Winter Rose

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  She got confused quickly by the past, thinking of Corbet, and remembering his grandfather’s face.

  “I remember how the wild roses grew around that hall. Nobody cared for the gardens; he was too mean to keep a gardener, and he had no interest himself. He worked the men in his fields too hard; he never hired as many as he needed. So no one went back for a second season. He made his son work even when he was small. The boy grew up wild and shy, like an animal; he hardly spoke, in the village. Once I saw a bruise like a hand on his cheek. I asked him—we were both children then, and children think the world is their business. Who hit you? I asked. And he got angry—so angry.” She shook her head a little, marvelling at the memory. “He said he had fallen off a ladder. I remember his eyes, that turned so dark when he was angry or frightened. And he was always one or the other, it seemed.”

  “Where was his mother?” I asked.

  “Oh, she came from far away, and died young. I only saw her once. She didn’t seem real to me. Not like us. You know how children see things. Too full of light or dark, things are. She seemed made of lace or wings, nothing real. Not bones and weary skin—nothing that could ever be old.” She paused, her lips twitching, her eyes suddenly too bright. “Nothing that would ache at the turn of the wind, or lose sight of her feet because she’s too stiff to bend.”

  I put my hand on her hand. Lace, her soft skin said to my fingers. Wings. “How did she die?”

  “Who knows, in that house? I saw his eyes, though—we all went to see her buried. He wouldn’t cry. You could see sorrow everywhere in him; he trembled at every wind, every spoken word. But his eyes were fierce as bitter winter night, and he would let no one touch him.”

  “His father?” I said, thinking of someone with Corbet’s face standing beside such a furious and grieving child. His eyes would have been cold, ice over a running stream of secrets.

  “Oh, he wept,” Leta said, surprising me. “In front of us all. With no sound. No movement. The tears ran down his face, and he did not even seem to know what they were…”

  I shivered suddenly. Corbet must have glimpsed, in his father’s eyes, what a terrible, violent, loveless place the old hall had been. But why had he come back at all, I wondered, if he had money and all the freedom in the world? Land, he had said. For the land. But he could have land anywhere. This village, like the hall, echoed with past. He had come to change an echo. Or perhaps I was right: He was cursed to return to the place where he had been cursed.

  Leta drank more tea. Her eyes were drooping; she yawned. She moved more easily, comfrey and willow bark soothing her joints. She held out her cup, for me to take it, I thought, but she wanted more tea. She had not finished with her memories.

  “One night after she was buried, one long summer night, warm like summer never is now, and with more stars than ever you see now, we snuck out of our beds and met on the green, and went secretly to Lynn Hall.”

  “Who?” I asked quickly, greedy for different memories.

  “Crispin’s grandfather Halov, and Anis Turl, and the innkeeper’s girl, who ran away to the city—Marin was her name. She had her eye on young Tearle Lynn.”

  “On Corbet’s father?”

  “Yes. She wanted money, that one; she wouldn’t look at the farmers’ sons. Later she married someone with a ship… I think that was her, who did.”

  “So you all snuck out of your beds and went to Lynn Hall.”

  “Well, you know how children are, about places they’re forbidden to go. Especially where someone has died… I remember the scent of the roses. We could smell them on the sweet air long before we reached the hall. Roses and the smell of new-cut hay. So it must have been that time of the year, the golden side of summer. And there we all were, running barefoot through the fields, thinking of what window we would push our faces against, to see what happened there at night. The place was so big, there were so many windows, the thought of them lit up drew us fluttering across the fields like moths. Chandeliers, Marin promised us. And gold cups. And fireplaces as big as kitchens, guarded by stone lions. We were almost there before we realized it, because the hall was completely dark, and we were looking for lines and tiers of light.

  “It was late, they had gone to bed. But Marin made us circle the hall; she pushed us and whispered, and made more promises, of velvet hangings, and wonderful things to eat, on porcelain dishes, left untasted on a table as long as the village green.

  “Finally we saw one light, in a corner room closest to the wood. It was on the bottom floor. A kitchen, I guessed, or the housekeeper’s room. She was a surly woman, that one. She’d say just what she needed to say in the village, one word at a time, as if her mouth was full of straight pins. She wore black, with a black hat that looked like bat wings. She never spoke to us. She nodded to everyone except the innkeeper. She said ‘Good day’ to him. But never with a smile. Where was I?”

  “You saw one light.”

  “Oh, Yes. So we crept to it, expecting her. We were trying not to giggle, or whisper, but we kept tripping on each other, or stepping on thorns with our bare feet. We kept waiting for her face to appear at the window. A long horse face, she had. Bony and colorless as wax. She left at summer’s end without a word to anyone. We just stopped seeing her after that.”

  Leta fell silent then, gazing into her tea. The expression on her face, I guessed, was much as it had been that night so long ago. “What did you see?” I asked eagerly.

  She drew breath, blinking, astonished still. “Two rooms,” she said. “One had a hanging drawn aside across its entry. We could see a bedpost in the shadows. In the bigger room we saw a single candle, and Tearle’s father sitting next to it, just staring at the empty hearth. The door to the hallway beyond that room was boarded shut. That’s all they lived in. Those two rooms. The rest of the hall was closed off. He must have put the housekeeper in the stable… Rois, you’ve spilled your tea.”

  The cup had overturned; tea flowed onto the saucer and into my lap. I stood up, brushing myself, feeling moth wings, moth feet, fluttering and prickling all over my skin.

  “Dear,” Leta said sleepily.

  “It’s all right. I’m used to being wet.” I took her cup, too, before it slid out of her hand. She looked at me out of round, perplexed eyes.

  “So we never saw a chandelier, and Marin ran away to marry a shipowner. Don’t you think that was strange, Rois? That great beautiful house, and all they ever saw were those two rooms. Don’t you think that was strange?” She lay back, dropped her hand over her eyes. “That poor, poor boy,” I heard her whisper before I left.

  Eight

  And so I went to Lynn Hall at night.

  I could not rest, I could barely eat, thinking of Corbet living like his grandfather’s ghost in those two rooms. Did he know? I wondered, then: How could he not know? Nothing in those coldly beautiful rooms spoke of past by daylight. Were they haunted only at night? I paced, waiting for night. Our father, watching me circle chairs and weave between rooms, lift a curtain to check the color of the dusk, turn away and lift another, asked bluntly, with some humor, and more hope.

  “Are you watching for spring to come? Or Corbet Lynn?”

  I turned to stare at him. Laurel said quickly, shaking a cloth over the table for supper, “Father, really. Do you churn your butter with your feet, too? She’s always this way in autumn. Leave her alone.” She laid napkins. “Corbet is coming tomorrow, not tonight.”

  I stared at her then. “How do you know?”

  “I saw him,” she said calmly.

  “When?”

  “In the village. You were with Leta Gett. He asked me if he could come tomorrow. How is Leta?”

  I twitched at a curtain, looked for chimney smoke above the wood. The sky had turned darker than smoke; there were no stars. It had not yet begun to rain again. “She’s frail,” I said. “But still gossiping.”

  “That’s as good as breathing,” our father said heartily. He hated to hear of illnesses, weaknesses among us.
Perrin tapped on the door then, and came in, smelling of wood smoke and sweet, rain-soaked air.

  He kissed Laurel, and began talking about a cow that had stopped eating. I watched the sky darken, until it was time for supper, and then I listened to the sounds of eating around me—spoons scraping bowls, Laurel’s soft swallows, Perrin’s noisy chewing, our father clearing his throat after every bite, Beda’s heavy tread and breathing and I wondered how I would ever get through the winter.

  It was better, later, when we sat around the fire, and our father’s snoring mingled with the flute. Perrin played and spoke intermittently. Both the music and his voice were gentle. He did not speak of cows, but of the light in Laurel’s hair, and of their childhood memories: how he had first kissed her among the blackberries, how they had first quarrelled in the apple orchard, throwing rotting apples at each other. My eyes dropped; his voice, Laurel’s soft laugh, wove in and out of the fire’s rustling; now and then the flute sang a little, a distant sound, as if someone played it in another room, another time.

  I felt a touch on my shoulder and opened my eyes. Perrin had gone, our father had gone, the fire had dwindled into a glowing shimmer on the hearth.

  “Go to bed, Rois,” Laurel said. “You’re dreaming.”

  I nodded. But I was where I wanted to be now: in the dead of night, and I sat there listening until I heard everyone’s sleeping breaths. Then, barefoot, I crept outside, and made my way by lantern light to Lynn Hall.

  I kept the lantern covered under my cloak until I reached the wood. Then I loosed a thin light to show me what bramble lay under my next step, what tree loomed in my path. The sky was very dark, without stars or even an edge of silver cloud to show where the moon hid. The hall took me by surprise, a wall of stone rising out of the black in front of me. The place was soundless; I saw nothing, I heard nothing. I stepped through a crumbling doorway into a room with no ceiling but the sky. I could feel the moss and broken flagstone under my feet. I let my cloak fall open. Light circled me, revealed jagged walls, window panes of sky. I moved from room to room, smelling the fresh wet beams that so far held up only air. I walked down the length of the hall until I stood at the doorway that Leta Gett had seen. It still sealed the two rooms behind it from the rest of the house, but the wood was newly planed and solid, a wall to keep out winter.

  I could go no farther. Yet I stood there, my lantern raised, listening for voices behind the door, feeling the empty dark at my back, seeing nothing but wood, hearing nothing, as if I were in some timeless pause between a breath taken, a breath loosed.

  I lifted my hand and knocked.

  The door did not so much open as dissolve in front of me. The rooms themselves—walls, ceilings, furniture—seemed as insubstantial as smoke behind Corbet, who stood looking at me, his eyes as expressionless as the moonless sky.

  He held out a hand. “You left something of yours here. You came back to look for it.” It lay in his palm: a drop of blood, bright and gleaming like a jewel. As I stared, his fingers closed over it. “It’s mine, now.”

  I felt a sharp pang, as if his hand had closed around my heart. “Corbet,” I breathed. “What are you? Are you your father’s ghost?”

  “No.” Expression touched his eyes; I saw him shudder. “No. Come in.”

  “No.”

  “You will,” he told me. “You will follow me. You keep trying to find your way past the world. You still see your reflection in water, you still feel the wind rushing past you, leaving you behind. You want to dissolve into light, ride the wild winds. I saw you, that night. You wanted to flow like moonlight out of your own body. You will follow me.”

  “What happened?” I asked, holding fast to sorrow like a blade in my hands. “What happened in those two rooms?”

  “Human things.” He shook his head. “It does not matter.”

  “It matters. You wear your grandfather’s face. Are you your grandfather’s ghost?”

  He made a sound; I saw his face streaked suddenly with fingers of red, as if he had been struck. “No.” He lifted a hand, gripped the misty stone. “Come in and I will tell you.”

  “No.”

  “It’s what you came for,” he reminded me.

  “I know.”

  “You came for truth, but you are too afraid to touch it.”

  “I am afraid of you,” I whispered.

  “Don’t be,” he said. But his cold eyes said: You should be.

  I took a step backward; he reached out, caught my shoulder. “Rois,” he said. “Don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me. Don’t.”

  “Rois.”

  I struggled to open my eyes, feeling black leaves sliding over them, and over my face, my body, as if I pushed through some dark wood before I could wake. Laurel stood over me, one hand on my shoulder, a candle in the other. Only a couple of smoldering flakes remained of the fire.

  “Rois,” Laurel said sleepily. “Go to bed. You’ll be stiff as a chair by morning.”

  I stood up unsteadily, bewildered, wondering if this were just another dream. Don’t, he had said. Rois. I followed Laurel’s candle; a leaf still wet from the wood glowed briefly on the floor in its light, like a footprint from another world.

  When I first saw him the next evening, there was nothing in his eyes that remembered a dream of an open door between us.

  He had ridden through rain, the interminable season between gold leaves and snow. He spoke of the weather, of a stable for his horse that he wanted Crispin’s help to build on the clear days left to us. He had brought wine from the inn; as Beda brought us glasses, he counted them and raised a brow.

  “Where is Perrin?”

  “In his barn with a sick cow,” Laurel said. His eyes questioned her, and she added, “He may come later.” She met his eyes a moment longer, then pulled out a chair noisily from the table. “Sit down.”

  Beda had made a chicken pie, fragrant with tarragon and so heavy that only our father did justice to it, plowing a broad furrow through it that would set him snoring in his chair by the hearth. I couldn’t eat. I was too aware of the movements of Corbet’s hands, the tones in his voice, the candlelight sliding along the folds of his loose shirt, touching his skin. I listened for the voice I had heard in my dream: the voice that had said my name.

  “Rois,” he said, and I started. He was smiling, but I could see no smile in his eyes, only the reflection of fire.

  “What?”

  “You’re very quiet.”

  “It’s the season,” Laurel explained. “She broods when she can’t go roaming in the wood.”

  “But you were out a day or two ago,” he said, and added easily, taking my breath away, “You left something in my house.”

  “You went visiting?” Laurel said. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “I went for a walk.” I had to stop to clear my throat. I could not meet his eyes. “I stopped at the hall. You were not there.”

  Blood, I thought. I left a jewel of blood where I cut myself on the reflection you left in your bright razor.

  “What did you leave there?” Laurel asked curiously. “A few mushrooms? Some late apples?”

  “Rainwater and mud,” our father suggested, with a chuckle, pleased, I could tell, at where my heart had drifted. He poured more wine into my cup, heady and dark as old blood. I sipped it, then raised my eyes finally to meet Corbet’s.

  “What did I leave there?” I asked him. My heart pounded badly, but the wine steadied my voice. “I brought nothing.”

  He smiled again, shifting a little away from the light. “Then I won’t tell you,” he said. “And perhaps you’ll visit me again. I need company. And you must come with her,” he added to Laurel. “You haven’t seen what I’ve done with the house.”

  She laughed, hesitating, I could see; our father reached for his pipe. “Of course they’ll go,” he said. “Laurel has been making enough lace to trim a barn; she needs light before the winter. She’s my practical daughter,” he added fondly. “I forget how she works in this
house to keep it tidy and comfortable: the chairs always where you expect them, and the cushions never frayed, the carpets straight—I don’t know what I’ll do without her, when Perrin takes her away from here.” He glanced at me, teasing, but I didn’t know what he would do, either; I never straightened a carpet.

  “I suppose,” I said doubtfully, “you could hire a maid. Or get married again.”

  “I suppose,” he retorted, “you couldn’t just learn to dust.”

  “There’s Perrin’s sister,” Laurel suggested. “Or Beda.”

  “Me,” Beda said, snorting as she removed what our father had left of the pie. “Marry in order to keep house for someone? Who’s to pay me for that? Now look at your plates—I didn’t bake this to feed to the pigs.”

  “I’ll finish later,” Laurel said dutifully. “With Perrin.”

  We had all shaped a few designs on our plates, even Corbet, who had been working. Beda grumbled off with the remains; we took our wine to the fire and our father lit his pipe.

  “This is pleasant,” he sighed, after a puff or two. And after another puff or two: “But I miss Perrin on the flute.”

  “I can play,” Corbet said. “My mother taught me.” He reached for it, despite Laurel’s protests.

  “No, you must answer questions; you can’t talk with your mouth full of music.”

  “Let me play a little,” he said, raising the silver to his lips. “And then I will answer every question.”

  He played a little. None of us moved, not even my father to lift his pipe. It was a song out of a forgotten kingdom, out of the deep, secret heart of the wood. It burned wild and sweet in my throat, in the back of my eyes. It lured and beckoned; it gave us glimpses of the land beyond the falling leaves, within the well. He blurred into tears and fire, a face of fire and shadow, a gleaming stroke of silver. I wanted to find that place where such music grew as freely as the roses grew here, the place where the winds began, the place the full moon saw within the wood.