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The Wild Swans

Page 13

by Peg Kerr


  “What’s that about?” Elias said. Sean shrugged.

  They walked closer. Several men sat behind the table, and others stood in front of it, talking to them. As they came closer, they could see the words on the banner: “Give to Gay Cancer.”

  “... what it’s about. We’re asking everyone to chip in to help the research,” one of the men behind the table was saying.

  The muscular bodybuilder listening to him shrugged and shook his head. “I ain’t got money to spare.”

  He started to walk away, but the first man’s voice called after him with some heat: “Look, think about what you spend to pay the cover charge at the Ice Palace, and for the time-share for the summer, and the goddamn water taxi rides. Can’t you please give us just a few dollars to help?”

  The second man froze in his tracks and looked back. “I ain’t got any money to spare for dickheads like you.” There was a frozen, angry pause, and then he strode away.

  “Way to go, Paul,” another man behind the table murmured. “That’s why we brought you along. Wonderful people skills.”

  “I can’t help it,” the first man, Paul, snapped. He hunched over in his chair, glowering, kneading his fists over the small cash box. “We’ve been begging all weekend and what have we raised? Maybe a hundred lousy bucks.”

  “Are you the guys who put that article on everyone’s doorstep?” Elias asked.

  “Yeah,” the second man behind the table said, giving him a wary look, as if he suspected that Elias, too, might shoot off some smart-ass remark. “More than a hundred men have become sick with this thing, and many of them are dead.”

  “My lover was one of them,” the third man behind the table said somberly.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have any money with me,” Elias said.

  “Here,” Sean said. He pulled out his wallet and threw several bills on the table.

  “Hey, thanks, man.”

  “Sure. Come on, Elias,” Sean said, and drew Elias away.

  Elias looked at him and laughed as they retraced their steps. “Do you always open your wallet for hard luck cases?”

  “Maybe just the ones that deserve it.”

  “Oh,” Elias said. His mouth felt dry. “Look,” he said to change the subject. “The moon is rising.”

  “Let’s head back along the beach.”

  They walked slowly, just at the edge of where the water had wet the sand, wrapped in a silence that felt both comfortable and yet somehow expectant.

  “So you’ve enjoyed yourself this weekend?” Sean asked finally.

  “Yes, I really have.”

  “I’m glad. I hoped you would.”

  “Thank you for inviting me.” He hesitated. “I want...”

  Sean waited for a moment. “What do you want, Elias?” he finally asked gently. At the sight of him, standing there in the moonlight, Elias lost whatever it was he’d wanted to say next. I want... I want... Oh, god, I don’t know what I want. I want to see you standing there looking at me like that forever, and maybe do more than look. He took a deep breath and stopped walking. “I want to learn from you.”

  Sean cocked his head. “You want to learn from me?” Elias could see the glitter of moonlight against his teeth as he smiled slightly. “You mean ... like lessons?”

  “You’ve given lessons before, haven’t you?” said Elias, greatly daring.

  “Music lessons,” Sean said absently. He looked down at Elias’s hand and then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, took it in his own.

  At the touch of Sean’s hand, Elias felt his heart leap into his throat. He closed his eyes to concentrate on the sensation. I want you to touch me.

  “You could play the piano, you know,” Sean said in a low voice, lifting Elias’s hand in his and gently running his fingers over it. “You have the hands for it.”

  “I do?” Elias said.

  “Mmm-hmm.” Sean took a step closer. “I’ve been admiring your hands.”

  Elias opened his eyes again and looked into Sean’s. “Would you ... show me what to do?”

  “I’d like that.” They headed away from the water then, and up the slope to one of the secret places hidden by the long beach grass from everything but the sky.

  And there, in that secret place, Sean showed him.

  Chapter Nine

  The earth is all the home I have,

  The heavens my wide roof-tree.

  —W. E. AYTOUN,

  “THE WANDERING JEW”

  Over the next two days, women from the village and surrounding neighborhood came to the cottage. Although Eliza gratefully accepted their gifts of bread, cheese, and ale, she politely but stubbornly resisted all offers to help her with the task of preparing Nell’s body for burial. “Nay, ‘tis only right I should do it,”

  she said. “God forgive me, I was not here to ease her passing. ’Tis all I can do for her now.”

  When the more persistent ones pressed her, Eliza only shook her head and turned away, pressing her lips together tightly. Several took offense at this. Because no one saw Eliza openly weep for her foster mother, some muttered among themselves about her hardness of heart—until the village parson, Mr. Wood, saw the haunted, silent grief in her red-rimmed eyes. Being more perceptive than most, he firmly put an end to such talk. In general, however, most were secretly relieved to leave the task of readying Nell’s body to Eliza. Smallpox was a dreadful thing, and Nell’s death had come bitter and hard. None of Nell’s neighbors had the least wish to share her fate.

  And so Eliza alone draped the bed in black and then carefully washed Nell’s smallpox-ravaged limbs and dressed her in her best dress. With infinite gentleness she combed and arranged Nell’s hair and placed a red rose in her clasped hands, taken from the bush Tom had planted in the garden on their wedding day. Her heart hurt to think of Tom exiled so far away, not even knowing yet what had befallen his wife. Perhaps, she thought, when the news reached him, he might find a small crumb of comfort in knowing Nell had held his rose.

  When she had finished with all the tucking and smoothing and arranging, Eliza lingered at Nell’s side for a long time, studying the beloved face, once so animated and tender, now utterly still. Its emptiness smote Eliza to the core. “I was coming back, dear Mother Nell,” she whispered. “Coming back home to bring my heart for thee to truly keep.” She paused and tried to smile past the pain in her throat.

  “Home—‘tis most strange, is it not? This was to be my true home, and all barriers between us had fallen at last, I had thought. But thou hast gone before to a place I cannot follow.” Her fingers, trembling, brushed Nell’s face. “Whom shall I give my heart’s love to now?” Finally, reluctantly, Eliza spread the shroud over Nell’s body. It would be raised over her face when the men came to bear her to the churchyard.

  The last of Eliza’s dresses were plunged into the black dye kettle that had been placed to simmer on the hearth. The harsh dye smell mingled with the scent of rosemary and yew sprigs and evergreen branches, cut and placed in the corner to be carried to the church.

  Tom’s younger brother, Richard, came from Combe St.

  Nicholas when he heard the news of his sister-in-law’s death, and this was another trial for Eliza. A sour-faced bantam of a man, he lacked both his older brother’s humor and openheartedness. In Tom’s absence, he considered himself to be both the acting head of the family and chief mourner, and he found Eliza’s presence puzzling and somewhat irritating. Since he had already had smallpox, there was no putting him off by pleading quarantine. On the morning of the funeral, when the pallbearers came to fetch Nell’s body to the church, he stood at the foot of the bed, bouncing impatiently up and down on his heels. Occasionally, his gaze wandered around the room and his lips moved as he laboriously totaled up the inventory in his head. As the men lifted the body from the bed, he whispered harshly in Eliza’s ear: “

  Tis not wool covering her corse?”

  “ ‘Tis linen, Mr. Barton,” Eliza said, staring at him.<
br />
  “Nay, you must take it off her, then. I’ll not be paying the fine for burying the dead in linen.”

  Eliza’s eyes darkened, and a moment passed before she could trust herself to speak evenly. “I have money to pay it, if you do dislike it,” she said, thinking of the bag of coins Robert Owen had given her.

  “The cloth is of your brother’s own weaving. He would wish it for Nell, I think.”

  Despite her mildness, he caught the small flash of scorn in her eyes. He felt rather nettled at this impudence, and a note of belligerence crept into his voice. “All very well, do as you like, then. But I am only wishful to protect my brother’s interests now. This place is his, and everything with it, and I will not have any squandering.”

  Eliza looked at him again quickly, startled and dismayed. She had not yet had time to wonder what might happen to Tom’s property, now that Nell no longer lived. “Of course, sir,” she said after a long pause. She bowed her head and turned away.

  Because of the fear of smallpox, only a few followed Nell’s bier to the church to see her properly buried. While they were en route, another mercenary consideration struck Richard Barton, and he sidled through the procession over to Eliza’s side to demand whether she expected him to pay the fee to have Nell buried within the church itself.

  Only the reflection that he was her foster father’s brother and therefore due at least a modicum of respect kept Eliza from escaping eagerly from grief into anger. “I told the parson to have the diggers prepare the plot next to her babes, sir,” she replied. “They were all buried together outside the church, and there Nell wished to lie, too.”

  “Ah.” He nodded, pleased to have a face-saving reason to avoid spending money without actually appearing to be niggardly. Relief made him offer a compliment, for compliments, at least, were cheap.

  “She were a good wife to my brother, I suppose.” Unfortunately, he rained it by adding as an afterthought, “Barren though she were.”

  Eliza crashed the sprig of evergreen she held in her hand, feeling the pain in her fingertips from the sharp points of the needles. “She was a better mother than you could possibly ever know, sir. God knows she was better than I deserved.”

  He gave her a sharp glance and prudently fell back a pace behind her for the rest of the way to the church.

  The small group of mourners gathered at the graveside and listened as the parson read the service:

  “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear sister here departed, we therefore commit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto His glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself....” After the final prayer, the pallbearers lowered Nell’s body into the ground, and yew and rosemary sprigs were dropped over her shroud. Then the gravediggers set to work filling in the grave. Eliza winced inwardly at the sound of clumps of earth falling into the pit over Nell’s body.

  When they had finished, Eliza stepped forward and knelt to place more of Tom’s roses on the mound. “Forgive me,” she whispered, pressing her fingers into the cool, damp earth. The soil clung to her skin, clammy as guilt. “Forgive me, dear mother, for not being with thee at the end.” Her heart eased a little, just a little, as she looked at the roses, for she had to admit to herself that surely Nell would not have wanted her to sicken with the smallpox and die, too.

  She tried to hold to that thought, as friends and neighbors stepped forward to greet her afterward. Diana, a friend from the village, slipped her arms around Eliza’s neck and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  “Poor friend!” she exclaimed sympathetically. “Are you wishful for me to stay the night with you?” She lowered her voice, glancing sidelong at Richard Barton. “It might be more of a comfort than some others would.”

  “Faith, you speak the truth.” Eliza smiled, warmed, but shook her head. “Your mother is very near her confinement, isn’t she?”

  Reluctantly, Diana nodded. “Aye. The midwife might be called at any time.”

  “Best you stay with her, then. You don’t want to bring the danger of smallpox to her or the babe. But—thank you.”

  Diana sighed. “Very well.” She squeezed Eliza’s hand. “We shall all miss her.”

  Because of the smallpox, there was no funeral feast. By twilight, the few neighbors who had returned from the church with Eliza and Richard Barton had departed, except for Mr. Wood, the parson. Eliza went out to inspect the side kitchen garden and pull up a weed or two. The garden did not look as neglected as she’d feared it would be. In fact, Mistress Pollard and the other neighbor women who had helped tend Nell had cultivated it a bit, in between watches of nursing. The old work, the old familiar rhythms felt soothing. When she had cleared away the worst of the damage, she filled her basket full of radishes, lettuce, and other greens for a supper salad and brought them over to the well to wash. At the front of the house, Richard Barton and Mr. Wood sat at the doorstep on stools, leaning back against the cottage wall, drinking ale. Talk drifted idly from the price of lambs and wool to rumors of new taxes that would come with the new king. Eliza heard their voices floating around the corner of the house, mingling with the smell of their tobacco.

  “What will happen to this property,” Mr. Wood asked after a lull in the conversation, “now that Mistress Barton is gone?”

  Richard Barton leaned forward to refill his tankard with the ale jug at his feet. “I’ve been thinking—‘twould be best for my oldest boy to come to live here. Aye, to keep its value up. The cottage would be big enough for him and his wife and their children.”

  Dismayed, Eliza stopped pulling up the bucket and turned her head to listen.

  “In trust for your brother, of course, Mr. Barton?” the parson asked pointedly. Richard Barton sucked in his cheeks meditatively. “Aye ... in case he ever returns. ‘Tis possible, what with the Protestant king now and all.”

  But if Tom didn’t return, Eliza thought bitterly, it was probable that neither Richard nor his son would mind.

  “Or,” Richard Barton went on, “perhaps if it could be sold, enough could be raised to ransom Tom home again.”

  “Hmm,” Mr. Wood said in a neutral tone.

  Richard Barton shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat. “I would not sell it if Tom did not wish it.”

  Mr. Wood drew on his pipe for a moment, troubled. “What about the girl?” he said abruptly.

  “What girl?”

  “Nell’s Eliza.”

  “What is it makes her Nell’s girl?” Richard Barton asked indifferently. “I know she’s lived here for years. Just a hired neighborhood wench, isn’t she?”

  “I believe,” Mr. Wood said slowly, “she is a fosterling. I do not know all the circumstances. I came to visit several times during Mistress Barton’s illness. Before she died, she told me Eliza had gone to live with her own folk. I do not know why the girl came back; Mistress Pollard tells me she didn’t know of Mistress Barton’s death when she returned.”

  “Well, she’ll just have to go back to her own folk, then,” Richard Barton said, shaking his head. Mr. Wood hesitated. He had to admit that the hard-faced man was within his rights. Mistress Barton was gone, and no children had lived to inherit. The law would clearly recognize Richard Barton as the proper person to act for his brother. Still... “I don’t know if your brother would agree.”

  Richard Barton eyed the parson, wondering whether to say, Tom’s not here, but he decided against it. “Look, you said the girl’s not kin. Unless—is she a by-blow of Tom’s?” Richard snorted. “If so, Nell had more patience than I knew.”

  “As I said, I do not know all the circumstances,” the parson said stiffly, his lips thinning in disapproval.

  “Well, if she’s not Tom’s, she’s got no call on me or mine.”


  Mr. Wood noted that he was already speaking of Tom’s property as his own. He sighed. “Well, if I am wrong, and there’s no other home for her to go to ...” He hesitated. “It seems a shame. She’s always been a bright, polite-spoken lass, if a bit quiet. Perhaps she can hire herself out with someone in the neighborhood.”

  “Best for her to go to her kin. Aye, or go to the parish, if she has none.” Richard Barton snorted again. “There always be places in the workhouse, I hear.”

  Eliza’s knees felt weak, and she sat abruptly on the edge of the well. Never in her worst nightmares had she thought she might end up at the parish workhouse. She covered her face with her hands and tried furiously to think.

  For one wild moment, she thought of going around the corner of the house and pouring out the whole tale to Mr. Wood. Yet common sense stopped her. Her father’s refusal to pay the debt owed to Tom and Nell meant that any help Mr. Wood might give her would only be for charity’s sake. That was true for anyone else in the village, too. As for Richard Barton, the cold variety of charity offered by the parish would probably be more than anything he would ever be prepared to offer her. But although it might be foolish, she did not want charity.

  Therefore, she would not ask for it.

  Mr. Wood did not yet know the Earl had disowned her. But once he began making inquiries, he would be sure to discover the degree of her destitution, and then his duty would be clear. If she wished to avoid being sent to the parish, perhaps forcibly, she would have to leave. Immediately. Numbly, she thought of the Countess. No doubt she would be maliciously pleased if she ever learned that Eliza had been driven from her home—just as her brothers apparently had been. Slowly, Eliza lifted her face from her hands and looked up at the rising moon. Her breath caught and then eased out slowly. Her brothers. Nell might be dead and Tom gone, but she did have family left. Eleven brothers, driven from their home, just like her. Eleven brothers—if only she could find them. Where could they possibly be?

  Without further thought, she pulled up the bucket and cleaned her hands. Leaving the basket beside the well, she quietly slipped through the side lean-to door that led into the hall. She tiptoed to the doorway leading into the parlor and listened. Mr. Wood and Mr. Barton still were talking outside the front door.

 

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