Shadow among Sheaves

by Naomi Stephens

  He thought of the innkeeper’s wife and the drunken man who had grabbed Rena’s arm by the stairs. He thought of all the foul rumors he’d heard about her, of the filthy closet and the pile of thin blankets he’d seen scattered on the floor—a bed more suited for a dog than a person. And had she once complained about her situation?

  The girl ought to have been cursing her situation, fighting back, showing some teeth as she had when he’d come to her room and startled her out of her reverie. But her expression remained strangely subdued, so much so that Barric still wasn’t sure if she’d been broken or was just incredibly resilient.

  Barric tipped his head back to catch his breath and watched Rena move, again, out of the corner of his eye. That particular morning, she had bound stacks of wheat with the other workers rather than filling her own bag, which surprised him. He had never demanded, or even suggested, she work for him, yet she’d hunched and hauled all morning, binding sheaves with the rest of them. Now that the day was nearly over, she worked on the other side of a narrow road, helping the field hands hoist dried sheaves into the wagons to be hauled to the threshing machine. Her back seemed brittle from the labor, ready to split.

  “Make her pay for that grain,” his cousin had said. Was she trying to pay him back for the cottage? Barric had never requested payment, but the idea of her being indebted to him sat heavy within.

  Tossing aside his scythe, he left the small patch of field he’d been working and crossed the road to the closest wagon. He helped one of the younger men jostle several stacks of dried wheat deep into the back, thwacking the worker appreciatively on the shoulder after they were in place. As he jumped back down from the wagon’s edge, he intended to reach for bundles of his own but found himself approaching Rena instead.

  She worked quickly, scraping together some scattered wheat which had come unbound from a stook. Though she didn’t look at him, her shoulders stiffened as he approached, and her fingers faltered briefly with the scrap of straw she used to secure the sheaves. So, she did notice him. He leaned in as if to help her secure the knot, then murmured, barely loud enough for her to hear, “You do not have to work like this.”

  Her chin jerked up at a sharp angle as if surprised to find his was the hand assisting hers. He waited for a response, testing her again, but she dangled for only a second under the challenge. “You would have me only beg from your hand?” She tied off the knot quickly, without his assistance, then raised both eyebrows.

  “I am not your employer,” he went on, straightening out of his crouch. He kept his voice stiff and businesslike, watching as the other workers began relocating to the other side of the field. “The cottage is already yours. You do not need to pay me for it.”

  She shook her head. “I cannot take anything more from you than what you have already given.”

  He leaned closer, grabbing a few of the bound sheaves, his voice dropping again. “Is it your pride that makes you so stubborn?”

  Finally, her eyes rose to him. They were a deep blackish shade, the pupils a thick veil barring him from her thoughts.

  “I do not have the luxury of pride, Lord Barric. Nor do I wish to.” Her words were not sad or harsh but spoken as naturally as if she had commented on the state of the weather or the color of her dress. She scooped up several bundles in her arms and inclined an eyebrow at him. Reading her request, he grabbed the last few bundles and carried them toward the wagon.

  Rena climbed up into the empty wagon first, stacking her haul into the farthest corner. From the ground, Barric tossed his own in beside her, nearly knocking her over in the process. When Barric held out his hand to help her, she braced her fingers in his and clambered back to the ground. Immediately Barric’s fingers felt the raised scars and calluses on Rena’s hand. He glanced down, expression tightening as he tilted her fingers to observe the fresh white cuts and blisters lining her reddened palm.

  Rena fisted both hands and drew them out of his hold, clasping them behind her back, her expression shuttering closed as Barric slowly studied her again. Her hands were those of a new laborer, the skin rubbed raw from the sharp bite of the sheaves.

  “You are not used to working,” he observed.

  “I am not used to many things,” she countered, turning her back to him as she moved to join the other workers. Her words were clipped and final, severing their conversation.

  But Barric was not accustomed to being dismissed, nor was he finished.

  He intercepted her before she could reach them. “That’s not entirely true,” he disagreed. “You seem especially used to running.”

  Rena spun around to face him. Gone was the subdued, tired look from her eyes. She wore a flashing, searching expression that indeed wanted to run but seemed instead made to fight.

  “Isn’t that why you came here?” he pressed, first peering down the row to make sure none of the other workers could overhear them. “Isn’t that why you ran from India? Did your parents cast you off for marrying Edric?”

  She winced and stepped back as he spoke Edric’s name, and he immediately regretted how casually he had spoken it, as if her husband’s name was nothing more than lifeless gossip on his tongue. Rena’s gaze clouded, and she lifted her face toward him. “They did not cast me off. They loved me. They begged me to stay with them in India.”

  “Then why come to England?” He shook his head, uncomprehending. He had no idea where these questions were coming from, or why he cared, but he barreled on anyway. “Why come to a place where you would be hated? You must have known how it would be for you here.”

  She sighed heavily. Either she was not sure of the answer herself or she was not sure he would understand, for she struggled to formulate a response.

  “My parents have each other,” she explained slowly. “My father has his work and his books, and my mother has her garden. They are rich in many ways, Lord Barric, as I might have been had I stayed with them.”

  Rena’s eyes drifted to her feet as if her gaze had been weighed down with an anchor. Barric was surprised to learn she had come from such a wealthy family, though perhaps he had always seen as much in her keen eyes. And, of course, she’d had enough resources in India to be taught English. But to marry Edric Hawley—she had cast aside a life of ease and affluence for one of mockery and disdain. He thought again of her hands, rubbed raw from labor. Did it mortify her to be seen covered in dirt, to be counted lower than everyone else around her? Did she regret her choices?

  “But Nell…” Rena whispered after a moment, as if hearing his questions. “I could not watch her board that ship alone, with nothing. She begged me at the docks to stay behind in India. But Nell is my family too, as much as my parents, and I must take care of her.”

  “But who takes care of you?” Rena’s eyes flew to Barric’s, her expression startling wide, and he clenched his teeth, already wishing he hadn’t asked such a deeply personal question.

  He opened his mouth to amend what he had said, to twist his words into something less intrusive, but she cut him off, shaking her head.

  “I don’t need to be taken care of.”

  “Ah.” He smirked ruefully as he foresaw the second half of her predictable answer. “Because you can take care of yourself, I suppose?”

  This time her eyes did not budge from his.

  “No. I have spent more than enough time being taken care of. We all must suffer now and then, Lord Barric, and I am strong enough to bear it. There is no other option than to endure.”

  We all must suffer. The words sunk beneath Barric’s skin, unsettling him more than he would have liked. He glanced toward the other workers, who kept up momentum on the far end of the field. Though they pretended to ignore him, he knew he’d drawn unnecessary attention to himself and to Rena.

  He swept back a step, placing more distance between them.

  “The sun will set within the hour,” he remarked dismissively, nearly flinching at how cutting his words sounded. “If you really wish to help, you must do better to
keep up with the others.

  Rena stood when she was supposed to stand.

  She sat when she was supposed to sit.

  She pretended to listen attentively, back rigid, never once braving a glance over her shoulder. But she still felt eyes boring into the back of her neck, still heard the occasional murmurs which were out of place from the rest of the prayers and petitions. She squinted her eyes against a shaft of light streaming through the stained glass. Alice shifted beside her, hand close enough for Rena to touch. On Rena’s other side, Nell knotted a worn handkerchief between her knobby fingers. Her eyes seemed mistier than normal.

  For William and Alice to share their pew that morning was an act of extreme kindness, when so many others had passed them by with looks of obvious avoidance. Though Nell said many churches still rented their pews, reserving them for families of class, Parson Richardson had adopted a newer, more controversial first-come, first-seated rule which allowed even the penniless—even Rena—a place with all the rest.

  From her spot in the southernmost wing, she could see much of the congregation. Many of the parishioners seated near them frequented Barric’s land or other farms nearby, and she passed them often on the road to town. In one of the front pews, Thomas sat beside an older gentleman with slightly graying hair and a lavish gray waistcoat beneath his suit of black. Like others had done, Thomas used an opportune moment to ease a surreptitious glance back at her. His eyes were narrowed, perhaps surprised she’d had the nerve to come.

  Rena sat up straighter, trying to pay attention to the service but struggling beneath its weight. So many words she’d never heard, so many songs.

  Standing then sitting. Chanting then reading.

  There were watchful eyes and dubious murmurs, and the organ’s melancholy groan as it conjured up a somber dirge to clench at her heart.

  Lord Barric sat on the other side of the aisle, his gaze sharp but thoughtful as he listened to the parson read. He seemed the only one not trying to figure out her presence in the sanctuary. After the way he had dismissed her in the field, so cuttingly in front of everyone, she wanted to be angry with him. But did she have the right to question his words when he had given her everything she needed?

  He could destroy her world, she realized, and Nell’s, in a moment if he wished.

  Pride would get her nowhere.

  Nell looked down at her then and offered a kindly, reassuring smile. Rena struggled to return it, feeling as though she’d been dug up by the roots and planted in the wrong kind of soil. For weeks Nell had pleaded with her to come to church.

  “I do not wish to be stared at,” Rena protested nearly every week, though they both knew it was a weak excuse. She suffered the stares of strangers every day in Barric’s field and yet returned to work each morning. “The parson may not even want me there,” she’d also tried. “He knows who I am. What I am. He knows where my prayers have been spent.”

  But even that lie was no good. More than once, he had paid them a visit, urging her attendance with unreserved kindness, and when he went fishing, he sometimes brought them a portion from his daily catch, if not more.

  The truth was Rena had been afraid of following Nell through the church doors. Not because she was foreign to them, exactly. What really gnawed at her were all those years spent prostrate in prayer to other gods. She was a pagan to every set of English eyes watching her from the pew. She had made the pilgrimage to the holy river Ganges with her parents; she had listened to her father as he read to them from the Vedas; she had watched her father leave for temple, had knelt before their household shrines and joined her parents’ prayers to Shiva. Rena had never been as devout as her parents, but she had also never doubted what they had taught her.

  She averted her eyes from the altar, the familiar barrage of guilt assailing her mind. What would her father say, she wondered, if he could see his only daughter standing beneath the church’s buttressed ceiling, kneeling now before Edric’s god? Or if her mother knew she had left off praying to the gods and goddesses enshrined in the corners of her home? Rena still wasn’t sure how she felt about any of it or where she fit in. She’d been thrust into a maze of foreign prayers and incense, wall after wall of guilt staring her down, and she could not see her way out.

  In the end, Rena’s own words had persuaded her to follow Nell to church that morning. “Your home is my home,” she’d said all those weeks ago, when Rena had begged to remain at the woman’s side. “And everything you are and everything you love—that is all I ever wish to be.”

  She’d meant those words, and her vow had made her somewhat stronger, bound to Nell by something other than grief. But there was still an invisible line stretched between the two widows, which formed a wall of sorts whenever Nell said her prayers and Rena tried not to listen, whenever Nell went to church and Rena stayed behind. And so Rena had come. For Nell, she told herself.

  Shifting in the pew, she gazed once more at Nell’s Bible and thought of Edric’s missionary friend, the one who had married them in the garden all those months ago. Rena had stared at him so openly, not merely as a young, nervous bride but as a strange native who had been thrust into an entirely new world. Did the missionary have reservations, she wondered, about allowing his friend to marry a pagan girl who worshipped strange blue gods and goddesses? Had Edric forced him to marry them against his better judgment?

  “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Rena’s eyes snapped forward, where the parson was reading from a thick black book on the pulpit. “For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

  She sat up a little straighter, the words snagging somewhere in the back of her mind like a frayed thread caught on an unseen nail. Blessed?

  “Blessed are they that mourn”—he went on in his straight, even voice, his black robes gathered around him like shadows—“for they shall be comforted. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst—”

  “Rena.” Alice touched her hand, jostling Rena’s attention away from the parson. “Are you ill?”

  Rena realized she’d stopped breathing. Blessed. The word clanged around inside of her. Blessed to mourn? To feel empty? Blessed to be poor and starving, she added bitterly, to have nowhere else to turn?

  The parson was still reading, but Rena had stopped listening. She didn’t wish to believe such things. After Edric had died, she had fasted and prayed until her head swam and her knees ached, as her parents had instructed, but it had only made her feel emptier. Instead of poor and small, she wanted to be strong and full, to grow beyond the grasp of her own grief. Blessing was invisible, something she could never snatch up in her blistered, beggarly hands. But strength? Strength was seen. Noticed. Respected far more than suffering or hunger ever was.

  With an unsteady breath, she met Alice’s concerned frown. “It’s just warm in here,” she whispered.

  CHAPTER 7

  At last the harvest was at its end, the final sheaves gathered, hauled, and stored. Barric made rather a show of carrying off the last of the sheaves, a small parade following him with banners and music, and then all the workers were offered fresh cider pressed from an orchard on Barric’s property. Even Rena was offered a cup, her first taste of crisp, English cider. Embarrassed to have been included, she quaffed off the pewter tankard in nearly one chug, wincing slightly at the unfamiliar tartness. She lingered but a short while before making her way home. All the workers were extra noisy on the road, made jovial by the satisfaction of a job well done and the contents of several shared flasks. One of the older men even smiled at her in kindly greeting.

  The biting air which sometimes warned of winter had relented that day, and so Rena walked without a shawl, appreciating the trees which were at last crowned in full autumnal colors. She crossed by the stables as she often did when she took the back way home, away from searching eyes, and was surprised to come upon Lord Barric as he led his tall black stallion toward the stall. She wondered that she had not seen him slip away from the other workers.

  “Good evening, L
ord Barric,” she greeted in a low voice. Though she often avoided him, she did not wish for him to catch her avoiding him now, especially after he had been so stern with her the last time they’d spoken, insisting she learn to keep up with the others. She was still learning to keep up.

  He turned, his eyes flashing with surprise. His auburn hair and jacket were both rumpled from the day’s work, and there was a faint scrape of dirt along the side of his jaw, as if he had raked his work-worn fingers there. His eyes seemed especially tired, rimmed slightly from lack of sleep. It’d been a long week for everyone. “Ah, Mrs. Hawley.”

  Strangely, she was reminded of the evening they had met, when he had first inquired after her name. She remembered the deep sound of Rena on his lips. Now she had slipped from “Rena” into “Mrs. Hawley,” as was only proper, but it was still strange, in a way, that the name her husband had given her had outlived him.

  She stiffened when she realized Lord Barric was watching her. “I ought to congratulate you on a successful harvest.”

  His lips quirked slightly at her formal tone. “It has been an interesting season, to be sure.”

  She considered moving along, leaving him to celebrate his harvest with a pipe or a bottle of port or some such thing, but then she paused, watching the way Barric’s gloved hand smoothed along his horse’s mane. “Your horse is rather beautiful,” she noted.

  “Do you ride?” Barric asked, leaning down to check the beast’s hooves. “Or did you, in India?”

  “Only once,” she admitted, recalling the time Edric insisted she learn, several weeks before he’d taken ill. “And was unsaddled very shortly.”

  A passing smile crossed his face as he straightened. “Now that I cannot picture.”

  “It was rather mortifying,” she agreed, shaking her head as she remembered the burst of chortles from Edric’s soldier friends. “Knocked flat and covered in mud. Your horse, however, does not seem the type to unsaddle a lady.”