by M. J. Logue
And somehow he could not get his old self back, try as he might. Every time it seemed as if he might be on the brink of recovering his old icy distance, that wretched child would poke him, or make him eat honey-cakes, or haul him out of his bed and make him come out in the raw grey afternoons to admire the black colt Marston - and he wanted to say he hated it, wanted to be left alone. And he didn't. He found himself tagging after her, awkwardly, like a dog on a string. Wanting to make her laugh - which she did, often, and that was a new thing, that he was a man who could make a pretty girl laugh.
She took shameless advantage of him and like a fool he let her. Everyone knew it, but there was an indulgent conspiracy that this was all part of Russell's rehabilitation; that he would fetch and carry for her, and tag at her heels, as if she were still four years old. And she wasn't. He was very aware of that.
He was taller than she, with a trick of baleful innocence. No one could ever suspect that the old Puritan, that frigid, dispassionate engine of impeccable virtue - that wouldn't be him guarding Thomazine's exit while she stole handfuls of raisins from the kitchen, or perched alongside her on top of the river meadow gate with a midwinter gale stirring the skirts of his coat and the black colt's head in the oat-pan between his knees. (Hollie said they were not to start even thinking about starting to gentle that colt. Russell said, absolutely stony-faced, that they hadn't thought about starting. And they hadn't - it had just sort of happened.)
He did not know what would happen, when he had to go away. He would have to – he could not bear to stay, and yet he could not bear to go. Even now it would break his heart to leave this place, and the people in it who had taken him to their hearts as if he had never left. As if he belonged.
As if they cared what became of him. And he did not know what might become of him, of a rootless, friendless intelligencer who might be killed in the commission of his duties tomorrow, or next week, or – Thomazine poked him, hard, in the ribs, and he folded over with a yelp.
“Attend me!” she said.
“I am attending!”
“You are not, you are wool-gathering! And feeling sorry for yourself!”
“I – oh, all right, I was.”
She sniffed. “Right. Joyeux. Ribbon.”
He held up the offending tangle, and a sad tangle it was. He combed it with his fingers, setting it into a kind of order again. “For you cannot give her such a gift, in this sad state, my tibber. What did you do, give it to the cat?”
“Ah, something like.”
Into a bow. She was staring at him. “Russell, you are most unexpectedly clever with your fingers, you know. That is very pretty.”
“Hm?”
“You have made it pretty.”
“You sound surprised? What is it – that I am so conspicuously not pretty, and yet –“
“Fishing for compliments, sir, ill-becomes you,” she said tartly, and she meant it, she was cross with him. “You are not a courtier, and so I shall not flatter your vanity. I am surprised, because I should have expected you to have little practise with frippery. Being an old Crophead, and all. And not having a wife to practise on. You don’t have a wife, do you, Russell?”
“I imagine she would have missed me by now, if I had, tibber.”
“Thankful.”
“Hm?”
“You’re an idiot.”
“True. But I am an idiot who ties pretty bows.” He finished, smugly, tying the ends in a fancy lover’s-knot. “There. Ribbons, all tidy.”
“Sweet lavender, for mama. That’s out of our garden, you know.” She shoved a handful under his nose, and he inhaled, and sneezed. “Doesn’t it smell like summer?”
“It smells like here,” he said, and then, very shyly, “it smells like home.”
“Mm,” Thomazine said, without looking up, “it does, doesn’t it? She puts it in all the presses. Do you not?”
“Not in my lodgings, tibber, no.”
“Why?”
“Never crossed my mind.”
She sniffed again, and set the bundle down. He picked it up and tied it with one of the stems, shaking his head. “You’re making it pretty again,” she said, and he smiled and shrugged and said he couldn’t help it, he had no gifts of his own to give, so he must do the best he could.
“Well, these are from both of us, then,” she said, quite without thinking, and that was what broke his heart, really, that they were all so kind to him. Such undeserved and unasked-for kindness, and he did not know how he could go away, back to unkindness.
Thomazine said he was an idiot, and he supposed he was. He had been here just over a week, and that gave him but two weeks of his leave left before he must go back to London to take up his own position as Death at His Majesty’s particular feast. Thomazine had told him he was an idiot pretty much every day of that week, in some guise or another, and he was beginning to suspect she meant it in affection. It was a very odd thing for such as he to be treated with such absolute and loving contempt, by the entire Babbitt family. No. That was not wholly true. When he was being Major Russell, who had a position to maintain and who could intimidate the braying whelps of the Court with no more than the flicker of an eye, they thought he was an idiot. They let Thankful get away with murder. And that felt funny, for he was not sure that Thankful had a right to still exist.
The young man who had been welcome here ten years ago was dead, surely. Had had the life choked out of him in Scotland, and at Court, and under Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth. He had no right to kindness, for he gave none; he had no right to affection, for he had none. He was what the Army had made him, now: he was as straight and fierce and implacable as a good sword, and it did not matter in whose hands he was, for he would be as lethal in the King’s as he had been in the Commonwealth’s. It did not matter, not any more. He had not the right to that choice. Not now.
They were kind to him, and he did not know how he was going to bear that, when he went away. Het trimmed his hair even with her sewing-scissors, where it was growing out at different lengths. Joyeux had grudgingly admitted that he was not so old or so mangy as she had first suspected, and that the inch and a half of tousled pale hair that he now had was fair, not white, and quite a pretty colour. And if he would but wear nice clothes and a periwig like fashionable men, he might pass for civilised.
Nell had shared a gingerbread pig with him on Christmas Eve, and that had made him weep, afterwards, for having that sticky confection shoved into his unsuspecting hand reminded him painfully of a small Thomazine and her old habit of trying to feed him half of everything she was given. There was a grown-up Thomazine now, and that made him weep, too, privately, for she had grown up without him being there, and he had had not known till now how much he had missed her uncomplicated childish friendship.
He wondered if they were real tears, or if he was simply thawing, like cracked cat-ice, and they would come to wake him for breakfast one morning and find nothing but a puddle in the bed where he had finally melted away altogether.
Even Hollie was kind, and gentle with him. (As if he were fragile, and might break. He was not sure he would not.) Although that kindness took the form of lending him that infernal festival smoke-blue silk suit, for they were of a like height –
“I would not have you turn out to the party in what you’re presently wearing,” Hollie had said, and looked innocent, for it had been a thing of remark, once, how much Hollie hated getting dressed up and would do almost anything but wear smart clothes. Lending Russell his finery was a good enough reason not to –
“What party?”
“Come on, Hapless! Your family’s got land, haven’t they? Well then! You know how it is – you’re obliged to show willing on New Year’s Eve, for the farm-hands. Open house. Feasts of fat things, and all that. Anyway, Het’s got her heart set on showing you off a bit –“
“Me?”
“Aye, you. Local boy made good and all that. You’re the only one of us that’s come to owt, let’s be
honest. Had you not noticed? Truly? She’s been bustling about like a bee in a bottle for t’best part of a week, and there’s none of us allowed in the kitchen for fear we might upset her planning by coming out wi’ a handful of raisins she had a use for.”
His hands and face had gone very cold, suddenly. “They have – she would – she has asked people to come? To see me?” Blinking very hard because the room was swimming about him and he thought he might faint. Which was shameful, and spineless, but she would hold him up to be stared at, laughed at –
“You all right?” Hollie said curiously, and he nodded, and said through numb lips, “Not – wholly mended. Yet. I – think I might be. Sick.”
And he was.