The Wild Swans

by Peg Kerr

  His paralysis abruptly broken, Elias took a step forward. “No,” he said quickly. “I mean—sorry, but no.”

  The hand let go of his belt loop. “Suit yourself, man,” said the voice, still friendly, but a little disappointed, too.

  Elias turned and went around the corner of the trailer.

  After a few steps, he slowed and looked back over his shoulder. In the shadow of the passageway between the trailer and the wall, he could see nothing. “Hey. Thanks,” he called back softly.

  “Anytime,” the answer floated back. There was a scrape and rumble, as if someone had sat on the back edge of the trailer and hoisted himself up over the edge.

  Elias walked swiftly back toward West Street, wishing he’d thought to ask about where to find the bus station.

  Chapter Three

  From all evil and mischief; from sin, from the crafts and

  assaults of the devil; from thy wrath, and from everlasting

  damnation,

  Good Lord, deliver us.

  From all blindness of heart; from pride, vain glory, and

  hypocrisy; from envy, hatred and malice, and from all

  uncharitableness,

  Good Lord, deliver us.

  —PRAYER BOOK, 1662

  The party pulled away from the Black Boar’s courtyard just after dawn. As they turned onto the road leading out of Ilminster, a fine mizzle began falling. Mrs. Warren sat in one corner of the carriage, wrapped up in a shawl against the damp, and kept up a running stream of commentary concerning the state of the roads, her difficulty digesting the morning’s breakfast, various inns she had encountered during other journeys on the Countess’s concerns, the spring planting, and the possible business of the folk they passed on the road. She proved a most inexacting companion, perfectly happy to continue her chatter for hours with very little encouragement from her audience. After a few failed attempts at diverting Mrs. Warren from monologue to conversation, Eliza contented herself with listening gravely and interpolating an occasional murmured “Just so,” or “No, thank you most kindly, madam, I am quite comfortable,” when offered, for the dozenth time, a pillow, a shawl, or a bottle of smelling salts. She found her companion’s garralousness amusing and, oddly enough, soothing. It allowed her to be silent, which suited her mood very well.

  The day passed slowly as the carriage rolled, swaying, through shifting silver mists. The damp strengthened the carriage’s odor of leather and wood. Trickles of water on the windowpanes made seeing out difficult. They halted twice at post houses to eat, providing Mrs. Warren with fresh fodder for comment on each occasion. Robert Owen and Edward Conway ate quickly and impassively, listening to Mrs. Warren’s talk without response.

  By the time they left the second post house and resumed their journey, the slow rain had stopped. A few rays from the setting sun pierced the thinning clouds to play over the newly planted fields. Robert Owen drove at a steady pace, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead. As he guided the carriage expertly around ruts and holes in the road, he brooded over his exchange with Eliza in the innyard the previous night. He could not decide whether he should have risked saying more to her, to make her truly understand. Perhaps, he considered uneasily, he should try to speak with her once more before they reached the end of their journey. He did not feel at all confident that she would heed his warning otherwise.

  The Countess had said she wished only what was right and proper for her husband’s daughter—but, Robert Owen reflected gloomily, he knew the Countess. More than that, Robert Owen knew something else, something about the Earl’s sons. The Countess did not know what he knew, but he felt quite sure that if she should ever find out what he suspected, his place would be worth a snap of his fingers. Inside the carriage, Eliza leaned toward the window to watch the green meadows and orchards slowly rolling past. Mrs. Warren peered out over her shoulder. “We are drawing close, I see. That is Mr. Powell’s farm, John Powell that is, my lady. Poor Mrs. Powell was carried off last winter by a fever, may God have mercy on her, but he has four fine young sons to help him. They sang a catch at the tenants’

  dinner last harvest, with most wonderfully pleasing voices. There is the lane leading up to Mr. Cotton’s smithy, and to Mr. Dale’s orchards. After we come around this curve, you will see—yes, do you see it now, my lady? That is the park, and the gardens. Yonder is Kellbrooke Hall.”

  Formal gardens flanked the house on both sides, and a wide green lawn stretched out before it. The house itself had been constructed of pale, golden stone in a double-pile, H-shaped plan. Large multipaned windows overlooked the lawn on the two main floors. The Earl’s arms were carved in the tympanum on the pediment above the wide front steps.

  Eliza drew in a sharp breath at the sight. She had wondered if her memories were true, if the place where she had been born would look familiar to her, or if she had somehow embroidered the picture if her mind to make Kellbrooke more than it was. The truth came as a curiously painful shock: the home of the sixth Earl of Exeter was even grander than she remembered.

  The carriage turned up the long graveled avenue bisecting the lawn. “I remember that cupola,” Eliza said suddenly, “with the golden ball on the top.” She had turned to look back the day she left ten years before. The sun had struck the golden ball on the roof at an angle that made it blaze like a beacon. She had shut her eyes against the glare, or perhaps to stop her tears. When she opened her eyes and looked again, the carriage had already rounded a curve and Kellbrooke Hall had disappeared.

  “I do not wonder that you remember it. ‘Tis one of the best known landmarks of the county,” Mrs. Warren observed with deep satisfaction.

  “The house is so grand, much more so than I remembered.”

  “Aye, that it is,” Mrs. Warren said, nodding, pleased.

  “My father must have many servants, then?” Eliza ventured hesitantly.

  “Oh, aye, my lady. Perhaps three score, or a few more.”

  Eliza’s cheek suddenly felt hot; she pressed it against the window glass. “My father does not want for help, I see,” she observed dryly. If the Earl could afford to keep three score servants, she wondered, how could he not pay Nell and Tom for caring for his own daughter?

  “Indeed, there are many more who would be proud to do him any service.”

  “Such as tending his daughter, perhaps?” Eliza looked at the other woman, who blinked in surprise.

  “It does not seem that it was for lack of hands to help care for me that I was sent away.”

  Mrs. Warren was momentarily at a loss for a reply. “Perhaps,” she stammered finally, “it was thought that... that your ladyship might thrive best in a more rustic ... er, a more pastoral setting.”

  This attempt at explanation, once spoken, sounded most unsatisfactory to both the speaker and the listener. After a moment, Eliza took pity on her companion’s confusion, gave her a small nod, and resumed staring out the window. Best to hold her peace, she decided, and wait to hear what the Earl himself had to say. Not entirely reassured, Mrs. Warren lapsed into an uneasy, uncharacteristic silence that lasted until the carriage rattled to a halt before the steps to the hall. Someone shouted, the latch to the carriage door clattered, and the door opened, admitting a flood of sunset light. A groom stepped forward to let down the carriage step and then withdrew, bowing. Robert Owen climbed down from the coach box and handed Eliza out. “Welcome home, my lady,” he said gravely, bowing. He hesitated for an instant, wondering once more whether he should seize the moment to speak to her again, but Mrs. Warren stood up to step down, too, and the fleeting opportunity was lost.

  “Thank you, Mr. Owen,” Eliza said. She thought she caught a flash of some expression of uncertainty or fear in his eyes. It was gone too quickly for her to identify, and then he pressed her hand and released it, and turned from her to assist Mrs. Warren.

  “Willoughby, take Lady Eliza’s bag inside. My lady, if you will follow me?”

  Eliza took a deep breath and followed Mrs. Warren u
p the broad front stairs. Nervously, she counted the steps as she climbed; there were fifteen. The great front door swung open as they approached it, and a footman stepped aside to let them enter. Mrs. Warren paused to speak with him, as Eliza advanced a few steps into the room.

  “Good evening, Pierce. Are my lord and lady at supper, then?”

  “They are in the Great Dining Room now,” the footman replied in an undertone as he shut the door,

  “and my lady asks that you wait with the Lady Eliza here in the Marble Hall.”

  “Here?” Mrs. Warren said in surprise, a frown making a crease between her brows. “That is—we have supped already on the road ourselves, but do they not wish for us to join them?”

  “Refreshment may be brought to Lady Eliza’s room tonight if necessary, her ladyship says.”

  “But that is not—” Mrs. Warren checked herself and, after a moment, nodded. “Very well, then. Please inform my lady that my lord’s daughter is safely arrived.”

  As the footman withdrew through a door to the right, Mrs. Warren turned to look for Eliza, who had stood a few yards from her. Rhombuses of golden light from the front windows angled across the black-and-white marble floor and dappled her shoulders and hair. “My lady?” said Mrs. Warren, coming to join her. “The Countess has said you are to retire to your own room tonight rather than join the rest of the household.” This seemed cold, so she added uneasily, “ ‘Tis most thoughtful of her, indeed, for you must be very weary.”

  But Eliza, turning in a slow circle and looking around, did not hear. “I remember this room,” she said pensively, “and a rainy afternoon, when we were all together here. We played leapfrog, and blindman’s bluff. And James ...” She stopped, and went over to gently finger a section of the paneling carved into a relief of leaves and flowers.

  Curious, Mrs. Warren followed her. “What is it, my lady?”

  Eliza’s hand stopped and she beckoned Mrs. Warren closer. “James was tossing a ball to Charles, but Charles missed it. The ball hit the wall here and broke off the corner of this leaf. Do you see?” She laughed softly, immensely cheered by this simple proof of her brothers’ existence.

  “Eh, well, now,” said Mrs. Warren, peering at the place where Eliza’s finger pointed and nodding wisely. “That corner has been broken off, true enough. Strange, I never noticed it before.”

  Eliza suddenly remembered Robert Owen’s advice that she should avoid mentioning her brothers. She gave herself a little shake and turned away—and drew in a sharp breath at the sight of a large portrait hanging on the opposite wall. “Mother.”

  “Eh? Oh—the first Countess.” Mrs. Warren squinted at the portrait for a moment, and when she turned to look at Eliza again, her eyes widened. “Faith, you do resemble her most wonderfully.”

  Eliza stepped closer to study it. The artist had painted the first Countess standing, with one elbow on a column, the hand languidly raised to pull back a corner of drapery. The other hand held the folds of her gown. Her head was turned slightly, but the grave intensity in the heavy-lidded clear green eyes transfixed the viewer. Clearly, Eliza had inherited those eyes.

  Seeing the portrait helped make her mother’s face become clear in Eliza’s memory again, too, and that realization brought with it a bittersweet surge of happiness. The expression in her mother’s eyes warmed her, making her feel that her mother knew she had come home, and saw how she had grown, and approved of her. She found herself wishing wistfully that Nell and her mother could have met. They would have liked each other very much, she thought. “I do not remember that picture,” Eliza said softly. Neither Mrs. Warren nor Eliza noticed Lord Grey’s wife, the second Countess, who at this point appeared in the doorway to the right. The Countess, who often found it useful to listen without being observed, did nothing to draw attention to herself.

  “I think I remember hearing your lady mother had sat for it,” said Mrs. Warren, “but it was completed after she died. Perhaps it had not been hung before you left Kellbrooke.” . “I am pleased to see it.” Eliza looked around and drew in another deep breath, consideringly. The air smelled faintly of beeswax. She smiled. “This is my mother’s house,” she said with quiet satisfaction. “My father built it for her.”

  Something in this remark made the Countess’s face darken, and she finally moved into the room and spoke, saying dryly, “A pity Heaven did not grant her many years to enjoy as its mistress.”

  Mrs. Warren turned quickly and curtseyed deeply, her face turning pink. “My lady! Er, the Earl of Exeter’s daughter, the Lady Eliza.”

  Eliza turned and curtseyed, too, shyly. “Madam.”

  The Countess did not nod or smile, but simply studied Eliza appraisingly. “Well. Let me have a look at you then.” A silence stretched, as mother-in-law and daughter considered each other and Mrs. Warren waited uneasily.

  On her part, Eliza felt a touch of surprise. Despite her erect posture and lifted chin, the Countess seemed so much shorter than she remembered. But then, of course, Eliza realized belatedly, the Countess would appear to be shorter to someone who had gone away as a child and returned years later as a young woman. More than this, however, the Countess was pregnant, in her fifth or sixth month at least. Eliza wondered at Mrs. Warren for not mentioning it. Pregnancy had not softened the Countess; instead, it seemed that the swelling of her belly had drawn the rest of her flesh to her more tightly. Neither the snowy ruffles on her Fontages cap nor the carefully curled fripons at her brow could disguise the hard lines ringing her mouth. Soft waves of expensive lace fell from her elbow sleeves, but her fingers, lightly tapping the clutch of keys on her chatelaine belt, were narrow, with bony knuckles. The Countess, on the other hand, felt a surge of dismay at the sight of the girl calmly gazing back at her. She had ordered that the Earl’s daughter be left to wait in the Marble Hall, hoping to abash her with the magnificence of her surroundings, but the Countess had overheard enough to realize that the effect had not been as she intended. A quick glance at the portrait hanging above Eliza’s shoulder made her tighten her lips, thinking, no, this would not do at all. The Countess had her coming child to consider; she did not want to awaken in the Earl memories that she had spent years lulling to sleep. She did not. A moment’s thought led her to a quick decision. “I am going to the stillroom,” she said abruptly. “Will you please accompany me there before I take you to your room?”

  “The stillroom?” said Mrs. Warren in bewilderment. “At this time of—er, is there something I might fetch for you from there, my lady?”

  “No,” said the Countess, keeping an edge from her tone only with an effort. “There are some particular herbs I need, and only I know where they are. You may help me by instructing the housemaids to bring a bath and fetch hot water to the West Rose Room.” Her eyes raked Eliza impersonally from head to foot. “I should think it best for her to scrub away the stench of the stableyard before meeting the Earl.” She indicated the doorway to the left with a sharp gesture of her chin. Eliza reddened, and her lips parted to protest the Countess’s insinuation, but Mrs. Warren spoke first, her words tumbling over themselves in her eagerness to agree: “Jest so, exactly so, my lady. A bam will be most refreshing and proper, and exactly what Lady Eliza needs; my lady is exceedingly gracious to think of it.”

  The wary look of anxiety she darted in Eliza’s direction as she spoke was so comic that Eliza’s sense of the absurd could not help but respond. She relaxed and smiled at her traveling companion as the Countess turned away. “Thank you, Mrs. Warren,” she said.

  Mrs. Warren blushed gratefully and dropped another curtsey. “Bless you, my lady, it were no trouble at all. Welcome home, my lady.”

  The Countess did not second the welcome or even slow her stride. Eliza had to hurry to catch up with her as she entered the smaller parlor adjoining the Marble Hall. Eliza glanced around, sorting through shifting wisps of memory as the two silently walked through the room and then turned a corner into the West Wing corridor. From there, a set of stairs
led down to the lower kitchens. A large pendulum clock on the staircase wall chimed the quarter hour as they descended, and Eliza paused at the landing, arrested by the mellow, reverberating sound. Here was another memory. The Countess noticed, and frowned. “This way,” she said at the bottom of the staircase, gesturing toward the rear of the house.

  They went through the low-ceilinged hall where the servants dined (two footmen and three housemaids, lingering at the table over tankards of porter, rose hastily to their feet as the two women came through) to a small wooden door beyond. The Countess opened it with one of the keys at her belt, and together they stepped inside.

  One of the maids followed them in, hastily lighting several candles in wall sconces about the small room, and then, at a curt nod from the Countess, withdrew again, closing the door behind her. Eliza looked around, blinking as the light flickered and grew. She drew a deep breath; the air was redolent with the earthy smell of the fresh and dried herbs covering the trestle tables and hanging from hooks in the ceiling. Jars covered with waxed muslin and labeled pots stood in neatly ordered rows on shelves against the wall. Ignoring Eliza, the Countess picked up a mortar and pestle from a windowsill and moved to the shelves, breaking off a leaf here and a bit of dried root there, muttering to herself under her breath as she added each bit to the bowl of the mortar.

  As the Countess ground her concoction to a fine powder with her pestle, curiosity drew Eliza over to one of the tables. Nell had taught Eliza as much about herbs and simples as any countrywoman might know, and she had also given Eliza a thorough grounding in the preparation of plants for dying woven cloth. Although the collection in Kellbrooke’s stillroom was certainly larger and more varied than the humble gleanings in Nell’s own larder, many of the plants looked and smelled familiar to Eliza. The cool and pungent scents made her wistful, homesick for her foster parents’ cottage. A bundle of fresh juniper branches lying on a bench to one side caught Eliza’s eye. She reached out and broke off a sprig, and ran her fingers lightly over the springy needles. The berries are most excellent good for all palsies, and a resister to all pestilences, Nell used to say. Admirable good for a cough, and for consumption and pains in the belly. And more, a sprig of juniper protects against all evil that would do thee harm. She had insisted that Tom put a sprig into the band of his hat before leaving to join the Duke of Monmouth’s ragtag army. Tom had laughed at her, but then, chucking her under the chin, he had affixed the sprig to his hatband, dropped a careless kiss on Eliza’s cheek, and marched away with the men mustering from Buckland St. Mary’s, Chard, Combe St. Nicholas, and Ilminster.