“Ron—your mother—”
His voice was quiet, but it held pain. “Did she hurt you?”
“I think she pulled out half my hair.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“I was—very frightened.”
“Did she hurt you?” he asked again.
“I think she scared me more than anything.”
“You’re bleeding.”
I reached up to touch my face. “She scratched me—”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. Tell me about it.”
“I don’t know—it didn’t make sense—it was all frightening—that I was using magic—”
“Jack be nimble Jack be quick.
Jack jump over the candlestick.”
Willy and Harry came through an open doorway, both giving a leap over an imaginary candle. Willy carried a coffee pot, Harry a tray with four mugs.
“Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.”
They set the coffee and the mugs on a small table. “Pretty lady all right, now. Don’t be scared,” Willy said.
“Scared of Zenumin. Bad.” Harry looked apologetically at Ron.
“Pretty lady, welcome.”
Now I was able to sit up, look around. We were in a small room with two narrow bunks—I was lying on one—both covered, like the day bed in Illyria, with rather scratchy Oriental rugs. A small table was set in front of the fireplace. A lamp hung from a nail on one of the ceiling beams. My faintness had passed. It had not come, I thought, from terror alone. I put my hands over my belly in a protective gesture.
Willy poured coffee. The familiar fragrance was comforting. There were beach grasses in a big milk can in the fireplace. It was cozy and a reminder of childhood. But this was not a dwarf’s cottage in a fairy tale. It was a room in a country even more incomprehensible.
The coffee was strong, but quite hot, and nut-like in flavor. I lay propped on one elbow and sipped. Ron sat on the second bunk and stared broodingly into the dark fireplace. Willy and Harry sat on two stools and looked at me. I thought that there was something they wanted to tell me, but that their vocabularies weren’t up to the task.
“Ring,” Willy said. “Ring good.”
“Never take off,” Harry said.
“No. I never do.”
Willy filled the other three mugs. “Good to eat together.” Now I saw that there was a plate of some elderly-looking biscuits on the tray.
Harry beamed around the table and then over to me. “Together.”
Ron got up from the bunk and went to the third stool. Willy held out his arms. “All hold hands.” He reached for Ron, for Harry. As Ron started to close the circle, Harry shook his head.
“No, no. Lady, too. All hold hands. No fall down.”
The room was small; it was easy to include me in the twins’ circle of love. I held Harry’s hand with my left, Ron’s with my right. Willy raised his head. “Oh, God, thank you for all. Thank you for stars and ocean and wind and tides and pretty lady and docdoc and coffee together. Amen.”
Ron dropped my fingers quickly. Then we all reached for our cups. The twins raised theirs to me in a wordless toast, and I lifted mine in return.
“Feel gooder now?” Harry asked.
“Yes. I’m all right. I’m sorry. Thank you, boys, for helping.”
Ron took the lamp from the hook and came over to examine me. “It’s a deep scratch. Do you think we can blame it on Minou in order to avoid questions from Illyria?”
I heard Minou’s familiar miaow, and he came in from the kitchen, whiskers and tail quivering. “I will say it was Minou.”
“I’m going to clean the scratch. It may sting.”
“That’s all right.”
“Minou take the blame,” Willy said. “Minou don’t mind.”
Ron cleaned my cheek with cotton and, I suppose, alcohol. He looked at my scalp where his mother had grabbed my hair. “She did get a handful of your hair.”
“Tell Honoria,” Willy urged.
“Honoria know, will know, must know,” Harry said.
“Yes, boys.” Ron took my cup and poured me some more of the hot, strong coffee. “I will tell Honoria and Clive. But it’s best if the others don’t know.”
The twins took their cups and the coffee pot out to the kitchen. I could hear the splashing of water from the pump.
“Your faintness—” Ron started.
Ron was a doctor and I trusted him. I told him that I was almost certain that I was pregnant. “But I’m fine, now. It was just because she frightened me—I’m so sorry, Ron, I keep forgetting that she’s your mother—”
“You would do well to remember it. Perhaps it is all right for Miss Olivia to give me a child’s trust. It is not all right for you.”
“Why isn’t it? Have you read Mado’s journals?”
“Why? Miss Olivia gave them to me. I should not have read them.”
“If she gave them to you, why shouldn’t you?”
“They weren’t written for public consumption.”
“Was that why you were reluctant to read them?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
He moved restlessly about the small room. The cypress timbers of the low ceiling seemed to press down on him. “I always loved Mado and the great-aunts—but only as a small boy loves. So when I went to England I got over the love. I didn’t want to blunder into it again.”
“But you did.”
“You know I did. And I learned things I didn’t want to know.”
“That makes two of us. Aunt Olivia is not as much a child as she seems. Mado made that quite clear—if we couldn’t figure it out for ourselves. And why shouldn’t I trust you as she does? When I have my baby, I want you to deliver it.”
He turned away. “I do not find that amusing.”
“It’s not a joke! I care enough about my child to want the best.”
He made no denials. “Let’s go. We’ll take it easy. Sorry I don’t have Thales tonight.”
The twins saw us to the door. “Tell Honoria and Clive,” Willy reiterated. “Tell Honoria about the lady’s hair.”
I touched my scalp, which still hurt. “It’s all right. I still have plenty. And it will grow back.”
“Moon old tonight,” Willy said. “Shadows long. Pray, pretty lady. Pray.”
“Willy and Harry pray. All numbers pray. All stars pray. All grains of sand.”
“All drops of water,” Willy took up the chant. “All the little waves, all sandpipers and pelicans, pray.” And then, “Tell Honoria.”
“I will tell Honoria,” Ron said.
“Oh, she brought jasper,” Willy entoned, “and gold, like unto clear glass.”
Harry continued, “Oh, she brought jasper, and sapphire, a chalcedony, and an emerald; oh, she brought sardonyx, sardius, chrysolite, beryl, and oh, she brought a topaz, a chrysoprase, a hyacinth, and an amethyst.”
“And oh, she brought twelve pearls, and gold, pure gold, even as if it were transparent glass.” Willy stopped the chant and said in a straightforward manner, “Badness after them. Do not let the Bad get them. Tell Honoria.”
“I will tell Honoria,” Ron promised again. “Good night, boys. You’ll be all right on your own tonight?”
“Come back,” Willy said.
Harry echoed. “Docdoc, come back tonight.”
“Very well. I’m going to walk Mrs. Renier home, and then I’ll be back. But it may be late.”
“Before moonset?”
“I’ll try. You’ll be all right till I get back.”
2
When we had walked along the beach in silence until the light of the twins’ house disappeared behind the dunes, I asked Ron, “What was that about, what Willy and Harry were chanting?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You read the journals.”
He was going to make me say it. It
was dark; a cloud brushed across the face of the moon so that our expressions were veiled. “Honoria’s treasure—the treasure she brought over from Kairogi—”
“What about it?”
“Your mother wants it.”
The moon came out from behind the cloud. He bowed his head. “How badly do you think she wants it?”
My voice was as low as his. “Badly enough to hurt somebody to get it.”
“Why do you think she wanted your hair—or anything that belonged to you?”
“To put Black Magic on me, I suppose—Ron, do you believe in magic?”
“No.”
“Then it doesn’t matter, does it? that she has my hair?”
“There are other ways of hurting people than magic.”
I looked at our feet moving slowly, side by side, along the moon-washed sand. “She was always so kind. And so beautiful.”
“Most clearings people have lost their teeth and their youth by the time they’re thirty. Life in the scrub is not kind.”
“How does she—” I started, did not finish, nor did he answer. The sand was cool under our feet. I felt the damp through the thin soles of my summer slippers and remembered the shoes I had lost my first night at Illyria. Had Belle Zenumin been after those? “But why would she want to hurt me? I’ve never done her any harm, and I don’t know where the treasure is.”
“You don’t understand about resentment and revenge, do you? You’ve always been the people who, to my mother, are them.”
“Who is them?”
“Everybody who belongs to Illyria.”
“But you belong to Illyria, too.”
“Do I?”
“Honoria does. And Illyria to Honoria.”
“But not to me.”
“You’re Honoria’s grandson.”
“Not by blood, Mrs. Renier. It really isn’t your concern, is it?”
“I’m a Renier now. I have a right to know.”
He said, gently, “Perhaps you’re happier not knowing.”
I was finding it hard to breathe. “Ron—I’m sorry—could we stop for a minute?” I shivered under the starlight, the moonlight. I hoped that Willy and Harry were calling on the stars for prayer, on the grains of sand, on every drop of ocean. Was that, then, what prayer was about? Ron took me to the shelter of a dune to rest. A light wind moved across the stars, rustled in the palm branches, stirred with the sound of wings.
Ron said, very softly,
“Mica, mica parva stella,
Miror quondam sis tam bella,
Splendens eminus in illo,
Alba velut gemma caelo.”
Terry’s words for me. Mica, mica, parva stella. Who had taught Terry that when he was a boy? Aunt Olivia? Then she taught it to Ron, too, and the Mother Goose rhymes to the twins … The tears began to flow down my cheeks. I had not cried this way since Terry left me. I tried to choke down the sobs, not wanting Ron to know.
But he said, “Don’t be frightened.”
“I’m not crying out of fear!” I said. Because I trusted him completely I flung myself at him as though he had been my father, and sobbed loudly. He held me, strong and comforting. Through my tears, I said, “Aunt Irene tried to get a strand of my hair, and a handkerchief. Why?”
“To give to my mother, I suppose.”
“For magic?”
“Yes.”
“Why would Aunt Irene have anything against me?”
“I don’t imagine she does. But what my mother asks her for, your Aunt Irene will get.”
“Why?”
“My mother could blackmail Irene and Hoadley without batting an eyelash. And would.”
“On what grounds?”
“All kinds. Including my paternity.”
“But Uncle Hoadley is not your father. Who is?”
“Can’t you guess?” he asked again.
“I’m not sure. Can you?”
“It’s no longer just a guess with me. I made my mother tell me. I had to be sure. I trampled on her magic and I twisted her wrist and I made her scream until she told me. I did that to my mother.”
“Who—who was he?”
“You want to know, go ask Mado.” He stood up. “They will be wondering where you are.” We slid down from the shifting sand. He let me hold to him until we got to the firmness of beach. Then he shook me loose. “What good does it do me to know? You ever been digging for oysters?”
“No.”
“Oysters lie low in grey, muddy clay. You know where they are because you see little bubbles, bigger than the donax blow, and sudden squirts of their juices, and then you dig down in the mud to get them. If you like oysters I suppose it’s all right to go digging in the mud. Oysters happen to make me sick. I am sick, sick. Knowing who my father is makes me, Ron, Theron James, with a borrowed name, even less than I was when it was all beneath the mud. I’d be like Tron if I could. But I’m trapped by Illyria. I’m trapped by Honoria, who is my true mother, and by Mado who is my grandmother as well as Terry’s. I’m trapped by those angels of hers.”
“But they’re gone.”
“Not far. Honoria and Clive keep them close. They won’t let them go far from Illyria. And when you came, they moved in closer.”
“Why—when I came—how could I have anything to do with Mado’s angels, with Illyria?”
The kitten appeared out of darkness, twining its sleek softness about my ankles. “We’re here,” Ron said.
The scratch on my face was accepted as having been made by Minou.
“He scratched my hand the other day,” Aunt Irene said. “I warn you, we’re going to get rid of that cat if he scratches anybody else. Stella, hon, you do seem to be taking longer and longer walks. People will talk.”
“Who, Aunt Irene? There isn’t anybody to see me.”
“Cousin Lucille will find out. Mark my words.” But she turned back to her game of backgammon. “This is the last game for tonight, Auntie. We’ve already stayed up too late, waiting for Stella.”
“Sorry, Aunt Irene.”
“We don’t expect young people to be thoughtful nowadays. But at least don’t forget to say good night to Aunt Olivia. She will be very hurt if you don’t remember her.”
“I won’t forget her. And I’ll say good night to you now.”
But I went out to the kitchen before going in to Aunt Olivia. Ron was standing with his back to the summer-cold iron range. Honoria was bent over, her hands clasped about herself, as though someone had kicked her in the stomach. Clive’s voice came out of the shadows; he had taken off his white coat, and because of his dark shirt and trousers I had not until then seen him. His voice was steel.
“Honoria, you think her magic be stronger than the Lord? You gone back to your old gods in Kairogi again? Send them back where they belong, old woman. Send them back. And pray.”
“I been praying.”
“Pray more.”
“I is wore out. You tell the Lord, Clive. You tell him. You tell him to do something about her magic.”
“You got to believe. You got to believe in the Lord.”
“I seen too many bad things.”
“How? How you seen them?”
“Some he showed me.”
“The bad ones? He show you those?”
“Some.”
“The worst bad ones? The evil ones?”
She whispered, “No.”
“How you see them?”
Honoria, the tall, the strong, the stern, faltered to her knees. “Forgive me.”
“It is not me you ask.”
“Yes. Yes, it is. I know the Lord can forgive. I’m not sure about you.”
Clive took her arms in his thin, fine hands. Honoria, still on her knees, leaned against his frailness.
I had seen Cousin James pray, and I believed him. But now for the first time I witnessed the prayer of utter desperation, of abandonment. Honoria was putting herself, and whatever it was she had seen, entirely into God’s hands.
For the sec
ond time that night the tears streamed down my cheeks.
God! I cried silently. God: be! Please be.
I said good night to Aunt Olivia and went upstairs. The house was dark and quiet. A candle burned on the landing. I undressed and fell into bed, pulling down the mosquito netting. I was too tired to read.
It wasn’t only the mosquito which came in through the carelessly tucked net that wakened me. It was pounding at the surf’s edge, the same strange thundering I heard my first night in Illyria.
I hurried to the balcony. The horses were galloping up the beach, ridden by hooded figures in white. I stood watching after them. I stood long after they had disappeared into the night. Then, again, I heard the sound of hoofs. It was a single horse, ridden by a horseman robed in black.
I turned back to the room and lit my lamp, then went downstairs, on the off-chance that Uncle Hoadley might still be on the veranda. I had no idea what time it was, but guessed that he seldom came to bed before the small hours. I tiptoed across the front room. Through the screen door I could see the light of his cigar arc-ing back and forth as he rocked. My foot creaked on an ancient board.
Uncle Hoadley rose. “Tron?” he asked softly.
“It’s Stella.”
“Stella! What are you doing up at this hour?”
I said flatly, “I saw some hooded men riding on the beach.”
“Don’t concern yourself, child.”
“But who are they!”
“It’s all right, child, don’t worry. It’s just a group of youngsters getting together. They often do on a weekend.” He rested his hand lightly on my arm; he seemed to like to touch me with his long, sensitive fingers. His hand was cool and a little moist; a glass of whiskey and water stood on the floor by him.
“Were they the Night Riders?”
“It’s nothing for you to trouble yourself about. I see to it that they don’t get out of hand.”
“Are they all youngsters, then?”
“No, child. Those you saw tonight, probably. But many of them are mature men. We have to see that law and order are kept.”
“Law? Order?”
“Yes, Stella. Law and order concern me deeply. You know that.”
“What about the riders who wear black?”
I had startled him. For a moment he did not answer, but sat with his cigar halfway to his lips. “Child, you are new to our country and our ways. You would do best to remain in bed at night.”
The Other Side of the Sun Page 29