NaGeira (18 page)

“I must hide you quickly,” said Gilbert.

“Yes,” I replied, and as I thought I heard reproach for my laughter in his tone, I added, “I’m sorry.”

“You must trust me, Sheila,” he said.

I couldn’t see his face at all, but his voice took me by surprise with its tenderness. I had the sensation I had fallen through a seemingly endless night—a night of sorrow and death, confinement, and deception—and that the falling was over. I was landing upon a bed of soft feathers. I felt that, despite the tribulations that lay ahead—voluntary confinement until it was safe to walk abroad, an ocean voyage through perilous seas—there was some comfort.

It was many hours to dawn and I knew there were doubts and worries to plague me yet. But the instinct which was central to it all, that this man who expressed so little would in time come to mean so much, I would never seriously question. I was leaping into darkness again, and I was growing to love the uncertainty.

———

A thin cloud skims through the crescent moon and the breeze stirs around me, shimmering the leaves. Whether I’m protected or not, they will not catch me tonight. I have heard nothing to suggest a proper search is going on. There have been voices in the settlement and voices by the smouldering remains of my house. They have kept to the open ground, it seems, afraid of night and the forest—afraid of me.

I am at the edge of the forest now, gazing down upon the settlement. Windows burn sleeplessly but nobody stirs without. It is past midnight. How smug the Rose home looks! I think of the many nights John Rose must have slept soundly with the growing child he had stolen asleep in its crib. I remember the slow, deliberate fashion with which the boy moved when he threw dust into my eyes. The child must have felt it a justified act.

I look again at the sliver of moon hanging over it all, its austere light skimming over the crags and cliffs to the south, kissing the ripples of the ocean, catching the damp boughs of the Rose home. All nature is mute, it seems; indifferent to theft, careless of slander. Though I communed through the decades with the trees and the wind, no whisper ever came to me of the crime.

My eyes fall upon the Rose door and, at that very instant, it comes open. There is no noise and I strain to see if I am mistaken. The door opens wider and a figure emerges. It is Simon Rose; he turns softly, easing the door shut. My blood quickens.
This is him—Matthew!
I tell myself this, but I cannot connect the thought to my heart. He is a patch long-fallen from a mended cloth. I cannot weave him back in a second.

Simon Rose makes his way—in silence, treading gently—up the hill towards the ruins of my house. I feel a tug in my chest pulling me forward to meet him. I resist, at first. But the lure is too great and I find myself skirting the woods as quietly as I can to get closer to the site of my former home, closer to the man who was once my grandchild.

Simon’s strides are long, his head bowed as he nears the spot. I am breathless from the trek and from the effort of keeping my footfalls silent. Hidden only a thicket from the clearing where the
ash and debris lay, I daren’t move. Simon stands over the site, his fists turned in upon his lips in an attitude of deep thought. He sighs, raises his head, drops his hands, and turns full circle. Then quietly, too quietly to be sure, he seems to say my name: “Sheila.”

He looks up in the direction of the woods where I stand. I cannot see his expression as the moonlight is behind him, but I sense he is searching. I know he won’t be able to see me and I make sure I do not move.

“Sheila,” he says again. And this time I am certain.

Is there a reason I should not reply? Apart from the obvious, that is. I try to imagine Simon Rose jumping on me, pinning me to the ground, and calling his cohorts below. It doesn’t seem possible and I realize there is no danger.

“What do you want?” I find myself saying. My voice is firmer than I imagined it would be.

His feet move suddenly against the gravel and for a second I think I was wrong; he really does mean to attack me. But then as I hear a sharp intake of breath, I sense the real reason for his sudden movement. He is frightened.

“Safety,” he replies, his voice quavering. “Safety for my daughters and my wife.”

He stands motionless in the light breeze. I see only his dark outline against the moonlit hill which rises slightly, then dips away behind him. I stay in the thicket.

“I’m no threat to your wife and children,” I say. “I am no threat to anyone.”

His head bows slightly. He doesn’t know what to say. He is certain I am malignant; I have told him I am not. There is nothing
but insult and recrimination between us now, and he is too afraid to go this road.

I decide to open things up. What have I to lose, after all?

“Your father told you lies, Simon Rose,” I say quietly.

I can hear his shock in the silence, and I see his shoulders move as though I have caused him to shudder.

“You ungodly serpent!” he whispers so quietly I’m not sure I’m intended to hear. But all my senses are acute for my age. I see and hear most things.

“If I am a serpent, then hear you the truth, Simon Rose.” I see him glance around himself, wondering about the quickest escape, so I hurry. “Your father told you stories about me for a reason. The boat in which you were found—the boat they burned—belonged to my husband.” He backs away slightly, then crouches to the ground. “And you were placed there by my daughter while we were under attack from pirates. Brace yourself, Simon Rose. The ungodly serpent you spurn is your grandmother.”

The last word is lost in Simon Rose’s desperate yell as he springs to his feet, having hurled something—a burned piece of wood perhaps—into the forest. He misses me by a long way. “You witch!” he shouts. He crouches down and picks up something else. “We should have burned you when we had the chance!”

I say nothing in case my voice gives him a clue as to where I am. I’m not afraid, just tired, just weary of playing games with rules that stipulate that I cannot win. I’m tired of living near frightened fools and having to negotiate around their fear.

Did Simon Rose even hear the word ‘grandmother’ through his yell? I’m not sure. Either way, as I watch his shoulders heave
and his throwing hand ready itself, I realize I’ve lost hope for my Matthew, given up on him before his reclamation has even begun.

Simon continues to scan the dark woods. I do not move. Eventually he murmurs something, drops his weapon, and scuffs through the ashes like a child. Then he trudges off down the hill, turning back once or twice as though he believes some beast might suddenly rush at him from out of the darkness.

The faint thud of the Rose door echoes through the night and the words of the playwright come back to me. “A crime that curses generations to come,” he had called the murder in Macbeth. I wonder at John Rose’s forty-year-old deception and the children of disorder it seems to have bred. “Monsters of the deep,” Will might have called them.

Is this true about Emma too?

————

The forest smells sweet today. Warm water trickles from the leaves and scatters tiny droplets into the breeze. The rain left off more than an hour ago, and I can feel the sun heating the earth in that mysterious way it does even through a canopy of branches.

Emma is different in the last day or so. Older, it seems. There was no glee when she told me of her mother’s miscarriage, although she admitted it suited her purposes. When she gave the bread to me and I started eating, I saw a curious look come into her face. She suppressed it quickly enough when I caught her eye. I couldn’t call it pity, not knowing her as I do. More like
unhappiness—an awareness of things not being right when a crone lives out the last of her days exposed to the elements because her community has burned down her home. She has learned to be sensitive to discomfort, and sensitivity is, after all, the mother of pity.

Or perhaps I was wrong about her from the start. Perhaps her wickedness was too extreme to begin with. Maybe now I’m seeing the first few cracks in her mask. In all manner of things, the woman might outstrip the girl. But she has not lost her ambition. She is determined to prevent another heir, and when I asked for a short stretch of rope and told her the reason, she brought it to me in less than an hour. The plan is for her to return once I have made a knot and cast my spell. Then she will secret the knotted rope under her parents’ bed.

I stoop and pick up the wet rope. Simon Rose richly deserves his knot of impotence, but I am not sure I will go through with it. I have been listening more intently of late to the sound the breeze makes as it shifts through the leaves, and I have felt my thoughts merging with these subtle movements. At these times I have felt that, however much I wish to punish the Rose family, there is something wrong with the plan.

I stand, the wet rope still in my hand, and make my way around some cranberry bushes towards the clearing. The finches no longer disperse when I approach. This time I even feel the tiny wind from their wings as they hover and duck around the leaves.

I remember how I blamed the green man once for misleading me and not protecting my father. But now I think I misunderstood. The forest does not act; it waits and opens its arms for those who approach it. We may draw our healing powers from the
woods as we draw water from the well. But it is passive and does not intrude upon the business of women and men.

My fingertips touch the bark of an aspen as I come into the clearing. The stream nearby sends soft, bell-like chimes into the atmosphere, echoing and multiplying like too many minstrels playing at once. I stand still and listen for a long time, and I feel part of myself dancing somewhere far away to its fanciful, fractured melodies.

One day soon I will die, I realize, and the thought is a happy one. When I was young I heard old people pronounce they are looking forward to death, and I thought them liars. But this is different, or so it seems to me. My spirit is no longer entirely within me. I think of the green man I knew in Ireland, and wonder if this is how he began. Did he also roam the forest in some forgotten century? Did his spirit merge with the forest, then fade into the leaves and boughs as his body fell and the insects came?

My hand opens and the rope drops to the ground. I know what my answer to Emma must be. Let Elizabeth teem more children into the world if she must. It is not my job to stop her, and the cycle of life must go on. The Roses can shed their mendacity when they may.

I move through the clearing and back into the thicket. I feel lighter already, having made my decision, and I breathe in an air of such sweetness I think my senses have taken flight. I can taste the bitterness of the green and unripe cranberries too, and I can hear the steady beat of a moth’s wing on the opposite side of the clearing. I turn to see, wondering whether my vision has become as sharp as my hearing and taste—and there it is, a white moth, beyond the open space, deep in a thicket, scooping some mysterious
honey from a dripping leaf. But halfway between the insect and me, in the middle of the clearing, there is a curious sight—an old woman curled in the grass, her eyes open, a length of rope near her hand. I think of the crone, her suffering and her joys, and I realize with only the faintest bump of surprise that she is me.

As I turn and continue, I carry her memories, her loves and dislikes, but they do not weigh upon me as they weighed upon her. I am the woman of the forest now. I am formless and infinite and I can shed my sorrows at will. Drifting further into the woods, I feel the girl Emma’s progress as she makes her way through the trees towards the clearing. I feel the touch of her footfalls as a bear might feel an ant tickling its way through her fur. The girl glimpses the body in the clearing and runs frantically through the final stretch of long grass. She draws close and falls on her knees. And—see, I was right!—there are tears spilling onto her cheek, and she lets out a long howl, not of frustration or annoyance, but of grief.

I return and hover over her shoulder for a moment and I hear the leaves around us whisper my thoughts.
The forest, my girl, is yours, they say in gentle, rustling melodies. While the woods embrace you, no spirit or beast can harm you, no strangers or neighbours smite you, no dank ague infect you. When death lies all around you, the leaves and boughs protect you.

I see her turn, breathlessly scanning the leaves, taking in the words. She stifles her last moans and stares wide-eyed into the forest—not a monster after all.

I let her feel me for a moment longer, then glide into the thicket again. Mosquitoes dart around me and earthworms wriggle
below. I hear the slow hiss of sap beneath the bark and the oozing of sweet waters as they seep up through a thousand roots. Nature rings with a constant harmony of celebration. At last, the music tells me, at last, you have come home.