The Wild Swans

by Peg Kerr

  Patience brightened. “Or perhaps she may be breeding already. I will provide a tonic for her; will you see she drinks it each night?”

  Mrs. Grafton softened a bit. “If it will help her, you may trust me to do it.”

  Eliza remained oblivious to Patience and Mrs. Grafton’s concern for her. Except for the sorrow weighing on her heart whenever she thought of her brothers, she would have been blissfully content. Jonathan did everything he could to make her happy, and her answering love for him grew stronger every day. In the evenings after supper, they established a pleasant custom of sharing a companionable hour sitting before the fire. Eliza busied herself with her mending as Jonathan wrote letters concerning the county’s business. Sometimes, when the sound of the quill scratching across the paper ceased, she looked up from her work basket to see him studying the soft lines of her face in the firelight, and he would say, smiling, “Have I told you yet today, Elizabeth, how dear you are to me?” Words hovered at her lips then; she longed to tell her love in return and to confide her task to him. But each time, the memory of the warning in her dream kept her silent.

  Every night, when Jonathan fell asleep, she crept away from their bed to her little chamber to work on the coats. Using a drop spindle she had secreted in the chest, she soon spun enough thread to set up a stick loom. She wove rectangular pieces to make the sleeves first, rolling them into cylinders once they were off the loom and then hastily basting them closed and attaching them to the body to complete her first coat. Then she quickly set up the loom again and started the next coat. In this way, as the autumn deepened, she wove coat after coat, staying each night until her hands began fumbling from weariness and she could no longer keep her eyes open. Then she would wipe her hands with the extract of dock, put everything away, and steal back to snatch a precious few hours of sleep lying next to Jonathan.

  But when the time came to begin the seventh coat, she found she had broken and spun all the nettles she had, and there was no more nettle flax. She had to go get more.

  Use the nettles that grow near the cave. No others will be of any use to you unless they grow upon graves in the churchyard. Eliza gathered the six coats she had finished and clutched them to her breast for a long time, thinking. She had to pluck the nettles herself, but she could not be sure of her way back to the cave. The churchyard, then, was her only hope. The thought of venturing forth to wander among the graves in the darkness made her quail—she squeezed her eyes shut tightly and prayed desperately for courage.

  As if in reminder, Benjamin’s voice came back to her in whispered memory: We will go to our unmarked graves— if we even have graves— unwept for by anyone but one another. Her brothers. Eliza lifted her head. She was doing this for her brothers, she told herself firmly, and if she failed them now, after all her work and pain, what hope could they have? Resolutely, she opened her eyes and stood.

  As she reached for her shawl, her eyes fell upon a glimmer of white inside the chest. She hesitated and then pulled out the bundle she had placed there, of eleven feathers strung on a narrow braid of her hair. As she lifted the loop over her head and settled the feathers on her heart, she felt a calm spread over her, whispering to her, You will not walk alone. Heaven will watch over you. She stopped at her room to dress hastily and then crept down the stairs and lifted the latch to step outside, her heart beating quickly. The waning moon hung low in the sky, a thin arc veiled over with wisps of clouds. Her breath puffed out in a cloud of frost as she pulled up the hood of her cloak. The darkness made her think momentarily of going back for a lantern, but she decided against it. The faint glimmer of starlight was enough to show her the way, barely, and besides, she would need both her hands to carry the nettles back.

  Eliza began walking, staying a little to the side of the ruts in the road to avoid the mud and keep the wooden pattens on her feet from clattering against the occasional stone. The air smelled moist and cold, with a tang of cider, cut hay, and manure. A stick snapped underfoot as she turned at the fork of the road, and the crack sang in the frosty air like a reverberating shot, making her start in nervous surprise. Anxiously, she looked behind her, but no one stepped out of the shadows to demand her business, and no dog barked at her passing. After a breathless moment, she touched the feathers she wore around her neck for reassurance and started forward again, feeling very small under the slowly wheeling stars. The back of her neck itched, as if aware of eyes, watching her in the darkness. In fact, her passage did not go unobserved. William had passed a restless night, and after an hour or so of lying awake, he had decided to sit at his desk to look over his sermon notes again. As he reached for a candle on his desk to light at the carefully banked embers of his fire, a movement in the darkness outside made him stop and peer through the window. There, he saw Eliza’s hooded figure, staring back over her shoulder down the road. After a moment, she furtively began moving forward again. Puzzled, William craned his neck to follow her, and he frowned as she stopped at the fork in the path leading to the churchyard. When she looked back over her shoulder again, William saw her face for the first time and straightened up in shock. “Mistress Latham?” he muttered aloud. “What does she out here at this hour?”

  After a perplexed moment, William went to fetch his cloak and slipped out of his house to follow her, his puzzlement rapidly congealing unpleasantly into something else, grim and cold. He looked up at the moon and then stared into the darkness down the fork she had taken. He caught a glimpse of her figure gliding along the fence, and with a shiver of dread, he started after her, moving carefully to keep his steps silent. After twenty paces or so, she paused again at the gate to the churchyard, and he slipped behind an oak tree to watch and see what she would do next.

  Taking a deep breath, Eliza lifted the gate latch and entered the churchyard. The grass grew long here, and her pattens sank into it; she had to move carefully to avoid tripping. The darkness seemed even deeper than along the lane, for the shadowy bulk of the meetinghouse effectively blocked out the little light available from the moon. She froze and blinked, reluctant to begin walking until her eyes had adjusted to the gloom—and then jumped as something rustled against her petticoat. She barely kept herself from screaming, but by the time she had spun around in a full circle, whatever it was had already brushed past her and disappeared. All she could see was tombstones, pale rectangles shining against the darker grass in the faint starlight, some upright, some leaning at a slant. The land dipped slightly here, and so mist gathered in the hollow to curl around the graves, languidly caressing the monuments to the dead. She could feel her own heartbeat thundering in her ears; she felt disoriented and suddenly terrified. Drawing her cloak tightly around herself, she began walking into the gloom, threading her way through the graves. The faint stirring of air in her wake drew up from the earth something cold, something that smelled warmth, human blood, life—and reached after them yearningly. William, watching from the distance, gasped and strained to see: here and there dim patches of starlight made their way through the trees, illuminating fragments of mist that seemed to coalesce into momentary shapes: a shoulder, a flash of curling hair, a ghostly face, upturned, with eyes closed.

  Thunderstruck, William staggered back, shuddering. He had certainly suspected something; he had been unable to comprehend how such a strange young woman could capture Jonathan’s heart so completely without uttering a single word. But even in his worst imaginings, he had never dreamed of a horror such as this.

  “Oh, Jonathan,” he breathed, full of fear for himself and terror and grief-stricken pity for the soul of his friend, surely now in mortal danger.

  He knew it now with utter certainty: Eliza was a witch, damned by Almighty God for all eternity. She had proven it by coming here tonight and using her power to conjure the dead. A wraith moaned softly not far from Eliza, a low, urgent sound, making the hairs stir on the back of her neck. She froze as ghostly hands made of mist reached out from all directions to grope at her: clammy and cold, demanding, tenta
tive. One patted her cheek just below her eye, lightly, as if it approved of her, and she shrank back, both in pity and skin-crawling revulsion, lips moving in silent prayer.

  And then the scraps of mist seemed to part in front of her, fleeing in all directions, and Eliza gasped in heart-thudding astonishment. An open grave gaped before her, like a new wound in the earth, dug by the sexton just that afternoon. Ghostly shapes writhed inside it, heaved, reconfigured, like translucent bodies pressed against one another trying to crawl out; other ghosts hovered about the grave, as if watching. Something moved behind her. A pair of skeletal hands slid around her ribs from behind, reaching blindly to embrace her human warmth, and the icy touch of bone against her nipples, even through the cloth of her cloak, made her start violently. She wrenched herself away, clamping down a scream with all her might, and the tracks of that touch burned against her skin like cold fire as she fled to the side of the graveyard abutted by the meetinghouse.

  The patch of nettles appeared so suddenly out of the mist as she stumbled forward that she almost blundered right into it. With a sob of thankfulness, she threw herself to her knees and began wrenching the roots of the plants out of the earth, not even noticing the burning in her hands in her desperation to get what she needed and escape again. Soon, a thick bundle of stalks lay heaped on the ground. Panting, she scrambled to her feet, threw a corner of her cloak over the bundle, and lifted it, staggering. She looked around wildly for the ghosts, but although they seemed more solid, hanging motionlessly in the air over the open grave and staring at her with burning eyes, they did not approach her again. Shivering, she picked her way as quickly as she could along the side of the meetinghouse until she arrived back at the gate. As she fumbled for the latch, struggling not to drop the nettles, William shrank back farther into the shadows of the thicket. He did not emerge again until she had passed him and was well on her way down the road again.

  He glanced at the meetinghouse longingly but did not dare to linger so near the churchyard, even in that holy place. The Devil’s allies must be out in force tonight, since a witch prowled the roads and ghosts roamed abroad. Safer to go home, he decided, to pray with all his might for God’s holy armor to protect him as he faced the trials he knew would come.

  William clutched his cloak tightly and headed for home. Yes, he would pray first. And then he would go to see Jonathan.

  Chapter Eighteen

  There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear.

  —1 JOHN 4:18

  The first few months after Sean’s diagnosis passed in a blur for Elias. He rarely thought to pick up his camera, and so had few images to help anchor his memories. Jerry died in August, and they heard more bad news in early September: Gordy was going blind from CMV retinitis and Philip had to be hospitalized for treatment of cryptococcal meningitis.

  But gradually Elias’s shock subsided in the face of a determination, a promise to himself that grew stronger with each passing day: whatever it took, whatever sacrifices had to be made, Elias would make sure that Sean defied the odds. If he helped Sean hang on to his health as long as possible, then maybe, just maybe, if they kept their ears to the ground, they could get in on some of the experimental treatments. Surely, he thought hopefully, in a country with the best medical system in the world, the cure for AIDS would be found soon.

  As Elias’s resolve crystallized, Sean began running a fever that continued day in and day out, without any discernible cause. He got dizzy when he tried to work at his typewriter, and so he spent more and more time in bed instead of writing. “And even if I could stand to sit there very long,” he complained one night as he picked listlessly at the beef stroganoff Elias had cooked for supper, “I couldn’t write anything. My brain is mush.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Elias tried to soothe him. “Just concentrate on getting over this bug so you can gain your weight back. That’s the important thing.” He gestured with the pot hopefully. “Do you want more? I used a really good burgundy in the gravy—can you taste it?”

  Sean shook his head fretfully and shoved his plate aside. “Maybe I’d do a better job of shaking this thing if I only knew what it was.” He sighed. “Thank god for the trust fund. At least we don’t have to worry about the rent payment or the health insurance premium if I can’t finish an article soon.”

  Elias agreed, but privately he couldn’t help but worry. Sean had Blue Cross through a writers’ union, an 80/20 plan. That twenty percent was really going to hurt if Sean had to be hospitalized for any length of time.

  Gay Men’s Health Crisis had set them up with a crisis counselor who had stayed with them a couple of days when they’d first gotten the news. Elias read their newsletter faithfully, hoping to keep abreast of the latest research. GMHC also matched them with a buddy named Patty, who came to visit Sean and help with chores and errands once or twice a week, while Elias was at work. At first, Sean seemed quite dubious about the choice, voicing some of his misgivings one afternoon in the bedroom after Elias had gotten home from work.

  “It’s not that he dresses in drag—”

  “Um, I think he wants to be called she,” Elias ventured.

  “You have to admit she makes a convincing woman.” He’d been taken aback at his own first sight of Patty.

  “—or the fact that you clean the dishes better than he— than she does. It’s her singing that gets to me.”

  Elias cocked his head and listened to the voice crooning above the sound of running water in the other room. “She sounds pretty good, if you ask me. Better than a lot of singers who show up at Nick’s music parties.”

  “But she’s singing Patsy Cline.” Sean broke into a hacking cough that continued for some time. “

  Patsy Cline,” he said in disgust when he had gotten his breath back. “In my living room.”

  “An opportunity to broaden your musical horizons, Sean.”

  “I like my musical horizons just fine where they are, thank you very much.” Sean slumped back against his pillow. “Patsy Cline. Now I know I’m dying.”

  Elias ignored this grousing, certain that Patty would bring Sean around, and eventually she did. Elias suspected that the change in Sean’s attitude had something to do with the obscure Irish beers she tracked down and brought along whenever she visited.

  “Ya gotta keep their interest up in eating and drinking,” she observed cheerfully to Elias one afternoon while Sean slept. “Not that I’m trying to knock him on his can, you understand, but maybe if he has a good beer to guzzle he’ll be more interested in eating a nice, fatty pizza to go with it. Something that’ll help keep his weight up. Not if I made it, though—I’d burn it. I’m about as lousy a cook as I am a housekeeper.” She laughed her trademark ribald laugh, belly shaking, as she dumped a pile of clean clothes from the laundry basket onto the couch and briskly began sorting. “That’s the key, Elias. You’ve got to fight the wasting. If he doesn’t up his food intake or if he starts having trouble with diarrhea, he’s gonna really lose some serious weight.”

  “He doesn’t have much appetite, with these fevers.”

  “Well, find ways to sneak extra calories into him, then. Stir an instant breakfast powder into a milk shake, for instance. If he gets diarrhea for more than a few days, start him on Gatorade and get him in to see the doctor for a stool culture.”

  Elias reached for a pile of T-shirts to fold. “That’s a good tip about the breakfast drink powder. Thanks.”

  “Experience. I’ve picked up a thing or two.”

  “So you’ve been doing this for a while?”

  “Since almost the very beginning. A couple years now. Sean’s my fourth buddy match.”

  “How do you find the time to help four AIDS patients?” Elias asked without thinking. After a short pause, Patty smiled thinly as she reached for another pair of jeans. “My fourth match in a row, I should have said. The other three have died.”

  The simplicity of the statement slipped under Elias’s guard, giving him a jol
t. He smoothed the T-shirt he had been folding until the colors began to swim and shift, and then he stared out the window at the trees in the back courtyard, trying to keep the tears at bay. The lowering sun filtered at an oblique angle through the yellowing leaves. Some were already beginning to fall, fluttering down to the ground in leisurely spirals like confetti. “I’m not going to lose Sean. Somehow . .. somehow we’re going to beat it.”

  His words sounded hollow to his own ears.

  Patty stopped sorting clothes and looked at him for a moment in silence. “What if you fail?” she said finally.

  “I... I can’t. I can’t fail.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love him too much.”

  “And the families and the friends and lovers of all the people who’ve died so far—you think they didn’t love the ones they lost?”

  “I didn’t mean ... I don’t know what I mean.” The corners of his mouth trembled. “How can you stand to do this? Be an AIDS buddy, I mean?”

  “Ah.” Patty began piling the folded clothes into the laundry basket. “Back when I had a bartending job, there was this guy at the place I worked. A waiter. Totally gorgeous.” Patty’s face lit up in memory.

  “Oh honey, I had such a crush on him! Well. He started getting sick—no one knew what it was back then. He went down fast. Quit work, and no one heard anything about him for a month. I went to visit him, and he was already dead. Pneumocystis. His landlady said he’d died in his apartment, alone. Refrigerator empty, lying in his own shit—he must have been too sick to get help, maybe too far out of it to realize how much trouble he was in until it was too late. I always felt terrible he hadn’t turned to me.”

  She sighed. “GMHC started up soon afterwards. Soon as I heard about it, I signed up.”

  Elias thought about the past year, the slow undercurrent of fear he had sensed growing among all of their friends as the news about AIDS had spread. Lately, he’d noticed he was feeling tired, just a little low on energy. Was it just that he’d been trying to do too much because Sean was sick? Or could it be something more sinister? What were his own chances? Surely Patty, too, must be aware as she took care of sick people that she might be looking at her own future. “Are you ever afraid?”