Five years after Edwin Drood's disappearance, John Jasper and Rosa Bud meet again in dark and unexpected circumstances.

I have a few words of introduction to say before I start my story. I must warn those of you who read The Blossoming of the Bud that this is very much darker in tone and more in keeping with the book — consequently there are some pretty ferocious levels of angst ahead.

I'm continuing where Dickens left off, without regard to the TV series, though I think I quote the odd bit of non-Dickensian dialogue from it at one point. The action starts five years after the disappearance of Edwin, and Rosa (as Dickens seemed to intend in the book) has married the sailor she met in London, Mr Tartar.

The story was very strongly inspired and influenced by the Florence and the Machine song What The Water Gave Me (no? really!) so I would suggest listening to it if you aren't familiar with it. I don't expect I'm allowed to link to it here but there's a terrific version on youtube (don't have the volume at full blast, though, because it distorts horribly).

Chapter I

Nothing was left of him now but remnants.

Remnants of a body, for opium had wasted him, hollowed his face, sunk his eyes into their sockets, stretched translucent flesh over bone.

Remnants of a mind, his once-keen wits dulled by the narcotic dreams, ambition replaced by delusion.

Remnants of a life, the piano now out of tune, a blank rectangle on the wall where a picture had once hung. Her image, torn down, burnt, nothing but ashes.

Around him in the room lay the clutter of addiction: broken pipes, empty vials, spent matches. This was his life now, these remnants.

"I am in tatters," he murmured, looking through the gatehouse window at the distant spire. He would never set foot in that building again. Finally, his dissolution had reached its nadir and the cathedral authorities could no longer turn an indulgent blind eye to it. His post was gone, and with it his lodging.

They had made allowances for so long now. Five years since Edwin…went. The whispers followed him every where. "Poor soul, he is unmanned by the death of the boy. But surely it is time he stopped giving in to this grief. Surely he is making himself ill."

There was nowhere for him to go. From the gatehouse to the workhouse. But no. That was not for him.

He looked over at the table. One last pipe? What was left was poor stuff and he couldn't afford any more. There would be no pleasure in the dregs. But perhaps it would steel his nerves.

He settled instead on taking a long draught of what remained in the decanter, then he put on his coat.

He walked out to the marshes and across them to the sea. The sun was very low now, and the water dark. Every so often, whenever he saw a large rock or stone, he picked it up and put it in his pocket.

As he stumbled over the uneven ground, he heard the dusk chorus of the marshland birds. "Little singing bird," he muttered to himself. "Fly away home." He tried a note or two, but it was useless now. The music was gone. It had been the last thing to leave his soul, but nothing now remained of that once-great passion.

His mind rushed with the enormity of what he planned to do. He felt as if some kind of struggle should be taking place in his breast, something to do with conscience. But how could he lay claim to one of those, after the life he had led? Perhaps it was simply absent. But he had had one once. He thought he had.

Efforts of memory were useless. What had been real and what an opium dream was no longer knowable. In the ruins of his mind, sometimes he thought he saw a light, but more often a blighted landscape of rubble and smoke. Hell.

That gave him pause. Was this place worse than hell? Should he try to eke out his days until that particular descent was inevitable? Yet it seemed he already lived there, in every respect but the corporeal. If he went to the devil, at least the torments would stop the endless grind of his thoughts. And perhaps there would be no hell at all and he would simply fade into silence.

The heady relief of this prospect quickened his footsteps until he came close to the shore. The water lapped at the banks, splashing here and there. A gust of wind whipped it up, sending a shiver over the surface.

He put his hands in his pockets, his fingers closing around the stones, feeling their shapes, their curves and knobs. He walked to the edge and looked out to sea, to the ships on their way into Chatham docks, dark outlines dotted with light.

Perhaps he was on one of those ships, coming home to his Rosa. He screwed up his face, swallowing bitterness, hands tightening over the stones. One foot reached out to the depths.

A sound from further along the bank, to the right, stopped him in his tracks. At first he thought it some small animal, keening and snuffling on the other side of a clump, but then it spoke, though the words were indistinct.

A woman's voice, high with tears, shaky but familiar.

John Jasper retracted his foot and turned in the direction of the speaker. At first he crept, stealthy, listening to make out the words.

"I am coming to you, my love. We will be together again."

Then there was a light splash and a sharp inhalation, another shiver and a wail.

"Oh, it's so cold. But so are you. My poor, cold darling."

Now Jasper ran, up to the top of a small hillock, from which vantage point the figure of a young woman was clearly visible, wading out from the shallows towards the place where the sea bed shelved away into a deeper stretch of water.

She had fallen to her knees, her golden hair streaming down her back, and now she was singing. That voice. He recalled it so piercingly that his heart, that shrivelled thing, seemed to expand to bursting. That little scrap of sound that he had schooled and trained until it was sweeter and brighter than anyone imagined it could be…Oh, she could not do this.

He threw off his coat, flung his boots into the grassy tussocks and took to the water, finding strength and speed in his urgency.

She stopped singing and turned her head, but she perhaps did not recognise him in the darkness.

"Oh, who is there? Please go. Please don't rescue me."

She bent forward and her head disappeared under the waves. Jasper, heedless of the cold and the wet weight in his clothes, lunged forward desperately. The slack waters lapped around him, pouring into his mouth and nose as he stumbled forwards, but none of that mattered, nothing mattered save that she should not die.

He caught hold of something, her shawl perhaps, and had to throw the sodden thing aside, reaching out again. Yes, her arm.

She struggled to throw him off but he managed to drag her back and pin her against him. He pulled her upright, her head cresting the water while she spluttered and screamed.

He staggered and almost let go of her half a dozen times before they reached the bank, but somehow he still possessed enough force to prevent her from succeeding in her desperate fight for escape.

In some dim recess of his mind Jasper clung to enough belief in God to thank Him for not allowing him to smoke that last pipe, nor to linger at the gatehouse until the withdrawal pains were upon him. Nothing could have saved her then.

He hauled her on to the bank where she lay, gasping and sodden, and took as many deep breaths as he could, preparing himself for the effort of strength that lay ahead. It was fully dark now, and the sky was clouded, threatening rain.

Rosa seemed too far out of her senses to make any attempt at speech, or to recognise him. When, having put his boots and coat back on, he reached down to pick her up, she lunged at him and said some indistinct words. "Off," perhaps, and "me". Now was not the time for deciphering her ravings, though, and he put everything that was not essential to her survival from his mind. He needed to get her to a place of warmth and security and no other object would cross his mind until this was achieved.

He used to dream of holding her in his arms; in his fantasies she had been light as a wafer, all ethereal and silken and smelling of peach blossom. Now, in her soaked skirt and its volume of petticoats, she weighed heavily and she clawed at his face so he had to hoist her over his shoulder if he was to make any headway at all. This was not how he had dreamt it. And yet it was somehow more beautiful than any of his imaginings by far.

"I have you," he said to himself, swaying off on the long journey towards the town, his arms clamped across the backs of her knees so she couldn't kick. Little blows from her fists fell ineffectually between his shoulder blades at first, but she soon tired of it, and he felt her droop there, her exhausted sobs mingling with his footfalls and the night sounds of the marsh. "You're safe."

He supposed she must have shut her eyes, perhaps she had even fallen into unconsciousness, for she made no sign of recognising where they were when he unlocked the door in the arch; she simply hung there all the heavier. He should have laid her on the shore, he should have pumped the water from her lungs. But he had been too overwhelmed by panic, too desperate to take her to safety. What if his negligence had resulted in her death?

By accident, he grazed her head against the wall during their ascent of the stair, and she twitched and wriggled over his shoulder again, coming back to life.

Thank God.

He carried her through the living room and into the bedroom, setting her down on the narrow bed.

"Who are you? What is this place?" she cried out, trying to sit up.

"Lie still," he said. "I will light a candle."

"Oh, I know your voice. Who are you? Why have you followed me? I did not want to be followed."

Jasper found a match that wasn't spent and a candle that hadn't guttered – quite an undertaking amongst all the detritus – and let a low flicker of light into the gloom.

Rosa's face glowed before him, her eyes round with horror, her hand over her mouth. Slowly she took it away.

"Oh, it is you," she said. "Or perhaps I am in hell. Is this hell?"

"It may well be, but you are still among the living."

She shuddered violently and he saw tears in her eyes.

"Even if I am alive, I do not know if I look upon John Jasper or his ghost."

"I think I may well be my own ghost. I have haunted myself this past five years."

"What has happened to you? You are so thin."

He made no reply, having no more words left, nor any desire to do anything but look at her, at her waxen face and her puffy eyes, her matted hair and the curl of seaweed clinging at her throat.

"You are frightening me," she whispered.

Her fear stirred him. He crouched down, seeking spare blankets beneath the bed and putting them beside her.

"You should get those wet things off," he said. "Wrap yourself up. I will light a fire in the other room. I may have some tea in the caddy."

She made no move but simply looked up at him, her lips slightly parted, her eyes tormented.

"You will take cold. Remove them, Rosa, or I shall have no alternative but to do it myself."

Her hands moved rapidly to her bodice and he left the room. On shutting the door, he leant back against it and put his hands over his face.

What could be the meaning of this? Rosa Bud, undressing, in his room, having had her life saved by him. He had never had much belief in fate – no, he liked to help it along – but what had happened out there in the marshes seemed mystical in its significance. But was it even real? Or had he imagined it.

"Oh God, am I dreaming this?" he groaned.

He tried to dismiss the possibility by looking for the tea caddy and filling the kettle. While he dug around in the dregs of the leaves, the first shivers of the evening's withdrawal pains rattled through him. So it wasn't a dream. It was real.

He stopped dead and waited for the spasm to subside. It lacked the ferocity of recent evenings. His diminution in opium use, forced by financial necessity, was at least taking the edge off the torture.

If he knelt to set the fire, the cramps were less debilitating. His bony fingers worked to light the miserable mess of coke and half-charred papers and ash that lay in the grate. He had burned the last of his musical scores the previous night and tiny fragments of melody were visible in the dirt, a few bars here and there.

"Rosa is here," he said to himself, watching a faint orange glow spread itself amidst the blackness. He rehearsed her name again, experimenting with the effect it had on him. "Rosa. Rosa Bud. My Rosebud."

How her very name had once inflamed him. He recalled a time when he could think of nothing but how she would feel beneath his touch, her lips, yielding to him. He had been quite mad with it. One of the few kindnesses of opium was its ability to reduce and finally extinguish physical desire. At least he had been freed of that, though it had taken a long time, longer than with most, his passions being stronger than those of the common man.

She had been married for two years before the all-consuming longings and the wakeful, lustful nights had ended. He shut his eyes and breathed through another spasm, forcing the memory of her wedding day out of his mind. He had stood by the water's edge that night too, but something had held him back, some inkling or presentiment that all might not yet be lost.

All at once the realisation struck him. Her husband, the sailor, was dead. That was why she had gone to the water. He put the kettle on its stand and warmed his hands.

He was still wearing wet clothes. He hadn't even noticed. But what of it if he caught a chill and it galloped into fever and killed him? One death was as good as another.

If I go, who will care for Rosa?

The question inserted itself into his mind, demanding notice.

"Fool," he muttered. "She has any amount of people to care for her. Grewgious, Miss Twinkleton, the young Mrs Crisparkle." But where were they now, in her hour of need?

He rocked to and fro until the kettle whistled and he poured the boiling water on to the few leaves he had managed to get into the pot.

He knocked on the bedroom door, but there was no reply.

"Rosa," he called.

Silence once more.

He took a breath and opened the door. She lay beneath the blankets, sobbing and shivering on the bed.

"Come to the fire," he said softly, dropping to his haunches by the pillow.

"I am afraid to," she said.

"Then you are very foolish. What are you afraid of?"

"You."

"I will not harm you. I will not touch you. Please come to the fire. I have made tea for you."

"You said you would not touch me before. I suppose you do not remember it? In the Nuns' House garden?"

"Oh. Yes." He looked away, uncomfortable. "I do remember it."

"You said you would not touch me but you still terrified me beyond anything I have experienced."

"It was not my intention to do so."

"Yet you did."

"Then accept my sincere apology, Rosa, and come to the fire."

"Go far away from me, and I may. No, further than that."

He went and stood by the door.

Rosa gathered the blanket around herself and stood up. She made a slow, shuffling progress out of the room, pausing to tell Jasper to get out of her way when she reached the door.

"You have only one chair?" She seated herself in the threadbare armchair and laid her head back in its comfortable recesses.

"I have sold the rest. I have only one cup also." He handed it to her.

She looked about the room, wrinkling her nose at its disarray.

"What are you come to? This place is like a chamber from a nightmare."

Jasper sneezed in reply.

"For all your fussing and fretting over me, you are still wearing wet clothes. You are taking cold."

"No, it is the withdrawal. It often makes me sneeze," he said unthinkingly.

"Withdrawal?"

"I shall change my clothes," he said, evading the matter at hand by slipping into the bedroom.

When he returned, in drier garments, Rosa was staring into the pitiful fire and the look in her eyes pierced him. He knew that look, had seen it in his mirror. Despair.

He came closer and leant on the chimney breast, looking down at her.

"You are a widow," he said.

Shaken from her reverie, she glared at him, then her face crumpled and she dissolved into tears.

"How brutal that word is," she wept. "It is not what I should be."

"But it is what you are."

She nodded and tried to wipe her eyes with the blanket.

"No, cry," said Jasper. "Cry all you like. It is all the same to me."

"You wished him dead, no doubt," she said, rubbing her face furiously now.

Jasper did not reply but he felt the justice of her accusation.

"I thought you would have known. The Mighty, lost in the Bay of Biscay with all hands."

"I had not heard. I no longer read the newspapers."

"And nobody here would have told you, for fear that you would appear at his funeral, ready to make another of your repulsive proposals."

His cheek muscles twitched in a stiff approximation of a smile. Rosa had not quite lost her spirit, it seemed.

"He is dead. And I am free." She parrotted the words he had spoken to her once before, viciously sardonic.

The look he gave her subdued her flare of anger. She shrank back into the chair and took refuge in the teacup.

He smiled genuinely then, finding that her little show of antagonism had unfrozen something within him, made his heart beat with its old urgency.

"I did what I said I would do," he explained to her baffled face. "I pursued you to the death. And then I delivered you from it."

"How could you think I would love a man who said such terrible things?" She paused and finished her tea. "Why did you do it?"

"Do what? Pursue you?"

"Deliver me."

"How could I not? How could I watch you die?"

"I wanted to. I still want to."

"I won't let you."

"You have no power to grant or withhold permission from me, Mr Jasper. You are nothing to me."

"But you are all I care for."

She put down the cup and curled herself into a foetal position beneath the blanket, burying her head between her knees.

"No," she keened, long and low.

"I have destroyed myself. But I will not see you go the same way. Rosa, when I went to the water, I had the same purpose as you. That particular appointment will not be kept tonight, though its time will come again. But I will not leave this world until I know that you are safe and hopeful of living the rest of your days out. You are twenty two, Rosa. Your life is not over because you have lost one person dear to you."

She looked up.

"You were going to…?"

"Yes. And I will return. But only when you are with friends and protectors who can care for you. Only then will I go back to the water."

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