Her husband returns to his seat.
Alice is no longer on the roadside.
A rush of breeze, hot and sharp, flattens the seared grass and scatters the few sheep, setting them to bleat and trot to the shadows of the old barn.
Then a thick quiet before the nag shakes her head and jangles the bit.
“Our condolences,” Mrs. Runyon repeats. “Our condolences.”
The drive waves and shifts as I walk to the house. Toby stares from the dining room window, his palms flat to the glass. He’s talking, his mouth moving, brows pulled down in a concentrated focus. But he watches me. Keeps talking and watches me. Gives a little wave that I return before taking the steps.
The door is ajar, the hall cool. Toby stands in the frame of the dining room door. “Shh.” He looks to the top of the stairs, then reaches for my hand, slipping his in mine. His fingers curl, plump and sticky. He leads me into the dining room and points at a seat.
“Here she is.” He lets go my hand and struggles with the chair, pulling it out. Pointing for me to sit. Patting my shoulder when I do.
It faces the mirror. The crepe has been removed, folded, and set to the cabinet. I stare at the silvered glass. A little boy and a plain woman with a swatch of dirt on her cheek peer back.
His lips are moving, hot sweet breath, no sound, focused on the chair across.
“Toby.”
He clicks his teeth, the only sound from his wordless mouth, and his fingers drum the fabric on my shoulder.
“Toby.”
My stomach twists. No. I shrug his hand off, then turn to grapple for his arms. His thighs push against my knees, and he looks at me with colorless eyes, those lashes so long and curled, furling and unfurling.
I shake him. One hard shake. “Toby!”
He smiles and then turns to the doorway. Cathy rounds the corner. She fans a riot of flowers on the table: goldenrod, chrysanthemums, an armful of asters. “Aren’t they . . . Are you all right?”
“It’s hot.”
“Go ask Saoirse for a vase, Toby.” Cathy cups his cheek and gives him a peck. “And a glass of water for Auntie.”
When it is the two of us, she turns to the flowers, lifting a stalk to strip the leaves. A ladybug drops from a stem, stretches its shelled wings. Cathy holds out a finger and waits for it to crawl onto her palm. “Look.” She smiles at me, as if sharing a marvelous gift. “She’s good luck. We’ll keep her in the house.” With a flick of her wrist, she tips the ladybug to the table. It lands on its back. Its legs flail and wings flap and close until it rights itself and crawls to the safety of a broad leaf.
“You should have asked them to stay.”
“I . . .”
“Where were you going?”
“I wanted the coach.”
“There’s no coach on Sunday.” A milky liquid seeps from the stem and beads along the stalk. She swipes it with her thumb, then looks around for some rag or towel to clean her hand. There’s nothing but the black crepe.
“Why?”
“I want Alice’s trunk.”
“I’m sure they’ll send it.”
“I have questions for Dr. Mayhew. She shouldn’t have had any access to that roof.”
“You won’t find comfort.”
“I am looking for none.” I grab the table edge and push myself up. “I just want to know.”
But Cathy isn’t listening; she’s rearranging the flowers, a single frown line marring her forehead. “She was never at peace. Always . . . What good does it do to stir the dead? It changes nothing. Nothing at all.”
Chapter Five
But the dead stir me. Three nights the same dream.
I stand in the upstairs bedroom of a house we’ve taken for a hospital. The walls are plum, the green curtains rusty from the blood of the hands that tie the fabric back. Dr. Rawlings wears a rubber apron. He crooks his finger to me.
“You will close their eyes.” But there are hundreds of soldiers, too many, the line of cots a mile long.
“I can’t.”
“You must.”
I bend to the first man. Place my hand to his forehead, then swipe my palm over his lids. “Fare thee well,” I whisper.
The next to the next to the next. Blue eyes and green, empty sockets and clouded white.
“I can’t.”
Alice is here, kneeling before a limbless, lifeless body, drawing the eyes shut. The locket dangles from her neck.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
She looks up at me. A cicada pushes its way past her lips, its blunt red-brown head dipping as it crawls to her lower lip, transparent wings unfurling in a tissue-paper whisper.
I wake in a knot of sheets and nightclothes, the room close and musty. The wallpaper on the bed’s edge buckles and bubbles. I press a finger to smooth it, but it won’t stay put.
There’s a tap at the door. I hear Toby breathing through his nose, trying to be quiet.
If this is his habit, it will need to stop. “I’m indisposed,” I say. “If you need something, go ask Saoirse.”
The knob twists left and right. Stops.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Then you must say ‘yes.’ And ‘sorry.’”
“Yes, Auntie. Sorry.” But he doesn’t leave. He still stands on the other side of the door, the toes of his shoes just visible in the gap.
“Toby?”
He slips a blue jay’s feather under the door. Blue and black, tipped with white.
Alice came home with treasures, seeds and nettles, dandelion down and thistle silk stuck to her hair, in the weave of her skirts, clinging in tufts to the fine hair on her arms, like a tumult and chaos of clouds. Dirt beneath her nails, grit in the whorls and eddies of her palms. The trees that ringed the pond bore witness to her and she to them—an etch of initials, a trinket or bobbin or discarded laces were secreted away in slits she’d carved in the tree trunks. Sometimes I’d find buttons missing from a bodice or skirt. Other times a hairpin went missing. Not stolen, though. Replaced with an acorn. A twig with a red-tipped leaf. The bud of a spring iris. A blue jay’s feather, tipped with white.
“Thank you,” I say.
“You’re welcome.”
You’re welcome, Alice said. And her voice was like bells.
Benjamin’s picture has been moved. I’ve gone to the kitchen for coffee and come back to it moved. It was on the mantel; now it sits on the sill. Saoirse’s been cleaning and not putting things back in place. My journal shifted from the bedside drawer to the desk. The wardrobe door ajar.
I close the door, replace the portrait, and move the silk bookmark to the next blank page of the journal.
“Saoirse.”
I hear her milling in the front parlor, her hoarse hum in constant refrain.
“Saoirse.”
The humming stops. She comes to the hall and peers across to the dining room, then down the hall to me. She chews her lower lip. “Did you call me?”
“I did. I—”
She pulls at a dust rag and then swipes it across the top of the curio cabinet.
She has grown old. Too old to keep doing this. Too old to scold her for something as ridiculous as a misplaced portrait. At least I have it.
“Are you ailing, missy?”
“No. No. I . . .” I pick at the doorframe with my thumb, then lift the edge of wallpaper running its length. A tiny line of penciled letters runs along the seam. The paperer’s marks. “Thank you for taking care of my room. But I wish to do it myself.”
She shifts her jaw left to right. “Are you settling with us for good?”
“I don’t know.” I spread my hands and shrug, wait for her to look away. “I don’t know.”
“Well, that’s that, then.” She turns to make her way back to the parlor.
“Saoirse.”
“Aye?”
“What did Alice do?”
She stops. Flaps the rag against her thigh, then folds it and tucks it into her
apron pocket.
“Saoirse.”
“About killed the child, she did. If Missus hadn’t found them, who knows what.”
“But why?”
“Not my place to say.”
“You knew her, Saoirse. She’d never . . .”
But she raises her hand to stop me and walks back into the parlor.
Later, I find Cathy and Toby in the field. They’ve set one archery bale against the old barn and another, closer, painted with rings of yellow and red and blue. A beginner’s distance. The sheep, normally lounging by the barn’s shadows, have wandered to the stone wall facing the road and house; some lie in the sun, others rest their heads on the crumbling wall and stare at nothing.
Cathy is dressed in an open vest, loose shirt tucked into her skirts. Sleeves rolled to the elbow. Hair loose and tied with a single ribbon. She settles the bow in Toby’s hand, curling his fingers round the grip.
“Nose to the string, Toby.” She bends down to sight along the bow with him, corrects the cock of his elbow. Then she steps back, hands to hips, watching the arrow release and arc and drop to the ground.
“Well. Not terrible,” Cathy says. “Maybe we can convince your auntie to join us?”
“I’d like Saoirse to stay out of my room.”
“If you wish. It’s your room.”
“They haven’t delivered Alice’s trunk. It’s been four days. I want her things.”
“Archery is much more fun to worry about.”
“Cathy—”
“Wait. One more try, Toby.”
A single arrow lies near Toby’s feet. He bends to reach it, and the bow swivels and drops.
“It’s too large. Is it Lydia’s old one?”
Cathy shrugs. “Do you want your own bow and arrow, Toby?” She glances over her shoulder at me. “We can go to town.”
Toby squints up at Cathy, then shoves his hands in his pockets and rolls on his toes. The empty quiver on his shoulder twists and bumps against his thigh.
Cathy picks up the bow and holds it out to the boy. “I forgot how much fun this all is. We haven’t done this . . . well, since . . .” She shakes her head. “Your aunt is an excellent archer, Toby. Did you know she won Mrs. Brown’s Academy tournament five years running?”
“That’s not true.”
“You did.” She kicks out a back foot as she grabs an arrow, nocks it, and takes aim at the far bale. The arrow makes its mark with a thud, feathers quivering against the yellow bullseye. “Then I won.”
Toby stares up at her and frowns. He reaches for her leg and grips it tight.
“Let go.”
He shakes his head.
“Go get the arrows.” She ruffles his hair, then grips his shoulders and jostles him. “Toby. Let go.”
He steps back, then meanders from arrow to arrow, pulling one from the soil or off the ground and dropping them in the quiver. Midway to the barn he drops to his haunches, poking at something in the grass, then holding it aloft on the tip of an arrow—a cicada husk. He flicks it and moves to the barn.
“Lydia was the archer,” I say. “She won those tournaments. Not me. I left midterm. My mother needed care. And I had Alice. You know that.”
“But he doesn’t remember Lydia. So, it’s easier if I say it was you. Not so many questions.” She unties the hair ribbon, combs her fingers through the locks, and then watches Toby as she ties the bow. “I loved Lydia. But if I tell him about that, he’ll ask for more. And I’m not willing to tell more.”
“He should know of her. He doesn’t need to know she drowned, I understand not telling that, but—”
“No.” She cocks her head and stares at me. In the sunlight, her eyes darken to jet glass. “I’m his mother now. If you had a child, you would understand.”
“I don’t want Saoirse in my room. Things have been moved.”
“All right.”
“And I don’t need to have had a child to know Toby shouldn’t be lied to. Lydia was his mother and she loved him. He should know that.”
“Isn’t it enough he’s lost Alice? Isn’t that enough for a little boy?” She runs a hand across the back of her neck and turns to watch him.
He waves, the arrows clutched in his hand.
“I can’t have children.” She picks at the leather wrapped on the bow’s handle and shrugs. “You could and chose not to.”
“My sister . . .”
“Your sister wasn’t a child. She was many things, but she wasn’t that.”
“How did she get on the roof of that building?”
With a long exhale of breath, Cathy moves to collect the other bow. “How, indeed.”
“I want to know.”
“Do you know you’ve never once talked about your husband? Where in the world did he die? In a swamp? In a field? A bullet? A minié ball? Dysentery? Did some other woman give him a Christian burial? For God’s sake, will you ever order his tombstone?”
“Be quiet.”
“There’s been too much loss, Marion. We need to let go of it and hold on to the living.”
Benjamin and I were a marriage of practicality. He was Head of Latin—“Soon to be headmaster”—and in need of a wife. My father was impatient for me to wed and to take Alice with me. His “happy accident” whom he coddled as a child became his embarrassment as she grew and her quirks became habit. How to explain a mute daughter? One who freezes midstep to smack her hand to her face not once but six times, always six, before carrying on? One who knocks her head to the wall in the morning and paints exquisite miniatures of flowers to give as gifts in the afternoon?
Our paths originally crossed in the aisles of St. Albans’s library, which carried five times the books Mrs. Brown’s did. Alice wanted an astronomy text. And I had none to give her nor instruction to guide the lesson I gave her. It had been years since I graduated from Mrs. Brown’s, and music and literature moved me more than the stars. I stepped to the counter, for women were allowed no farther in the rooms, wrote my request on a slip of paper, and waited for the clerk to return. The door swung open behind me, bringing a rush of brittle leaves and slicing air. It was Benjamin, smelling of musty books and leather from the satchel slung across his chest.
“I have seen you before,” he said. His beard was trimmed but not full gray, and he knew I would admire the angles of his jaw and cheekbones, making sure to pose like an actor in the one beam of sunlight.
I laughed, and pressed my fist to my lips to stop it.
“Why do you laugh?”
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
He cleared his throat and peered past the counter to the stacks. “Mr. Eliot is never here when you need him here.” Then his eyes turned to the paper I still held in my hand. “What are you looking for?”
“A book. For my sister. She’s ill . . . I would like an astronomy book to bring her.”
“Your sister is in luck. We have many to choose from.” He tucked the books close to his chest and tipped his head. “Follow.”
His back was broad, straining a coat that shined at the elbows. The clerk came around the corner, eyes blinking furiously at my presence amongst the stacks, but Benjamin waved him off. “This young woman—what is your name?”
“Marion. Marion Snow.”
“Miss Marion Snow is in need of a book, Mr. Eliot. A text that ponders on the infinite measure of the universe. We shall get it for her.” He strode on. “I have seen you at the lyceums on Wednesdays. Last week was particularly sodden, was it not? A treatise on corn. Corn! We are choking in the grip of our southern brethren’s penchant for slavery and we are given a treatise on corn.” He glanced back and winked. “Not that the subject is without merit, if you find it has merit.”
“It is of importance to the hogs.”
“Why, it certainly is, Miss Snow. It is quite that.” He stopped so suddenly his bag swung and bumped against my chest. “Here.” He pulled down a large tome from the top shelf. “This is complex. With mathematics. Is your si
ster good with mathematics?”
“Yes, she . . .”
“Because I am not. But I am excellent with Latin. So, she may avail herself of my tutoring.”
He came to the house regular as clockwork, Tuesday mornings. I sat with him in the parlor, and Alice lurked at the top of the stairs. There was no denying I waited for each Tuesday, impatient at the slow tick of the clock. His voice, as he lectured and read, was rich. His eyes were richer. “Here is a very fine illustration of Neptune, Miss Snow.” He twisted in his chair to call out to the hall. “I shall leave the book open to it.”
“You spoil us,” I said.
He turned back to face me. “I wish to marry you.”
The room hummed. My cheeks burnt. Alice came down two steps and stopped at the creak of a board.
“Your father has agreed.”
“Why me?”
“You do not simper. I have not once heard you complain. We are agreed on the slavery issue.” He tamped a pipe—I remember the match did not take and he tossed it to the plate on the side table in the parlor. But it missed and dropped to the rug, leaving a small smear of black that never scrubbed clean. “And I wish to marry you, Miss Snow.”
“I don’t want to marry.”
“All women want to marry.”
“That isn’t true.” I slid forward on my chair, clasping my hands around my knees.
“What do you want, then?”
I looked out the window, at the dark hedge and the line of white where the road intersected. A dappled shadow from the great tree spread across the drive. “I want . . .” But all I could conjure was a field without end, and myself looking back at myself from the horizon’s bowed edge. Yellow flowers, knee high. “I want myself.”
“But you have Alice.” He raised a finger. “And I have agreed to Alice. She will have a home with us.”
So, Alice and I changed houses. The cottage was too small; we were all underfoot of each other. I refused his bed as often as I could. I did not wish for a child. I had been burdened enough ministering my mother and then Alice. I could not fathom the want of a child who would tug my skirts and hold me to its needs. By Christmas the first year, he ignored Alice. By the second, he ignored me. Visits to Turee grew less frequent. Lionel’s wedding. Toby’s christening. Father’s funeral. A summer afternoon.
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