“Where are we going?” I whispered. I don’t know why I whispered, and I don’t know why I asked, because he was not going to answer. I followed him up and down the gentle swells, tripping over the hummocks, until we had climbed a small hill. But the hill had no summit. It was like a shallow bowl at its top, hollowed out smooth with short grass yellowing from the lack of rain, a large, flat stone standing up like a finger at its center. The grasses grew tall around the edges, and when Davy sat beside the stone, Bertram in his lap, I knew the only creatures in the world he was not hidden from were the birds of the air. I came and sat on the grass beside him. Bertram hopped down to graze.
“Is this your place, Davy?” I asked, more to fill the silence than to know his answer. I handed him the bun, which he tore into eagerly. “Is it a secret place? Shall I not tell?”
His large eyes looked up at me over the bun, wide and serious, and I stared into their blackness. They were very expressive eyes, like windows of nighttime, and somehow I was sure that Davy would not want me to tell.
“All right, I shan’t, then,” I said, answering as if he had spoken. “Not unless I know you wish me to. Is that a bargain?”
He took another bite of the bun, his gaze dropping to the book in my hand. I set it in his lap, and he turned the pages slowly as he chewed, stopping often on the pictures, which were vivid: tropical birds of fantastic colors, monkeys, and the depiction of an openmouthed crocodile, water dripping from jagged teeth. He lingered long on that one.
When the bun was gone, I said, “You were frightened yesterday, Davy, and I don’t know why.” His eyes darted up, instantly fearful.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said immediately, “but I wish I could know. Would you like to learn how to read and to write down what you want other people to know?”
He looked again at the book, silent, one brown finger on the picture of the crocodile.
“And if you knew how to read,” I coaxed, “you could know what this book is telling you. See this word?” I moved his hand aside and pointed. “This word says ‘crocodile,’ and the rest of the words tell what the crocodile eats and how it behaves. Would you like to be able to read that?”
I could see nothing but the top of his brown curls, bits of leaf sticking out of them.
“Look,” I tried again. “I’ve brought paper, and a pen, and ink.” I drew them out of the bag. “Let me show you.” I opened a small copybook to a blank page and uncorked the inkwell. I set the ink beside the stone, dipped the pen, and wrote a large letter D.
“See,” I said, “this is the first letter of your name. There are twenty-five more letters, and when you know them all you can mix them up to make as many words as you wish. And when you know the words, you can copy them down yourself and tell whatever you’d like, and all without talking. Here.” I put the pen in his hand, guiding it to a slight dip in the inkwell and back to the page. “Try the letter D.”
We sat there, breeze sighing as the sun became a yellow ball to heat up the grasses, Davy’s hand hovering above the page until the ink began to dry. I helped him dip the pen again.
“Don’t worry if it doesn’t turn out well,” I said. “Just try.”
But still he did not touch the pen to the page. I put my hand on his, thinking to guide him, but he leapt up from my touch as if stung, sending the pen flying and nearly knocking over the ink. He hurried across the little dell and snatched up Bertram, holding the rabbit close, as a low voice from behind me said, “What’s all this, then?”
I twisted around. Lane was there, the red cap on his hair, a rifle in one hand and a brace of dead pheasants in the other. He laid down the birds and the gun and stepped into the little bowl of land as I faced forward again, feeling guilt for I knew not what. Lane folded his length down onto the ground, leaning back against the stone, once again reminding me of a cat, dark and sleek. “Well?” he said again.
I lifted my chin. “I thought perhaps Davy could learn to read, and to write, so that he could … so that he …” I left the sentence unfinished.
“I see,” Lane said, and picked up the open book on South America from the ground. Davy, fear evidently gone, came and sat down beside him, trying to imitate Lane’s lithe stance against the rock, an impossible and slightly comical task for a boy with a short, round body and a bunny in his lap. I discovered the gray eyes on me, hard and accusing. “Is something funny?”
“No,” I said, straightening my face.
Lane frowned down at the book for a moment, then leaned close to Davy. “Do you see that crocodile there? Do you know what it’ll do if you try and touch it?”
Davy looked up into Lane’s face, dimpling, and reached a tentative finger toward the picture.
“Bite off your hand!” Lane yelled suddenly, snapping the cover shut as if the book would eat the child’s finger. Davy’s hand jerked back, and his dimple deepened at Lane’s laugh. My brows went up. Males were strange creatures.
When they were done amusing themselves by pretending that the book would consume pieces of their limbs, I said, “I was wondering, does Mrs. Jefferies sleep in her own cottage at night?”
Lane’s brows came down. “Aunt Bit? Of course she does. Davy with her.” Davy’s dimple faded, and he stroked his rabbit.
“I was wondering because last night I heard footsteps in the corridor, and then … someone had a fire lit and a supper made in a room downstairs, just around from the kitchen. The room had been cleaned, and furniture and ornaments had been moved from other parts of the house. I thought perhaps your aunt would know.” I couldn’t mention the wolf, of course, but I watched for Lane’s reaction to this information. There wasn’t one.
“Aunt Bit had one of her headaches and went to her bed early last night,” he said. Bertram hopped out of Davy’s lap, and Davy got up and followed him to the edge of the dell. Lane frowned as he watched him.
“And there have been other times …” I said, forcing out the words. “The first day I came. Someone was in the chapel, and they … laughed. I thought people from the village might be …”
“And you’re sure you really heard it?”
The gray eyes were on me again, cold and sparing me nothing. Had I heard someone laugh? Was I certain of that now? There were so many things I’d thought I’d seen, and hadn’t. I tucked my bandaged hand into the billowing worsted and looked away. I could not answer.
“Which room is it you saw?” he asked eventually.
“Three doors down from the kitchen, around the corner.” I wished I’d gone back there this morning, to be sure. How I loathed myself for not knowing. I watched Davy offer a spray of wild onions to the rabbit while a sudden breeze waved the grasses.
“Just what is it you’re up to, Miss Tulman?”
I looked at him, still leaning back against the stone, and though his position had not changed, I could easily perceive that he had. He was coiled and tense, ready to spring. “What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean. What are you doing with Mr. Tully, winding clocks and painting things and spending all that time in the workshop? What are you doing with Davy in this hollow? What do you hope to gain by it?”
I looked down at my skirt.
“You’re still going to turn us out, aren’t you? Can you deny it?”
I held silent. What could I say?
“You are going to turn us out. I don’t care what Mary Brown runs about telling the whole village, you’re going to send every last one of us to the streets. And you’ll take Mr. Tully, too, and when you do, it’ll kill him. You know it will. You know it the same way I do. You might be the only other person in the world that knows it like I do.”
His words were soft and measured, like velvet-covered blows. I closed my eyes against the pain.
“You know it, and yet you smile and kiss his forehead and plan a party. A party, for God’s sake! And what are you doing strolling about with Ben Aldridge and letting little girls give you gifts? What are you doing here at all?”
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I held my breath, tears threatening my eyes. I wanted to tell him that none of this was what I would have chosen. That I was having a party because I’d never been to a party, and that it was helping me forget what was to come. That I was exchanging my uncle’s life for a scrap — maybe less than a scrap if I could not trust my own mind — but if a scrap was the only life I was likely to have, then I would have to take it, no matter what came after. The outcome for Uncle Tully would be the same either way.
But of course I said none of that. I breathed and opened my eyes, feeling sore and bruised inside, watching my hand clutch the worsted. Davy sat on the edge of the dell, Bertram in his lap, while Lane’s jaw worked in and out, in and out.
“Aunt Bit says Mr. George left his wife a great deal of money,” he said suddenly, “and that you live in a fine house on a London square. She says there are shops and museums and theaters, and people packed like sausages so that you could never be done with the exploring of it.”
He waited for me to confirm or deny. I only whispered, “I have never been to a theater, and I have never … explored London.”
“You’re telling me you go chasing footsteps through Stranwyne in the middle of the night, but that you’ve never wandered out your own front door?”
That was very true. I bit my lip and said nothing.
“All right, then what do you do there?”
I could have said I keep the ledger books for Aunt Alice and organize her receipts. That I write letters to her bill collectors, dust and tend the fire, and pluck the dog hairs from her dress. That I keep track of the housemaid’s movements and go to market when we must discharge another cook because the wages have been spent on baubles for my indigestive cousin. That I have lived so many of my days cramped in one crimson room with a woman who despises me that it’s no wonder if I was going mad now. But I said none of that either, though Lane’s low voice answered, “I see,” just as if I had. I looked up and saw that Davy was gone.
“We tried to teach him to read and write, you know,” Lane said. “But he wouldn’t learn. I think he could learn, but he wouldn’t. I reckon he doesn’t want us to know what he’s thinking. Aunt Bit seems to know though, and without him having to tell her.”
I remembered that certain expressiveness in Davy’s eyes, and wondered if, with practice, I couldn’t do the same. The wind ruffled my hair.
“Please lie for us,” he said. “Just for a little while.”
The softness of the request — a request I could not grant — hurt me so much more than his anger had. Again I held my breath. But then his tone changed.
“What happened to your hand?”
I tucked the bandaged hand back into the folds of my skirt, but Lane reached across the space that separated us and grabbed it out again. He held it up in front of me.
“Untie it,” he said. I shook my head, but he slipped the knotted end over my fingers and unwound the ribbon of cloth, my stomach growing sicker as each fold fell away. The ugly scabs stood out red against my skin, individual marks in a half oval. He turned my hand over, and gazed at the corresponding set. “You did that yourself, didn’t you?”
I shook my head again, but it didn’t matter. He flung my hand into my lap and stood. “If you’ve got one good deed left in you, use it for yourself, Miss Tulman. Get rid of it, before you hurt more than can be fixed with a bandage.”
He picked up the rifle and pheasants and was gone over the lip of the dell, leaving me with the blowing papers of the copybook. I let the tears come. It was horrible to be considered a drunkard, but the truth was so much worse that part of me thought I should probably be grateful. But I wasn’t grateful.
I let myself cry until I quieted, breath shuddering as I gradually became aware of bird wings and hot wind and rustling, and when I opened my eyes Davy was sitting on the edge of the little hollow, his chin on his knees. He came silently across the dell, picked up the book about South America, and settled cross-legged before me. He looked intently at the pages, eyes darting, and after a few moments, paused. Before I knew what he was about he had found the pen, got ink on its end, and put it to the page of the book. Then he dropped both book and pen and flitted away, disappearing over the edge of the dell.
I picked up the book from the grass, sorry to see such a nice thing ruined, and looked at what he had done. It was the acknowledgments page, giving credit to the artist who had created the pictures, a Mr. David Woolsey, but now the David had a thin black line traced below it.
I closed the book carefully and looked up at the empty dell. Davy could read. Both Ben and Lane had been right. Davy was not incapable of sharing what might be in his head; he was merely unwilling. And I was not going to be able to change that. Or anything else. I gathered up my things and hurried from the little dell.
I went back to Marianna’s room and locked the doors, refusing to come out even at Mary’s nonstop insistence. I told her I did not feel well, that I did not wish to eat, that I would sleep, and it was long before she gave up and left me in peace. But I did not sleep. I sat in the stuffy room, staring as the sun moved slowly across the wallpaper, until the light finally dimmed and disappeared. What foolishness to think I could have this time, that I could pretend none of this was happening. Ben might let me, and Mary, and Uncle Tully could not comprehend, but Lane and his aunt were not going to stand for it. And how could I blame them? What would I do with an erratic, inexplicable girl bent on taking away everything I loved?
At length I did sleep, however, and when I woke the next day the sun was slanting from the very top of Marianna’s windows. It must have been going on noon. I moved quietly about the room, not quite ready to face Mary’s questioning, and finally sat down at the dressing table. My hair was wild where I’d slept with the pins in, the shadows beneath my eyes showing through my skin.
I opened the drawer to find my brush, but it was empty. Mary had put my hair things in the left drawer instead of the right. I ran the brush through my tangles and pinned it all up again before moving everything back to the correct drawer. I had slept in my dress and it looked it, but I didn’t much care. I unlocked the door to the corridor and made my way silently to the kitchen.
It was amazing, I thought twenty minutes later, how a bit of bread with butter and milk could change one’s outlook. I hurried back up through the twisting corridors and stairs, and gave my customary glance to my guardian before I turned the knob and walked into Marianna’s room.
But I was not in Marianna’s room. I was in the library, with the cobwebs and the dusty lounges. I stood in the dirt and shut the door behind me, a sense of wrongness and confusion making my head spin. I allowed the whirling to still, then took careful steps through the filthy room. I would not go back to the hall, would not check the location of my guardian’s portrait. It did not matter. I tried to open the connecting door, the one that led to Mary’s little bedroom, but it was locked. I knocked lightly.
“Mary?” I called.
The door flew open. “Lord, Miss. You gave me a fright! Whatever are you doing coming through here? I keep this door locked, you see, ’cause you can never tell what might be coming through a door, though locks don’t keep out the things I’m worrying over, Miss, if you understand me. Not that I’ve seen the first —”
“I just fancied a look at the library, is all. How nice you’ve made your room, Mary.”
Mary’s freckles stretched with pleasure. The little stove was polished to a bright shine, fresh curtains hung at the windows, and a quilt was spread over the bed. None of it was pink.
“I just needed a bit of different, you know, Miss. That one color can wear on a person’s nerves. Now what in the name of heaven’s been the matter with you, Miss?”
“I …”
“I mean, how can I go and be a proper lady’s maid with the doors all locked? That’s a barrier to my job, that is. And some of us has got work to be doing, if other people are going to up and decide to be giving a party. There’s —”
“Mary,” I said, firmly enough to stop the flow, “I’ve decided that wasn’t such a good idea. It was … silly of me, to think —”
“What are you talking of, Miss? ’Tis only what young ladies are supposed to be doing, that’s what my mum says, and, Miss, if you don’t mind me saying, it better be you or it’s nobody.”
“Mary …”
“Now I know what you’re about to be saying, Miss, ’cause I’ve been thinking it all out for myself, and unless you’re thinking of inviting every lass from Upper and Lower, which couldn’t be fitting …”
“Mary,” I sighed.
“… or unless you’re thinking that you and Mrs. Jefferies is making up a party, then I don’t see how you can be doing it. My mum is none too sure of you, begging your pardon, and things being what they are, I can’t be tramping down there to tell her you’re inviting young men to a party in your own bedroom.” Mary’s eyebrows were straight up her forehead. I was a bit stung.
“But that was only because of Uncle Tully! His mother’s rooms are the only place … I mean he wouldn’t be … It’s difficult to explain, but it doesn’t matter because —”
“I know it, Miss, I know! That’s why I was thinking about the library, then, what you just came through? That would’ve been part of the old mistress’s rooms, and there’d be nothing improper in —”
She stopped abruptly, head cocked to one side. A knock was coming faintly to us through the walls. We moved through the connecting doors to Marianna’s room just in time to hear it again at the bedchamber door. Mary clapped her hands together.
“Visitors!” she hissed, her eyes alight. “Quick, Miss, stand over there!”
She jerked my sleeves once to straighten them, then pushed me toward the hearth. When I’d regained my balance, she patted her hair once and flung open the bedchamber door.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Moreau,” she said.
The Dark Unwinding Page 13