"I recall a Sabbath day one winter," she went on, speaking in a dreary monotone, "when Grace, dilly-dallying behind on the way to chapel as usual, picked holly to wear in her raven hair. It stuck out like an insolent tongue. Made the little hussy quite the centre of attention at chapel that day." She paused. "That was the day we first saw Rufus."
He returned to his chair, grumbling under his breath, holding his wooden hand. But he did not shut her up.
Suddenly her tone changed, her voice falsely merry and careless. "The drafts in this house can be felt more than ever these days. I believe she pulls the walls apart at the seams with her stubborn will."
I glanced over my shoulder to where she stood by the window, gazing out with empty eyes, nursing a rolling pin in her arms. "If only she would go away, but she never will. I should have done away with her when I had the chance." Now she looked at the rolling pin and smiled faintly. "Smacked this against her vain skull, just like the other one with her fancy boots…" She stopped, as if she just remembered she was not alone. Her head twisted around and her grey eyes met mine.
I was chilled to the bone.
"Thieving woman must be dealt with," she said, unblinking.
Rufus finally spoke. "Silence, woman, you give me a headache."
Still she was not done. "But if we are rid of one, another springs up in its place, just like those damned wild roses by the orchard wall, with their thorn-covered stems waiting to prick my fingers bloody."
I swallowed and laid my hands on my belly to calm the child she threatened with her ice- cold hatred.
Rufus barked at her again to be silent and so she calmly went back to her goose, mumbling softly that a good wife’s work is never done.
* * * *
In the evenings we all had our favorite tasks to enjoy, winding down after the daily toil. Suzannah had her sewing, Robert Culpepper his books, and Rufus whittled little bits of windfall wood into animals for Nathaniel. I finally picked up a quill again, inspired by the peace, but it was a fragile tranquility, waiting to be spoiled; so, of course, it was.
On one chill evening, the clanging of the bell at the gate shattered our serenity and a blot of ink dropped from my quill, a blight upon the page.
Hugh had no fondness for Souls Dryft and, so I’d learned, generally came back there only when he ran out of coin. As neither Rufus, nor I had anything to say upon his arrival, the conversation was left to Suzannah. She asked after his wife’s health and the child, twittering around him, as if he were a returning hero, not a notorious scapegrace who married at sword point. As her only remaining son, he was magically forgiven his sins.
We were all inconvenienced to make Hugh comfortable. He wanted his bedchamber, so Master Culpepper was moved out to share the groom’s loft above the stables. I agreed to take Nathaniel to my own bed and when we went up that night, Hugh followed.
"The brat grows well on my hospitality," he muttered.
"Yours?"
"Yes. Mine," he replied, his eyes spiteful in their victory. Of course, he now assumed that Souls Dryft would come to him when Rufus died. He relished the idea of being master of the house, and of our fates.
Nathaniel clung around my neck, glaring at Hugh, but unusually silent.
"He’s too old for that molly-coddling! Put him down. Let me look at him."
I refused. Hugh followed me to my chamber, where I laid Nathaniel on the bed. When I turned to leave the room, he was too close. I shoved him hard, forcing him out into the passage. "So, now you are sure Nathaniel is your son?"
"Of course he’s mine," he sneered. "You only have to look at him." Leaning his shoulder to the door, he added, "And I am resolved to take him back with me, so I advise you to reconcile yourself to it, sister."
But Will had left Nathaniel in my charge and he would be disappointed in me if I failed. "If you care about that boy, you will let him stay. He is happy here and thriving."
"I see no sign of it," he replied stiffly. "The boy runs wild and has a rude mouth. Just like you." He was right, of course; Nathaniel and I were two crow-headed imps left to grow like weeds between flagstones, without nourishment or care, yet stronger because of it.
The reason for Hugh’s sudden desire to claim a son was soon revealed; Frances had suffered a miscarriage, and the physicians assured her she could bear no more children. Hugh wanted a son to prove his manhood. Hence, he came for Nathaniel.
It rained hard that night, turning to ice as the temperature dropped suddenly. We woke the next day to a harsh cold, everything in the yard coated with a spray of silver and white. Even the water in my wash basin was frozen solid. Only Nathaniel took pleasure in the change, sliding back and forth across the frozen puddles in the yard, bouncing fearlessly each time he fell. Hugh spent the morning trying to engage Nathaniel in various games, of which the boy wanted no part. When Hugh lost his temper, Nathaniel told him that he smelled like a woman. We all laughed, except Hugh, whose sense of humor never did extend to observations on his own faults. That afternoon, slumped by the fire, he made sour comments about anything within reach of his senses. He complained that his mother did not put enough salt in the pottage and Nathaniel’s hair required trimming; he could find nothing he wanted in the pantry, the groom was surly and incompetent, one of the dogs bit him, and Robert Culpepper was accused of giving him "odd" looks. Eventually Rufus snapped at his son that he could always leave if he found the place so below his standards.
"And before you talk again about taking the boy," Rufus added abruptly, "you should ask him what he wants to do." We all looked up in surprise, for Rufus usually feigned sleep rather than interfere in arguments.
"Ask him?" Hugh exploded. "He’s six years old!"
"Oy, feller! I’m eight," Nathaniel shouted, jumping out of his seat.
"Go on then," urged Rufus. "Ask the boy. As you see, he has a voice of his own."
I thought Hugh would refuse to play his father’s fool, but he straightened his shoulders and turned to the waiting boy. "Well, Nathaniel, it seems you have a choice to make." Lowering his eyelids, he forced a smile. "I have been absent from your life until now, but one day, when you are grown, you will understand." He brightened, pushing the smile further. "I am here to make amends." Now he extolled the virtues of life in London, pointing out the many entertainments the boy would enjoy there: a comfortable home with a furnished chamber twice the size of the one he currently must share, servants to bow to his every whim. I worried that Nathaniel might take the bait. The idea of being pampered and cosseted would surely appeal to his bratty nature.
Two small fingers pressed to his mouth, the boy asked, "There’ll be jam tarts?"
"It goes without saying."
Nathaniel tapped his lips. "And Genny?"
"You will not need her in London."
With a gusty sigh, Nathaniel put his hands behind his back, strode to where Rufus sat by the fire and said solemnly, "I think I’ll stay here then, if ‘tis all the same to you."
I wanted to laugh, but somehow held it in.
"This is ridiculous!" Hugh exclaimed. "I shall not be treated like a fool to amuse you all. The boy comes with me, and that’s settled."
"He made his choice," replied Rufus, completely unruffled and immoveable – reminding me of his eldest son. "The boy stays."
"Then he’s an imbecile!"
Nathaniel, leaning against his grandfather’s chair, gave a calm little shrug. "I like this house, and I’m staying." He was his own determined little person, of course. He added slyly, "And I saw what you did to Genny."
"What?" Hugh sputtered, silver eyes flaming.
"At the harvest fest. Didn’t know I saw, did you?"
Hugh would not stay to be accused further. Cursing, he shook off his mother’s anxious hands and walked to the door. Then he turned to me, suddenly struck by another thought. "Very well then. If you want to keep him, you had better pay me." He held out his hand, palm up. "Give me that opal ring."
Everything now stood still, even time itself. Suz
annah, frozen to the spot, looked at her husband. Rufus looked at me. The door at the foot of the staircase blew back and forth in a draft, the latch clicking as if to mark time passing.
Fingers clasped around the leather chord, I backed away from Hugh.
"Give it to me," he repeated, smiling nastily. "I know you have it."
Rufus stood so swiftly that Nathaniel cried out, thinking he’d done something for which to be punished, but his grandfather came toward me, eyes afire. "Show it to me, wench, before I rip out those damnable all-seeing eyes of yours."
Trembling, I lifted it, still keeping my distance.
"You got it from your mother then," he exclaimed, the veins standing out in his neck, pulsing with his anger.
"No. Your son gave it to me. He said it was his mother’s."
Rufus swung around, his eyes releasing me from their fiery grip, turning it now upon his wife, demanding an answer.
Suzannah’s face was so tight, I thought it might crack into a thousand little pieces and crumble. Ghostly white, she sank to the nearest chair and stared dully around the room. Her hands curled into fists upon her knees and then she said, "Yes, I took it."
With those few words, a torrent of anger came rushing out of her, as if it broke a seal on a barrel.
"Good God, how this truth has burdened me." She lifted a fist to her heart and began to beat herself, while her husband stared in astonishment. "I took your ring, Rufus, on the same night I took off your fingers."
He swayed, the color draining out of his face.
"I hid it from you all these years, so you would not know the truth – so you would think Grace wielded the knife that night. I wanted to make certain you did not go after her when she left. With that knife I took your pride and your dignity, to keep you here with me."
Clutching his wooden hand, he rocked back on his heels, as if her words were fists punching at him, knocking the breath from his body.
Her lips moved slowly, deliberately dragging out the pain they caused – not just his, but her own. "It was the only way I could keep you here, to make you stay and not follow her." Lifting her eyes to the window, she stared into the past. "Those were the hands with which you touched her. You could never touch her again as you once did." Abruptly she laughed. "When the pain woke you from a deep sleep, I told you it was Grace who did it. How like her to do such a thing. With her vengeful temper it seemed quite believable. After all, how could I have done it?" Her eyes were wide and glassy. "Suzannah — the meek, wilting lily you barely noticed when that other witch was in the room. Surely, Suzannah could never do such a thing."
The door at the foot of the staircase opened again, where Grace bumped against it. Rufus was distracted and Suzannah seized her chance. She flew from her chair, across the room and out of the door. On her way by, she snatched up my writing from the window seat, knocking the inkpot over in her haste.
Rufus gave chase and I followed, wanting my story back. Whatever happened next, I was a part of it and I had a role to play; it would be cowardly to stay behind. Nathaniel came after me and I told him to go back inside. He passed me my gloves – the pair Will gave me – worrying that my hands would be cold. Overwhelmed, I had no words, but kissed his brow and then hurried down the lane.
The wind was wild that afternoon, easily bending the pines as if they were sheaves of wheat, knocking their sleeves of ice so that they tinkled and glistened prettily. In the back of my mind a very small voice cautioned me to stay back, but I shut her out, determined to be an adventuress and not one of those weak women who stayed behind at home when there was war to be fought.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Passing under the gatehouse, I looked up into the bleak, hollow sky and saw her on the roof of the tower, standing between the battlements, her skirt tugged about by the howling wind. Rufus saw her too and battered on the door until it opened. Ignoring the servants’ protests, he thrust them aside and ran to the tower staircase. Looking over his shoulder, he commanded that I stay, but that went the way of any other command given me. Only a few steps behind him, I struggled up the tower and squeezed my bulk through the trap door, into the brutal wind.
They argued; their voices whipped over the battlements. At the sight of me, her wrath turned into the fiery breath of a dragon, shot out in long flames across the rooftop. "I hope you are happy now, Grace. Now you have taken everything from me," she cried. "First Rufus and now my son."
I did not believe she would really jump; I thought it was all to get her husband’s attention.
Rufus stepped closer to his wife and she backed away. "Do not pretend you can forgive me," she cried. "Now you know the truth, how could I be forgiven?"
Creeping around the walkway, approaching from her other side, I expected her to back away from me, into her husband’s reach; instead she held up the pile of papers that belonged to me and began to rip them, scattering the pieces into the wind. They blew around us like snowflakes, some drifting over the battlements.
"You killed him with this witchcraft," she cried. "Now I shall undo the spell you put upon him." Somehow she thought I caused her son’s death with my writing.
"It was only a story," I shouted, reaching out, trying to save the last few pages from her wrath.
She took hold of my skirt and dragged me to the edge. "Go and fetch it then," she hissed. "Do witches not fly?"
We slid about on the icy rooftop. A gust of wind flung my hair across my face, and I could see nothing, but suddenly there were arms pulling me back. I heard his last plea to his wife; then, as the wind turned again, I saw Suzannah’s face, her eyes wide and red— rimmed, her skin so translucent that every vein and pulse showed through it. The hatred, so long ingrained upon her face, melted now with confusion.
"See! You would save her and let me fall," she whimpered.
As she leaned upon it, a section of the ancient stone crumbled away and the wind took her skirt as if it was a kite, sweeping her slender form over the broken edge. In one last effort, her white fingers clung to the stone. Knowing her strength, I was certain she could still save herself and I crawled to her aid.
"Here!" I cried through the wind. "Take my hand." But she looked at those calf-skin gloves and remembered only that her son had given them to me. She would sooner die than accept my help. I saw her eyes flicker and her fingers opened. Even as she fell through the air, she screamed her windblown curses at me.
I turned away, my eyes blurred, my face numb from the cruel lash of wind.
Rufus was still on his knees; his face in his mismatched hands. The scattered remnants of my pirate’s story were all around us, some spinning in circles, the words jumbled, sentences broken. Now he was gone for good. Of course, if she could not have him, she made sure I could not either.
Far below us, in the courtyard, some of my torn pages had blown into the burning braziers, and now feathery charred remnants fluttered around Suzannah’s broken body like black rose petals thrown in tribute.
* * * *
We buried her on one of those chill, bright days, peculiar to winter, when the piercing light of the sun deceives with only the promise of warmth. Her death was proclaimed an accident so she might be buried in the graveyard, although some believed she took her own life. Had I not been wearing those gloves to remind her, she might have grasped my hand in the end. Who knows?
Her body was joined by another in the graveyard that spring, for when the lake ice thawed, a corpse was found there, tangled in the weeds. Beth Downing’s skull had been crushed from behind and then she fell, or was pushed, into the lake. So she had not abandoned her son after all. Out of morbid curiosity I went to watch Beth’s corpse lifted from the lake and noticed that she had no boots upon her feet. Those boots, which once caused Suzannah such heartache, were removed before she sank into the murky depths. I thought it best not to dwell on that too long, or I might let my imagination run away with me.
Soon after the funeral, Hugh returned to London. He decided not to fight me for Nathani
el, but not out of any sudden attack of good conscience. No, it was the debt he accumulated playing dice at Merryweather’s Tavern that made his hasty departure expedient. Coincidentally, on that same day, Nan packed all her gaudy frocks and left poor Tewke, her husband, who was the only one surprised to find her gone. I could have said "I told you so", but restrained myself admirably, holding my tongue at last.
There was one other thing Hugh took when he left – the opal ring. Like any common thief, he cut it from the cord around my neck while I napped one afternoon in the window seat, which was my habit in the later months of my confinement. I had no inclination to demand it back; material things never mattered to me and, as far as I was concerned, that ring had caused trouble enough. Besides, Rufus had told me there were once orange seeds in that ring; he and my mother had planted them in the orchard, behind the house, where they grew into those glossy, fragrant plants that so fascinated me. Therefore, that ring was now an empty vessel and what really mattered – what it once carried — was here still, in the garden, where it would remain forever.
I later heard a rumor that Hugh lost that ring in a game of dice with the brothers Willingham, but I never saw it again.
And after all this, as you know already, my child was born.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Nathaniel exclaimed in disgust upon the discovery that the babe had no "tinkler". When I explained why she lacked that particular appendage, he cried in outrage, "What did you have a useless girl for?"
I was scarcely more impressed and cherished the fancy that Mistress Cobb had sold my true, beautiful son to the gypsies, replacing him instead with a screaming, bad-tempered girl.
Good Lord, the tantrums that creature had drove me to distraction. One day, it began a screaming fit, from which there was no respite. I panicked when she lost her breath, that furious, wrinkled face turning blue. Rufus calmly took her from me and sat her bare little buttocks on the stone doorstep, whereupon she immediately hiccupped, the sudden cold making her catch a breath at last.
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