I was twenty-three years of age in March of 1862 when I traveled to my cousin’s home in the countryside of Wiltshire. The fifth day of that wretched month found me huddled in my carriage, the drizzly gray gloom outside soaking a bone-deep chill into every aching part of my body, which had been roughly abused by the long confinement and ill-kept roads over which I’d traveled coming up from Dartmoor.

I did not know then that these would be the closing days of ordinary life. The only suggestion of the monumental changes that were about to occur was the headache that had come upon me upon crossing the Dart River. The pain, as fine as tiny needles being pushed into my temples, increased as I crossed the chalk downs and approached Dulwich Manor.

At the time, I assumed this was due to anxiety, for my younger sister and her new husband were among the guests invited for an extended stay at my cousin’s sprawling country house. As I was long accustomed to contending with Alyssa without anything like this haunting megrim, I suppose I should not have made this rather obvious misattribution. But how could I have thought differently, back then?

The house was a large, ugly thing, squatting low on the land like a spider on a softly rounded hilltop.  Stones blacked with lichen and soot formed a plain rectangle of unadorned walls dotted liberally with cross-hatched windows, lying dormant under leaden skies.  There was no sign of life about it or any of the outbuildings.  Everyone had taken shelter from the rain.

I emerged into a light drizzle and drew the cowl of my cloak over my head.  At the top of the impressive set of carved steps a very correct looking servant waited.  “Emma Andrews, Mrs. Dulwich’s cousin,” I told him.

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