Patricia Gaffney - [Wyckerley 02]

by To Haveand To Hold

  “Yes, yes.”

  “And—will you lead a new life, following the commandments of God and walking from henceforth in his holy ways?”

  “Yes!”

  “Go in peace, then. Your sins are forgiven.”

  The viscount peered up at him in panicky disbelief.

  “They’re forgiven,” Christy repeated, insistent. “The God who made you loves you. Believe it.”

  “If I could . . .”

  “You can. Take it inside your heart and be at peace.”

  “Peace.” His hand loosened and fell away, but he continued to gaze up with pleading eyes. All the hopes of his life had narrowed and tunneled into this one hope; that he was loved, and that he was forgiven. Christy was learning that at the end it was all anyone wanted.

  “My lord,” he asked, “will you take the sacraments?”

  A minute went by, and then the old man nodded.

  Christy prepared the bread and the wine quickly, using the bedside table for an altar, reciting the words of the ritual in a voice loud enough for Edward to hear. He was to ill to swallow more than a tiny morsel of the Host, and he could only wet his lips on the edge of the chalice. Afterward, he lay utterly still, the flutter of the wilted lace on his nightshirt the only indication that he still breathed.

  Time ticked past in the dim box of a room; the lamp wick began to sputter, and Christy rose to turn it higher. A choking sound from the bed made him turn back quickly.

  Edward was trying to sit up on his elbows. “Help me . . . help . . . oh, God, I hate it . . . I’m afraid of the dark . . .” Christy put his arm around his thin shoulders, propping him up. “Geoffrey?” He stared straight ahead, unblinking. “Geoffrey?”

  “Yes,” Christy lied without hesitation. “Yes, Father, it’s Geoffrey.”

  “My boy.” His smile was rapturous, a little smug. “I knew you’d come.” His head bobbed once and fell on his left shoulder; a long, ragged sigh rattled up from his chest, but he was already dead.

  Christy held him in his arms a little longer before laying his slack torso back on the bed and gently closing his eyes. “Go in peace,” he murmured, “for the Lord has put away all your sins.” The unmistakable aspect of death had already seeped into the viscount’s corpse; his soul was gone. Christy administered the last sacrament, the anointing of the body with oil, taking a melancholy comfort in the solemn rite. When he finished, he sank to his knees by the bed to pray, hands folded, his forehead pressed against the side of the mattress.

  That was how Geoffrey found him.

  ***

  Christy hadn’t heard footsteps but something, maybe a change in the air, made him lift his head and look toward the doorway to the hall. A tall, dark-haired man stood in the threshold. Sallow skin, sunken cheeks, black, burning eyes in hollow sockets—for one grotesque moment, Christy thought it was Edward, returned from the dead in the semblance of his youth. But a second later, a flesh-and-blood woman materialized behind the man’s shoulder, and Christy realized he wasn’t seeing ghosts. He got to his feet in haste.

  He met Geoffrey in the middle of the room. He would have embraced him, but Geoffrey held out his hand and they shook instead, clapping each other on the back. “My God, it’s true,” Geoffrey cried, his voice sounding shockingly loud after the long silence. “You’ve gone and become a priest!”

  “As you see.” His gladness gave way to concern as he took in his oldest friend’s profoundly altered appearance. At sixteen, Geoffrey had been a strapping, muscular youth; when they’d wrestled together, they’d almost always fought to a draw, and on the rare occasions when Christy had won, it was only because he was taller. Now Geoffrey looked as if a well-placed blow from a child could knock him down. But his charming, wolfish grin hadn’t changed, and Christy found himself smiling back, wanting to laugh with him in spite or the somber circumstances of this meeting. “Geoffrey, thank God you’ve come. Your father—”

  “Is he dead?” He moved around him to the bedside without waiting for an answer. “Oh, my, yes,” he said softly, staring down at the still corpse. “He’s dead, all right, no question about that.”

  Christy stayed where he was, to give Geoffrey a little time to himself. The woman in the doorway hadn’t moved. She was slim, tall, dressed sedately in a dark brown traveling costume; the veiled brim of her hat cast a shadow over her face. He glanced at her curiously, but she didn’t speak.

  Geoffrey had his back to the room; Christy tried to read his emotion from the set of his shoulders, but the rigid posture was unrevealing. After another minute, he crossed to the bed to stand beside him, and together they gazed down at Edward’s lifeless face. “He didn’t suffer at the end,” Christy said quietly. “It was a peaceful death.”

  “Was it? He looks ghastly, doesn’t he? What was wrong with him, anyway?”

  “A disease of the liver.”

  “Liver, eh?” There was no hint of sorrow in his frowning, narrow-eyed countenance; rather, Christy had the unnerving impression that he was scrutinizing the body to assure himself it was really dead.

  “He asked for you before he died.”

  Geoffrey looked up at that, incredulous, then burst into high, hearty laughter. “Oh, that’s good. That’s very good!”

  Dismayed, Christy looked away. The woman had come farther into the room; in the shadowy lamplight, her eyes glowed an odd silver-gray color. He couldn’t read the expression in them, but the set of her wide, straight mouth was ironic.

  “I think he was sorry at he end,” he tried again. “For everything. I believe he felt remorse in his heart for—” This time Geoffrey cut him off with a crude, appallingly vulgar oath that made Christy blush. The woman arched one dark brow at him; he’d have said she was mocking him, but there was no playfulness in her face.

  Then Geoffrey flashed his charming smile, and the anger in his eyes disappeared as if it had never been. He spun away from the bed and draped his arm across Christy’s shoulders, giving him a rough, affectionate squeeze. “How’ve you been, you ruddy old sod? You look . . .” He stood back and made a show of examining him, head to toe. “Christ, you still look like an archangel!” He ruffled Christy’s blond hair, laughing, and under his breath Christy caught the unmistakable odor of alcohol. He stiffened involuntarily. All the things he could have said about Geoffrey’s appearance seemed either tactless or hurtful, so he didn’t answer.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here,” Geoffrey urged, guiding him toward the door. Christy resisted, and Geoffrey stopped short, adjacent to the silent, motionless woman. “Oh—sorry, darling, forgot about you there. This is Christian Morrell, an old chum from my halcyon youth. Christy, meet my wife, Anne. Anne, Christy. Christy, Anne. Shake hands, why don’t you? That’s it! Now let’s all go have a drink.”

  “How do you do, Reverend Morrell,” murmured Anne Verlaine, unsmiling, ignoring her husband’s facetiousness.

  Christy struggled to hide his surprise. Rumors about Geoffrey were always rife in Wyckerley, had been since he’d run away at sixteen and never returned. About four years ago Christy had heard that he’d married the daughter of an artist, a painter; but the next rumor had him off fighting the Burmese in Pegu, and there was no more talk of a wife. As a consequence, Christy had assumed that the marriage was just another in the colorful catalog of stories about the village’s prodigal son that might not be true but never failed to entertain the natives.

  “Mrs. Verlaine,” he greeted her, taking the cool, firm hand she held out to him. She was younger than he’d thought at first, probably not even twenty-five. Her accent was English, but there was something distinctly foreign about her; something in her dress, he thought, or the penetrating directness of her gaze.

  “No, no, it’s not Mrs. Verlaine anymore, is it? It’s Lady D’Aubrey! How does it feel to be a viscountess, darling? Frankly I can’t wait for someone to call me ‘my lord.’ Come on, we must go and drink to Father’s demise. It took him long enough, but better late than never, what?” Geoffrey
’s arm around his wife’s waist looked steely; she resisted for only a moment, then let him lead her out of the room. Christy had no choice but to follow.

  Forever and Ever

  THE TOWER CLOCK on All Saints’ Church struck the quarter hour with a loud, tiny thud. Connor Pendarvis, who had been leaning against the stone ledge of a bridge and staring down at the River Wyck, straightened impatiently. Jack was late. Again. He ought to be used to it by now—and he was, but that didn’t make his brother’s habitual tardiness any less aggravating.

  At least he didn’t have to wait for Jack in the rain. In typical South Devon fashion, the afternoon had gone from gray to fair in a matter of minutes, and now the glitter of sunlight on the little river’s sturdy current was almost blinding. It was June, and the clean air smelled of honeysuckle. Birds sang, bees buzzed, irises in brilliant yellow clumps bloomed along the riverbank. The cottages lining the High Street sported fresh coats of daub in whimsical pastel shades, and every garden was a riot of summer flowers.

  The Rhadamanthus Society’s report on Wyckerley had said it was a poky, undistinguished hamlet in a poor parish, but Connor disagreed. He thought the authors of the report must have a novel idea of what constituted poverty—either that or they’d never been to Trewithiel, the village in Cornwall where he’d grown up. Wyckerley was friendly, pretty, neat as a pin—Trewithiel’s opposite in every way. Connor had been born there, and one by one he’d watched his family die there. Before he was twenty, he’d buried all of them.

  All except Jack. Here he came, speak of the devil, the folded, one-page letter. “Enough to coyer the note of deposit I’ve just signed for our new lodgings.”

  “Well, that’s a relief for you, counselor. Now you won’t get pinched for false misrepresentation o’ personal fiduciary stature.” Jack chortled at his own humor; he never got tired of making up names for laws and statutes, the sillier sounding the better.

  Connor said, “I had to pay the agent for the lease of six months. Thirty-six shillings.” It wasn’t his money, but it still seemed a waste, since they wouldn’t be in Wyckerley past two months at the most.

  “What’s our new place like, then?”

  “Better than the last. We’ve half of a workingmen’s cottage only a mile from the mine. We’ll share a kitchen with two other men, both miners, and there’s a girl who comes in the afternoons to cook a meal. And praise the Lord, we’ve each got a room this time, so I won’t have to listen to you snore the glazing out of the windows.”

  Jack cackled, going along with the joke. There were times when he kept Connor awake, but it was because of his cough and the drenching night sweats that robbed him of rest, not his snoring. “What do they say about the mine?” he asked.

  “Not much. It’s called Guelder. A woman owns it. It’s been fairly—”

  “A woman.” Jack’s eyes went wide with amazement, then narrowed in scorn. “A woman,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Well, ee’ve got yer work cut out right and proper, then, ‘aven’t ee? The radical Rhads’ll be aquiver wi’ joy when they read yer report this time.”

  Connor grunted noncommittally. “The woman’s name is Deene. She inherited the mine from her father about two years ago, and she owns it outright, without shareholders. They say her uncle owns another mine in the district. His name’s Vanstone, and he happens to be the mayor of Wyckerley.”

  “Why’n’t they sent you to that un? The uncle’s, I mean. Tes bound to be far better run.”

  “Probably, and there’s your answer. The Society hasn’t employed me to investigate clean, safe, well-managed copper mines.” No, but the selection process was still fair, Connor believed, if only because conditions in most Cornish and Devonian copper mines were so deplorable, there was no need to doctor reports or tinker with findings. Or pick a woman’s mine over a man’s in hopes of finding more deficiencies.

  He put the envelope in his pocket and clasped his hands behind his head, blinking up at the sky. The June afternoon was lazily spectacular, and he couldn’t deny that it was pleasant to sit in the shade while butterflies flickered in and out of sun rays slanting down through the tree leaves. In a rare mellow mood, he watched two children burst from a side door in the church across the way and run toward the green. A second later, out came three more, then four, then another giggling pair. Shouting, laughing, they skipped and ran in circles and tumbled on the grass, giddy as March hares. He’d have thought Sunday school had just let out, except it was Saturday. The children’s high spirits were contagious; more than one passerby paused in the cobbled street long enough to smile at their antics.

  Half a minute later, a young woman came out of the same door in the church and hurried across the lane toward the green. The school teacher? Tall, slim, dressed in white, she had blond hair tied up in a knot on top of her head. Connor tried to guess her age, but it was hard to tell from this distance; she had the lithe body of a girl, but the confident, self-assured manner of a woman. He wasn’t a bit surprised when she clapped her hands and every shrieking, frolicking child immediately ran to her. What surprised him was the gay sound of her own laughter mingling with theirs.

  The smallest child, a girl of five or six, leaned against her hip familiarly; the woman patted her curly head while she gave the others some soft-voiced command. The children formed a half circle around her. She bent down to the little girl’s level to say something in her ear, her hand resting lightly on the child’s shoulder.

  “Look at that now, Con. That’s a winsome sight, edn it?” said Jack in a low, appreciative voice. “Edn that just how a lady oughter look?”

  Where women were concerned, Jack was the least discriminating man Connor had ever known; he liked all of them. But this time he’d spoken no more than the truth. This woman’s ivory gown, her willowy figure, the sunny gold in her hair—they made a very beguiling picture. And yet he thought Jack meant something more—something about the long, graceful curve of her back as she bent toward the child, the solicitousness of her posture, the kindness in it that took the simple picture out of the ordinary and made it unforgettable. When Connor glanced at his brother, he saw the same soft, stricken smile he could feel on his own face, and he knew they’d been moved equally, just for a moment, by the perfection of the picture.

  She straightened then, and the little girl skipped away to a place in the middle of the semicircle. The spell was broken, but the picture lingered; the image still shimmered in his mind’s eye.

  She took something from the pocket of her dress—a pitch pipe. She brought it to her lips and blew a sort, thin note. The children hummed obediently, then burst into song.

  Smiling encouragement, her face animated, the music teacher moved her hands in time to the melody, and every child beamed back at her, eager to please, all wide eyes and happy faces. It was like a scene in a storybook, or a sentimental play about good children and perfectly kind teachers, too good to be true—yet it was happening here, now, on the little green in the village of Wyckerley, St. Giles’ parish. Mesmerized, Connor sat back to watch what would happen next.

  The choir sang another song, and afterward the teacher made them sing it again. He wasn’t surprised; smitten as he was, even he could tell it hadn’t been their finest effort. Then, sensing her charges were growing restless, she set them free after a gentle admonition—which fell on deaf ears, because the shouting and gamboling recommenced almost immediately.

  “Looks like a little o’ new puppies.” Jack chuckled, and Connor nodded, smiling at the antics of two little towheaded boys, twins, wing with each other to see who could press more dandelions into the hands of their pretty teacher. Heedless of the damp grass, she dropped to her knees and sniffed the straggly bouquets with exaggerated admiration. Her way of keeping their rambunctious spirits within bounds was to ask them questions, then listen to the answers with complete absorption.

  Just then the curly haired little girl, clutching her own flower, made a running leap and landed on the teacher’s back with a squeal
of delight. The woman bore the impact sturdily, even when the youngster wound her arms around her neck and hung on tight, convulsed with mirth. But gradually the laughter tapered off.

  “She’m caught,” Jack murmured when some of the children crept closer, looking uncertain. “The lady’s hair, looks like. Edn she caught?” Connor was already on his feet. “Con? Wait, now. Ho, Con! You shouldn’t oughter—”

  He didn’t hear the rest. Impulsiveness was one of his most dangerous failings, but this—this was too much like the answer to a prayer he’d been too distracted to say. He took off across the green at a sprint:

  No doubt about it, the teacher was caught. “It’s all right, Birdie,” she was saying, reaching back to try to disentangle her hair from something on the little girl’s dress. “Don’t wriggle for a second. No, it’s all right, just don’t move.”

  Birdie was near tears. “I’m sorry, Miss Sophie,” she kept saying, worried but unable to stop squirming. The music teacher winced—then laughed, pretending it was a joke.

  The other children eyed Connor in amazement when he squatted down beside the entangled pair. Birdie’s mouth dropped open and she finally went still. The teacher—Miss Sophie—could only see him out of the corner of her eye; if she turned her head, she’d yank the long strand of hair that was wound tight about Birdie’s shirtwaist button.

  “Well, now, what have we here?” he said, softening his voice to keep Birdie calm. He shifted until he was kneeling in front of the teacher, and reached over her bent head to untangle the snarl.

  “It got stuck! Now I can’t move or I’ll hurt Miss Sophie!”

  Around them the children had gathered in a quiet circle, curious as cows. And protective of their teacher, Connor fancied. “That’s right,” he agreed, “so you must hold very, very still while I undo this knot. Pretend you’re a statue.”

  “Yes, sir. What’s a statue.”

  A breathy laugh came from the music teacher. He could see only her profile and the smooth angle of her neck. She had cream-white skin, the cheeks flushed a little from exertion or embarrassment. Her eyes were downcast; he couldn’t be sure what color they were. Blue, he thought. “The stone cross at the edge of the green, Birdie,” she said, amusement in her low voice. “That’s a sort of statue, because it never moves.”