They are silent today, quick with intent. The air seethes with thought.
Eliza murmurs, “Did you go to the brother?”
Chloe does not speak. She makes a sound both sharp and wet.
“Did you ask at Trubb’s Farm?” asks Eliza. I picture her—brackish eyes narrowed, eyebrows acrobatic with conviction. Cloth squeaks on the fire brasses.
“Went yesterday.” When Chloe speaks at last, her scornful tones are unrecognizable. She is hesitant, as though each word were a step through a bog. The Devon is strong in her voice. I had not noticed it before. “He called me a whore and sent me off.”
“You have a month before I can’t lace you up,” says Eliza. “No more. You hear me? Go again. You make him hear.”
“He won’t help. Not that one,” says Chloe. “I am for the workhouse or the Home. They’re the same in the end. You go in those places, you don’t come out. And all I can think is that I hope it looks like him.” There is a gentle thump, rustling. A seagull cries somewhere in the distance. I think, How like these strange times, a gull on Dartmoor. But the gull is Chloe, who is crying.
“Come here,” I say. There is a silence like death.
“Ma’am,” says Eliza, suddenly close. “Please.” The red thread of panic in her voice.
“The two of you,” I say. “Come here.”
The scent of Chloe’s tears. Salt, rain, clean skin.
“It is Robert—Gilmore—the butler, who did this?” I ask. I recall the day Iris was born, when Chloe brushed my hair and I saw her secret. I knew it even before that, I think. I saw it in her sullen eyes that day in the kitchen.
They say nothing. There are movements in the air. They are shivering like puppies.
“And he is dead,” I say.
“Yes,” says Chloe. Her voice is puzzled, as if she can’t quite recall. The many, various hidden costs of my deed. “It is not Eliza’s fault, ma’am. She warned me of the error of my ways, and none of the blame for my sins should rest on her.”
“Can you write?” I ask. “Either of you?” There is silence. “Speak up.”
“I can write,” says Chloe.
“Bring paper. Fetch a pen. Then sit down by me.”
I think the instructions are obeyed. At any rate, there is bustling and the dry scratch of paper, and then there is quiet.
“Write what I say,” I tell her. There are some false starts. I speak too quickly. Chloe falls behind, and I cannot then recall the rest of the sentence.
I am as brief as may be in the letter. If Mr. Gilmore will be so good… There are considerations… I rely on his charity, his Christian feeling. I trust he will not blame the innocent for the sins of the fathers. It being his own brother who has transgressed, he will feel a responsibility… Perhaps he also will recall my brother Charles, who did him a kindness once, when his brother was sick with a poison… Herewith enclosed is something toward…
Then I dictate a reference for Chloe. It is firm and favorable and fairly honest.
“I am not quite happy about it,” I say. “It is in your own hand …”
“I made the writing different.” She is curt.
At my direction, Eliza goes to the escritoire. “Ma’am,” she says delicately, “where…?”
I have to laugh. “The key on the lavender ribbon,” I say, “hanging from the back of the mirror. As you very likely know.”
Eliza brings the money in a dirty, copper-scented bundle. We are flustered by the great amounts of it. We divide it up and begin to count, but how am I to know what is there? It’s no matter anyway.
“Take it,” I say. “Go now to Henry Gilmore. Take him the letter and half the money. I will send him more in due course. The other half you take with you. Go to Exeter—or no, too close—to Bath. Take rooms. You are a widow. It may be they won’t like it, but you can pay, which means everything. Stay within doors. Eat well. Engage a physician. When the baby is born, you must come back. You must give it to them. To Mr. Gilmore and his wife.”
“Do I have to?” Chloe asks. It sounds like her old insouciance, but the timbre is wrong and brittle. “May I not take the child…”
I think about this for a time. “I don’t think you can,” I say.
She says nothing, but the money is lifted in its greasy leaves from my lap.
“Will he take care of it?” she asks.
“His wife cannot have children. He’ll be kind for that. He’s a farmer and not a successful one. He’ll be kind for the money. I will give him enough to be very kind. I’ll make sure of it.” I wonder what I am promising. “You must,” I say.
Eliza, who has been very quiet, bursts out, sudden and shrill. “Must this, must that. Why should she? It’s a terrible thing you’re telling her to do.”
I find her by her voice. The slap lands flush on her cheek with a crack.
“I was left and raised by others for money,” I say. “I know well what it is I’m advising. It is better than the alternative. You may believe me.” I think of the workhouse babies I have seen. I think of Iris’s tiny toenails, of her treble voice and her cheeks.
I will watch Chloe’s child. I will cling to Charlotte Gilmore like a best friend. I will give Alonso’s money out like water.
“It will be hard,” Chloe says.
The gray despair in her voice raises hairs on the back of my neck. I see her sunk, underwater, weeds waving by her face. I see her blue eyes fixed and staring. Hidden cost.
I will not let it happen. I will ensure they do what I say. I will ensure that she can bear it.
I reach. “Show me,” I say.
She takes my hand with her small rough one and guides it. The gentle, fragile swell.
“It is a boy,” I say. “You’ll name him after your brother. Young Tom. He will be strong and handsome and very kind. Women will like him. These gifts are his already. Now give me an eyelash from your eye and a hair from your head.”
She puts the hairs on my open palm. Her thin fingers are cold. I close my fist about them. I say what I need to, quiet into our locked hands. Then I open up and blow them away. “Now you have given him your black hair. You have given him your blue eyes. So he will always be marked as yours. Wherever he goes in life and whatever he does, your son will always be using the gifts you gave him.”
Later that evening, Alonso holds me, enclosing me in the scents of bay and leather. My blind eyes are stinging with tears. He murmurs and asks me things.
“I find I have spent all the householding,” I say. “Everything in the drawer. And Chloe was pert, so I turned her off. I am ill-tempered, and blind, and worthless.”
“Nothing of the kind,” he says into my hair and asks nothing further.
So I tell him what has passed with Chloe. “It is foolish,” I say. “Is it atonement?”
“For what?” Alonso asks, and the edge of his voice is delicate and sharp. I can hear him thinking.
“For everything,” I say. “For the woman I am, for the things I have done… For them. For my three lost ones.” And for Robert. I have drawn too much blood. I have taken a man’s life. It weighs and weighs like darkness and will do all my days. Robert’s death will cover me always like sickness.
And Iris’s little dead sisters… I recall them each day. Each day, I must realize anew that what I have done will not bring them back. “I have been a fighting hedge snipe all my life,” I say. “‘I wish a different fate for my daughter. But she will be tried too… Oh, it is all connected, Alonso, do not you forget it…” My voice deepens, takes on the rough edge that means the Eye is on me.
His hand on my back. “Meg?”
“You look after him,” I hear myself say. “Do you promise to do it? Take care of Tom Gilmore.”
“We will,” he says, frightened. “Together, we will make sure the Gilmores do right.”
“Promise,” I sa
y in the terrible voice. “He must dig the grave.”
“I promise,” he says.
The Eye lifts, floats away as if it never was, and we’re alone.
I kiss his hand. I am swept with feeling. Alonso’s touch, the warmth of sunlight on my face, the scent of fresh-washed cotton—everything cuts deeply now, as it never did before. Love has finally settled into me. It has turned me belly up on the shore, just as I always feared it would.
• • •
The air is filled with autumn. Dry leaves and the scent of dark berries and mold and hay. The morning air is wine. I make to rise quietly. Alonso’s cuff links are chinking from the corner of the room, where his dressing table stands. The quiet harrumph as he clears his throat. I feel his attention, but I have urgent business. Iris will be awake—no doubt she is talking to the dawn. Before my feet meet the cold boards, there is a flash of white deep in the center of my skull.
“Draw the curtains,” I cry. “It hurts; it burns.” There is a whirlpool of movement beside me, and Alonso’s hands are on my lids, pulling them gently apart. I shriek and tell him no, no. It is an ax blade to my head, the light. My tears are hot. His fingers shake, and he asks, what is it, what is it? My words are unwieldy. I cannot make him understand for some time. Through the lightning flashes are perceptible knots of oak on the boards, my pale toes, the rippling hem of my nightgown.
I can see.
• • •
There follows a time of anxious rest, of cold compresses bound across my eyes. Of smarting headaches. But the world bleeds in, day by day. The veils lift, one by one. Objects take on shape and form, resolve themselves into distances.
Bright light still causes me pain. I must cover my eyes until they are strong enough. Each day, Alonso removes my blindfold for an hour—then two, then three. He oversees me with the exactitude of an experiment. He is impersonal, gentle. There is something unsettling in it. I long for his temper.
Colors are blank and strange—for a time, I see reds and pinks as blue and vice versa. I lie cushioned in my downy bed and watch the window. Swallows cross the sky, which is the veined red of freshly butchered meat. Alonso brings me late summer poppies, a flower that I have loved always for its overblown fragility, its deep orange-red hues. But these are the blue of a drowned face. I cannot tell Alonso how sad they make me. They sit in the vase at my bedside. They lurk in the corner of my eye like unease.
Most days, there is some activity down the hall, sounds of heavy things moving and the scent of fresh paint. I ask Alonso, what is it? His answer is short and vague.
Iris plays in my lap. She is heavy now. Her desires are becoming sophisticated. Her understanding, her knowledge, grow daily. She likes certain songs and cannot bear others. She has taken to punching me heavily when displeased. Hair covers her silken skull. Soon, I tell her. But when? I keep my eyes covered when she is with me. I am afraid to behold her for the first time. I fear my skewed sight.
We go on quite well. October comes. As she tucks the bedclothes around me, Eliza says in hushed tones that Charlotte Gilmore has been blessed with a child—a boy. They have named him Tom. So that at any rate has been well managed. I give Eliza money for the Gilmores. For the little boy.
The next day when I take off the compresses, there it is—through the window, the gray sky, the precise hue of dirty silver.
I inch farther along the road to recovery. Alonso writes letters to men in big towns, who claim to know things about eyes. They make promises to visit. I don’t need them, I tell him—I am healing. He does it anyhow.
One day, Eliza leans in and whispers, although we are alone: Chloe is to be married. A gentleman from London, no less. “So, ma’am, she is shortly to be Mrs. Coulson, and it has all ended happily.” If marrying were a guarantee of happiness… But I say nothing.
• • •
I lift the stinking camphor-soaked cotton. My eyes are red-rimmed and new. Alonso is not beside me. Where? The room is as it was, as it has always been. Brown and shining in the dawn, the beams above. The sounds of Rawblood are muted. Full day will come soon enough.
I think of Iris. Longing is in me like an arrow. Today is the day that I will look upon my daughter.
Someone has been digging beneath the cedar tree. Why should that make me sad?
• • •
The door is ajar. It is painted white. Painted blue ducks, blue umbrellas, and blue seashells climb it in a riot, curling around the door handle. I picture Alonso’s face, puzzling over what Iris should have, what she will like. The door swings open, silent, well-oiled. No one will be woken by it. The care, the thought.
Morning sun falls on fresh white walls, varnished boards. Curtains flutter at the windows, the color of a kingfisher’s back. A white-and-black mottled rocking horse gallops, legs thrown out, nostrils red and panic-wide. On the bright walls are flowers, tigers, horses. A white dresser is ranged with an audience of china animals: deer, dogs, cats, mice; they stare with cold, clever eyes. A white cradle, fine as spun silk, stands shiny-new in the corner. Above it hangs a mirror, and knots of blue ribbons, and seashells, and a silver locket. They turn gently in the light.
Alonso stands over the cradle with Iris in his arms. They look at one another, my husband and my daughter, in fierce concentration. They have not seen me. His hair sticks up in white-and-black whorls on the back of his neck, the pouched lines of his face sewn up with sleep. She is a translucent glimpse between her new dark silken hair, dark lashes, and the pale blue blanket. The flowers of her fists open and close gently in the air. My heart is full.
I go to them. At the slight sound of my feet on the boards, Alonso looks up. I smile, but he nods, serious.
“It was finished yesterday,” he says. His voice is a bare whisper. “I am pleased you came today.” As if he had expected me for some time.
“It is wonderful,” I say, and I mean it.
He offers me the pale-blue blanket, the dark scrub of hair just visible. “Here,” he says. “She has gone back to sleep, I think.”
I take her. I look at my daughter. I look at her for some time.
I had thought her plump, but her face has a symmetry to it that is startlingly adult. Her eyelids are large and white. Dark lashes rest on snowy cheeks. She is different. She is different from the picture I had of her in my mind and from anything I have ever seen…
That is not so. She is very like someone I have seen. There is a stirring within me, hot. I hold my daughter, and I try to understand. “I feel—” I say. “Alonso, I am not sure that I am well.”
“Sit,” he says, and I do, upon a white wicker bucket chair, piled high with cream-and-blue cushions. “Give her to me,” he says.
“No,” I tell him. I hold her; I keep the perfect small face before me. Iris’s lids flutter, open. I look into her eyes, her black, black eyes, and I see.
Dimly, I hear Alonso say, “Blood, Meg, you are bleeding.” I had thought I was healed, but some treacherous fragile part of me has given way. It is impossible, but I feel the orange tautness, the familiar pain. Eclampsia again? It shouldn’t be, can’t be, but the lights are flashing, pulsing in my skull. The blood comes frightening and fast.
It seems less important than the other unutterable, terrible thing. I have understood.
I had thought her gone, but it is not so. I look at my daughter, and she looks back at me, pink-and-white skin glowing, dark eyes clear and wide and young. She puts a corner of blue blanket in her mouth and gives me a secret smile.
“Alonso,” I say. It doesn’t sound right. A rough and wet sound, like a great bird cawing.
He does not hear. He is pressing a great wad of linen against me, against the blood. The red bubbles up around his hands.
There are tears on my cheeks. I hear a scratched and broken shrieking. It is mine. The tinny scent of blood is strong. Everything is darkening, turning burnt orange. The shrieki
ng grows. Beneath it, a smaller, thinner child’s cry. Iris and I weep. I look into her eyes and imagine them bereft of sense, filled with the darkness of eons. I imagine her face older, corpse white, unwitting, mouth thin with suffering. I imagine shearing off the silky dark hair to the tender skull beneath; I picture it cruelly wounded, again and again, until it is covered with scars, like valley rims under awful moonlight. It will come to pass.
I must tell Alonso. I must tell him, and we will prevent it—someone must prevent it—but my mouth has gone soft like wool and cannot be used. A long, rusty, useless noise emerges. “It is her,” I say. “Her.”
The sound that comes from him is worse. He peers at the corners of the room, his eyes crazy. He looks everywhere but at Iris, wailing in my arms. He collapses at my feet, and his head slumps on his arm. His white-and-black head, striped like a badger. His long hands slick with my blood.
Was there anything I could have done to turn it aside, anything? Had I not been so busy, so in love with all my secrets. I do not know. I do not understand.
“This is a beautiful room,” I say to him, though it doesn’t sound like words. “You have made it so beautiful for her.” The white wicker chair, the cream-and-blue cushions—all are dark, syrup red. A glossy pool covers the boards by my feet. As I watch, it spreads gently, silently.
Charles, my pompous brother, is in my mind. I touched him in his death. Perhaps he will come to find me in mine… All the while, I had thought I was forging my own path. It seems to me now that I have wandered blindly, tangled in old, old events, as if in brambles. Caught on their piercing thorns.
Time is short. I will Alonso to look at me. His shoulders shake, and he presses his face into his sleeve. Please, I tell him with all my being, look up, look into my eyes. Look. His head is lowered. He does not look. In my lap, Iris weeps, her hands reaching toward my face. I can no longer move my limbs—they are bound with iron and dead. I cannot comfort her. This is the first, little one. The first of those awful sorrows that will befall you. I would do anything to make it otherwise.
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