The Exile of Sara Stevenson

by Darci Hannah

  Dreams are horrible things when they go against our innermost wishes, and mine were terribly contrary to my deepest desire. The first time he appeared he was standing on the deck of a ship. He turned to me and smiled. He was so close, only a few feet away, and held out his hand, beckoning to me with his magnetic eyes. Without hesitation I began to walk toward him. I reached out my hand, filling with happiness at the thought of being with him again. Yet before we could touch, a billowing cloud of gray smoke rolled in, obscuring his golden form from my view. My hand frantically searched the acrid smoke, trying to find him. I walked into the cloud myself but could see and feel nothing but air. And when at last the gray fog receded in the same direction and manner from which it had come, all that was left was a pool of blood. I stared at it, dark and sticky on the deck, seeping in the caulked spaces between each plank. The sound of waves lapping against the wooden sides filled my ears along with the gentle groaning and popping of slack lines moving against block and tackle. Except for this all was still and quiet. I knew he was gone. And I half screamed, half cried from the pain of it.

  A voice came, calm though insistent, attempting to pull me to the surface, yet I resisted, yearning to follow Thomas. It came again, urging more fervently, unrelenting in its tone, until at last I was forced to obey. I believe I was still crying when I finally opened my eyes, and when I did I was shocked to find him sitting there.

  If he was angered by my surprise, he didn’t show it. The soft glow from the lamp on the nightstand illuminated his features, revealing an expression contorted by deep concern or, perhaps, pity. Just how long Mr. Campbell had been sitting in my room watching me, I had no notion. “’Tis only a dream, Miss Stevenson,” he offered calmly. “A very frightful dream.” Yet when he bent forward, looking more closely at me, he breathed, “Jesus God, what is it that haunts ye so?”

  I looked at him, not understanding what he was saying. It was then I felt it. Deep within me, from the confines of my budding womb, the baby quickened for the first time, fluttering in my stomach like the wings of a trapped butterfly. I gasped from the feel of it. I had never felt such a thing before, regarding the stigma I carried as something inanimate and isolated from me as a person. But suddenly, in one fleeting moment, everything changed. I reached my hand under the sheets, smoothing it over my thickening belly, straining to detect the little tremor that moved my body so. But I could not feel from the outside what I felt on the inside. And then the thought that I carried this life, this child of Thomas Crichton’s when I saw his death, made the tears keep streaming from my eyes in an unrelenting flow.

  “Hush now, hush now,” Mr. Campbell soothed, noting how I was unraveling right before his eyes and growing a bit suspect. “What is it? Are ye in pain, lass? Where does it hurt?”

  I didn’t know how to answer this, for I was in pain. I was hot, flushed and tormented. My body burned and ached, yet it was my heart breaking that caused my breath to come in gasping half sobs and my fists to clench and unclench the tangled coverlet under which I slept. The physical pain was nothing in comparison. And still too, even more baffling than all these symptoms put together, was the small glimmer of something alive buried deep within me. It was not pain but something quite contrary to it, something I had no name for. Mr. Campbell was staring at me, his eyes looking puzzled and a bit wild. I both nodded and shook my head.

  “I don’t understand. Ye are in pain?” he questioned, eyes narrowed as he attempted to puzzle it out.

  Again I gave an incoherent mumbling gesture.

  “Ye are not in pain? Och! But I dinna understand! What will ye have me do? What can I do? By God, what is it, lass, that makes ye cry out so in the dead of night?”

  I reached up a hand to wipe the tears and sweat from my eyes, fighting to shake the lingering dream and become master over my emotions once more. He didn’t move. He sat very still and kept watching me, studying my face in a disjointed way, his pale eyes hidden in the dark shadow of his brow. And then, with a voice trembling from disuse and lingering sorrow, I answered his question in aught but a whisper: “My baby’s father.”

  He sat quietly processing the words I had spoken. His face grew distant, his focus inward; and then without any warning his hand came forward, reaching for my neck. Still fevered, I flinched but possessed neither the strength nor the will to fight him. His long fingers, rather elegant and fine for a lighthouse keeper, were cool against my hot skin. They came around me, thumb on the opposite side as the deftly probing fingers, and then, gently, he tilted my chin back, exposing the long white column of my throat. Still watching him with my fevered eyes, I swallowed, then waited, almost willing him to continue.

  I had so little to live for. I was completely at his mercy, and this he most certainly knew. His eyes scanned my neck with singular interest as the fingers pressed into my flesh almost painfully. They were moving around, searching for the right spot for which to end my life, and as I waited—my heart thumping ungodly fast, aware of a new life fluttering within me and feeling just a glimmer of remorse for it—his roving fingers stopped. He pulled out a pocket watch, held it under the lamp and continued feeling my pulsating neck. “Dear God,” he uttered softly after some moments had passed. “’Tis as skittish as a hare and as feeble as a wean. Give me your arm.”

  I had no choice; he took it. It was a thing of wonder and horror how swiftly he moved. My arm was pulled flat along my side, propped over a little bowl, palm up, with the sleeve of my nightgown pushed over my elbow. His hand dipped into his pocket and drew forth a little knife, the exact same knife I saw him twirling in the window of the lighthouse. Without another word he gripped my arm, squeezed tightly and pulled the blade across the tender white skin of my forearm. It burned where he cut me, and I flinched, half from the pain, half from the violation of it.

  “There, now,” he said, relaxing his grip while making certain the blood dripped into the bowl. “We’ll just draw off a bit. That should help balance the humors enough to break the fever.”

  “But I’m not out of humor,” I protested weakly, hating the practice of phlebotomy and fighting the urge to pull my arm away.

  “From all my observations, Miss Stevenson, ye are very out of humor.” I was about to protest this offensive statement when I saw the corner of his mouth twitch upward ever so slightly. He found this amusing. Mr. Campbell was baiting me. Fevered as I was, I would not bite. “Be a good lass now and relax. I’ll be back in a moment.” And then he left.

  I had no choice but to lay my head back on my pillow, being too hot and weak to move. And as I felt the blood drain from me, dripping steadily into the little copper bowl, my heart began to slow down as well, beating at something like normal while the fluttering of tiny angel wings inside me also ceased. Mr. Campbell reappeared.

  He took my arm and placed a strip of gauze around it, tying it off in a neat little knot. And then he propped me up on a mound of pillows and insisted I eat some of the broth he had brought with him. “I can manage,” I said, when I saw that he meant to feed me like a child.

  “Aye, perhaps ye can, but I don’t trust ye overmuch. I’ve little reason to do so.”

  “I’m not going to run away,” I replied a bit testily, and made a pathetic grab for the spoon.

  He pushed my arm back to my side, glared at me and retorted, “I don’t expect that ye would. You wouldna make it as far as the door. Now open up.” I had little choice, and so I did, suffering in silence the humiliation of being spoon-fed by a man who despised me.

  “Ye need to eat. Ye need to remain strong. You’ll not get better otherwise,” he advised sternly as he kept the watery broth coming. There was an unnatural tension in the air that arose between us as he diligently worked the liquid into me with the same fortitude he might set to polishing the great lens. There was naught for me to do but sit and obediently open my mouth on cue, accepting the meal I had little stomach for. He was nearly finished with his unsavory task when all of a sudden his gaze dropped to the bowl cradled in h
is hand. His mood changed. He appeared introspective, or, perhaps—dare I think it—embarrassed? But whatever chimerical wind had come over him he felt compelled to ask in tones soft yet probing, “Tell me, your baby’s father … did he … did he assault ye, then?”

  “What?” I blurted, causing the last spoonful of broth to dribble ignominiously down my chin. I wiped it with the sleeve of my nightgown.

  “I asked if he … if he forced himself upon ye?”

  “No!” I said more than a little tersely.

  He looked up. “He did not take advantage of ye … forcing himself upon ye … committing an act of rape?”

  “No!” I was thoroughly indignant at the notion.

  “But I thought …?”

  “Well, as usual, you thought wrong! It was nothing of the kind!”

  This seemed to confuse him and he asked, “Then why is it … why is it ye act so skittish and daft all the time? Your willful disobedience … your hatred of men. Why do ye cry out in the middle of the night? Often when I walk past, I hear ye, I hear ye weeping into your pillow and, by God, it unnerves me.”

  “Well, I’m sorry for it, Mr. Campbell! And I’m sorry too that you have no notion what it’s like to love someone and then realize that the one you love so deeply, so completely, has truly left you! I cry, sir, from the pain of it, and because I’m still waiting for him to come. But I’m afraid he will never come because he doesn’t even know how to find me!” It was said with more heat and passion than I intended.

  This admission startled him and he grew suddenly quiet and morose. His face seemed to darken while his lips pulled taut into a pained sort of grimace. And then he cradled his head in his hands, raking his long fingers through his unruly dark hair.

  He suddenly looked up, his eyes pale and piercing. “Is that why … is that why ye were up in the light-room that day? Ye were looking for the telescope? Were ye looking for him?”

  I was a little riled, perhaps overly defensive of my previous behavior, and quipped, “Why? Does that sound so daft to you … to look for someone in a place as lonely and forlorn as this? Yes, I was trying to reach your telescope. It intrigued me. I thought …” Here I trailed off, believing he really didn’t care what I thought. “I’m sorry,” I added instead. “I’m sorry for breaking one of your ‘lighthouse rules.’ I really didn’t know.”

  He was quiet, watching me as I talked, saying nothing, not even a nod in acknowledgment of my apology. And then, abruptly, he stood to go. “Ye need your rest, Miss Stevenson,” he said coldly as he bent to turn down the lamp. The light played on his features, slowly receding like the setting of the sun, casting the landscape of his strong, rather handsome face into shadow. It was dark again but for the soft glow of the banked fire in the fireplace. “I’ll send Mrs. MacKinnon by in the morning to check on ye. But now, I believe, ’tis time ye went back to sleep.” He picked up the copper bowl containing the blood he had drained from me and carried it to the door. Yet there he paused, stood thinking for a moment and turned around. “If ye like … when you’re feeling better, I can show you how to use the telescope.”

  I propped myself up a little higher and looked at him incredulously. He was silhouetted in the doorway; the dangerous look had left him. His odd pale eyes that could pierce with the points of daggers when they wanted to seemed quiet and distant.

  “But ye must promise not to touch anything, of course, like the great lens or the housings. But if ye are careful, and if ye are still interested, I can take ye to the observation room and ye can have a look.”

  “Really?” I uttered, slightly suspicious of this change in him.

  “Aye, really. Now, good night to ye, Miss Stevenson,” he said, and left the room, still carrying the little basin of my blood, a palpable air of tiredness and defeat lingering about him.

  • • •

  There were indeed many changes that happened as the harshness of winter receded. As I recovered from my illness, trying to regain my strength from the fever that had ravished my body, I was forced to drink many malodorous and putrid infusions and decoctions prepared by Mr. Campbell and served up by Kate, she insisting that they were not poison but medicinal substances. This I doubted, especially since it was Mr. Campbell who prepared them, but I was in no shape to argue and so I drank what I was given, mainly to appease Kate and Robbie, who would not let me out of bed until I complied. And I was growing all the more restless and irritated, confined to my room as I was. There was also an upside to this forced assault and methodical destruction of my taste buds, and that was that Kate’s cooking wasn’t nearly so hard on the palate as it once was. At least my stomach didn’t rebel as often as it had when I first arrived.

  There were other changes too, not just the minor culinary improvements of our cottage, but changes in Mr. Campbell as well. He never came to sit with me again, never attempted to bleed me or probe my neck, but he did look in from time to time, standing at the threshold of my doorway, daring to go no farther. He was fleetingly polite with conversation, asking few questions and answering mine with monosyllabic words. His eyes, those marvels of nature, seemingly pellucid one minute then calculating and cunning the next, were not nearly so harsh and captious. He kept his distance; he kept his anger in check, yet there was an air about him that bordered on desolate. I’d like to say it didn’t bother me, but I found that it did. And the reason for this was that I believed I was the cause of it.

  There was also a change in my body. Where for so long I had been slender and lithe, hardly believing my own words when I proclaimed to my family that I was pregnant, and wishing it more than feeling it, only suspecting it by the skipping of one menstruation cycle, it was indeed true. Once I began to take solid foods again I could feel my stomach thickening with a pleasing roundness. There had been, of course, the word of the examining physician back in Edinburgh, a neighboring country doctor with no ties or knowledge of our family. He had confirmed for my parents their worst fears and preserved me from a loveless marriage. Kate and my mother still implored me to marry the good Mr. Graham straightaway, advising that I beguile him with wedding-night passion and then pass the fruit of another man off as his own. This was downright amoral cuckoldry and they knew it! How good, God-fearing Christian women could think of it was in itself disturbing, but that they should both approach me with the same solution on their own was yet more telling and damning by far of the cunningness within the fairer sex. How often was this particular coup d’état employed? Of course I rejected this notion out of hand for personal reasons, taking the moral high ground, which was rather pathetic coming from a fallen woman. Yet only now was I certain that Thomas’ child lived within me, and its presence—felt in the stillness of the night with heavenly caprice—both thrilled and inspired me. And I longed for its father all the more.

  It was late February, a mild day on the Cape, with a cloudless sky and the sun shining forth with diminished midwinter intensity. The ground, covered by two feet of snow, sparkled like so many diamonds, while great arrows of gannets passed overhead. It was still plenty cold outside, but there was a hint of spring in the air and I chose this day to approach Mr. Campbell with my request. He looked up from his plate of eggs and biscuits, his pale eyes scanning my woolen-frocked form as a stableman might check a mare for soundness. Unable to abide such scrutiny—my pride absolutely forbidding it—I stood where he could better see me, performed a graceful pirouette, then bobbed a courtly curtsey to him. He dropped his fork. Kate giggled.

  “Well, ye look healthy enough,” he finally said. “At least you’ve the strength to mock me. But can ye manage the climb?”

  “Why, of course I can,” I insisted, sitting back down. “And hardly a day could be finer. Besides, I distinctly heard you say that the fishing fleets would be starting out for the Grand Banks very soon now. I wouldn’t want to miss that.”

  “Aye, I spied a few lights last evening from passing ships. The weather was grand enough for it, but it will not last,” added Robbie, reaching fo
r more biscuits, no doubt relishing the change in breakfast fare from the usual watery oat porridge.

  “I said they’d be starting, Miss Stevenson. Besides the navy lads, what you’ll be seeing now is yon gallant adventurer or your more intrepid tradesman, but little else. The real shipping traffic won’t start for a few weeks yet.”

  “Then I’ll be ready,” I stated with conviction. Although Mr. Campbell had some inkling of what drove me to the tower, Kate and Robbie had remained ignorant until that moment. They both looked at me, then at each other. There passed a look between them that went beyond my understanding, and when their eyes came to rest on me again, I got the feeling they were both displeased with my motives.

  It was a peculiar phenomenon that four people could live in such close proximity for nearly as many months and still be largely ignorant of the many secrets we carried. Certainly we had a grasp of one another’s unique personalities and idiosyncrasies—for instance, which of us preferred milk and sugar in our tea, and which of us did not, who enjoyed reading outdated copies of the Edinburgh Review over a shot of whisky by the fire at night, and who preferred to chat about Edinburgh and dredge up old gossip over a cherry cordial. Kate assumed I had forgotten the man I loved and that I was now living peacefully with the foolish choices I had made. Robbie was so fully absorbed in his new role as light-keeper and busy keeping a thumb on his own domestic affairs that he had little time for much else. Yet it was he that knew Mr. Campbell better than any of us, spending hours at a time cooped up with the man, or out hunting together on the parve when time allowed. However, both Robbie and Mr. Campbell were of reticent dispositions and aside from the occasional conversation about lighthouse affairs and small talk over a glass of whisky at night, they were nearly strangers.