Oxford, 1881:

Danvers shifted uneasily. He had never felt at home in parlours. He had been brought up to think of them as women's places, where you had to avoid indelicate topics of conversation, and where the slightest movement of your elbows could overturn an antique vase or an alabaster figurine.

This one was different only in so much as it was crowded with easels instead of vases. In some cases, the paint on the canvas was still wet, giving off a heavy, chemical smell that was making him feel quite light-headed. At least, he hoped it was the smell. It could easily have been the scenes depicted in the paintings. But as the only man in the room, he felt it was incumbent on him to show a bit more backbone.

Miss Hope and her mother had lit some candles, although dawn was beginning to creep over the window now, watering down the darkness to the colour of gruel. The two sources of light didn't complement each other, and certainly didn't add up to much illumination. They were both sickly and fitful, and compounded his urgent desire to be somewhere else.

"I've been painting ever since I got back," said Miss Hope, noticing his nervous glances at the easels. She had taken off her bonnet and shawl, but the gloves remained emphatically in place.

Behind her, Mrs Hope was putting out the tea-things, tight-lipped and silent. She looked as though she was doing all of this—letting Danvers into the house, offering him tea and seedcake—against her better judgement.

"I couldn't stop," Emma went on, her eyes still on the paintings. "I hope they'll be used as evidence in a court of law someday. But mostly, I think, I just wanted to get the images out of me. They can explain, far better than I can, what you want to know."

Danvers inspected them politely, even though he would rather have inspected a mouldering corpse.

He had seen a lot of dreadful things since Dr Petrescu had asked him for help in freeing Jack from his spell. He had seen Mrs Darwin advocating magic, he had heard tales of captured young women with no fingernails, he had seen a perfect, living replica of Miss Syal, kept in a cupboard, and created for purposes he didn't like to think about.

But this was worst of all. Maybe it was the half-light, or the strange, chemical smell, but the paintings seemed to breathe their unwholesome atmosphere into the room. When he looked at them, he felt as though he was underground himself, tasting the steam and sulphur.

They showed caves of black rock—not lofty and cool, but crowded, hot, and steamy—lit by jewels that glittered in the rockface, and fires that danced on the surface of the underground lakes. Dark figures loomed out of the shadow and steam—some of them big and muscular, shaped like the gargoyles that had been chasing Miss Syal over the rooftops, some of them thin and small and frighteningly delicate, young women with their heads bowed and their shoulders slumped, clutching pickaxes.

There were sketches too, with rampant shading and mad, zig-zagging lines. Mostly, they depicted the same, gargoyle-like creatures, but, in one instance, there was a human face—as unremarkable as a man you would pass on a station platform, taking the train to Waterloo. He wore spectacles and an ascot tie. It looked as though the pencil had bitten quite deeply into the paper as Miss Hope had worked on his portrait.

He tried to bring a scientist's mind to bear on these images—the way Dr Petrescu or Mrs Darwin would have done. But the only neutral observation he could think of was, "You have... quite a skill, Miss Emma."

Emma inhaled sharply through her nose. "Is that all you can say? I didn't dream it, you know." She slipped off one of her gloves and held up the back of her hand for his inspection. Where there should have been fingernails, there were now only scars—white and puckered, as though old age had come to her prematurely. Danvers felt his stomach heave.

"I was there," she said, pointing at the canvas with her horribly damaged fingers. "I was one of them."

Mrs Hope laid a hand on Emma's shoulder. She was staring into the middle distance with a strange expression, her mouth clamped firmly shut.

Emma shut her eyes and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Mr Danvers. I just—I didn't know much about men—or males—before I went away, and now it's hard for me to remember that they're not all—well—like them." She pointed to a gargoyle-figure in the painting, and Danvers noticed a detail he hadn't seen before. The gargoyle was holding a whip—not the slim, leather kind, but a flail, with multiple strands and a tiny hook on the end of each.

It was the last straw. He didn't know why, but it was. He suddenly stood up, knocking the nearest easel off-balance. It teetered but didn't fall. And his hostesses were just looking at him with calm, resigned eyes, waiting to see what he would do next. He sat down again, too sickened to even feel foolish. "You were a slave?"

"Is it so hard to believe?" said Emma. "Not so long ago, our merchants traded in them. And it's less than twenty years since slavery was abolished in America."

Her mother's hand tightened on her shoulder, and she sighed. "You have to understand, I don't think you're personally responsible for all this. My tone might imply that, but I'm not—I mean, I was only there for two years. Believe it or not, the others think of me as the most soft-hearted one amongst them."

"I don't under—"

"Yes, I know," said Emma, lowering her eyes wretchedly. Her mother had pressed a cup of tea into her hands. "I should start at the beginning, I suppose—although that's the part I remember least. When I was fifteen, my mother sent me to the covered market to buy tea. I'd had a fight with her, you see, and I was going under protest, so when I didn't come back, everybody assumed I'd run away."

Danvers looked at Mrs Hope, who was still staring calmly into the middle distance, as though unaware how convulsively she was clutching Emma's shoulder. He felt dreadfully sorry for her, but all he could think to say was, "This looks like wonderful seedcake, Mrs Hope."

"Anyway," said Emma hastily, as though she wanted to keep her mother from being drawn into the conversation, "what had really happened was that his agents had taken me." She nodded at the sketch of the human face, with all its deep, angry pencil lines. "They get you in crowded places—markets, fairs, and festivals—where there's a lot of noise and a lot of shadow to lurk in. They're completely human, so they can blend in very easily, but they—and their fathers and grandfathers—have been working for the gargoyles for hundreds of years. Or rather, helping the gargoyles to work for them."

"It's a strange, symbiotic relationship," she added, raising her teacup, and taking a shaky sip. "His agents abduct young women and bring them down to the caves, where the gargoyles keep us, and use us to mine the gems and minerals that are so abundant down there. It has to be women, because of the rock. The gargoyles' society used to be dominated by women, back in the days of Eve, and they left charms in place to ensure that only other females could persuade the rock to part with its riches. Anyway, after we've mined them, the gargoyles give these gems and minerals to his agents, in return for supplying them with slaves. But the agents also perform an additional service for the gargoyles—the main one, as far as they're concerned. They suppress knowledge. They hunt down old manuscripts and burn them. And, if they can't destroy a certain book, they'll guard it, and kill anyone who attempts to read it. The gargoyles rely on his agents to stamp out all knowledge of Eve, and how to bring her back."

"I'm sorry?" said Danvers, his cup of tea frozen midway to his lips. "Bring her back? But isn't she dead?"

"No, Mr Danvers. Well, yes and no. You can't kill her. She goes around in cycles. And she's due to return. Overdue, in fact."

"But I've seen her in the glass case in Christchurch Meadow," Danvers protested. "She's been embalmed. They've replaced her eyes with marbles..."

Emma waved a hand. "I don't pretend to understand it any better than you do. Understanding it can only put you in danger. Ellini understood it, and his agents hunted her for years. They didn't even give up when they saw she was protected by Jack Cade. One agent after another was hurled at her until one of them got through. Anyway," she went on, wrinkling her forehead, "I was telling you about the fire mines."

"His agents have been abducting women to be slaves to the gargoyles for hundreds of years. It has to be women, and not just because of the rock charms. The fire mines are difficult to enter. They were once underground temples, consecrated to the earth mother. There's an ancient spell on the stones which ensures that, if you're not a demon, you have to be at least a female, in order to get past the threshold."

"Once you've been brought down to the fire mines, the gargoyles mark you as their own by tearing out your fingernails." Emma gave a cold shrug and took another sip of tea. "It makes tremendously poor sense, because, once you've had your nails torn out, you're not fit to grope around for gems in the rockface for weeks, but Ellini thinks it's symbolic. The gargoyles never trim their claws. They can't see, of course, so they communicate by leaving scratch-marks in the rock. I suppose, as far as they're concerned, taking away a woman's nails is like taking away her voice. Also, tearing out our fingernails meant we were unable to scratch their faces when they touched us."

Danvers was silent. It was a horrible, sickly, sweaty kind of silence, in which he was acutely aware of the dryness of his throat, and the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. He felt a mad urge to apologize for breathing too loudly—or for anything—but everything seemed insufficient, as though it would insult her.

"It doesn't matter," said Emma, almost to herself. "As I was saying, young women have been living, working and dying in the fire mines for centuries, and Charlotte Grey has existed among us almost from the very first moment. She was one of the first women they abducted—in the seventeenth century, I think—and she showed her fellow slaves how to survive. She found a way to steal food. The gargoyles never fed them enough to live on. I don't think they really understood about humans. Perhaps they meant to be kind, but you'll forgive me if I'm sceptical about that."

"Anyway," she went on, a little unsteadily, "Charlotte Grey was so often in trouble that, over the years, her name became another word for 'scapegoat'. The women had to steal to survive, but the gargoyles would always want to punish whoever had done the stealing, so the women took it in turns to call themselves Charlotte Grey and accept the punishment. It was easy enough to fool the gargoyles because they couldn't see. And to ensure that Charlotte Grey always smelled the same to them, the scapegoat would cover herself in sandalwood oil, which the gargoyles used to pour over their altars to the earth mother. Even after the real Charlotte Grey died, we went on using her name, and covering ourselves with sandalwood whenever we were feeling strong, and the others were feeling weak. It was a way of ensuring that no one woman had to take too much punishment. It was also a way of keeping the new slaves alive, because a lot of them would bleed to death, or die of infected wounds, when they had their fingernails removed. By taking turns as Charlotte Grey, we could steal food and medicine for the new girls and take the punishment while they recuperated."

Against all expectations, a fond, nostalgic smile suddenly settled on Emma's face, as though she was remembering a golden age. "When I first got there, Ellini played Charlotte Grey for me more times than I'd care to remember. She was... well, if anyone can really be good at taking punishment, it's her. She was the best Charlotte Grey when I was there—always stepping up to suffer in somebody else's place. As such, she was practically our leader. Maybe we were over-reliant on her. Maybe we took advantage. Perhaps that's why she's in the terrible position she's in now. But she was so... unflinching. And then, of course, there was her hair. That always seemed mystical. It was difficult not to take it as a sign."

"What about her hair?" said Danvers.

Emma blinked at him, nonplussed. "Oh, of course. You don't know. When you've been in the fire mines for a few months, the flames and the sulphur bleach your hair. Every woman who's ever worked there has had white-blonde hair like mine—even the original Charlotte Grey. But Ellini was immune. When we weren't calling her Charlotte Grey—which was a lot of the time, believe me—we called her 'the brunette'. It made us think of her as a kind of Messianic figure who'd been sent to lead us all to freedom." Emma's smile faded, and she looked wretchedly down at the teacup in her hands. "I think she rather took that to heart."

Danvers allowed her silence to continue for a few moments, thinking—without much conviction—that it might be therapeutic in some way. But it weighed on him instead, the longer it went on, so he muttered, "Was there no way out?"

He felt stupid for even asking. As though they wouldn't have tried all possible methods of escape, when the alternative was so much misery! But after all, she was here above ground, talking to him, so there must have been some way out, for some of them.

"Yes," said Emma. "There was a way up into the caves under the Gogmagog hills. That's in Cambridgeshire," she added, seeing his blank expression. "The entrance to the fire mines is there—but, like I said, only for women. There was a narrow fissure in the rock between the fire mines and the Gogmagog caves. You could inch through it with a lot of struggling and scraping. We mainly used it for getting out to steal food. In fact, the locals had so often glimpsed a white-haired young woman in black rags that they thought we were all the same person—some kind of local nature spirit—and left out offerings of food and wine for us. It's funny how you can get completely the wrong end of the stick, but still be helpful."

Danvers tried to smile but wasn't entirely sure he'd managed it.

"Anyway," said Emma, "the fissure was too long and too narrow to use as an escape route. Maybe one or two women could get out before they were missed—but then the gargoyles would know there was a way out, and the women who were left behind would have no chance of ever getting home and would suffer for their companions' freedom. That's the strange thing about the Charlotte Grey arrangement," Emma explained. "When your fellow slaves have been tortured on your behalf, and you've endured the same for them, you never really feel like saving yourself and leaving the others."

Her face darkened. "At least, most of us don't. Violet was different. She only ever thought about herself."

Danvers's jaw dropped. "Violet Pike? From the Chemistry Faculty?"

But then, he had already known that, hadn't he? He'd heard her asking Miss Syal how she'd escaped. They had talked about her glued-on fingernails. And however much he tried to defend her, he couldn't imagine Miss Violet agreeing to be tortured on behalf of some other girl.

Emma held up a hand in protest. "Don't ask me about her, Mr Danvers, or I shall become even more indelicate. She betrayed us, and there's an end of it."

Danvers didn't want to argue with her. He looked down at his teacup, and muttered, "Please tell me about the terrible position you say Miss Syal is in."

Emma's face grew still darker, but this seemed like a topic she was more willing to discuss. "Once—about a month ago, I suppose—he came down." She nodded again at the heavily pencilled sketch. "He couldn't come into the fire mines because he's a human male, so he waited in the caves under the Gogmagog hills. He'd come to see this troublemaker—this Charlotte Grey—that the gargoyles had told him about."

Emma raised her hand and then lowered it again, frowning. "But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. Before that—before we even knew what was going on—the gargoyles called for Charlotte Grey. And it wasn't even her turn," she added, her eyes filling up with agitation. "It was Katherine's. But Katherine was so weak, and Ellini was so... Ellini, you know? So calm and unreachable that you'd think nothing could ever hurt her. So we let her volunteer. We thought it would just be another whipping. But they took her up to him, and he has eyes, and he saw her. Nobody else could ever be Charlotte Grey again. And, worse still, he... he fastened on her. He was convinced the slaves were plotting against him—he was convinced there was going to be some kind of rebellion. He was paranoid beyond belief. He couldn't understand that we had nothing, not even our fingernails—"

Danvers looked up at Mrs Hope expectantly, wondering why she didn't squeeze Emma's shoulder again, since it seemed to be such an infallible method of calming her down. But Mrs Hope had her eyes shut. He suddenly remembered that she worked at the police station, and that Ellini Syal had been brought there in handcuffs and treated like a criminal. And all the time, Mrs Hope had known that this young lady had been tortured in her daughter's place. It couldn't have been a nice thing to go through.

But why was everybody being so stoic about this? Why was there so much suffering in silence, and so little talking—and shouting? Why weren't there people with placards in the streets making everyone aware of this despicable treatment of English women?

"He thought Charlotte Grey was the leader of this non-existent rebellion," said Emma, her voice steely and steady once more. "That's what happens, isn't it, when men look at Ellini? They get fixated on her. I only ever knew her in the fire mines, where there was only women and eyeless gargoyles, but now we're in the real world, I can see her effect. At any rate, it worked on him. He was obsessed with the idea that he had to keep her locked up—that she was going to depose him if he let her out of his sight for a second. He tortured her for information on conspiracies that didn't even exist. And that—incredibly—was when she had her big idea."