The Maker of Swans

by Paraic O’Donnell

  Nazaire comes again. This time, he brings food. He sets a tray on the table before the fireplace and lifts the cover from a soup plate. The smell reaches Clara almost instantly. She turns away again, clutching her stomach to silence it.

  He approaches the bed with the soup. ‘You must eat,’ he says. ‘We brought you here only to demonstrate our convictions to your guardian. We intend to treat you well.’

  It is chicken broth, Clara thinks. There is a delicacy to the aroma too, a thread of fragrance. Tarragon, and sweet bay.

  ‘Come,’ says Nazaire. ‘You do not like me. You think I am not your friend. Perhaps you will come to think differently of me, perhaps not. But I am afraid you must tolerate my presence. It will be me who sees to your needs, while you are here. Come, you must eat.’

  Clara turns slowly and looks up at him. He is elegantly dressed, as always. He has folded a napkin over one arm in a way that reminds her of Eustace. He holds the soup plate on one upturned palm, his arm unfailingly steady. With the other hand, he half-fills a spoon. He dabs its underside on the napkin, then holds the spoon to Clara’s lips.

  ‘You must eat,’ he says.

  The silver handle gleams in his smooth fingers. He was the hidden hand. He was the knife.

  She opens her mouth very slightly. In her chest, there is a choking coil of panic. She tries to slow her breathing. She closes her eyes and feels him rest the warm blade of the spoon on her lower lip, feels the broth spread over her tongue. The spoon is taken away. Clara closes her mouth and opens her eyes.

  Nazaire has withdrawn the spoon and is waiting, alert and patient, for her to swallow. His hands are entirely still. She cannot see even the flicker of his pulse. She takes a sharp breath. With all the force she can summon, she spits the soup at his face.

  It is a thin broth, and only weakly coloured. Most of it, she thinks, has spattered over his collar, though some reaches his ear and hangs from the lobe in a glutinous thread. His stillness is almost undisturbed. Setting the soup on the nightstand, he takes a handkerchief from his pocket and unfolds it. It is starched and spotless, bearing a discreet monogram in one corner. With unhurried care, he blots his skin and clothing. He shows no more agitation than if he had spilled soup over himself.

  When he has cleaned himself, he folds away the handkerchief. He takes up the soup plate again and brings the spoon to her lips.

  ‘Little one,’ he says. ‘You know you must.’

  The next day, Clara eats by herself. When Nazaire brings her soup, accompanied this time by a small piece of bread and butter, she shakes her head and points at the nightstand. He sets the food down and takes a step backwards, watching without comment. Since she cannot hold the plate, she leaves the soup on the nightstand, reaching out with the spoon and lifting each mouthful laboriously to her lips. She is weak still, and her hand trembles. Much of the broth is spilled on the bedclothes, and it takes almost an hour for her to finish. Nazaire does not move or speak until she at last drops the spoon onto the empty plate.

  ‘There,’ he says. ‘It is better for everyone this way. I have no great gifts as a nursemaid.’

  When she has finished, Clara sinks back onto her pillows. Eating unaided has exhausted her, but there is something else. She had forgotten the comfort of rest and food, the simple warmth of well-being.

  ‘You have been well cared for,’ Nazaire says after a moment, ‘by your Eustace.’

  She looks at him warily.

  ‘Crowe is your guardian, yet it is Eustace who seems most attentive to your needs. And there is a fondness between you, is there not?’

  Clara swallows and clutches at the sheets.

  ‘You miss him, no doubt, and you find me a poor substitute. But I will show you, I hope, that he and I are more alike than you think. I have been in service, like him, since I was young. And like him I have devoted myself to a great man; to order, and to duty. I have made sacrifices, just as he has. Perhaps you will come to see our resemblance.’

  She presses her lips together and tugs her sleeve across her eyes.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he says. ‘You feel his absence keenly still, and it was thoughtless of me to mention it. It is enough, for now, that you begin to accommodate yourself to your circumstances. Through that door there you will find a washroom, where you may refresh yourself when your strength returns. When you have recovered sufficiently, there will be other comforts we can provide. A desk, perhaps. Paper and pens.’

  Clara looks up at him, still blinking.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he says. ‘We do not forget how you value such things. And you have questions, perhaps, that you would like to put to us. You will have your chance, and we will answer frankly, within reason.’

  She studies the even contours of his face. He wishes to appear reasonable, and has allowed his expression to soften slightly. When he continues, the softness vanishes. It is smooth and complete, like the erasure of chalk marks.

  ‘You must know, little one, that this is une arme à double tranchant. You know this expression, yes? If you do not behave with courtesy, then there will be difficulties. If you do not accept our hospitality until it is time for you to go home, if you try to return without our leave, then there will be difficulties. Grave difficulties. You understand?’

  Clara glances at him and turns to the window. Above the moors, one of the buzzards is hunting alone.

  ‘Very good,’ says Nazaire. ‘The view is not what you are accustomed to, perhaps. In winter it is not so cheerful. I assure you, though, it is one of our better rooms. There are rooms downstairs with no windows at all. With not even a light to read by.’

  The buzzard idles above something unseen. Tracing a steep but graceful curve, it slips towards the snow.

  The next afternoon, Nazaire brings Clara a lamb chop for lunch. He offers to cut it up for her, but she insists on doing it herself. Straining with her left hand, she presses the knife into the leathery surface of the meat. With no fork to hold the chop steady, she cannot saw with the blade. It is awkward and tedious, but she persists.

  ‘I have been telling Dr Chastern of your progress,’ Nazaire says. ‘He is very pleased. He looks forward to visiting you when you are well.’

  Clara does not look up. She has positioned the chop in the centre of the plate. Her wrist trembles as she bears down on the knife, rocking it slightly to coax apart the fibres of the meat.

  ‘You will be agreeable, I hope,’ he says. ‘As you have been with me. Dr Chastern would be most upset if you were not. He was not pleased when you were injured. He is a man of learning, you see, while I— well, my education has been wanting.’

  She grips the knife in her fist so that she can exert more pressure, but the chop is hardly tender. Whatever his other abilities, Nazaire is an indifferent cook.

  ‘I will tell you a story, little one. Dr Chastern was travelling once in a country that was at war. It was not called a war, but that is what it was; that or something even worse. When he returned to his lodgings, he found the lady of that house dead in her chambers. Her daughter lay beside her, also dead, and on the floor lay a soldier; an irregular, as they are called. A boy stood over him, holding the soldier’s rifle. He was the only one in that room who was still living, this boy, but he was holding the rifle’s bayonet to his chest. When Dr Chastern questioned him, he said that he had killed the soldier. He had killed him to avenge his mother and his sister, who had – I must choose my words carefully, since you are only a child – who had been defiled. He had killed him, and had waited for someone to come so that the truth of what had happened would be known. His mother and sister were gone, the boy said. He had released them from their shame and suffering. Now he too wished to die because the memory of what had been done that day would make his life unendurable.’

  He pauses. He had released them. Clara holds the knife still as she waits for him to continue.

  ‘Do not be alarmed, little one. I will not distress you by saying more about what took place that day. Indeed, I cannot tell you m
ore, because I do not remember. Dr Chastern possesses certain skills, you see, and wished to see the boy freed of his torment. There was a way, he said, to cleanse him of those memories. It was an act of kindness that placed the boy in his debt.’

  The blade screeches across the plate, sending the chop skidding onto the nightstand. Breathing hard, Clara raises her eyes to Nazaire’s face. She tightens her fist around the silver handle. He watches with amusement, making no movement to take the knife.

  ‘Have I not persuaded you, little one? Do you wish to take your own revenge? If so, you must choose your moment more wisely.’ He glances at the lamb chop, which is marked but largely intact. ‘And you will need a sharper knife.’

  He brings the writing table three days later. She wakes to find it positioned at the window, a scuffed and unadorned bureau with an ill-matched chair. Clara pushes herself to a sitting position, wincing at the discomfort in her neck and ribs. She is sore and tender in several places still, but can get out of bed without too much difficulty. Shuffling to the window, she lowers herself carefully into the chair.

  She spreads her fingertips over the surface of the table, startled at how consoling it is. Beneath the thinning varnish, she feels the coarse muscle of the oak, how readily it is warmed by her touch. She began her days once with this small ceremony, all the days she remembers.

  The desk is bare, its shallow drawers empty. Nazaire has left no paper or ink. She is coming to know his ways, his fondness for withholding as he gives. He squanders nothing. With each reward, he reminds her who has granted it, how easily it may be taken away.

  Clara sits calmly at the desk. Her longing to write is deep and mournful, but she is content for now with this much. She looks out over the white and untouched moors, their poor scattering of marks and adumbrations. It is a desolate place, yet it fills her with a strange sense of intimacy. She feels close to herself, to the life that was within her life.

  That too began with a whiteness, with a tremor in the sinuous flux of ink. She feels them even now, those other pulses. They throb beneath her fingertips, somewhere deep in the sinews of the oak, waiting for the emptiness of the page.

  Fifteen

  After Eleanor is gone, the boy’s mother falls silent.

  Even in the first days, when the child has yet to be buried and they are making what small arrangements they can, she speaks only when she must to make her wishes known. She does not reproach the boy’s father for bringing them to this place, where the river rises almost to their door. She does not blame the boy for sleeping at the ferry house, or for the empty bed that might have kept his sister from wandering.

  She gives no opinion of the casket that the boy’s father makes from boat timbers. Some of these have been oiled already, and the air of the tiny parlour where Eleanor is laid out is syrupy with the stench of pine tar. The handful of townspeople who come to see her clutch handkerchiefs to their faces and leave the room almost as soon as they have paid their respects. The boy’s mother stands by the stopped clock on the mantel, making no reply to their expressions of condolence. She meets their eyes and allows her hands to be pressed but looks down again without uttering a word.

  Only on the matter of Eleanor’s grave clothes does the boy’s mother speak forcefully. In this, she will defer to no one and will be kept from no expense. Though the cost is almost a week’s takings, the boy is sent for a bolt of the best linen. It has the simple whiteness of stitchwort, and its weave, when it is laid across the counter, is fine and even. The draper, knowing its purpose, wraps it in black crepe. The boy carries it home with slow reverence, as if it were the body itself.

  From the linen, his mother makes a simple gown. It is long enough, when Eleanor is laid in it, to cover her almost to her toes. It fits loosely, and conceals the skew in her legs, which cannot be made to lie flat. The boy thought to join her fingers upon her chest when he brought her to the ferry house, and about them his mother arranges a small garland of daisies.

  It is while she sees to this, adjusting Eleanor’s cuffs and tucking the stems under the bluish nubs of her fingertips, that his mother makes the only sound of grief the boy has heard. She bends slightly and clutches herself, and the sound that escapes her throat is a clotted gulp, as if something in her chest is torn. She stays a moment longer, her palm pressed against her child’s interlaced knuckles, then stumbles from the room. She shuts herself away until the casket is covered and the undertaker’s carriage is brought to the door. It comes on the morning of the third day, among the first thick gouts of the rain, drawn by a poorly fed mare whose hindquarters are streaked with her own filth.

  Afterwards, the boy and his father keep themselves from the house when they can. They stay late on the river, making crossings even after dusk. When they tie up for the night, the boy’s father makes his way towards the inns on the quays. He has taken to spending his evenings there, though his suspicion of the men of the town has not lessened. Nor has his misfortune done anything to soften his manners. In the mornings, he comes reeking and sullen to the boat, his cheek thickened sometimes by bruises. He drinks alone, the boy suspects, in those places where his money is still taken, and stops only when it runs out.

  His father speaks of Eleanor only once, and even then his meaning is almost hidden. He pauses one evening as he is leaving the ferry house. The boy is at the workbench, cleaning a tarbrush in a pot of spirits, and looks up to see him in the doorway. His father is working at the loop of his purse, which he has just filled, and his face is shaded and wary.

  ‘You will see that the doors are locked?’

  The boy gives a slight nod. ‘I will see to everything.’

  ‘You are a steady lad,’ his father says. ‘It is a comfort, after all that has happened.’

  The boy puts down the brush, wiping the heels of his hands on his apron. ‘I am only waiting,’ he says.

  His father looks down the slip to the boat. ‘It will come to you soon enough,’ he says. ‘The river has wearied me before my time, I think, and you are almost of age.’

  The boy shakes his head. He walks past his father to the slipway.

  ‘I am not waiting for that,’ he says, watching the slow water. The river, in the evening light, is a dull skein of rust. ‘I do not know what I am waiting for.’

  When his father has trudged away, the boy goes back inside. He has not returned to his old bed since the day he found his sister. He sleeps in the ferry house now, and sees his mother only when some necessity brings him to the house. It is he who keeps aside enough of each week’s takings to ensure that she is not left wanting. He climbs to the roof if a slate has been loosened by the weather, or chops the firewood for the range, stacking it neatly against the gable.

  If they sit down to eat, he speaks to her of small and practical matters. She answers his questions briefly and quietly, rarely looking him in the face. When the boy can think of nothing else to say, they eat in silence.

  She brings in no herbs or flowers now, and the kitchen is no longer perfumed with mint and rose petals, with chamomile and sweet bay. The flood that took Eleanor came higher than before, sweeping away even the rose with blush-white blossoms that she brought to the house when they first came. She has planted nothing in its place. She no longer sets foot in the garden.

  The spring comes, or a semblance of it. For a full fortnight, they are visited by a succession of storms, each one seeming to recede before gathering violence out at sea and returning as if some act of retribution had been overlooked. There are days when the boy and his father can make the crossing only once or twice. There are days when they do not dare even to take the boat down the slip.

  At any time, this slackening in their trade would be unwelcome. Now, it threatens to ruin them. Two or three days, the boy thinks, is all that keeps them from the mercy of their creditors. In better times, his father had been more provident. When the boat had first come to him, when he still spoke eagerly of the coming changes in their fortunes; in those days, a portion of every fare
they took was put aside for wintering. It was not that they did not cross at all in the darker months, but what they brought in between November and February could not be depended on to feed a family, still less to keep a ferry boat in trim and tackle.

  Now, his father leaves the ferry house every evening with all of the day’s takings but the handful of coppers the boy has kept back for his mother. Sometimes, when he has spent all he had by ten o’clock, he will come back even for that pittance. The boy bars the doors and waits. If he has had his fill already, he will fall soon enough into a stupor. If not, he will slouch back to the town or give up and go home. He does not demand money from his wife, even on the worst nights. For all that he has turned from his duties, there is that much decency in him still, or there is something in her that forbids it.

  By the time the worst of the weather has passed, the pier has suffered so much damage that they are forced to shorten it by almost a quarter. With the timber they cut from it, they repair what remains. The job is passable, and will see them through to the autumn, but the shorter pier does nothing to ease their lives. The character of the river is changing as the mouth of the estuary widens. The bank they are licensed to put out from is silting up, and it grows harder now with each landing to keep from running aground.

  If any good comes of this, it is that the boy is left more and more to run the boat alone. He is more adept at these short landings now, and has come to know the water better than his father ever did. It means he must do the work of two, poling the boat and navigating the channels, but he likes it better all the same. He steers his own course now, making each correction as soon as he sees cause. No time is lost conferring with a skipper who knows no better – or whose judgement is blunted by last night’s whisky – but who cannot keep from offering some contrary view.