Sunday morning comes around, I sleep late and feel like I’ve lived a year in seven days. The only reason I wake is because the Binions tap at the door and look expectantly at me. They leave when I tell them they may return in half an hour. They say nothing, just slip away.
Sleep was hard won last night, and I spent hours tossing and turning before at last dropping off in exhaustion. Even then my dreams were fraught with imaginings – of my mother as she was when I knew her, and as she might have been when I did not. The bedtime tales Heloise told me, of what happened when she went to her mother, told her about the child – me – growing inside her. How Leonora raged at her ruin, at all the plans she’d had to make a good marriage for her daughter; how she’d locked Heloise in her room for days until the morning Burdon came for her, with a stout coat, a single carpet bag containing a few changes of clothes, and a purse of coins to pay her way wherever she went. No one else in the house spoke to her or even saw her off – her father so recently deceased, there were only the servants and her mother and brother who might have said goodbye – and the butler walked her up the driveway, through the woods, to the front gate where the coach soon stopped on its way away from Morwood, the Grange and the Tarn, and everything she’d ever known. When she’d asked Burdon where she should go, he’d replied, ‘Wherever you might hide what you’ve become.’
So, when I look upon the old man’s face, I remember that. Heloise said he was kind until then, I do remember that. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to ask him about it.
I remember his words from my mother’s mouth, and I remember her expression, her tone as she told me. I remember her every resentment because that’s what she fed me, and even if I went hungry for food, I was ever sated with my mother’s bitterness and her desire for revenge. And I grew with one aim in my life, to bring her back where she belonged.
I roll out of bed and pace up and down the small, pretty room, the room that girl had before me, my predecessor, and I recall that I’ve neglected the other task I came here to do for someone else. I will do it, soon, I will.
Filled with energy and rage, I’m almost running from one wall to the other, a rat in a cage, a cat in a box, a madwoman who may as well be in an attic. All those thoughts, all those emotions – years of thoughts, years of feelings, not all mine – mine, all pressed down under Heloise’s, under everything she fed me, told me, all my life – all of them feel like they’re burning in my head and I must do something, destroy something, push the rage and sadness outside before I tear someone limb from limb.
A walk, I think; a walk, fast and warming; a walk across the fields and into the woods, away from this house. Time to visit the Lewis family again, as I promised. Or a ride. Perhaps take one of the horses from the stables; faster, wilder than I. Eli owes me a favour. I’ll not feel so uncomfortable asking for something.
I see Burdon as I’m making my way downstairs. I’ve dressed neatly in a dove-grey dress, my hair is a tight braid curled into a bun, my satchel over my shoulder, stout boots on. He’s at the top of the staircase as I reach the bottom and though he calls for me I ignore him and am out the front door at speed. I cannot look at him, not at the moment, not when my mother’s memories are so close to the surface.
Out the door, down those stone steps, quietly around the side of the manor, and along the path to the stables where Eli spends a goodly part of his day. I pass the structure where the carriages are kept – two full ones, a caleche and a brougham – and nod to Owen Reiver, the some-time coachman, as he polishes the large black conveyance with the Morwood crest on the doors. The structure is the same stone as the house, and I step inside to note that it’s pristine. There’s the smell of hay and horses, of well-cared-for beasts. Eight stalls, six of them occupied. Two enormous draughthorses to plough the fields, black as night, feather-footed, their coats brushed to shine. The others two roan geldings, and two ebony. All looking at me over the doors to their stalls, curious, hoping for a treat I suspect.
‘Eli?’ I call and receive no response. I walk further in, past the stalls to the very back where the tack room and feedstore wait. ‘Eli?’
I call all the way along and am met with silence. When I finally reach the feedstore, there he is, resting against a bale of lucerne, staring at me.
‘Why didn’t you answer?’ I snap.
‘I figured you’d turn up eventually and find me.’ He shrugs and it enrages me – I was ready for a fight, wasn’t I? I don’t want a horse, I know that now; I didn’t come down here looking for that.
‘This means nothing,’ I say before he kisses me. ‘Nothing.’
* * *
‘And no more vomiting?’ I ask. ‘Nor shitting through the eye of a needle?’
Eirlys Lewis smiles. ‘All well. We can’t thank you enough.’
I think back to the sample of water I’d taken from their well, think about the dead mice I found around the plate of bread I’d left in the kitchen, soaked in that very water. So I was right the well had been poisoned – just not very efficiently. The dose was deadly to the mice, smaller creatures by far than a human, which suggested however much went into the well wasn’t large enough or the poison strong enough to kill anyone. Enough to make them ill, however. I wonder if death was the aim, but the poisoner was simply incompetent? Or if the illness was a warning? What might this family, or one of its members, know that someone wanted kept quiet? They were unable or unwilling to tell me – perhaps they didn’t even realise it was a warning?
‘Eirlys, is there anyone who wishes your family ill?’ I ask and she looks at me strangely.
‘What an odd thing to say. No, we live out here, we live apart, my husband works hard for Mr Morwood, and he’s never had any reason to complain.’
I nod. ‘Forgive me, a stray and silly thought. But continue to get your water from the stream for another few weeks. I have given your husband some items to help cleanse the well. Be careful of what you drink and eat.’
She nods. They’ve all got their colour back, the rashes have disappeared from their skin and the children are running around outside, their energy returned. Hardly recognisable from the barely living creatures I saw a week ago.
‘Thank you, Asher. We can never repay you.’
‘Just stay healthy. And keep drinking the tea, it’s good for you any time.’ I repack my satchel and rise. The little kitchen is clean and bright, the air in the entire cottage is fresh with all the windows open, and bunches of lavender hanging by the fire, ready to be thrown in.
I bid her farewell and go outside. Thomas Lewis is by the well; in his hands and at his feet are the ten balls of kaolin clay and assorted herbs I brought. Easy enough to use the clay from the quarry (less easy to forget the fog and being lost in it), all the herbs in the gardens, easy enough to make these balls and let them dry by the fire in my room in the evenings, then hide them in the hidey-hole until this visit.
‘Just toss ’em in, you say?’ he calls as he sees me.
I go over to him, nodding. ‘They’ll dissolve and the herbs will neutralise anything in there that’s unhealthful.’
‘Neutralise? Now there’s a big word.’
I shrug. He throws them in, four, five, then finally the last two. We listen as they drop into the liquid. I repeat what I said to his wife, in hopes they will both remember – or if one does not then the other will. ‘Water from the stream for another few weeks; by then this should be drinkable again.’
‘Thank you, Asher.’
‘You’re welcome, Thomas. You’re back to your tasks?’
He nods. ‘I’ve been able to finish planting a new copse to the north corner.’ A cloud passes over his face. ‘Had to leave it unattended for too long. Tried my best but I couldn’t even walk that far.’
I pat his arm. ‘All back to normal.’
I did not ride, finding myself a little too tender for that after my encounter with Eli. Yet when I begin my walk back, I find myself unwilling to return to the manor just yet. Still too much energy, still too much lightwood in my soul ready for the touch of a spark. So I make a detour, though I don’t quite know why. Perhaps it’s the appearance of Heloise when I’d thought myself free so briefly. Perhaps it’s simply that I want to pick a fight and this one has been put off for long enough. I return to the church yet again.
The door’s unlocked, no one around with services done for the day. Inside the air is colder than out, all that stone keeping the breath of autumn trapped. It’s dark, too, but for some few candles lit up by the altar. I can see white cloth upon it, embroidered with gold. Last time I was here I did not look around, was not prepared to remain. A monstrance studded with precious gems, and two silver vases filled with those blood-bell flowers that even at this distance I can see are wilting despite the cool that should keep them fresh. I wonder how old they are and which good-wife tends to this church on behalf of the god-hound. Someone not especially devout it would seem; the not-quite-a-cathedral in Whitebarrow was ever spick and span, its bouquets fresh and the finest, its good-wives attentive and prideful. Having seen the priest here I’m in no way surprised he inspires no devotion to either himself, his church or his god. It’s a very long time since he was handsome enough to seduce my mother. To father me. To leave her to the fate she ultimately met.
I walk quietly towards the altar. The old man’s not in evidence; perhaps he’s holed up in his little house behind the church, perhaps in the village haranguing someone for sins real or imagined. Hypocrite. How long I’ve got is anyone’s guess so I pick up my pace and circle around the altar to find the gap in the stones. A finer place of worship would have some kind of covering, a trapdoor or a balustrade of sorts to warn the unwary about this void: if I did not know what I was looking for in the dim space I might have fallen. I take one of the candles; its flame flickers with the movement, then steadies. Down the steps, my paces echo only a little.
The crypt is, strangely, warmer than above. That might concern someone more superstitious than I, but I’ve got other things to take my attention. There are niches around the walls filled with deathbeds in dust-covered wood, gold locks and hinges catching at the gleams of the flickering candle. Money enough for the Morwoods to pay for expensive coffins to keep their dead beneath, but not enough thought for them afterwards to pay someone to rub the gilings away, to polish the little brass nameplates on the side beside the main latch. I walk around the space, candle held high, and examine each and every nameplate. There are twenty coffins here, twenty filled niches. I wonder where earlier Morwoods lie, surely there must be some, then I notice the flags at my feet are engraved with names and years long ago. There. They rest there. But the recent dead are here and five empty niches await, reserved no doubt for the current occupants of the Grange.
I navigate the room twice, three times, and do not find what I seek.
So.
Did they say she had died? Did they tell anyone who asked that Heloise had passed away? Cover the shame that way? Or did they simply not mention her again? No announcement, merely perhaps an offhanded ‘Oh, she’s gone, some months ago, private funeral, don’t you know?’ if anyone ever asked. Not even a pretend interment, no men of the house to carry an empty coffin – so light, so light! – down here for her. Just sent her forth and acted as if she had never existed. And who might I ask about that without giving myself away? No one. Not yet.
I do find the box containing Donnell Morwood’s remains. Leonora’s husband. Heloise’s father. My grandfather. Dead before she was shamed, I think my mother said. When did he die? The brass plaque tells me it was the same year Heloise was sent forth. So: after Luther returned and before Heloise was exiled. And my mother seldom spoke of him; never mentioned him as a tormentor or protector. Perhaps he was simply nothing. Did she even much remember him, after he was gone? Being dead he’d failed to save her from anything and I suspect simply wiped him from her mind. When news of Luther’s disgrace came home to roost, carried in the folds of a letter, he set about dying of shame and impoverishing his family. Now that I know of Luther’s abortive stint in Whitebarrow, did his father die before he had to see his son again?
Without her husband around, without her daughter, how did Leonora change? Only one child left, the other banished, no one else to temper her tendency to control everything. Morwood, hers after all, her blood in the soil, her family’s lot.
From above comes the distant sound of the church door opening, the warning creak travelling down to the depths. My heart stutters; I think to blow out the candle, to carefully make my way back up the stairs, and sneak into the shadows, try to make my escape. But something inside me says No. Ever so quietly but ever so firmly. No.
Whatever fills me makes me slip the mourning ring from my finger, stow it in my skirt pocket. I feel no change. Perhaps there is none. Perhaps I’ve had this face too long now. I pull the pins from my hair, shake out the tresses that I can now see have changed hue. I take to the stairs, hold the candle high and make no secret of my presence.
‘Who’s there?’ The trembling, rasping voice. What did Heloise say? He had the finest voice. He was thunderous in the pulpit, persuasive elsewhere; sometimes he would sing to her.
Before I take the top step, round the altar, I call, ‘Hello, Father.’
‘Who’s that?’
The candle in my hand is held high just enough to illuminate my face, my hair. My mother’s face, my mother’s hair; only my eyes aren’t hers, not that particular, peculiar blue. Mine are green, like she always said my father’s were. Are. But he’s probably not in a state to realise that at this very moment.
‘Hello, Father,’ I repeat. ‘Don’t you recognise me?’
And from the way his eyes widen, I know he does. Or rather, he recognises her, the lover he cast away. I’m older than she was then, but in this light it will hardly matter. I move around in front of the altar, to face him as he stands in the narrow aisle.
‘Heloise.’ He says her name like a breath, like a curse, like a prayer all in the one exhalation. ‘It can’t be.’
‘It isn’t. I’m her daughter. Your daughter.’ It won’t matter, telling him this; he’s not seen my other face, won’t associate this illusion with the quiet brown-haired girl and not a single fine feature to distinguish her. And there’s a good chance he won’t even speak of it – would he dare approach Leonora? After what he did to – with – her daughter? Whatever he says he’ll sound deranged. And I cannot help but enjoy the mean sense of delight this gives me. All the things he helped take from Heloise. I’m not fool enough to think there’d ever have been a happy family for any of us. But somehow there should have been something better than there was, but for this man’s weakness.
‘You… she didn’t die?’
‘She did, but not when you thought. Did you imagine her dying by the roadside? Giving birth there as her last breath left her? Or perhaps being buried by some well-meaning stranger, kinder than you or her kin? Burying her and perhaps a child brought forth in the coffin? What did you imagine happened to her, Father?’
‘I…’ He stares at me as if he can make neither head nor tail of my words; as if he cannot separate me from my mother. ‘She ruined me.’
I shouldn’t be surprised. Why am I? What did I expect? An apology? Why does this feel like a blow?
‘She ruined me!’ Even louder this time. He prowls, raging, back and forth along the aisle; flecks of spittle fly from his mouth. ‘Don’t you know who I was? What I was going to achieve?’
‘No.’ Although Heloise told me. She said he’d been sent to Morwood for a year – a year’s service in a small and unimportant place before he returned to the cathedral-city of Lodellan to begin his journey upwards. I do not know how she thought it would be – did she dream of joining him there? Living perhaps in a fine house he’d set her up in? Though princes of the Church do not marry, they’re happy enough to father children hither and yon. But I never asked her because by the time she began to tell me more about my father (those secrets trickling like sand through an hourglass), she had nothing but anger left for him. I don’t know if she kept any memories of her hopes, and I was not fool enough to ask her about those. Whatever hers were, he did not share them.
But the incident with Heloise was enough to keep him here in Morwood. Somehow those in power found out. Somehow the flow of his life was diverted from the mainstream of ecclesiastical authority in this tiny backwater. And he’s been sitting here all of my life, stewing on it. I wonder if Leonora had influence? If ensuring he suffered close by was her revenge?
‘She told what I’d done! What we’d done! She… she seduced me away from my god…’
‘And you’ve clearly spent all the time since trying to get back into his good graces with kindness, charity and service to the poor,’ I say, and he stares. Perhaps the sarcasm is lost on him. He stops pacing, comes closer to me.
‘And now you’re here. To ruin me…’
‘Hardly seems like there’s anything left to ruin, Father.’
He leaps at me and I’m not prepared. Hands to my throat, thin strong fingers like iron bands. I drop the candle and it is extinguished. Now I’m on the cold stone floor, the back of my head striking the flags, bouncing a little, but cushioned by my fall of hair. There’s just me and the man who fathered me, frothing at the mouth, spittle striking my face as he tries to throttle me. I try to peel his fingers away but he’s too strong. I can hear him shrieking. It’s a most awful noise. Telling me what I did to him, what I cost him, conflating me with Heloise so it doesn’t matter at all which one he strangles. Black spots at the corners of my eyes, then a great silver flash that takes the priest with it, and I can suddenly breathe.
And the sound of feeding, the shrieks silenced, and I roll my head to the left, see the great wolf worrying at my father’s throat, and I’ve got just enough sense to slide the mourning ring back on my finger. My long hair is brown once more.
I close my eyes for what seems a very long time.
Eli’s hands on my shoulders shake me awake, gently. In the dim light of the last candles I can see he’s tried to wipe away all traces of the priest but there are bloodstains on his shirt, his chest where he’s not closed it again. I look past him at the small ridiculous pile that’s all that remains of he who fathered me, and I feel nothing. This was not what I’d intended. I had not planned any of this – ridiculous when you consider how much else I have planned – but how else would this have ended? A quiet death for him? One not at my hands? Or Eli’s paws and claws?
‘Are you all right, Asher?’ Eli says and it sounds like he’s calling from far away. ‘Did he hurt you?’
He sits me up and I put a hand to the back of my head. No blood, just a slight ache. My throat’s another matter, and it will only get worse. I’ll need to rub calendula into the skin for it will bruise and bruises will require some explanation. High-necked blouses for me for a few days.
‘Did he hurt you, Asher?’ Eli asks again and I can hear that he cares and I wish he wouldn’t.
I nod, croak: ‘But not as much as he would have. Thank you. Why are you here?’
‘I was coming back from the Tarn – had to get a new bridle.’ He looks at the body. No regret on his face. ‘I heard him screaming. Didn’t sound sane.’
‘No. I came to light a candle, offer a prayer. He attacked me.’ I shake my head. ‘I didn’t know he was so…’
Eli looks at me, peers into my face.
‘What?’
He shakes his head. ‘Nothing. I just thought I saw… red hair.’
I laugh. He joins me.
‘What’ll we do with…’ he asks at last.
‘In the crypt below. There are death-beds. He’ll fit neatly in one.’