The Ebony Swan

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “You’re going to be good for me, Susan. This morning I feel more purposeful than I have for a long time, and I have a plan. There’s a place I want you to see. Perhaps if we go there together I’ll be able to make a decision about something that faces me.”

  Theresa looked upset. “Not that church again!”

  Alex’s smile was kind but firm. “I know you dislike my going there, but you have a mistaken idea about what that historic place means to me.”

  Susan caught the flash of resentment in Theresa’s dark eyes. The relationship between the two women was hardly affectionate.

  “Do you like your tower room, Susan?” Alex asked. “Do you remember it at all?”

  “Sometimes I have a feeling that I do. It’s a feeling that leaves me a little uneasy—though I haven’t any idea why. Last night when I went outside on the balcony and walked around, I found a door that seemed to lead to another part of the tower room.”

  “That door is kept locked,” Theresa said with a sharpness that seemed unwarranted.

  “I know. I was curious, so I tried the door.” She didn’t ask why it was kept locked, but the question seemed to hang in the air.

  Alex explained quietly. “Juan Gabriel didn’t build this house. The man who built it was an inventor who liked to shut himself off from his family so he could work without interruption. The tower rooms were where he escaped to be alone. He used the smaller room as his workshop, and the outside stairs gave him access to it without disturbing the rest of the family. His grandson, from whom we bought the house, told us about him.” Alex set down her cup and looked directly at Susan. “We use it now as a storeroom and keep it locked.”

  “As it should be,” Theresa said tartly. “Please excuse me—there’s something I need to do.”

  She was leaving to show her annoyance, Susan thought, but Alex let her go without comment.

  “Perhaps we can start off right away?” she suggested to Susan. “I’ll fetch my car keys, while you get ready for a short trip.”

  As her grandmother left the room, Susan started for the door and ran upstairs for her purse. In the doorway of the tower room she stopped in surprise. Theresa stood near the head of the bed, having apparently just hung a picture in the empty space Susan had noticed the night before. She looked faintly amused at Susan’s surprise in finding her there.

  “Your grandmother asked me to find a picture for this spot, and I thought this one might be appropriate.”

  Appropriate in what way? Susan wondered. She recognized the stone ruins atop a mountain, having seen pictures of Machu Picchu before. This black and white photograph of the famous Incan temple had been taken from the air so that the view of walls and terraces, walks and wide steps—all built some two thousand years before Christ—were spread across several levels of the mountaintop. Two tiny human figures at the foot of crumbling steps gave a sense of vast spaces and massive structures that dwarfed them completely.

  Theresa mused aloud. “How I would love to go there! I can almost feel the wonder of it just looking at that picture.”

  Susan’s focus was elsewhere. “What hung there originally, Theresa?”

  There was a slight hesitation before she answered. “A picture of Juan Gabriel. I never understood why Alex wanted it removed, but it’s not my place to question what she chooses to do.”

  This was probably false humility, but Susan had no time for Theresa now. She picked up her purse and left, leaving Theresa still studying the photograph of the temple ruins.

  When she had joined Alex in her car and they were on their way, her grandmother explained about the place they would visit. Susan listened with interest as she related the story of “King Carter” and the rule he had held over Virginia.

  “Robert Carter built his church on the same spot where an earlier one had been built by his father—a building that had become too small for the growing congregation of family and friends. It’s a remarkable building, Susan. I hope you’ll be interested.”

  This seemed more than a visit to a historical site, Susan thought, and wondered what lay behind it. If a few mysteries could unfold their answers during this visit, that would be fine. Her own father had been indifferent to religion and had sometimes spoken scornfully of his first wife’s faith. Only the intervention of Susan’s stepmother had caused her to be sent to Sunday school, so she wouldn’t grow up a “heathen.”

  The drive from Kilmarnock ran through wooded countryside, with occasional houses visible. When they reached a great tree-shaded area at the side of the road, Alex parked her car, and they got out to walk past a small cemetery.

  “I’ll show you Carter’s tomb and those of his two wives later,” Alex said, and Susan continued to feel that they were not really here for sight-seeing.

  At an open gate Alex paused, musing aloud. “In Peru, when I was very young, I was taught by nuns. I was a devout little girl, but when I grew up God seemed to fail me, and since Juan Gabriel disliked all formal, ‘limiting religions,’ as he called them, we weren’t churchgoers.”

  Looking up at the great red bricks glowing in the sun, Susan felt more confused than ever. “Then why are we here?”

  Alex’s answer continued to be evasive. “This is part of Virginia’s history, Susan. You were born in Virginia, though you remember very little.”

  So far, she’d felt no particular connection with Virginia. Though all she had seen was beautiful, her eyes were more accustomed to the colors of parched desert and earth-colored adobe, and to the marvelous red rocks that cropped up dramatically in unexpected places. All this greenery seemed monotonous.

  Alex went up the steps and through the open door of the church, and Susan followed, feeling oddly hesitant and uncertain. Her grandmother seemed to have some sort of obsession about this place that made Susan uneasy.

  Out of the sun’s heat, the air inside seemed several degrees cooler, and she shivered. At the foot of the main aisle, the high walls of wooden pews rose on either hand, and her apprehension increased. She suddenly felt as though she might open herself to some strange quality within these walls—something she might prefer to resist.

  “Look up!” Alex directed.

  Susan tilted her head back to encompass high spaces of floating light—light that poured in filtered beams through three oxeye windows set into deep eaves. For a reluctant moment a sense of awe held her—a feeling that she quickly dismissed, remembering her father’s scornful laughter echoing out of the past.

  “Why are we here?” she repeated.

  Alex heard the note of rejection in her voice, and she placed a quieting hand on Susan’s arm. “Don’t try to ask reasonable questions. Just give it a chance; let yourself feel whatever is here. Sometimes this place restores me, works a special spell. I thought it might do the same for you. You are my daughter’s daughter—but we seem so very far away. I’d like to bridge the distance between us.”

  Touched, though still resistant, Susan followed as Alex moved toward the transept aisle.

  “I wish I could have seen you dance,” she said softly.

  “I know no one anymore who has ever seen me dance.”

  “I suppose my grandfather saw you on the stage? Was it your dancing that drew him to you?”

  Her grandmother’s sudden vehemence of denial took her by surprise.

  “No! Your grandfather never saw me dance!” Then confusion seemed to possess her and Alex immediately corrected herself. “What am I saying? You were asking about Juan Gabriel, and of course he saw me dance many times, before Rudy Folkes died. He would even travel to other countries where the Folkes Ballet was appearing.”

  “Did he ever write about you as a dancer?”

  Alex seemed to find the question disconcerting, and for a moment Susan thought she wouldn’t answer. Then she said, “Only once—in his book The Black Swan. He wrote that book during our early years here, when he
could still describe me perfectly as I danced the role of the white swan in his story.”

  Pain had touched Alex’s voice—some deep pain out of what was long past. Hearing it, Susan spoke more gently.

  “At least I’d like to read a description of your dancing. That book isn’t one my father had in his collection, so I’ve never seen it.”

  “Let’s get out to where it’s warm,” Alex said abruptly. “There’s nothing here for us today, after all.”

  In spite of Susan’s reluctance to surrender anything of herself to this place, it was as though something held her here—as though she could sense that something was about to happen.

  What happened was a sudden small explosion of sound in the form of a human sneeze.

  “There’s someone here!” Alex went quickly to pull open the door of a nearby pew.

  On a high-backed bench that ran around the pew’s interior sat an elderly man. His graying hair, swept back from a wide forehead, indicated his years, though his striking face was scarcely lined. He had been writing in a notebook that was balanced on his crossed knees, and he set it and his pen down on the bench and stood up, his smile forced.

  “I was wondering if you’d discover me, Alex,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed this bit of eavesdropping. The spell this church appears to exert over you fascinates me. And this must be Susan Prentice whom you’re trying to convert?”

  The hand he held out to Susan was large and summer-browned, its size matching the rest of him. Susan put her own hand into an enveloping clasp that somehow seemed unwelcoming.

  “I’m Gilbert Townsend,” he said, without waiting for an introduction from Alex. “I was very good friends with your father, whom I respected a great deal.”

  Alex broke in. “Do you live in this church, Gilbert? This is the second time in two days that we’ve met here.”

  “The book I’m writing is about Christ Church—have you forgotten? I come here often.” His voice was tinged with annoyance as he answered Alex, but it softened deliberately when he addressed Susan. “How long are you staying with your grandmother, my dear?”

  The question seemed surprisingly direct. “Probably a few days,” Susan told him, retrieving her hand from his smothering clasp. “I’m glad to meet friends of my parents. Your sister Hallie came to see me yesterday soon after I arrived.”

  “Hallie could never contain her curiosity,” he said lightly. “I hope she didn’t disturb you too much. She can be pretty unexpected at times. Don’t believe everything she tells you—she could have made a great fiction writer, with her imagination.” In spite of his mocking tone, he seemed disturbed that Hallie had visited her.

  “I liked her,” Susan told him. “She said she was my mother’s friend, and brought me a picture my mother had given her.”

  Gilbert Townsend looked doubtful. “I don’t think that she and Dolores were close, Susan. But never mind that. It’s just as well that you’re not staying too long. I think your father would not have wanted you to come here.”

  “Oh? Perhaps you can tell me why, Mr. Townsend?”

  Apparently he found her question discomfiting, and while he hesitated, Alex drew Susan away.

  “Let Gilbert get back to his work. I want to show you the Carter tombs, Susan.”

  Gilbert Townsend made them a derisive bow, and when Susan glanced back as they left the open door of the pew, she saw that he’d picked up his notebook and pen, but was looking after them. He certainly hadn’t been pleased to see her—that was evident. There were undercurrents here she didn’t understand.

  “He doesn’t approve of you, does he?” she asked as they went outside.

  “That’s all right—I don’t approve of him.” Alex dismissed Gilbert with a flick of her fingers.

  “If he was my father’s friend—” Susan began, but her grandmother spoke sharply.

  “All the more reason to stay away from him. No one needs a friend like Gilbert. Come, we’ll walk around the back of the church to the tombs. The Visitors Center is over there, and perhaps we’ll look in on Hallie before we leave.”

  The subject of Gilbert Townsend had been put aside, but Susan’s stubborn streak could be as strong as her grandmother’s and she meant to return to her questions about him soon.

  Robert Carter’s large stone tomb was a monument in itself. It stood intentionally higher than those of his two wives, its decorations ornate. On one side a great coat-of-arms had been carved into the stone, and there were other carvings and inscriptions.

  “The slabs that covered the tombs were so worn,” Alex explained, “that they’ve been replaced and duplicated, even to the Latin inscription that tells us that Robert Carter was ‘possessed of ample wealth, blamelessly acquired.’ Perhaps not everyone in his time would have agreed to the word ‘blamelessly.’”

  In a sense Susan felt even more uneasy standing before these three tombs than she had inside the church. There seemed an all-enveloping loneliness here—perhaps the loneliness of death. These tombs held all that remained of so much human loving and loss; so much grief and anguish and physical pain. Here in the shadow of the church she continued to feel cold, though it was so much warmer than it had been inside.

  “Let’s go find some more cheerful shade,” Alex said briskly. “I can sit on the grass if you’ll help me to get up.”

  She still seemed strangely insistent, and Susan knew there was more to come from their visit to this place.

  “I wanted all this to touch you, as it has touched me.” Alex spoke almost wistfully as they walked past the tombs together.

  Susan wished she could please her. “What I feel right now is unsettled, isolated—not connected to anything.”

  “Uprooted,” Alex said. “I can understand that. You need to find something to take hold of, so that new rooting can begin. Even though you may be here only a short time, I would like you to find a connection with us, Susan. This land, these people are in your blood.”

  They’d reached a great oak tree, where morning shade offered a resting place. Susan helped Alex lower herself to the grassy earth, where she could lean back against the trunk of the tree. Then she dropped down near her grandmother.

  Overhead, leaves rustled their summery sound. Closing her eyes, Susan let pictures drift idly through her mind. She could see the tower room where she’d spent the night, see Theresa hanging a picture—that photograph of Machu Picchu that she’d placed in the empty space over the bed. When Susan told Alex about this, her grandmother’s smile was uncertain.

  “I wondered what picture Theresa would choose. She must have taken that one out of her own room. You can feel flattered that she’s loaned it to you. Theresa has what comes close to an obsession with Incan history in Peru.”

  “I’m not sure she meant to flatter me. Perhaps she only wanted to disturb my dreams. I can still remember the scary stories she used to tell me when I was little.”

  “Do you remember anything else, Susan—anything that was frightening?”

  The question troubled her. There was something—but it always slipped away. Perhaps because the terror was too great to be faced?

  “So far I haven’t remembered very much. Why did you remove the picture of my grandfather that hung on that wall originally? Theresa said you had it taken down.”

  “It was the wrong picture of Juan Gabriel,” Alex said shortly.

  A strange answer. They both remained silent for a few moments, then Susan said, “What do you want of me? I keep feeling that you are asking me for something, but I don’t know what it is.

  “I’m not sure I know either,” Alex said, and Susan heard sadness in her voice.

  Somewhere nearby a bee went about its summer duties, and a yellow butterfly lighted on the same bush. When a twig dropped beside her, Susan picked it up, twirling the leaves in her fingers until they seemed to pirouette like a dancer. She asked the question th
at came most naturally to her mind.

  “How did you come to be a dancer, Drina?”

  Perhaps hearing the name spoken again sent Alex’s thoughts back in time, for she began to reminisce.

  “I had always loved to dance. I could do a good flamenco when I was ten, and I mastered the castanets on my own. I knew nothing at all about ballet until one year that I will never forget. Our family used to visit a village up in the mountains every summer, when the weather grew hot down by the coast.”

  She was quiet for a moment, lost in the past. Then she went on, drawing scenes from her memory.

  “What I remember best about that high place was the volcano—a great red mountain with steep sides that rose straight up behind the walls of the convent. Sometimes red dust would streak the habits of the nuns, and I thought it made the white cloth even more beautiful. The nuns didn’t like it, of course, and they spent too much time dusting it off and washing their garments.

  “I remember the volcano especially because I was afraid of it. A hundred years before, it had erupted and killed a great many people. The damage could still be seen in the village. The volcano had remained active, and there was always a drifting of smoke from the crater. At night the glow of that inner fire frightened me.” Alex was quiet for a moment, lost in her remembrance. Suddenly she shook her head, as though emerging from a dream. “But I wasn’t afraid for long because Madame Magdalena came into my life and took my attention away from everything else.”

  Susan relaxed against the rough bark of the tree, her eyes closed as she visualized the pictures her grandmother painted so brightly of a country on a faraway continent. Perhaps she could find the connection she longed for in Alex Montoro’s words.

  “Madame Magdalena had been a dancer when she was young,” Alex explained. “Even though her knees would no longer bend in more than the shallowest of pliés, Magda was a magnificent teacher. Wherever she happened to be, she would look around among the young girls and single out those she wanted to teach. She would charge the rich families handsomely. Poor ones she would teach for nothing. Everyone knew her, and it was an honor to be chosen.