The White Forest

by Adam McOmber

  “Does she talk about me, Pascal?”

  “Of course, Saint Jane. Often.”

  “And what does she say?”

  “She misses you but she needs time to make sense of her own thoughts,” he said. “She’ll come back when she’s ready, and I’m sure she’ll be ready soon.”

  It was during this period of isolation that I took up Nathan’s journal of the war again and forced myself back to Malta and the auberge. I found it comforting, at first, to read his words, but as the tone of the journal changed and the events became distorted, that comfort faded and finally disappeared entirely.

  May 1—Prince Louis Napoleon reached Malta this afternoon on a ship called the Orinoco. I glimpsed the man from afar. He looks much like the paintings I’ve seen, though heavier. Still no sign of Lord Raglan, whose brigade we are meant to join, and we have been told to hold the course in waiting. I’m coming up empty-handed in my search of the auberge as well. None of the texts in the library refer to either the Empyrean or the Lady of Flowers, and I can find no record of Theodore de Baras. I am also worried that the Brothers may know I have taken their ape finger. They look at me with concern when I pass them in the halls, and it seems that even Romegas is more guarded in my presence.

  The best piece of evidence I’ve gathered is nothing concrete, but an odd story that Romegas himself told me—a myth really. I got up the courage one evening after dinner to ask him about the various idols on the island, saying I was particularly interested in the statues popular around Città Vecchia that represented the Lady of Flowers. I, of course, did not acknowledge I’d seen a similar statue hidden in his own catacomb.

  “Ah yes, the mysterious Lady,” Romegas said. “May I pour you a drink, Signore Ashe? Our own Brother Bianchi makes a pleasant digestive from grapes gathered in the northern countryside.”

  I accepted the wine, and we settled ourselves by the fire. I was reminded again what a wonderful and comforting place the auberge could be. Perhaps I’d been wrong to think the monks suspected anything of me. Romegas seemed entirely himself that evening—open and congenial.

  “The Lady of Flowers lived here on Malta at the time of Christ, and during her lifetime she gathered a cult that persisted even after her death,” he said. “She was a mystic who claimed to be a sort of avatar. Are you familiar with that word?”

  I told him I was not.

  “It’s common enough in the Hindu religions. In English, you might say incarnation—the physical manifestation of a god on the earth.”

  “So the Lady of Flowers believed she was a goddess?” I asked.

  “Not precisely,” Romegas said, taking a sip of his dark wine and looking toward the fire. “She claimed to be a projection of the unnamed goddess—a piece of her. You must understand that all of this is nothing more than a fairy story, signore. Our pope would be disappointed in me for telling it at all. I’m simply relaying what I’ve heard. In part, this fiction about the goddess was perpetrated by the Lady herself, but it has been embellished over the years. The Lady’s goddess has accrued many names. Some would say that she is Sophia or the Sapientia Dei—the eternal female who is the embodiment of God’s wisdom. She is said to have lived with God before creation, not as wife but as partner and equal. Others would argue that she is not a part of God’s system at all, that she existed before him and became his inspiration, a primal archetype. She is the idea for everything, and yet she herself is nothingness, the magnificent void that existed before the universe. Her eternal body takes the form of the void, just as the Greeks gave name and personality to the ocean and the sky.”

  I tried to behave casually as Romegas spoke, in order that he should feel at ease enough to continue. But his story fascinated me, and my excitement continued to mount.

  “When the universe was created, the unnamed goddess did not disappear. She sat alone and watched creation from her high aerie. Some would say the Lord eventually relegated her to Hell along with the rest of the monsters who existed before creation, but I don’t think that’s right. She continued to exist on her own terms in a fragment of the original void.”

  “I thought you said she was the void,” I said.

  “It’s mythos, signore. There’s nothing logical about it. She is the void and lives inside the void.”

  “And the avatar?” I said. “The Lady of Flowers?”

  Romegas smiled at my eagerness. “That’s quite another story. The unnamed goddess saw our world as a place of suffering and confusion. She took pity on humanity because Creation was corrupt and growing more so. Not only was the world populated by the inventions of God, but soon Man himself began to make his own vain inventions. And these inventions possessed such troubled souls.”

  Here I thought to myself about the souls of objects and how Jane could make them sing. I wondered what she would make of this story.

  “In her great compassion,” Romegas continued, “the goddess is said to have dressed a piece of herself in flesh and sent that incarnation into the stream of time. The avatar was to be a protector of mankind. You’ll hear the fisherman on the island, those who remain half-pagan despite our best efforts, talking about how the Lady of Flowers keeps them and upholds them. But the Lady was also saddled with another task. It is said that if the world became too terrible, if man made too many creations, too many broken and clamoring souls, the Lady would rise up and bring back the void. She would unmake what has been made by the Lord and therefore bring solace to the earth.”

  “She would destroy the world?” I said.

  “Not destruction precisely. The unmaking would provide a solution—a new kind of Paradise.”

  Perhaps I was feeling my drink, or I was merely intoxicated by Romegas’s amiable manner, but I suddenly had the fortitude to ask him whether he’d heard of Theodore de Baras.

  A faint look of surprise passed over the old monk’s features, and I wondered too if I detected a momentary expression of anger there as well.

  “I haven’t heard that name in many years, Signore Ashe.”

  “It’s only that I read some of his writings in England and wondered if there might be more at the auberge.”

  Romegas sighed deeply. “The work of de Baras is kept in a private library that I’m afraid only the Brothers have access to. He is not particularly well regarded here because of his bizarre theories.”

  “Is he buried in the vault below?” I asked.

  “He is not,” Romegas said. “Brother de Baras disappeared when he was thirty-nine years of age. His body was never found.”

  I sat with that information, staring into the depths of my digestive, and wondering what had happened to the monk.

  I closed the journal, still using Maddy’s handkerchief to handle it, and stared blankly at the worn leather cover and then at the wall in Father’s study. Romegas’s story of the unnamed goddess and the Lady had resonated with me. They too had heard the suffering of objects that I had heard all my life. Nathan had clearly come close to understanding all of it. Yet something had happened that made him return to England, not full of knowledge, but utterly disoriented and weak enough to become a follower of Ariston Day. I wanted to continue reading, to finish the journal entirely, but there was something I felt I should do first, something I’d been considering for a long time but never found the courage for. Questions of my own history seemed pressing once again.

  I went to the kitchen, where Miss Anne was preparing what smelled like lamb in a copper kettle over the fire. She was startled by my appearance, and I stood very close to her, as if I might touch her at any moment.

  “Do you still keep in contact with Miss Herron-Cross?” I asked.

  “Oh, Miss Herron-Cross,” Anne said, nervously. She was sweating from the heat of the fire, and she used a rag to wipe her brow. “Those were the days, weren’t they, Jane?”

  “I suppose they were. Do you hear from her at all?”

  “We used to write letters,” Miss Anne said. “Such lovely letters. I kept her apprised of the going
s-on at Stoke Morrow.”

  “So you know where she is currently?”

  “Only a few years back, she was acting as head maid at Saint Hilda’s School. Hilda’s isn’t so far from here—just to the south, you know.”

  “Go and fetch my heavy walking cape and boots,” I said.

  Miss Anne stopped stirring her kettle abruptly. “Jane, you’re not thinking of bothering Miss Herron-Cross, are you? We should all let the past be the past, I think.”

  “I’ll ask for your advice when it’s required,” I said firmly. “My walking cape and boots, Anne.”

  • • •

  Saint Hilda’s School was a rambling gray manor house set on a wide acre of grass and elm. I’d seen it before on trips into London, but I never imagined Miss Herron-Cross might be inside. A school for girls was a rarity in London, and from what I understood Saint Hilda’s was more a place for cultivating manners than it was an institution of science or the arts. I often wondered why Father, in his depression, hadn’t simply packed me off to such a place. Perhaps he’d felt too ashamed, knowing Mother would never have done so. He kept me at Stoke Morrow out of some duty to her.

  Girls in dark uniforms, which looked almost like habits, idled in the yard and watched as I made my way up the long stone path. Their ages ranged from quite young to nearly eighteen, and they all seemed uncertain of me. I looked neither like a servant nor like the kind of woman their tutors were grooming them to become. My walking boots and cape were almost mannish, and I knew the expression on my face was not one of sweetness or charity. I was, in many ways, not like a woman at all. Nor was I really like a man. I was a third type, gray-eyed and unnatural. I thought about brushing my hand against each of these girls’ cheeks, allowing them to see that the very brick and timber of quiet Saint Hilda’s was filled with life and pain. The shingles on the roof blazed like doomed stars and the doorframes howled with useless life. I wanted these girls to know the world was not as simple as what they’d been taught. Manners meant nothing when there were horrors and wonders waiting at every turn.

  But in the end, I left them alone with their beliefs. I was nervous about seeing Miss Herron-Cross after all these years. She’d said such awful things about me before her departure. She believed me truly depraved.

  A young woman in a maid’s uniform met me in the stone foyer of the school and informed me that Miss Herron-Cross was indeed still at Saint Hilda’s, though she was no longer employed as head maid. She’d suffered a series of episodes nearly a year before, falling twice, and she’d been bedridden ever since.

  “May I speak with her?” I asked. “She was my caretaker when I was very young.”

  The maid became suddenly warm. “Oh, that might be just the thing to lift poor Susana’s spirits,” she said. “Follow me, dear.”

  I was ushered into a small room with a high window, which provided the only source of light. Miss Herron-Cross appeared nothing like the staunch matron I remembered. A white sheet was pulled up to her chin, and she stared at me absently with liquid blue eyes. The years had shrunk her, made her insubstantial. The young woman who’d escorted me said, “I expect you both have some catching up to do. I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Do you recognize me?” I asked Miss Herron-Cross when the maid was gone.

  She swallowed dryly. “I do not.”

  I put my hand lightly on her hand, allowing the transference to occur.

  She tried to push away but was too weak to do so. “Jane Silverlake,” she said. “What in the name of God are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to ask you about your last days at Stoke Morrow,” I said. “I’ve wanted to speak with you for some time but haven’t had the courage. Though as of late, it seems I’m building fortitude.”

  She made no response and continued merely regarding me.

  “When you left your post, you told my father that my mother had a troubling nature. That she was somehow unnatural. Do you remember?”

  She cleared her throat. “Evelyn Silverlake was as singular a woman as I have ever known.”

  “Careful not to blaspheme,” I said softly, “or I shall touch your hand again.”

  She huddled beneath her sheet. I remembered how Heron-Cross would lock me in my room near the end of her tenure at Stoke Morrow, so she would not have to look at me or feel what I felt.

  “Tell me what you remember of my mother then,” I said.

  “Evelyn wasn’t like you if that’s what you’re asking,” she replied. “She couldn’t make the house moan or the walls spit fire. Your father first met her when she was wandering in the southern woods. She was walking there among the trees in her tattered frock, and she didn’t claim to have any sort of home or people. I don’t know if anyone ever told you that. Your father inexplicably asked for her hand in marriage soon after their meeting, and if you think she was a good mother to you, Jane, I don’t know that you’re remembering correctly. She was scarcely present. She kept venturing back into the woods and then onto the Heath, as if she was searching for something, but she never told any of us what it was she was looking for. My own mother used to tell me of spirits that walked the southern woods and waited there to ensnare men. They wanted a house to grow whatever plot they were brewing. I always thought Evelyn was something like that—some desperate spirit who needed shelter for a time. When she died, none of us were particularly surprised because, quite frankly, she didn’t seem to know how to live.”

  I shook off Miss Herron-Cross’s disturbing words—keeping my mind focused on the issue at hand. “Did she ever mention someone called the Lady of Flowers?” I asked.

  “Never,” she said. “Most of the time Evelyn didn’t speak at all. When your father first brought her to Stoke Morrow we all thought she was mute.” Miss Herron-Cross paused for a moment. “But there was the church she grew interested in—the one in Spitalfields. They didn’t worship God or Christ. What they worshipped did have something to do with flowers if I’m remembering correctly.”

  “Spitalfields,” I said.

  “That’s right. Not an area most of us would ever go to, but Evelyn Silverlake went there like the world couldn’t harm her. As if it didn’t truly exist.”

  “And do you know why she died?” I asked, feeling like a child again in Miss Herron-Cross’s presence and disgusted with myself because of it. “Do you know what made her so sick out in the field of shale?”

  She coughed and then spat phlegm into a handkerchief. “Evelyn Silverlake’s death was unnatural, to be sure. It was as though she . . . faltered. Like she could no longer hold her place in the world. And so she closed her eyes and looked at us no longer. She gazed instead at that place she was meant for.”

  “What place?” I said.

  “I already told you I don’t know that. I didn’t understand your mother, and I don’t understand you. Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  I did not thank Miss Herron-Cross as I took my leave, and I did not wish her peace. Instead, I thought of Mother, all alone on the Heath, closing her eyes and gazing on that other place.

  CHAPTER 20

  I returned to Stoke Morrow, and though Father had recently come home from his law offices I didn’t go to greet him. I couldn’t bear it. I had too many questions, and I knew that they would hurt him. He’d buried the past, endeavored to make as stable and normal a life for me as he could muster. I thought about Miss Herron-Cross’s comment about Mother’s absence during my childhood. She was right, of course, yet I also had many memories of Mother sitting at my bedside and whispering her stories to me. The more I thought about these memories, the more I realized the instances of storytelling had happened in the dead of night after Mother had returned from walking and everyone else was in bed. These were private moments between us. It was difficult now to remember the precise nature of her stories, other than the one about the pregnant oak, and the more I tried to conjure those narratives, the more tangled my memories became until it seemed Mother had spoken to me in an altogether foreign t
ongue. Or that she had not spoken at all but merely hovered over my bed, somehow imparting the stories through silence. I took Nathan’s journal to my bedroom and opened it, hoping to find answers there or, at the very least, distraction.

  5th—Have had an uncommon time of it since my last writing, which I see has been days. Romegas recommended that I take a walk down a long country road to look at the ruins of a civilization called Crendi. The ruin is said to be Phoenician in origin, though, according to Romegas, it is perhaps much older. “Crendi was a favorite place of meditation for your own Theodore de Baras,” Romegas said. “It was, in fact, the last place he was ever seen,” Romegas said. “There is a temple in the ruin where the ancients made worship to the Lady of Flowers. You’ll find it intriguing, no doubt.”

  I told him I would certainly make the walk, for sport if nothing else.

  As I traversed the road from the auberge to the ruin, the Mediterranean sparkled like a gem to the east. Wildflowers grew alongside the road, and the sweet smell of those flowers combined with the scent of the sea to make the air into an elixir of life and death. The ruins of Crendi revealed themselves slowly. Large pieces of white rock appeared and, at first, seemed to be natural formations of the landscape. Then a post and lintel came into view, like our own Stonehenge. Finally came the remnants of buildings, most of which had collapsed. There was a flat-roofed circular structure which fit the description of Romegas’s temple, and I sat on a rock to take my lunch (a sandwich made with cured meat that was foreign to me—venison perhaps).

  I’d forgotten my hat, and my skull was baking. To escape the punishing heat, I finally entered the temple though I was hesitant to do so. The place filled me with a sense of foreboding and made me think again of the disappearance of Theodore de Baras. To be sure, the bright sun had altered my perceptions. Mirages danced before me in the shadows of the temple, and I felt suddenly dizzy, barely able to stand. I went to the stone altar and sat down, searching for my canteen. Our captain had warned us of symptoms that could arise from heat exhaustion, and I feared I was suffering such an attack. It was when I began to drink that I had what I believed to be another hallucination—this one far more concrete and distressing. Looking over my raised canteen, I saw a figure appear in the doorway. I understood immediately the figure was not a man, though it stood upright on two legs and swayed from right to left. It was simian in nature—apelike. Because it was backlit by the harsh sun, its features were cast in shadow, and I could not see its face. From what I could discern in the half-light, it was covered in long white fur, the same sort of fur that sprouted from the finger I’d found in the reliquary.