The Girl from Rawblood

by Catriona Ward

  Miss Brigstocke’s reverie was interrupted by a strangled noise; when she looked up, Miss Hopewell was weeping. Tears ran down her face and dripped through her fingers, shining in the candlelight. Her shoulders shook with violent paroxysms.

  “Mary!” cried Miss Brigstocke in real alarm. “Why, whatever can be the matter?”

  Miss Hopewell raised her head. Her eyes streamed, and her face was pink and seamed with effort.

  “It is so stupid,” she gasped. “It is…unconscionable to be roused to such passion by a piece of cloth. I cannot bear it! Do not talk to me anymore! Get out! It is bad enough that I must bear your presence, which was foisted upon me, and that you must call me your ‘dear girl’ and ‘sweet Mary’! Do not also bombard me with this…this trifling, womanish stuff! Get out, get out, get out!” She fell to her pillow, racked with sobs. She felt the dark worm within. It stirred; she reviled herself.

  Miss Brigstocke contemplated her a moment. She rose from her chair and approached the bed slowly, then sat down upon it. Giving Mary much time to retreat, she took her in her arms. She then began rocking her, uttering meaningless sounds, and stroking her head. “There, there,” Miss Brigstocke said. “I have tired you. Yes, indeed. I talk too much, I do; it has ever been a fault of mine. But please, do not let my nonsense perturb you. All will seem different tomorrow, I promise it.”

  “Tomorrow!” raved Mary into Miss Brigstocke’s chemise. “Tomorrow! Yes, we must endure that, and the one after, and the one after! Of course. The endless series of tomorrows. I abhor it! Damn tomorrow! To—to hell with tomorrow!”

  Miss Brigstocke closed her arms tight and her eyes tighter.

  “If you like,” she agreed in gentle tones.

  The following evening, a small package lay beside Miss Brigstocke’s plate at the table, inscribed Hephzibah in Miss Hopewell’s elegant hand. Having been informed in Gabriela’s rough Tuscan that the other signorina was malata and would dine in her room, Miss Brigstocke set to her solitary supper. She eyed the package as she ate, birdlike, a cutlet and a little salad.

  At last, her repast concluded, the maid rung for, and the table cleared, she reached for the parcel. Her fingers unfolded the brown paper neatly. She put the handy length of string aside for further use. When the wrappings had yielded and the tissue beneath was lifted apart, there tumbled into Miss Brigstocke’s lap a creamy length of Sicilian lace.

  • • •

  Summer dwindled into autumn, and in the business of making the house ready for the winter, the two women found some occupation. Miss Brigstocke spoke of Don Villarca often and told tales of him to the limited society that fell in their way. She spoke of his whims and his oddities in small, hot rooms where English people took their tea, so that he seemed to hover like a miasma over the tea urn, and some semblance of him clung to the scones. As for Miss Hopewell, she did not speak of him. She preserved a reticence on the subject. But something was still wrapped tight about her heart.

  Mary grew quieter with each day that passed. She was for a time much occupied with correspondence, largely directed to a Signor Fratelli, avvocato, Siena. One day, a legal clerk came to call, bristling with pens and red tape. He spent the afternoon closeted in the parlor with Miss Hopewell. This posed a very minor inconvenience to Miss Brigstocke, since she would not presume to intrude on Mary—particularly when she feared to disrupt the administration of business, something of importance? And thus she could not get to her tambour frame that was in the parlor. And therefore had fallen sadly behind with her stitches. Of course, she would not dream of mentioning such a trifle to her dear friend; she could not now recollect why she had brought it up.

  Mary Hopewell did not reply.

  “Oh, Mary,” said Miss Brigstocke. “What will become of us?”

  “Of you,” said Miss Hopewell, irritable, “I know not. But I will die.”

  Miss Brigstocke’s eyes filled with sympathy and tears. “You must not fear,” she said. “You are the best of us, dearest. You shall be the first to be taken to the bosom of our Lord.”

  Miss Hopewell was silent. “I am not afraid,” she said at last. “Do you know, I wish I were? It is just…so torturously dull, the prospect.” She rose stiffly from her chair and went away. She was not seen belowstairs for some days.

  • • •

  One overcast morning when autumn was far advanced, there was a great pounding on the door of the villa, so that the two women leaped from their seats where they had been mending a tablecloth, and Miss Hopewell pricked her finger, and Gabriela went to answer the summons with much complaining.

  Through the door poured Don Villarca, filling the air and the corners of the room. “I have apologies to offer, which I hope will not be spurned,” he said, proffering two nosegays of vivid color. Their rich scent perfumed the apartment, dizzying. The hearts of the flowers were golden as egg yolk. The petals were the same deep red as the silk of his coat.

  It is said that there is nothing so elevating as the reunion of friends. Don Villarca launched into narration of his months away from them. It had been hard! Miss Hopewell and Miss Brigstocke would forgive him, for they were so estimable and everything that was kind.

  Miss Hopewell drew a deep breath. She wished to show Don Villarca a strange flower she had found. It was by a well, in a field, and peculiar—she believed she had it in her reticule. Mary said, “Perhaps you would be so good as to fetch it for me, Hephzibah?”

  Miss Brigstocke stared at Miss Hopewell. “If you are tired, dear Mary, it would be well for you to retire. Conversation, I find”—this addressed to Don Villarca—“can be as exhausting as a brisk walk!”

  He made no reply to this. Mary looked long at her friend. “I should think it such a kindness in you, Hephzibah,” she said gently, “to go to find that flower.”

  Miss Brigstocke went, and Miss Hopewell was alone with Don Villarca.

  Neither spoke. Miss Hopewell could not meet his bright, narrow eyes. So Don Villarca took her hand and asked her to be his wife.

  A small sound was heard in the hall—a board squeaked. They stared at the door.

  “Not here,” Mary said. “Come.”

  They went to the villa’s garden, a small patch of dry earth adorned by lank spider plants. Above them, the gray November sky.

  Mary said without preamble, “Now, as to your question, sir, you do me great honor. I am devastated to be obliged to refuse. I view you in the light of a dangerous man; I do not desire any more intimate acquaintance. I could not reasonably expect happiness from a union with such an…individual. I am not persuaded that you are steady in your intentions,” she said. “You cannot keep even an appointment.”

  Don Villarca kicked at a lump of dry earth, which broke and covered his shining black boot in red dust. “Miss Hopewell,” he began, “I understand you. But I will not have that set against me. I did come that day.”

  Mary Hopewell raised her eyes to his. She regarded him with fascination. “You understand me?” she asked. “Most kind. I cannot make a similar claim. For, sir, you did not come.”

  “Yes,” he replied. “I did. And I was told by…the person who received me that you could not marry. I was told that it would mean your death. Then I knew that I must stay away. I resolved never to see you more.”

  “What a very indelicate conversation,” she said. “By whom… Who told you this?”

  “I thought you had made her messenger,” he said, then shook his head. “I thought… But it does not matter.”

  “Who,” persisted Miss Hopewell, her cheeks pale, “would dare presume so? Who would be so cruel?”

  He made no answer, and she stared. The blush rose slowly in her face.

  “Well,” she said, “who are you, then, to go away on this person’s authority, with no word to me, as if I were a naughty child?”

  “I have sent many, many men to their graves in my time,” said
Don Villarca. “It is too much, the death I have dealt. So, to be the means by which yet another were to perish…”

  Miss Hopewell, who had long lived with mortality at her heels, said, “Do not speak of your guilt, of these deaths upon the battlefield and then of my death, mine… Do not speak of them as if they are the same. They are not. It is not for you to tell me what my end might be, to blame yourself for causing it, or to praise yourself for preventing it.”

  “To end another life,” persisted Don Villarca, “and that, your life—it could not be borne. It seemed neither of us was free to act. It was good and neat.”

  “What fecklessness, what presumption!”

  “Yes,” he said, “I see that now.”

  “I know my own case,” said Miss Hopewell. “The obstacles that stand between myself and marriage. You will in time consider this a lucky escape—for I would be giving you a sad bargain if I said yes. Your situation, however, is not apparent to me. You say you are not free. Explain.”

  His lips tightened, and the furious light shone once again in his face. “This is an old truth: that when we, the Villarcas, marry, we invite the bad luck in. Foolish, it may seem to you. But it is not so.

  “My grandfather left his wife—after terrible travails—and went to Vienna, could find no peace, lost his mind, and died in a hospital there. My father married, as was arranged for him, his cousin. Thinking to live in a healthful climate, they went to Switzerland, but he died in a brawl shortly after I was born. She stopped eating altogether, until she too died. My uncle wed his laundress; he murdered her while walking in the Pyrenees during the lune de miel, and then threw himself from a cliff. I could go on. Shall I? My family… We eschew our own country. Rightly so. It carries ill memories for those of my name. We have done great wrong there. I have chosen Italy to spend my days.

  “The Villarca blood is dark and strong. The Villarca temper is furious, sublime, full of poetry and madness. We seek the light, ever…but we never find it. We should not share ourselves with others. It is not a good thing. They call it in my tongue, the luz oscura, which means the dark light. Some call it a curse. I do not know. Certainly our past, the history of the house of Villarca, has shameful passages. Shameful. Our lineage is steeped in blood. There is no family more deserving of a curse.

  “But I have considered it carefully, you may believe me. The luz oscura… It is more likely to be madness. An inherited weakness. Such things not infrequently afflict highborn, well-bred families. We have been so jealous of the bloodline, you see. So very, very fond of marrying our children to one another. You would not breed dogs in that way—but yes, it will do for the Villarcas. Anyhow. Superstition or madness, there remains this: that when we marry, we do it badly. We drink, we lose our minds, we rage, we wound—and always, always, we die young. It is the way. I was afraid for myself. And, perhaps, of myself. You speak of a sad bargain—on my side, I fear it is so. I like to do things well; this matter, I felt, was beyond my skill.

  “It was wonderful when you were so cross with me, when you looked at me with—hate. For when it was only I who felt this, nothing could result.” His brows darkened; he said, baleful, “I fostered your distaste. I encouraged it. I was a boor. I do not like to think of how I behaved. For that, I am sorry. But when I came to suspect that, despite all my seemings, you did not entirely dislike me… Ah. Then it was frightful.”

  Something stirred within Miss Hopewell, like the beginning of inspiration. She said, “Luz oscura, you call it. Yes. It is a good name. Madness? Perhaps. But not that alone. I saw the darkness in your soul the moment I saw you.”

  A great stillness came over him. “We come now to it,” he said.

  She said, “Go on, sir.”

  “You tell me that I am cold,” said Don Villarca. “You say that I am cloaked in despair. All this is true. I have led what people call a sinful life. I think that all my virtue is dried up, withered away. Sometimes, I walk through it in my dreams—the interior of my heart. It is like a black land, where black flags hang in tatters and venomous plants grow in sickly clumps and serpents writhe… A deadly night garden, my heart.”

  “I know it,” she said. Her breath came a little faster.

  “But,” said Don Villarca. “I have seen your heart too, Miss Hopewell, and it is just like mine.”

  His words smote Mary like a blow. She burned within.

  “All your beauty cannot hide it,” he said. “Downcast eyes, meticulous correctness; a decorous manner cannot hide it—the great black hole where hope should be, where life should be. You say that you see the darkness in me. I see it mirrored in you. I know your emptiness.”

  “I will not be spoken to thus,” she said, “by a man who—”

  “What? What, Miss Hopewell, have I done? Nothing that you know of! But you feel it—the great cavern within me. Because like calls to like, always. Will you deny it?” he asked, his hand urgent on her arm. The light in his arrow-slit eyes. “Will you deny that we are the same?”

  “You are a villain,” she said.

  He nodded. “We are both villains.”

  Mary could not move, for the world had tilted forever on its axis.

  “I have no one,” Don Villarca said. “All of my family is dead. Their deaths were terrible, each one. Madre de Dios. I am alone and rotten with memory. You too are alone, Miss Hopewell. We are wasted, both; we are sickened by loss. Perhaps sorrow has taken the virtue out of us forever, has corrupted us utterly. Perhaps it cannot be recovered… Will you refute me again? Will you—”

  “No, I will not deny it,” said Mary Hopewell, exhausted. Tears rose, burning, to her eyes—she let them fall. A great opprobrious weight had been lifted. “We are the same. I felt it. I feel it.” The power, the strange peril of the moment swept through her—the enormity of being known. His hand was cool on the back of her neck.

  “You have never known freedom,” said Don Villarca. “Ladies are meant to be cut from different cloth. They are not supposed to want, to know certain things. And I—I have never known peace or affection. Perhaps we are not villains at all. There has been no opportunity to discover what we might be.” His voice sounded a note of infinite longing. Mary’s hand found his. Their fingers intertwined lightly, and in that slight touch, she felt it—the aching tug of the possible. Years, a life…

  Mary tore from his grasp. “It is not settled,” she said. “Villain I may be, but I will not do what you ask. The bargain is too bad. I must warn you off it. If only you knew! Your family is lost to violence and madness—but the Hopewells die young also. Like the Villarcas, we murdered each other merrily, we fought duels, and we died; yes, we died plentifully… Then, when we lost our home, we were scattered. One by one, we fell victim to disease… You speak of the blood, the curse of the Villarcas, but in truth, the Hopewells are no less damned… It is a sad history, best ended. I am the last of my name, and I am not long for this world. For these reasons and—oh!—a hundred more, I will not give you the answer you seek, sir.”

  He said, “We will agree on this, in the end. I have conceived such a passion for you, and I am very clever at getting what I want. Perhaps this will be my most monstrous act—to take from you your life.”

  “Odd,” she said. “I care not for that.” She shook her head. Her eyes held a resolve that was his answer: No.

  He seized Mary’s hand in a light grip and leaned into her ear, so that his words filled those spaces with his breath. “Nel ciel che più de la sua luce prende,” said Don Villarca, “fu’ io, e vidi cose che ridire, né sa né può chi di là sù discende…3 If you marry me, you shall do precisely what you will. There is nothing that I would not understand. Whatever you wish—whatever you desire—it shall be yours before you have finished the thought. I will make it my life’s work. Do you understand me?”

  “Paradiso,” Mary said lightly. “A paradoxical freedom; one that is permitted, granted by another… I mu
st go.”

  “Stop,” said Don Villarca, agonized. “I know, I know, I have done it so very badly. I should have begun like this.” He drew from the white silken lining of his coat a sheaf of papers.

  Miss Hopewell smiled. “Sir—”

  “Please,” he said, “read.”

  She scanned the first lines, the next page and the next, lifting the leaves with unsteady fingers. Her lips moved silently. Her heart beat against her ribs like a child with a stick on the railings.

  “It took me some time to find it,” said Don Villarca. “It was traveling in disguise, as Dempsey House. Who are these Dempseys? It will not do. So if you will have it, I will take you home to Rawblood. I do not hold everything cheap,” he said. “I can discern what is infinitely rare and must be grasped. Say what you choose; give me what answer you will; send me away. But do not,” said Don Villarca, “ever again think that I do not see to the heart of you.” His face, habitually so watchful and elegant, now brimmed with feeling and with anxiety.

  “You do not know what you have done,” said Mary, “and I will have it—” She passed one hand across her brow, which was hot. The other clutched to her chest the deeds to the house. “As soon as may be. I care not for…” She left the thought unfinished; her face bore the inattentive look of one who listens to a sound far away. “You should take William Shakes home to Devon,” she said. “He misses it.”