Once Upon a River

Vaughan receives a letter from the fortune teller and follows its directions to the river, where the man is waiting for him. The man implies that for enough money, Robin will relinquish his claim on The Child. Vaughan offers 50 pounds and tries to leave, but the man stops him and demands a thousand pounds, the same amount of money Vaughan had paid in ransom two years prior. Vaughan sits on his jetty and becomes overwhelmed with despair, thinking of his lost daughter and contemplating suicide. He almost flings himself into the river to drown, but at the last moment catches himself on a rope tied to the jetty. He is reminded of Mrs. Constantine.

Content Warning: This chapter mentions the death of a child.

Vaughan returns to Mrs. Constantine’s home. He retells the events of the last six months, then relives what happened the night he delivered Amelia’s ransom two years prior. That night, he dropped the money at the designated bridge, but fell over a bundle on the ground as he was leaving. It contained Amelia’s body. He carried her to the river and let the river take the body away. In the present, he cries, then confesses that part of him wondered if this new child was Amelia after all, if she somehow survived that night without him realizing or knowing. He explain his current problem with the blackmailers. Mrs. Constantine says that Vaughan should tell Helena the truth. Once he has calmed down, he learns that she is not a medium but a therapist, and she describes her training in America.

Rita and Daunt travel to the Armstrong farm, discussing The Child and trying to hide their affections for each other. The younger Armstrong children welcome them with The Child amongst them. They set up for the pictures and Armstrong is disappointed that Robin is absent. Daunt takes a picture of Bess and Armstrong, then of the whole family. Armstrong gives Rita a tour of the farm, carrying The Child with them as he discusses how mysterious she is. Armstrong tells Rita about his childhood, reinforcing the isolation of growing up as a biracial child whose parents came from vastly different backgrounds. After his mother’s death, his stepfather dubbed him “Mr. Armstrong,” a name that belonged to neither of his biological parents. He uses the story of his upbringing to justify his love for Robin: “I see a child who could so easily have fallen between the cracks in families. […] My wish was always to ensure that he would always know he belonged in my heart” (352).

Daunt arrives with the completed family portrait, and Armstrong asks him about the picture of Maud. Daunt recalls some details about the man who was with the pig before everyone enjoys tea. Then Daunt and the children pose Armstrong with the animals and they take a perfect picture of a farmer at work. Inside, Rita and Bess discuss The Child and how exhausted she gets at night. When Rita asks to look at Bess’s eye, Bess explains the magical nature of her Seeing eye. After some prompting from Rita, Bess looks at The Child using her Seeing eye and realizes that The Child is “lost” and “wants to go home to her daddy” (358).

Rita and Daunt debate the viability of Bess’s Seeing eye while they sail with The Child; Rita believes it is more likely that Bess has gotten extraordinarily good at observing people after her difficult childhood. The Child seems content on the river, and when they reach Buscot Lodge she guides them to the house. The three enter the sitting room and discover Vaughan and Helena in tears. The Vaughans embrace The Child as Rita explains that the Armstrongs have sent her here, but the Vaughans tell Rita that they know The Child is not theirs. The adults sit by the river and watch The Child play as Vaughan recounts the night of the ransom. Before they return to the house, they offer to adopt The Child, even though she isn’t Amelia. Rita and Daunt ponder The Child’s true place once again, then resolve that they must discover the identity of Amelia’s murderer. They pose an idea to the Vaughans, who agree to help.

Daunt and Rita travel to Cricklade, the home of Amelia’s nurse Ruby, under the pretense of interviewing Ruby’s grandmother about the dragons of Cricklade. According to the old woman’s story, they set fire to the village decades prior. Daunt sets up a photo of the old woman next to a charred piece of stonework as Rita reveals she is from Buscot, leading to a conversation about Amelia. Rita admits that The Child who has been found is not Amelia, and the old woman tells them about some of Ruby’s hardships since Amelia went missing. This includes the recent cancellation of her wedding, because following the summer solstice people have been saying bad things about her. Rita asks if Ruby would be willing to help them uncover the culprit, and Ruby steps out of the house where she has been eavesdropping. Rita explains the plan while Daunt photographs the old woman, then asks Ruby why she left the lodge the night of the kidnapping. Exhausted after the years of secrets, “shoulders slumped, her voice flat and at the end of her strength, Ruby told” (371).

As they travel through the town of Kelmscott, Rita and Daunt stop to photograph a wishing well. He asks her to take the picture while he submerges his face to make a wish. As she starts to take the picture, she is struck by a thought and rushes to check his pulse as his face is submerged. After 18 seconds, he lifts his head, and she writes the count of his pulse down in her notebook. She asks how he feels, then reveals that his heart briefly stopped after his head was submerged for six seconds and that his pulse was very slow once it restarted. He is not excited by this discovery, and they pack up the camera in silence. Daunt confesses that if he was the type to make wishes, he would have wished for Rita and a child. They travel back to her cottage in silence, where he leaves her and departs for the Swan. Rita mourns his departure.

Heavy rains continue into autumn. At the Swan, patrons debate the circumstances of The Child, who the Vaughans now call Milly. Joe’s health continues to decline, and stories about The Child grow malicious. Daunt announces that he will be performing a magic lantern show at the Swan on the autumnal equinox. That day, the Swan is closed for preparations as Daunt organizes his assistants and the young Armstrong boys. In the afternoon, Rita arrives with a woman whose identity is shielded with a shawl. Margot’s daughters join the crowd. Shortly before the show, Jonathan allows people inside, where the inn’s largest room has been redecorated. The Armstrongs arrive without Robin, but the Vaughans stay away. Lily is the last to arrive, carrying a basket with a puppy inside that she intends to give to The Child.

Daunt begins the show, during which a light is shined through a series of glass prints to create images projected on the wall. The first shows the Vaughan house, while the second shows the Vaughans standing in front of it with a two-year-old in their arms. Next comes an advertisement for Stella the Sapient Pig from the summer fair several years ago, an animal who is seemingly both literate and capable of seeing the future. The next picture is of Mabel the pig, Maud’s offspring, and Ruby. Ruby is shown giving a man a coin for the pig to read her fortune. Ruby, hidden in the darkness, asks who she will marry; one of Margot’s daughters pretends to be the pig and sends her to the river at midnight. The pictures show Ruby at the river, while at Buscot Lodge a figure sneaks into Amelia’s room and kidnaps her. Daunt then asks who kidnapped Amelia before drawing everyone’s attention to the pig’s handler.

The spectators shout, calling out details of the man they believe to be responsible. Their descriptions match what Rita and Daunt already know about the man who blackmailed Vaughan. They prepare for the second part of the show as in the crowd, Lily starts to panic. The show resumes as the archway to another room is revealed, where a child appears to hover above the ground. Ruby questions the child as if she were Amelia, asking who is responsible. The child points at the audience and pandemonium breaks out. Lily flees, whispering “I didn’t mean to do it” (389).

Later, the Armstrongs help Margot’s family clean up the inn, including the lights and mirrors they had used to make Margot’s granddaughter look like a ghost. Jonathan finds the puppy Lily left and Armstrong offers to take it to her. Daunt is despondent that their plan did not work and Rita attempts to comfort him.

Rita accompanies Armstrong to deliver the puppy, but as they walk, they overhear Lily talking to a pig. Lily is confessing to drowning her sister and believes The Child to be Ann seeking revenge. The puppy barks and Rita tries to soothe Lily, but Armstrong runs to the pig stye and recognizes Maud. Lily insists that she must confess to the parson.

They arrive at the parsonage. Lily asserts her need to confess while Rita explains the show at the inn. The parson encourages Lily to confess. She explains that when she was 12, their family had ill piglets, and her sister Ann was also ill. Her stepfather, who wanted sons, neglected the women of the house. One day, Lily’s mother left to buy medicine, leaving Lily in charge of preparing dinner. Victor arrived with a bundle and said that one of the piglets had died, demanding Lily dump it in the river. When Lily returned home, she learned that Ann was missing and hid from her mother’s anger. Later, Victor told her Ann was in the sack she took to the river. Lily ran away from home and never returned. Rita prepares a guest bedroom for Lily while Armstrong asks how Maud came to live with her. Lily tells him that her stepbrother, Victor Nash, brought the pig. Armstrong recognizes the name.

Vaughan, Daunt, and Robert try to uncover Victor’s hideout and organize a group of men to capture him. Late at night, the three men are joined by eight others in rowboats and row to Brandy Island, sneaking towards the factory storehouse. Armstrong breaks open the door to reveal an illegal distillery and they hear noise from the trees. They search the underbrush but hear someone splash into the river.

In the water, Victor struggles to swim. The current is too fast for him to pull himself to the bank. As he thinks he is going to drown, he is pulled from the water by someone he believes to be Quietly the ferryman. Victor smiles as he is taken to safety.

Half of the search party remains on the island while the other half sails to search Victor. After some time, the men give up, assuming he couldn’t have survived the cold water. Back at the parsonage, the parson writes to the vicar from Lily’s hometown. He learns that Ann had been found wandering far away from the house and the sack Lily had taken to the river contained a dead piglet. Lily’s mother died of heartbreak and her stepfather was hanged for unrelated crimes. Rita and the parson share this news with Lily and try to comfort her, then tell her that Victor is believed to have drowned. Lily returns to the cottage with Armstrong and discovers that Maud is pregnant. Robert asks Lily to take care of Maud until she has her piglets, offering to give Lily a piglet in exchange.