by Peg Kerr
One stone flask had a stopper. Eliza filled it with water and slung the carry cord tied to its handle over her head. She picked up a loaf of bread and a wedge of cheese, hesitated, and reached for a knife. Our Lord tells us to pray only for each day’s daily bread, to teach us faith, Nell always used to say. The Almighty doesn’t want us to fret about more than one day’s portion of food at a time. It must have been a comforting thought to her during the past several years, Eliza thought grimly, sawing the bread in half, whenever the larder became too empty.
The bread and cheese fit neatly into a folded square of lockram cloth. Knotting the comers together, she tied it onto the cord that held her flask. She took Nell’s shawl from the peg by the lean-to door and slipped back outside. Off in the orchard a nightingale sang in liquid melody. Eliza tiptoed to the corner and listened. The parson was speaking now, telling a story about his boyhood in Devonshire. She eased back into the shadows and then picked her way across the yard to the outskirts of the orchard. Nell’s black shawl pulled over her head covered the brightness of her hair; her black dress made it easy enough to slip into the shadows under the apple trees without being seen by the men. She struck out at a diagonal, heading for the road.
Once Eliza had reached it, she stopped and looked back over her shoulder. No one was in sight. She looked up at the moon again and blew out a sigh. “And now, dear Lord? Where must I go from this place?” Going over to the side of the road, she sat on a large rock to think. She had no idea where her brothers might have gone since the day they had disappeared. Perhaps she might be able to find out more if she went back to the neighborhood of Kellbrooke Hall, but she did not want to go anywhere near the Countess. And after all, she thought ruefully, one direction might serve as well as another after so many years.
She felt alone and very frightened. At least her brothers had had each other. But she was determined not to go back.
The words from one of Nell’s favorite psalms came back to her: In Thee, 0 Lord, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in Thy righteousness. Nell had read it aloud many times since Tom had been taken from them. Eliza looked down at her clenched hands in her lap and whispered the words aloud. “Bow down Thine ear to me, deliver me speedily: be Thou my strong rock of refuge, for an house of defense to save me. For Thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for Thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me....”
The nightingale sang on undisturbed when she had finished. Eliza squared her shoulders and stood. She looked in both directions, up and down the lane, and then shrugged and spat into her outstretched palm. A thump of her other fist into her palm made the spittle plop into the dirt at her feet to the left.
“That way then.” She wiped her hands on the dewy grass, settled the flask more comfortably at her hip, and began walking.
* * *
Eliza walked for several hours before stopping to sleep in the lee of an old barn. A slice of bread and a hunk of cheese served as her breakfast; she ate it slowly and tried not to wonder what the next day’s dinner might be. She combed her hair out with her fingers as best as she could, picking out bits of straw and leaves, and then shook out her skirts and began walking again.
The first day, she left the road to cut cross-country. She hopped over stone fences, striding across sheep meadows and along the borders of orchards and wheat and barley fields. Sometimes her path led her into cool woods filled with brooks, where she bathed her feet and refilled her water bottle. Her travel took her in a generally northern direction. Fortunately, the summer weather took a warm and pleasant turn. Overhead, high, puffy clouds sailed across the sky like tall ships across a sapphire sea, casting racing shadows over the meadows. Woodruff flowers bloomed everywhere underfoot, and the scent lifted Eliza’s spirits, although it made her sigh, too, as she remembered St. Barnabas’s day must be coming soon. She had made a Barnaby garland of woodruff and roses last year; Nell had helped her hang it from the ceiling to sweeten the air in the house. “Barnaby bright, Barnaby bright,” she sang absently to herself, “light all day and light all night.”
Eventually, Eliza came to the great road that curved north and east to Taunton and Bridgewater. A steady stream of people traveled along this route, in carts laden with fruit, vegetables, and bundles of newly sheared sheep fleeces, heading for the great town markets. At first, she followed the road’s curve at a distance, wary of attracting unwelcome attention from local constables. When she had eaten the last of her bread, however, she drew closer, hoping to find someone traveling along the road who might sell her a bit of food for some of the last of Robert Owen’s pennies. As she hesitated along the side of the road, wondering what to do, a man came walking toward her from the southwest, driving a flock of geese before him with a willow switch. He did not seem to be doing a very good job of keeping the geese together. As they came closer, Eliza could see why: he had to use one arm to support a young boy he carried on his back. As they came abreast of her, the man looked up and caught her eye. Several geese took advantage of his distraction to dive toward a gap in the stone fence. The man lunged to flick the switch to stop them and swore as the boy lurched on his back.
“Good morrow, sir,” Eliza said. “Oh, pray, may I help you?”
“Aye,” the man replied in an exasperated voice, “if you might be willing—God’s blood!” In the general flurry, one goose bounded off the path, gabbling excitedly and flapping up into his face. The man recoiled, batting it away. “Aye, if you would take the switch... my Jack has twisted his ankle, you see.”
“Poor fellow!” Eliza rounded up the geese until they circled restlessly around the man’s feet again.
“Perhaps ... I am wishful to go this way myself. Might I drive the geese for you so you may carry the lad?”
The man gladly accepted her offer of aid, and so Eliza gained a traveling companion for a short while. The boy, Jack, was shyly pleased with her, and he goaded his father into sharing a portion of their bread and bacon. When Eliza finally parted company with them at the Taunton market, the man drew a half dozen goose eggs from the carry bag slung from his waist and gave them to her. After Taunton, she traded the eggs for ale and more cheese at one of the farms along the road and then struck out cross-country again. The land changed, becoming wilder the farther north she walked. Wheat fields and orchards gave way to moors in high summer flower. Her footing became more uneven and difficult, and clouds of gnats swirled above the fen grasses to fly in her face and hair. She wrapped her head and face with Nell’s shawl and struggled on. Finally, just as she thought she would collapse in exhaustion, she came upon a low rise, with a flat area sheltered by a few large stones. There, she made a nest for herself with the shawl and lay back against a rock to watch the sunset through half-lidded eyes. As darkness fell, the vault of the sky above the restlessly shifting moor seemed enormous. Her feet ached, and her spirits sank to their lowest level ever.
This journey was quite different from the journey she had made from Kellbrooke Hall. Then, she had been traveling toward something, but this was simply wandering. As she stared at the crystalline stars wheeling above her, she felt light and weightless, as if dwindled down into nothingness. She breathed a prayer—she hardly knew what—and slept.
The calling of birds, shrill and sweet, woke her the next morning. Groaning, Eliza untangled herself from her shawl and sat up, stiff and sore. When she unknotted the cloth that held her bread, she discovered that she must have rolled onto it during the night, for the bread had been battered to crumbs. Sighing, she scooped them up and ate them as best she could, washing them down with sips from her bottle. Then she staggered to her feet and began walking again. Before long, her stiffness began ebbing away and her stride lengthened. She breathed in the summer perfume deeply and felt her sleepiness recede. Skylarks dipped and twittered above her, singing to the morning. Eliza turned her face up to the sky to watch them as she walked—until a woman’s voice abruptly drew her attention earthward again, saying mildly, “Good morning to you,
child.”
Eliza stopped suddenly in utter surprise. An old woman stood right in front of her, dressed as neatly and soberly as a Quaker, in a plain gray dress and apron, with a basket slung over her arm. Despite her wrinkles, her gray eyes were bright, and they met Eliza’s with a hint of a smile.
“I... I beg your pardon, madam,” Eliza stammered. “I did not expect to find anyone.... That is—” She remembered her manners and bobbed a curtsey. “Good morning to you, too, I should say.”
“I came out this morning to gather some of these. Would you like a taste?” The woman folded back a cloth from the top of the basket and held it out for Eliza to see. There, nestled on the cloth, lay dozens of plump wild strawberries. The morning sunlight slanting across them made them glow with ruby-red light. Eliza, suddenly aware of a sharp pang of hunger, took a few. “Thank you,” she said. The berries indeed tasted very good, with a flavor both sweet and tart. Eliza rolled them on her tongue slowly, watching the woman rearrange the cloth over the basket.
“And why do you wander the moors, child?”
Eliza swallowed her last berry. “I am looking for my brothers.” She smiled a little self-consciously. “
‘Tis strange to confess I have managed to misplace eleven brothers, but I have. And I do not know where to look for them.”
“Eleven, say you?” the woman said thoughtfully. “Yesterday I beheld eleven swans swimming, at the mouth of the river near here that leads to the sea. The sun shone on them, the light playing around their heads like crowns of gold.”
Something in her words—a certain tone, a hint of a concealed meaning—reverberated oddly in Eliza’s ears. She looked at the woman sharply, suddenly wondering... if God had indeed heard her prayer for guidance, what help would He send? And who would He choose to send it?
Another memory rose, unbidden, of the swans she had seen fly over the cottage on that fatal morning the Earl’s people had come to take her to Kellbrooke Hall. The morning her life had changed forever.
“Do you believe in ... in omens?” Eliza asked a little breathlessly.
The woman said nothing, but only cocked her head, as if Eliza had not spoken and she still waited for a reply.
After a moment, Eliza sighed. “Could you show me where you saw them?” she asked.
“There, yonder,” the woman said, pointing to the north. “Those taller shapes are the willows that grow along the river’s banks. If you follow it downstream, you will come to the sea.”
“Bless you for your kindness.”
The corners of the woman’s mouth twitched in a small smile. “I hope you find your family, child.” And then she was gone, gliding away noiselessly, before Eliza could think to ask her anything else. The river ran lazily, barely rippling at the base of the willow roots lining its banks, as if hypnotized by summer’s warmth. Following the river downstream along its edge proved difficult, for the willow trees grew thickly, along with brambles and briars that plucked at Eliza’s skirts. She persisted, however, spending the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon stepping over rocks and scrambling over the willow trunks that sloped toward the water. A small part of her mind wondered at the strangeness of her errand, even as she struggled along. Yet, something inside her drove her onward, stubbornly refusing to listen to common sense.
Long before she saw it, she smelled the sea, a wild, briny tang. The sun was beginning to dip toward the horizon when she stumbled, panting, around the last curve—and stopped, amazed by the sight, for she had never seen the ocean before. The wind had died down. Far out from shore the water’s surface looked flat, like hammered silver, without a sail for as far as the eye could see. Waves lapped the sand gently at her feet, rising and falling like the breast of a sleeping child. She walked into the water until the highest part of the wave covered her ankles. Sparkles reflected from the sunlight flashed in the sand underwater as the waves pulled back from the shore. The tug of the sand shifting under her feet as the water surged and receded made her laugh. She bent and dabbled her fingers in the water and then cautiously touched them to her lips. Her mouth puckered at the taste. Bits of something white lay on the foam-covered seaweed just beyond the high tide mark. Eliza went over and knelt down to look. Feathers ... she gathered them carefully and counted them, her heart beating quickly. Eleven large white feathers, perfectly shaped. She held them up in wonder to examine, and sunlight glinted off the water droplets hanging from their rippled edges. As if in a dream, without knowing why, she pulled enough long hairs from the nape of her neck to braid into a golden red thread. A thorn from one of the bramble bushes along the river’s edge had broken off in her skirt. She drew it out and used it to pierce the feathers’ quills and tease the braided strand through each.
And then she simply sat for a long time without worry or thought, the feathers in her lap, watching the sea. The restless stubbornness that had driven her all day to this spot now seemed curiously peaceful, content to merely rest. And wait...
As the sun sank into a canopy of red and gold, she saw a line of swans like a long white ribbon flying over the water, one behind the other toward the shore. Her heart leaped up in her breast at the sight. She scrambled to her feet, clutching the feathers, and backed away until she felt bushes behind her. There, she crouched to hide herself.
With great thumps and splashes, the swans alighted right at the water’s edge, quite close to her. A trick of the last sunset light warmed their flapping wings to a color like molten gold. As the edge of the sun finally slipped below the horizon, the swans all spread their wings and extended their necks, as if about to take flight—but instead they elongated. A tremendous light welled up, making Eliza gasp. When she could see again, she clutched the branches of the bush with a choking cry of astonishment. For the feathers that had covered them had all fallen into the surf. They were no longer swans, but men clad in white. And although the years had changed them, she knew them immediately and sprang up with a glad cry, calling out their names as she ran.
Their heads turned as she ran toward them, and after the first heartbeat of surprise, they surrounded her and took her into their arms.
Eliza had found her brothers at last.
Chapter Ten
Come, you thankful people, come;
Raise the song of harvest home.
All is safely gathered in
Ere the winter storms begin.
—HENRY ALFORD,
“COME, YOU THANKFUL PEOPLE, COME”
Rick offered the job at the photo shop, and Elias accepted it. He started in the front, learning how to stock the shelves and write up orders accurately. “Make sure you fill everything out on the form,” Rick told him. “If you don’t mark whether a guy wants matte or glossy, count on it, he’ll decide he wanted it the other way. And he’ll lie through his teeth about it, trying to get the shop to eat the cost.
“Once you’ve got all this stuff down, and you know the cameras and types of film, then you start learning the procedures in the back. When I’m sure you can run the morning prints through the Kreonite without exploding it, I’m gonna hand the first shift over to you. As you may have noticed,” Rick added, deadpan, “I’m not a morning person.”
Elias spent his lunch hours on a bench in Central Park, basking in the sun by the Pond. As he ate his egg sandwich, he scanned apartment and roommate ads in the paper, circling the ones that looked interesting. Eventually, he would lay the paper aside and settle back to watch the brightly painted miniature boats tack across the Pond. Swans and ducks swam meanderingly over in his direction, eyeing him speculatively, and he went to the water’s edge and tossed them his sandwich crusts. He didn’t even realize how much he had come to depend upon this lunchtime routine until a day came when rain drove him inside, and he spent his lunch hour wandering forlornly around a drugstore instead. At the end of each day, he took the subway back to Union Square and walked from there to Sean’s apartment, smiling to himself. Everything felt different now, or maybe it was the training at the sh
op, making him see his surroundings with a newly awakened photographer’s eye. Colors seemed to have more intensity, and surfaces—he groped to understand it—maybe it was that mellow September light, adding roundness and density to everything. Or maybe things look different just because I’m eating more regularly. He had a place to return to, a... He shied away from calling it a home. A base. The gritty memories of living on the streets faded as, day by day, he cautiously built for himself what he thought of as a normal life.
Or maybe it was the thought of Sean that made that stupid grin tug at the corner of his mouth as he jogged up the apartment steps. He never knew what Sean would be doing when he returned from work. Sean might be writing, surrounded by a blizzard of papers, a pencil gripped between his teeth at a jaunty angle like a tycoon’s cigar. He might be at the stove cooking dinner, tasting something on a spoon, and his eyes would light up at the sight of Elias. The table would be set for two, the whole apartment redolent of garlic or curry. He might be sitting cross-legged on the couch, picking out a tune on his guitar, his face serious as he bent over the strings. Sometimes he’d be at the weight machine, his face glistening, bare arms flexing and straightening smoothly, a small towel around his neck. Once he was in the shower, and Elias had to wait outside for fifteen minutes before Sean got out, heard the buzzer, and let him in. “Well, that’s stupid,” he said. “Let me give you a key.”
They always managed to touch within the first few minutes of Elias’s coming in the door. Sean seemed to know how nervous he still was, like a wary animal just on the verge of spooking, and so he always made the first contact casual. He would tap Elias’s elbow and ask him to put the water glasses on the table. Or he would place his hand nonchalantly on Elias’s back as he stood in front of the refrigerator, so Elias would know to step aside to let Sean reach in to get the milk. And every night, when Elias had relaxed enough to stop tensing up every time Sean got close to him, Sean would reach over and knead the back of his neck or put an arm around his shoulder for a quick hug, saying, “I’m glad you’re back.”