Lily (39 page)

The house was silent enough to be empty, but she knew it was not. She stood at the foot of the stairs, gazing up at the dark hallway. Last night, on this spot, Lewis had told her she was too forward with men. A giddy laugh rose in her throat; she had to put her fingers over her mouth to smother it. Was she expected just to go now, with no more words? She said, “Good-bye,” into the echoing emptiness, amazed at how clear and strong her voice sounded, and walked across the hall to the front door.

The wind blew a gust of grit and cinders in her face when she stepped over the threshold. Immediately her gaze fell on a rumpled bundle of cloth at the bottom of the shallow steps. She went closer and saw that it was her old dress, the one she’d worn when she arrived here three weeks ago. She bent and picked it up, and felt her old shoes, hard and lumpy, wrapped inside. Holding the bundle against her breast, she stared up at the flat facade of the house; the black window squares blinked back blind and empty, but she was not deceived: she felt the bright avidity of watchful eyes like sharp, bared teeth. Expressionless, she turned away and began to trudge up the lane, her high-heeled wedding shoes clumsy on the packed dirt, just as the first thudding drops of rain began to fall. Unknowingly, she was setting out toward Dartmoor.

T
HERE IS SOMETHING INIMICAL
about the moor. It does not look habitable, it does not look like the earth. The bogs and bracken and seeping moss lie in a brown, monotonous expanse broken only by stark outcrops of granite called tors. Vipers live in the treeless moorland scrub, but few birds. The stillness is brooding and sullen, the prospect unfriendly even on the brightest days. But usually the moor is shrouded in mist, and then one has an urge to turn back, to get out into more wholesome air. Sometimes, in the middle of Dartmoor, a horse will stand still and sweat with fear.

On a cold September afternoon, when a clammy mist trailed white fingers over the dreary downland, an old woman drove a donkey cart along a trackless path of her own choosing. Her name was Meraud. Beside her on the hard seat sat a huge black dog. “Down now,” said the old woman, and the dog jumped to the ground. The cart carried an extra burden today, and the aged donkey had to strain even on the shallow hills. The dog trotted alongside on the stony wasteland; when they were once again on level terrain, he leapt gracefully back to his seat.

Meraud buttoned the top button of her frock coat. It was a man’s coat, green with age. “Getting cold,” she said, huddling into it, “and that gel haven’t so much as a shawl. Still sleeping, is she?” The dog, Gabriel, shifted his heavy ears at the question. “What were she doing in Bovey Tracy, I wonder. No place for a gel in a silk dress, that’s sure. Damn rascally monkeys—ran when they saw you, didn’t they, Gabe? Hoo hoo.” It wasn’t so much a laugh as a verbal representation of one, as one might say, “bang,” to stand for a pistol shot. “Don’t have to go back there for ages, maybe spring if we’re lucky. Got everything, we did. You fancy the chicken, don’t you?” She shrugged a shoulder toward the small wire cage on the floor of the cart behind her. “Admit it, you sod. But you leave ‘er be, there’s a good boy. You can have the eggs, for all I care; it’s the other I’m wanting. Down again,” she said as the cart started up another rise, and Gabriel jumped down. A little farther on, Meraud began to sing.

The mist thickened and thinned uneasily. In the intervals when it lifted, low-hanging bags of cloud jostled each other, so close to the seepy earth that it seemed an upraised arm could touch them. Lily gazed up at them blankly, imagining they were restless sheep, undecided what to do next. She shifted uncomfortably on a burlap bag full of sharp things; to her right was another large, heavy bag full of something foul-smelling. The voice that had awakened her came again, a high, light quaver on the heavy air: “How sweet my Savior is to me, His arms a refuge dear.” Lily turned her head and stared through a wire mesh into the bright, unblinking beads of a chicken’s eyes. After a moment she levered herself up on one elbow and glanced behind her. The black rump of an enormous dog filled her vision, two feet from her face. She hadn’t noticed the chicken when she’d half crawled, half fallen into the cart, but she remembered the dog. His intimidating presence had saved her from a trickle of jeering urchins in the muddy lane of some no-name village she’d wandered through—how long ago? Undersized, barefoot, and scabby, they’d only insulted her at first, but then their beastly courage had grown and they’d begun to hurl rocks and clods of dirt at her. The black dog had trotted to her side, lifting his heavy flews back from sharp and astonishingly white teeth. Her tormentors had flown away like rumpled birds from a cat.

The thin soprano singing came to a quiet close. Lily heard a movement behind her, and then the voice said, “So, you’re awake. What’s your name?”

Lily twisted around, squinting in the dimness at the bony profile of a woman in a dark coat whose gnarled hands held the leads to the elderly donkey pulling the cart. “Lily Trehearne.” The old woman nodded. After a few silent minutes, Lily ventured, “Where are we going?”

“Gabriel and I are going home.” She turned her head slightly. “I’m called Meraud,” she offered. “Have you got any people, Lily Trehearne?”

“No.”

“Friends?”

“No.”

“What’ll you do, then?”

She shook her head. When she realized the woman wasn’t looking at her any longer, she said, “I don’t know. I can’t think.”

“If the parish constable catches you, he’ll clap you in the workhouse. You got to have a place, you can’t wander.”

Lily lowered her chin to her chest.

“Can you work?”

“Yes, I can work.”

“I need a helper. Couldn’t pay anything, but you’d have food and a roof.”

Lily took a breath. She said, “I’m pregnant.” There was a long, long silence. She sank back down on her shoulders and closed her eyes, thinking of nothing.

“You could stay anyway. I live on the moor. You can help me with my work as long as you’re able.” Lily gazed up at the gray swirl of the sky through tears of thankfulness.

A long time later, the donkey cart lurched to a stop. Lily got down stiffly. The moonless night was pitch-black. “Have a care,” the old lady warned her when Lily, feeling lightheaded, walked straight into some bulky, looming shape in the murk, a tree or a stone of some sort, she supposed. She made out others like it all around her. Meraud took her by the arm and led her through the maze of dark forms to the door of a small cottage. Inside, it seemed colder, damper, and darker than outside. “Can you light a peat fire, Lily?”

“Yes.”

“Here be the hearth at your feet, and there’s the firebox. I’ll come along in soon.”

“But I should help you with your bags of—things.”

“We’ll let ‘em set till morning.”

“The donkey, then—”

“Have done, gel, you’re already dead on your feet. Make up the fire and then hie you to bed.” She ghosted away through the black door before Lily could say thank you.

She’d never laid a peat fire before, had only said she could to please her new benefactor. As her eyes grew used to the dimness, she made out the neat stacks of turf beside the stone hearth. She could see no kindling except the tinder in the tinderbox. Did you just—light it? She stacked the grate with four of the heavy squares, which resembled enormous bars of soap, and after much striking and scraping, succeeded in setting a spark to the linen tinder in the box underneath. Lo! The peat caught like magic, and in no time at all she had a merry fire burning. The smell was strong, though, and quickly pervasive; it reminded her of smoking bacon.

“Hie you to bed,” Meraud had said. The bed must be this rush mat on the earth floor. Oh, but she would be taking
her
bed, then, or half of it anyway; was there nowhere else to sleep? She glanced around the small room—and drew in her breath in a gasp of astonishment. The wall! The one in the back, it was—
shining,
sparkling, glittering, sending back reflections of gold and crimson firelight from a thousand tiny prisms, specks of brightness on every surface of the wall from floor to ceiling. After a full minute of motionless wonder, Lily crept forward until she stood within touching distance of the colorful, blinking panel. Glass, it was, and mirrors. And metal. Small, oddly shaped pieces glued into the plaster, or whatever the wall was made of, to form a fantastic multicolored surface of blinking light.

She whirled at a noise in the door. Meraud came in, carrying the chicken in its coop and a sack over her shoulder. She kept her gaze down and didn’t look up until she’d finished setting things down and storing her supplies on a shelf built into the bottom of a rough table, in what Lily took to be the kitchen area. For the first time, she saw the old woman in relative brightness. She might have been fifty or seventy, tall and angular, loose-jointed, slow-moving. Her face was deeply lined, dark as leather. Her yellow-white hair was cut short and covered her head like a metal cap. She had a witch’s nose, sharp-boned, pointed on the end, and a small, thin-lipped mouth that revealed a number of missing teeth when she smiled. But her brown eyes were gentle as a madonna’s. She glanced up now, and Lily was surprised to read shy anxiety in her expression. With a start, she realized Meraud was waiting for her to say something about the cottage, or more precisely, the wall.

She flung out an arm helplessly. “It’s—
fabulous!”
Meraud’s gap-toothed grin transformed her homely old face. In it Lily imagined she saw a sweet, forgiving nature that would understand and absolve every human folly and frailty. For no reason she could think of, tears sprang to her eyes. “I’m tired,” she muttered, embarrassed, swiping at her cheeks.

“How long since you ate?”

She thought. “The night before last.”

“Set down, lamb. Get dry and clean—there’s water in this pitcher—and get under the covers. I’ll make tea.”

Lily did what she was told, glad to strip out of her damp silk dress and her new underclothes, her sodden shoes and stockings. She washed beside the fire, dried herself with a piece of cotton toweling, and crawled naked between the blankets on the rustling rush mat that Meraud had dragged close to the hearth. She heard scratching outside and watched as the old woman went to the door to let Gabriel in. He gave Lily an impassive stare before going to the fireplace, walking twice around a tight circle, and flopping down with a satisfied moan.

Presently Meraud handed her two mugs of tea and a plate of warm oatcakes, and lowered herself stiffly beside her on the mat. Lily scooted over, giving her the side nearest the flames. “You can’t sleep bare after tonight, you’ll freeze. Can you sew?” While she spoke, she drew her black dress over her head and folded it in a neat square for a pillow. Under it she had on a wool jerkin and pantaloons.

“Yes, I can sew.”

“Good. You can make yourself a nightshirt out o’ some fustian I got in Bovey.”

Lily ducked her head. “You’re so kind to me.”

Meraud slurped noisily at her tea.

“Do you live all alone?”

“Nay, there’s Gabe, and Pater.”

“Pater?”

“The donkey. And now there’s that chicken. What should we call ‘er?” Lily couldn’t think.

“And o’ course I’ve my work.” She reached out to hand Gabriel an oatcake; he chewed on it pensively, watching Lily.

“Have you lived here for a long time?” She felt a yawn rising, and swallowed it down with an effort.

“Middling long.” On the floor at the head of their bed lay a small box heavily encrusted with stones and seashells; from it Meraud removed a short clay pipe and a leather pouch. She still had her gloves on, from which the fingers had been cut off. Watching her fill the pipe, Lily noticed that her bony hands shook slightly. Next she held out a long straw to the turf fire, ignited it, and lit her pipe from it, and presently the smell of tobacco mingled with the rich essence of peat.

Lily put her cheek on her folded hands. She had one more question, but she hesitated to ask it, fearful of offending Meraud. “Are … have you … do you ever get lonely?”

The old woman turned her head to look at her. Her face was in deep shadow, and Lily could see only two pinpricks of reflected light where her eyes were. But even in the darkness, she thought Meraud looked sad. “Lonely,” she repeated in her high, sweet voice. “But how could I be,” she asked gently, “when I’m never alone?” She reached out and stroked Lily’s cheek, her rough fingers light and caressing. “Go to sleep, lamb.”

Lily closed her eyes. She drifted off to sleep listening to Meraud’s soft, raspy soprano, singing, “He walketh with me by a field of green, and He holdeth my trembling hand.”

She was alone when she awoke. Thoughts of Devon crowded her mind—she must have been dreaming of him; but the images had fragmented past memory, and for that she was glad. She sat up and was startled anew by the gaudy spectacle of the cottage’s far wall. She saw a vague but gay reflection of her naked self at the bottom, lit from the remnants of watery sunshine streaming in through the half-open door, and the incongruous sight almost made her smile. She pulled her clothes on quickly and stepped outside.

And stopped dead. Less than eight feet away stood a giant. Every muscle in her body tensed, poised for flight; she opened her mouth to scream. An instant later she saw that it wasn’t real—or not animate, rather, for it was remarkably real. Not human, exactly, nor precisely animal. Really, it was more like a partly human vegetable. She went nearer, and realized with a profound start that this green vegetable-man was by no means alone, that there were others—
dozens
of others—standing around in the yard with him. Some were like the vegetable-man, although in different postures, but there were also owls and turtles, big-breasted women, cats and rabbits and fish, giant balls, weird totems, monoliths, and countless other fantastical shapes and forms whose identities could be known only to the one who had made them. Meraud?

Studying the vegetable giant—which was eight feet tall; Meraud must have had to stand on a table, or maybe the donkey cart, to fashion his head—Lily saw that he was made out of earth, predominantly, and that he was still growing, as it were. Sprigs of greenery and tussocks of reedy grass grew out of him in random unlikely places, accounting for his inimitable look of edibility. He had no face, and yet undeniably he had an expression. But Lily couldn’t put it into words, and she suspected that her perception of it would change with her mood. For now, he struck her as whimsical, but at another time she thought he might frighten her.