by P. N. Elrod
A black weight settled on my shoulders, bowing them, sinking into my brain, deadening thought, but not feeling. The impossibility of my situation was too much to bear. While Elizabeth had been with me, I’d been able to take hope from her, but even her support looked to be no more than an illusion . . . a shadow.
I live in the shadows and make shadows of my own in the minds of others. Shadows and illusions of life and love that fill my nights until something like this happens and shows them up for what they are.
Now as I leaned wearily against the wall of the stable and stared inward to darkness, I knew what Nora meant. Its exact meaning had been driven into me by those two horrified men with the same force as the lead ball that had killed me. My desire to go back to the life I’d known was never to be fulfilled. I might create an illusion of peace for myself but it would be only that and nothing more. Sooner or later the unnatural aspects of my condition would encroach upon and destroy that peace. This instance was surely the first of many others to come. The weight of such a future was enough to crush me back into the ground again, back into the grave that had rejected me.
Without mind for direction, I left the stable and wandered forth into a night that was my illusion of day. A cloud, the color of iron and just as heavy, rolled over my heart and soul, pressed hard upon my spirit, and filled my mind with despair. Even the careless glory of the stars filling the great sky with their light could not pierce or lift it.
I walked and walked, hugging my injured arm. My path took me through fields and across the road. I lost track of time and didn’t care. I met no one and was thankful. I wanted no one to see me, not even Father. I was too ashamed of what had happened to me, of what I’d become.
Only when the sky turned unduly bright did I rouse somewhat from the self-pity that had such fast hold of me. I didn’t wholly shake it off, merely thrust it aside out of mundane necessity.
My unmindful walk had been in the right general direction. I was on my own land and not too far from the old barn. Elizabeth might even be there. I’d told her about it. Yes. I could bear to see her again, perhaps, but no one else.
The light flooding the sky increased, imparting clear vision to others even as it blinded me. My steps grew clumsy, uncertain, as they’d been the previous dawn. I staggered forward with greater speed, shielding my eyes and looking up only to stay on the path I stumbled over. The barn lay just ahead. I dived beneath the ivy hanging over the entrance and into the comforting shadows beyond with a sob of relief.
Apparently I was not so far gone in my mood as to forsake life just yet. Had I stayed outside, I suspected the sun would burn me down to the bone. A musket ball was bad enough, but there are worse fates.
My steps dragging in the dust, I returned to the dark shelter of the stall. The only marks there were the ones I’d made earlier. I’d probably be secure enough for the day—at least until Elizabeth came the next evening. I was sorry she wasn’t here, but it had only been a faint hope. She was probably still talking to Father, poor girl.
I sat with my back to the wall, trying to ease my aching arm and groaning at the futility of it. This time I would welcome the sleep the day would bring . . .
* * *
. . . But that whipped by without any knowledge that I had slept.
My eyes had closed and opened. That was all it took, and the hot hours of another late summer’s day were gone forever. All my future days would be spent like this one, one instant the end of night, the next the beginning of another with no sense of time between. I’d never again see the clouds against the sun, never see its rise and set except as a warning or as an inconvenience that must be endured. No nightmares, but no dreams either, nothing but this unnatural oblivion and its inevitable reminder of death.
Whatever was to become of me? Did I even care?
After a moment’s sluggish thought, I decided the answer was yes. For my body, if not my spirit. Conscious or not, the enforced rest had done me much good. More movement had returned to my arm and the swelling was reduced. The pain was . . . noticeable, but not as bad as before.
Then I forgot all about it, sharply aware I was not alone. Standing but a few yards away was Elizabeth. Her face bore signs of fatigue and strain, but happiness as well as she looked at me. She held a lantern and standing next to her was Father.
A hundred years might have gone by since I’d last seen him in the library giving those final instructions to me and Beldon. He’d been so solid and concerned, but confident. And there’d been pride as well, pride for me, and for what I was doing. The kind of pride that always caught at my heart and made me pause and thank God that he was my father.
Sweet heavens, but he’s an old man, I thought with dull shock, looking at this near-stranger who stared back, stricken, mirroring my own painful astonishment. His face was so lined, so gray, the lips slack and pale, his eyes so hollow. Even his body seemed to have shrunk, the straight spine bent, the shoulders slumped and the strength of his arms and spirit fled.
I’ve done this to him.
My sight blurred and swam. I didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to see him like this.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, hardly knowing my voice, hardly knowing why I said it.
He slowly walked over, knelt by me. I could just see that much through the sheeting of tears.
His hands tentatively touched my shoulders. They were steady and strong, making a lie of what I’d seen. Then his arms went around me and he pulled me toward him as he’d done often enough to give solace when I’d been very small.
“Oh, my boy,” he whispered, rocking me gently. “My poor, lost child.”
I said nothing, did nothing.
He pulled me closer, holding tight, and I felt a great shudder travel through his body.
He was . . . was weeping. I’d never known him to . . .
There came a terrible choking sob from him, and I felt one of his tears splash warm upon my cheek.
“Oh, laddie . . . thank God, thank God. . . .”
My heart and mind began to clear as the realization dawned that he was yet my father, and he loved me still, no matter what had happened or what was to come. All my sorrows, all my hurts were not so great that somehow he could not help me bear them.
“Please, laddie . . . please don’t be a dream. . . .”
In a hot flare of shame I cast off my self-pity and surrendered to his love and comfort.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Elizabeth allowed us a decent interval for this precious communion, then put down her lantern. There were tears on her face as well, and she attended to them with a handkerchief before coming over and kneeling on my other side. She patted my head, stroking my hair as though to assure herself that I was indeed solid and not an imagined spirit.
Father looked at her. “I am sorry I doubted you,” he said. “Forgive me, daughter.”
She touched his arm and smiled wryly. “It’s all right.”
“What’s this?” I asked, straightening a little. Father gave me a last reassuring hug, then stood. From my seat in the dust I once again saw him as the child in me had always perceived him, saw him as he would always ever be to me: a tall, handsome man with strength and energy and honor and wisdom.
Elizabeth said to me, “I did mention that there was no way in the world he would . . . well, that it would not be easy.”
“She told me everything . . . and I did not believe her.” Father regarded me with amazement. “I’m not certain that I even now believe.”
I had difficulty swallowing. “Told you . . . everything?”
“Yes.”
I felt my face go red.
He smiled kindly upon my disconcertion. “Dear child, whoever and whatever this woman was, I’m ready to fall on my knees and thank her for what she shared with you. You’ve come back to us. I don’t care how or by what means. You’ve come back
; that’s all I care about.”
I started to speak, found my throat had gone thick, and tried swallowing again. This time it worked a bit better. “It’s just that this is still extraordinary to me as well, Father. I’ve doubts, so many that I can hardly bear them. Sometimes I seem all right and then it overwhelms me and I don’t know what to do.”
“You’ve been alone too much with yourself. It’s time to come home.”
“But I’m afraid.” I felt shamed to admit it.
He looked at me and seemed to see right into my heart. “I know you are, Jonathan,” he said gently. “But you’ve been through all the worst things already, have you not? All on your own, and yet you’ve acquitted yourself well. Now that we’re with you, don’t you think it’s time to give up your fear?”
With my eyes closed I could almost feel their love beating soft upon me. I welcomed it like the warmth of a fire against the bitterness of a winter night. He was right, and I was being foolish. I opened my eyes, nodded shyly, then he reached down and helped me to my feet. A bad twinge like the touch of a hot poker shot up through the top of my skull with the movement, making me gasp.
“What’s the matter?” he demanded, steadying me.
“It’s better than it was,” I gritted. “But there’s still work here for Beldon.” I cradled my injured arm in its make-shift sling. God, but that had hurt. It had been almost fine until I’d tried to unbend it.
Elizabeth took up her lantern to see better. “What has happened to you?”
“Didn’t Lieutenant Nash send anyone over to give you the news?”
“He did not. What news?”
“I caught him. I caught Roddy Finch.”
In the looks exchanged I marked an astonishing degree of family resemblance between them.
“That’s how I was hurt,” I added, which did not really explain anything.
This, of course, inspired many, many more questions about my most recent activities. Our slow walk back to the house was made slower by my need to provide answers. It helped to keep my mind off the pain, though.
“They’ll hang him, you know,” Father said thoughtfully when I’d finished.
“Yes. I’m sure they will.”
After that he said nothing more on the subject.
* * *
While Father and I waited near the stables, Elizabeth went ahead with the lantern to make sure our path to the main house was clear. After that, her task was to send away any servants out of the hall leading from the side door to the library. The other members of the household, Beldon, his sister and Mother, in an outward show of mourning, had forsworn social activities for the time being and could be counted upon to be in their rooms at this early hour of the evening.
Beldon, I learned, had been especially hard-struck over what had happened to me. I’d asked after him and was told he was as well as could be expected. His grief was deep and genuine, and he’d more than once blamed himself for my death, though no one seriously reckoned things in that fashion. Apparently he thought he might have taken more care, somehow prevented it or, had he been a better physician, saved my life. That alone told me how far the extremes of idle thinking his sorrow had carried him. Certainly it was a match to the desolation I’d known last night, and I felt an unaccustomed twinge of sympathy for him.
“He has a great affection for you, you know,” Father told me as we waited.
I nodded. “Yes, I’m aware of it, and I’m sorry for him that he does. I cannot return it in a manner he would wish.”
“He understands that, I’m sure.”
“He’s quite a decent fellow, isn’t he?”
“He is. It was very bad for him being a doctor and yet unable to help you.”
“He did what he could,” I said. “I remember that much. It was an awful thing—”
Father went very still. “Did it . . . was it . . . ?”
I instantly guessed what he was getting at and constructed a hasty lie, the only one I’d ever told him, but one he desperately needed to hear. “I felt no pain, sir. It was very strange, that. Very quick. Be at ease in your heart, I did not suffer.”
He searched my face.
“Truly, Father. I think it might have been because of Nora’s . . . gift to me. It seemed no more than a dream while it happened, and then I simply fell asleep.”
He at last relaxed. “Thank God.”
“What about poor Beldon?” I coaxed, hoping to shift his mind down a different path.
He shook himself. “Perhaps Elizabeth can tell you more. My memory fails me. It was the worst day of my life, and I never want to see its like again. I fear even now that I have succumbed to distraction and this may also be a dream.”
“Elizabeth said something like that last night, but I am here.”
With that he lay his arm over my shoulders, pulling me close again and kissing the top of my bowed head. “I know not what is to come or how we shall deal with it, but with you here, and with God’s grace, we shall weather it. God has been merciful to all of us. Your return is a miracle, it must be.”
I felt myself to be the one person least able to offer an opinion on the subject. Once again I thought of Lazarus. Had he suffered this sort of confusion of heart? I was not inclined to think so. Doubtless his faith was greater than mine; besides, there had been people around, including the Lord Himself, to explain exactly what had happened to him. His resurrection had been a miracle—mine, I wasn’t so sure about, but all the same, it was good to have Father’s strong arm to steady me.
Elizabeth’s figure appeared in the side door and motioned for us to hurry inside.
The hall was dark—to them. It was merely dim for me. We rushed to the library and Elizabeth swept the door shut behind us. Father guided me to the settee near the dormant fireplace and made me lie upon it.
“Some brandy?” he offered.
I found myself stammering. “No . . . that is . . . I mean . . . I can’t.”
He swiftly and correctly interpreted the reason behind my distress and shrugged it off. Elizabeth had apparently told him everything. “Light some more candles,” he told her. “I’m going to fetch Beldon.” Before leaving, he paused by the cabinet that held the house spirits, drawing forth a bottle of brandy. He poured a good quantity into a glass and placed it ready on a table.
“The doctor will need it,” Elizabeth explained when he’d gone.
I laughed a little, but with small humor. By God, he certainly would. I felt the need as well, but the scent of it turned my stomach, overriding the desire in my mind. “When did Beldon finally come home?” I asked, to divert myself from the stink.
“Late this afternoon. He was in a dreadful state. He’d been out since the . . . services . . . looking for the. . .”
“Rebels?” I said, hoping that would help. It was an alternative to calling them murderers.
Her mouth twitched with self-mockery. “For the rebels, then. He’d been with a group of soldiers led by Nash’s sergeant. They went right into Suffolk County, turning out every farm and hayloft along the way. They never found anyone, of course.”
“That’s hardly surprising. Those uniforms make people nervous. I should think all rebels, connected to the business or not, ran the moment they clapped eyes on ’em.”
“So they did. Beldon came to realize it and decided to strike out on his own.”
I was dumbfounded. “But that’s appallingly dangerous.”
“He seemed not to care. It didn’t do him much good, though, and in the end he came to no harm. When he gave up and dragged home at last, he was all done in. He slept the day through. Jericho took a tray up to him earlier, but Beldon sent him away.”
“Have you talked to Jericho about me?”
“No. There’s been no time yet. I was busy enough talking to Father.”
“After I sort things out with Beldo
n, I must see him next.”
“It’ll be all right, Jonathan.” She’d clearly heard the apprehension creeping back into my voice.
I managed a smile for her. “How were you received when you arrived at Mrs. Montagu’s?”
Her back stiffened. “I understood why you had to go off, but I’m not sure I’m ready to forgive you for leaving me adrift like that.”
I started to protest or apologize, whichever was required most, but she waved it away.
“Never mind, little brother. You did what you thought right, and that’s sufficient reason. I’m still allowed to be exasperated with you, though.” She went ’round lighting candles, filling the room with their soft golden light. Though the curtains were drawn, cutting off any outside illumination I might have taken advantage of, this was a token return to normal sight for me and I relished it. No wonder Nora had been so fond of candles.
“How did it go for you?” I ventured again.
“It was not easy. Father was frightfully annoyed and the soldiers with me alarmed him. Under those circumstances I couldn’t just blurt out my news. Thank God for Mrs. Montagu. She determined that only something truly important would have drawn me forth at that hour and tucked me under one wing and took me off while Father tried to talk with the soldiers. They didn’t make much headway as I think his German isn’t much better than yours. By the time he’d finished, I had some tea and biscuits in me, which were a great help. She’s such a sensible woman. I could see she was enormously curious, but she most bravely refrained from yielding to it. Heavens, but she doesn’t know about you either.”
“That will come, in time. What did you say about me to Father?”
She snorted. “I really couldn’t say anything. Not about you. I just wasn’t ready for it. I was still trying to take it all in myself.”