NaGeira (5 page)

I watched Thomas Ridley hurl the stick. The big animal bounded after, tongue hanging sideways from his mouth. I smiled at the dog. We had much in common, I thought.

———

It was on the road from Bristol to London that he first spoke to me. Our carriage was part of a caravan rumbling east. Our possessions, our servants, and Mr. Ridley’s household made fourteen carriages in all. Mother and Mr. Ridley were somewhere up ahead. Thomas Ridley and I were near the rear of the procession. For the first hour of the journey we sat side by side without any sign of recognition. Both of us watched the barrels and boxes piled up on the opposite seat creaking and bumping together with each jolt of the road. I could tell his posture—hands folded on his lap, head slightly to one side—and I could even hear his breathing beyond the noise of the road.

From Dublin to Bristol had taken four days. I had scarcely seen him on the ship and had given up on his company, at least until we reached London. I was not prepared when at the start of the journey from Bristol he opened my carriage door, especially as I had heard Mr. Ridley bellowing instructions that he ride with the groundsmen. I assumed he had made a mistake and would correct himself the moment he saw me. Instead, he hauled himself up and, to make room for himself, picked up the box beside me and added it to the top of the pile opposite. He glanced at me as he sat down and quickly looked away again. I thought I saw a faint blush on his neck, but the light in the carriage was too weak to be sure.

When I got used to him sitting beside me, I took my gaze from the boxes and barrels in front of me and stared out of the window. Sunlight flickered blindingly, blocked then released by overhanging branches. The world was a patchwork of colour and darkness, I thought. My father was slain one day. I fell in love the next. One moment there were robbers, demons, murderers crouching by the highway, the next the sunlight kissed my face and lit up the greenery
of the forest like a celebration of midsummer. Wild roses bobbed in the breeze, their petals as red as the lips of Thomas Ridley. Mosquitoes spun in delirium, insane with happiness.

I groaned in pleasure as the sun held its own for a spell. Its heat mingled with the passing breeze caressing my hair and warming my forehead. I had never been drunk but imagined this was how it felt.

Without thinking, I turned back to the interior of the carriage to stare at Thomas. There was nothing there at first, only multicoloured suns and darkness. As soon as I could see his outline, however, I spoke. “Are you looking forward to London, Thomas?”

There was silence for a second. The sun flashed on his face and I could see he was amazed, his pale-blue eyes wider and more alive than I had seen them before.

“You speak English!” he exclaimed.

I took my fingers from the window ledge and turned completely towards him now.

“Of course I speak English!” I said. I found myself laughing like a river suddenly bursting its banks. “What ever made you think I didn’t?”

“My father,” he said, his voice gentle. “He told me I shouldn’t try to talk to you because you wouldn’t understand.”

He continued to stare at me, but his pale-blue eyes were moist and smiling now. “All this time we could have been talking together!” he said with a laugh.

I felt warmed by his attention but suddenly shy about myself. Had I really not spoken a word in his presence? What a strange creature I must seem to him now! And there was something else rather disquieting in all this. However silent I had been, surely Mr. Ridley must have known I understood and spoke English. He knew
the history of our family, that my first years were spent in this country before we were offered land in the Pale. He knew that, despite their Irish birth, both my parents used the English tongue. How could Mr. Ridley really have believed I knew only Irish? Unless, of course, he was deliberately misleading his son.

“Well, it doesn’t matter now,” said Thomas Ridley, perhaps noticing my frown. “I’m delighted you speak English and I’m glad we can get to know each other better before you go away again.”

The words took a moment to seep into my head.
Away again.
The echo came once, twice, three times. “What do you mean before I go away again?”

Thomas Ridley shifted in his seat and frowned.

“You haven’t spoken to your mother?” he asked.

“About what?”

“There is a convent school in France, Sheila. I think they mean to send you.”

“She hasn’t said anything to me!”

I must have shouted this rather than spoken it, because Thomas Ridley looked distressed and held out his hands as though to calm me. “Perhaps I have the whole thing wrong,” he said. “My father only mentioned it yesterday, and only then because I asked about you.”

I sat in silence listening to the grinding wheels. The patchwork world had plunged me into darkness again, it seemed. “How could any respectable English woman be educated in Catholic France?” I broke out suddenly. “No one would receive me.”

“No,” said Thomas Ridley doubtfully, his brow furrowed. “I must have got it wrong.”

I watched the shade of branches skimming across his troubled
face and thought of my mother, how she flitted like a shadow from room to room as she prepared for the journey. I recalled a sickly smile directed at me once or twice; it had been like catching a reflection in a window. I was never quite sure if the look was meant for me or if she even remembered my presence for longer than a person waking from a sleep remembers the details of a dream. Could I rely on her?

“My mother would never send me away, especially without talking to me first,” I said with a conviction which took even me by surprise. Thomas looked at me with his pale eyes. There was a new kind of respect in his expression. The words, I realized, made me feel better. I was staking my land, proclaiming to the world that I will be moved no further. I was so certain of the justice and good sense of this stance, I became certain, too, that I had power to ensure its accomplishment.

Sunlight flickered into the carriage again, skimming Thomas’s hair like flame. “That’s wonderful,” Thomas said, his smile bright and genuine. “Then I was mistaken.”

I don’t know what I was expecting from Thomas Ridley, but it wasn’t this. I had spent so much time watching him play with his dog and groom his horses that when I longed for his attention I imagined him teasing me, pulling my hair, or tumbling me along the ground while he laughed. I had basked in a hundred pleasing daydreams of this kind. So his polite and solicitous behaviour was a surprise, and one that held some disappointment. He had set me quite apart from his more rambunctious side and I felt there was a barrier between us. I longed to scuffle, to prod his muscles, and tousle his sandy hair, but instead I had to hold back, smile, and answer demurely.

As my disappointment abated, however, I began to see a profound flattery in his manner. And it made me feel older than I had ever felt before. At thirteen I was not a girl anymore. But I had never until now seen myself as a woman. In Thomas Ridley’s pale eyes and polite smile I witnessed a reflection of the creature I would become. My mother, I had noticed, drew the finest manners even from the most boorish of men—Mr. Ridley for instance. Thomas was not like his father. And it was exhilarating to think that, of all men, it was gentle Thomas who should be first to reserve the best side of himself for me. These were the types of attentions, I realized—not the boisterous, physical ones—that ladies were gratified to receive. I had entered into womanhood at exactly the same moment I had entered into love. Suddenly the world was a vast, enchanted garden.

We rolled through the countryside for many hours, coming to a stop at an inn some forty miles from London. The journey would take two days, we had been told, so by the end of the next day we would reach London. Thomas Ridley opened the door and jumped down, holding out his hand to take mine. I stepped from the coach, returning his smile. The sunset burned between the trees and the dark inn swamped us in shadow. Every moment now confirmed the start of something new. Even the air had taken on a different scent, mingling hints of evening blossoms and wine. I found my steps slower, my back more upright. I still longed to jump on Thomas Ridley’s back and scuffle him to the ground, but the urge was giving way to something more delicate, something requiring stillness and silence.

“Thomas!” came a call from far ahead in the coach procession. I recognized Mr. Ridley’s voice.

Thomas immediately took off, running over the crusted earth and gravel. He wove between coaches, disappearing from my sight.

“Just helping the young lady down, Father,” I heard him say breathlessly.

“I told you not to bother about that,” came the gruff reply. “Go with the boy here and see our horses are treated well.”

A chill came into the air. I pulled my coat more tightly around my shoulders.

L
ondon is a sewer, but I long for it now. In London, I was accused. In London, I was imprisoned. In London, I smelled the stench of purgatory from the cells below and I heard the wailing from that dark place. At night I thought that sound might extract my spirit. I thought it might circumvent death entirely and deliver me straight into the fiery belly of hell. London meant all these things to me, but if I could leave this desolate, friendless place and go back there now, I would think seriously about it.

I wasn’t old then, of course, and age, it seems, is the worst of all crimes. Perhaps the people here spurn me because I remind them of what they will become. I am the skeleton swinging from the gibbet.
Commit the crime of living too long,
the wind sings through my bones,
and this will be your fate.

Is this why these people hide and crouch from the world when they come to the door? Is this why I receive so little open
thanks when I help them? The boy David Butt brings me firewood, and Elizabeth Rose will beg her husband for partridge in the fall so she may bring it to “the crone.” Of course, she won’t mention the source of her debt. She will call it charity, and the people down below will brim with pride that such generosity lives among them.

I miss London because it levelled all people to dirt. This whispering settlement targets only me. Something smarts inside my brain at this. Why should I be reduced to dispensing cures to people who despise me? Why should I accept their grudging favours in return? Surely this is not my intended fate. This must be some accident, some fault in the great design which went unrepaired. Where are the children and grandchildren who should be looking after me? How came their blood to be spilled onto the senseless, useless rocks? Generations of my family venerated their old people. They were as respected as pharaohs. But here I am, staring at the smouldering log which gives barely enough heat. Even for this small comfort I had to humour a child who distrusts me.

And things grow worse. For the second night running, the June air has turned icy with the falling of night. I don’t know how I can survive another fall and winter. Listening to the crackling of the fire, I close my eyes and try willing myself into a happier time. I hardly notice the knock at the door. It must be close to midnight. The people of this settlement never come to me this late. No doubt they imagine demons and serpents guarding my door at night while dark revelries take place within.

The knock comes again and I open my eyes. Pulling the blanket tighter around my shoulders, I push myself up from the chair.

It’s not timid enough for David. Surely Elizabeth wouldn’t have returned at this hour. I shuffle across the boards and pull the door open to find the dark outline of Sara Rose.

She isn’t shuffling her feet like David, nor is she cowering and glancing down to the settlement like her mother. She is perfectly still; her moulded shoulders are like the branches of a proud young tree, her slim waist clearly defined above her hips like a woman, not a girl. Without asking, she picks up her skirts and walks around me into the cabin. I turn around and close the door. She stands looking at the fire. I start shuffling back to my chair, but she beats me to it, lowering herself into my cabin’s only real seat with the confidence of a great lady. She gazes at the fire.

“Are you going to deny it?”

It is more of a statement than a question.

I make my way slowly to my bed and lower myself onto the straw mattress. She doesn’t take her eyes from the fire.

“Deny what, child?”

“I’m not a child.” Now she turns to me, her eyes moist and resentful. She
is
pretty. David Butt is right about that. Her full cheeks show red, even in the muted glow of a dying fire. Her hair is golden. Her eyes are large and greenish-hazel, and her lips, when they are not pouting, must be generous and shapely. I believe I looked a little like this myself once. In appearance she is the fair maiden of legend. But what pride and what presumption!

“I am eighty years old, Sara. You are thirteen. To me that makes you a child.”

She makes a disdainful hissing sound and looks back towards the fire.

“You’re trouble. You’re an outcast. I’ve been warned about you a thousand times.”

If I were not tired and old, I would get up and box her ears. As it is, my anger dies almost as quickly as it flares. I am left in some bleak limbo of acceptance.

“Who warned you about me?” I ask wearily.

“Father, Grandfather before he died, Mother … everyone.”

“Your mother!” I laugh.

She glares at me.

“What did you come here for, Sara?”

My voice is steady and I meet her stare. She casts her gaze back to the fire.

“You must undo whatever you have done to me.”

“And what is that?”

“I know David Butt comes here. We followed him, my sister Emma and I. We waited in the woods behind your shack until he left.” Her fingertips push away a strand of hair that has fallen over her cheek. She looks deeper into the flames. “Emma believes he is in love with me. We know what you did. You cast a spell to make me feel the same about him.”

“How could you know this?”

She turns and glares at me again.