The Winter Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  The sun had started to sink as they'd begun their discussion. When they finished, Wainaina picked up an old tin pie pan and beat it with a stick, signaling to her workers in fields near and far that it was time to go home.

  Sid bid her a good evening and headed for his own house. He was tired. He and Wainaina and the others had spent the day hoeing and weeding, making sure that nothing competed with the precious coffee plants for water and nutrients. They would fuss over them continually now until harvest time, doing everything in their power to ensure a good crop. Sid would be dining alone tonight. Maggie had been invited to supper at the Thompsons'. He had not. Lucy and her mother still weren't speaking to him. Earlier in the day, he'd asked Alice to leave a plate of something cold for him on his own table. He didn't like to eat at Maggie's table when she was not home. As he approached his house, he saw that it was lit up. Dusk was settling. Alice must have left the lantern burning. A nice touch, he thought. Very welcoming. That Alice was a good old girl.

  As he got closer, he saw--to his great surprise--that a brown horse was tethered on the far side of his house. It looked like Ellie, Maggie's mare. Had Maggs arrived home early? And if so, why had she tied Ellie here instead of putting her in the barn?

  He saw then that the horse wasn't Ellie. Ellie was all brown. This horse had a black muzzle and feet. He tried to place it, then realized that the McGregors had a brown mare with black feet. He'd often seen the missus riding out to the plains on it all by herself on a Sunday. He'd hailed her once and asked her why.

  "It's Sunday, Mr. Baxter. I'm going to church."

  "Church? Where, ma'am?"

  She'd made a sweeping gesture, one that encompassed the plains, the sky, and the hills.

  "Right in front of you. Have you ever seen one finer?"

  That was certainly Mrs. McGregor's mare. Sid hurried now, wondering if something was wrong at their farm. He was tired from the long day and not thinking straight. If he had been, he would have remembered that India Lytton was staying with the McGregors while her daughter got her strength back.

  But he didn't remember. Not until he was in his doorway staring at the woman seated at his table. Mrs. McGregor had brown hair. This woman was blond. A few curls had sprung free of her careful twist. This woman was beautiful, too. So damned beautiful. Six years on and she hadn't changed. She was still slender and straight-backed, still lovely. He felt his heart clench in his chest. Six years on, the pain of her betrayal was as fresh as if it had happened yesterday.

  Her eyes were closed behind her eyeglasses. She'd been dozing. They opened now. His footsteps had woken her. He was out of the door and down the steps before she'd turned her head. But it was too late; she was already on her feet.

  "Mr. Baxter! Is that you?" she called from the doorway "Please don't go! I've waited here for hours for you."

  Sid stopped, hands clenched at his side. He did not turn around.

  "I'm sorry if I trespassed. Truly I am. I knocked on Mrs. Carr's door first, then yours. I didn't mean to offend you. I only want to speak to you. My daughter and I are leaving soon and she wanted to give you this. Well, you can't see since you won't turn around, so I'll tell you what it is. It's a photograph of her. She wanted to bring it herself, but she couldn't. She's caught a cold, you see. Only a slight one, but I'm worried that she's still delicate after what she went through so I wouldn't let her come. I have left her at the McGregors', tucked up in bed."

  Sid made no reply. India advanced to the porch.

  "Won't you please forgive me for intruding? It's just that I didn't have anywhere else to wait for you. Couldn't we start again? I'll go first. Hello, Mr. Baxter. How do you do?"

  Sid turned around slowly, ever so slowly. He lifted his eyes to hers and quietly said, "Not so well at the moment. And you, Mrs. Baxter?"

  Chapter 101

  For a few seconds, India was senseless. She could not breathe. She could not feel or hear. She could only see. Sid. Her Sid. Dead all these years, now standing in front of her, silent tears on his cheeks.

  And then her senses came back, flooding her body with such violent intensity that her legs gave way and crumpled on the porch steps and she had to grab the wooden railing to keep herself from falling to the ground.

  Sid stood, hands clenched into fists. He made no move to help her.

  "Damn you!" she cried. "Damn you! Damn you!"

  He stared at her, saying nothing, then he wiped the tears from his face.

  "Freddie said you were dead! The newspapers all said it!"

  "I faked my death. I had to. Your husband was going to hang me."

  "How could you do it, Sid? How could you let me think you were dead? Me?"

  He smiled a hard, bitter smile. "How could you let me think you loved me?"

  "I did love you!"

  "Is that why you married Lytton? Because you loved me?"

  "I had reasons for doing what I did. Reasons you know nothing about."

  "I'm sure you did. Comfort. Money. Safety..."

  India was on her feet in an instant. She walked the few yards that separated them, raised her hand, and slapped him as hard as she could.

  She almost told him then. Almost told him that she married a man she despised and endured his rules, his demands, and his cruelties, all to protect her child. Their child. She almost told him. But she didn't. His anger was too much. It frightened her. So did her own. Instead she turned away from him and strode to her horse. She was in the saddle in an instant, reins in hand.

  "You can't ride now," Sid said. "It's getting dark. It's not safe. Wait until morning."

  "And do what?" she spat. "Spend the night here? With you? I'll take my chances."

  She was about to spur the mare on when Sid said, "You've ruined me by coming here, do you know that? Ruined my life all over again. I'd found a measure of peace here. Some small happiness."

  India shook her head. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. She couldn't believe any of this. She got down from her horse again and strode back to him.

  "I what, Sid? I what? I ruined your life? I ruined your life?" she shouted. "What about my life? I was waiting for you! Not knowing where you were. Not knowing what had happened to you. I found out you were dead on the streets of Whitechapel from newsboys yelling that your body had been found in the Thames. From newsboys!"

  "It wasn't supposed to happen that way. That fast. The body came up again quickly. Too quickly."

  "Oh, well, that's all right, then, isn't it? That explains bloody everything!"

  The look in Sid's eyes, the look of fury and pain, softened at her words and he became uncertain, but his voice did not. "Your grief over me didn't stop you from marrying Freddie, though, did it? How long did you mourn me, India? One day? Two?"

  "I told you I had my reasons for marrying Freddie," she said.

  "Yes, you did. And I told you what they were."

  India backed away from him, wounded to her very soul. "Thank God you did it, you bastard. Thank God you spared me a life with you. With a man as heartless and cruel as you are."

  She climbed back into her saddle. As she did, Sid said, "Don't come back here, India. Keep away from me. Please."

  "Don't worry, Sid. There's no chance of that," India said. She looked down at the reins in her hands, then at him. There were tears on her own cheeks now. "Do you really hate me so much?" she whispered brokenly.

  He shook his head. "No, I don't. I don't hate you at all. That's the whole bloody problem, isn't it? I love you, India. Still."

  Chapter 102

  Seamie stopped dead, placed his hands on his knees, and gasped for breath. He looked around himself frantically, hoping to spot a landmark--

  a familiar boulder, a gnarled tree, anything. His lungs were screaming for air, but he knew he could not rest.

  Willa lay on her back in their tent, thousands of feet above him, semiconscious, her right leg smashed. The falling boulder had knocked her off the couloir. She had fallen a good hundred feet, hitting ha
rd on her right side, then rolling and sliding another twenty before she was able to grasp a jutting rock and stop herself.

  The fall had taken only seconds, yet to Seamie it had seemed as if it would never stop. He remembered shouting to her over and over again. And finally she'd shouted back. She was alive, thank God! He came down fast, slipped, and nearly lost his footing. "Slow down, you idiot!" he yelled at himself, knowing that if he fell, too, there would be no one to help her. No one to help either of them. They would die on the mountain.

  "Jesus Christ, Willa," he said when he got to her. He didn't ask if she was all right. She wasn't. Her face was covered in blood; there were long gashes on her head and hands. But they were nothing compared to her right leg. It lay twisted at a sickening angle to the rest of her body.

  "It's buggered, isn't it?" she said in a ragged voice.

  "It's bad," he said.

  "How bad?"

  He couldn't answer her.

  "Seamie, how bad?"

  "The bones are through the skin."

  She banged her head into the snow. Again and again and again.

  "Stop. Stop it, Willa. You can't come apart on me."

  "I'll never climb again."

  "We're not going to worry about that. Not now. All we're going to worry about now is how to get you off this mountain."

  He knew she couldn't do it by herself, and he was afraid to carry her the rest of the way. They still had to get down the rest of the couloir, over an icy ridge, and down the snowy northwest corrie. What if he slipped?

  Willa still had the rope coiled over her chest. He knew what to do. He quickly dug a seat in the snow at the base of the couloir. Then he tied one end around her waist, the other around his own. His hands were blue again, the rope was icy and wet, and it took him a long time to tie the bowlines.

  "What are you doing?" she'd asked weakly.

  "I'm going to lower you down the couloir."

  "Then what?"

  "I have no idea. I'll work it out when we get there. Let's get you onto your back."

  Willa tried to roll over. The broken bones jostled and ground against themselves. She screamed. Seamie almost lost his nerve, but didn't. He couldn't. He had to bully her or they'd never get down.

  "Come on, Wills," he said, helping her. "Keep going. Scream if you have to, but keep going. That's a girl."

  She did scream, but she got onto her back. He helped her pull her knees up to her chest and hook her hands behind her thighs. He sat in the snow seat he'd dug, braced himself with his feet, and began to let out the rope. The weight of Willa's body took her down the couloir. She screamed again at every rut and bump. The rope ran out before they reached the bottom and he had to shout for her to lower her good leg and dig in with her crampon to keep herself from sliding while he descended to her, then they repeated the whole process. By the time they got to the bottom she was gray with pain.

  From there it only got worse. He thought about leaving her tied to the rope, climbing up the ridge by himself, and then pulling her up after him. She weighed about 125 pounds, though, and he knew there was no way he could pull up that much dead weight at this altitude, so he decided to carry her on his back. He made her clasp her hands together around his neck, then he looped the rope around his shoulders and under her bottom, making a crude sling. Every time he moved, he jostled the break again. Gravity pulled on it. Willa was in agony; he knew she was. Several times he felt her teeth on his back as she bit down to keep from crying out. And once he felt her grip release around his neck and he knew she'd blacked out. He'd had to dig in with his feet, grab for her hands, and shout at her until she'd come around again.

  The effort of climbing a ridge at fifteen thousand feet carrying extra weight was harrowing. Every step took all his strength. He'd had to pause after each one, trying to breathe, trying to shore up his strength, before he could take the next one. When they reached the top, he'd had to sit down for some time before he had the strength to lower her again, this time to the top of the corrie. From there the slopes eased and the snow and ice began to give way to rock. Relieved, he hurried his pace, desperate to get Willa to camp. It was a mistake. He slid in some scree, stumbled, and fell. Willa, still on his back, fell with him, banging down on her broken leg. The pain was so bad, she'd blacked out again. He got up, cursing himself, and half-walked, half-staggered his way back to camp.

  It was nearly evening by the time he got Willa into their tent. He laid her down on a bed, got a fire started, and got busy cleaning her wounds. She had a deep gouge on her brow. Another on her palm. The rest were scrapes. He washed them with melted snow, then poured whisky from a flask they'd packed into the cuts. It stung, he knew it did.

  "How about the leg?" she said, in a voice worn thin by pain.

  "I'm getting to it," Seamie replied. He took a clasp knife from his pocket and cut her trouser leg open. He knew she was watching his face, so he worked to keep it blank. He had to work hard for he had never seen jagged bone ends sticking out of a person before. He didn't know what to do. He thought about trying to set the bones, but it was impossible. He would never be able to set the edges together properly; she needed a surgeon for that. He thought about trying to splint them, but he knew that merely touching the leg would cause her unbearable pain. He finally decided to douse the fracture with whisky.

  "This is going to hurt," he said.

  She nodded, then went rigid as he poured the alcohol into the wound.

  When she could speak again, she said, "Is it hopeless?"

  "I don't know. Perhaps if we could get to a doctor, get it set, you'd have a chance at it healing."

  Willa laughed bitterly. "Mombasa's one hundred and fifty miles away. Nairobi's about the same. I can take my pick, I suppose, since I'll never make it to either."

  "Yes, you will."

  "How, Seamie? It's impossible. I can't walk and you can't carry me. Not all the way to Mombasa."

  "I'm going to go down to the base camp. Get the porters," Seamie said. He'd been formulating this plan all the way down the mountain.

  "They won't come. They're afraid."

  "They will come. I'll offer them all our gear. Compasses, field glasses, tents, the whole lot. They'll take it. I know they will. They can get a fortune for it. And in return I'll get them to fashion a stretcher. We'll put you on it and take turns carrying. When one gets tired, another can relieve him."

  "And you'll walk all the way to Mombasa like that?"

  "No, we'll walk to Voi. If we can just make Voi, we can get on the train there and ride the rest of the way to Mombasa."

  He quickly set about making her a plate of hard cheese and tinned sardines, then filled her canteen with water from the stove and set it by her bed together with a lantern. When he finished, he covered her with both their sleeping bags.

  "I'll be back tomorrow," he said, slinging his own canteen across his chest.

  "Seamie, if something happens..."

  "Nothing is going to happen, Willa. Nothing."

  "But if it does...I just ...I...well, I love you."

  He'd seen the fear in her eyes, though she'd done her best to hide it. He'd knelt beside her, taking her hands in his. "I love you, too. We'll have the rest of our lives to talk about this, I promise you. Do you believe me?"

  "Yes."

  "Good. Rest now. You're going to need all your strength for what's to come."

  She nodded. He kissed her and left. It was already seven o'clock and he was desperate to put as much ground behind him as possible before nightfall. He half walked, half ran down the mountain. The moon was almost full and shone brightly, illuminating his way. He had no pack to weigh him down, no snow or ice to slow his steps. His trip to Antarctica had made a navigator out of him, and he managed to stay on a south-southwest track by the stars alone, stopping only a few times to check his compass.

  Shortly after three o'clock in the morning, after he'd been walking for more than eight hours, he was nearing the place where he thought the base ca
mp should be. He knew it would be quiet because of the hour, but he expected to see the light of a fire, to smell its smoke. He thought he might be greeted by one or two of the porters who'd heard him coming. Tepili and his men slept lightly, always attuned to the sounds of the night.