Rawblood

by Catriona Ward

  The silence that follows is thick.

  ‘Come, please,’ I say. The tears course, salt, down my cheeks, ‘You need not bear it alone.’ But she is gone. The red parlour settles back into shape, the fire dead and black in the grate. The wind taps the windows and roars in the chimney. I am bereft, shivering. I will never be warm again. My sleeper kicks. Her tiny fists and feet hammer me from within.

  ‘Hush,’ I say to her. I stroke her lightly. ‘Hush, Iris. I will never leave Rawblood. Grow, rest. All will be well.’ Somehow, it will.

  Somewhere in the dark beyond she is walking.

  She likes fire, though she cannot get warm. Fire draws the solitary traveller. I saw her first in the dead winter. I had heard the tales. The truth was beyond all imagining.

  I was alone before the great hearth, large enough to drive a carriage through. The flames leapt high. The hall towered above me. Alonso was abed.

  I knew that it had come about again. It was the fourth time. I did not know if I could bear it – the hope, the crisis, and then months lived in the great black pit. I knew it was a girl. They are all girls. I read terrible things in the red fire. I was alone, alone.

  When I raised my eyes the ghosts of the flames danced in them. Behind them was a white dead face, inches from my own. The sensation that ran through me was so far beyond anything I had known – it does not fit to call it fear. It was falling through air, all my organs tight braced for the smash on the rocks. It was a wind stirring the deep roots of the soul, which must never, ever be touched. Her black corpse eyes held me, holes in the world. Her flesh was old white cheese. The scars on her head stood out, grey valley rims in the flickering light. I have never beheld anything so terrible. I saw you in the water, I tried to say. All those years ago …

  The black eyes widened and in them I saw aeons. The maw began to open, the raw white lips parted like a rent in a piece of paper. Between them was the black ache of nothing, nothing, long years of nothing. There was the sound of stone grinding on stone, the sorrow was so thick it had a taste, it filled my mouth like bitter wool. She yawned wider and reached towards me, a hand unfurled like wizened driftwood and reached towards my heart, towards my belly, that gentle rise at the centre of myself. I cried out then, I was to be carried into it, carried into her, the expanse of empty grief. The claw came on, the fingers brittle sticks, it hovered a hand’s breadth away, and stopped. The white fingers fluttered, odd and delicate. Then withdrew. She sat, impassive, her dead eyes dark and unreadable.

  I felt something stir within me. I placed my hand upon the mound. There was no mistake. The gentle push came again – a long and sleepy motion, content. A small hand reached, as if to touch the white husk before me. My sleeper moved for the first time.

  We stared at one another, the living and the dead. I will remember it all my days. What is that phrase? Like calls to like. I have seen the marks of cruelty on her. I know not what she is or where she came from. But she has been brutally used beyond what a person can stand and live.

  I can well believe that those who see her are destroyed. To see her is to know emptiness. But I saw that emptiness when I was very young. They called me a witch in Grimstock and Samuel Bantry took what he thought was his due from a witch. The hand heavy on the back of my neck, the straw pressed to my face. The sound of the belt sliding out of the buckle. He called me a witch. He made me one.

  There was, in that look between she and I, both knowledge and acceptance. Something was exchanged. Something of mine is carried by her. In that look she took into herself my pain, my fear. I took hers.

  And that is when I had the idea. I saw what I must do, and how we would be saved.

  All those years ago, in that valley by the spring, I asked: who will help me? And I saw her. So the water told me true, in the end. It is because she walks, dreadful and suffering, that Iris will come into the world. So I look for her in deserted passages. I turn my cheek upward on stormy nights, waiting for her touch. I listen always for her dead voice, which is like stone crushing stone. My ghastly saviour, my whipping boy.

  I went to Robert that night for the first time.

  *

  Chloe is brushing my hair. In the glass my face is milky and thin. Silks rustle gently, out of view. Eliza is laying out clothes, vast balloons of fabric to be draped around my bulbous self.

  Chloe is cross but tenderness is in her, it moves through her fingertips, through my hair. It is not meant for me, this tenderness, but it comes to me anyhow and I am grateful – for the smooth motion of the brush, for Chloe’s slender form, reflected solid behind me, for her blue and black and cream beauty – for she is very beautiful and it is comforting – for the touch of her clever fingers.

  ‘Don’t fidget so.’ Chloe tosses her shining head, from which dark strands are escaping. Chloe can never keep her hair tidy. ‘Ma’am,’ she adds.

  ‘Less pert,’ I tell her, ‘or I’ll pull your hair.’ In the mirror Chloe blanches and bites her lip. She fears me. Wise of her. The Eye comes on strong and sudden as it does in these late days and I see that Chloe is in the same state as me. I do not think she knows it yet.

  When I feel it I send them away. ‘I will rest,’ I say. They go.

  It will be today. Everything will be decided now. It is not right to be within walls, even Rawblood’s. I know where I belong for this and it is not here. So when Chloe and Eliza’s steps have died quiet in the hall I ease my swollen frame from the stool. My shift is wet through. So is the stool. They will see that, I suppose, but by then I will be well away. Through the window the world is grey and lowering. I feel the coming dusk. It lies on my skin like love.

  Down the stairs, through the narrow back passages. From below, the sound of the servants’ dinner. A voice raised in one line of song, ending in laughter. Past the study which hums with Alonso’s presence within, and into the yellow parlour, where the fire isn’t laid yet for evening, which has the window with the loose catch. I worm my way out into the late afternoon, into the air. The grass is a cool carpet. I take my shoes off. Across the top of the hill rowan berries are a red shout against the brown. I am pricked with sweat, chafed by cotton. The air is hot and awful. But the cave will be cool. I am so heavy. I carry a small world before me, filled with flesh and movement. Yes, she is coming. The cave is so far off. The pain begins, an orchestra tuning.

  By the time I reach the foot of Sheepstor my whole being is singing, loud and lusty. Colours are interchangeable. I stop and retch under the wide umber sky. Just a while, I tell her, a little while longer. Rain begins to fall in cool plump drops. Thunder grumbles far away. The light will be gone soon. I climb. Of a sudden it is dark as the inside of a coal scuttle – I blink but it makes no difference. I’m blind. The old, familiar dark. But this time it will be different. I walk, listening to the tumult inside me. My feet are sure. I feel her breath on me, that other one. Even in this cold, it is colder.

  I cannot account for time; how long have I walked? The ground beneath me is no longer tussocky, rough. It is dry, sandy. From somewhere comes a sweet scent, a dark scent. I realise with some relief that I am not where I had thought – not on the moor, not heavy-bellied with pain. It is all gone – the rain, the cutting wind.

  I open my eyes and the way is straight before me. The night is soft and I am light and young, walking the long Kent lanes to London. My feet and the black road. The eglantine is out in the banks and the night is furry with the stench. (Of course I called it sweet briar, then. What did I know?) All I think of is Alonso’s face. It hangs in my eye in the dark. When coaches or horses come with hooves and winking lamps I hide in the ditch. I am not a fool. Somewhere I have lost my shoes but it makes no matter. My feet are hard and I am strong.

  The walk does not seem long. Time moves in a series of stutters until I am standing barefooted before the Chandos Club. But I must be tired – there is a fine film over all things. The walls and sky of London glow, unearthly. I speak to the porter, whose fleshy jowls hold secrets in their fo
lds. He bars me. I stand on the flags and look at the lit window where he is and my body seems to melt; each minute passes like a torment. I think I cannot endure it but then Alonso is there, his vast shape filling the door frame, blocking out the dirty lamplight. He hurries across the street. We stand straight before one another like opponents.

  ‘What is that school about,’ he says. ‘They cannot seem to keep you there more than a week.’

  ‘I wanted to show you,’ I say. ‘Look. The irises are blooming in Kent.’ I offer him the dead flowers. I take his hand tightly. We are silent in the hazy greenish street. My feet curl against the cold flags, my white-knuckled hand grips the grimy stalks. ‘Let me stay with you for ever,’ I say.

  Alonso takes me by the shoulders and says in the saddest way, ‘Yes, I will give you everything.’ He talks, and through the wispy night I understand his words – he means to adopt me, or some such. I laugh hard enough to snap my stays. The world steadies a little. I say, ‘I do not want you for a father, or a brother.’

  ‘You cannot want me,’ he says. ‘I am good for nothing.’ He is pleading, unlike himself.

  I say, ‘I’ll judge that for myself, thank you very much.’ His pale hand lights on my shoulder. Every inch of the miserable street is alive with feeling.

  The deluge blows lateral and sharp across the tor. The rain is blinding. Black skies are massed heavy above. Inside me is a furnace which leaks torrents of pain. The air is vibrant and darkening. Spikes of grass rise icy between my toes. For a moment there are dead flowers in my outstretched hands. Where is the lamplight, where is my bear? Time is fitting into itself like a Russian doll. I do not recall where I am or where I was going. It is not important. I stand in the blast of the storm and clutch my roiling belly. Dead flowers and the cloying fumes of the lamps. I am there, I am here … both, neither. She is all about me, her coldness is everywhere: in the storm, in the cloud, the rock; somewhere under my feet on a far-off London street.

  I know the ways and means that nature has, in bargaining. So I know that I am being offered a last chance, to change my mind. I will not.

  I wish Alonso were here. Everything is happening now.

  When I come to, my face is pressed hard to the ground. ‘Here,’ a voice says. ‘Here.’ My arm grasped by a pale mottled hand, dripping with rain. I grasp the hand, which lifts me gently to my feet. Rain washes grass and earth from my face.

  I say, ‘I can walk.’ I am released immediately. Shakes stands before me, a small blasted shape.

  ‘Of course,’ I say, ‘it would be you who found me.’ We stare, bitter.

  ‘I suppose you must come, then,’ I say.

  He says something incomprehensible. I lead into the pelting torrent.

  The pain ploughs deep, it leaves deep furrows. It’s possible I may die of this. It’s something I have never before considered. Everything is hectic and spangled. Shakes’s dim shape is lit with stars. Each raindrop to strike my flesh is an explosion, a galaxy. I am weak with relief when I see the treacherous narrow path, the rock walls. Not far now.

  The crevice appears in the rock, black against the black wet granite. Shakes pulls me towards it, our hands slippery with rain.

  In the cave everything is pale and green with some kind of moss. It glows, it is filled with a nimbus. I waddle across the sandy floor. On the low stone altar has been placed a child’s hoop earring, an egg … Other indistinguishable things; rusted, rotten. I sweep them all off. The egg breaks with a soft sound.

  Shakes places his lantern on an outcrop and stares at me with his clouded blue eyes.

  ‘It is called eclampsia,’ I say while I still may. ‘Do you understand? There is nothing to be done. If you wish to be of help,’ I tell him, ‘be still. Be quiet.’ It killed the others. It will not take Iris.

  I take the scrap of cloth from my pocket. It is dark with Robert’s blood. I put it on the altar and say the necessary thing. Then I eat it. The linen is like sawdust in my mouth. I am swallowing, dry; I think it’ll never go down but at last it does. The pain rises, everything goes red and orange. I don’t know much else after that.

  My eyes have gone again, but I know the scent of Alonso’s skin. His hand is on my brow.

  ‘She is well?’ I say. ‘I cannot see.’ I am glad of my blindness. I could not bear to read his face.

  ‘She is,’ he says. A great shout goes up within me and I am at the same time abruptly bone-tired. As if each part of me were stitched to the cave floor. But there is no time for rest.

  I say, ‘Give her to me.’

  Something settles in my arms, a decided weight. I take my time; it is not to be believed just yet. I trace soft little legs, arms, touch fingers and toes the size of sultanas. Outside me, in the air, she is both awesome and tiny. A small mouth seizes the tip of my finger and a chasm opens in me through which I perceive a world larger than the one I have known.

  Nothing can ever be the same, now.

  ‘She is looking at me,’ I say. ‘I feel it.’ I am afire.

  ‘She is,’ Alonso says, then goes on, very fast, ‘her eyes are dark, soft and dark. Like sun on deep water. She looks at everything. She is quite red and small but I think she will have very white skin, like you. She will be very, very beautiful, like you.’

  ‘Iris,’ I say. ‘Iris. Hello.’

  ‘The first gift you ever gave me,’ Alonso says, ‘irises.’ I smile to myself. Iris and I have talked of this many times over the months. But the name is new to him.

  ‘Are we alone?’ I say. I mean, is that little stump of an old man lurking in a corner, watching me.

  Alonso says, ‘We are alone.’

  For a time there are only small sounds. I acquaint myself with my daughter’s form: her soft head, her ears like rosebuds.

  ‘You should not dislike him,’ Alonso says. ‘He brought me here to you. He has always cared for me, since I was small.’ I recall, for a moment, Shakes’s old face, running with rain. Then Iris’s hand finds my finger like a starfish, and I am seized by a joy that is so deep it resembles pain.

  At length I say, ‘My eyes. I am afraid, Alonso. It feels different, unlike the other times. The dark is different. It is as if something has been cut … Do you think,’ I ask, and I keep my tone even, ‘that I will ever see her?’

  ‘You may, Meg. It often returns. Very often.’ Alonso cradles my head with a hand. His other hand rests on her, protective. Iris talks to him. She talks shrill and clear like a brook in spate.

  ‘Loud!’ he says. His voice has strings, golden apples, bellows in it.

  I feed Iris. It is like nothing I have known. The world has been pried apart. The kingdom unrolls before me. Blindness is a small price to pay for it.

  I say to Alonso, ‘Each time you saved me, instead of them.’

  The bloody horror of it. The little limbs. Three linen-clad bundles. Their lives taken to save mine. My hand tightens as I think it and Iris bleats, outraged.

  ‘I know,’ Alonso says. ‘I am sorry for it. But there was never a choice … Not for me.’

  ‘I thought I could never forgive you.’

  ‘And now?’ In his voice I hear shaking and hope.

  All these years I have chosen not to see. He is not a bear. He is not a tree to lean on. He is a man and an imperfect one. He is arrogant and frequently ill-humoured. He is childish, held in thrall to his past and chronically addicted to morphine. His heart is restless, quick and deep.

  ‘I can,’ I say. ‘I can forgive.’

  On the hill she showed me the long walk from Kent to London. The walk ends here.

  The shaking in him grows. I think I hear him weep. That seems right. I weep too, into his shirt cuff. I lie back, Iris a plump little pillow on my breast. Two hands are playing with my hair: one very large, one indescribably tiny. There is the dim sound of rain in the distance. Almost immediately I am asleep.

  I smell Shakes before I hear him. He is mouldy against the clean scents of blood and sand and rock. (I had not thought sand and rock
had scents, but I live in a new world now.) And there are other men with him, and Alonso. Iris stirs, makes bird sounds in my arms.

  ‘Try to bear it.’ Alonso’s voice is in my ear. I am lifted onto something. My every fibre protests – I am torn up like carded cotton.

  The men grasp the canvas. I hear their oily fingernails. They heave, they strain. I feel their suspicion, their dislike. It comes through the touch of their hands on the canvas. They think I belong in a cave.

  The litter lifts, the ground veers away. I am carried, swaying. As we leave the dark and come into sunshine the warmth and light are like an endearment. There is a strong scent, which is acrid and despairing.

  ‘Alonso,’ I say to the great expanse of dark. I know he will be there.

  ‘Yes.’ He is beside me.

  ‘I smell burning, here.’

  There is the tramp of feet. Somewhere a blackbird gurgles, high and long. Iris stirs against me. How can I know what is happening in Alonso’s face?

  ‘Shakes made a fire of all the trees along the path,’ he says at length. ‘He set them alight with kerosene. They burned … so brightly, even in the dark, the rain. I saw them from Bell Tor.’ He says, ‘I can never repay him.’ His voice is taut with colours, it has a shape. Perhaps in time I will learn to parse these shapes and colours, learn the language of voices.

  ‘We will have to change many things,’ I say. ‘Alonso! Where will she sleep? We need a nursery.’ We had settled on a bare box room for the nursery. It has large windows, the light floods in. How beautiful, we said, it will be when painted white and blue. That was ten years ago. We have not touched it. How paltry was our hope.

  ‘She will sleep with us,’ Alonso says, ‘and in time we will contrive.’

  ‘And,’ I say, ‘I want more women around me.’