NaGeira (14 page)

I’d rather be damp here under the forest’s protection than damp in my own cabin. It’s been so long since I’ve seen the man of the
forest I wonder now if he ever existed. It is this, more than anything, that draws me forward to walk among the trees. Children, I have heard, are born with the echo of paradise in their ears. It is the place from which we have come and the place to which we hope to return. The soft voice of the man of the forest seemed to promise paradise all those years ago. As the leaves and pine needles yield to my tread and a squirrel scurries out of my way, I remember how I felt then. The world was like a glorious rainbow which I had as yet barely glimpsed. There was endless beauty and limitless joy.

The sun has emerged from the clouds and scatters its way through the leaves overhead. Summer rain glistens in patches, turning spots of undergrowth to gold. The route I have been following is one I often use to collect firewood. I know each fruit tree and every mossy trunk. The breeze stirs again, scattering a shower of droplets from the leaves. These, too, catch the sun and wink like pearls as they fall. There is another noise, from further behind me than the patter of droplets. It sounds like the tread of caribou, only bolder. I hear voices, too. Whoever it is must be very close to my cabin, judging from the sound. I think I hear a door creaking open.

I turn immediately and make my way back through the pliant leaves. If a door did open, it could only be mine—there are no others within earshot. Why would a group of men be opening my door? The question smacks me as rudely as the wet branch which springs back against my forehead. I push it away and hurry along, a coldness clutching my heart. At last the men come into view, their dark shoulders hunched beyond the saplings. They are indeed standing around the open doorway of my cabin.

Parting the saplings with my hands, I press through the undergrowth. As I come out into the open, the men turn towards
me. One of them is Seth Butt, his face ashen, his eyes rimmed with red. Another is Elizabeth Rose’s cousin, Joshua. He is timid, yet physically strong, with the same reptile eyes as his cousin. The last, a young man with a stalk of hay in his mouth, is Jack Power. He fishes sometimes with Seth and David.

“Well, what is it that you want?” I ask. But I don’t want an answer. I tuck my head down and walk an arc around them, making for the door. Joshua shifts half a pace to the side, as though letting me past. But it’s just his nerves. Already I have doubts that they mean to let me inside. The silence of spinning thoughts surrounds them; they are like hawks twitching their feathers while they measure the distance to their prey. And sure enough, before I reach the threshold, Seth bounds in front of me, barring me from the door.

I glare at him. His eyes are desperate and afraid.

“Out of my way! Do you want an old woman to die of the damp and cold?”

Seth Butt remains where he is and the other two approach and stand behind each of my shoulders.

“It is natural to fear cold and damp,” says Seth, straining the words through gritted teeth. “It is natural to fear the agues sent by Satan to plague mankind. Yet you walk in the dripping forests inviting such misfortune!”

The men at either shoulder have not yet laid hands upon me, but I can feel them easing themselves closer. Seth’s eyes dart between the two of them, then rest upon me. “You are accused of witchcraft!” he says, raising his voice so that the last word is yelled. His lips struggle like an earthworm wriggling in a boiling pot. He points a finger towards my chest, then glances at his companions.

Again there is a hint of panic in his eyes, as if this were the climax of a play and they are in danger of omitting the very action that will wring from the audience the applause they crave.

At last a hand comes down upon each of my shoulders. It is a clumsy movement like that a newborn calf makes as its hooves come into contact with the slippery turf.

“Aren’t you rather old to believe such nonsense, Seth Butt?”

“If only tragedy did not demand belief, old hag,” he says. As though underlining the insult, Jack Power’s fingers dig deeper into my shoulder and Joshua’s grip becomes tighter.

“What tragedy?” I ask. And for the first time my lips tremble. Now they have overcome their timidity, there is little I can exploit to lever my way to freedom. The rest—what they know, or think they know, how and why Emma Rose betrayed me when it was not in her interests to do so—these are just details. I am caught fast. They will never let me go.

“The double tragedy you know well,” Seth shouts, his henchmen gripping me harder and pressing me downwards as if I were struggling—which I am not. “The double tragedy you created.”

“I know only of Sara Rose’s disappearance,” I say feebly. The plainest statement now sounds like the practiced art of deception on my lips. I can sense their minds skipping ahead to so much else they think I must know.

“Villainous witch!” Joshua blurts. There’s a curious lack of conviction in his woolly voice despite his choice of words. “You were not content to murder our poor Sara. You had to use Seth’s poor nephew as your instrument.”

Joshua’s hand grasps me harder and he is overtaken with emotion, it seems. Seth’s expression changes too; his eyes water and he
nods gratefully to Joshua. He struggles to speak and the men on either side hold me attentive while he wrings the words out of himself: “You made him kill the thing he loves. You have cursed him for life.”

“We should take her down now,” Jack Power breaks in. “Before she casts another spell.”

“At once,” Seth agrees, pulling himself together.

They turn me around and march me onto the pathway leading down to the settlement. Now and again Joshua or Jack Power wrenches one of my arms as if I were attempting to escape. Seth strides on ahead, swinging his arms like a soldier. But when he sees the clumps of people waiting down below, he gets embarrassed, scratches his head, waits for us three to pass, and then comes up the rear.

Some of the people scatter and disappear into their homes as I raise my head in their direction. Others, like Elizabeth Rose, Emma, and Mary remain huddled together. Elizabeth’s delicate frame looks particularly frail. I catch Emma’s eye and—would you believe it?—see the hint of a smile. She lays her head slowly on her mother’s shoulder. Elizabeth’s hand reaches around her daughter’s neck and strokes her hair. She pulls Mary tight to her other side. The child sucks her thumb and grips her mother’s skirt.

Then, on top of the little mound upon which Seth’s house stands, I see a sight that explains everything. Moping with shoulders hunched, kicking pebbles along the ground, is David Butt. The sun is behind him and his face is in shadow, but I can see him glance up at me before he shuffles around the corner of his uncle’s house and out of sight.

So Emma may not have given me away, after all. And Sara’s body
may not even have been found. Is David Butt alone to be my executioner? Is it he who has told of witchery driving him to murder? As I am under guard and he is not, it’s clear the people of this settlement must have entirely believed him.

Jack Power hauls my shoulder roughly and I am forced to turn right and ascend a little slope to the tiny schoolhouse which looks out onto the ocean. A group of small children kneeling and playing with stones gape for a moment at our approach, then jump up and run away, scuffing the turf with their shoes. They do not squeal or shout.

We come to the schoolhouse entrance and the men hesitate. We cannot enter three abreast, and the dilemma of whether to go in first and haul me in after, or push me in, then follow, causes a momentary return of indecision. In the end, Jack Power enters and pulls me in after. Joshua lets go for a moment, then bounds in after me and grabs hold of my wrist. Seth clumps in last.

“Tie her up in the chair,” orders Seth. “Make sure she’s facing the wall.”

Jack Power picks up a heap of rope from the floor, while Joshua’s two hands guide me uncertainly by the shoulders to a chair opposite the door. He turns the chair around so it’s facing the wall and I sit down from tiredness rather than submission. As soon as I do so, the rope is coiled around my chest and shoulders, pulling my spine hard against the back of the chair. I can feel hot breath gushing past me as Joshua and Jack grunt and strain over this task. My shoulders have been strapped so hard my fingers tingle. I stare at the wall in front of me and the thought comes like lightning: The grimy wood, the wormholes, the cross hanging above my head, may be among the last sights I ever view without the imminent terror of
death. It is sadness that accompanies this thought, not fear. I must say goodbye to them all—my cabin, my solitude, my medicines, the forest with its echoes and whispers. And I must say goodbye to memories, too. My children, my husband, my mother and father, Thomas Ridley, the playwright so insecure he was hurt by the judgment of a child. All of these people, my constant companions through the years, will die a second time, and this time forever as my recollections are consumed by fire or suffocation. The thought nearly drives me to panic. I’m suddenly aware of my weakness against the thick rope.

“Bring in Simon Rose and the witnesses,” murmurs Seth.

“Right away,” answers Joshua. I feel his footsteps vibrate along the wooden floor. He closes the door after him and the daylight fades to the muted hues of a prison cell.

I
remember how it came upon me suddenly, the knowledge that I really had lost everything. It was a few days after my consignment to this cell. The serving woman, who I now knew as Bess, had given us food, some bread, and meat on a bone. I’d eaten hungrily. So had the playwright. The rat emerged as it usually did at the end of a meal. The playwright began throwing it some morsels of bread he had kept. I had eaten so eagerly that I had forgotten to save any scraps. This fact—my thoughtless greed in robbing myself the little pleasure of feeding our pet—became too painful to endure. I fixed my eyes upon the window and held down tears while in the corner of my vision the playwright threw and the rat caught.

Suddenly I saw myself from the outside, the change that had come over me. Long gone was the forest, and gone was my mother’s distracted affection. No more Thomas Ridley with his pale eyes and his red lips. The day used to stretch before me in a rainbow of possibilities.
Now someone had blown out the sun and there were only these bleak walls, faces ingrained with misery and dirt, and the all-pervading smell from limbo. All I had to look forward to was the pleasure of feeding a creature I once considered vermin.

Bess had been right to put a cheerful face on things that first day. She knew that in time I would come to appreciate the simple functions life had kept open for me. I began to look forward to seeing her. Her fussy good nature was like a warm blanket over my shoulders, like the mother’s comfort I no longer had. I even looked forward to seeing the guard, Gilbert, whose sallow face watched mine through the open doorway still, not with suspicion, which he had every right to feel, but with the ghost of concern. The playwright was a comfort too, though his moodiness disturbed me.

The threat of tears subsided as the last scraps were thrown, but I still felt the deep chill of desperation. I sighed a few times and tried to look as miserable as I could. I had an idea that, as I was thirteen and he was over thirty, he might think it his duty to comfort me. He probably didn’t think any such thing and, even if he did, he didn’t seem to notice my distress.

I got up, walked over to the window, and curled my fingers around the bars.

“This is the worst,” I said out loud. It wasn’t a complete thought and I meant to finish it with something like, “… day of my life,” but I’d caught the playwright’s attention sooner than I’d expected, and he interrupted.

“The worst?” he said, finding one last scrap in the straw and throwing it at his friend. “The worst is not so long as we can say, ‘This is the worst.’”

I turned around to see his eyes alert and looking up at mine. The rat watched me too. It twitched its nose and descended from its hind legs onto all fours.

“How do you mean?” I asked.

The playwright frowned. I could see he was getting frustrated, so I took a step forward and said, “Yes, I think I know what you mean.”

He nodded, encouraged.

“You mean … that if you are in a position to say anything, if you are still alive, then it is not without hope.”

“Exactly!” he said, delighted.

“That’s so true!” I said.

I wasn’t nearly as struck by the thought as I pretended to be. It seemed a bit obvious.

“Despair is your worst enemy in here,” he said, gazing not at me but at the animal, which now buried its muzzle in its flank, grooming itself after the feast.

“I know,” I said, then, not to seem presumptuous, added, “I mean, I think you must be right.”

“Well, in that case,” he said, pulling his knees to his chin, “what are your plans?”

“Plans!” I repeated with a laugh. “What kind of plans can I make in a prison cell? What are your plans?”

The playwright was motionless for a second, considering.

“There are people working for my release right now. People in the profession.”

I went back to my corner and sat down slowly.

“That’s not much of a strategy either,” I said quietly, not wanting to goad him too much.

He sighed and pursed his lips. “Yet it will work,” he replied so casually it was hard not to believe him. “You know why?”

“No.”

“Because of the most reliable influence in the world,” he murmured, “the balm that eases all sorrow, the comfort that quells all fears. The eternal word.”

“What eternal word?” I whispered, feeling on the verge of some mighty revelation.

The playwright smiled. “Gold!” His eyes sparkled, not with mirth but with bitterness. “My plays make money. There are those with vested interests who want them performed. And the politicians who put me here have itching palms. They love money more than they hate my plays.” He looked up at me again and gave me a tight grin. “It may be tomorrow. It may be next week, or next month if I’m unlucky, but I am certain of release. Which is why I’m asking you about your own prospects.” He smiled at the grooming rat. “Delightful though this brave new world may be with such lovely creatures in it, you need a plan to get yourself out.”