The Book of Secrets (29 page)

Grandmother, a message from the grave. There are caves in the hills
behind Waipu. I have heard tell of them. They are full of stalagmites and stalactites and glow-worms which shine like a million candles. They are little explored, being both a place of enchantment and one of fear. All these things that befell you, and I never knew. I really am like you, grandmother. I have been exploring too, and ended up in a cave.

No wonder, Maria thought, that the people, Annie and the women, had sought to keep her apart from Isabella. No wonder they would have had her take her grandmother for a fool.

In her mind’s eye she tried to envisage the rugged terrain that led to the caves beyond Waipu. The difficulties to be encountered were another potent reason that the caves were so little visited.

Deep in these thoughts she did not hear the footsteps outside. When she was roused by banging on the door, her first thought was to refuse to open it. Her uncle’s voice called out to her.

‘Open up, Maria McClure.’

‘Why should I? Did my mother send you?’

‘She did not.’

‘I am waiting for her to come back. I will not see you unless you bring her.’

‘Your mother will never return.’

In the night, fraught with smoke and the aftermath of fire, she detected an elegaic quality which filled her with foreboding. She unbolted the door and pulled it open, half expecting to see several men come to get her.

But Hector stood by himself on the doorstep, a heavy coat, more like a cloak, wrapped around him as if he were one of the Men of old.

‘I do not wish to see you,’ she said.

‘Yes. Better to hide your face in shame, I agree.’

He stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

‘Where is my mother?’

‘She is dead.’

‘No … Another trick …?’

But straight away, she knew it was true. His eyes bored into her, red-rimmed with smoke and exertion and the day’s fires.

‘When?’

‘Last evening.’

‘But why? How, Uncle Hector?’

‘Her heart. Broken. She said it was broken before she died.’

I must keep calm, she warned herself. I must not let him see into me. Aloud, she said, ‘That is nonsense. People die of disease. Or of age. Not of broken hearts.’

‘Believe what you wish.’ He lifted his shoulders, dismissing her comment.

‘Had she been ill for long?’ Maria whispered, faltering in spite of herself.

‘Since the day she left here.’

‘I would have tended her.’

‘You.’ His manner was full of contempt. ‘Much good you could have done. You killed her.’

‘You’ve been burning fires all day. As if nothing had happened.’

‘Your mother was beyond earthly help, there was work to be done.’

‘When will she be buried?’

‘It is already done.’

Maria sat down suddenly, her body determined to betray her.

‘You couldn’t do that.’

‘But we have. She was buried at sundown. It was agreed that the sooner she was taken to her rest the better for all.’ He paused with heavy significance. ‘In the circumstances. Your condition is known of round here.’ He looked at her. Her clothing gaped across her bulging stomach, and her ankles were swollen. No wonder she was unable to stand up properly. ‘Your condition was further advanced than we suspected. You could have informed us of that, at least.’

‘I didn’t …’ Her voice trailed away. They would never believe that she had not known, that she had undertaken a season of delight in innocence. As if the pleasure conferred knowledge. So, she was a liar too. Not that it mattered. She was not totally alone. She tried to shut out his insistent words.

‘God will wipe away our tears and there will be no more death, nor sorrow nor pain.’ Hector was intoning, turned biblical in his phrases now that he had accomplished his task.

‘Did my mother … did she have a word for me, uncle?’

‘None.’

‘Nothing at all?’

‘What word would a dying woman have for the likes of you?’

‘She was my mother. She loved me.’

‘She did not. She despised you.’

Maria wanted to argue with him, to try to prise an admission from him that her mother had not spoken harshly of her at the hour of her death, but his face was so set, so certain, that she began to believe him. I will never know, she thought with despair.

‘I will go away from here,’ she said dully.

‘You will stay.’

‘Surely that’s for me to decide now?’

‘Count yourself fortunate that you are left with a roof over your head.’

Her heart hammered in her chest as she tried to assimilate each new piece of information that her uncle was offering. She endeavoured to look him in the eye, to meet his pale hard gaze. For a moment she detected in it something akin to excitement, as if all this activity and the crowding in of events had taken him out of himself, made the blood race a little. His gaze flickered away. Perhaps he guessed at what she could see?

‘So I am a property owner,’ she said.

‘To an extent,’ he admitted.

‘What do you mean? Either one is a property owner or not.’

‘Before your mother’s death we discussed your future. She agreed with me that you were not fit to take possession of the land around you and try to administer it. Your age is against you of course, and you have shown no signs of a mature outlook, such as your mother enjoyed at the time that your father, God rest his soul, departed this world. At the same time, having brought you into this miserable life, there was a responsibility for your welfare which she recognised. Accordingly, she made the land the house stands on into my name, and the house into yours.’

‘But that’s monstrous. Did you have a lawyer witness that?’

‘A lawyer? Young woman, it is neither here nor there to a lawyer. Any lawyer would recognise that we have acted in your best interests.’

‘My best … oh uncle. You do not know what you’re saying. I will see a lawyer myself in Auckland. I am leaving for there in the morning.’

‘I have told you, you will not.’

‘And I have told you, it is not your decision now.’

‘You will be prevented from leaving.’

‘How can you prevent me?’

‘You will not cross my land.’

He smiled at last and her thoughts turned to the kindly uncle on whose knee she had once sat when she was a child. ‘Poor little bairn,’ he had murmured then, ‘nothing but a poor fatherless little bairn, hush don’t fear, you have uncle to care for you, pretty child.’ Hector and his wife had no daughters.

‘You understand,’ he was saying, his voice as soft as velour, ‘in order to leave the house, you must cross land which is mine. That is not allowed.’

‘I see,’ she said, as if she really did. ‘Uncle, I am trying very hard to understand your attitude towards me. I’m finding it very difficult. I’m offering to leave here. I can hardly expect you to be pleased with what’s happened to me, nor am I pleased with the situation myself. There, you see I’m not without regret or penitence. But I’m prepared to be responsible for what’s happened, now that I’m on my own. Don’t think I’m without sorrow for my mother. I have hardly had time to comprehend what you’ve told me. But now she’s gone, I don’t wish to stay here. You speak of my best interests … I tell you, that for all of us it is better if I go.’

‘And even if you crossed the land, then you must consider who would take you away from here. By the boats? I hardly think so,’ he said, almost as if she had not spoken at all. ‘Food will be placed regularly. You will not go without. The compensation for the land which was your mother’s is the price it will cost to keep you, Maria McClure … When your confinement is due, place a white cloth at the window and a midwife will attend you.’ He smiled in a melancholy way. ‘I am as your father now, Maria, heaven preserve and keep me.’

‘Tell me, tell me why you’re doing it,’ she cried out. ‘Oh please tell me why you won’t let me go.’

‘Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.
Samuel
I, chapter fifteen, verse twenty-three. I recommend it to you, Maria.’

‘Witchcraft? You think I’m a witch? Oh I don’t believe this, you call yourself a Christian. You cannot believe that?’

He opened the door to take his leave. Against the night his coat was like the burnt trees as he turned away from her; an obdurate back, no quarter given. Above him the new moon hung like a crystal. I must not look at it through the glass, thought Maria, but already it was too late, for she knew no luck in the world was going to save her.

‘Uncle,’ she called piteously down the path after him.

He paused but did not turn back to her. ‘What is it?’

‘Did she say nothing at all? Not even my name?’

‘She did not,’ he replied, speaking into the night. ‘She would not speak your name in my house. We brought better things with us, better morals to this country than you have found here. Our journeys were not made in vain to be sacrificed to such mischief. Your name will be as a curse under my roof and within my hearing. Goodnight, Maria McClure.’

At the gate he paused. ‘You may till the garden if you wish,’ he called.

Later, she woke again from one of her dreaming sleeps, the names ringing in her head … from Assynt in Sutherlandshire from Applecross and Skye, Lochalsh and Harris, the Man said I must be patient Maria. And were you patient mother? Oh aye, I was. And I was the child mother?

Aye, yes you were the child, the grass Branco it smells so sweet, the sweet scent beneath us, oh but why d’you need ribbons and embroidery when you’ve got a crown of hair like that Maria oh mother it is a little bit of ribbon …

all
flesh
is
as
grass
…

… my own fair lass, my bonnie girl …

the
grass
withereth
…

… from Loch Broom and Lock Tollachan, Dunrunie and Badinscallie from the Summer Isles and Corry Halloch, return return return we never, streaming on across the seas, to Nova Scotia across the Atlantic, to Pictou and St Ann’s to Australia by the green Indian Ocean on the good barque
Margaret
and on the
Highland
Lass
,
by the Tasman Sea, and the
Gertrude
and the little ship
Spray
and on the
Breadalbane
and the
Ellen
Lewis
,
the sails of the ships billowing before fair winds and bad, great white canvas sheets on the rigging, mother I dream dreams as you must have dreamed and my grandmother before me …

I
am
betrayed
by
my
own
people.

Grandmother, why did you leave the cave? How can I live my life out in this place? How did you? Grandmother, they will not keep me forever, will they? Isabella, oh Isabella, I wish you were alive, or that I were dead.

Later again, it came to her that this could be her cave, safe and secure, where they could never reach her. Towards dawn she took
the candle and opened the book once more, reading what Isabella had written of McLeod’s arrival at the cave to prevent her and her child from perishing in the woods one winter long ago.

Watching the sky lighten she thought, so this is what it has all come to. And wondered if McLeod had seen his followers perverting the course of morality. Or had he long ago lost sight of what it was all about himself? What natural savagery had overtaken a community which had begun with such kindness in its intentions?

But Isabella had been a married woman who had been taken against her will. While she was a single woman who had lain, from choice, with an enemy. For that was how they must see him, though she did not. No enemy you, Branco, nor yet a lover; a friend between seasons.

Perhaps McLeod would have left her in the cave?

I am the last sacrifice.

Taking her cloak from behind the door, she stepped outside amongst the dew. Across the paddock, a watcher waited. She turned the other way and another dark shape loomed against the scarlet tongues of morning. To her left, another. The house was surrounded. She made to run, but the child kicked inside her with such force that she staggered. Again the world loomed black. While she could still stand she made her way back inside.

It will only be for a little while, she told herself. I will stay here for a short time, until the child is born. They cannot watch me forever.

Just a little time.

Did she imagine it, or did one of them call her?

You are a murderer, Maria.

No. No. I didn’t kill her. Mother, where are you, tell them I did not kill you.

As if with an axe, Maria, as if with an axe.

The voices, maybe they are in my head. Perhaps there is no one out there.

Was
it
the
wild
men
in
the
woods?
Men?
What
men?
I
don’t
think
there
were
any
men …
No,
I
never
saw
strange
men
in
the
woods.
Ghosts
perhaps …
mother,
long
ago,
telling
me
at
night
there
were
no
ghosts,
or
only
ghosts
for
people
who
had
been
bad.
Now
what
did
I
ever
do
that
was
bad?

Just a little time, alone in the cave.

Maria’s hand brushed an object, like beads only rougher. It was
lying beneath a packet of letters. She uncovered it and saw that it was beads of a kind, though not like any she had ever seen before. It was a string of human teeth, the teeth of young children.

She took them out, fearful, fascinated, and half-disgusted at first, but the shiny teeth were smooth like small white shells on the outside, and only the crowns were rough, with a few brown pits here and there, old toothaches preserved forever, and the roots curved down to sharp scratchy little points.