The Snow Rose

by Lulu Taylor

  Letty is shocked but says nothing, just stays still in the darkness.

  ‘It didn’t help that he fell into religion. Not the good old C of E, that’s harmless enough. All this fire and brimstone stuff. Doom. End of the world is nigh. All of that.’

  ‘You mean, the Beloved’s teaching,’ Letty says softly. There’s a pause and then she says with a tone of gentle accusation, ‘You don’t believe it.’

  ‘Not a word. Not a bloody word.’ Arthur laughs. ‘There’s always been someone who says the Day of Judgement is due tomorrow at twelve, let’s all get our sackcloth and ashes out as they’ll be needed directly. Christ’s disciples thought they were living in the final days, almost two thousand years ago. And here we are still, and no sign yet of anything ever happening. Why? Because it’s not going to.’

  Letty trembles in the presence of such blasphemy. She reminds herself that she is being tested. She has to stay firm in the face of Arthur’s heresy, because that is the way the Devil is trying to find her weakness. It would be easier if he weren’t so confident and so sure of himself. She can’t think how she is going to begin to break down the walls of his unbelief so that the Beloved’s truth and goodness can pour in.

  ‘But my father and mother have fallen for it, hook, line and sinker.’ Arthur whistles out through his teeth. ‘Just my luck they should find a rascal like Phillips, ready to fleece them of my inheritance.’

  Letty frowns. She can’t stand to hear the Beloved talked of in this way. It causes almost physical pain. But she has to listen if she’s to understand the way that Arthur thinks. ‘Is that so? Would they disinherit you?’

  ‘The slightest hint that I’m not playing ball and my father is perfectly capable of cutting me out and signing the lot over to this place. In fact, he probably can’t wait to. Thinks it might buy him a cushy berth in heaven, I expect. Even cushier than here.’ He pauses. ‘I imagine your family were none too pleased when your sister decided to make the house over to him, were they?’

  ‘Well . . . our parents are dead. We don’t have much in the way of family. But my sister, Cecily, was the most upset at what Arabella did. She hasn’t been able to forgive it. This was her home until then, you see.’

  ‘Yes. That must have been trying,’ Arthur says slowly. ‘And you? What did you make of it?’

  ‘Me?’ Letty is surprised. No one has ever asked her opinion about it. ‘Well, it made no difference what I thought.’

  ‘That may be true, but you could still have a view on it, couldn’t you? What did you think about your sister giving this house and the estate and everything to a strange man? Spending her money on building churches and putting up a gaggle of old men and women like this?’

  Letty says, ‘It’s not like that. It sounds so simple and stupid, the way you describe things. But they aren’t simple at all, they’re very complicated, and what sounds stupid is not. The Beloved is inspired by the Divine – but that doesn’t make his message easy to hear.’

  ‘I don’t know how you put up with it,’ Arthur mutters. ‘I’d have lost patience with it at once. And as for this marriage he made us go through . . . you’ve never once said it was an outrage to have it sprung on you, or an insult to your dignity. Which it is.’

  ‘Because it was the will,’ Letty says gently. ‘It is part of the plan. I must obey and accept.’

  He says nothing for a moment, and she knows he’s lying still, staring into the darkness, but she senses that pity again, the same that she’s seen in his eyes once or twice before.

  ‘Tell me,’ he says suddenly, turning towards her in the gloom. ‘That vision you claimed to have – about your sister marrying Phillips. Did you really have it? Lily fields of heaven and all the rest of it?’

  ‘Oh,’ she says. A repulsive feeling curls in her stomach. It’s the shame of her complicity in the Beloved’s lie. ‘Oh . . . that.’

  ‘Yes. That. You were very convincing. I liked watching you, standing up there, your cheeks all flushed, declaiming what you’d seen. But I didn’t entirely believe you . . . and I didn’t entirely believe that he had nothing to do it. Phillips. It was all too convenient for him. The rascal.’

  ‘Don’t call him that. He’s the Beloved.’

  ‘I’d rather rip my own tongue out than call him that,’ declares Arthur. ‘The man should be ashamed of himself, dubbing himself that way. It’s not manly.’

  Letty thinks of the Beloved, striding about, tall and masculine, showing his fine figure to them all, while Arthur is hardly more than a boy. Of course the Beloved is manly. He’s the ideal of manliness. He’s what everyone aspires to.

  It occurs to her that she doesn’t know many men. It floats across her mind that, compared to the gardener, groom, odd-job boy, the relics from the Army of the Redeemed and the ancient reverends, the Beloved could hardly look anything other than impressive. She subdues the thought at once.

  ‘So,’ he persists, ‘you did have those visions?’

  Letty is silent. Lying is anathema to her. But she’s tried so hard to do what the Beloved wanted that she’s come to believe that she did see something. ‘In a way,’ she says at last. ‘I came to see what the will wanted.’

  ‘You poor scrap,’ he says suddenly, his voice sad. ‘You’re a good girl, aren’t you? You didn’t ask for any of this. And now you’re as deep in as any of them.’ He sighs into the darkness. ‘I thought it was going to be hard enough getting myself out of all this. Now I can see it’s going to be even trickier than I thought.’

  Letty is aware that she has begun to think of Arthur all day long. Where once he was a shadowy presence around the place, one that she barely registered, now any room that does not contain him seems empty and lacking in life. When she sees him, he seems brighter and more alive than anything else in the house, and the sight of him fills her with bubbles of pleasure, lifting her mood and making her walk more lightly. Her tasks seem more manageable and life has been given a kind of sparkle she hasn’t known before. At the same time, she has begun to feel strangely awkward around him. When she sits next to him at mealtimes, she can barely lift her eyes to him, and her fingers tremble when she inadvertently touches him.

  When he says solemnly, ‘Can you please pass me the salt, wife?’ she knows, as she would never have known before, that he is teasing her, but the words send tiny jolts of excitement over her skin.

  Occasionally she feels the eyes of the Beloved on her at these times, and more than once she has looked up to see him watching her appraisingly, and she senses that he is observing Arthur as well.

  What does he want? What is the will?

  Each night, Arthur tells her a little more of himself and he asks about her as well. He asks to know about her childhood here at the house and what she wants for herself.

  ‘Don’t you hope to see more of the world than this place?’ he asks.

  ‘I suppose I did. I had plans to study once. I thought of nursing, or teaching. But that’s all changed since the Beloved came here.’

  ‘Why should it change?’ Arthur asks impatiently. ‘You’re not his vassal!’

  ‘Because the world is here now,’ she says simply. ‘And what is the point of studying or work if the Day of Judgement is at hand? That’s why we’re here. We’ll be ready when the day comes. It is imminent. The Beloved says so.’

  Arthur is silent.

  ‘I wish you would believe,’ she says softly. ‘I would like you to be saved.’

  ‘I would like you to be saved too. I suppose we have different ideas about what that means.’

  She is touched by his words, her heart swelling with pleasure at the thought that he wishes her well. But how they are ever to reconcile what they believe, she does not know.

  At least he is here now, she thinks. He’s safe with me. He must not leave.

  Arabella does not come down for breakfast and stays in her room all day. She says she is perfectly all right but that she has a headache. The next day, she is absent again and Letty goes up to see h
er, concerned for her health. When she lets herself into the bedroom, quietly so as not to disturb her sister, the bed is empty, its sheets rumpled and the counterpane thrown aside. From the dressing room comes the sound of retching. Letty hurries over and sees Arabella bent over the sink, being violently sick.

  ‘Arabella!’ She rushes over to pull back her sister’s hair and put a comforting arm around her shoulders. ‘You’re ill. I must call a doctor.’

  ‘No. No.’ Arabella spits into the basin and straightens up wearily. ‘Don’t. There’s no point.’

  ‘What do you mean? You’re obviously unwell. How long have you been like this?’

  ‘I’ve been nauseous for a couple of weeks but since yesterday, I’ve felt truly ill for most of the day.’

  ‘Most of the day?’ Letty is wide-eyed with concern. ‘Come on, let’s get you back to bed. What on earth can it be? You’ve barely eaten for the last two days, you can’t be poisoned by anything, can you?’

  Arabella says nothing but lets Letty help her back into bed and tuck her up.

  ‘Please allow me to call the doctor,’ Letty begs, when Arabella seems to be comfortable again.

  ‘No! No! Not yet. I don’t want anyone knowing yet,’ she says.

  ‘Knowing what? That you’re ill?’

  Arabella shoots her a look that is simultaneously scornful and defiant. ‘No, you goose. Can’t you see what’s in front of you? I’m ill because I’m going to have a child. It’s the sickness that comes in early pregnancy. It will go after a time. I hope.’

  Letty stares as she absorbs this. ‘A . . . a child? Are you sure?’

  ‘I think I know the signs. And I have them all.’

  ‘But how can you be expecting?’

  ‘Don’t be so stupid. How do you think? I have a husband, don’t I?’

  Letty doesn’t know what to say. She can see the fear in Arabella’s eyes, behind the snappish irritation. Letty is thinking what they will all think: how can this be, after everything the Beloved has said? He has been adamant that the community’s marriages are untainted by the flesh. Children are a sin. But all that must be . . . has to be . . . can it be . . . a lie?

  Arabella blanches and groans. She jumps out of bed to run for the dressing room again. When she has finished heaving up bile, Letty holding her hair clear, she sighs and says, ‘The Devil can win sometimes, Letty. The fight is a violent one – and sometimes he wins.’

  Letty doesn’t tell Arthur what she has discovered, and he doesn’t seem to notice that she’s quieter than before when they are together at night. Instead, he talks of his friends at Oxford and their adventures, something he likes to dwell on, partly because he enjoys her shocked reaction, she thinks. But also he seems to be reminding himself of that other life, the one that still awaits him if only he can break free of this place. She is so quiet that he thinks she has gone to sleep and soon he is also quiet and she hears the regular sounds of his breathing.

  She lies awake, thinking of what this might mean, and how the community will receive the news when it becomes obvious that Arabella is expecting. It can hardly be hidden from them.

  She feels a tremor of something unpleasant and utterly undesired. It is, she realises, doubt – nasty, creeping, sickening doubt. With it would come the destruction of all the safety and certainty that underpins their world. She does her best to suppress it.

  It is a Friday evening service, the most exciting of the week. While Sundays are solemn, Fridays have a more festive air, filled with a sense of joy and something like hedonism. Arabella manages to get there; she tells Letty that the sickness goes away towards the evening, but the experience of the day is so horribly draining, she is still good for very little. But Sarah does not attend. Kitty says that she is sicker than ever, confined to her room with a painful complaint, something to do with her kidneys.

  Letty sits with Arthur during services now. His parents are usually just behind them, watching anxiously to see if Arthur is yet exhibiting any signs of faith. Arthur seems unusually docile during the services. He sings the hymns in his tuneful voice and listens to the sermon. While he doesn’t say ‘Amen!’ or ‘Praise be!’ with the others, he doesn’t dissent either. There are no grunts of scorn or whispered comments. Letty is glad of it. She is still shaken inside, and the sight of Arabella, so obviously pregnant now that Letty knows and yet no more than off colour to everyone else, reminds her of the creeping serpent of doubt that is writhing inside her.

  I want to believe so badly, she thinks, fervent. I have to.

  Everything is built on the Beloved’s words and on the belief he has engendered in them. There would be no one here, no church at all, if it weren’t for that. As it is, there are new members of the congregation now. There are more men and women, called to hear the word, desperate to be saved, attracted by life in the community where there is comfort and plenty and a promise of safety until the end of the world and beyond. Tonight the church is packed.

  The Beloved is in fine fettle. Since his marriage to Arabella, he has been filled with a new strength. The ladies talk with awe of his spiritual gifts and the awakening of a new depth of passion and conviction within him. He certainly seems more magnificently physical than ever, clearly glorying in the charisma of his own presence.

  Tonight, he lets rip upon the congregation, declaiming loudly about the wickedness in the world and the divine inspiration vouchsafed to him that means he can see clearly who is wheat and who is chaff. ‘We await the great moment of retribution!’ he thunders. ‘I can see into your hearts! I can see who will be saved and who will not. I can see those who burn in torment for eternity! To be saved you must believe. Believe!’

  The congregation is full of sighs and tremors as the Beloved begins to walk among them, fixing them in turn with his burning blue gaze and pressing his hand to their chests as if to feel the heart beating within. Sometimes he shouts, ‘You, sister, are saved!’ or ‘Brother, you shall see salvation!’ and sometimes he says nothing and then hisses, ‘Believe!’

  Even Arthur is unable to take his eyes off the spectacle as the Beloved, in billowing shirtsleeves and black trousers, marches around, causing women to scream as he pronounces them saved, or howl if he does not. Then he puts his hand to the heaving chest of Emily Payne, a humble girl, one of the younger Angels, come to join her older sister in the community. She is not more than seventeen, with big blue eyes and a sweet face, with large buck teeth that mar her prettiness. The Beloved stares furiously into her face. ‘Believe!’ he roars. ‘Sister Emily, believe!’

  ‘I do believe!’ she yells, and to everybody’s amazement, she falls to the floor and begins rolling wildly about, frothing at the mouth and crying, ‘I believe, I’m saved!’

  Moments later, several others are doing the same. The atmosphere is intense, dramatic, and wild. Letty is carried away by it all, sure that she is witnessing divine transports. Arthur grabs her by the arm, his expression half amused, half appalled.

  ‘By God,’ he whispers through the racket, ‘it’s like something you’d see at the asylum.’

  ‘Believe, Arthur!’ cries Letty ecstatically.

  ‘They believe,’ he says, looking around at the writhing women and dumbstruck men. ‘They believe only too well.’

  Letty ignores him. She has forgotten all her doubts. I believe.

  The next morning, when Letty comes in for breakfast, the atmosphere is sombre but no one will say why. Arabella is absent again. Arthur frowns as he cuts his bread, but he doesn’t seem to know any more than Letty does. The Beloved is not there either, and Letty hears a whisper that there have been official visitors to the house.

  ‘What is it, Kitty?’ Letty asks, as she passes her in the corridor. ‘What’s going on?’

  Kitty is grim-faced. ‘It’s Emily Payne. It seems she left the service last night, and drowned herself in the lake.’

  Letty gasps. ‘What? How awful! Why would she do such a thing?’ She recalls Emily’s ecstasy of the night before, her sure and c
ertain belief that she was saved.

  ‘Perhaps she couldn’t wait for paradise,’ Kitty says soberly. ‘The policeman is here. The coroner’s been sent for. Poor Emily.’

  ‘Amen. Rest her soul,’ whispers Letty.

  Then she goes upstairs to her room and sits down on the bed. To her astonishment, the door bursts open and Arthur comes in, red-faced. He never comes here in the daytime! But he marches over and takes her hands.

  ‘Letty,’ he says urgently. ‘I’ve just heard the news. Enough is enough. This has to stop. It was amusing enough to start with, but real people will be hurt. They have been hurt! That poor girl has drowned herself because of that man.’

  ‘What?’ She only half hears him, she is so astounded by the fact of her hands in his and the way that touch is making her feel.

  ‘Don’t you see it, Letty? He’s so busy preaching hellfire and damnation, he’s sending them mad. She killed herself, the deluded fool! He has to be stopped. I can’t stand by any longer, and nor should you.’

  ‘But . . .’ She looks up at him helplessly. ‘She must have been possessed to do such a thing. The Beloved never wished it for her!’

  ‘Of course not. He needs them alive, not dead.’

  ‘She must have been a sinner,’ Letty says, sounding firmer. That was surely the only explanation. The Beloved has banished death. If death came, it must be as a punishment.