Jason, Veronica

by Never Call It Love

  She took a small handful of corn from the dwindling supply in the barrel. Back in the house, she dropped the corn on the table, and then with a string she found in a drawer of the homemade pine cupboard she fashioned a small noose with a slip knot. As she approached the window, the dove's shadow lifted with a whir of wings and disappeared. But the poor thing would be back, she was sure, as soon as it spied the com.

  She unhooked the deerskin. The air that swept in was only a bit colder than that already in the house. She scattered corn on the icy layer of snow, laid the snare. One hand holding the end of the string, she flattened herself against the wall at one side of the window and waited, heart pounding.

  After several minutes the pretty creature landed on the far corner of the sill. For a few seconds, with the iridescent feathers on its neck changing from green to purple and then back again, it turned its head from side to side, looking at her from round brown eyes. Apparently it decided that she, standing motionless and with held breath, was no threat. Or perhaps hunger had made the bird reckless. Anyway, it began to peck at the corn, moving along the icy surface on coral feet.

  Tensely, Elizabeth waited. The dove was approaching the snare. It skirted the far side of the string's loop, swallowed two more grains of corn. Then it turned back and began to search for any grains it had missed____

  Now! She jerked the string, closing the snare around one fragile leg, and drew the wildly fluttering bird into the room. Except for verminous insects, she had never killed a living thing. For a moment, as she looked down at the struggling creature, she thought that she could not go through with it. Then she seized the bird, first with her left hand and then her right, and wrung the slender neck.

  As she dropped the bird to the floor, she realized that for an instant she had wished it was Patrick's neck she held between her hands.

  When the broth was ready, she awoke Caroline, and then carried a steaming bowl over to the bed. "Just see what Mama has for you!"

  The child stared dull-eyed at the broth, the very smell of which made Elizabeth's mouth water. Caroline took a sip from the spoon her mother held for her and then turned her head away. "No!"

  Fear squeezed Elizabeth's heart. Why should a half-starved child not want to eat? She spoke coaxingly, but still Caroline, shaking her head, kept her pale mouth closed. "Then go back to sleep, darling," Elizabeth said cheerfully. "I'm sure you'll want this later." Too frightened now to feel hungry herself, she poured the broth back into the kettle.

  After darkness fell, Caroline did take a few teaspoons of broth. Less worried now, Elizabeth too consumed a little of the precious liquid. In the morning, she would add more water to the broth and the fragments of dove meat at the bottom of the pot. Combined with onions and potatoes, it would make a nourishing stew that might suffice them for at least two more days. She sat beside the small cooking fire until it died, and then went to bed.

  Sometime in the night, a soft plopping sound awoke her. Rain? No, it was too intermittent for that. Then, becoming aware that the air in the room was much warmer, she realized the significance of the sound. Thaw! Icicles that hung from the eaves were dripping onto the snow.

  Caroline, huddled against her mother's back, gave a dry little cough. So that was it, Elizabeth thought. She's coming down with a cold. Cautiously, so as not to waken the child, Elizabeth turned in the bed and lightly touched her daughter's face. No fever. Her cold must be a slight one. She would be all right, especially if the warmer weather held. Elizabeth went back to sleep.

  In the morning she awoke to a dripping world. When she incautiously opened the front door, several inches of slush flooded in. She slammed the door shut, went to the window that faced the clearing, and unhooked the deerskin. Bright sunlight, beating down on the whiteness, dazzled her eyes. The snow in the clearing was melting. It was no longer a solid sheet of white, but marked by darker little rivulets of water, all hurrying toward the snowy woods and the river beyond. Already she could see a dark stain about a quarter of a foot high, marking where the snow had melted, on the Jessups' door opposite, and on the door of Colin's little house.

  The deerskin covering on one of the MacPhersons' windows gave way to Duncan MacPherson's red head. "You all right over there?"

  "Yes, except that I think Caroline has a cold."

  "So have both the twins. But we'll all be fine, now that it's getting toward spring."

  Spring. Last night spring had seemed centuries away. "I lost track. What is the date?"

  "March eighth. Hold on, Mrs. Stanford. If this weather keeps up, we'll start shoveling paths a couple of days from now."

  His head withdrew. As Elizabeth refastened her own window covering, she heard Caroline cough twice. She pushed back the fear the sound brought her. Caroline would be all right. Even though Patrick had left them to withstand this terrible winter alone, they would survive, now that it was March, now that spring was almost here.

  The warm weather held, weather that seemed almost tropical compared to what had gone before. By nightfall no icicles dangled from the eaves. The next day dawned even warmer. Elizabeth knew that soon her long isolation would be ended. But by then she could take little joy in the warm sunlight beating down, because Caroline was worse, much worse. The small face was no longer pale, but unhealthily flushed and hot to the touch. She did not turn aside from the spoonful of broth held to her lips, but merely stared at it, eyes dull, mouth closed.

  That night, unable to sleep, Elizabeth sat at the bedside, listening with terror to Caroline's coughs, and to her breathing which had taken on a raspy sound. It was not until exhaustion overcame her that she undressed and got into bed beside the fevered child.

  The welcome sound of scraping shovels awoke her in the dim morning light. She looked at Caroline. The small face was still flushed, and the rasp in her breathing seemed more pronounced. Elizabeth got out of bed, moved swiftly to the front window, unhooked the deerskin. Duncan MacPherson was out there, shoveling aside the few feet of slushy snow that remained between his house and her own. Beyond him she could see Joe Thompson, clearing a last stretch of path between his house and the MacPhersons'.

  As soon as she was dressed, she snatched her shawl down from its hook, flung it over her head, and stepped out into the icy slush. "Caroline is sick," she said as she hurried past the Scot. "I've got to see Mrs. Thompson...."

  It was Colin who opened the Thompsons' door to her knock. He stood there smiling, his face pale after so many weeks indoors, his left hand resting on the crook of an ancient-looking blackthorn cane. "Elizabeth! I was going to come to your house the moment the path was clear."

  She managed to return his smile. "It's good to see you standing. Is your foot...?"

  "It's almost entirely healed. In a couple of weeks I should be able to take to the fields again."

  Mrs. Thompson came hurrying toward them, drying her hands on her apron. Her gaze searched Elizabeth's face. "Child! What is it?"

  "It's Caroline." Terror tightened her throat. "She... she..."

  "I'll see her," the older woman said, and reached for her shawl.

  Moments later, seated beside the flushed child, Mrs. Thompson said, "It's a lung congestion."

  "What will...?" Elizabeth could not finish the sentence.

  "I'll do my best for her. First we must get her back into the crib. We'll put a sheet over it to form a tent, and then have her breathe in steam from a croup kettle. And we will get some food down her, if we can. She must be terribly undernourished."

  Undernourished, Elizabeth thought bitterly. Her child was not just undernourished, but three-quarters starved. And all because a fanatical man cared more for his fellow fanatics than for his wife, or even his own child.

  CHAPTER 44

  A shrill chorus of tiny voices rose from a pond somewhere in the dark woods, a nighttime chorus that swelled and faded, swelled and faded, like the beating of a gigantic pulse. Elizabeth, seated at one side of Caroline's crib, was only vaguely aware of the spring peepers, those sm
all heralds of a new season's burgeoning life. It was death that held all her attention, the death hovering in this silent room.

  Mrs. Thompson, seated on the other side of the crib, had said more than an hour ago, "I think the crisis is near. If she lives through the night..."

  Elizabeth did not remember whether she or the other woman had spoken since then. During this past week—a week of little sleep, of days and nights blurring together, of endless hours spent hanging over Caroline's crib—her memory had grown vague, so that she could not recall whether three or four days had passed since Caroline had not only taken a little beef broth but also, with a spark of recognition in her glazed brown eyes, had said, "Mommy?"

  Now it seemed hard to believe that the suffering scrap of humanity there in the crib so recently had been strong enough to speak. Elizabeth's gaze kept moving from the small reddened face, with the whites of rolled-back eyes showing between barely opened lids, to the laboring little chest. For about forty-eight hours—or was it longer than that?—she'd had the feeling that it was only her own will that kept her child's tiny chest rising and falling.

  Someone knocked. Elizabeth knew it must be one of the women settlers calling to ask about Caroline, and to hand in a bowl of soup or other food. Feeling stiff, almost old, she crossed the room and opened the door.

  Patrick stood there, a gaunt-looking Patrick, his face covered with several days' growth of beard. She stared at him, not sure but what he was a phantom conjured up by her tormented mind.

  After a moment he smiled and said, "Well, Elizabeth, aren't you going to let me in?"

  At the sound of his voice, she knew that he was real. And she knew how much she hated him.

  Oh, before this she had felt what she thought was hatred. The night he left her violated and bleeding in that lonely house north of London. The morning she had looked down at her brother's murdered body sprawled on the beach. But this was really hatred, this blackness boiling up inside her until she could taste it in her mouth.

  She put her hand against the door frame, barring his way with her arm. She felt her lips stretch into the parody of a smile.

  "Tell me, Patrick, did you let your friends know where to find all those arms?"

  He said, his eyes puzzled, "It was too late. The English had found the last of them almost a year ago. In god's name, Elizabeth, why are you—?"

  "Well, Patrick, don't feel too bad about being too late. At least you're not too late here. You're in time to watch your child die."

  He seemed to turn to stone for a moment, face expressionless except for the stunned horror in his dark eyes. Then he lunged forward, breaking her grasp on the door frame, and moved past her into the room. She seized his arm with both her hands. "Yes, she's dying." Her voice was soft and thick now. "You killed her. You left us alone, without enough food, enough firewood..."

  He broke free of her grasp and strode over to the crib. Still seated beside it, Mrs. Thompson neither moved nor spoke, but just kept her gaze on the tall man's face. After a moment, Elizabeth went over to stand beside her husband.

  The only sound now was the child's labored breath, oddly mingled with the tiny frog's pulsating hymn to spring and new life. As the three adults stared down into the crib, the small chest became motionless for two seconds, three, four...

  My baby's dead, Elizabeth thought, and felt a silent scream of agony well up inside her.

  The small chest lifted, drawing air into itself. Patrick made a hoarse, strangled sound. Then he strode across the room and went out into the night.

  Elizabeth stayed there, hands gripping the crib's railing, gaze fixed on Caroline's face. Then, unable to bear her torment standing still, she began to pace up and down. After a while Mrs. Thompson said quietly, "He probably went to his brother's."

  Only half-comprehending, Elizabeth paused and looked at the older woman. "He must have tried to get back, and found the road and all the trails blocked with snow," Mrs. Thompson went on in that quiet voice. "Anyway, no matter how thoughtless and selfish he was, he is your man. He will still be, no matter what happens to..."

  She broke off, and then added, "Go to him. You are doing neither yourself nor the child any good, pacing up and down like that, and you are upsetting me. Now, go. Go on!"

  Dully obedient, Elizabeth took down her shawl, flung it around her shoulders, and stepped out into the cool spring dark. There was no moon, but starlight shone on the leafless trees walling in the south side of the clearing. Except for a lamp's glow showing through one of Colin's deerskin-covered windows, every house was dark.

  She started toward Colin's house and then stopped, arrested by a sound, harsh and painful, off among the trees to her left. With an odd, lurching sensation within her breast, she recognized it. It was one of the most terrible of all sounds, that of a strong man weeping.

  Footsteps noiseless over the ground, she moved to the wood's edge. A few yards ahead, a patch of lingering snow glimmered. Beyond it, back turned to her, wide shoulders heaving, Patrick knelt on the damp ground. His sobs seemed wrenched from him, like something torn out by the roots.

  She heard a whimpering sound, like an echo of his pain, and knew after a moment that it came from her own throat. She took a step forward. Then she halted, because he had begun to speak.

  "Let the child live," he said. "I don't ask it for myself. How could I? You know what I have always been. But if You really exist, let our little girl live. I'm not even asking it mainly for the child's sake, God. I'm asking it for Elizabeth, my Elizabeth. Yes, I know I have ho right to call her mine..."

  His voice broke. For a moment there was no sound except those raw, tortured sobs. Then words again poured Out of him. "And I know I have no right to feel this love for her, or expect her to feel anything but hatred for me. What sort of treatment has she known at my hands? At best, I've been blindly selfish, as when I scoffed at her fears and left her alone here. And at worst, such as the night when I broke into her bedroom in that house north of London.... Oh, God! If I could only roll back the years, and meet her for the first time, and woo her gently, lovingly. But I cannot. All I can do is to plead with You to spare her this suffering now. Please, please let the child live." Again his words gave way to hoarse sobbing.

  Standing at the wood's edge, Elizabeth felt the ache of tears in her throat. Tenderness for him seemed to swell her heart, so that it was hard to breathe. Afraid that in another moment he would become aware of her presence, she turned and moved back across the starlit clearing to her house. She mounted the front steps and stood there weeping quietly, forehead leaning on the arms she had crossed against one side of the door frame.

  After a while she wiped her face with one corner of her shawl and went into the house. Mrs. Thompson rose from beside the crib. "I was about to go to the door to look for you. I think she has passed the crisis."

  Elizabeth crossed the room swiftly, and half afraid to believe the evidence of her eyes, looked down at Caroline. The child's face was less flushed now, and her breaths, more normally spaced, had lost some of that terrible rasp. Relief washed over Elizabeth, relief so profound that it left her faint. She gripped the crib's rail to keep from falling.

  Mrs. Thompson said, "m sit up with her. You'd best go to bed, just as soon as you have told your husband. Or shall I tell him? Where is he? At his brother's?"

  No one must disturb Patrick, not when he might still be talking to that God he did not believe in. "Yes, he is with Colin. But you needn't call him. He will be here soon."

  Relief and fatigue and joy combined to make her feel half-drunk. She moved to the bed, sat down, and took off her shoes. "I won't undress." She stretched out on the bed. "I will just wait here until Patrick comes in," she said—and knew nothing more until morning light and the sound of Mrs. Thompson's quiet movements awoke her.

  CHAPTER 45

  Swiftly Elizabeth sat up. "Is Caroline...?"

  Mrs. Thompson, bending before the fireplace, turned to Elizabeth with a smile. "She's much better. I fe
d her broth about an hour ago. Now I'm heating water for tea."

  Elizabeth swung out of bed and crossed to the crib. With a flood of thanksgiving she saw that the child's breathing seemed almost normal. True, the sleeping face, in its frame of matted curls, looked shockingly bony and white, and yet it seemed to Elizabeth that a shadow—an almost visible one that had lain over her little girl's face for a week—was gone now.

  Patrick! She must tell Patrick! "Did my husband come back here last night?"

  "No, he did not." If Mrs. Thompson felt curiosity about Patrick's failure to return, she was careful to keep it out of her voice. "He must have stayed with his brother."

  Swiftly Elizabeth moved back to the bed, sat down, and slipped on her shoes. Then remorseful realization struck her. "You shouldn't have let me sleep! Why, you've been here all night."

  "I slept. I pulled my chair up to the table and rested my head on my arms and slept real well. Now, go make yourself pretty for your husband."

  Elizabeth hurried through the door into the pump house, where on one rough wall a small mirror hung above a shelf holding a white china basin, a matching pitcher, and comb and brush. A few minutes later she crossed through early-morning sunlight to Colin's little house. Smoke rose from its chimney. He must be preparing breakfast. She wondered if Patrick sat at the rough table. Or was he still asleep? He had looked so tired the night before, so thin and sunken-eyed.

  She knocked. Almost immediately she heard limping footsteps. When Colin opened the door, she looked eagerly past him. No one sitting at the table or lying on the built-in bed against the far wall. She asked, "Where's Patrick?" Fleetingly, in one part of her mind not wholly taken up with her husband, she realized that Colin no longer leaned upon a cane.