The Widow's Fire

by Paul Butler

  And what of me? How does the African feel about robbing this erstwhile hero of his true love? Well may you ask. Thwarted, dear reader; this is how I felt. Even in this place of unnaturally pale, unwashed skin where men and women quote the Bible but hang their fellow Christians to prevent a minor inconvenience to themselves; even here I would have preferred the golden arrow of Cupid to the iron sword of Thanatos.

  And there was something else. I had begun to understand Captain Wentworth. He was like Socrates and me in the first weeks after the reading of our master’s will. He could fathom the ground under his feet no more than Socrates and I could understand the concept of freedom. I had seen this clearly enough in the bewildered fog that followed him around, even before Mrs. Smith pounced. In the Assembly Ballroom he had smiled and nodded vaguely at those around him. There had been about him the sense of a man who distrusted all the physical details at his fingertips — the ladies’ gloves, the fans, the bonnets, the classical architecture. None of it was real to him and so he held everything as distant as he could while remaining cordial. He stood a foot or two behind his Miss Elliot as she introduced him. He looked upon those he met only when not looking would have seemed rude.

  I had no wish to play a part in torturing a fellow ghost, but I knew I must, just as I knew poor Henry had to disinter those in eternal slumber. He was impending doom and I was death, and in some grotesquely impossible way we were both children of our Nyx, our Mrs. Smith, daughter of chaos. None of us had a choice, not even her. I did not know the full details of Mrs. Smith’s plan but could readily guess there would be no rest or relief for Captain Wentworth any time soon.

  It was this dark, rueful mood that brought me to the graveyard just within sight of the abbey spire. I sensed a crisp dawn approaching, perhaps half an hour distant as yet. Perhaps I had come here because of Lucy whose little fists rested on my neck; although he was not buried here, she might feel something of her father’s presence among the dead.

  Or perhaps it was a more general serenity I desired for her. I was quite beyond caring for stone angels and crosses. Indeed, in the size and grandeur of the monuments each family chose to represent their departed I felt an unseemly continuance of the games of rank and superiority even into death. But Lucy, as yet unformed and unsullied by my cynicism, might draw some comfort from the energy of this place. And, sure enough, tendrils of pale mist did rise from the ground like the pure breath of the earth, and the cold stones emanated a kind of peace. The silence was calming.

  But we were not alone. Before one gravestone a mourner crouched low. His attitude was one of private anguish, hat by his side, its rim nestling in the frosty dew. This was Captain Harville, and the gravestone belonged to his sister. I had observed him before several times from a distance. Harville, my brother’s killer, in an attitude of prayer.

  I let my hand slip behind my back and pulled Lucy closer. One thing above all others I found most curious about those of a certain rank: the more callous they are with the people who are unknown to them, the more extraordinarily sensitive they are to their own feelings. And their claim to Christian values never seemed to contradict this strange imbalance. If they were honest about it, if they told us that the true meaning of Christianity was to look after your own, I might have some respect for them. But this was not the case.

  Harville had sensed our presence; I could tell this even before he turned. A crow had twitched in an overhead branch and this was the movement he now followed when his thin face titled in our direction. Although the gravestones seemed to draw the light from the sinking moon, it was still too dark to guess at his expression. He remained crouching, somewhat uncomfortably because of his lameness, and I wondered whether this was some form of self-punishment. Then, planting his stick in the indentation where gravestone met earth, he rose to his feet.

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  I was temporarily at a loss as to how to reply. He stooped again to pick up his hat, disarranging long wisps of hair with the effort.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said as calmly as I could, “but I believe I am as much at liberty as you to go abroad.”

  I had never before spoken with Captain Harville; Lucy had been brought to me by Elsie herself. I’d wondered at her detachment at the time. There in the darkness, beside my hut, she’d spoken only of her master’s will, how it was best “the brother” (meaning me) be left with “the child” (meaning her own daughter), and that she herself was to go to another part of the country and start life anew. “I’ve brought disgrace to my master’s house,” she had said, handing over the squirming bundle as though it were a sack of poisonous snakes. “And they have so much to deal with already with poor Miss Fanny’s sickness.”

  I’d stood in attendance at several dramatic performances in Bath, but never had I heard a declaration sound so much like a prepared speech. It was odd indeed she would rehearse it for my benefit when the detail most pertinent to me, the swift and unjust execution of my brother, Socrates — her lover at least for a time — did not even feature in her summary. My mouth had begun to form eager questions, but she had merely turned and disappeared into the night from whence she came.

  What a lesson it had been! I had supposed the bonds of motherhood superseded all other concerns until I had come across the depth of a white woman’s shame when she has lain with a black man. So Socrates was forsaken by the woman for whom he gave his life. Lucy was to have a dead father and a mother whose whereabouts would be to her forever unknown.

  And, here before me now, replacing his hat and pulling his cane from the earth, was the “master” who had so successfully pulled all our marionette strings. Captain Wentworth’s assertion began to gnaw within me. An honourable man, a kind man, who lied and bribed his way out of embarrassing situations. I could have ignored it. I could have shrunk into the darkness with Lucy on my back and let Harville limp past me happy and secure in whatever pious platitudes he had been lofting into the heavens. I could have done it but for Captain Wentworth’s effrontery at the notion that his friend was anything other than noble. Wentworth had made this impossible, and there was something else. Between them, Harville and his former maid had withheld the information that might one day have allowed Lucy to trace her mother. I knew from the notions of home that burned within me, that a child, no matter his or her age, longs to know about their beginnings. We are all of us in a perpetual search for ourselves.

  Lucy smacked her lips and gave a little snort. Harville moved away from his sister’s grave with a studied air of ignoring us. But his route carried him within a pace’s breadth of us — I even felt the gust of air as he passed. Lucy began to stir, her limbs poking into my back.

  “Captain Harville,” I called.

  He turned abruptly. I realized my voice must have seemed loud to him. There was a lopsided aspect on his face, as though astonishment had frozen while it formed. Was he surprised I recognized him? I strongly suspected he knew who I was. His eyes seemed to avoid the child on my back, the child whose father he had put to death, but he continued to stare at me. I took this as an invitation to proceed.

  “Captain,” I said, “I need to know … I need to know how to reach the maid in your former employ — the maid Elsie.”

  And then the incredible thing happened: His eyes flared, and the arm with the stick made a sudden motion as though he was throwing a stone. The metal base circled comet-like above me and then it struck. The jagged edge sank into my forehead above my left eye. The impact knocked me backwards a pace and when I fully comprehended what had happened I was on one knee, knuckles against the turf, free hand reaching involuntarily behind me, touching the dome of Lucy’s head.

  She was safe but my fall had set her off. Like a trap hitting a dip in the road, she gave a creaky yelp, then took in a long breath — which I hoped in vain might be the end of it — before letting out a wail. Harville was standing right above me now, eyes wild, stick still tight
in his hand. His lips moved over his teeth in the oddest way. I was sure he meant to strike again and this time he really might hit the child so I shimmied backwards through the wet grass, feeling Henry’s coins bulge in my pocket. Harville did not make to follow. Lucy’s one long wail had fallen into stutter of cries, descending as her breath escaped.

  “Are you are a madman?” I hissed from a safer distance. But the Captain’s expression had now changed to a kind of bewilderment. He raised a hand to his face and pressed knuckles into his eyes as though erasing some unacceptable image. Then he turned, shoulders listing like the deck of a sinking ship, and limped off in the direction of his lodgings.

  I got to my feet, warm blood trickling down my face. In the distance, where the graveyard met the road, Harville’s figure, a twitching awkward thing now, disappeared between two trees. I turned to the sister’s grave, its stone pale and solemn in the darkness. I know what these people say about grief — that it overturns the senses, creates violence and confusion in even the gentlest of souls. Harville’s friends would excuse him in a moment; likely they would blame me for arriving at such a time and in such a place as was sure to provoke him. But put the shoe on the other foot, dear reader. If I had swung a stick and drew blood from Harville because I was upset about Socrates, who would excuse me?

  Quite.

  So why should I be consumed by his suffering, or indeed the suffering of any of his kind? Empathy might rise for a while, as it had for Wentworth. But in the end we were too different. The hunter can admire the stag before firing his arrow. He may even see himself in the life he seeks to end. But these moments pass. Who in the kingdom of beasts really cares for any species but their own?

  I turned and tramped home. Lucy would never know the woman who bore her into the world … unless. Unless. The word hung over me like a solitary cloud as we made our way up the incline, avoiding Gay Street lest we come across Harville again. As we reached the Assembly Rooms stables, Lucy’s now-whimpering voice keeping pace with my thoughts, my private cloud seemed to groan, spilling tiny drops of thought.

  Unless — I opened the door to my hut — unless this information could be part of Mrs. Smith’s scheme. Unless, in return for my help, I demand from her not coins, but words: the name of a town, a street, enough information to trace the correct whereabouts of a woman once in the employ of the Harvilles.

  As the door shut behind me, I lit the hanging lamp’s taper. Settling into the straw, I reached behind my back, untying Lucy. I lowered her onto her bed. Eyes closing, thumb coming into her mouth, she ceased to fuss. I patted her head and then lifted my fingertips to feel the blood, now drying, on my face. It would be a delicate negotiation, this was sure. Mrs. Smith liked her campaigns to be focused upon one result. She did not like distractions. And yet Wentworth was so involved with Harville and he was well placed to find out the information I needed. He might even know it already.

  The first rays of morning squinted through the glass, lightening the golden strands of straw in Lucy’s bed. My golden child, I said out loud. No one will keep from you what is yours. And for the moment at least, I believed it.

  9. CAPTAIN WENTWORTH

  I WAS SURPRISED TO FIND HARVILLE’S WIFE up and dressed so early. Despite being at the breakfast table, however, she seemed ill-composed. Her skin was pale and there were shadows under her eyes. When I entered, she had looked up, startled, as though she had been expecting someone else. Her fingers had taken a piece of bread from her plate, but now, distractedly, she dropped it.

  “Good morning, Lydia,” I said, aware that my voice must have betrayed some concern.

  She smiled. “Good morning, Frederick. I see a man happily in love is never late for breakfast.” She picked up her bread again. “You are no doubt keen to see your Anne this morning.”

  “Indeed I am, Lydia.” I lifted some bread from the basket between us and Jenny, the Harville’s parlour maid who had travelled with them, filled my teacup. The steam rose, curling towards me, reminding me that this was an opportunity, the first of many, to introduce the idea of a friend who might soon be among us. “I mean to write some letters this morning, old friends I have quite deserted of late that I wish to ask to Kellynch for the ceremony.”

  With studied carelessness, I took a bite and brought the cup to my lips.

  “I’m sure all your old friends will be delighted for you, Frederick.” She took a sip also and looked at me with some of the old sparkle. But still I had the sense she was troubled; her smile disappeared, and her eyes became odd and nervy as she laid her cup down upon her saucer.

  I could almost have believed that she had somehow heard some advance warning of my troubles, that Mrs. Smith and the people she employed had, by testing the waters, also stirred them up. There was only one option if this was the case. I had to lay claim quickly to the information before the interpretation of others took hold of it entirely.

  “There is one old friend in particular who has been much on my mind.” I felt the sting of heat on my face. This was too much, too clumsily phrased. Why would any friend be “much on my mind” unless there was some special reason for it? But I had none such to hand. “I mean, you might have heard of me talk of Oliver Mason, Captain Oliver Mason?” I coughed and brought a napkin to my mouth.

  She shook her head vaguely. “No Frederick, I haven’t. An old comrade?”

  “Yes, indeed.” I coughed again and felt my lips tightening. “An old and trusted friend. I must, for instance, write to him.”

  She blinked at me curiously as well she might after such an awkward speech. I would have to do better than this from now on. An accumulation of such clumsy mentions of Oliver Mason would raise an alert that something was amiss and the company would watch us together all the more closely. For the moment, however, I was relieved. She had not reacted to the name; whatever was troubling her this morning, it was nothing to do with me.

  “May I ask, Lydia,” I ventured, “if you are quite well?”

  She stared at me for a moment then shook her head as though awaking from a dream. She took up her cup in both hands and gave me a sweet, regretful smile. “It is Richard, Frederick. I am rather worried about his spirits.”

  “Fanny?”

  “Yes, Frederick. I thought being here in Bath so near our dear Fanny would be a comfort to him. But Richard was ever such an attentive and affectionate brother, I believe it reminds him only of his helplessness.” She turned toward the window and the skeletal branches tapping at the pane. “He went out well before dawn this morning and has still not returned.”

  “Perhaps the long walk may help clear his mind, Lydia.”

  “Indeed I hope it might. But you know his nature. He is so used to making the best of things, so desirous of the happiness of others, that I feel his own feelings lie rather like an unguarded fortress, ready to be taken when grief strikes unawares.”

  A sentiment fierce and loyal towards my friend gathered like a wave about to break. I thought of how he had been so unfairly characterized outside Westgate Buildings, and the fury of it prevented me from answering. I merely nodded, half ashamed of the moisture rimming my eyes. Lydia saw this and was touched. In another second, we both turned at the sound of the street door opening.

  Lydia, rising, gave a sigh of relief. “This is surely Richard.” I stood also and followed Mrs. Harville through to the hallway.

  Harville was at the coat stand wiping the metal end of his stick with a handkerchief. Seeing us, he stuffed the linen quickly into his pocket and dropped the stick into the wooden slotted holder. “You are up?” he said. “Both of you.”

  It was an abrupt greeting and I struggled for something companionable to say, but the oddness of his manner had me at a loss. And I had other concerns. Why would a gentleman like Harville, with Jenny and the hotel employees at his disposal, clean his own stick? My eyes settled on the pocket into which the handkerchief had been thrust. It was
a fleeting impression only, but I couldn’t conquer the idea that the cloth had been stained with red.

  “A touch of unpleasantness, Wentworth,” he said as though reading my thoughts.

  “Oh,” I said, unable to think of more.

  He took it to be a question. Removing his hat and placing it on a hook he said, “I am rather ashamed.” He smiled first at Lydia then at me. “I do love dogs but was set upon by one in the Abbey grounds and had to defend myself.”

  “The stick?” I said.

  Lydia gasped.

  Richard nodded, “I had to strike it hard, I’m afraid.”

  “But you are unhurt, my dear?” Lydia fluttered towards him and laid her hand upon his forearm. He patted it indulgently.

  “Quite unhurt, my dear. The dog belonged to a gang of gypsies.”

  “Oh Richard!” Lydia exclaimed. “We should tell the attendant. With gypsies around no one is safe.”

  “They’ll be miles away by now,” he said, smiling. “They ran off when I struck their dog.”

  “You should be careful, my dear.”

  “I am always. You must not worry.” Pulling his wife’s arm under his, Harville escorted her back to the breakfast table. I followed. “I am merely in need of good company over breakfast.”

  Thus returned to his habitual charm and cheerfulness, Harville soothed his wife’s nerves and they had, for the most part, an agreeable breakfast. I watched them as a spirit must watch its living friends and relatives — with fondness and an ache of envy. Dogs and gypsies; if only the problems that besieged me were so simple. The prickle of a specific duty hovered around me, too. I had made a meal of my first mention of Oliver Mason to Lydia. I should take the opportunity to make amends now. I should casually throw in the name again, suggesting to Harville that the two of them, my closest friends, would find much to enjoy in each other’s company. But each time my lips worked themselves up to form the sentiments, the bread seemed to stick to my tongue, delaying me. And I became aware that Lydia, distracted though she had been, would recall how awkward I sounded the first time. In short, I lost courage and abandoned the idea.