by Priya Sharma
It was too late. His father had gone and the wind blew the words back in his face. It was too late to get dressed and run after him.
Something glinted from the kitchen table, shown up in the moonlight. It was a pledge in gold. An oath made of metal. Gideon held his father’s wedding ring. He stood outside his mother’s door for a long time, thinking about what to do for the best, and then went back to his closet and closed the door.
Death on the Orme
“GIDEON, GO OUTSIDE.”
“But—”
“Do as I tell you.” His mother’s knuckles were white as she gripped the arm of the dragon chair. “Do it now.”
“You’d better go too,” Maud addressed Samuel and Peter, “and take Charity with you.”
The kitchen was reduced by the number of the men who had crowded in. They shuffled to the edges of the room to make way for the children who filed past them. These strangers had come, bearing the body. They’d swaddled the dead man in a clean sheet.
The fishermen were accustomed to death, it being one of their many bounties from the sea. Death was even in their woollen jumpers, each knitted to their own designs so their widows could identify their remains after a pounding by the waves. They were not callous like the Ormeshadowers; they came to pay their respects as though this were one of their own, as if they owed these women an apology on behalf on the errant ocean for stealing a husband who wasn’t hers to take.
One of them stepped forward. He was young, the colour high on his cheeks. He held his cap over his heart.
“I’m Michael Piercy. Ambrose Martin, over there, found him down by the Orme.”
Ambrose Martin dragged his eyes off the table set with grief.
“He tried to speak to me.”
Michael Piercy shook his head.
“Hush, Ambrose,” he said gently, “you’ll upset these nice ladies. Begging your pardon, but he couldn’t have been alive when he found him. What Ambrose heard was probably the rumbling the dead make afterward . . .”
His voice trailed off. Maud nodded. The fishermen did not have the only claim on the mysteries of death. The villagers knew them too. The birthing bed could easily become the deathbed. Death lived in their cottages and fields. It rattled in their chests in winter and glowed in the fever-slapped faces of their children.
Neither John nor Thomas Belman had been home in the last four days. They’d searched for them in ditches and brooks. They searched on the distant hills, where the streams looked like silver ribbons. They searched on the Orme. They knocked on doors, only to be met by the pinched faces of the Ormeshadow villagers who said they knew nothing. Finally a search party was organised and Maud went to the valley to see if there was news.
Maud recognised death, even when it wouldn’t show its face.
Ambrose Martin, the fisher of men, started to weep.
* * *
The children loitered in the yard, none sure who was fatherless. Samuel and Gideon circled each other, uncertain of what to do. Charity jumped in puddles, breaking up the clouds that drifted in them. Peter strolled aimlessly, avoiding his sister’s muddy splashes.
“I don’t care if it’s my father.” Recently Peter felt he had to challenge the older boys, even when he knew it would earn him a clout.
“What a wicked thing to say.” Gideon was first to respond.
“Don’t care,” Peter replied.
“Don’t care, don’t care,” chanted Charity.
“Shut up. All of you just shut up.” Samuel kicked at the wall of the farmhouse. “I’m going to look.”
They followed, sidling up to the window. Charity squirmed to get between them, even though she was too short to see in. They pressed their faces to the glass. Gideon wiped away their breath with his cuff.
The body still wore its impromptu shroud.
Ambrose Martin’s arms hung by his sides, his hands too heavy to lift them and wipe his tear-mottled face. Michael Piercy patted his shoulder as if willing him to gain control of himself. Clare wrapped her arms around her own waist, like she needed comforting. Maud seemed calm, but her face was as pale as the linen on the body.
It wasn’t unheard of for Thomas to go off. His dark moods came in fits and he righted himself by disappearing for days and drinking them away. The black broodings had stopped when John returned, despite his foul tempers remaining.
Gideon watched his mother and Clare look at each other as if deciding something. Maud was the braver of the two. She crossed herself and went to find out whose husband it was. In doing so she blocked the boys’ view.
“What’s happening?” Charity asked, receiving a sharp elbow from Peter in return.
Maud unwound the cloth covering the body. Gideon’s guts twisted. He could see his mother’s mouth fall open, her face full instead of its normal smoothness, and then she recomposed herself. Gideon thought, It’s Uncle Thomas. His legs shook.
Maud went to Clare, who stood stiff and tall staring at the strange feast laid out on the table.
Gideon’s legs gave way. It was his father after all.
* * *
The sea had bleached the colour from John Belman’s skin, like driftwood left at the mercy of the tide for too long. Seaweed was knotted in his hair. There was dirt on his face, and his brine-soaked clothes had dried to stiff tatters. Clare bathed him with a rag.
“Gideon, come away.”
Maud’s gentle arm slid around him. He shook his head.
“I’m staying.”
“You shouldn’t see this.” Maud stroked his hair, pushing it out of his eyes. Stubborn, he held on to his tears.
“I’m staying.”
“Let him suit himself.” Clare’s voice was broken glass.
“Clare, I don’t think that’s wise.”
Clare sliced off the remains of John’s shirt with a pair of scissors.
“He’s my son. Don’t tell me what’s best for him.”
Maud slumped in the dragon chair. Mother Wainwright had asked her for help birthing Hettie’s baby, while the eldest girl, Eliza, looked after her sisters. Hettie bore her child with a shocking stoicism for a woman widowed for so many years. Bad mother and bad daughters was the village litany as her belly showed.
When Maud had returned, the house was empty of men and all Clare would do was shake her head and say they’d argued.
“Thomas didn’t kill him,” Maud blurted out. She had wanted to be alone with Clare to talk. Somewhere away from Gideon and John, but it came out anyway. “He’s a devil when his blood’s up or he’s had a drop or two to drink, but he wouldn’t do this. There were witnesses to where he was.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t believe it. The constable himself says he’s been accounted for. There’s no shortage of witnesses to where he was.” Drinking, drinking away for days, fit to drown himself in the stuff.
“Dad knew the Orme with his eyes shut.”
Clare turned her gaze on him. He looked like he was going to say something more, but she stared him down and then wrung out the rag in the bowl beside her.
His father had been found on the rocks at the foot of the Orme. Only a boat on the water would have seen him. Gideon had stood far above him, shouting for him over and over, but not seen him because of the steep angle of the Orme’s face.
Clare lifted John’s arm, wiping away the salt and dried blood. She frowned as she reached his hand. She went to his trouser pockets, but they were empty.
“His wedding ring. It’s gone.”
“It must have come off.”
“No, it was too small for him. It was always hard for him to take it off.”
“Do you think one of them took it?” Maud meant the fishermen. “Surely no one would do such a thing.”
Gideon forced himself to look again. One side of his father’s head had caved in from the impact of landing. Gideon’s fingers closed around the ring in his pocket. He’d been too frightened to tell his mother. The longer he left it, the harder it became, until knew it was too late
to give it to her. It felt so heavy for such a small thing. Gideon imagined falling from the Orme, the weight of it carrying him down and down.
He saw his father sitting on the Orme, in the dark, thinking. Did he run to the precipice or simply step off? As he plummeted toward the cold, black sea did he think, This is a mistake, I want to live? Was he afraid?
A word. Gideon could have given him another word, Dad called louder so it carried into the night to fetch him back. Or Gideon could have run out after him, his bare feet fearless on the cold cobbles. Or Gideon should have been brave enough to knock on his mother’s bedroom door, the ring still warm from his father’s hand, so she’d pull on her coat and together they would go after him and find him sitting there and hold him in their arms and say, Come home, come home. We love you, come home.
Gideon could never tell her about the ring.
Such simple things to stop a man from taking his life; a pair of shoes or a word shouted louder or a boy’s courage.
The Will
HENRY HIPPS, THE SOLICITOR from Bath, arranged to meet the Belman family at Carrside for the reading of the will, as he was travelling north to see his sister. He rented rooms at The Swan, known for its respectability and clean sheets.
Before the Belmans took the dogcart to Carrside, there were the conventions of death to deal with.
There was the cutting of a lock of John’s hair to make a mourning brooch for Clare. Gideon watched Thomas do this with his shears before Maud had time to go and fetch the scissors from the sewing basket.
There was John’s burial on the wrong side of the church wall, the minister turning the pages of his Bible with disdain as though he alone had foreseen John Belman would come to no good. There were the alms for the poor and the prayers for his damned soul.
Ambrose Martin, the fisherman, came to pay his respects to John Belman. The man hovered at a distance from the Belman family, wringing his cap in his hands.
Then there was the cleaning of the kitchen table. Clare and Gideon scrubbed it in salt and silence. It stung Gideon’s fingers where he had bitten his nails to the quick and stripped the skin from around them. He was glad. Some feeling remained in part of him at least.
Then they donned their best clothes to go to Carrside.
Henry Hipps shook their hands in turn, starting with Clare.
“Mrs. Belman.” Mr. Hipps bowed low. “I am sorry for your loss. I liked your husband very much. An admirable man. A sad day indeed.”
Gideon’s mother wasn’t diminished by her widow’s weeds. Gideon saw how men were taken by her face and then disappointed on seeing the wedding ring on her hand. Now, seeing her mourning clothes, hope glimmered in their admiring glances.
Thomas was clean-shaven. He wore his brother’s best suit, altered to fit by Clare, with a mourning band on one arm. She was furious when Gideon had suggested his father should be buried in it. A waste of good cloth. We aren’t rich enough to be sentimental. You’ve been spoilt for too long.
Thomas looked like a gentleman in his new clothes. Gideon saw his uncle was not all rough and ready, he could be as he chose, changing his bearing and character like changing his clothes.
“Mr. Belman, how do you do?” Mr. Hipps held out a hand. “May I offer my condolences and comment on the strong family resemblance of the Belman men?”
“Yes, Mr. Hipps, good of you to notice. My father sometimes mistook me for John and vice versa. My own boys are just the same.”
Samuel, Peter, and Charity had been left at the farm with a list of chores under the watchful eye of Mrs. Phelps, one of the few villagers stern enough to keep them in check.
“It is a tragedy.”
“Mr. Hipps, thank you for your kind words and sensitivity in the circumstances. This is my wife, Maud. Say hello, dear.”
Maud curtsied with servility and confusion. Her husband was indeed in disguise.
Mr. Hipps turned to Gideon. “And you must be Gideon Belman! You’re the image of your father. Very image. Sad, sad day. How old are you?”
“I’m ten, sir.” Gideon’s voice was rusty from neglect.
“And tall for ten. Tall.”
Introductions over, chairs were assembled. Mr. Hipps had ordered a fire. The clock chimed the hour.
“Shall we begin?” Mr. Hipps took a seat at the desk. Clutching the bottom of his waistcoat, he pulled it down with a jerk.
The will was already laid out before him. He broke the blob of red wax with a snap and a jagged line divided the seal. The paper crackled as he unfolded it and smoothed it out flat with his palm.
“Yes, yes.” That was all he said. He read on, with no further explanation, as though he were alone in his own office. There was just the sound of the clock and expectation.
Gideon looked out the window. Below, out of sight, there were chambermaids and stable boys, women on the street shopping for lace and men about their business. All these goings-on as if the absence of John Belman hadn’t caused a momentous change in the world.
Hipps’s bumbling was done now and he was earnest, with all his authority as a partner in Hipps, Fletcher, & Blaxendale.
“I, John Jeremiah Belman, of sound mind and body, do . . .”
When Henry Hipps read aloud it was in an unchanging drone with none of the inflections Gideon’s father used. Whatever John Belman was reading from, be it even a list of errands or a book of myths, he made the words sing off the page.
Gideon made fists of his raw hands, dry from the salt and scrubbing of the table. He clenched them, stretching the skin until it cracked. He did it again and the crack deepened, blood rushing to fill it.
“. . . and to Professor Davies, my housemaster at Wainscot College, should he still be living, I leave the etching David Slaying Goliath he so admired, along with my deepest gratitude for all the kindness he showed me when I was his student.”
The etching had hung in the parlour of their home at Bath. David stood with one foot on the chest of the fallen giant, an arm raised to heaven in victory. His father had not updated his will. The etching had been sold to help with the cost of moving to Ormeshadow.
“Finally, the remains of my estate, that is to say, my half share in Ormesleep Farm, which includes half the farmstead, land, implements, and livestock, I leave to my wife, Clare Elizabeth Belman. In the event of her death prior to mine, this is to be left to my son, Gideon Nathaniel Belman. There is one exception to this, however.” Mr. Hipps had found it in him to raise his voice, making Gideon jump. “I request that the carved chair to be found at Ormesleep Farm, which was bequeathed to me by my father, be passed directly to Gideon Nathaniel Belman, along with the piece of land named the Orme, details of which are below. This also includes any items found on the aforementioned land.”
Thomas turned his eyes on Gideon and fixed him with his unwavering gaze. Clare caught it and frowned, not knowing enough of Belman mythology to understand the significance of her husband’s bequest.
All Gideon could think was, The Orme is mine. The Orme is mine. She is mine. She is mine. Finally, something resembling a feeling welled inside him, bitter and sweet all at once.
* * *
They ate before returning home. The dining room at The Swan smelt of beef and gravy. Maud shuffled in her seat and looked around, but Clare sat, smiling, as though she were accustomed to being waited on.
“Thank God,” Clare said when the food arrived, “I’m sick of mutton.”
The beef came as thick slabs, served with the potatoes, crispy from roasting in goose fat. Thomas ate with gusto. In company, at the head of the Belman family, he became effusive.
“Here, Gideon, have another slice of meat. You’ve hardly touched a thing. Eat.”
Gideon put the meat in his mouth and chewed. He knew the beef was tender, but it had no taste. He wasn’t hungry. The room was too full of laughing people and Thomas’s false concern.
Gideon made a fist of his hand and the fresh scab cracked open like the seal on the will, blood the colour of wax we
lling up. It was because of this that he was able to sit through the meal.
* * *
Thomas and Clare walked ahead, her skirts swinging as she matched his stride. Maud followed behind them, an arm around Gideon.
“Gideon”—Maud drew him close—“I want you to know I’ve never known a better man than your father. I am sorry.”
They paused to let a maid with a laden tray pass as the corridor was narrowed by a pair of young women who stood talking.
“Oh, Martha, he has such a dignified air and she is so lovely.” The young woman nodded at the receding backs of Thomas and Clare. “What a handsome couple they are.”
Maud and Gideon passed the gossiping women, who had moved onto another subject. Gideon waited for his aunt to exclaim over the mistake and laugh, once out of their earshot. Instead her mouth became a grimace and they didn’t speak again for the whole journey back to Ormesleep Farm.
At the Table
“SO YOU SEE, SAMUEL and Gideon must give up school.”
Thomas sat in the dragon chair at the head of the table.
“I don’t know.” Clare was alarmed by this turn of events. “John wouldn’t have liked that. For either of them.”
Gideon stood in the door, wood stacked up in his arms. His breath was given shape by the cold air.
“Samuel is twelve and Gideon is ten. Not long before they’re men. When I was their age I was working alongside my father.”
“Sam has done so well in the last few years with John to teach him,” said Maud as she lifted the pot from the oven.
Thomas sat back in the chair. “I wasn’t speaking to you.”
He said it so quietly that it made Gideon shudder.
Samuel and Peter had followed him in, carrying pails of milk and more firewood. Gideon could tell they too felt the heavy threat in the room and were quiet.
“It’s like this.” Thomas leant forward, his voice full of reason. “You own half the farm, but you can’t work it.”
“Yes, but you worked the whole farm yourself before we came,” Clare interrupted him.
Thomas inhaled sharply. Gideon quickly finished stacking the logs in the basket and grabbed the handle of the poker, pretending to stoke the fire. He let the tip lie in the white embers at the fire’s core to get it good and hot as he kept his eyes on Thomas.