by Julia Byrd
Then her eyebrows drew together. “You are not he,” she announced.
I stopped behind Everett and met her eyes from over his shoulder. A smile spread until it took over her face and dimpled her cheeks. Her skin and teeth reflected the silvery moonlight back to me. She was young, but no schoolroom lass. Perhaps my age or maybe as much as thirty. I could not look away. I thought I knew everyone in the village, but this woman I surely would have remembered. She was a stranger. Her pale skin contrasted with her dark hair and eyes. Nowhere was she slender except maybe her delicate wrists and long fingers. I had an uncomfortable fantasy of the weight of a woman spread over my lap, the generous curve of her hip filling my palm.
“It is you for whom I have been waiting,” she said. “I am sorry I availed myself of your shears and denuded your park. Shall we grieve together for your loss of the Viburnum tinus?”
Chapter 3: Rite of the Vegetarian Funeral
I didn’t want to open my mouth and stammer. Why had I decided to meet her? I could have left her another note, or I could have ignored her entirely. I could have done anything else, but instead, I stood and gawped like an overgrown fish.
Everett was not tongue-tied. “You are the reason for the loss of our plants. You cannot go around digging things up and walking away with them, you know.”
“The dead must make way for the living,” she said softly. Her eyes were not on Everett. Her eyes were on me. “I needed it more than you. But I will help you bid farewell to it.”
“To a shrub?” Everett squawked.
The woman paid him no heed. “Will you speak your name?” she asked me and then took a step closer, reawakening a long-dormant masculine curiosity in me. She was tall, the top of her head at my shoulder, her hair almost hidden under her straw bonnet. Her long coat was buttoned around a complex figure of slopes and valleys, the womanly silhouette a fascinating contour I wanted to map. Her shoulders, breasts, waist, hips—all demanded my topographical consideration.
“Madam, you shouldn’t be out alone at night,” Everett said. “Anywhere, really, but especially here. People will think you’re a ghost or a witch.”
He was right, although she appeared unconcerned. “It’s altogether too late for that, I’m afraid.” To me, she repeated, “Will you speak your name?”
I had uttered nothing. Would she think me a simpleton? Would she look at me with pity or disappointment? Women have occasionally smiled at me, but only until I spoke to them. I touched my tongue to my lips, and she watched that too.
“B-Benjamin Hood,” I said, and it was not terrible.
She smiled again. “Mr. Hood.”
“Th-this is Ev-Ever-Everett T-Toth.” I gestured, but she didn’t look at him. Everett muttered something. “W-will you p-please stop stealing our-our-our—” I stopped because I knew the phrase was going to become a loop. “Our” has such a vague ending, for me sometimes it didn’t want to end at all. I breathed, and she waited. “Plants.”
“What if I need one?”
I blinked. She seemed to intend this as a serious question. “C-come and-and ask m-me—”
“Ben!” Everett objected.
I silenced him with a hard look.
“And if I come and tell you what I need, you will let me take it?”
“Ben, this is ridiculous, make her go.”
I was negotiating terms with a thief. I folded my arms over my chest, and the woman mirrored my pose. Was she mocking me? “M-maybe s-seeds or cuttings. Or I-I c-can help you f-find it out-outside th-the park.”
“The deal is struck.” The woman extended her right hand, and I reached for it before making a conscious decision. I folded her hand into mine and took a step closer, and we shook once to seal our bargain. In the dim light, her cheeks reddened, and her eyes dropped to my collar. Everett grumbled and turned away. “Juno Stephens,” she said softly.
“Wh-what?”
“My name.”
“M-Miss Stephens.”
“Mrs. My husband passed away a year ago.”
“M-Mrs. Stephens.” And then, because I wanted to see her smile again, “P-plant thief.”
She lifted her nose into the air. “I prefer plant relocator. I assure you all half-dozen of your shrubs are alive and well in my—”
“Six?” Everett said, turning back with arms akimbo. “You took six?”
“There must be hundreds here.” She was unrepentant, and she was also underestimating the cemetery by a hundredfold. Eight thousand trees were planted over the fifty acres before we opened for business. “But Mr. Hood is correct, we should grieve for your loss of the Viburnum tinus.”
“It’s n-not a l-loss for you,” I pointed out. She, after all, had gained a Viburnum tinus.
“I can still help you, and I can still feel sorrow that you have experienced a loss.”
“D-do you?”
“Feel sorrow? Of course. I am sorry to have caused you trouble, even if it was necessary.” Mrs. Stephens brushed her hands together with purpose. “Come, stand here with me.”
She motioned, and I was drawn forward. Everett, too. The three of us stood side-by-side before the empty hole in the ground, like a strange botanical version of a funeral. She slipped her hand into mine, and I did not dare to look and see if Everett had been awarded the same privilege.
“The Viburnum tinus was here, and now it’s not,” Mrs. Stephens offered. “The visual landscape of this path will be off-balance without its waxy green leaves. The birds will miss its blue berries. We hope the little bush thrives in its new home with me, and we are grateful for the time—” She paused, looked up at me. “How long?”
“T-two years.”
“For the two years it was here in Maida Green.”
“Amen,” Everett murmured.
I released Mrs. Stephens’ hand as I used the side of my foot to push some dirt into the hole. I was unsure how much of the meeting was a joke, and I hoped that I myself was not the joke.
Everett and I exchanged a glance. He widened his eyes and jerked his chin toward Mrs. Stephens. He wanted to be rid of her, pragmatic as always. But I was reluctant. We both turned to face her.
“You have a terrible stutter,” she proclaimed.
I could not respond, for opening my mouth and attempting to defend myself had never once succeeded in the past. My stomach clenched. Perhaps I was the joke, after all. Everett sputtered out an objection on my behalf.
“Wait, Mr. Hood,” she called because I had started to walk away. “You’re not a very holy man, either.”
Turning back, I drew a slow breath. Strong emotion and tiredness worsen my speech, and the sentence I wanted to say had a tricky turn in the middle. “I d-do not n-need insults from-from a-a-a plant thief.”
“Plant relocator. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to offend. Please don’t go. I offer these things only as facts, not insults. You do have a terrible stutter, and you’re not a very holy man.”
How is a man holy or unholy? Do we tally only sins on the order of murder or also lesser abuses…had she been spying on me in my house at night? That would be too mortifying.
“Bold for a thief to speak of holiness. How have you been breaking in, Mrs. Stephens?” Everett asked. “Do you have a key for the gate?”
“I didn’t break in,” she said. “I walked in. Through the unlocked gate. During the day. I took the plants I needed, and I left you those notes. Then I walked out.” She shrugged.
“I n-never saw you.”
“I know.” She was smug. I wanted to curl my hands around her shoulders and rattle her. “That’s because you haven’t been paying attention. You never noticed me. And that’s how I know you’re not a very holy man.”
“Wh-what?”
She stepped forward until there was only a pace between us. The fragrance of her was not rosewater or perfume but Salvia officinalis. Sage. Did I smell of dirt? Of death? Mrs. Stephens lifted two slim fingers and jabbed me in the sternum. “Being holy is only paying attention. And you haven�
�t been. Fortunately, for you, I am a holy woman. I can help with your speech.”
“N-no.” I grasped her wrist to pull her prodding fingers away from my chest. For a moment all I could see was the contrast between my rough hand, callused and burnished brown by the sun, and the pale ovals of her clean fingernails. Then I recalled what the woman was proposing and released her abruptly.
I’ve had people look inside my mouth before. Even, when I was a child, had doctors offering various elixirs and exercises. But it has never been a problem with the muscles or nerves of my tongue. I hardly knew I was different until well-intentioned souls started trying to fix me. Then, when I was thirteen or so, I grew several inches and turned gangly and clumsy, and my brother had less time for me. That was around the same time I began to prefer silence. Even after I grew into my height, even after the doctors, I never outgrew the stammer.
“You must allow me to try. I owe you a favor. We won’t do anything you don’t want to do. But not tonight. Meet me at the gate tomorrow at midnight.” She added one final poke for emphasis, then turned her fingers on Everett. “We’ll need you, too.”
Everett scowled. “How are you going to cure Ben’s stammer?”
“I’m not. Just wait and see. Tomorrow at midnight. Don’t leave me waiting.”
She could not cure my stammer, but I didn’t care. She wanted to come back again, and that was all I wanted from her.
Chapter 4: Rite of Listening
Walking past my mother’s house had left me with a lingering sense of guilt, so the next morning I decided to pay a visit, even though I knew exactly how the visit would proceed. She would sigh and reprove, I would sit in near silence, and we would part, both glad it was done.
Her maid opened the door to my knock, and I ducked under the low lintel. My mother had lived with Joseph until he died, and afterward, she had leased the house in the village. There was never any question that she would come and live with me at Maida Green.
“G-good m-morning.”
My mother, thin and tall, although somewhat bent with age, wore her hair in a graceful swoop. She was often complimented on her low and melodious voice, and I believed my particular affliction had been especially trying to her. “Benjamin, my darling. Come and sit.”
I perched lightly on a floral sofa. My scuffed boots were ludicrous against the yellow-flowered carpet. “M-Mrs. T-Toth sends y-you her re-regards.”
“What was that, dearest?”
My mother sometimes pretended she did not understand me. I breathed slowly, tried again. “Mrs. T-Toth sends her regards.”
“Very kind of Adele, the dear lady. I saw Lucy on Wednesday. How is Everett?”
“W-Well.”
“Anything of interest happening at Maida Green this week?”
The primary benefit of my work, from her perspective, was information on deaths and gossip on grieving families. “A-another infant.”
She gasped. “Another! That’s three from the village over these past few weeks, my word. Of which family?”
The headstone had not yet arrived. The surname was written in my book, but I could not remember it. I shrugged. Mother clicked her tongue in disapproval, both at the missing detail and my silent response. “Benjamin, that shirt is nearly worn through at the seams. I know you’ve money enough to avoid looking like a vagabond.”
I sighed and clasped my hands around one knee. I had the income, but I saved almost everything I made to someday buy back my brother’s farm. I wasn’t far from grasping that ambition, and I was not wasting any money on clothing. I planned to manage the house and land better than my brother had and create a better end for us all. Then my mother could spend my money on a new wardrobe, and I would read enough to remember all my Latin. “Y-yes.”
A long silence. “What other news? How are you?”
I met a woman who likes “avail” and “denude” and black silk ribbon. She held a ceremony for the shrub she stole, and tonight she wants to help me with my speech. She says being holy is paying attention, and I like her topography.
“N-nothing. F-fine.” Another silence. My mother’s eyes traveled from the top of my head, where my hair was uncombed and untrimmed, to my shoes on her carpet. She would see a rougher, less preferred version of Joseph. I cleared my throat. “D-do you know a w-woman by the n-name of Mrs. S-Stephens?”
“Certainly not.”
That response, I understood quite well, meant she knew something of the woman but would not admit to any acquaintance.
“And neither do you,” she added.
“N-no,” I said mildly. “Wh-where does she r-res…live?”
Mother twisted the dull gold wedding band on her third finger. In the decade since Father’s death, I had never seen her without it. “The Widow Stephens has only recently emerged from mourning. Her husband’s house is on the lane just past that aspen grove, one-quarter of a mile past the Millers’ place. Everyone avoids walking through those aspens, even though there’s a pretty bend in the creek, surely because they’re avoiding Mrs. Stephens.”
I nodded. I didn’t know the Millers, but I did recognize Mother’s description of that aspen grove. “H-her h-house,” I said.
“Pardon me, Benjamin? Perhaps in the form of a complete sentence?”
I twisted the corners of my mouth up and stilled my restless hands. “Y-you said, ‘her husband’s house.’ It m-must be hers n-now.”
Mother flicked her fingers. “Yes, obviously. She’s such an odd woman, though, that I suspect Mr. Stephens’ family would be rolling in their graves to know the property went to her. Five years of marriage with no children. And she entertains a motley stream of inappropriate visitors. You’d do best to keep away. Your name needs no additional foibles associated with it.”
Because my mangled speech, and my brother’s debts and subsequent suicide, were more than enough ‘foibles’ around my name. I rose abruptly. “N-nice to s-see you, M-mother.”
“Benjamin, you only just arrived—”
“M-must be off.” I took three long strides and rescued my coat and hat from the pegs by the door before she was out of her seat. She hurried to me, and then her hands were on either side of my face, pulling me down for swift kisses on both cheeks.
“Be well, darling. I do worry.”
“Y-yes.”
I kissed the top of her head and gave her a weak smile before departing.
* * *
Back at Maida Green, I offered Everett no explanation for my tardiness. The fog hung thick around Maida House in the distance, and I scowled at it. I did not need the disapproval of an abandoned manse.
We worked steadily together, opening a grave at the end of a row. The earth was soft and fragrant. Being holy is only paying attention. I removed my leather gloves to let the wooden-handled shovel abrade my palms. What if Mrs. Stephens’ ‘inappropriate visitors’ were ineligible, attractive men? Did it matter to me? Two hours later, Everett and I were sweating, and I rolled my shoulders to feel the pull of muscle across my back.
At the end of the day, Everett departed for home but promised to return at midnight. I entered my cottage and attempted to look at it with fresh eyes. I swept the floor, then borrowed a bouquet of fresh cut flowers from a grave and propped them in a vase on my table. She might not come inside at all. I cleaned the fireplace grate and laid in a few birch logs. Over the stove, I fried three eggs with a translucent slice of onion and a piece of marbled bacon, then ate it straight from the hot pan. By nine o’clock, everything was clean and scrubbed, including myself, and I was exhausted.
I dozed slouched in my chair until just before midnight, then bolted upright with a start. Striking steel to flint, I set the fireplace ablaze and lit too many candles.
Outside the cemetery gate, a light bobbed on the path, and low voices floated on the still air. Everett and Mrs. Stephens approached together. I shifted my feet, then turned my key in the heavy lock. What were they discussing?
The gate opened silently on oiled hinges. M
rs. Stephens bestowed upon me a smile and a curtsy as she passed within. Something weighted the canvas satchel looped over her elbow. “Mr. Hood.”
I inclined my head, fighting a smile. “Mrs. Stephens.”
Everett pursed his lips. Sometimes he acted eight years my senior instead of my junior.
We walked in silence along the center aisle, past the headstones and marble monuments, none of them more than three years old. One family tomb in the far corner predated the creation of Maida Green as a separate entity, although no one visited it. A few stones had started to tilt, and several wore green moss in patches, but I did not intend to do anything about their signs of aging. A cemetery should show its age. New graves are sad, but old graves are dignified and comfortable.
At the groundskeeper’s cottage, Mrs. Stephens stopped just within the doorway. “Well!” she said.
“M-may I t-take your c-coat?”
She unfastened her buttons and allowed the garment to slip down her arms, and I tried not to stare. The neckline of her dress extended almost all the way to the tips of her shoulders, displaying the full arc of her collarbones. But most interesting was the narrow black ribbon around her pale throat. Could it have been the very one I had held in my hands? She turned, and I glimpsed the bow tied at the nape of her neck. Were the ends fraying? It seemed unbearably intimate. Had she worn it intentionally to tease me? I could not help but imagine tugging the end of the silk and tossing it away. With a little jolt, I turned and draped her coat on a hook.
Everett folded himself into one of the chairs around the table. He looked like a businessman conducting a meeting as he spread his hands. “Here we all are. What are we going to do about Ben’s stammer?”
“Yes, efficient boy. I said I could help, and I will,” Mrs. Stephens said with a nod. “I have a potion and a spell that will be just the thing.” She reached into her cotton bag, produced a bottle of Scotch whisky, and waggled it, her eyes twinkling. “My magic potion.”