NaGeira (6 page)

“I’ll tell you how. Next day, I saw him on the wharf and something came over me. I couldn’t help flirting with him. It was just in fun, at first. But when I felt his rough hands with my fingers, something changed.”

“People feel what they feel, child. You had never been near enough to him to notice before.”

Her eyes narrow. “How could I feel such a thing for David
Butt? He has no property, no boats of his own. He has no parents, even—”

“His father was killed in a storm, Sara,” I interrupt. “His mother died of fever.”

“I will not fall in love for charity!”

Sara gets up from the chair and faces me. “My family are the leaders of this community. We always were. I and my sisters will marry suitable men, men of property and standing.”

“Then you will go far afield, young woman,” I say, “for I see none about here who can be described thus.”

“You’re right,” she says, her shoulders straightening. “The Roses are the only family of standing in this settlement. My father is in contact with a family in Bristol.”

“So, why are you here?”

“Tell me why David Butt came to see you.”

She stands over me now, her eyes keen yet somehow a little frightened.

“I never reveal the purpose of a visit,” I reply with what I hope is enough defiance to deter her. She watches me carefully, trying to sift clues from my voice. I decide to distract her with a challenge. “If you have feelings for David Butt, it is because you have feelings for David Butt. Since you’re so proud of your bloodline, why don’t you draw upon your natural nobility and fight these inappropriate desires in yourself? Here’s a chance to prove yourself, girl. The higher the rank, the more control you must exert over your feelings.”

It seems I have struck the right note. Her body relaxes a little and she glances around the cabin as though waking from a daydream. “Of course I have the strength to fight these feelings. I’m not in love with David Butt and I’m not afraid of you.”

She turns quickly and walks to the exit. She opens the door and turns back to me. “If I find you have been practising witchcraft,” she says, “I’ll tell my father.”

Before I have a chance to reply, she strides into the night, leaving the door open behind her.

———

I haven’t slept much tonight. It’s colder than any grave in my cabin and a strange paralysis has gripped my heart, preventing me from rising and throwing more logs on the fire. These are not really my logs, a stubborn voice tells me. I did not gather them myself, nor did my kin. These logs are a favour squeezed out of an unwilling boy. My body refuses to move and make use of them.

Perhaps it is the overweening young Sara Rose who has reawakened my own pride. Whatever the cause, I am like a sick animal refusing food, rejecting the state in which I find myself. Warmth and food will keep my heart beating, but they are no longer my friends. They make me survive merely to suffer indignities. I want to reject all sustenance that stops short of restoring me to the woman I should be: a proud, brave, well-loved soul who died in spirit when her family was stolen or slain. How could such a woman scrape for favours the way I do? How could such a woman have lived so long beyond her time?

Yet live I did. Not only did I live on, but I lived on in health and fitness, with appetites and wants. My wits did not scatter to the winds. I did not withdraw into a sweet cave of madness where I might see my family about me still.

I used to think there was a reason I was spared. In the early years, after I first arrived here, I thought the settlement would reclaim me somehow. They might come to me, I thought, and suggest I move my house closer so that I would be in the cove with the rest. I hated the sea, it is true, yet I could have been persuaded. But month after month, year after year, nothing changed. The fear and pity they felt for me hardened into something immovable. They heard I had cures, so they came to me once in a while. But they were usually alone and rarely talked more than they needed. Children never came. One day, four years after my arrival, I looked out of my window to see young Simon on the brow of the hill staring at my cabin. His fingers were in his mouth, and his eyes were round like full moons. I recognized him from the blue wool jacket I had heard one of the women praise. He stood there swaying from side to side like a doll. The sun shone upon the path and the breeze whispered in his blond hair. Was this some emissary, I wondered, sent to recall me to life? Silently as I could, I slipped through the doorway so that I could see the child up close. When I turned the corner of the house and emerged onto the path, I saw he was crouching to the ground, gathering something up in his tiny fingers. I took a step further and he raised himself up again. There was a movement from his infant arm and dust flew into my eyes, pebbles scraping my cheek then scattering around my feet. It was so unexpected, I shut my eyes tight. Phantom suns glared in the darkness and I heard his small feet scurrying down the hill.

“I’ve been warned about you a thousand times,” the girl, Sara, said. The words have me blinking once more as though she, too, had hurled dust in my eyes. “Father, Grandfather …” she
said. Why would Simon Rose talk evil of me? Had he turned events upside down in his mind? Does he believe he was attacked by the strange woman on the hill? That sunny day almost forty years ago was the only time there has ever been direct contact between us. I’ve seen him down by the wharf when I’ve had to go into the settlement. I’ve seen him on the path and in the forest when he is hunting. But he always looks away. Once I saw him with Sara when she was no more than three winters old. They were together under the canopy of pine, father crouching low, talking softly of the forest to his child. I spied them through a lattice of branches which dripped with melting snow, and felt the magic of their communion. He was drawing the child into the detail, the tattered edges of the cone where the birds had made their meal. In the gentle crow’s feet of his smiling eyes I saw a kindness that was familiar to me, and, in the silent wonder of the child, I saw something too. I was in Ireland again, removed from myself and watching. Simon was my father, and I was that child whose eyes searched the boughs for the finches which had disappeared like spirits. So lost in their world was I that I neglected to remain hidden.

“There!” cried young Sara, clapping her hands and turning to her father. Her search for the missing birds had unearthed a different prize and she pointed at me as though she had won a game. I smiled at them both, but Simon’s expression had changed already. He picked up his daughter, turned, and made his way from me. “No!” came the cry of the daughter who stared at me open-mouthed from over her father’s retreating shoulder.

For years I wondered what harm he thought I meant his young Sara. Had I become so irretrievably tangled up with some
infant nightmare of his that he felt he must pass the confusion on to his children? Later, when Elizabeth became ill with Mary and I was warned by the community to stay away from a home I had never been to in the first place, I lost patience. I barred my door and refused to admit anyone for days. I softened after a while as I knew I must and the timid knocks of the sick and anxious found a way into my world again. But what about John Rose? This part of the puzzle is the one that hurts me most. What could charitable, shy John have said against me? Or was the girl merely lying? Feeling around this question like a beetle probing for rot, I find an uncomfortable answer. She was many things, that girl—vicious, arrogant, rude—but it seemed likely that she was telling the truth.

Daylight creeps into my cabin. I shift slowly onto my side. Why should I not march down to the cove and ask Simon Rose why he should talk ill of me to his daughter? I know I will not do this, but it is a stirring thought and pleases me. There are high walls around me and the only freedom I have comes from trust. I never argue, cause trouble, or break a confidence. This is my only safety and I am not quite ready to sacrifice it, even though I lie in the cold.

I shift onto my back and gaze into the milky dawn of my cabin. The straw mattress makes scrunching noises beneath me. I take in the scent of the earth; the sods lying on the roof overhead have come alive again now it is summer. There’ll be insects and wriggling things now there is warmth and moisture during the day. I find myself smiling and realize my thoughts have skipped on to Thomas Ridley. The boy had the wholesome smell of the earth and early summer is his season. Perhaps I have given him a passing thought
or two every summer since that burning night at the inn between Bristol and London. But this is different. These days he is not far from my thoughts most of the time.

I remember the dark-timbered room of the inn, how the moonlight skimmed along the floor once my candle was out. An oak tree brushed against my window and cast shadows of its leaves all over the walls, so that my room seemed like an arbour of oversized vegetation. A stubborn twig beat a rhythm against the glass and the air was heavy with blossom. I lay awake amidst layers of darkness trying to gauge the changes inside me. I felt like an alchemist’s vessel and I could sense my blood altering with the infusions of fate and circumstance. The journey had unsettled me and the summer made me restless. But Thomas Ridley climbing into our coach, treating me like a lady, turning the full attention of his pale blue eyes upon me—these things had pushed me entirely over the edge. I was turning golden inside. I needed the alchemist to return to his experiment and confirm its success.

The building creaked and footsteps drummed along from one quarter of the inn to another. My heart beat faster whenever these footsteps seemed to approach, then slowed again when they moved further off. I couldn’t understand my excitement until a footfall, softer than the rest, came very close to my own door. Whoever it was seemed to stand there for a while. There was silence, then a creak, then silence again. Then it came—a soft tapping at my door. My heart rolled like thunder. I sat up.

“Yes?” I said too quietly to be heard, I thought. But the listener’s hearing was acute and the door began to open.

And there was Thomas Ridley, still dressed in day breeches and shirt. He looked like a young deer, his pale eyes large, his movements
slight but swift. In the wavering light of his candle, he gave an apologetic smile. I think I was smiling too, but I couldn’t think of what to do or say. We remained gazing at each other for some moments, he on the threshold with his candle, me sitting in bed cradling a knee in my hand for support.

“Everyone is in bed now,” he whispered at last, protecting his candle with his hand. He kept his eyes towards the flame and frowned slightly, shifting on his feet. For a moment I thought he would turn and leave. I still could not think of what to say. I smiled foolishly, trying to form words that wouldn’t come.

He sighed, bit his lip, and shrugged. He took a half-step backwards and began to turn, so I quickly cleared my throat and said the first words that came into my head. “Come in and watch the shadows.”

He stared at me, questioning.

“Come in,” I urged again. He did as I asked and closed the door quietly after him. “The moon is throwing giant shadows over the walls.” I turned and pointed to the wall above my bed. But there were no shadows there now because Thomas Ridley’s candle had washed them away.

Thomas looked at me, smiled, and came a step or two closer.

“You’ll have to blow that out to see them.”

I heard his lips part. It was like the first pat of rain before a torrent. He blew out the candle. A dot of fire remained on the wick briefly, then disappeared.

The shadows of the leaves returned, but we had forgotten them already. Somehow and without noise, Thomas Ridley had made his way onto my bed. My hands were running over his shoulders and arms as a fast-moving stream washes over boulders. I pulled his
shirt blindly one way and then another to find my way inside. His warm lips touched my cheek and then I felt the weight of his head on my ribs.

Oak leaves hissed against the glass and the lone twig tapped a pendulum rhythm. The shadows bloated as the moon arced high, then rose to the ceiling as the great orb sank. Soon dawn burned pink through the trees and the twig tapped loudly to the strengthening breeze.

T
he whole world rumbled, the words
thom-thom-thom-thom
vibrating like a giant drum. Burning lava spewed into the valley, hissing
ridley-ridley-ridley
as it slid down the mountainside. Men, women, and children scattered, screaming
“help-us-thom-as-rid-ley!”
their togas flying, their eyes in panic. Even the chickens cackled
ridley-ridley-ridley,
their flightless wings battering the air. The Forum fell with a great, booming
THOM!
Dust rose and thickened, whispering,
as-ridley-ridley.

I awoke from Pompeii to find the noise was real enough. Footsteps were thumping somewhere below. “Thomas Ridley!” came a loud, angry voice, not for the first time, it seemed. “Where are you?” It didn’t take much time to identify the voice of Thomas’s father. It took even less to answer his question.

Thomas Ridley’s warm arm lay across my bare belly. His hair pressed into my cheek. I raised my hand and touched his elbow with my fingertips. The day outside was bright and sunny. The
oak leaves rustled joyfully against the window. The lone twig prodded the glass as if to say
I warned you.

My companion breathed in slowly, coming awake.

“Thomas!” the voice boomed again.

Thomas tilted his head a fraction. Wide awake now, he had halted in mid-breath.

“We must wake your daughter, my dear,” came Mr. Ridley’s voice below. “Our coaches will leave within the hour.”

Double footsteps came up the stairs, one set sound and resolute, the other quiet and uneven—a young deer following a wild boar.

Thomas Ridley’s pale-blue eyes fixed on mine. His breath touched my face. The tip of his tongue emerged from between his lips and he turned to the door.

The corridor outside vibrated to Mr. Ridley’s tread. Already it was too late. Three hard knocks came on the door. I pulled the sheet up to my chin. Thomas Ridley slid under the blankets as far as he could.