#
In the old days, we used to eat salt duck on our laps and let the onion sauce drip off our chins while picnicking by the Blackfork. If we got thirsty, we stuck our heads in the creek. If we got bored, we grabbed jelly jars and competed for tadpoles in the current.
But here, in Knockin, Iago wore a Windsor tie and served me roast beef on a china plate. He appeared to like nothing so much as the busy-ness of rooting out a relish fork or an embroidered napkin from the depths of his big fancy hamper.
“Maybe you’d rather have one of Old Mrs. Bleven’s nut sandwiches? Oh look! Here’s that jar of cucumbers I was telling you about . . . ”
Whatever he was doing to keep busy in recent years, I was fairly sure he hadn’t been romancing women. I remembered a bold, articulate boy with sensuous fingers who, even at the reedy age of ten, could raise goosebumps brushing grass from the soles of your feet or tasting plum juice off the tip of your nose. As a man, he was quite the cold fish. Looking at him, I couldn’t help but think of the boy crying in the stream.
“What happened to you, Iago?”
He paused then, the jar of cucumbers forgotten in his hands, and he stared off into the trees. I stared, too.
On the neighbor’s line, laundry fluttered in the breeze. A flash of red caught my eye, reminding me of that old scarlet tablecloth flag we used to fly at Vortigern’s Grave, the ragged banner of which never failed to attract some new glorious adventure. After taking a better look, however, I realized that the red on the line was really a dusty rug with an ugly stain, the very opposite of our beloved flag. The way Iago was staring at it, I wondered if it had confused him, too.
He said, “Ten times out of ten, people will take advantage of a child on their own. Did you know that, Lilabet?”
I got an unwanted picture in my mind right then, an unmade memory, if you will, of copper hair and frog-green eyes.
Iago poured himself a second cup of wine and proceeded to down it faster than the first. “You think most folks are basically kind, but not in Knockin. Everyone is too hungry. People have lost sight of themselves and where they come from. I should know. I’ve done plenty of things that would surprise you.”
An hour before, I’d rubbed the letter M off his mirror to test if it was real.
“Such as?”
There was a flash of that old evil glimmer in his eyes that used to spark whenever someone offered him a dare, but I’d never been one to back down on such things. I wanted to know about Moonstone.
Iago licked his lips. “I took seven dollars from a widow’s glove drawer once. Flat out stole it and never looked back.”
In Dolgelley, there was nothing lowlier than a thief. Our village showed them no mercy. Iago gave me a defiant look and waited to see if I would call for a flogging. That he was pushed to such a loathsome act only spoke of how desperate those years must have been.
“I helped filch a cow one time, too,” he added.
I pitied him for his terrible lot, but I was still waiting to hear about a dog.
“Some years ago, I touched a woman for a half-rotten egg and a wedge of stale cake because she was a lonely drunk and I hadn’t eaten in four days.”
“Four days?” I whispered.
“Another time, I hit a man in the head with a bicycle wrench, and he ended up losing an eye.” He looked to the bottom of his empty cup. “I’m not anything like the person you knew back home.” He started searching the hamper again. “Would you care for a watermelon pickle?”
I looked into those bruise-colored eyes and lost the will to ask about Moonstone. “It was reckless of Unc to bring you here,” I said.
“Don’t think I don’t hate him for it,” Iago said. “But that’s all in the past. Do you believe a man can find grace, regardless of what he’s done, Lilabet?”
“I believe God forgave your father long ago.”
“I’m not talking about God,” he said. “Or my father.”
“Grace in this lifetime? Yes. I believe in it with all my heart.”
He almost smiled. But not quite. “I can be a good husband to you, Lilabet. If you want children, I promise to do right by them as well.”
“Tell me why I should want to stay in Knockin? Is there anything at all to recommend it?”
There was a drop if wine on his white shirtsleeve, and he traced the stain once, twice, three times with his fingertip. “You will like Reverend Williams. He is a worthy minister of the New Testament, and I only sleep through half his sermons.”
“I suppose that’s something.”
“This place is not as tough as it once was. People are having some luck growing apples and soybeans, and they get nicer every year because of it.”
He was ten years old when Unc died, and he’d been on his own ever since. “I wish you wouldn’t have been alone all those years, Iago.”
He set the hamper aside. “Who says I was alone?”
Though it was still full, he added a splash of wine to my cup and poured himself another. “Remember that time you popped out your arm and Mary Brin came to the house to yank it straight? Mary said, ‘Think of something else while I’m yanking it,’ and you told me later that it must have worked because you hardly felt anything at all. That’s what I did, Lilabet. I wasn’t alone all these years. I was hunting down dragons and searching for conchs with you. I wouldn’t be sitting here otherwise.”
When our picnic was done, we headed home in his nice new carriage, and I was pretty certain a kiss was coming. Iago jerked the horses to a stop in front of the house and looked at me through a lock of hair with the first flash of warmth I’d seen in his eyes in some fourteen years.
Over the course of the last several months, I’d read books on the proper comportment of men and women in this country, one of which informed me that a man should not wear his hair too short or too long or let it be curly, lest he be mistaken for a man of soul. Only artists and poets are given to untidiness, according to the rules of etiquette laid out by Miss Clarissa Leticia Pope. Iago wore the look of a man of soul, and the black eyes that watched me around tangles of wind-swept black hair did, indeed, seem the most wanton of all poems.
One minute he was staring into my face, the next, his eyes had moved on to the front door. “What the devil?”
A queer mark stood out against the planks. There were three crescents linked at the center painted in red. A hat pin pierced the right-most of the three.
With a brush of his hand, Iago’s hair became tidy again. “I need to run an errand, Lilabet. I’ll see you for dinner.”
“Who did this to your door?” I asked.
“Probably just some hooligans from town,” he said. “They’re harmless enough.”
Alas, I did not get my kiss.
5
The rug next door flapped on the line, knotting and unknotting in the wind.
“What is that place over there?” I asked Mrs. Blevens, nodding at the only other house to sit on Section Nine Road.
It was later that same afternoon, and for lack of anything better to do with me, the woman was showing me the rows of pickle-lily and stewed tomatoes that lined her canning shelves. As such, I peeped at the neighbor’s house through a window framed by all manner of mysterious specimens swimming in dark murky brine. Iago had not returned since our picnic, and I was tapping my foot.
Old Mrs. Blevens glanced out the window, then took a step back, as though fearful we’d be caught spying. I wasn’t used to the painful sound of her burnt vocal chords, and I found her difficult to understand. I understood her perfectly on this occasion though. She said, “It’s called Cleopatra’s Needle.”
My father used to have something he called by this same name, a crystal for collecting negative impulses. He’d stuck it in a flowerpot by the front door in order to ground it, and nothing would ever grow there in the following years. Father’s superstitions aside, usually such crystals were associated with witchcraft.
“A witch lives there,” Old Mrs. Blevens said. She thumped on the pane wi
th a twisted knuckle. Up close, her features did not seem so much scarred as they did blurred. “Used to be three of them. One got married, one died, and now there is only the one witch left. You can’t see it from here but there’s a pentacle carved in the front door.”
“And people tolerate such behavior?” I asked. Unc used to speak endlessly of his desire to join this practical nation of curseless, faery-free people. If there were witches in America, was there no place safe to run?
“The devil shows up where he may,” Old Mrs. Blevens said.
“But why would anyone want to name their house such a thing?” I asked.
Her tongue whipped over her barred teeth. “If your soul is twisted in that direction, there’s a certain power to be drawn from the weaknesses of men.”
Looking at Old Mrs. Blevens, I discovered that an eye should never be without a lid. Without a lid, it rolls about like a tomato in a jar.
“See those lumpy marks she’s got in her yard?” the woman said. “The goats run in circles over there.”
Goosebumps reared up on my arms. “I don’t put much faith in witches, if you want the truth.”
The rug did a flip on the line, and Mrs. Blevens grunted.
I spotted a pale and wrinkled face in an upstairs window. “Someone’s watching us.”
The old woman stole a quick peek through the glass. “That’s just one of the carvings. See there? She has them in every window.”
“Carvings?”
“Turnips. She does them up with jack-o-lantern faces. Cleopatra’s Needle is the only turnip farm this side of Paddy’s Run.”
I had not been able to eat a turnip for five years running, and I suddenly remembered why. As I watched from the canning room window, my husband came barreling down the front steps of Cleopatra’s Needle, kicking wrinkled faces off the stoop as he went.
I waited at the kitchen door for him and watched as Iago weaved across the yard. He stomped past me into the house, the smell of whiskey following like a woman’s perfume.
The eastern wall of the kitchen was made of colored bottles stuck in adobe mortar, their bottoms facing out, necks facing in. It was the first thing Iago built on the house and, to do it, he used medicine bottles he collected from ditches and beer bottles he emptied while collecting the medicine bottles. That same morning, when the sun was out, the wall scattered emeralds, sapphires, and amethysts, making a jewel box of Iago’s face as he polished off his kippers. At night, the bottles became a wall of eyes glinting in the firelight.
“I took care of it,” he said, breathing hard as a charging bull. “Bloody hooligans. Won’t be painting crescents on anyone else’s home anytime soon, you can count on that.”
“They live next door, these hooligans?” I asked.
His coat landed on the floor with a heavy thunk. “I stopped in for a neighborly drink.”
“I see.” The combed and polished gentleman had vanished, leaving a mud-caked dosser in his place. I took a deep breath and thought about grace. “Would you like me to fix you a bath?”
Iago dropped into a chair and began unbuttoning his shirt.
There was no time for questions. In a blink, Old Mrs. Blevens was at my side, ready to lend a hand.
“He does like his whiskey,” she mumbled out of the wrecked corner of her mouth.
Without being asked, she slipped on some shoes, clunked out to the well, and started bringing water for the stove. When it was boiled, we ferried kettle upon kettle to the new copper tub parked by the bottle wall.
“Are we friends with the neighbors?” I asked Old Mrs. Blevens while Iago dozed with his chin on his chest.
“Not I. No.”
Eventually, Iago came to and told her to go away. “My wife can see to me.”
The old woman shot me a doubtful look but was quick to leave us alone.
By this point, Iago was without his shirt. The sight of his bare skin reminded me of the days when we were young—of one hot day in particular. I remembered resting my head in the sandy cradle that fell between his hip blades and tickling his sides with a blackbird feather until he got mad and tied my braids in a knot. It was still possible to count his ribs—that much was clear—but he wasn’t that bony boy anymore.
As I crossed with the last kettle, he took hold of my arm, grabbing it hard. Since my arrival in his house, the man had not so much as grazed me with a knuckle while passing a watermelon pickle. I looked down at his fingers curled around my sleeve.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, loosening his grasp, but he didn’t let go. Instead, he slid one finger up my cuff and followed the vein along my wrist like a leaf caught in a zephyr. “Lilabet,” he whispered.
I gave the bottle-wall a quick, mad look, for I had the sudden and awful sensation we were being stared at through every one of its glittering holes. Iago took his hand away.
As children, we often floated on our backs buck-naked in the sea, our baby toes hooked together, our hair tendriled like seagrass beneath our heads. We were too familiar to have much curiosity. All that had changed. When the man by the tub went to unbutton his trousers, I turned around so fast, I kicked his coat clear across the room.
“We used to take our baths together,” Iago reminisced. Even so, I thought it best to keep my back turned until I heard the water slosh around him.
All the mothers in Dolgelley had wanted Iago for their daughters; he was such a beautiful thing. The Widow Drake had wanted him for herself. Unc, for his part, found the matter irksome.
“I have half a mind to take him out back and break his nose and cut him up a little,” he said one day. “It isn’t safe to look like that.”
Unc never cut Iago but, judging by the scar on his head, something else did. I’m here to say, it didn’t make one piddly bit of difference. Eyes on the ceiling, arms slung over the sides, his knees poked from the water like the unscaled reaches of the Himalayas rising through the clouds. Sloppy drunk as he was, I could scarcely breathe just looking at him.
“No one’s going to stop me having a wife,” he said.
Trembling rings of water pulsed around his stomach as I tipped the spout over the tub. “Why should anyone want to?”
“There’s those that can’t bear to see a man get what he wants, what he’s waited bloody years to have.”
“Who?” When I retrieved the coat, I noticed the left pocket was weighted and popping a seam.
“Come here,” he said. He held out his hand and, even in the dim steamy glow, I could see the blood that lined the gullies of his knuckles. Iago’s temper had always been as remarkable as his face. He followed my eyes to his bloodied hand. “I cleaned up the mess on the door,” Iago said.
He used to scratch his nose when he lied and I waited to see if he would do it now, waited as that blood-etched hand extended like a gauntlet between us.
Either the man had out-grown the habit or he was telling the truth. His nose went un-scratched.
“I want to kiss you,” he said.
“We’ve only had but one picnic,” I reminded him. “Do you think we should?”
“Yes,” he said quite earnestly, taking my fingers and reeling me in.
He’d always had this look about him, half-innocent, half-hellion, and I never ceased to find this a satisfying mix. In the misty light, however, he seemed an angel, using his mouth as though he’d never used it before. Exploring. Tasting. Savoring. Then he pulled me in the water. As my skirts jelly-fished around us, he asked, “Did you know any men in Dolgelley, Lilabet?”
I shook my head. “I was too busy holding your letters close.”
The right corner of his mouth twitched with a grin. His hands moved up my hips to my waist, to the front of my dress, and I spotted a scar shaped like a clover on the heel of his palm.
“I don’t guess the first time should be in a bath,” he slurred, even as he locked me in place between the Himalayas.
“Why don’t you take me to bed, Iago?”
He fought with my skirts and shook his head. “I ca
n’t wait that long.”
There was clawing then, and churning water. A scant twenty-four hours had passed since he’d vowed to woo me, but something broke loose. Frenzied fingers dislodged buttons from loops and worked their way up under my hem. “God!” he cried. He sucked on my skin through the thin wet fabric of my dress and lace and flesh twisted between his teeth. The black sockets of a hundred bottles ogled us as he blazed a bruised trail from my neck down to my stomach.
Lord knows, I understood what it was like to bite down on your pillow in the middle of the night for want of something you could not have. How many times had the smell of wet wool or a dusty barn filled me with soul-deep yearning? In my imagination, I’d pressed him to my body a thousand times, kissing him shyly, voraciously, endlessly. Reality was quite different. Iago flipped me on my back, gonging my skull against the copper. A scarred palm gripped my knee.
“Between you and me, Iago, this isn’t how I dreamt it would be.”
His hand froze on my leg. He squeezed his eyes shut.
“Foxglove,” he snarled.
“What?”
“Oh, God. Get away from me, Lilabet.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I brought the whiskey myself, but she must have put it in when I wasn’t looking.”
Foxglove does strange things to a person, the opposite of wallflower. Why would someone give him something meant to fan the flames? I waited for an explanation.
“Get away from me,” he spat. “Get the hell away, or I won’t be responsible for what happens.”
This was my second day at Watersplash.
6
On my third day, I decided it was high time I get some answers. I stomped across the dead brown yard, side-stepping a splattered turnip face, and marched up to the pentacle. Call me my father’s daughter, but even as I hammered my fist on the door, I feared my curiosity was merely a disguise for the magnetic pull of Cleopatra’s Needle.
Sometimes a door will swing open of its own accord at moments such as this one, and that’s just what happened when I knocked. A cat even screeched past my leg as it fled the house, though it might have proven more unnerving had it been black instead of orange. Orange works in a pinch, though, especially in conjunction with a nice unoiled hinge. Who but a fool would enter such a door when pentacles and vegetable guts conspire with skittish cats?
PANDORA Page 332