good fun, on Myrrha's part, but the women who'd been helping her had been motivated by sheer terror.

It was the freedom Eve represented – the freedom that seemed to have brought the hordes of darkness up through the cracks in the earth. That was how outrageous it was for a woman to live for books and learning, instead of children and love. It terrified them. It made them feel that her guilt was theirs.

And, just like Ellini Syal, they were savage in punishing their own guilt, when they would have been merciful with others. 

"One of the embalmers," said Myrrha, "experimented with a knife that had been carved from a bone of the last woman to have brought Eve to life. Guess which part of the corpse's anatomy this knife was used on?"

"The eyes?" said Fabienne, sitting up at last.

Myrrha didn't answer. She liked to let Fabby's intelligence do most of the work. Instead, she said, with no trace of modesty:

"This embalmer was very clever, because that's exactly the way magic works. It's to do with what makes a good story, and it's utterly opposed to what makes scientific fact. If you're a good story-teller, you can be a good sorceress. There's something wonderfully evocative about the idea that the bones of your mother – your life-giver – should be the only things which could eternally kill you. But there's no practical, logical reason why it should be the case. Bones are just concretions of minerals. Their role in the human body is purely structural; they're basically just hangers for draping flesh on. But they have such a fearful hold over the imagination, don't they? Because they were once inside a living creature, and, years after that creature's death, they're all that remains."

"Extraordinary," said Fabienne. "Does it have to be the bones of her most recent resurrecter? So, for example, if one were to kill Miss Syal, and make a dagger from her bones-?"

"Oh, why be so restrained?" Myrrha giggled. "You could make a whole sword from one of her femurs."

"Well, whatever sort of weapon you chose," said Fabienne, waving this aside, "as long as it was made from Miss Syal's bones, it would kill Eve permanently? And the demons with her, I suppose?"

"Only the ones that are still connected to her. The ones that fall asleep when she dies."

"Don't they all do that?"

"Oh, no. Those charming gargoyle-creatures that chased Miss Syal over the rooftops didn't. There are ways to tear yourself from her – although, needless to say, they're all very taboo and sacrilegious."

Fabienne was silent, turning this information over in her mind. "What a pity we can't write a monograph about it."

"Why can't we?"

She frowned, and Myrrha almost clapped her hands with excitement to see the cogs turning in her head.

"Well, because then everyone would know how to kill Eve forever." When Myrrha didn't respond, she went on, "That's not what you want, surely? Most new-breeds regard her as the mother of their race. Even if she weren't, she's still an intelligent woman who has suffered at the hands of men. You made an exception for Ellini Syal, perhaps, but women like that are exactly the sort we should be helping."

"You know very well that I don't hate the men as much as the women who make it so easy for them," said Myrrha. "If you could see how domesticated this new Eve has become..."

"But you'd need Miss Syal..." said Fabienne, whose intelligence always worked faster than her moral outrage.

"Yes. And she has an extraordinary talent for disappearing."

Myrrha glanced at the daguerreotype which they had brought with them from the cottage and mounted on the ornate and peeling paper of the bedroom wall. Fabby had been sad to leave the jars of preserved genitals, but there had never been any question of leaving this. It showed the Wylies, at the first and only time when they'd been gathered together, all dressed in their Sunday best and sitting in rows like the committee of a Philanthropic Society. Most of them thought of themselves as members of a Philanthropic Society – one that did an invaluable service to womankind by showing them what men really were.

"Did you tell any of the others where we were going when we left Oxfordshire?" said Myrrha, nodding towards the daguerreotype.

"Of course. I write to them all, regularly."

Myrrha was interested, despite herself. "What about?"

"Oh, all kinds of things. We compare notes, share observations-"

"On the inadequacy of men?"

Fabby frowned again, and went on, in a slightly injured tone, "Inadequacy makes it seem like they're letting us down rather than trampling us under. We study the phenomenon, and console each other. The girls write me detailed descriptions of all the men they've placed under your spell to forget their loved ones, and all the loved ones who are subsequently educated about the real nature of mankind. Of course, after they've rejected their lovers, the men can go about looking very smug – which is why, I'm afraid, Isabella takes it upon herself to do something about them."

Myrhha turned back to the daguerreotype and searched for Isabella.

Oh, that one. Good heavens.

"Do any of them live in London at the moment?" she asked.

"Isabella lives in St. John's Wood."

"Hmmm," said Myrrha, picking up her pack of cards and shuffling them briskly. "This is going to sound like a strange request, but let me know if you stop hearing from Isabella, won't you?"