The Wild Swans

by Peg Kerr

  [version history]

  Also by Peg Kerr

  Emerald House Rising

  The Wild Swans

  Peg Kerr

  ASPECT®

  WARNER BOOKS

  An AOL Time Warner Company

  Copyright notice

  Contents

  Prologue

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

  Epilogue

  For Kij Johnson, who teaches me grace

  The Wild Swans

  Prologue

  Hey, ho, nobody home

  Meat nor drink nor money have I none

  Yet we’ll still be merry

  Hey, ho, nobody home.

  —TRADITIONAL

  Elias lay huddled in a ball under a dirty pink blanket in a corner of an abandoned warehouse, dreaming of swans.

  In his dream, he flew swiftly through the early morning chill, the earth shrouded in curling mists beneath him. Other swans flew on either side of him, their necks stretched out full length, feathers fluttering at the tips as their wings pumped rhythmically, their feet tucked up neatly underneath. The rush of air made their pinions vibrate with a peculiar, throbbing hum. As the rising sun slowly turned the pale, pearly gray light to a warm yellow, the swan flying directly to his right caught and held his eye with an inscrutable, silent stare. Then, it banked, beginning a lazy spiral toward the earth below. The rest followed it, arrowing down to circle the roof of a lone cottage sticking up through the mist. Elias wheeled to match their course, joining up with the flock again just as the cottage door opened and a figure darted out.

  Elias shifted and muttered in his sleep. In the darkness of the warehouse, something knocked over a pile of cans with a metallic clatter and scuttled off into the darkness. A rat.

  “Hey, Elias. You awake?”

  Elias groggily raised his head, and as he blinked up at the dark silhouette stooping over him, the last swirling tendrils of the dream vanished. It took him a moment to identify the voice. “Gil?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Time’s it?”

  “Little before midnight. I think.”

  “Mmm. Where’s Andre and Tom?”

  “Andre’s out hustling with Luke. Don’t know where Tom went.” Striking a match, Gil stopped to light the end of a candle stuck in a tuna can beside Elias’s head. Elias struggled up to a sitting position on his pallet of torn blankets and Gil sat down beside him. Rain spattered against the grimy, cracked window above their heads. “You got a fag?” Gil asked.

  “No,” Elias said. “I wish you wouldn’t call them that,” he added mildly as Gil rooted through Andre’s small pile of possessions, pushing the dirty clothes and a syringe aside until he found a pack with four battered cigarettes in it. Gil tapped one out and leaned toward the candle to light it. Elias wondered how often Gil rifled through his things while he was away.

  “Can’t help it, guv,” Gil said, taking a deep drag and smiling broadly. He was a wiry kid of seventeen, a year younger than Elias, dressed in black jeans with a belt buckle that read “Boy Toy” in rhinestones, a T-shirt ripped at the shoulder, and a black beret. “My dad got stationed overseas a lot. I was in England when I started smoking. Every bloke over there called ‘em that.” He raised an eyebrow and proffered the cigarette to Elias. His hand had a fine tremor.

  Elias shook his head. “No, thanks.” Something about Gil’s words had snagged a memory of the dream. He saw again in his mind the thatched roof of the cottage, glimpses through the fog of sheep browsing in the nearby meadow, the low stone fences—“England,” he murmured to himself.

  “What?”

  Elias shook his head. “Oh, just a dream I had.” One last flash of memory welled up before the dream faded entirely: the swans were watching over someone, protecting him—or was it a her? As he looked around himself into the darkness of the warehouse, outside the trembling circle of light thrown by the candle, the feeling of comfort, of safety, ebbed away like dirty snow heaped up against a hot air grate. He shivered. He felt cold and hungry and, though he didn’t like to admit it, even to himself, desperately scared. There aren‘t any guardian angels here.

  “I gotta get some money,” he said.

  Gil tapped his cigarette ash into the tuna can. “You went to the plasma center, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t get much.”

  Gil nodded. “That’s why I don’t go no more. It doesn’t help to be skinny when they pay by the pound.”

  “And they won’t let me sell any more till Tuesday.”

  “You don’t want to try sneaking into another center?”

  Elias shook his head. “No, I think they’re right. I’m about bled out for now.”

  “There’s always Dumpster diving. Find something to pawn. Collecting cans.”

  “Uh-huh.” He had been trying to do that the last day and a half, but other scroungers had picked over most of the Dumpsters he’d visited. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning.

  “You could grab an old lady’s purse.”

  “No,” Elias said firmly.

  “It’s easy.”

  “That’s not the point. I’m not going to do it.” He closed his eyes, trying desperately to find comfort in the fact that he’d rejected the idea so quickly, so automatically. Surely that meant he still had some standards left... didn’t it?

  But look how far he’d already fallen in just a couple of weeks. How long would it take before he’d be willing to seriously consider bashing in some old lady’s face? Even with his eyes still closed, Elias could feel Gil’s cool, steady gaze, and he imagined he knew exactly what it meant: Don’t think it’ll be long before you change your mind.

  When he opened his eyes again, Gil was studying the glowing tip of his cigarette. “Or maybe ... you could go out with Luke or me.”

  Elias opened his mouth and shut it again. Part of him wanted to answer, Yeah, I suppose I could, while another part screamed, Jesus, no way. Not ever. He felt cold dread gathering in the pit of his stomach. Maybe, he told himself grimly, this was what hitting bottom meant: trying to figure out which of two previously unimaginable alternatives was the least ugly. “What’s it like?” he asked softly after a moment.

  “Oh, it depends. Sometimes you just get fat guys from the burbs who want you to listen as they cry in their beer about how their wives just don’t understand them.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah. Don’t count on it, though.” He took another drag. “Most of the time you gotta earn it.” He stubbed the cigarette out as Elias digested this. “It’s an option. Let me know if you want to try. You’ve got other options, you know.” He got up and stepped back toward his corner. Back into the darkness. Elias looked down at his hands. His fingernails were bitten down to the quick. When had he done that? He couldn’t even remember. He was losing all track of time. He leaned over and blew the candle out and settled himself again for sleep.

  Other options— right. The only other option that would get me out of this is going home. Only I don’t have a home anymore.

  Chapter One

  Although I am a Country Lasse,

  a lofty mind I beare a,

  I think myself as good as those

  That gay aparell weare a,

  My coate is made of comely Gray,

  Yet is my skin as soft a,

  As those that with the chiefest Wines

  do bathe their bodies oft a.

  —17TH CENTURY BALLAD

  On a certain clear May morning in 1689, in the first year of the reign of King William III and Queen Mary II, Eliza walked barefoot along a country lane in Somerset, carrying a basket heaped with freshly dug roots of the little flower the French call dent-de-lion. The basket weighed heavily on her arm, and she shif
ted it from one side to the other as she picked her way around patches of mud and puddles left from the previous night’s rain. All around her, the newly baptized morning gleamed. Water droplets, transformed by sunlight into iridescent pearls, clung to the slender stems of violets and cowslips lining the pathway. In the fields ewes called to their lambs, and the sound mingled with the shrill squabbles of sparrows in the hedgerows. The air, sweet with the scent of wet meadow grasses, barely rippled the surface of the water pooling in the lane. Eliza sometimes lifted her gaze from the images of birds flying in a cerulean sky reflected beneath her feet, to watch the real birds passing overhead. She was tall for a girl of fifteen and slender as a young linden tree. Her reddish blond hair hung halfway to her waist, tightened by the spring dampness into a mist of undisciplined tendrils. They lifted from her shoulders with a feathery lightness as her steps quickened to climb the hill. At the top, she turned down a track passing through a gap in a stone fence, leading away from the lane. She shifted her basket again as she rounded a copse of budding apple trees— and then stopped dead in her tracks in surprise at her first clear sight of the cottage beyond.

  A carriage stood, incongruously, in the clearing in front of the kitchen garden. Chickens warily stalked around its wheels, suspicious of this strange addition to their territory. Besides the four horses hitched to the carriage itself, a saddle horse tied to one side stood browsing through the garden’s herb border; it raised its head, ears pricked forward, and snorted at her.

  Cautiously, Eliza took a few steps forward and opened her mouth to call. The words died upon her lips, however, as her eyes suddenly fell upon the coat of arms emblazoned on the carriage’s door. The blood drained from her cheeks at the shock, and she dropped her basket, scattering dandelion roots in the grass underfoot. Her hands flew to the neck of her dress, and she drew forth a narrow black ribbon tied around her throat. A small gold locket strung on the ribbon fell into her muddy palm, glinting in the sun.

  She did not need to look at it to know: the coat of arms on the locket was the same, and that realization brought with it a heady mixture of astonishment, excitement, and fear. She stood a moment cupping the locket in her hand, until she had composed herself again, and finally let out a long, tremulous breath. “Well, then.” Her fingers closed tightly over the trinket, and then she tucked it back into her dress.

  Kneeling, she methodically gathered the roots back into the basket, her face serious and set. At the well, she drew up a dripping bucket of water and washed her hands carefully. Scrubbing away the last traces of the mud from her morning’s work helped calm her nerves. Then she picked up the basket again and went to the door of the cottage. Steeling herself, she firmly lifted the latch and went inside. Long ago, the cottage had been divided into two main rooms, with two fireplaces, one in each room, joined by a central chimney. The room she entered, the parlor, faced the front, and the other room, called the hall, where the cooking was done, overlooked the garden in the back. The open parlor shutters let in angled patches of sunlight that brightened the whitewashed plaster walls. Spring air wafted in with her through the doorway, mingling with the smell of fresh-baked bread from the hall and muting the faint under tang of damp wool, wood smoke, and lavender. A man and a woman, seated on three-legged stools squeezed between the loom and the bed, rose hastily at Eliza’s entrance. A somewhat older man leaning against the wall drew in a sharp breath at the sight of her and straightened up more slowly. The four stood frozen in a tableau for a breathless space, and then Eliza stepped away from the threshold and closed the door. “Do you seek me?” she said politely, setting her basket down.

  “My dearest Lady Eliza,” the woman said impressively, stepping forward. She had a stout figure, laced so tightly into-her fine dress of blue sarcenet that her color looked alarmingly high, despite a generous dusting of powder. With the pretintailles appliqués trimming her gown, the profusion of curls dressed with a scarf of striped Siamese stuff, a la Sultana, and the beauty spot patches applied to her forehead and cheeks, she looked the very figure of current French fashion; a more fantastic figure in an English country cottage could scarcely be imagined. She smiled with benevolent brilliance and took Eliza’s hands. “My name is Mrs. Warren, and I serve as a companion to Lady James Grey, Countess of Exeter. These are my escorts, Robert Owen,” she gestured toward the older man who had been leaning against the wall when Eliza came in, “and Edward Conway. We have been sent by your mother to bring you home.”

  “My mother is dead.” Eliza gently withdrew her hands from the other’s grasp. “This is my foster mother’s home. Do you mean my father’s wife?”

  Mrs. Warren’s smile slipped a little. She took a deep breath—or as deep as her stays would allow—and tried again. “Indeed, she is your father’s wife, but that is hardly the term to use. In law, she is your mother.”

  She spoke evenly enough, but Eliza flushed at the suggestion of coldness that had crept into her voice. Painfully conscious that she had made a mistake, she stammered, “Forgive me, madam—I beg your pardon. I truly meant no offense.”

  “None is taken, my lady,” replied Mrs. Warren, thawing once more.

  “And,” Eliza said, her heart beating quickly with shy eagerness, “my father wishes to see me, as well as my mother-in-law?”

  “Aye,” said another voice tightly at the doorway leading to the hall. It was Nell Barton, Eliza’s foster mother, wiping red-rimmed eyes with an apron as she came into the room. “He finally calls thee to his side-—like a poacher who starves and beats a faithful dog, yet still expects it to whistle to heel at his pleasure.”

  Mrs. Warren shot her a venomous look. “How durst you speak so of the Earl?”

  “Prithee, how durst he use his own daughter so? Left her with me for ten years, for ten years an‘ it please you! With nary a visit, nary a letter to the poor girl!” Nell’s gaze met Eliza’s, lips trembling as her tears spilled over again. She turned scarlet, sensing she was making herself ridiculous, but despite Eliza’s pleading eyes, the words kept tumbling out. “Well, I did my best, but how could I teach an earl’s daughter to be a fine lady? An excellent, proper father, leaving her with the likes of me!”

  Mrs. Warren opened her mouth to object, but Nell hurried on, “And yet never a moment’s trouble did she give me, for she’s as good-hearted, as fine a lass as ... as ...” Nell burst into sobs in earnest, throwing her apron over her face. “Little he knew or cared! But now, ‘tis enough with poor Nell Barton, and ’ tis time for the girl to come home. Home! And where does the Earl think his daughter has been these last ten years?”

  She sank onto a stool, overcome and acutely humiliated at having become unwoven before these fine people. And then she heard a footstep beside her, and a familiar voice saying softly into her ear, “Hush, Mother Nell...” and she leaned gratefully against Eliza’s waist as the girl wound her arms comfortingly around her shoulders.

  “Have you done yet?” said Mrs. Warren coldly.

  “Mrs. Barton,” Robert Owen interposed, directing a quelling glance at Mrs. Warren, “ ‘tis true, our coming here must be a shock. We are sorry you did not receive warning of our arrival. Belike you and the child would wish a quarter hour together alone before we go?”

  “A quarter hour?” Eliza said in bewilderment. “Am I to leave so soon, then?” No one answered her. Mrs. Warren avoided her eyes, contenting herself instead with glaring at Nell. The young man, Edward Conway, looked at the floor. Robert Owen alone met her gaze, his expression softened by Pity. Numbly, Eliza looked about the small, crowded room. The familiar objects all around her stood out in a strange, sharp relief, as though to engrave themselves on her memory for one last private instant before vanishing forever. There was the loom her foster father, Tom Barton, had used, still set up with a length of half-woven perpetuana, untouched since Tom had left three years before. In the sudden silence, Eliza fancied she could almost hear the thump and clatter of the wooden shuttle, and Tom’s merry whistle. There was the bed with th
e counterpane Nell had embroidered before her wedding, and there, Eliza’s own first sampler, mounted upon the wall. Out the window she could see a delicate mist of new lettuce and herbs unfurling in the garden, and the first tendrils of beans just beginning to wind up the poles. She had spent countless mornings working there, hoeing and weeding, savoring the feeling of the damp earth crumbling between her toes. They had planted a cherry tree that spring; she would never taste its fruit now.

  With an effort, she spoke. “I... I must fetch my tippet. And my other clothes—”

  “You needn’t trouble to pack much, my lady,” said Mrs. Warren. “We will see to’t you are more ... suitably garbed ere you meet his lordship.”

  Nell stiffened, and Eliza saw and understood her indignation. She felt an answering flicker of fury begin to rise. “I needs must be alone with Nell to say my farewell,” she said coldly. “And I will meet my father wearing my own clothes. He provided them, did he not? Surely he thought them suitable.”

  Robert Owen’s eyes crinkled in amusement, and then his face became carefully bland again. He gave her a half bow. “We will leave you for a space, my lady. Mrs. Warren, Edward, would it please you to walk with me in the orchard?”

  He shepherded them from their seats, soothing Mrs. Warren’s gobbled protests and throwing an enigmatic look over his shoulder at Eliza as he led them out.

  “I didn’t know where thou had gone,” Nell said. “When they came ... and said thou must leave ...”

  She pressed a hand to her mouth.

  “I am very sorry. I... went for a walk.” She had been out in the yard shortly after dawn, feeding the chickens, when a flock of wild swans had flown overhead through the dwindling morning mist, wheeling over the yard twice before flying away to the west. The sight had taken her breath away, and without understanding the impulse, she had left her chores to follow the path of the birds, until they had faded to distant specks in the brightening sky. She had felt a pang of guilt when she turned for home. Nell fretted whenever she roamed very far in neighboring fields and woods, worrying that without one of her friends from the village to accompany her, Eliza might be molested by a passing stranger. Neighbors might spread rumors, too, if they misconstrued herb-gathering expeditions as dabblings in witchcraft. “I... I found a goodly harvest of lion’s tooth root on my way home, at least,” Eliza continued at random, wanting to fill the sudden silence. “It should be enough to dye thy new petticoat.”