The Dark Unwinding

by Cameron, Sharon

  Marianna’s library had become the workshop, temporarily at least. It was full of tools, benches, whirring, ticking, my uncle’s chatter, and new burn holes in the carpet. But I did not think Marianna would have minded that. On Wednesdays, Uncle Tully allowed Mary to join us, and she brought him salvaged pieces from the flood to play with and reassemble. It was Mary’s day when my uncle’s newest project became recognizable: a child-sized clockwork arm connected to the gears of a long-legged rabbit. Lane set down the wax he was carving and said, “I can’t make that face for you, Mr. Tully.”

  My uncle’s mouth went slack, as if Lane had pronounced a sudden predilection for the green-striped cup. “You can’t?”

  “No, Mr. Tully.”

  I watched them both cautiously, and when my uncle showed his first hint of agitation I said, “You like to remember numbers in your head, don’t you, Uncle?”

  He frowned. “Yes, but …”

  “You don’t always write them down to look at, do you?”

  “No … I …”

  “Well, I think Lane would like to remember Davy in his head, too. Without looking.”

  “Oh!” My uncle’s face brightened. “He likes to remember in his head! That is just so. Lane always knows what is just so.” He picked up the clockwork arm and the bright blue eyes fixed themselves on the gray ones. “But what about … rabbits?” he whispered very loudly. “Do you like rabbits to be in your head or outside of it?”

  “I think outside will do just fine, Mr. Tully,” Lane replied, his smile as much for me as for my uncle.

  I’d been glad to see it. With the rebuilding for him and the planning and management for me, the care of my uncle, a house full of people waiting on the completion of their cottages, and Mary’s watchful eye, it wasn’t often that he managed to take my face in his hands, as he had once before. Though he had managed it. He could be rather ingenious that way. When I brushed my hair at night, I looked at the silver swan on my dressing table and no longer saw the upward escape of flight. I saw the act of alighting, of settling softly in. But lately he had struck me as restless, and sometimes I would catch his gaze wandering, looking at things I could not see.

  And then one evening he knocked on the bedchamber door and asked Mary if I would like to go rolling. I couldn’t imagine what he meant, the polished floor of the ballroom still being mud-covered and ruined, but when I saw the long, wide hallway that led to the upper garrets, the floor newly polished, and the skates, cleaned, oiled, and dangling from his hand, I could not hide my delight.

  We raced — no telling what the villagers still in the house below thought of our noise — while Mary, ever vigilant, watched from the garret steps. He wouldn’t let me win, as I thought a gentleman might have, and only laughed when I complained, telling me that I had no complaint, as he’d never been a gentleman. But I could also see that he had something on his mind. When I slowed after our sixth lap, laughing and trying to catch my breath, he turned to me and said, “Mr. Cooper came to see me today.”

  I waited for him to go on, but there was no other noise than our wheels on the passing floor. And then I saw something I had only ever seen once: a tinge of pink beneath his skin. I stared at the new color as he skated on, hands in his pockets, until we were at the farthest end of the hall, away from Mary.

  “Mr. Cooper came today and … he asked my permission to marry Aunt Bit.”

  I blinked. As good friends as Mrs. Jefferies and I had become, I had never thought of her as … marriageable. Of course, I’d never thought of myself that way either, not before Stranwyne. But I’d not forgotten Mr. Cooper’s signature on the paper denouncing my sanity, though in light of the threat to his home, I had struggled to. The gray eyes were on me, waiting, so I said, “Well, what does Mrs. Jefferies say about it? Isn’t it rather sudden?”

  He slowed to a stop and ran a hand through his hair, and I watched, enthralled, as his skin flushed further. “That’s … why I’m telling you this, actually. Aunt Bit says she’s going to come to you herself, and …” He lowered his voice. “The truth of it is, this whole thing’s been going on a long time. I didn’t know until you said something about the room with all the ornaments and the crystal and such. I knew she’d borrowed that silver wolf — or I knew it after she told me she had — but …” He sighed. “I reckon she was trying to impress him, and they had to meet away from the village, so …” He shrugged. “Aunt Bit says Mr. Cooper has a taste for ‘fine things.’”

  My eyes widened. I remembered Mr. Cooper’s twitchy gait down the tunnel, and Mrs. Jefferies opening the ballroom door when they knew we were all going to the castle, and the silver wolf on the table in the room of the ornaments, with a supper laid out before the fire. I thought of that night, and felt my hand go to my throat.

  “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes,” he replied.

  “And I just sat there on the settee, waiting and waiting….”

  “While they peeked through the window, their supper going cold.”

  I stared back into Lane’s appalled face. The situation was ridiculous and horrifying all at once. A long moment passed, and then I giggled, Lane smiled, and seconds later the bare walls rang as we laughed. Mary shook her head at us, her face showing disapproval from the stairwell as Lane took my hand, pale cream in his tan, and pulled me forward to skate the other way down the hall while I tried to catch my breath.

  “You’re going to hear the whole thing straight from Aunt Bit in the morning,” he said. “She’s shaking in her boots about it. Feeling guilty, I reckon, but … I thought you could use a bit of warning, for God’s sake.”

  “Well, I thank you for that,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings, but I’m not certain I could have kept my countenance had she …”

  But then I stopped, both rolling and speaking, suddenly aware of everything that might be causing Mrs. Jefferies to suffer guilt. Mr. Cooper had signed that paper and given it to the magistrate not just for himself and the villages, but for Mrs. Jefferies, possibly even at her urging. In fact, now that I thought of it, I was certain he had signed that paper at her urging. Lane stood still, watching my understanding dawn, and as always he waited, letting me decide.

  “All that is long done and gone,” I said. “I’ll tell your aunt so myself in the morning. I will wish her joy.”

  “Thank you,” he said quietly, and put his lips to the back of my hand that was still in his. “You are more forgiving than I am.”

  The next morning I did exactly as I’d said, kissing Mrs. Jefferies’s teary cheek, wondering only then who Lane had not forgiven. And the afternoon after Mrs. Jefferies’s visit was the second time Lane did not come to the workshop.

  The third time he did not come I said nothing. The fourth time I left my uncle with Mary and went to find him. He was in the little hollow, sitting beside the mound of dirt that was Davy’s grave, the upright rock now serving as a headstone. Lane had gone into the tunnel and found Davy himself, as soon as the water had dropped far enough to wade, a day I wished I could not remember. It was nearing February now. Late afternoon clouds sat low on the land, the air dusky and sharp with cold, though the hollow dulled the worst of the wind. I sat down next to Lane, huddled in a blue-and-green-patterned shawl, listening to the trogwynd sing high and then low, eerie and inhuman, a sound I had come to love. I had not heard its music for a long time, not since the night Aunt Alice was here, just before I’d discovered that Stranwyne was mine.

  I stayed quiet for many minutes, sensing the black mood beside me, and then I said, “I think about Davy often, you know. And I think that he talked all the time, just not to people. I think he only talked to Bertram.”

  “Why do you think that?” the low voice asked.

  “Because when he told me to run that day in the tunnel, his voice was clear, not gruff or disused. And do you remember the first day I came to Stranwyne, when I was so anxious, and frightened, and running from clocks?” I was pleased to see a faint smile. “I wandered i
nto the chapel, my nerves wound tight, and a laugh echoed all around me. Then I caught sight of Uncle George in the mirror and let out a scream you should have heard all the way to the workshop.”

  He laughed softly.

  “I think Davy was just up in the gallery, or in the little hallway behind it, playing a game with Bertram. He laughed because he could. Because he was alone. I imagine he did the same in this place, as well.”

  Lane pulled the red cap from his head and twisted it, turning it over and over with perfectly coordinated fingers. “I wonder … if you can have any idea just how angry I am.”

  I looked at him carefully, at the dark brows and the gray eyes that would not meet mine. I was used to Lane’s bouts of temper. They were like a gunpowder flash: hot, powerful, and soon over. But this was different. What I had taken to be restlessness and absence of mind, I now recognized as slow-burning coal.

  “I am angry at all that mud down there that was my home,” he said. “And I am angry at this pile of dirt beside us, which should not exist. But mostly I am angry at Ben Aldridge, and I am angry at myself, for not hurting him when I had the chance.”

  I pulled the shawl closer. “Ben Aldridge is dead.”

  “That gun,” he replied as if I had not spoken, “should have been in my hand. I should have shot him then and there. If I had, none of this would be happening. I knew Davy could swim. A little.”

  I put my hand on his arm, surprised to feel the tension beneath my fingers. “You didn’t even know he had done some of those things, not at the time … you …”

  “Aunt Bit has someone to take care of her, and Mr. Tully has you and Mary, and he’s so much better at getting used to things than he was. You run this place as if you always have, and you’re wealthy now, with a thousand different choices than before.” The cap twisted and writhed. “No need to make you the scandal of London.”

  I stared at him, a little unnerved. Likely I was the scandal of London already, if my aunt Alice had anything to do with it. But what did I care about that? The only person outside of Stranwyne whose opinion I valued was Mr. Babcock’s, and he had only ever referred to Lane as a “fine young man.” I was making my own rules at Stranwyne. I squeezed his arm. “What are you talking about?”

  He got up instead of answering, three springs taking him upward to the edge of the hollow where he stood in the icy wind, hat in hand, looking out over what used to be the Lower Village. His next words were only just spoken and would have never been heard had the wind not blown them to me. He said, “And I have never seen the sea.”

  I didn’t know what to do or to say, could not think of what might ease this dark frame of mind. Then I saw that his back had gone rigid, the coiled-up posture I knew so well. I got to my feet. “What’s wrong?” I said. “Is someone there?”

  He turned down the little slope, coming back quickly to where I stood at the center of the dell. “No, nothing’s wrong. Go inside now. You’re cold.”

  “Come with me.” Again I put a hand on his arm and again felt the tightness of the muscles, this time possibly to the point of pain. “Come, and I’ll get you some tea.”

  He shook his head. Then he bent down, took my face in hands, and placed his lips once to my forehead. The wind hit my back like a wall of ice.

  “You’ll do well,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Go back to the house now, Katharine. Go on.”

  I stood my ground. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “No. Not just yet. Hurry on, then. Mr. Tully will be waiting.”

  But I did not hurry. I moved slowly, brow furrowed, looking back once to see him up on the edge of the dell again, bareheaded and arms crossed, the catlike readiness still present in his stance.

  Later that evening I heard a tromping on the stairs and then Mrs. Jefferies — now Mrs. Cooper — was banging on the door to Marianna’s rooms, yelling as if the place were ablaze. I jerked open the door in my nightgown.

  “He’s gone,” she said.

  We stood together in the doorway to Lane’s room, a small place, closet-like, in the same corridor as the kitchen. I’d tried to give him better but he would not take it, saying he did not like so much space. The cot in the corner was neat, the blankets smooth, the worktable where he carved swept clean of its wax and plaster shavings. The clothes pegs stood bare and the red cap was gone, though the smell of him was still there: metal, paint, and Lane. I stared at the empty room, stricken, experiencing a shock as mind-numbing as when I’d watched Ben’s boat fly to pieces in a ball of flame. The trogwynd wailed, and Mrs. Cooper sniffed. There was nothing else to say.

  I sat in my chair until late in the night, listening to the wind, watching the silver swan gleam with hearth flames, my father’s cautious gaze looking down from the portrait Lane had hung for me in my room. I had locked my doors again, with no explanation to poor Mary, to be alone and savor the bitterness of my pain. I searched my memory for the things I must have done wrong, and could only conclude that the trouble was deeper. The trouble was me. What Aunt Alice had always insinuated about me was true. Why had I ever thought differently? I must have deluded myself just as surely as before Mr. Lockwood came. I thought of the words that had passed between us in the hollow, all the reasons why Lane felt he wasn’t needed. All the reasons why he could go away and be free of me, without guilt.

  And then I got angry, the deep, cold kind, the kind that made me calm. No matter what my faults, Lane’s behavior was inexcusable. He should have spoken; surely I was due that. And in the hollow he had said that if he’d shot Ben Aldridge, then “none of this would be happening.” Shooting Ben Aldridge would not have resolved any dissatisfaction with me or even a mere wanderlust. This was not logical. I did not like that.

  I pulled on my dressing gown, lit a candle, and dried my cheeks with the back of my hand. I would search Lane’s room, open every drawer, look under the bed. And if that failed, I was going to Mrs. Cooper, late hour or no. I hurried to the bedchamber door, head full of this plan, my progress only halted by a hard, chilly something beneath my bare foot. I looked down. In the ring of candle glow, lying on a carpet rose, was a key. It had been pushed beneath my door.

  I picked it up, turning it over and over in my hand, running a finger over its ornate casting. It was a clock key. Had it been there earlier, when Mrs. Cooper came? It could have been, but we’d both been in such a state. I shut Marianna’s door behind me, glanced once at my guardian, and stole softly through the corridors and down the many stairs, until I was in the room of the clocks.

  The gaslight was on here, no need for my candle, the ticking a comfort to fill my head. I searched the maze, running my fingers over shining wood and sparkling glass, looking for a clock that had no key. I found it after one deafening cacophony that proclaimed the half hour, on the floor in a back corner, small, with a walnut case, a silvery swan with raised wings etched on its door glass. Now I knew where he’d seen the swan, I thought, though the one in my room had so much more life.

  I got on my knees and opened the clock case slowly, my heartbeat now louder than the ticking, and in the back, behind the swinging pendulum, I could just see a small slip of paper. Careful not to disturb the clock’s rhythm, I slid the paper out. It was blank but for five letters on its back, inked in Lane’s hand: Paris. I sat back on my heels, tears pricking my eyes. I did not understand.

  I climbed the stairs to my corridor, one painful step after another, and when I reached the top, my uncle stood in the hallway with a candle, his thin, pale legs sticking out below his nightshirt. He was looking at the portrait of my guardian, and his white beard turned at my approach.

  “I’m not sleepy!” he announced in full voice.

  “I’m not either, Uncle,” I whispered. “But let’s speak more quietly, in case Mary is.” Uncle Tully went back to his examination of the portrait. “Do you like that picture, Uncle?”

  “Oh, yes!” he replied, nose nearly touching the paint. Then he remembered and whispered, “Oh, yes! And Lane has gone
away, little niece.”

  “I know it, Uncle.” I studied the shadows collecting at my feet. “Do you want me to bring you something warm to drink?”

  “Oh, yes! I mean, no. I mean, no, it’s not the forever kind of going. Yes, that’s what he said. Not the forever gone away.”

  I looked up, trying to sift my uncle’s words. “Did Lane tell you that, Uncle Tully?” I should have known. He might leave without informing me, but he would never have done such a thing to my uncle.

  “Yes! He said that sometimes people go away because they must, not because they want to. Because sometimes things are not splendid, or right.”

  Like me, I thought. Then I saw that Uncle Tully was plucking at his nightshirt. He fidgeted so much that I reached out and gently took away his candle.

  “I think I shall tell you a secret, Simon’s baby. Should I?” He bounced on the balls of his feet. “Shall I? I think I shall!” He whispered loud and slow. “I saw the man.”

  “What man?”

  Uncle Tully beamed. “The man who holds the toy!”

  A picture of Ben Aldridge with my uncle’s fish came to my head, and I felt my insides flinch. “What man who holds which toy?”

  “The flower, little niece, the flower!”

  I let out a breath.

  “I saw him, but he didn’t see me, and neither did the other man. The other man didn’t ask to hold the flower, so I didn’t have to do five.” Uncle Tully looked relieved. “And they didn’t want me to see, so I waited, very quiet, until Lane came and then they all went away. The man didn’t mind that Lane saw him. The other man likes to write things. But he didn’t want to hold the flower.”

  My mind was already in motion, clicking fast like a new-oiled machine. Mr. Wickersham had held the flower. He could only mean Mr. Wickersham, and his nameless, scribbling assistant. Mr. Wickersham had been in the house, tonight, in the clock room with Lane. “How did you know they didn’t want you to see them, Uncle?”

  “Because they hid! Behind the clocks! People who hide behind clocks do not want to be seen….”