BONE HOUSE (17 page)

“When I did I saw that he was partially unclothed. He’d taken off his doublet and all that remained were his shirt and breeches. That is when I saw the knife. It was small and silver with a pearl handle, a gentleman’s knife, but I could see the blade hanging open by his side. He took a step toward me and I remember thinking that I had nowhere to run, for it was the mare behind me and him in front. I hesitated and he took another step and the mare startled. She jumped and kicked at me and I was knocked forward by her feet. She’d kicked the air out from my chest and I fell upon the ground not two steps from where he stood. He waited until I sat up, then he grabbed my arm and dragged me to the stall opposite. I struggled at first and he held the knife up to my face and said that he would cut me. I could smell the stench of liquor on him, so I kept my place. But he would not be satisfied, could not do at first . . . what needed to be done. This made him even more angry, and he hit me with his fist several times about the face and body. And then he held the knife and forced me to . . . revive him . . . until he was able to finish.” My mother pauses then, her chest heaving from the effort of the memory, her eyes filled with pain. I place a
hand upon her arm and she flinches without even realizing. A length, she continues.

“The mare was our witness. I stared over his shoulder into her eyes and wished that I had chosen her instead. Afterward I began to cry, and once again he grew angry. He ordered me to stop but I could not and then he drew the knife again and said that he would cut me if I could not be silent. Just then there was a noise in the yard and when I screamed he took the knife and slashed me here. The door to the stable opened for a moment. I looked but could see no one, for I was on the floor. But he could see. He screamed at them to leave us, and then I heard the footsteps of a child run away across the yard.

“He left me then, cursing the child. There was much blood upon the floor from the wound and the smell of it all around. The mare stood watching me, and suddenly she was calm. It was then I saw the blood upon her chest, for he had cut us both. I waited there with her until darkness fell. By then the blood had stopped and I was able to walk home, where I found my father unconscious on the floor from too much drink. I dressed the wound as best I could, and waited for my mother to return.”

“She came at dawn the following morning, tired and upset because the baby was born still after more than two days of labor. My father woke and was still mean with drink. There was so much desolation in the house. All that we had worked and saved for had been lost. Or so it seemed that morning.” She shakes her head and stops talking.

“Did you tell her?” I ask quietly.

She lifts her head to look at me. “I found that I could not,” she says. “I caught a fever and spent some days in bed. By the time I had recovered, the wound was nearly healed, though the scar remained. My mother did not see it until many months later, long after I fell pregnant. By then she did not want to ask. By the time you were born, my father had run off and drunk himself to
death. My mother died of smallpox the following spring. It was a miracle that you and I were spared.”

I stare ahead: cannot picture the young woman in the tale, cannot fathom that it is my mother, nor that I myself have played a central role. But most of all, it is the idea of my father that I cannot stomach. And the terrible violence from whence I came. Something rises up in me: the need to purge myself of the story seeded deep within. But my mother begins anew, and I raise my head to listen.

“When you first went to work at the Great House, I felt some fear. As if the house itself was partly responsible for what had happened. But I told myself that he was dead, and that your mistress seemed a decent and charitable woman. I had seen her many times about the village, and though we’d never met, I had a sense that she too had suffered at his hands. And the child, the boy: his tragedy was clear enough for all to see. Somehow I thought that we were joined to them by suffering, and though I could not bring myself to enter the Great House, it seemed both right and natural for you to be under its roof.”

She looks at me for confirmation of this choice, or perhaps for absolution, but I find that I am too stunned to offer it.

“Why did you not tell me earlier?” I ask at length.

“What purpose would it have served?” she says. Perhaps she is right. Some truths are only agents of suffering.

And yet I had a right to know. For I am like the scar upon her belly: we are what remains.

We sit in silence, trussed in memory, until darkness falls. And by the end of day a curious thing occurs: our silence forms a kind of harmony. It is the first time I have felt anything like companionship with my mother.

I leave her finally and return to the Great House, for there is nowhere else to go, and it seems as if the walls themselves exert
some power over me, pull me back within their confines. I have forgotten entirely about my mistress in the interim, and when I enter through the kitchen, Cook looks at me a little strangely, as if something about my person has altered.

“She asked for you,” she says, nodding upstairs. I stare at her, do not reply. “I told her your mother was in need,” she adds.

“It was the truth,” I say without explaining further. I turn and leave the kitchen, make my way toward the great hall and its portrait gallery. It is there I find him, and he is waiting for me. The portrait seems almost alive: his eyes are full of venom and they lock me in their gaze. Perhaps my mother is wrong—perhaps I do not belong beneath his roof. But the portrait holds me frozen to the spot: I stand for several minutes until I hear a noise behind me. I tear my eyes from those up on the wall and turn to see the painter at the end of the gallery. He watches me intently, and the look upon his face is uncomprehending.

“Are you all right?” he asks, taking a step forward.

I shake my head and push past him, run up the stairs to the haven of my room, where I collapse into sleep.

But I cannot stop him from my dreams. He comes to me just as he is within the Great House portrait: a man of forty-odd years, tall, dark-complected, stern of visage. In my dream he is perched upon the giant mare, clutching a bullwhip tightly in his hand. And then I see that she is drenched in blood. It oozes through her chestnut coat as if through a carpet, and the foam flies about her mouth. Her urges her forward and she takes a step, then falters, her long legs trembling. He begins to beat her savagely with the whip, and she meets my gaze for one brief moment, then collapses under his weight, the whites of her eyes glistening. He rolls free from her and with one swift movement draws the pearl-handled knife and slits her belly lengthwise like a vast ripe fruit. The skin of her belly opens and out tumbles the boy, the crooked boy, fully clothed and blinking
back his fear. His father raises the bullwhip and the boy stumbles to his feet and runs away, leaving his father shouting obscenities in his wake. I turn and watch the boy disappear around the corner of the yard, and when I turn back to the master his demon eyes glow red. He sees me now, raises the whip in my direction, but when I try to run I find that I am frozen to the spot. The mare’s blood runs in rivers across the soil, and soon it surrounds me like the tide. I glance down at my feet and they are awash with her suffering.

I
wake uneasily, with a strong sense that I must act quickly before my mother’s fate is wrenched from our hands. The other servants are already huddled over their bread and prayers when I descend. I pause just outside the great hall and listen to the low but steady murmur of voices and the occasional peal of laughter. When I enter, silence falls over them and a row of inquiring eyes greets me. I think of the scar upon my mother’s belly and wonder whether the women have maintained their silence. If so, it is only a matter of time, for the devil’s teat is too powerful a secret to lay buried for long. I do not sit with them, but cross directly to the kitchen, where I find Cook already with her hands deep inside a pullet. She raises her head and her eyes flood with concern.

“How goes your mother?” she asks tentatively.

“As well as one might expect,” I reply. She shakes her head and sucks in air through her teeth, then slowly extracts her hands from the pullet, her fists clutching entrails. In a flash I see the image from my dream: that of the crooked boy spilling forth from the riven belly of the mare. And all at once I know what I must do.

My master is an early riser, and I am not surprised to find him already seated at his desk in the library. As I enter the room it strikes me that perhaps he has remained rooted there throughout the night, for it is clear from his demeanor that sleep has
barely visited him these past few days. He reminds me of Long Boy, for his eyes hold the same restless look about them. My unannounced visits no longer take him by surprise, and I do not feel trepidation in his presence, only urgency, as if the burden of my mother’s story should not be borne by me alone.

I speak slowly, cautiously, choosing my words with precision. I tell the tale in its entirety, just as it was told to me, and as I do, am taken aback by the pleasure I feel to see the look upon his face. For he is truly horrified, just as I knew he would be. Indeed, his embarrassment is so acute that I can nearly touch it: his crooked spine seems to contort with shame as I speak, so much so that as I near the end of the tale he is bent so far to one side that his face nearly rests upon the desk. It is as if all the sins of his father have somehow lodged themselves within his very bones. When I finish there is a long silence during which the only sounds are that of the timepiece ticking in the corner and the rise and fall of his own labored breath. At length he straightens, unfolding himself as best he can, and looks at me.

“I was that child,” he says quietly. He takes a deep breath before continuing. “And the image of my father . . . drunken, half-clothed, a bloodstained knife within his hand, has never left me. I did not see the woman, your mother, though I heard her screams. They too have stayed with me . . . it is not the sort of thing a child easily forgets.” He pauses then, his eyes brimming with pain, then clears his throat.

“My father hated me,” he says in flattened tones. “I suppose my . . . infirmity was too great a disappointment. Or perhaps I was simply made to pay for his mistakes. Sometimes I think my whole life has been lived entirely in atonement for his own. Does that sound self-pitying?” He looks at me and I slowly shake my head.

“At any rate, when he died I felt relief . . . though little else had changed. At least I no longer had the specter of his anger to confront.” He gives me a small half-smile. “Only its memory.”

He looks away then, lost in that other time. I consider whether I should reveal the final chapter of my tale. My mother’s voice comes to me: what purpose would it serve? But something propels me forward, like a wave sweeping across the shore.

“My mother fell pregnant afterward,” I say. “She never married. There were no other men . . . neither before, nor after,” I add, lest my meaning be unclear. He stares at me, his eyes widening with realization.

“I see,” he says finally.

“You must help us,” I continue. “You must help
her
.”

“Yes,” he whispers. “Yes, of course.”

“You must go at once to the magistrate. And you must tell him what you saw,” I say.

His face fills with confusion. “But I did not see him cut her. Indeed, I did not see
her
at all. I saw only him . . . and the blood upon the knife.”

I trap his gaze firmly in my own. “Then you must lie,” I say.

He nods then, slowly.

And then, in minute detail, I describe the scar and its location.

I leave him stunned, and go directly to my mistress. As I enter her bedchamber I can think of nothing other than her husband, my father. The knowledge lies deep within me, like a coiled snake. If she suffered under him, then she has cloaked it well, for nothing in her passing references has ever led me to suspect the depth of his sins. Her comments were disguised by propriety and a thinly veiled ambivalence. Perhaps she closed her eyes to his brutality. Perhaps he kept it from her—but this seems unlikely, as she is shrewd and well aware. It makes her somehow tragic in my eyes. Almost more so than my mother, for though my mother was a victim, she was not complicit in her own undoing.

My mistress sleeps when I arrive, the skin upon her cheeks like oiled paper. I rearrange the bedclothes and she stirs, opening her eyes. She blinks repeatedly, endeavoring to focus her gaze, but
in the end she appears to fail, for she rolls over to one side with a sigh and closes them anew. I wait a few moments, until her breathing is more regular, than quietly slip away. I do not think that she has seen me: her servant, the daughter of her husband.

I hurry to my mother’s cottage, and find her busy washing wool. At least her hands are occupied, a sign that her spirits have improved. She greets me with relief and appears almost grateful for my visit, though she wears her gratitude uneasily, like an ill-fitting garment.

“Have you seen the magistrate?” I ask at once.

She shakes her head. “I have heard nothing,” she says.

“You have not been accused?”

“Not to my face.”

“Well, that is something, at least,” I reply. She lifts the wool out of the basin and wrings the water from it with both hands. I watch as she squeezes out the last remaining drops.

“I have been to see my master,” I say quietly. She pauses, her hands in midair, and raises her head to look at me, the newly washed wool hanging limply from her fingers. “He was the boy that day,” I say.

“I have always known as much,” she replies. Without thinking, she drops the wool once again into the water.

“He will intervene on your behalf,” I say. “He will tell them what he saw that day: the truth about the scar.”

She looks down at the cloudy water in the basin, the wool floating freely like an island. Instinctively her arms move around to clutch her sides in a protective embrace. I read her thoughts in an instant: it is all too public, this airing of her past. Even worse than yesterday’s search, for that was between women, behind closed doors. But the idea of two strange men discussing what befell her at the hands of a third: this she cannot bear.

I lay a hand upon her shoulder. “It must be done,” I say gently. She nods, just barely. I remove the wool once again from the
water and wring it tightly in my hands. Even with my master’s help we cannot guarantee her safety. The only thing that will truly change their minds is the discovery of the fetus. But that remains a riddle none of us can solve.

At length my mother takes the wool from my hands and methodically hangs it out over a wooden frame by the fire.

“How is the boy?” she asks finally.

“The fever is gone,” I say hesitantly. “But he is somehow altered.”

“She feared for him,” my mother says slowly.

“How?” I ask.

“She told me once, not long ago . . . that it was ill-judged of her to raise a child in the constant company of strangers.” My mother looks at me, her meaning evident. When he was young, Long Boy remained behind a bed curtain when his mother entertained. Later, when he was old enough, he was sent outside, though often I’d see him crouching close behind her cottage, as if he could not bear the separation. In truth, such was her calm assurance and easy manner, that no one gave a second thought to the propriety of his presence. He was like an extra limb, almost a physical extension of herself. But now that she was gone, it seemed as if the life-source had been wrenched from him.

“It did not help that he was so unlike the others of his age,” says my mother, referring to his size. I had never seen him play with other children: he looked a giant in their presence. Like my master, his body was a cage, isolating him from others. It stood in sharp contrast to that of his mother: for hers was like a fountain of abundance, where all and sundry could come and replenish themselves, drink deeply of her generous spirit.

“Perhaps when he reaches manhood he will be more settled,” ventures my mother. She looks at me and our eyes meet in a frown.

For she does not believe this, and neither do I.

*        *        *

I take him bread that she has baked, and when I place it in his hands, he holds it gingerly, staring down into the deep brown crust as if it will contain her likeness. He raises his head and looks at me expectantly.

“Is she still tired?” he asks. I nod.

“She needs to rest,” I say. “But when she has regained her strength, she will return.” He frowns, looks down again at the bread.

“Your friend was here,” he says then. I stare at him blankly. “He left me that,” he says, nodding toward the table. I cross over, see the charcoal sketch upon the table for the first time. It is of the boy, seated up in bed, the same look of turmoil in his eyes. I hold the paper and my hands tremble slightly. I turn to Anne Wycombe.

“He was here?” I ask. She hesitates, then nods.

“Yesterday,” she says.

“But . . . why?” I ask.

“To see the boy,” she answers.

“He asked to draw my picture,” says Long Boy proudly. “It is very like, is it not?” I cross over to his side and together we study the drawing. Long Boy reaches out and fingers it, clearly entranced by his own image.

“Yes,” I say slowly.

“He said he was a friend of yours,” says Long Boy. I look at him, feel the anger rise within me.

“He has been hired by my master,” I reply. This seems to satisfy Long Boy, for he nods, then bites off a hunk of my mother’s bread.

But it does not satisfy me, for I do not trust the painter’s motives. “You must be wary of such gifts,” I say, echoing my mother’s words.

“It was not a gift,” says Long Boy. “He called it an exchange.”

I look at him puzzled, and then it dawns on me. “You gave him the book.”

Long Boy nods and his eyes color anxiously at the tone of my
voice. “He said he would return it,” says Long Boy. “He will, won’t he?”

I leave him then, clutching my fury like a tightly wrapped parcel. I have hardly said two words to him these past few days, yet the anger has not lessened over time. His interest in her now seems like an act of trespassing: he has no right to be here and even less claim upon her than the others, for it seems to me that the woman he knew was not the same as the one who lived within our midst. If only he would leave: take his charcoal and his sketches and his disquieting vision with him.

When I reach the Great House, I go at once to the tower, can think of nothing else but the need to retrieve the diary and tell him he must go. My heart races as I climb the stairs and by the time I reach his room, my chest is heaving with rage. I stop sharply at the door, for it stands slightly ajar, and I struggle to regain my composure, for I have no desire to make a fool of myself in front of him. But all is silent within: I hear only the sound of my own breath. Instead of knocking, I raise a hand and ease the door open slightly. At once I see his room is empty, and I enter quietly, like a thief, closing the door behind me.

My first thought is that he has already left the village, and I feel a stab of disappointment until I see that this is not the case, as the room still holds his things. The bed is made up tidily and his few belongings are stowed neatly to one side, almost as if he were expecting someone. His paints and canvasses are stacked upon a table in the corner of the room, together with his papers and sketches. I cross over to them, wonder what, if any, progress he has made these past few days. But what I see atop the pile is not her face, but my own, staring out at me almost accusingly.

I step forward and finger the edge of the paper. It is a charcoal sketch of my upper body, and the look upon my face is one of anger: it is precisely, disconcertingly, the look I must have worn
when I climbed the stairs only moments ago. The eyes are dark and opened wide with anger, the mouth is closed, lips pressed tightly together, and the brows are knit together in a furrowed frown. But what strikes me most about the woman in the portrait, much more than her apparent state of high emotion, is her beauty. For despite my expression, he has made me striking. And although the face is undoubtedly my own, the beauty I do not recognize. I have never seen myself in such a light; nor has anyone else, to my knowledge. I stare at the sketch, wondering what exactly he has done to render such a transformation: which parts of me he has altered to my benefit. Slowly I turn round and find my reflection in the great gilded mirror that hangs opposite where I stand. And there, framed in the glass, is the woman of the portrait. I stand watching her, eyes wide, and the anger falls away from me like sheets of ice. I edge closer to the mirror, peer intently at myself, for I have never met the woman that he sees.