• • •
I’m in the hayloft with the ladder pulled up. Samuel Bantry is below, wandering the farmyard, calling for me. He doesn’t know I’m up here—he’s just chancing it, idling away his time. It’s easing into midmorning, and he’ll be into the village for Friday drinking soon. All I must do is hold tight.
“Meg,” he says, “come out. If you do not, you shall have the strap. You do not want the strap, do you?”
I keep my scorn silent. Does he think I will answer? Chancing it or no, he’s got that slinking, black tone in his voice.
“Copperknob,” he says. “When I find you, you’ll pay.” The leather hits his palm with a thwack. As insults go, it is weak. I’ve had worse all my life. Red hair means witches around these parts, and there’s nothing more to be said about it.
Below, a bucket rings with Samuel’s kick. A hen flaps across the yard in a rattle of clucks.
His pace slows. He’s thinking. His footfalls are quiet. I move behind a tower of hay. I dig in and down into the musty warm. The loft feels unsafe, of a sudden. But I can see the rickety pine of the ladder against the wall. It is here, so how would he get to me? And what would he do if he did? Slaps. The strap. My ears would be soundly boxed. And that would be that. Bruises, a few welts, and tears are nothing new, to be sure.
But I am not sure. There is another look that sits deep in his eye these days. I am lately fifteen. Women are punished differently from children.
Scuffling below. Something is dragged across the muddy cobbles. It bodes ill for me. I make myself a mouse and burrow deeper into the hay. It is difficult, because something is happening.
The loft blinks about me like a great eye. Planks creak, and there is hay in my nose. Below, the sound of metal ringing on cobbles… But behind that, through that, I see…a purple sky over a far moor. Dawn over warm land. Dew on the velvet grass. Two men on a hill, crouched by a dead dog. I cannot hear. But their anger, their despair comes from them in waves.
The hay is hot; the seed trickles into my ear. Something clangs as it comes to rest on the edge of the trapdoor. I must move, but I am slipping in the sky over a house with many gables and chimneys and… Samuel’s eyes and ears rear up into the loft like a sea monster surfacing. An old sheep hurdle makes a handy ladder after all.
Mrs. Bantry’s eyes are round and owlish. She fills my vision like a landscape. Behind her, a corner of blue sky. I start to say—she puts a finger to her lips. I hush.
The earthy stench and gluey mud cover me. In my mouth, under my nails, in my ears. My hair is rattails of brown. An acceptable color at last. Under the mud, there is blood in various places. I’m on the midden, where I fell, I suppose. When pushed. Above in the loft, Samuel is whistling. He is off to Friday drinking, having shown me what’s what.
We scrub me in the horse trough by the lane. I climb in, sit down. The water rears, a high and glassy cliff, then crashes. Mrs. Bantry pours the cold cupfuls over. I wince under her hands, but we do not discuss it. What would be the use? The bruises are dark feathers on my wrists, my neck, my back, my legs.
I am splintered. The outside of me is weeping and holds Mrs. B, for her comfort and for mine. Another part of me is thinking, how long, then, until, until… Because Samuel has never strapped me on my thighs before.
A little of me, the clearest, deepest part of me, is thinking of my brother.
Mrs. Bantry counsels me, as always, not to cross him, not to cross Samuel. We both know, from long experience, that it will serve no purpose. However closely I obey, he will find cause. Today was not too bad. I have been bed-bound for weeks in the past. Each one of my ribs or fingers has been cracked or broken over the years. My collarbone was broken twice.
The truth is that were I not first in line, the black eyes, the loose teeth, the ringing ears would be for Mrs. Bantry. Still, she wants me to be spared, as if it would not mean her pain. She is behaving as if there were justice and some kind of reason in the world, which is admirable. She is a good woman.
Mrs. Bantry taught me the first steps. She taught me that the witches’ ladder is made with yarn of certain colors. She taught me the feathers and the flowers, their sakes when whole, when burnt.
She never really believed. I saw that the first time that they sang in my hands—the feathers, the blood. The first time I had the Eye. They were little games for Mrs. Bantry. Women’s games, passed down through her family, thrilling and secret. Ritual, habit. Without consequence. It must have been a great shock when they leaped for me, with bright fire and with power.
She was afraid then. She never taught me more. But it was too late. By that time, the roots and the earth and the blood spoke to me themselves and told me their uses. Mrs. Bantry has always cared for me in her way, though she did not understand me. But in some things, she cannot defy her husband.
I know something that they do not, not yet. My brother will die. Is perhaps dead already. Who will send the letter? I have a day, three at most, before they know that there is no more money. I breathe and banish fear. I scold myself. All is not lost. There is always something to be done. I will discover my course.
• • •
It’s a clear dawn, pale moon still suspended. The heather is springy and good under my feet. I run, my bruises singing; there is not much time for this. The vale beneath Bow Peak is soft in shadow. The brook is a crooked silver seam on the valley floor. I follow it up along the thin slice of bank, against the current, morning dew creeping through the soles of my boots. At the head of the valley, the spring leaps like an eel from mossy stone.
I take from beneath my shawl the stoppered phial of vinegar and oil and the tin plate. Copper is good. Silver is better. But this is what I have. I put the tin plate under the spring. Water rushes over, good, hard sound. The light is coming; the valley glows. The moon thin, bitten silver.
When the moment is right, I take the dish of spring water and put it on the grass. I pour in the oil and vinegar and wait. The water goes still as glass. The moon and the dawn are in it. I breathe deep. I say what I need to say. Then I ask. Show me the answer.
Nothing. A tiny midge lands in the dish. The surface of the water shivers in concentric circles. I wait. Nothing happens. Perhaps it is the wrong question. Who will help me? I ask. I wait. Nothing.
When the Bantrys find that I can no longer be kept, they will turn me out. I understand it. There is so little to go around. Samuel will do what he will before they put me out though. I would stake my life on it. Money has been the thin invisible line that kept me from disaster, and now it is removed. I will be a hedge beggar, and sooner or later, I will die—of cold, of hunger, raped and beaten to death in a ditch. That is what becomes of hedge beggars.
What is to be done? It is borne upon me that my situation is hopeless. I look at the blank moon in the pale water; I laugh a little. It reflects the truth: there is no one who will help. He never gave me cause to love him, Charles. But I think of him dying, and my eyes burn. Tears strike the still water; it whorls and shivers. Tears for him and for myself.
The moon scatters and rearranges itself. It’s all about me in silver shards. A terrible white face with madness in the eyes. Horror binds my heart… The water shivers, a sound like cards shuffling, and it’s gone. I am somewhere else entirely.
Around me, warm stone walls. A house. Passages and rooms open out as I go; in the center is a hall, like the chamber of a heart. Faint, without, the sound of rain. The scents are everywhere: rain and stone. A room now, a library perhaps, a study. Leather and panels of burnished wood. Through the leaded panes, wild gray hills.
Below me, a chair, kicked hastily aside. I swing in space.
The pain is immediate and savage. I cannot pay much mind to anything but the great crushing sorrow wrapped tight about my heart and the rope, coarse and bristling even tighter about my throat. These are not my hands; it is not my throat. I look through the hangin
g man’s eyes. This man… His flesh holds things in common with my flesh. It remembers. We have seen the same mysterious things in the warm nothing dark that comes before birth. As I feel the shape of our noses, which are the same, and the pond-green of our eyes, which is the same, I understand with a lurch of sorrow. Here is my brother, at last.
We sway, creaking, from the beam. We choke in agony. Our legs kick uselessly in space. Our air-starved body gives up, bit by bit. I am to know him only for a heartbeat, as he dies.
A face is in my brother’s mind. This is his dying thought: a man. Dark, vast, and still as if carven. Black hair streaked with white, long elegant hands. The light in his eyes that is like the sun on brown river water. Deep. The love Charles feels moves into me like a blow. I am stunned. I am weeping with it. Who is he? I will never know. A most torturous gift, no sooner given than torn away.
But there is this.
As my brother’s brain becomes a bonfire, as it fires thousands, millions, of stars into the endless night, as his flesh changes from living pink to dead, I hear it. My name. As his throat is crushed and blood bursts in his eyes, he feels me.
Meg? he asks. Whatever, how? Oh God, I am afraid…
Hush, I say. I’ll be your guide.
He is glad. He lets me touch his heart with mine. At the last.
When it’s done, I am very weak. I sit and clutch the turf with my fists. I weep. I claw the ground. He has left me again, and this time for good.
MARY HOPEWELL AND HEPHZIBAH BRIGSTOCKE
1839
Mary Hopewell was endowed with the kind of beauty that seems not long for this world, so composed is it of the symptoms of sickness: pallor, delicacy, languor, a low voice, and a cheek painted pink with the hectic flush. Though much admired, she had never married, it being pronounced by physicians that her health could not endure it. This would not have troubled her, having attained the ripe age of thirty without encountering anyone whom she wished to marry. But she was of a generation of women whose brothers, father, uncles, and cousins had all been lost to soldiery, to that small French tyrant who terrorized the world so for many years. The Hopewells were an old family, hailing from Devon, but Mary was not long to have the benefit of them. Having lost all her menfolk to Bonaparte when she was a child, most of her female relations perished, as the years passed, from the same complaint that plagued her. The consumption took each in quick succession, and then Mary was alone.
Miss Hopewell sold her cottage at Brighton and went to live with her one remaining cousin, a Mrs. Anstruther, who was married to a legal gentleman with a promising career at the Inns and had a young family, which showed a marked tendency to enlarge itself at every opportunity. Miss Hopewell asserted that she considered it her duty to contribute her monthly portion to the household, but this was considered parsimonious, the fault that Mrs. Anstruther deplored more than any other, and could not be permitted. They preferred that Miss Hopewell should lean upon them. Were they not, after all, perfectly beforehand with the world? It was nonsense. Cousin Mary must put all such thoughts from her head. No, she should enjoy what she could of London and be quite peaceful.
But perhaps…if she wished to take the children for a drive now and again…that would relieve Mrs. Anstruther when she had one of her heads, which she often did in the mornings; the little angels would love it so! And Mary’s skills on the pianoforte were quite superior—perhaps Alice could be set to practice with her a little in the afternoons, for the girl would never do in a drawing room as it was. The cook too could be taught by Miss Hopewell to make that béchamel that Mr. Anstruther had so enjoyed at Brighton; it had been her sister’s recipe, had it not—dear Anne, God rest her soul!—some trick with the scalded milk, perhaps? And were Mary not too wearied in the evenings, it would be so kind in her to help with the darning, for Mrs. Anstruther was not nacky with a needle, one of her many failings, she was sure, and there was always mountains of the stuff… Some little favors such as these, and Mr. and Mrs. Anstruther would consider themselves richly repaid. Yes, it was positively distressing for Mary to speak of money so!
Miss Hopewell supposed London was well enough; she did not become very well acquainted with it. She mended and darned and scrubbed and nursed and taught French and Italian and the piano. She found herself often obliged to retire to her room in the evenings and, in the colder months, could not leave it. She was attended at these times with all possible solicitude: when Mrs. Anstruther brought up to her the handkerchiefs to hem, she brought also syrup of poppies and a basin to cough in.
“It’s little enough I can do for the poor soul,” she said comfortably to her husband. “She will not likely be with us for long.”
Miss Hopewell remained with the Anstruthers for three years, during which two additions were delivered into the family. One winter morning at the beginning of the fourth year, during the bitterest season in living memory, Mrs. Anstruther visited Miss Hopewell’s chamber for a cose. Mrs. Anstruther confided to her cousin that she was expecting, this summer, yet another happy event! So blessed were they. Although, it did put one to great shifts, five children and soon another who must in its turn be schooled and fed and shod… And Mr. Anstruther’s prospects, though ultimately magnificent, had run aground here and there recently: some occurrence in the labyrinthine bowels of that great masculine entity, the Royal Exchange, which she could not fathom… At any rate, they must draw back on the reins for a time; a little, only a little.
Mrs. Anstruther’s household economy had ever been perfection; she was a devoted adherent of the dictum of Bishop Hall: “He is a good wagoner that can turn in a little room.” Mrs. Anstruther’s rooms now became little indeed. The medicaments and nourishment that were prescribed for Miss Hopewell began to be doled out precisely onto the kitchen scales.
That winter brought about Mary’s worst bout of illness yet. Days passed when she seemed to drift above herself. From her pillows, Miss Hopewell heard Mr. Anstruther murmur to his wife, as they strolled down to dine, “And yet she shows no sign of a permanent decline.”
Miss Hopewell was not surprised when, in the spring, it was decreed by the solicitous Anstruthers that she must try a change of air and a warmer climate. As Mr. Anstruther observed, she did not seem able to die.
Mr. and Mrs. Anstruther had thought the matter through with conscientious thoroughness. As much as they would miss their dear cousin, it behooved her, for the sake of her constitution, to repair to Italy with a companion, hired for the purpose. A suitable lady was found by means of advertisement, interviewed, and engaged, all by Mr. Anstruther, who, as her only male connection, had Miss Hopewell effectively in his charge until he could find a way to get her out of it.
Miss Hopewell had a small capital, which was administered by her cousin-in-law; this would pay for a tolerable standard of living and the wages of the companion. In fact, as Mr. Anstruther observed, since this capital had remained almost untouched for several years, she might be expected to go on in a capital way! Miss Hopewell fixed him with a thoughtful eye and acquiesced. She was tired of her life being measured; it emphasized its probable brevity.
Miss Hopewell met Miss Brigstocke for the first time at Dover, on the eve of their departure. Miss Hopewell was borne there by Mrs. Anstruther, who made much of her throughout the journey and petted her, pressing her hand and uttering protestations of attachment, mourning their imminent separation. In the carriage, Miss Hopewell gave much thought to the woman who was to be her intimate companion. Miss Brigstocke would be more familiar to her than Mrs. Anstruther to her husband, perhaps, for that pair had various and diverging interests, as married couples do—domestic, legal, sartorial, familial—and many weeks went by when they saw one another for but a few minutes during the course of it. Not so would be the connection between herself and this woman—in a foreign place, with no acquaintance and scant resources, they would be deeply necessary to one another.
The day was a bright,
English one; a sharp March breeze made its way through the crevices of the carriage and under Miss Hopewell’s pelisse. As they entered Dover, Mrs. Anstruther leaned forward, the better to observe the crush of people around her; Miss Hopewell leaned back—she did not want to see sunlight on the silk of dresses or the gold of officers’ braid. The world was busy and awake, she thought, but she should not have any part in it. Miss Hopewell looked at the sea instead, which tossed, burdened with the black stick silhouettes of ships.
“Rough,” murmured Mrs. Anstruther to herself. “Very rough today. I do hope it will not…” Mrs. Anstruther’s hand tightened with true urgency; Miss Hopewell caught her cousin’s thought and smiled. Mrs. Anstruther would push the packet out of harbor herself if she could.
It seemed to Miss Hopewell but a moment before Mrs. Anstruther was standing on the flagstones, calling for her to “Come down from the carriage, Mary, do!” and then depositing her in the coffee room of the Cinque Ports Inn with a small, gray woman. This was Miss Brigstocke, who was to share the remainder of her days.
Now that she sat before her, Miss Hopewell could see little in Miss Brigstocke to alarm her but little to give her confidence either. The other woman wore a dress of gray merino, darned neatly and abundantly. Her hair was determinedly frizzed in the fashion of one who last took note of such things at the turn of the century. Her face was small, much crossed by coarse lines, and her eyes shone black. Mary Hopewell felt a tilt of despair, regarding her; Miss Brigstocke looked emptied of life, dried, wrung out.
Mrs. Anstruther thought to order a supper and left the room with the heavy, jovial tact of one who has no interest at stake. The women regarded each other a moment.
“It is like an arranged marriage,” said Miss Brigstocke at length. “How quaint of us! If we do not like one another, I assure you it will be quite proper for you to express your reservations to Mrs. Anstruther, you know, in a low voice, at which I shall look suitably devious, or perhaps drunk, and she will see that I am not fit to accompany you at all. There can be no reason for us going along with it unless we wish; I imagine another advertisement can be placed, and as for me, there is a very eligible position at Hove, which I have been considering, so you mustn’t trouble yourself with that.” Miss Brigstocke paused and then said in a quite different tone, “But, I confess, I have longed to see Italy.”
The Girl from Rawblood Page 19