NaGeira (8 page)

Gradually the life in the alley slowed, as did the noises from the house. Footfalls pattered quietly somewhere downstairs. I urged them on, longing to hear them climb towards my room, but a door closed softy and then there was silence. No one would come to me tonight, I realized; not Thomas Ridley with his pale-blue eyes, not my mother with her vague, distracted assurances, not even a servant at whom I might at least fire some questions.

Somewhere, far below, a kitchen maid scoured a pan. Lost in anxiety and fatigue, I lay down on the pillow, nestling my head in the soft feathers so I might draw up some comfort from them. My ear vibrated with each heartbeat as though a giant were striding somewhere beyond London’s walls, shaking the foundations of the house. I thought of Ireland, of the warm breezes and rippling leaves. I inhaled the smell of imaginary earth and thought of Thomas Ridley and his thick hair, the colour of sand. I thought of the man of the forest and tried to remember precisely how he had appeared to me. All I could recall were the contours of a face showing in the knots and pits in the tree bark, a face that faded and revealed itself in the shifting light and shadow. I could remember how his voice hissed gently like the rustling of leaves as he spoke. I let the words run through me, then repeated them like a prayer.
The forest is yours,
I told myself.
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.
My eyes became heavy. I was far from the forest now, it was true, but the pacing giant merged in my imagination with the man of the forest. It was he—the green man—pacing outside the city walls, I told myself, and his mission was to protect, not to threaten. Listening to the
thump, thump, thump
of the man in the forest, I gradually drifted into sleep.

———

Next morning I woke to crisp sunshine streaming in through the window and the clamour of a working city in my ears. Sudden yells and shrieks broke through a constant babble of voices like erratic seagulls crying above a constant, murmuring sea. I went to the window to see this pandemonium. The alley was thick with carts and traders in constant milling movement. The voices wafted up, multiplying against the brick-and-timber walls. I could not match words and speakers together. All sound and movement was spasmodic and random: a woman presenting necklaces on hoops to a passing crowd of ladies; a ragged man with a shoulder beam from which hung wooden cages with twitching chicks; a sudden shriek to which no one paid attention. Did one of the humans below make the sound or did the cry emanate from the stones and dust? Certainly no one turned to see who had made it.

The white-faced woman entered with a bowl of water. I turned from the window to find her laying it by my bed. I thought of stopping her to ask her what was going on, but she had left
before I could form any words. I washed my face and hands and started drying them on the cloth provided. Before I had quite finished, she entered again.

“Come,” she said. “You are to follow me downstairs into a carriage which is waiting.”

She was so decided in manner, her dark eyes so fixed, that I took a couple of steps to the door at her command. Then I forced myself to halt. “Where is my mother?” I asked, my lip stiff and, for the moment, not trembling. “I need to see her.”

I was expecting a rebuke, but instead the woman looked at me mildly, her eyebrows raised. “She is at the place to which you are bound. We must hurry.”

I had no idea where “the place” referred to could be, but I was happy to rush downstairs with the woman now. Everything would be explained, I thought, all the silence and isolation of the last day and night. Perhaps I would join my mother in one of the London parklands. She might rebuke me at first, or she might have forgiven me already. But soon everything would be as normal and we might walk together, taking in the waters and the meadows.

On the ground floor the servants were still shifting furniture after yesterday’s arrival. Two of Mr. Ridley’s staff were heaving my mother’s heavy oak sideboard in through the hallway. Another three were fixing a place on the wall for her grandest mirror. My gaze swooped eagle-like around the hallway, into the dining hall, for a glimpse of Thomas Ridley, but he was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he was with Mother too.

The white-faced woman led me swiftly outside and into a small coach. We began to move instantly I sat down. We were
silent as the carriage rumbled along, its springs creaking and groaning. It turned one way, then another, passed markets reeking of fish and horse droppings, became trapped in a crowd of ragged-looking people, then lurched forward again at great speed. I glimpsed the Thames, blue and glistening in the sunshine. As we turned once more, I saw from a distance the great white walls of the Tower of London, the flag of St. George flying high from the mast. We came into the shadow of trees. Dark, high walls skimmed by the carriage window. We turned sharply one last time and flew through a rugged stone archway and into a courtyard. There we came to a stop. The white-faced woman alighted first; I followed. Looming over all sides of the enclosed courtyard was a lofty, grey-brick building, its walls as high as the trees I had known in the Pale. Something shrank and coiled inside me as the woman tugged me gently by the elbow and bade me follow her through the entranceway. As we hurried along a dim, high-ceilinged hallway, I could hear from somewhere far beneath our echoing footsteps a distant sound of coughing. A thickset man passed us, a circle of large keys hanging from his belt. He ignored us as though we were spirits, quite invisible to him. I glanced over my shoulder as he unlocked an arched doorway and disappeared, closing it after him with a great echoing clunk. We turned a corner into an identical corridor, and at last, the white-faced woman stopped at a narrow door and knocked. I could barely hear a reply, but she pushed open the door and gestured me to go in first.

I remember the room, the smell of wax polish and oak, the creaking of leather chairs. Mother was sitting, pale and round-shouldered, as if she were in mourning again, though I knew no
one could have died. Mr Ridley was right there beside her. He murmured some comforting phrase to her while the white-faced servant led me to the end of the long table at which they sat. She placed her bony hands on my shoulders, like a sculptor getting a measure of its stone. I knew the meaning of her touch: I should remain standing in the place she had put me.

I watched my mother intently, waiting for her to glance in my direction so I could fathom her mood. It had been so long since she, or anyone else, had properly acknowledged my presence I was beginning to feel as if I were indeed a ghost. Opposite Mr. Ridley and my mother was a bull-like man with huge shoulders and a round head. Through his sparse white hair, I could see pink bumps and furrows.

“Indeed,” he said, continuing a conversation that must have been in progress before I came into the room. “Bedlam is not the place, Mr. Ridley.” He had a reedy voice and a nervous smile, neither of which matched his robust figure. “You did well to think of us. It is a disease of morals, not of wits, and without confinement it would, as you correctly imply, spread and infect your household. From all that you say, the dark lands of Ireland with their pagan lures have her firmly under their spell.”

I watched the man’s forehead as he spoke, curious about the bumps and abrasions of his permanent frown. I thought about the cratered moon I had glimpsed through the inn window and wondered how a similar surface could be beautiful in one place and ugly in another.

“Young girl,” he said abruptly, turning towards me. His eyes were as pale as Thomas Ridley’s, but there was a coldness about them that chilled me. His nervousness and humility were gone.

“I want you to answer me truthfully. Your mother tells me you used to go outdoors often in Ireland, to the countryside surrounding your home. Tell me precisely where you went.”

“The forests,” I said. I looked at my mother again, but still could not catch her eye. Mr. Ridley handed her his handkerchief; Mother took it delicately in her fingers. She seemed a strange creature to me at that moment, a butterfly without colour, fragile and timorous yet somehow not graceful.

“Indeed,” said the stranger with a knowing sigh, “and what did you do there?”

“I climbed trees and watched the birds and animals.”

The man frowned sadly and looked across the table at my mother, whose face was now half-buried in Mr. Ridley’s handkerchief.

“And in that time, young lady, did any of the animals speak to you? Did they become your companions?”

“They were my companions, yes, but they did not speak directly to me. They were animals.” I looked from face to face, but met only the stranger’s eyes. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Just answer the questions I put to you, girl,” the man said, fixing me for another while with his stare. “And did you converse with any other being? Any creatures that you did not recognize as animals?”

Suddenly the room became airless and my face started to burn. He was asking what he already knew. It would be dangerous to try to lie.

“The man of the forest,” I blurted out. The burning sensation on my face spread to my neck and shoulders, and my knees began to feel weak.

“The man of the forest?” he whispered. “What man?”

“A man of leaves and branches,” I replied. “He whispers like the leaves. He comes and goes like the breeze.”

The black centres in the stranger’s eyes shrank to pinpricks. His shoulders heaved like those of an animal set for slaughter. “This is more serious than I thought,” he said. Mother looked up from her handkerchief. Mr. Ridley narrowed his eyes.

“She is conversing with the green man, the pagan spirit of the forest.”

“But all this happened in the Pale, Mr. Jarvis,” Mother sobbed. “Surely there could be no pagan spirits in a land under the English Crown.”

“I wish you were right, Mrs. Ridley, but things are not so simple. You were protected there by armies and the fortresses. You believed perhaps that the dark lands began only beyond the Pale. Being a good and devout lady, dedicated to the faith of your Sovereign, you were safe from the corrupting influence of paganism and witchery. But a girl on the brink of changes would be so much more receptive to heathen forces than you or—pardon me, Mr. Ridley—your late husband would realize.”

“You must not blame yourself,” said Mr. Ridley leaning toward my mother, laying his hand on hers.

“No, indeed,” agreed Mr. Jarvis. “The very air wafted ungodliness into her lungs. No mother, no matter how devout, would have been subtle enough to prevent her daughter’s infection.”

My mother nodded gratefully at Mr. Jarvis. “May we hope for a cure?” she whispered.

Mr. Ridley frowned and the lines on his forehead became heavier. “This is a serious case indeed, Mrs. Ridley, and, in the
usual course of events, punishable by far worse than mere incarceration.” There was a grave silence. My mother held the handkerchief from her face and became as still as rock. Mr. Jarvis, seeing this, leaned back slowly and gave her a reassuring smile. ”You must remember, my dear lady, that the creature that stands before you now is no longer your daughter. Even though she may look the same, her soul has decayed from the inside out.”

Mother sighed and gazed at the table.

“You may, of course, have your personal physician attend her, though I doubt the expense of it will prove worthwhile. It is her soul, not her mind, which is diseased. And Newgate is not an asylum.”

“We had thought of sending her abroad to a religious house,” Mother said mildly.

Mr. Jarvis gave her a gentle smile. “She is too far advanced, I am afraid. But you need not give up on her if you are not quite ready. She will be lodged in the master’s side and may have any treatments or comforts you deem fit.”

“Indeed,” said my mother. She buried her face in Mr. Ridley’s handkerchief once more.

———

I can’t recall how long it took me to work out all the implications of the conversation taking place before me. Now, sorting through their words again, it seems obvious from the start. But at the time, the realization came upon me only in a series of jolts, like the involuntary flinch a body makes from a flying stone. Only when the moment is past does a person have the leisure to question
whether the missile was an accident randomly gliding in her direction, or whether there was purpose and intent behind its aim. All I know is that, by the time I finally absorbed the entire meaning of the exchange, I was alone in a stone-walled room with no fire, a thin straw mattress, and a barred window. Only then did I realize that, as a consequence of laying with Mr. Ridley’s son, I had been sent to prison.

I
’m still haunted by the expression on my mother’s face just before she left the room. I remember standing by the table like a swaying reed as she and Mr. Ridley rose. Mr. Ridley went to the door with Mr Jarvis. At first it seemed as though my mother would do the same. But at the last moment she wafted toward me, raising her hands to my face before dropping them to her sides again in a helpless gesture. She tilted her head and gave me a look of such broken-hearted anguish—her eyes wet with tears, her brow a torment of furrows. Next moment, she was turning from me. As her moth-like figure disappeared through the doorway, I heard her greeted by the soft and comforting words of her new husband.

———

The settlement has come alive in the search for Sara. For hours now I’ve been listening to the growing tumult. I’ve heard footsteps
approach to within a few yards, then trudge back down the hill. I’ve heard Sara’s name called frantically from the village, from the shore, and from the woods on the other side of my cabin. Sometimes everything goes quiet for a short time and I’ll hear muted voices and whispering. There’s something ominous in the fact that no one has yet knocked on my door. It’s as though a wolf pack is circling, cutting off possible routes of escape as it closes in.

So much effort for one spoilt girl, the phrase comes to me unbidden. I despise myself for thinking this way, but I cannot help it. I’m jealous of this cruel and pretty creature. Her loss has caused the world to cease, when my incarceration caused hardly a bump.