The Wild Swans

by Peg Kerr

  “The witch ...”

  “See, there the witch goes....”

  “Look how she mutters.”

  “She prays to the Devil to rescue her.”

  “She has no hymnbook in her hand.”

  The crowd grew thicker, and the people following the cart jostled one another. As Eliza’s fingers flew deftly, looping and winding the flax, some dared to walk closer to the cart and shove the rails to make it rock. Eliza cast one despairing look toward the sky and then bent to her work again, warily tucking corners of the coats under her knees to keep them close to her.

  Jonathan and William stood waiting near the foot of the gallows. William had been there since dawn. When Jonathan had walked up and taken his place beside him, the two men said nothing to each other. But as the cart turned the corner of the path and came into sight, Jonathan’s fists clenched convulsively.

  “She made no sign of repentance to you while you were with her, Reverend?” he said, prodded by the last feeble stirrings of hope. “Perhaps, even now ... if a confession could be prepared ... if she would set her mark to it...”

  “I am sorry,” William said, gently but inexorably. “But no. She never ceased in her work while I was with her.” He swallowed, unable to meet Jonathan’s eyes, and his face grew hot. “She made it clear she was not wishful for me to stay.”

  “Then it is all over,” Jonathan said to himself numbly. “For the last hope is gone.”

  William heard him and closed his eyes, as if the words had rendered a mortal blow. His own torment was not finished, he realized bleakly; it would never be finished for him, not until the day he died. Even when the witch was hanged and her body burned, things would never be the same again between him and Jonathan. He knew better than that now. “Indeed,” he said hollowly, stone-faced. “Soon this shall all be over.”

  The mutters of the crowd grew louder and more menacing as the cart came closer.

  “Still she works at her foul sorcery.”

  “Destroy the witch’s work.”

  “Aye! Tear it from her hands!”

  Fingers began reaching through the rails of the cart, grasping at the coats. Eliza made a strangled noise in her throat and threw herself over them—and then looked up at the cries of amazement from the crowd. What she saw sent her spirit soaring in glad astonishment.

  For the eleven swans had swooped down and alighted on the cart. Hissing, arching their necks and flapping their wings over their heads, they clouted at the few unlucky enough to still be near. The buffets from their wings were like blows from a cudgel, and the people scrambled back in alarm. “What does it mean?” they exclaimed to one another, terrified.

  Jonathan and William each fell back a step, too, their mouths open in amazement. Patience stared at the swans, her heart beginning to hammer, and with a glad cry, she began pushing her way forward through the press of people. “Innocent!” she cried. “ ‘Tis as I told you! She is innocent! See, God sends His own angels to protect her.”

  Her shouts penetrated William’s shock, and his fists clenched. Innocent—could she truly be? If she were innocent, could even he... And then he remembered the ghosts in the graveyard, and he shook off his paralysis. “Executioner,” he shouted with a sweeping gesture, hardly knowing whether he was reaching for salvation or putting the final seal on his own damnation, “the gallows await. Take hold of the witch at once and do what you have been charged to do.”

  “Wait, wait!” Jonathan cried, even as the executioner stepped forward, reaching into the cart to grasp Eliza’s hand and drag her forth. Before he could touch her, she scrambled out of his reach, snatched up one of the finished coats and jammed it over the head of the nearest swan. A flash of brilliant light flared, making people scream, and Hugh’s head burst from the neck of the garment. As his arms transformed back, thrusting through the sleeves, his fist shot out, connecting with the executioner’s jaw in a meaty, satisfying crack. The man dropped into the dirty snow as if poleaxed. “Get back!” Hugh roared. Eliza threw a coat over another swan’s head, and with another flash, Charles appeared. He sprang up to guard the other side as the rest of the swans hopped down from the cart railing into the straw, their heads bobbing up and down in excitement. The people screamed and the horse reared in panic as Eliza seized coat after coat, transforming her brothers back, one after another. For a flurried minute, all was screaming and flailing wings and flashes of light and confusion. William backed up, trembling, until he felt a post supporting the gallows at his back. Jonathan remained rooted to the spot, frozen in astonishment. Eliza threw the last coat over the last swan. The spell’s dissolution revealed him to be Benjamin, but the coat had not been finished, and he had a swan’s wing instead of an arm. She leaped to her feet then, her eyes wild.

  “Now I may speak!” she cried in a cracked, hoarse voice. “Hear me speak!”

  The crowd hushed in awe.

  “I am innocent! I am...” Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she sank into Michael and Geoffrey’s arms, overcome at last by suspense, anguish, and pain.

  “Elizabeth,” Jonathan whispered in the shocked silence. “Elizabeth!”

  “Aye, she is innocent,” James said, standing up. He went to the rail of the cart and raised his voice to address the crowd. “By the most solemn oath, by the blood of the blessed Christ Himself, I swear to you that she is not a witch!” he cried raggedly. “We are the sons of the Earl of Exeter, and she is our beloved and faithful sister. We were placed under a spell by our mother-in-law and have been doomed for the past eight years to assume by day the form you have seen. All our sister’s labor has been to undo the terrible evil done to us, and free us of the magic’s curse. She is not a witch; she has been undoing the work of a witch! We have resumed our true forms only because of her perseverance, in the face of all who tried to prevent her from finishing her task.”

  The crowd wavered, breathless, torn by doubt, not knowing what to believe. “But the ghosts,”

  William whispered in bewilderment. “Why then did the ghosts ... ?”

  Jonathan felt the blood drain from his face. “She did not conjure them,” he breathed. “They came instead to frighten her, to stop her!” Remorse, grief, and rage at himself shook him. “Just as I tried to stop her!”

  And then a woman’s voice cried out, high and thin, “Look you! Look!”

  William felt something at his back, glanced behind himself to see, and scuttled back a step, openmouthed. The faggots piled high for the burning had taken root in the snow and burst forth with climbing vines. Branches were thrown out, and more vines hurried up, as if leaping out of the ground. Soon the pile of wood and the timbers of the gallows were entirely covered with buds, which quickly opened up into hundreds and hundreds of red roses, nodding above the snow. A sweet fantastic fragrance filled the air.

  “A miracle,” someone breathed.

  One deep crimson blossom nodded just above William’s shoulder. He reached with a trembling fingertip toward the velvety petal edge—but then drew back and turned his face away, ashamed, nails cutting into the palms of his hands.

  On the top of the pile, one bud opened into a perfect white rose, shining like a star. Moving as if in a dream, Jonathan reached up and plucked it and then came to the cart, where Eliza’s brothers knelt bent over her, chafing her cheeks and bleeding hands. They looked up at Jonathan and sat back as he climbed into the back of the cart.

  “Is she ... Does she live?” he said fearfully.

  “I do not know,” Benjamin said, blinking back the tears in his eyes.

  “Elizabeth,” Jonathan whispered, clutching the rose tightly and looking down at her. James looked up at him solemnly. “Her name is Eliza.”

  “Eliza?” Jonathan knelt down beside her in wonder and took her hand. He laid the white rose upon her breast, and its scent was cool and soft and sweet. “Eliza.” Tears sprang to his eyes. He could hardly believe it; he had thought she had betrayed his love, but now he understood that instead he had betrayed
hers. “She cannot be dead!” he cried, his voice cracking, unable to bear it. “I must not lose her now, before I can make my confession to her!”

  “Nay, look you, she breathes.”

  “Eliza?”

  Slowly, her eyes fluttered open and he held his breath. A tear trickled down her cheek, and she smiled up at him. “Eliza,” he said brokenly, “oh, Eliza, I have wronged thee so. Oh, how my pride and cowardice must have hurt thee! Thou wert true and faithful always, even when I...” His own tears nearly blinding him, he pushed a tendril of her hair from her eyes. “Canst thou ever find it in thy heart to— Nay, I cannot even dare to ask it. I do not deserve it.” He squeezed his eyes shut, bending over her, his tears raining down. “God forgive me for being such a fool!”

  She raised her hand and placed it against his cheek. “Jonathan ... Jonathan, I love thee,” she whispered.

  Astonished, he opened his eyes and looked down at her. At the look in her eyes, he captured her palm and pressed a kiss against it, hardly daring to believe in the grace that allowed her to forgive him.

  “And I love thee, Eliza.”

  He reached for her hesitantly, almost afraid, but she raised his hand to her lips and drew his other arm around her. He helped raise her shoulders so that she could sit, and she laughed as her brothers embraced her. They all turned their faces to the sun to watch the birds that came from every direction, swooping and diving over the profusion of roses, singing as if in the garden of Paradise.

  Epilogue

  June 25, 1988

  The cab pulled up to the curb on Fifth Avenue, and Elias fumbled at the door handle with stiff and swollen hands for a moment or two before managing to open it. His GMHC buddy Tim came around to the other side to help him get out. Elias straightened up slowly and turned to look out over Central Park as Tim turned back to the cab and paid the fare.

  I’m glad I lived long enough to see this day.

  “You got your balance?” Tim asked as the cab pulled away.

  Elias took a tentative shuffle forward and nodded. “Yeah. I think so.”

  “Do you think you can make it down the path here? There’s a little slope.”

  “Yeah, I can make it. I think. If we stop to rest a few times.”

  Slowly, with Elias leaning heavily on Tim’s arm, they picked their way along the path heading for the Great Lawn. Walking hurt. He had so little flesh left now that his feet felt like bony sticks, making balancing difficult, and he could feel the fissures between his toes and on the soles of his feet starting to crack and bleed again.

  It had not rained for many days. The grass was all dead, baked to straw, and the air hot and dry. Everything is desiccated, ready to blow away on the wind. Just like me. The dust swirling around them made him double over, racked with hoarse, hacking coughs, and they had to halt several times to allow him to get his breath back. People streamed past them, all heading in the same direction. When the two of them finally came out of the shelter of the trees, Elias paused and gasped, squeezing Tim’s arm tightly.

  “Oh, man,” Tim breathed.

  The Quilt lay spread out majestically before them on the Great Lawn, arranged in blocks surrounded by a white plastic walkway. It was spectacularly varied in style and materials, bewildering the eye with a hodgepodge of colors and textures. At the same time, it was a formal unity, pulled together by the repeating pattern of the squares of fabric and bound by the walkway, like a white frame. People gathered around it on all sides, clustered along the edges. The scale of the Quilt made them look tiny in comparison. Some of the squares were still empty; the unfolding ceremony was still going on.

  “It’s so huge!” Elias whispered. He was not prepared for that. He had seen many of the panels already while working on Sean’s at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, but knowing how many there were still did not ready him for the visual impact of the Quilt being displayed, lying under the scorching sky. And the panels here today represented only a small portion of the Quilt as a whole.

  “Everyone’s so quiet,” Tim said, his voice hushed, too.

  The unfolding teams, groups of people dressed in white, continued to work their way down the Great Lawn toward the southern end of the Quilt. Slowly, reverently, each team circled a square bundle of fabric placed on the ground. They stopped and stood still for a moment, holding hands around their bundle. Then, they stooped and pulled back the folds from the center and laid them on the grass, making a larger square. They stepped to the side and pulled back the second set of folds from the center, stepped to the side again and pulled back the third set of folds. Then they lifted the Quilt block high like an offering to the heavens, and the cloth billowed up as if inhaling. They paced a few steps around to the left in a circle to align the Quilt block with the others and gently placed it on the ground, completing another portion of the pattern.

  All in utter silence.

  Elias felt tears in his eyes. “It’s so beautiful.”

  After a moment, Tim stirred. “Didn’t you say Sean’s parents were coming to this? Are you planning on meeting them somewhere?”

  Elias nodded. “Down by Sean’s panel, in half an hour.” They had offered him the chance to go on ahead, to allow him some time alone with his memories before they joined him. It was an example of their sensitivity, another reason why he had grown to love them so.

  He had tried several more times to contact his own parents and his brother, but all his overtures had been rebuffed. They had hung up on him whenever he called, and returned his letters unopened. It had hurt like hell, but Janet and Jim had stepped into the void, moving to New York to care for him as he weakened. They were his parents in truth now, just as Sean had wished. He would have been so pleased.

  “How do we figure out where the panel is?” Tim asked.

  “We need to ask one of the volunteers. They’re the ones in the pink T-shirts.”

  A volunteer checked the list and directed them to a block about a third of the way from the northern end, along the edge. They started walking again, but soon their steps slowed as one panel after another caught their attention. The colors and shapes and textures that had seemed so jumbled together at a distance now resolved themselves into discrete stories, portraits of individual lives. Michael Poppas... Blossom .. . Luis . .. Rocky Saterwhite . . . Bill “Leggs” Bohle . . . Julianna . . . Freddie... Dick Ammons... Ben Connors... Glitter, teddy bears, neckties, baby shoes, photographs, university pennants, military medals, feather boas ... Alex Vallauri... Dion Sexton... New York Rebel... Robert... Stephen R. Gibson, M.D. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words have been cut off here unsaid? Interspersed with the names, birth dates, and death dates were broken hearts, cut from velvet, and embroidered tears, the familiar signs of fear, suffering, agony, and desperate love cheated by death.

  “There are too many of them!” And how many more panels must be made and added to the Quilt before this cursed disease is broken?

  As they walked farther, Elias realized that the onlookers were part of the Quilt, too. A man sat on the ground to run his finger along the satin edge of a panel, and then buried his face in his knees, sobbing. Another man bending over him to whisper in his ear had KS lesions entirely covering his arms and face. Two women, perhaps a mother and a daughter, stood with arms around each other’s waist, staring down at a panel of navy blue, embroidered with stars and a unicorn, their faces etched with devastation. A little girl about four years old sat cuddled in her father’s arms, sucking her thumb as he dabbed at tears with a tissue. A white-haired woman leaned down to place a bouquet of flowers on a panel, smiling a tender, private smile. Jim Hurley... Rebel Owen . . . Ken Jackson . . . For the One Who Left Unknown ... El Lampi...

  “Here we are,” Tim whispered. “Look, they’re just opening it now.”

  Elias watched, his heart beating hard, as the unfolding team lifted the fabric. It strained against their grip as if trying to float away. But they held on to it firmly, turning in a circle like a wheelin
g flock of great white birds holding a net, and then bent to return it again to the earth. The air that had filled the material dissipated like a slow, sighing exhalation.

  There it was: Sean Donnelly. 1955-1984.

  They stood for a long time, looking at it in silence. Finally, Tim said, “It’s wonderful, Elias.”

  “Yes,” Elias replied, quietly pleased. “It is, isn’t it?”

  Sean’s panel was simple and elegant, with a few hidden surprises. Elias had chosen a cream-colored background because it reminded him of the Irish sweaters Sean had loved to wear. With Ruth and Minta’s help, he had painstakingly stenciled an intricate Celtic border around the edge using dark green paint. Janet and Jim had painted his name and Bill had painted the dates. A graceful Irish harp made of felt adorned the corner.

  “Those look like real harp strings,” Tim said.

  “They are. I had Nick and Amy cut them from Sean’s own harp”—Elias’s throat constricted—“so no one could ever play it again.”

  Tim bent down to look more closely. “What’s that in the upper corner, peeking out of the scrollwork?”

  Elias smiled. “A penguin. Ruth embroidered it.” After a moment, his smile faltered and his face twisted.

  Tim saw, and his hand tightened on Elias’s shoulder. “Maybe you’d like to be alone with him for a few moments?”

  Elias nodded gratefully. “Thanks, Tim.”

  “Okay. I’ll go check with a volunteer to find out—what were some of the other panels you want to see?”

  “There are a bunch of them. Kiyoshi Uno, Jerry Simms, and Patty ... I don’t think her panel has a last name. Let’s start with those.”