The Girl from Rawblood

by Catriona Ward

  Go and dig the grave. Go. The long white bugles of funeral flowers. Lilies.

  Since demobilization, he’s been adrift in the vast sea. He only just keeps afloat. Each day, only just. The bewildering profusion of everyday things. The farm. Taxes. The calf with the broken leg. He feels at once too young for it all to be expected of him and too weary to care about it. Everyday things and the other, darker matters, lurking always just below. He was managing. After a fashion.

  But last night, she was there. In the coffin, and also in the dark, outside the narrow light of the barn door. Within, without. Below him, before him. Dead. Not dead. Pale, awful. Drawn. He felt it like a blow to the throat or the heart. He felt the deep pull of the tide. How to stay afloat?

  He could arrange for burial at Manaton, a churchyard, anywhere. Legal and safe and done. But it’s not what she would have wanted. He knows what’s being asked of him. There’s no means of knowing the cost. He thinks bitterly of all they took from him, the Villarcas. Why should he go?

  Before the war, he thought you could withstand things. You would recover and replenish yourself. Now, he knows that it’s not true. What little reserves you have—of pity, kindness, courage, and so on—must be guarded. Stay afloat. Or let go. Drift into the deep. He stands and thinks.

  “Right,” he says at last and whistles for the dogs.

  • • •

  The wind’s up on the moor. The pony raises her nose. She snorts at the gale, at the ghosts of horses on the air. Tom walks beside her, hand on her neck, eyes watering. The tarp on the cart flutters. Underneath are picks, a shovel, stout ropes, and pegs. And the long box. The dogs race ahead of the cart and back again, long pink tongues out, wild eyes. They’re brown, brindled lurchers with great tails like masts. They pant, joyous. They were messenger dogs in the trenches. They don’t know that they’re farm dogs now. They’re still bewildered by the land, the light. One of them is deaf, the other half blind. They have no names.

  He is going inexorably toward something. Perhaps he’ll not come back. The wind buffets. He’s exhilarated, despite it all.

  Rawblood in the distance, blackened and broken.

  • • •

  Someone is calling. It’s faint at first. It’s a name, or something like it. Once, I knew.

  I am seized, as if by the scruff of the neck. I land hard on the flags of Rawblood in a haze of firelight. Something dark and dreadful on my hands. I wipe them clean as best I can. What have I done? Someone is calling.

  She sits by the cavernous hearth, hair red and burning like the fire before her. I come close to look at her, really look at her. I have never seen a picture. I do not believe there are any. But I know her; I would know her anywhere. Face intent like a cat glimpsing prey. In the uncertain light, I see the wet rims of her pond-green eyes. Not intent. Sad.

  Come, I say. I’ll show you my eyes.

  She flings her hand up. You must stop, she says. The world coils and uncoils with power. The lines and colors of her shiver in the air. I am stopped in my tracks. She’s not a memory. She’s here, in one way or another.

  Let me go, I say. What does it matter? It was all long ago. I do not want to think of the things I’ve done.

  She looks at me. Cold, green, intelligent. It matters. You burned the house, did you not?

  Papa said to burn it, I say. Didn’t work. We go around and around and around and around. No way out of the circle.

  Did Tom Gilmore dig the grave?

  The question is meaningless, enraging. I don’t care, I say. Why? How has this happened to me?

  I went to the cave when the time came, she says. To let you into the world. It is an old place. Too old, perhaps. I should have known. The earth and the stone remember. The cave does. Then Tom Gilmore left your ring on the stone… That the ones you love may never die, they say. Foolish to dismiss old tales. So how are you here? How do we come to such things? I do not know, except that it is by slow degrees and unknowing. And it is all connected. My daughter. Her hand light on my face, her look. It brings the scent of fresh grass, the memory of sunshine. You can get out. If Tom Gilmore digs the grave. I told your father to look after him. He forgot. Some feeling in her face I can’t read. He is the only one of us left now.

  Tom’s not one of us, I say.

  Of course he is, she says. You made him one. It’s love that does it.

  He’s forgotten me, I say. Tom. Everyone’s dead or forgotten me…

  Iris.

  That’s not who I am. I’m not her anymore.

  She tuts. Come, she says and takes my hand. The front of her cambric nightgown. The gentle swell. I am somehow both here and there, warm inside her and alone in the cold dark. She puts her hand over mine. The love that moves then between my mother and I is as tangible as a shared road or a ribbon. It fills the spaces between us. We sit together on the cold stone floor before the dying fire.

  I can’t stop, I tell her. And I can’t get out.

  I’ll give you a memory, she says. And she does. It’s of warmth and Papa and the scent of iodine. The ache of bruises. It was a bad day, but then the fire cracked in the grate, and I was safe in the sheets, and he read to me of a grave, and a woman, and a sword.

  Somewhere in the distance, the keening of old hinges. A door, swinging open.

  • • •

  Tom stands irresolute among the ruins of Rawblood. Black spires of charred wood rise in the afternoon air. Winter sun pours through the ruined windows. Behind is the gray land. The great curving staircase is gone; the slate roof is gone. The hall is open to the sky. The vast marble mantel remains above the hearth, blackened and cracked. Once, there flowed cherubs and devils in its chilly white folds. He said he would never come here again. But you can’t escape some debts.

  It was a year ago the house burned. In Dartmeet, they say the fire raged for three days. Everything obliterated in a great welter of flame. All gone. No cause for it to be found. Some said they saw a blazing figure running through the house, setting it alight with burning brands. To hear others tell it, a flaming sword. Starved, bald, with eyes afire. Of course, Rawblood has been haunted always. The old man Shakes was sleeping in the stable, as he always had. He never woke. Or so it must be assumed, for there was no trace of him after. People are sorry about Shakes in Dartmeet and all around. He was well known in these parts. They’re not sorry about the Villarcas.

  The dogs circle on the grass. They turn elegantly and make no sound. The soft incessant patter of their feet tells their distress. The dogs know fear and death; they’re accustomed. But they won’t set foot in what’s left of Rawblood. They don’t like it. They tell Tom this with upturned brown eyes, quivering bodies.

  He goes to the place, already chosen, under the cedar tree. He paces out the hard ground. Eight feet long. Four wide. Eight deep, at least. He recalls a night in a cave, talk of a murdered girl beneath the cedar… An old tale. This is now.

  What’s in the box seems to have nothing to do with her. A scarred, hungry thing, died in its sleep. “We never had a chance,” he says to the air. “Not a chance.” He’s surprised by his fury. Deep, sudden.

  He breaks ground. The pick rings as if on metal. The earth resists, then breaks open. He sinks into the rhythm of it. Wintry light sits on him. His straining arms, the shovel, the dogs’ worried faces.

  It takes most of the afternoon. He stops when he thinks he should. He’s not tired. He pours water into the shallow of a shovel for the dogs and the pony. They all drink noisily.

  When at last it’s done, he lets the coffin down gently into the hole. It’s difficult. His arms and back hum with weariness. The sun’s low now in the sky. Not long till dark. That old story she loved. The graves opened like doors to yield their dead.

  • • •

  The great tree murmurs at my back. The moon falls through the leaves. Dappled shade. It’s not a cedar now, but som
ething older. The branches are dark and knotty, the leaves shaped like blades. The tree and the cave. They call to one another. The same people made them and for the same purpose.

  There has always been a tree here on this hill. They hung sacrifices from the branches. Pieces of bread, amber beads, lengths of perfect linen, oxen hearts. They hung the children dressed in white. The blood ran down the bark. The man who does it is wizened, small, and ancient. Face like cooling lava. He treats them gently. He soothes them as he slips the noose about their necks. Then the knife. The old man does it in her name. Places remember. Rawblood. Not such a gentle name after all.

  The grave’s half in shadow under the spreading branches. It lies quiet, newly dug. A pile of earth beside it. There has always been a tree here and beneath it a grave. Someone buries me here. Will bury me here. Has buried me here. Comes to the same thing. How are ghosts set free? Graves are doors too.

  A circle of lamplight blooms soft beneath the tree. Someone stands by the grave. Was he always there? Blue eyes. Scarred face solemn in the shifting light.

  Tom throws a handful of cold earth. It scatters on the thin coffin wood. The dark is coming, and the air is cold. The sky is a blazing orange line behind the ruins of the house.

  He unhitches the pony from the cart. “Go now,” he tells her and the dogs. “Go on. Bugger off home.” The pony goes gladly with a ladylike kick of her heels. The dogs don’t want to leave him, but in the end, they go too, trotting across the fading land.

  He lights the lamp. It throws a warm circle on the winter ground. He leans on the spade. He waits. He thinks, We made each other who we are. He thinks of her and all the times. A crack is opening in him, or the world. Forward or back? he thinks. Something races through him like color or approaching thunder. Forward or back? The sun is nearly down. He wills the night on. The air is uncertain, lustrous. He looks about him sharply. In the dark, beyond the lamplight, something gently stirs.

  “Iris,” he says.

  “She died,” says a voice like stone grinding upon stone. Like the death of hope, like battlements falling.

  “She died,” I say. “I’m not her anymore.”

  “Iris.” The light’s warm on his face, young beneath its river of scars. He’s afraid.

  “You gave me up,” I say. “Forgot.”

  “No,” he says. “That’s the problem. Can’t forget it. All our lives.”

  I try to think what he means, but it’s so distant, removed. Tiny, lit-up scenes, caught in time.

  I say, “Put out the light.” The winter night rises about us. Multitudes of cold, cold stars. He comes toward me in the dark, breath white and fine-spun in the air.

  “Those days,” he says. “Won’t let me go. You and I.”

  The black is rising, a tide. I welcome it in.

  “You think you know me,” I say. “But I am more dangerous than you could dream.” The thoughts come fast and lovely like thrown knives. His ignorance, his obstinacy. He did this somehow; he put the ring on the stone. My every fiber burns with the dark. Sweet singing in my bones and my veins. I am made of malice and full of power. I am made of nothing. Look at me. This is who I am. I show him my eyes.

  He breathes me in. The sickness. The despair washes in, bitter. It rots and curdles his insides. It runs through him, spoiling everything it touches. He coughs. Blood swells within his lower lip, spills to his chin in a thin, eager line. He’s afraid, of course, like all the others.

  “Go on,” he says fiercely. “If you have to.”

  I curl about his bones. I show him everything.

  He stares. Blank, blue look. Without warning, he reaches out and passes a hand over my head. His palm warm on my bare skull. His fingers touch the ridges of the scars, which cover the broken holes. “Oh,” he says sadly. Years since anyone touched me in kindness.

  “Get away,” I say. “Get off.” The black scatters. I release him. I come back into myself with a thump.

  He doubles over, coughing, rubs his chest through his thin, patched shirt. He pounds his heart with a fist.

  “You all right?” I ask.

  “Lungs,” he says briefly. “Gas did for me. Hold on.” He coughs.

  “We’re quite the pair,” I say.

  He says, “What was done to you, Iris?”

  I tell him. The words taste of tin. “I can’t be this anymore,” I say.

  A pause, and then he says, “What, then?”

  I think of Hervor and the door of the dead. “At dawn,” I say, and it’s me who’s frightened now, “I think I go.” I look at the horizon, and I see: the line of Rawblood is wrong against the sky. Unfamiliar. Jagged, broken. Twisted, skeletal angles. I peer into the dark. Heavy scent of old, old ash.

  “Did it burn?” I ask. “Tom, did Rawblood burn?”

  “Yes,” he says, wary. “It’s gone. Burned last summer.”

  “I set it on fire,” I say. “Last night.” It worked after all. Rawblood, my home, my prison. I look at its shattered silhouette. It wells up strong in me still. That love. Even now.

  I think I could stay, if I wanted. Burned or not, I could wake beside the fire in the great hall. Go through the endless doors. Do what has already been done and give in. Forget. Rawblood will always be there. All I’ve done.

  I touch the paper in my pocket. Creased, soft. “I had a letter from you,” I say to Tom.

  “Well,” he says, “I must have sent a hundred.”

  “If you’ve anything to tell me,” I say, “it’d best be now.”

  “All right,” he says. The night wheels on. The shape of his head against the stars.

  • • •

  The skyline’s blue and burgeoning. Shapes are stronger by the moment. I can see him, just, in the silver light that comes before the sun. He’s tired, pale. Memory surges through me. Afternoon heat, blue serge, his hand touching mine as we ride home. Hooves clipping the road, the song of bees, happiness so thick it’s a warm stupor, as if someone has taken our minds. I’m filled with simple knowledge. I touch his shoulder. Through the thin shirt, it’s good and damp and real. “I thought it was my father,” I say to him. “I thought I came back for Rawblood, for her… But after all, it wasn’t those things. In the end, it wasn’t them I came for.”

  Tom looks at me and I at him. The first reddish beam of day falls across us. Behind him, the sun crests the hill, a blazing line. Above us, the tree is wreathed in light. Each winter branch is lacework against the sky.

  I’m not ready. We’ve barely begun. I reach for his hands; he grasps mine tight. No, he says. Pest… The red disc of the sun rears up; the sky runs blood then orange then amber. The light strengthens. I say, No, wait. I hold to him. Warm, familiar. Wait. His fingers slip through mine. He’s gone.

  I’m alone in burning light. I close my eyes, but the sun is in them still; behind my lids, there dance eons, planets, stars. All the moments and beginnings and endings. The faces of the dead. Rustle of silk, the thud of a boot. Flash of my father’s eye blinking, great and brown. Centuries unroll; the colors are staggering. Indigo, white, yellow. Burning wheat fields, the light caught on battle blades, blood, blood, and everywhere, the sound of trees growing.

  The ground creeps up over my boots, my legs. Earth about my shoulders, my head. The ground closes above me like water. A grass snake winds smoothly past my cheek. Creatures and things move in the earth about me; it is so alive. I sink down, past the old stone foundations of Rawblood. The house by the bridge over flowing water. My fingers brush the stinking fur of a fox where it sleeps in its earth. It bares its teeth but doesn’t wake. Down through a cold river, bound deep in the rock.

  A quick flash of a green shining cave, two children crouched on the rocky floor. They speak to one another, faces intent. I know her, of course, and him. How strange: how tender, distant. The candle stub flickers bravely, casts light and shadow. I yearn toward them. No
ne of it had happened yet then…although, of course, it had.

  The little girl looks at me. Horror on her small white face, and fear. She puts her thin child’s body between me and him. The white worms crawl in my eyes. She pulls the boy up and runs, scattering shale and shards of brown glass.

  The cave walls flicker. There’s a woman in a bloodstained dress. She weeps, and her huge belly undulates. A knotted old man crouches by her, eyes milky. I want to touch her, to comfort her and be comforted…but they’re gone.

  The shining green cave is shadowed, empty. A gold ring sits on the altar stone. Red and white gems gleam in the cool light.

  I sink. Down.

  Down through other caves where blind fish swim and calcified minerals bleed from the ceilings in glittering pointed spikes. Down into the deep inside of the land. To where nothing is anymore. I come to rest. There are many arms about me in the dark—kind arms. They hold, and their voices are in my ear, my family; I see their faces and their lives laid out like a road through the centuries, like a ribbon. I see my part in it and the choices that were their own, in the end. The sadness brims, fills me like a cup. I will drown in it, surely, and that will be welcome. They speak long and low, and I see, like the crack of breaking bone, that I am so very small in the placement of earth and hill and rock, in the placement of things. And I see that I am forgiven.

  They leave me. They slip away like smoke.

  I am alone on a great plain. Fire leaps from deep holes. Scent of lilies, of rot. Something approaching. Dark, boiling, rolling closer, huge and terrible under the fiery sky. No. I’ve made a mistake. I turn to run. It rolls over me, hits me like a torrent. I am shattered in a slow explosion. The pain is beyond anything. It’s knowledge, time, all racing through me like horses. I am broken, disassembled. The brawling noise, high wind. I flow out into the little rivulets under the world.