The Snow Song

by Sally Gardner

‘But what about the priest?’ said the farmer.

  The question surprised the mayor. ‘What about the priest?’ he said.

  ‘He’s as bad as the butcher, they worked together. He’ll come for the money.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed another. ‘He’ll come and he’ll threaten us.’

  ‘That won’t happen,’ said the mayor. ‘Once the butcher has been buried, the priest will leave, and a new priest found.’.

  There was a shout of heartfelt joy.

  The mayor realised how isolated he’d been from this community. He should have stepped in long ago. He felt ashamed to think that he hadn’t had the courage to stop the butcher. He caught sight of his wife in the crowd and thought, I should have had the courage to tell her about the letters. She would have stood up to the butcher. She’s stronger than I am. He looked up as the church bells rang out into the mountain. Freedom, they pealed.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The Letter

  Not long after Edith arrived home, she found the cabinet maker’s bed hadn’t been slept in. All that day a party was out searching for him. When Edith returned in the afternoon she was struck by the stillness of the house, a stillness it had never possessed before, and she knew that the old fool was dead.

  Perhaps that was what had woken her so early. It had nothing do with the butcher. She sat on the verandah steps. The hens already seemed plumper and one had laid an egg as if in gratitude for being rescued.

  Edith hadn’t eaten all day and was thinking about supper when Georgeta came into the yard with a basket of food and wine.

  ‘I heard your father is missing. I’ve brought you this,’ she said. ‘It’s long overdue. I would’ve come sooner if I hadn’t been looking after my son.’

  Edith took the basket into the kitchen, found two glasses and opened the bottle. The day had been a rehearsal for the summer to come and they sat on the verandah as the sun lingered, golden in its warmth.

  ‘I wonder what your grandmother would have made of all this,’ said Georgeta.

  ‘Not much,’ said Edith.

  ‘She would have been very proud of you. It took courage to do what you did.’

  ‘Not as much as it took Una to do what she did.’

  ‘Una will get better in time,’ said Georgeta. ‘But I don’t know about Sorina.’

  ‘How is your son?’ Edith asked.

  ‘He recovered almost the minute he heard the butcher was dead. He confessed he’d lied, that he’d never seen you as one of the bloodless. He told me the butcher had made him say those things. He refuses to tell me more and, if I’m honest, I don’t want to know. But my husband says we must talk and that is rare. Usually it’s he who talks and I who listen.’

  Edith put her feet up on the carved balustrade of the verandah and said,

  ‘I wasn’t related to the woman I called Grandmother.’

  ‘I know,’ said Georgeta. ‘She told me.’

  ‘Did she tell you anything else?’

  ‘That she had a fearful row with the cabinet maker, that she said over her dead body would you marry the butcher.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Edith.

  ‘Before she came here, she lived down the mountain and made her living going from village to village telling stories. In the summer she would travel with the circus. She was very fond of your mother.’

  ‘Did you meet my mother?’

  ‘Yes, once. She was pretty – not dark like you but fair, pale as snow. Your grandmother took your mother in when she left the cabinet maker. She returned to him not out of love but out of guilt. He pleaded with her, promised to be a better man. The spring before you were born, there was talk that he had another woman in a village not far from here and that summer your grandmother took your mother travelling with her. She craved a baby as a starving man wants for food and, when she came back, she was pregnant.’

  ‘Perhaps I did come from the goblin market,’ said Edith.

  ‘It doesn’t matter that your grandmother wasn’t related to you. It was she who brought you up. You are a remarkable woman in no small part due to her. Blood or no blood.’

  Three days later the cabinet maker hadn’t been found and the village elders and the mayor agreed that the search for him should be called off.

  As one of the elders said, ‘The mountain gives back its dead when it’s ready and no amount of looking will change that.’

  Edith was surprised at how little she felt; just an acceptance that the cabinet maker was gone. All she could hope for was that death had met him kindly and she suspected it had.

  In the space between the butcher’s death and his burial, villagers began to talk about him and what he had done to them. They came to Edith’s house to watch Misha make the coffin; the sight of it enough to reassure them the butcher wasn’t coming back.

  ‘The earth won’t weep for his grave,’ said a farmer.

  Two days before the butcher was to be buried the blacksmith came to collect the coffin and bring Flora to see Edith. She was carrying a parcel.

  ‘Better than he deserves,’ said the blacksmith as they loaded the coffin onto the cart.

  Misha went with him to the forge, leaving Flora and Edith sitting outside. Edith lifted her face to the sun.

  ‘This time next week we will be married, and I will see our daughter again,’ said Flora. ‘Oh Edith – this is a new beginning.’

  Edith thought back to last spring, just before she met Demetrius, when she felt it to be full of new beginnings. She enjoyed hearing Flora speak; a tumble of words colliding with one another, accompanied by a bush full of sparrows arguing, each with a chorus for Flora’s happiness.

  ‘This is for you,’ said Flora. ‘I charged the butcher far too much for the wedding gown.’ Edith opened the parcel to find a dress and a long travelling coat. ‘I thought you should come and stay with us. I’ve written down the address. And don’t forget to bring your embroidery.’

  ‘Flora, they are too beautiful. Thank you. But…’

  ‘No buts. Just remember to bring some of your embroidery with you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s all the fashion and rich ladies pay ridiculous money for exceptional needlework.’

  It was late afternoon and Edith had a stew slowly cooking when Misha returned from the forge. He had been to the barber’s on the way back and his winter beard and his long hair were gone. A clean-shaven, handsome young man stood before her.

  ‘I’m going to ask Lena’s mother if we can be married as soon as we have a new priest.’

  ‘Has Lena agreed?’

  ‘She has,’ said Misha, smiling.

  ‘Then ask Lena and her mother to come to supper with us to celebrate.’

  She heard him close the yard gate then went to her father’s room. She’d changed the sheets on the bed and had collected the empty bottles hidden under it when Misha came into the kitchen.

  ‘It’s no good,’ he said, furiously. ‘She called me an… an idiot… said she’d never let her daughter marry the village simpleton.’ He pushed his fists into his eyes and Edith could see the broken child in him again. ‘That’s what I am – that’s what I’ll always be. The dirt from the butcher’s boots.’

  Edith pulled his hands away.

  ‘Misha,’ she said, ‘listen to me. Remember what Demetrius told you – you mustn’t let yourself be defined by the butcher’s word.’

  ‘I might as well have made the coffin for myself.’

  ‘Misha, would you put the dumplings in the stew and lay the table?’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry.’

  She put her arm round him. ‘It was no fool who thought to put the revolver in the butcher’s bedroom. Does Lena think you’re a fool?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So, add the dumplings in five minutes.’

  Lena’s mother opened the door a crack at Edith’s knock. Knowing she would close it again, Edith called, ‘Lena,’ and Lena, who had been in tears at what her mother had said to Misha, rushed down the
stairs, pushed her mother out the way and put her arms round her friend.

  ‘I’ve come to invite you and your mother to supper,’ said Edith.

  ‘Lena’s going nowhere,’ said the widow. ‘She’s not having supper at your house while that lovesick idiot is there.’

  Edith gazed at the widow and took her time. ‘You’ll regret this,’ she said slowly. ‘Your granddaughter will be born, and Lena and her husband won’t want you in their house. They won’t want their beautiful and clever daughter to ever hear that word. You’ll be alone here while your daughter and your son-in-law live a happy and prosperous life. And you’ll have a corrupt butcher to thank for your loneliness.’

  ‘How dare you speak to me like that? You are a disgrace! The way you came back into the village – I saw you – a heathen.’

  ‘Please, Mother,’ said Lena. She took Edith’s arm.

  ‘If you go… I wash my hands of you!’

  But the widow found herself shouting at a closed wooden door.

  ‘That was better than stealing cherries when we were young,’ said Lena, laughing.

  ‘Much, much better,’ said Edith.

  Misha was waiting on the verandah and Edith left them together and went to feed the hens. She thought, I should have said fifteen minutes before he put the dumplings in. Never mind. She gave up worrying about supper and walked down to the stream and sat a while, staring through the orchard at the snow-topped mountain. She had a feeling that Demetrius was near her again.

  Vanda and Una had decided that afternoon to clear out the butcher’s house, something they wanted to do together. Sorina had asked to help and the three of them had built a fire in the yard from all the furniture that had been associated in their minds with the butcher’s mother. Her shawl lay on top of the pile. They set fire to it and watched the flames devour it, hungry for the feast.

  Before they left, Sorina said, ‘There’s something Edith should have.’ Una went with her into the bedroom and from under the bed Sorina pulled a pair of boots. Curled inside one was a letter. ‘They belonged to the shepherd.’

  That night, the moon rose, massive in its roundness, and sat for a moment on top of the church spire.

  No one knew how the blaze started but it was thought that a spark from the fire that Una, Vanda and Sorina had made in the butcher’s yard might have been the cause. It was indeed windy that afternoon. But whatever it was, the butcher’s house was well and truly alight. It stood apart from the other houses so there was no great urgency to put out the flames. Edith saw the sparks rise into the sky and, as Misha and Lena had no interest in anything except each other, she joined the rest of the villagers watching the butcher’s house burn. It was an hypnotic sight and had to it a justice that she hadn’t known was needed before she saw the house in flames.

  Vanda found her in the crowd.

  ‘These were under the butcher’s bed,’ she said, giving her a pair of boots. ‘There’s a letter tucked in one of them.’

  Edith remembered the day she had first seen Demetrius, the boots next to him on the bench outside the cobbler’s. She held them tight to her, too stunned to think what to say.

  The priest watched the fire from a window of his house. It was proof, he was certain, that the butcher would come back as a bloodless one. He had seen him in his nightmares, the wax from a candle dripping onto dead flesh.

  It was nearing midnight when Edith returned home. The house quiet, she put the boots on a chair and took out the letter. It was written in a clear hand. She poured herself a glass of plum brandy and read it.

  My beloved Edith,

  I am not writing this letter to make you sad. I hope we will be laughing together, and you will tell me what foolishness it was to put these words on paper. But if I know you, as I believe I do, you will understand what I am about to say. I have had a premonition. It happened on the day I met the butcher. I thought it was to do with your fate but now I am sure it was a foreshadowing of my own death. My mistake was to imagine the butcher as a pantomime villain. Too late, I realised why you were worried. You are far too intuitive to dismiss him lightly. Never did I imagine he could stop us from being together.

  My love, if I return then tell me I am a fool, but if I don’t, know this: I have never loved anyone as I have you. Because it is night it doesn’t mean I am not here. When the dawn comes, you will see me again. Don’t put me on a pedestal. Don’t make me into a little god of a future we didn’t have. Live your life, relish whatever it might bring you. May it bring you the wisdom to love again, enjoy your beautiful body and may you have many lovers to kiss you and love you in all the ways I cannot.

  My love for you will not be frozen by death; the waiting will not be marked by years. No clock can give me time. I will be here, and that is where you will find me. Be free. I put no chains on you. To truly love is to let go, and by doing so, I know you will return when the winter comes, and the days draw in on a life lived with passion. Do not feel guilty for the footsteps you take without me.

  With my blessing, with all my love, choose life, Edith. Not for both of us – my days are nearly spent – but for yourself. Fill your lungs with mountain air, tell your stories, let them take you on a journey.

  My love, my heart, you are in my soul.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The Crossroads

  Edith couldn’t sleep. She read the letter again and again and knew that the sorrow of losing Demetrius was the sharpest of thorns. His gift to her, his love, was the rose. If it had been she who’d died, she would have wanted the same for him: not to waste his days in dreams of what could never be. She would have wanted him to play his violin, to love again. This letter told her that Demetrius understood her completely. He had seen the wild woman, the traveller within her, long before she had seen it in herself.

  I’m not expecting to find my happiness in marriage and children, she thought. I know that’s not my story. Demetrius gave me a mirror so that I might see the infinite possibilities of love. Perhaps to truly love is to accept there will be change and only through change can love grow.

  In the honeyed dawn of a new day she felt there was hope. His words were freedom. Hadn’t she stared death in the face?

  Now she said aloud, ‘Give me the wisdom to be brave. Don’t let me make the past my cage.’

  She stood, stretched out her arms and knew she was ready to leave the village.

  The coffee was on the stove, the bread in the oven and she went out to feed the hens. She found two eggs as the cock crowed in the new day. As she went back to the house the sky was turning gun-black and fat droplets of rain were falling. When she reached the verandah, the rain was cascading onto the tiles.

  ‘A good morning for the burial,’ said Misha coming out of the bedroom. ‘Lena’s still asleep.’

  Edith shook off the rain and poured the coffee. ‘Do you want an egg?’ she said.

  They ate breakfast together.

  The rain was pouring down and thunder growled its way into the yard.

  ‘You’ll get wet,’ said Edith.

  She found her father’s old umbrella which he’d never used and now would never need. She gave it to Misha and followed him to the gate, her shawl over her head, and watched him carrying an invisible wreath of rage to lay on the butcher’s coffin.

  At the crossroads the blacksmith, huddled under an oilskin, waited in his cart for Misha. In the back, next to the coffin, sat the priest and next to the priest was the priest’s trunk. While they waited the priest tried to negotiate a price with the blacksmith to take him to the main road that led to the town.

  The blacksmith refused. ‘You spread lies about Flora,’ he said simply. ‘Why should I do anything for you?’

  ‘Out of kindness?’ suggested the priest.

  ‘As kindness and cruelty were both the same to you and the butcher, who’s to say I’m not being kind?’

  The priest didn’t say another word.

  The horse stamped, steam coming out of its nostrils. It move
d forward slightly when it saw Misha walking towards them.

  ‘Good morning,’ said the blacksmith and gave Misha a hand up onto the cart.

  They set off to an open field, well away from church, where the butcher’s grave had been dug. Lightning flashed yellow across the grey sky and thunder rolled down from the mountain. A pungent smell of garlic came from the coffin as Misha and the blacksmith lifted it from the cart and slid it into the flooded grave.

  As the priest stood shivering by the grave, the rain stopped and the sun broke through the windmill clouds, sending out sharp rays of sunshine.

  ‘Aren’t you going to pay your respects?’ asked the priest.

  Neither Misha nor the blacksmith said a word. They walked away and waited under a chestnut tree while the priest gave the service alone.

  ‘He put a stake through the butcher’s heart,’ said the blacksmith, rolling his tobacco. ‘And there’s more garlic in that coffin than you’d stuff a goose with.’

  At last the priest stood back and Misha and the blacksmith covered the coffin with earth. They were pressing down the tufts of grass when they heard the distant sound of drums, trumpets and cymbals.

  ‘What’s that?’ said the priest, a look of fear on his face.

  The blacksmith, the tallest of the three, could see the top of a tattered banner winding its way up the path to the village.

  ‘Sounds like the devil’s music,’ said the priest.

  ‘You of all people should know,’ said the blacksmith.

  The banner came into view. It read ‘Zamfir’s Circus’. One more turn in the dirt road and there came a motley collection of people in faded clothes that once had been bright. Some were on horseback, some on foot and one led a bear. They were followed by three lumbering houses on wheels. The procession came to a halt and out of one of the houses stepped a man. He was striking in looks; his hair was dark and tousled, he wore a black frock coat with red and green checked trousers, an embroidered waistcoat and pointed red boots. He was carrying a top hat.