I sighed with weariness and stretched out my hands to show they were empty of the tokens she sought. In fact, both palms were stuck with bits of hay. I had not been able to find a pitchfork and was carrying the hay to the horses in armfuls. Because the weather threatened to be inclement, we had stopped for the night in a barn, which a farmer had granted us, along with a bit of supper.
“Well?” she demanded. “It is a poor lover who brings no gifts. Perhaps I should not be surprised: you were a poor lover.”
It was her unreason that baited me; still, I grew annoyed. Too quickly, memories of our night in the cottage below Stirling, of our time together in the Orkneys, sneered and snapped at me. Our journey had been far darker than I had imagined possible, and now I wished only to be rid of her.
“You want poetry?” I asked. “I have the perfect poem–written for a Valentine’s Day wedding.” I spewed out Donne’s words like venom:
Here lies a she sun, and a he moon there,
She gives the best light to his sphere,
Or each is both, and all, and so
They unto one another nothing owe,
And yet they do, but are
So just and rich in that coin which they pay,
That neither would, nor needs, forbear nor stay,
Neither desires to be spared, nor to spare,
They quickly pay their debt.
“ ‘Rich in coin? They quickly pay their debt?’ What sort of nonsense is that?”
“A good lover would understand. So perhaps I should not be surprised either.”
“Oh!” she said, her mouth a little round of amazement. “Now I understand: that is your gift—to make me laugh.”
I tossed the last of the hay into the stalls and brushed myself off.
“It has been Saint Valentine’s all day, Lily. Why wait to torment me till we are lodged together so intimately?”
“I am bored, Victor. You have made only one joke, and now you won’t argue! What shall I do for amusement?” She settled onto a pile of hay, preparing for a long complaint. “You could not entertain a child,” she said. “You are as predictable as an oatcake and just as loathsome.”
I opened the barn door. A blast of wind sent loose straw whisking across the floor.
“You’ll be too cold out there.”
“It is too cold in here.”
I wandered in the yard, looking for a place to spend the night. It was fully dark, about nine o’clock, with no letup in the wind. The air was laden with moisture: before morning, no, before midnight, it would snow.
The carriage stood before the barn where I had pulled it to unharness the horses. I squeezed in. It rocked back and forth beneath my weight as I shifted positions. Much too small to provide me rest, it continued to bounce and sway until I gave up the idea of comfort and sat still.
The padding and curtains muffled sound and sight; I heard only the velvet upholstery whispering under my movements. The air was close, the little compartment so tight I breathed back in my own breath. It was not unpleasant, yet I was annoyed being out here while Lily was within. I want to be charitable; she tries me so sorely I cannot be.
“It’s not charity if it does not hurt,” Sister María Tomás said to me so many years ago.
“I have done nothing to deserve your charity,” I had answered.
“Shhh. If you did, this would be repayment and not charity. Besides, this hurts me not in the least. You have provided me with such distraction I’ll have to confess it, although not until you’ve left,” she added, her plump face red against the wimple.
“Good works must hurt? No wonder so little good is done in the world.”
“More good is done in this world than you know. And much of it benefits the doer, even though it gives him nothing, even though it may even cause him pain.”
“Could so pure an act exist?”
“So … you belong to no church then,” she said.
“What church would accept a monster? No, do not answer me.” I waved. “I know only too well that churches are made of men.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “And men do not love as God loves. Perhaps we should find you a church of women,” she said, smiling broadly. “Mother would scold me for that!” She glanced over her shoulder. “Scold me, yes, then look to see where such a place existed and how quickly its current abbess could be deposed!”
“You have a sharp tongue, Sister.”
“I am forever cutting myself on it.”
She asked one more time about the scars on my face and body. I trusted her, wholly and unexpectedly, but I could not tell her.
“If charity must hurt, make this your act of charity, and do not ask again.”
Why did I not share my story with her? She would have been neither frightened nor disheartened by my existence; she would have been fascinated. Perhaps that was why I did not speak: instead of making me less than what I was, she would have made me more.
Her definition of charity pricked at my thoughts, while my body was pricked by the cramped seats and the stiff wind that shook the carriage at irregular intervals. At last I decided to return to the barn and empty my anger into my journal.
I crept inside. Lily was by now asleep. Looking at her, I remembered the mesmerizing beauty who had first appeared to me on the cliffs. Now I saw a plainly ill woman stretched flat on her back. A thread of spittle, silver in the dim light, hung from her open, snoring lips. Her hair was a snarled mess, her clothes were those of a workman, her swollen stomach rose in defiance.
Her snores ended abruptly. She grabbed her stomach as if the worm had kicked, then she tried to roll over to get off her back, a position she said caused her many aches. Her eyelids fluttered. Perhaps she was still half-asleep. Perhaps she had been having a nightmare. Her expression on seeing me was one of pure revulsion.
How easily I had silenced the young man at the inn, my hands moving of their own around his mouth, yearning to go around his neck. I watched my hands as I might have watched the hands of a stranger, which is what they are—the hands of someone else. Despite my intention to be influenced by peace, my disparate parts react with their own habits of violence.
Just now I had seen the hatred in Lily’s eyes and felt my own hatred.
Was she still in danger from me?
Tarkenville
February 17
It is done. My mind is at last rid of Winterbourne, and my presence rid of Lily’s.
Stopping only to rest the horses for the briefest of times, I raced to Tarkenville. Walton was close behind us–too close, too close—I felt it. I needed to get Lily back within her father’s protection, for at any moment Walton might come limping after us.
Recognizing the landscape even by dusk, Lily became furious. She banged on the roof of the carriage and slammed repeatedly against the window. I had hoped that being home again, especially after being attacked, might change her mind. Instead, she was more adamant than ever. When I pulled the carriage to the side, she threw open the door and jumped into the road before the horses had come to a full stop.
“I will see no one when I am like this, no one!” she cried, stalking away.
“Only your father; that is all I ask,” I said, following.
“A thousand other routes would have taken us to London!”
“I was not traveling to London. You must see your father, Lily. Perhaps he can protect you from your uncle. I cannot.”
Twisting round, she clawed at my face.
“If you will not see your father,” I said, coming upon an idea, “at least go see the estate. It has been several months now. Are you not curious about the repairs? So much work must have been done! So much for you to inspect!”
I could see the struggle in her eyes.
“I will not go to him,” she said, pleading.
“Surely, after all that has happened, you want the comfort of family.”
“I want nothing!” She turned her face and when she spoke again, it was in a soft, strangled voice: “I wishe
d him dead to have the house. Now I should go to him?”
Could even Lily feel guilt?
“It was nothing, a selfish thought such as we all have,” I said soothingly. “Your father will be happy to see you, happy to see that you need him.”
Her hands encircled her stomach, and her features hardened.
“It would have been over so soon. Why didn’t you wait, Victor? When I returned, I wanted to return as myself, not a mother. Now, here, even after I rid myself of the thing, I will be a mother whose child died. ‘Poor Lily,’ they will say. I will not be so named!”
“Shhh. Come back,” I said. I tried to keep my voice soft, though I would strike the words from her mouth when she referred to getting rid of the worm. “Let me at least drive you to the manor. See that first. You must be curious.”
She let herself be led to the carriage.
Circumventing the town, I drove through the woods to the estate, up the long private road that ran to the house. My first glimpse of the building was not clear, embraced as it was by the bare skeletal branches of the trees, and I thought, no, it cannot be: when we are past the woods, I will see something else.
The manor was a blackened shell. I had heard so often of the house being restored that I had come to believe it myself and had fully expected that great efforts had been made toward repairs. Instead, the building looked untouched, so freshly destroyed from the fire I expected traces of smoke to rise from its exposed, charred rafters.
No portion was inhabitable; the destruction was complete. The outer sandstone frame might someday be salvaged, but the entire inside had been turned to ash.
Where was Winterbourne? Who would know? Perhaps Reverend Graham.
Though worried about the silence from within the carriage, I did not stop, for fear conversation would provoke her rage to a point beyond recovery. I left the estate, returned to Tarkenville, and pulled up at the town’s far end where the church and the parsonage stood. Both were lit against the darkness. I left Lily in the carriage and peered into a church window. In the back pew sat Winterbourne himself!
For months my thoughts had shaped themselves around this man—first in admiration, then in hate, then in unadmitted grief when I presumed him dead, and finally in passionate anticipation of seeing him again. Now he sat paces away.
He was much changed. His noble countenance was thin and as ashen as his house, his sharp eyes were dull. Seeing his transformation, I felt both sorrow that I had caused it and optimism that I had the power to restore some of his former vitality.
I turned around. The door to the carriage hung open, and I silently cursed. How could I have expected Lily to wait patiently for something she wished to avoid?
She had gone no farther than around the church and stood at a low stone wall that circled the cemetery. I approached her cautiously, not knowing whether she was dazed or enraged past words.
“My mother lies in there,” she said. “It is too dark to try to find her.”
“In the morning we will go together,” I said. “Lily, I have found your father. He is right here, in the church.”
“Will he be angry at me?”
“He will be overjoyed.”
She turned her eyes to mine. Her features were settled into a rare calm. Perhaps seeing the house had forced a shred of reality on her. Her mania could not exist alongside the reality of that charcoal shell.
“Will you wait here awhile longer?” I asked. “I would speak to him alone first.”
She nodded, then turned back toward the dark cemetery.
I slipped into the church and walked to the pews.
“Reverend,” Winterbourne said without turning. “Did you see Barton on your rounds? This morning he pressed me again as to when I would leave here. I could not give an answer.”
A cough racked his body. He brought a handkerchief to his mouth and spat.
“Reverend?” He half-turned.
“No,” I said softly.
“You!” He stood up and tried to flee so quickly he tripped and again began to cough. I drew back my hood.
“I mean you no harm, sir. I never meant you harm.”
Lies, even now. How dare I stand before him?
“When I heard your wife died, I was filled with …” I said. “And your daughter—I have brought her back.”
Winterbourne looked around the church.
“Lily? Where is she?”
“Outside.”
“Bring her in at once!”
“I would speak to you first.” I stepped toward him, saw his body tighten, then I stopped and sat in the nearest pew. “As soon as I heard that you were alive, I knew I had to return
Lily to you. I have kept her safe for your sake,” I said, thinking of the many times I would have abandoned her but for him, thinking of lying with her on that stone altar of death in the Orkneys. “Now I …”
“Now what? What have you done to her?”
“It is your brother-in-law. Walton tracked me down as he has always tracked me down, and when he saw that Lily had stayed with me as a willing companion—”
“Willing companion!”
“Not at first, but later when she realized she had lost everything … I thought you were dead. I thought I had killed you.”
I gripped the pew.
“What is it you would say to me?” Winterbourne asked sharply.
How could I answer? That I never meant to hurt him, when I so gleefully set his house afire? That I never meant to hurt him, when I kidnapped his daughter? That I never meant to hurt him, when my very purpose in first coming to Tarkenville had been murder? Next to these, the one thing I could say paled: “I swear to you I did not kill the stable boy!”
“That is what you would tell me? Very well, you have told me.”
His coldness stung. I tried to make my voice as stern and unfeeling as his.
“You must listen carefully. Your daughter is in danger. Walton now pursues her as viciously and unreasonably as he pursues me.”
“Walton would never harm Lily! It makes no sense.”
“She is with child. You knew as much,” I said. “That’s why she was being married off. Perhaps I should have brought her to her husband instead.”
“Lily has no husband,” Winterbourne snapped. “He died before the New Year. And it would not have mattered if he had lived. The church was his sole beneficiary in absence of a wife and heir, and he had already changed his will back. The child is yours, isn’t it, and you want it for your own. That’s why you took my daughter.”
I jumped up and paced in the central aisle.
“The child is not mine, nor did I know of its existence when I took her.”
Should I now repeat her taunts that even she did not know who the father was? Should I tell him that the child was in as much danger from her as from Walton? No, I had to look at myself as he did—a person not worthy of trust.
“Whether or not you believe me does not matter. Walton does not believe it. He is convinced that the child is mine and that it must be unnatural. He would kill Lily, too, for bearing it. He believes I have debauched her. He believes she has become my whore.”
I looked away, unable to face the sudden dread in Winterbourne’s eyes.
“You must protect her!” I exclaimed, confused by what I felt and by how he was reacting. “Her time is almost here and Walton is close behind. Do not refuse her because of my actions. She deserves far more than what you should give me.”
“Why did you do it?” Winterbourne asked, slumping wearily against his seat. “Why did you come to England, why present yourself at my house, why take my daughter, why destroy my life?”
“Everything was done only to ensure my freedom. You cannot imagine my life under Walton’s pursuit. I have not been allowed to be a man. I would be one, and more than a slave, too: I would be free.” I faced Winterbourne, remembering how he and I had spoken of such matters at the estate. “Is freedom not worth any price? ‘What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly
. It is dearness alone that gives everything its value.’ ”
“The only thing of value here would be your death! You cannot separate fine-sounding words from the mouth that speaks them. Neither can you become a man by speaking like one.”
Pounding my clenched fists onto the bench, I cried, “I am a man!”
“Nothing you have done proves it!” Winterbourne shouted, leaping to his feet. “Nothing! Now where is my daughter?”
“She is here, Gregory.”
Both of us spun round at the voice. Reverend Graham stood at the back of the church, his arm around Lily. They had slipped in unnoticed while we were arguing.
Winterbourne fell back against one of the pews as he saw her more closely. He shook his head over and over then rushed to Lily, snatched her away, and held her tightly.
“This is how you protected my daughter? When you took her, she was a bride … a beautiful bride,” he whispered into her hair. Pushing her back to arm’s length, he stared at her bloated stomach and the ragged line of stitches across her cheek. His expression was tormented. “You took a bride. What have you returned to me? Not my daughter. A monster! A monster like yourself!”
Later
My pen ripped the page as I wrote that last word, the ink bleeding through to the pages beneath. I had returned to Winterbourne wanting nothing less than redemption. He had called me a monster.
Writing the word, I had to stop, slam shut my journal, and run. I raced down the dark country roads like a drunken fool, stumbling with my eyes half-closed, fingers pressed to my ears, as if I once more heard his denunciation spoken aloud–heard it in both his own voice and in that of my father’s. The two of them have entwined themselves.
I had killed the one already. Perhaps I must do it again.
I try to make my thoughts stony. Have I done so much to save the worm only to now strike down the one man who might protect it? I cannot yield to the rage that throbs in my hands.
Now it is over, and I am at last rid of both Winterbournes.
Stupidly I had made too much of them, the father as well as the daughter. Neither was extraordinary apart from the feelings I invested in them. Neither was worth the anguish they inflicted on me. And if I have learned anything from them it is this: I was made by nature to be a solitary creature and now have become one by desire as well.
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