by Ari Berk
“Well,” Silas said, laughing uncomfortably, “I think so. I am talking to you.”
“Silas, for all you know, you are talking to some part of yourself. What if everything and everyone in this house were merely a portion of your own mind given shape and voice and presence?”
Silas didn’t like the way the conversation was turning. The more he considered Maud’s words, the more schizophrenic he felt.
“How can that be? I don’t know what you know, and you’ve told me lots of things I know nothing about.”
“How do you know you don’t know them?”
“I—I just know.”
“Well, then! Silas, I’m not saying I am right about any of this.”
“Do you mean my being here is all an accident? Just happenstance?”
“No. Because I called you here.”
“You called me?”
Maud quickly corrected herself. “I mean we called you here, the family called you so that you might be Janus.”
“I think we both know there is more to it than that now,” said Silas, hoping to draw her out.
“Silas, perhaps I will just leave it at this: We are who we were. You carry this house, and indeed, the entire family, in your blood. You are here because you are an Umber, and all Umbers find their way to this house, eventually. Family does not end. It endures. Through life, beyond death. We are all here now together, for good or ill. The world outside is changing, winding down to its inevitable end. Yet, this house remains, a bulwark against time. Such places endure because they are remembered, in the blood and in the imaginations of their dependents. You carry this house in your blood and in your name. So here we are.”
Silas looked up at Maud and smiled, though he did so halfheartedly. He could feel the sincerity of her words. The Undertaking every day confirmed it. Yet that didn’t mean everyone he was related to was good, or didn’t have their own agendas, which he knew, just knew, Maud did.
Maud looked away from Silas and out the window over the estate, saying, “I don’t know who this girl is you’ve let out of the catacombs. But, I know you can find her name and help her. I know this because I know something about you. You were a lost child, Silas. You have never been at peace in the world. You wander from place to place, settling the accounts of others, and only recently have you found your own home. That home comes from helping those who are, like you, lost. And because of your youth, you are especially predisposed to find what you are yourself. Lost children are your speciality.” As she as spoke, her face hardened. A desperate gleam shone from her face, like the flash of ember before it either leaps again to flame or goes out.
Silas had not forgotten the Bowers of the Night Herons, could never forget the ghosts of the playground. Maud’s words were true and he knew it, and he was beginning to believe she might even know something about his own past experiences. Yet her words came so easily, as though she was speaking a well-practiced script. A daily prayer. She’d been waiting to say these words since he arrived at Arvale. Silas also suspected she knew more about the anonymous ghost than she was letting on.
“Maud, if this nameless spirit is an actual child of this family, a lost child, where do you think I should begin to look to find her name?”
Maud continued to gaze absently out the window, her voice became low, and she put one hand on the stone casement to steady herself. “Silas, you are the expert on such matters, not I.” She put an arm up to cover her eyes as if she were planning to weep. “Indeed, I lost a child once, and the topic is very hurtful to me.”
Her voice wavered, yet her tone hinted at her anxiousness to keep speaking. She was purposefully trying to draw him in.
“I’m so sorry, Aunt Maud,” Silas said, going along. He was beginning to guess what she wanted from him. “Where is your child now?”
“Limbo,” she said in a whisper. “The Limbo of the Innocents.”
“But isn’t this house a kind of limbo? Is your child lost somewhere in this house?”
“This house shares many qualities with Limbo. But it is not the Limbo, the one I learned about in life. That is a very particular place where children go. Or, rather, where they once went. Long ago, before I came to better knowledge of my estate, I thought I would come across him, my son, somewhere. If I waited long enough, one day, I would open a small door in some corridor and there he’d be, wrapped in a swaddling cloth, waiting to be picked up like a Moses child. That day has never come, and all these years he has been lost to me. He is in Limbo and cannot come out. Not until the breaking of the world, or until he is brought forth. I have prayed for him.”
“Is there nothing you could do to get him out yourself?”
She was clearly trying to hold back her rising grief, but she bent forward and started to shake softly. The edges of her gown’s hem seemed to unravel and pool about her like falling water. Her words were muffled by the long woolen sleeve that she’d drawn up to catch her tears.
“Even at the time of his death, I tried to help him. I traveled to the shrine at Avioth, in Lorraine. Perhaps it still stands. A miraculous statue of the Virgin had been found there long, long ago upon a bush of thorns and called The Welcoming One . . . or by some, The Receiveress. Many grieving mothers went to Avioth with the corpses of their babies, for it was known that if a child had been stillborn or had likewise died without rite of baptism, he could be brought there and the power of the shrine might briefly return the child to life. So many lost children. So many parents desperate to have them back.”
“What was the purpose of restoring the baby’s life for just a few minutes?”
“A corpse cannot be baptized, Silas. It was revived so that the priest might then baptize the living child, and when life fled the infant again, its soul might enter Paradise and not be sent to Limbo.”
“Did it work?” Silas asked, feeling Maud’s desperation, his voice beginning to catch in his throat at the thought of those parents holding their unmoving children in their arms.
“For many, yes. I myself watched a tiny stillborn infant . . . saw her skin flush, the blood turning from black to red . . . the hands moving this way and that. I witnessed the miracle. But there was nonesuch for me and mine. I shall never forget the sight of my baby upon that cold stone, still and lifeless. A wind rose and blew out the candles of the shrine and I knew there would be no beneficence. I left that place and buried my child on the north side of a small church. The north side, Silas, oh! The burial ground of the lost!” Maud sobbed freely for several moments, but opening her eyes once more, she breathed in deeply and said, “Oh, Silas, this was so long ago. Each age of the world has its own beliefs and which are true and binding in their time. When this happened, children who died without having been baptized went to Limbo. This was not an opinion, or a guess. It was fact. At that time, Priest, not Peller, held authority. The priest told me my child was in Limbo, and so that is where he was and where he remains. It was explained to me very plainly, and I shall never forget those words, such as they were then, burned into my heart, each one:
Yf a chylde be deade bore—
Thogh it were qwyk in womb before—
And receive not the baptime,
Of Hevene may yt never claime;
With-oute doute, beleve ye thys,
Tht yt shal never come to blys.
“And, so I am bound, in this earthly purgatory, until I might hold a loving child in my own arms. You yourself can attest to the power of a child’s love. Let us recall, a woman once ascended to the throne of Heaven, all for the love of a child. Even though mine is trapped in Limbo, I have tried to see my child at peace, to imagine his contentment. The accounts in my day were numerous, and there was much disputation by the church fathers about Limbo. I have tried to imagine a place filled with children, quietly waiting, together.”
“There are such places still. I have seen one,” said Silas, softly.
Maud lifted her head and stared intensely at Silas.
“Were the children there happy? Were they at peace?
”
Silas held back, not wanting to hurt her further, but Maud looked at him with such sharpness, such desperation, that he could not turn away or refuse her, as though the weight of her sorrow exerted a kind of gravity.
“I think most would have been happier elsewhere. None were in pain. But I think they understood their condition was one of loss and isolation. They understood they were incomplete. They knew they were not home and not among their kin.”
Maud looked back toward the window and began to weep again, choking out her words through her soft sobs. “He passed so quickly, perhaps even before he came forth from me, and there was not time for a priest. I never had even a moment to hold him while he lived. He is the reason . . . oh, Silas. But this breaks my heart. And it pains me to ask this—”
Here it comes at last, Silas thought with pity and apprehension both.
“Perhaps there is something you could do?”
Silas stood and could not speak. He didn’t know what to say, or what exactly she was asking of him. She wanted him to restore her child’s spirit to her? He wasn’t sure how to answer, though he could see his silence was upsetting her. He now understood that she had been waiting to ask him this since they’d met. Maybe this was why Maud wanted him here in the first place. She was shaking as she waited for a reply.
“Maud, I’m not—”
Anticipating refusal, she turned on him, crying loudly.
“Go on, Silas! If you will not help me, leave me here to my grief and be gone! But think on this: We are kin. Does this not obligate you to help me if you can?” Her face began to twist with frustration and tears of fire flowed from her eyes. “You have helped others! Strangers! Brought their children back to them. Out upon the marshes! You brought those mothers children to love. Even when the children were not their own, they were set free of their sorrows! How could you help them and not me? Why will you not do for me what you have done for them?”
So she knows something of my work in Lichport, Silas realized, his nerves pulling taut.
Her voice rose into a scream. She was becoming hysterical. As if in answering chorus, the nameless spirit beyond the walls howled from the battlements. A wind rose up outside and sent its blast down the chimney, blowing a shower of sparks from the fireplace into the room.
“Maud, I don’t know how much you’ve seen of my work in the marshes back in Lichport, or how you’ve come to know about it. But most of those children’s mothers had long ago passed on—those women in the marshes were content to hold the spirits of children not their own.”
“I would be likewise content, I promise you!” she begged.
Silas was at a loss. This made no sense to him. “Are you asking me to bring you the ghost of a child? Some lost child from somewhere? Wouldn’t that merely be consigning the child to another kind of perdition? Why would you desire such a thing?”
“You have not a mother’s heart,” she whispered. Then, raising her voice in accusation, cried, “So you think me so poor a mother, then? Say it, Silas Umber, and be done!” She had risen off the floor and a bleak, miserable light emanated from her body.
“No. Maud, I’m sure you would have been a great mother, would still be a great mother,” Silas said, trying to calm her, “but where would I find such a ghost? How would I get it here? In a tin? Do you want me to force it here to Arvale? This is too much, really! Are you asking me to summon a child’s spirit to the Limbus Stone? Just look up any name of a dead baby in these scrolls and summon it? It would be terrified. What kind of mother would subject a child to such treatment?”
She gave no answer to his questions, but only posed questions of her own.
“Are you not the Undertaker? Do you mean to say that in all the misthomes between heaven and hell there is not some child in need of keeping? Have you not already walked the lychways? Is this not your own especial work?”
“Yes, but this feels different. In those other cases, I knew where I was going. Some of them I could enter only because my own experience was linked to the nature of the shadowland itself. But maybe I could try to—”
“Or in this house? You can feel the pain of children. How else could you have heard that spirit down below? You might search the chambers of this house. Who knows what you, with your particular gifts, might find? My misery has closed many doors to me. Will you not try? Let the lost call out to the lost!”
“I am not lost,” Silas said, his voice unsteady.
“As you please,” Maud replied in a terse whisper as she turned away.
“Maud, please, you are not hearing me. I do not think—”
But she’d had enough excuses. She tore at her hair and wailed as Silas looked on, unsure how to calm her. He wanted to tell her that his work at the marshes had been based on guesses, that he hadn’t known then if anything he did would work.
“Maud! Maud!” Silas couldn’t think of anything to do but call her name. She would not answer. She sobbed frantically, casting aside the reins of self-control, her words an unintelligible mix of misery and Latin. Silas stood there, unsure what to say or do. Maud looked down from where she hung on the air and spoke through her tears once more.
“Go! Find your lost little girl! Leave me now to recover myself. Perhaps when you have settled your own mistakes you might again consider your obligation to your own kin. Until, then, leave me to my grief. Silas, go!
In her face, Silas saw pain and betrayal, but something else. Was it revelation or resolve? She had learned something from him, or figured out something for herself. He didn’t like not knowing what had she had gained from their exchange.
She drew her hand over her eyes to dry them.
Before Silas could speak again to comfort her, she rang her small bell furiously and Lars came running to the doorway. When Silas turned back to Maud to say good night, to tell her to be easy, that he would try to help her, she was gone.
As she departed the library, Maud Umber’s shoulders grew heavy, for she wore both sorrow and shame about her like a shawl of iron. She had shown her hand too soon. Silas knew what she wanted and how desperately she wanted it. She had pushed too hard and he had refused to help her.
Maud retreated to her private chapel. She lit no candles. Her tears were quickly drying. What to do now? she considered. Perhaps Silas is truly unable to help me. Perhaps I brought him here too soon. Yet, it might still all be for the good.
She thought she knew who had been released in the catacombs: perhaps the lost daughter of the one imprisoned in the sunken mansion. Yes. That seemed more than likely. Who else would have called out like that to Silas? What other spirit could sense so particularly Silas’s gifts? It must be the lost daughter. What a miserable time in the house that had been. Now her mind was turning, striving to call up the events of six hundred years ago. The girl’s name was stricken from the world. The Damnatio Memoriae had done its awful work, but the threadbare events of the past still hung in Maud’s memory. The father had punished the daughter. Why was that? Had there been a child? Yes. The girl had a baby, in secret, and the father had put her away, but not before there had been terrible curses all around and the threat of worse. But what had become of the baby? How in wrath the father had scoured the house and the forest for it! If Silas found the girl, he might find the baby, too . . . and then . . . the girl might be put back in the catacombs, the poor immoral thing. Or, she might take the waters and the baby could remain . . . in the house. With me. Like the spirits of the mothers of the marshes, another child could bring me peace. And then . . . would I then ascend to some higher seat? she wondered. If she was right about what and who the girl might be, why, there was already a bond. Had she been quicker to help, things might have gone another way long ago, the baby might even have come to her then. Yes, she thought, this could be the ending of my many sorrows. Perhaps Silas’s settling of that terrible and ancient spirit could, in its way, serve to bring me peace. Silas would find the ghost’s lost name.
Already, Maud could feel the house changin
g around her, passages and halls long sealed, now throwing wide their doors for the new Janus; old spirits stepping forth from the very stones of the walls, eager to speak to the one who might one day command them all. All she needed to do now was wait. Abide, abide, she told herself, and all shall come to joy.
In her mind, like the dawning of the midwinter sun, there rose a small bright vision of the child. Only a child. Nothing more. She closed her eyes and could almost feel it in her arms. Silas would find the name of the lost girl, and bring her to the Limbus Stone. He would. He promised. Maud prayed that it might be so.
“O Holy Mother, Lady who is the defense of all, Glorious Queen of Heaven, preserve me now when my eyes are heavy with shadow and the darkness of death, and the light of the world is hidden from me. Oh, most gentle Lady, who was borne through the mist and into the midst of the angels and archangels and stood singing to thy glorious child, succor and preserve me in this dread hour when my heart’s ease waits close at hand . . . ,” she began, her words falling away into desperate repetitious whispers. “Let him find the name he seeks. Let him bring home the child, and bring it to me, and all will be well and all will be well and every good thing shall be well.”
Maud grew quiet. She lit a candle and sat in her chair within the glow, imagining the weight of a child, any child, in her arms. She looked with longing and jealousy both at the statue of the heavenly mother and the baby seated on her lap. When she’d lost her child she lost herself, her place as Undertaker, and any status she’d once held in the family. Her death had not improved matters, but only brought her grief into terrible focus. She knew this, she’d always known it, but she could not see beyond it. Only a child could bring her peace. She reached out for the statue. The carving was smooth with a patina of devotion and desperation. She took it from the altar and cradled the statue in her arms, rocking her body back and forth. She closed her eyes and began to sing so softly that her breath did not disturb the candle flame.
