[Sequoia]

by Adrian Dawson

  “Thank you, Master William. You are a good soul.” The old lady, whose true age was probably least known by her own self, gratefully lowered her frame back into the wooden chair. When she spoke again her voice has lost a little of the croak that lifting herself up seemed to have ingrained. “Can I be of some service?”

  “No, not this day. It is young Rachael I seek. Is she to be found in the kitchens?”

  Florence smiled an odd smile. “She is that, sir,” She pondered awhile. “Though I must tell you once more... you’ve certainly brought me a one in that child.”

  He looked confused. “Is there a problem? I understood that she was working well. That she was settling in...?”

  “Working well, sir, there is no doubt in that. But settling? No, she is not a one for settling.” She shook her head gently. “She has a malaise upon her that girl, I am sure, and it keeps her shoulders low. When the tasks are upon her, she is not afeared of the graft, but here she is... nigh on a year past... and still she takes every moment offered to stare through the glass to the world outside. Were I a woman to wager, or indeed had the funds to do so,” she raised an eyebrow, “then I would say that she has a loved one off in the conflicts and is pining his return.”

  Silence fell. Save for the marching drip of the hanging clothes, not a sound was heard. William was clearly taking the old lady’s words deep on board and thinking on them hard before deciding on a suitable form of answer.

  The scullery itself had no windows, unlike the next door kitchens. Even so, William stared to the wall as though it did indeed possess glass and he could see well into the world beyond. Florence could see quite clearly that his thoughts were no longer in this room.

  “She is pining, I agree,” he offered eventually. “But I fear it is something else she seeks and does not find it here. Not yet at least. Tell me, has she brought any knowledge in her wake? Any talents perhaps?”

  The old lady nodded with some degree of admiration in her face. “Indeed she has, Squire William. Why only last week as I prepared the porage for your father, she did take to crumbling some of your sweet wood in to it. Your father made it known that he should like it as this from now forth.”

  “Sweet wood...? That is interesting.” He raised his hand to his mouth, his index finger tapping gently on the tip of his nose, and took a moment to think. “Cinnamon is not without its price, which might suggest that she has been in the service of a gentleman before? Perhaps even betrothed to one?”

  A thought suddenly rose in Florence’s mind, lighting her eyes wide. She raised her own index finger quite excitedly for someone of such advancing years. “Some months past she did take one of the long knives and spend some hours rubbing it on the block. Not as a length but every yea forth...” she indicated a small distance with her thumb and forefinger. “She did carve marks into the blade which should have spoilt it for use and yet with the bread the opposite it true. It is now so much neater in its cut. She did whisper that the knife was now so-rated.”

  William pondered the image. “Has she spoken of where she might have learned such things?”

  Florence took a deep breath and shook her head. “She speaks little more than a few words a week, and only then if you should be so lucky.”

  William nodded knowingly. He looked toward the door to the kitchens and then back to Florence. “I am of a mind to take a stroll this morning,” he said. “The air is fresh and my legs have not seen the long service of yours and are not best suited to resting in a chair. I thought perhaps you might allow me to borrow Miss Garland for an hour or two as my companion?”

  “She is in your employ, Squire, not mine. You might do as you wish. If you are looking for conversation as you go about your constitutional, however, then I fear you will return disappointed.”

  William shook his head gently. His words were delivered as though his thoughts were as distant as those of Rachael Garland herself. “I have spoken with Rachael on many an occasion myself and would agree that her words are few but no... it is not her conversation I seek. Not this morning.”

  Florence said nothing, knowing that it was not her place to do so, but an unsuccessful attempt at suppressing a knowing smile which started behind her eyes instantly betrayed her thoughts.

  William looked to her sternly. “Mrs. Banks, there is no doubt in my mind that Miss Garland is a fine looking young lady, but she is also well below both my years and my standing. I would have thought you to know me better after such long service. Such dalliances are not in my nature.” Florence hung her head respectfully as his tone turned pensive once more. “Though you are not the first in the village to offer me that look. I would ask that you Scotch such rumours should you hear those thoughts turned to voice.”

  She shuffled uneasily in the chair. “I will that, Sir.”

  “Good.” He nodded firmly toward the plate sitting on a small table beside Florence’s stool. “Then I shall away to gather her and leave you to your bread and fat.”

  He smiled weakly. “If I can get but a few words from our stray child this morning ,” he said, as though to himself, “then I am hoping they will carry with them some welcome advice...”

  * * * * *

  At the furthest side of Manningtree, some two miles from the manor and less than a mile from the Mistley port, the young Prudence Hart, face as crimson as her best dress and sweat glistening her cheeks, screamed and screamed and screamed.

  No matter what anyone said, or what anyone did or tried to do for comfort, she would not stop.

  In the tiny room, with its bare stone walls and fondness for echoes, it sounded to all as though the banshees of Hell themselves had been released. It made even the thin pans hanging on hooks above the fire rattle to its ungodly tune.

  Widow Hart, fetched at haste by a young boy from along the way, hurried in through the door and did her best to close the gnarled lats against the morning chill. She was met by Rattler Tom’s permanently bemused expression as he blocked her path for just a moment and told her that Prudence was, apparently, ‘doin’ a-right’. His eyes, disparate since the bullock incident, looked everywhere but at Ma’s face as he told her in one long monotone that Prudence would do well if she worked with the matrons and did ‘precise’ as she was told.

  Another piercing shriek from her daughter and Widow Hart shoved her way past, still none the wiser as to what might actually be be causing the child such excruciating pain. In the centre of the room she found Prudence laid flat on her back. Her work dress was hunched around her waist, her legs open wide and her mouth webbed thick with spittle as she tested the full power of her youthful lungs.

  In the gloom of the poorly windowed room, with just one coarse stub of candle and the small fire offering the weakest of additional light, Liza Mae was already tending to the patient, her own huge bosom making it appear (as noted earlier by Ma Fletcher) as though ‘two of the buggers might have arrived already’. Liza Mae had lived across the track from the Harts her whole life and had known Widow Hart since long before Prudence had entered into the world. Prudence’s birth had been well planned and had come as no surprise to anyone in the town. If anything, not unlike herself in later life, Prudence was perhaps a little tardy in her arrival. Nevertheless, cloths and waters had been readied days before, including a small rag to be dampened for the forehead and the fire was kept permanently alight with an endless stream of wood from every villager whose return from the forest so much as ventured near the tiny cottage.

  When it came to this birth, however, it seemed that Prudence herself had been the only one expecting.

  “Push, my dear,” Liza Mae said gently. “Push for all you are, for I can see him appear.”

  When Widow Hart had left that morning, Prudence had done what Prudence always did of a morning: she lit the fire and, once it had taken a little, she filled the kettle from the rain trough outside and was ready to lay it on the stone so that there would be hot water to clean the potatoes. It was then that the first contraction had arrived. It
was sharp, to be sure, but she had managed with it and, after just a few seconds, she had set about her task again. The second contraction soon put paid to that. Within a few minutes Prudence was creased near double and the kettle was rattling across the floor. The water was cast away from the fire but the kettle rolled back. By the time Liza Mae had hurried across at the commotion, Rattler Tom following soon after, the kettle was already touching the embers and glowing red at the spout. He had needed the broomstick to retrieve it but had minded little as it kept his eyes away from the other things occurring in the room which he had no desire to see.

  It was not long before more of the town’s matrons arrived - eight in total - squeezing into the room before Ma herself returned, and an even shorter time thereafter that the first of the questions started...

  Who here knew she was pregnant? No one, it seemed. Or who the father? No-one again. How long? Not even that question could be answered for Prudence’s garments had always been worn loose. As loose as Prudence herself Ma Fletcher had noted, but a firm scowl from Widow Hart had put that thought swift to bed. It would appear that the young girl, so ready with a word of gossip about any and all in the town if she had one, had somehow kept her own piece of gossip quite successfully to herself.

  “Push your loins,” Ma said, echoing Liza Mae. She had no shortage of questions herself, but they would wait. Life was not what man created, she knew. Life was the work of God and that work was to be aided here and now. But ask some questions of her daughter she would. There would be no doubt about that.

  Another scream was delivered... far louder, far more piercing and lasting far, far longer than any which had gone before. It was followed a deep, long silence. In the flickering light, Ma swiftly cut the cord, wrapped the bloodied bundle in a blanket and held it close to her own not insubstantial bosom, bouncing all three of them gently.

  The room of gathered women sighed their relief in one long, unified breath.

  But all was not as it should be. Both Ma and Liza Mae had acted as midwives at a great many births around the Tendring Hundred in their years and not one had seen a child so small. It was little wonder that Prudence had hidden her bulge beneath her corsets so effectively as it was clear that this little one’s arrival was already a rebellion against the ways of its mother. This one had arrived early. By perhaps as much as a month or more.

  Anxious moments came and went without release, Ma Hart nursing the child as best she could. In the end, she took its feet, turned the bairn lop-sided and gave it a gentle shake before righting it again.

  A few anxious seconds later and more cries were heard. These were not screams of pain, however, but the first sounds of a new life... a newborn baby loudly announcing its arrival to the world in the hope that the world might just warm it, feed it and protect it until it could handle such tasks for itself.

  With the fire kept on track from Tom’s poking (as he did with a quick-disappearing broom handle once the pot was rescued) the room was warm and Ma mused that the child, if it had a mind to fight, might just stand a chance.

  Prudence lifted herself to her elbows and slid backward to the wall so that it might take the weight of her sitting. Still desperately out of breath she held her arms gently forward and, in a softer tone than many had heard from her in some years, said, “Give it to me.”

  “’Tis a he, Prudence, not an it.”

  “Then give him to me!”

  And there she sat, for a full half hour. Bolt upright in the flickering candlelight as the others cleaned, scurried to fetch things needed or headed out to spread the word. She spoke not another word and, for now, the child made not another sound. Instead they just stared into each others eyes and found themselves at peace with each other.

  Eventually, the pride in her own eyes still full, Ma Hart could not escape the fact that she also had questions on her tongue. She crouched down beside her daughter and, though she had not been expecting such a thing, beside her grandson. She handed over a glass of warmed milk but when Prudence did not take it, laid it on the stone floor beside her instead.

  “Why did you not say?” she asked.

  Prudence said nothing and did not catch her mother’s eye. Instead, she just stared at her newborn son with a wide smile and the dampness of her own pride welling soft in her eyes. Eventually, as though she had not even heard the question delivered, she said, “I shall call him Will. For Will is a fine name, is it not?”

  Only two of the Matrons remained in the house by now, but they looked swift to each other as sure as Ma looked swift to Liza Mae. Ma wanted to come straight out with it, to ask the question on all their lips, but could not bring herself to do so. Instead, she altered her words in the hope that the core of the answer might be the same.

  “Who is the father?”

  Again, Prudence said nothing but this time it stayed that way. Wearing the same warm smile she had worn the past half hour, she gently placed her index finger into the tiny hand of the baby and marvelled as new fingers closed around her own. Mother and son smiled back and forth as though they were mirrors.

  The questions would go on for many more days and some, but not all, would be answered. Who the father might be, however, was not. Not ever. More telling to the townsfolk was that many names were put direct to Prudence and she did not refute but one - not even the name of William Clopton, squire of the town, to whom she had taken quite a fancy and who now, it would seem, was the namesake of the very infant in question.

  Who might have lain with Prudence and sired the child would soon become the subject of a great deal of idle gossip for the locals and, in a town as small as Manningtree where not one outside the manor house could read or write, gossip formed the only books.

  Prudence’s silence... well that spoke volumes.

  ELEVEN

  Thursday, August 20, 2043.

  Portofino Hotel & Marina, California.

  “Where in the name of fuck is he, Neil?”

  Scalise didn’t even bother to turn. She knew it was Grainger, the concierge had phoned that little snippet of information up a few minutes ago. And she knew that he had reached the doorway behind her; even through the breeze she could still smell his sweat. She also already knew the answer she would be getting very shortly, but it didn’t stop her asking the question.

  There was an awkward pause. Like everything else, it too was expected. “We don’t know.”

  From the penthouse suite, situated on the 15th floor of the recently rebuilt Portofino Hotel, Scalise leaned forward on the balcony, her right hand resting firmly on the chrome rail which seemed to float above the glass. In her left hand was her usual glass of red, and she watched as the sun began its descent below the furthest reaches of the Pacific, the horizon also turning red; the last strains of day promising sunshine tomorrow as it drifted slowly out of sight. It was one of her favourite views in the world, and even on the most mundane of days the sunset over the Pacific was always spectacular. It was her way to unwind and leave the stresses of the day behind but tonight, as she gazed out across the seemingly endless ocean, she sighed deeply. Why the hell, she wondered, did she perpetually have to be surrounded by morons?

  “There is no we in this, Neil. You know that. I’m hidden, at least for now, so you’re the only one visible in the trees. The simple truth is, if you can’t see him from up where you are then perhaps I should look at bringing you back down to earth?”

  “We’re tracking the car,” Grainger said, somewhat nervously and clearly defensively. “And his cPad. Last registered positions were heading north out of town, toward the parks.”

  “How long ago?”

  “About two hours.”

  She sighed. “And now…?” Then she waited, without turning. Again, she didn’t even know why she bothered to ask. The answer was obvious. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath of Pacific air and sighed yet again. As she spoke, she nodded acceptance of a deeply shit situation. “And now you don’t know.”

  The penthouse suite was for f
amily use only and, save for the necessary supports, all four walls were almost entirely one-way glass offering her the clearest possible views of the sea beyond and the city behind. The furniture, all chosen by Barbara herself, was modern, minimal and elegant, often curved in appealing shapes which satisfied Scalise's love of geometry, form and symmetry. From the long, smooth curves of the huge sofa to the coffee tables and every ornament and decoration visible, everything in the room was either clear glass or white, save for a few very carefully positioned flashes of red. A vase here, a flower there, one leg of a table or the flick of a wide brush on an otherwise untouched canvas. The sapphire-glass desk she had chosen for her stays here was concave against one edge, the other forming a perfect cycloid curve with high-gloss, diamond-cut chamfered edges. Unlike Klein’s desk, Scalise’s only had a computer built into the outer area; the central section having had its glass surface ground to semi-opaque which gave it the air of a high-tech desk pad. Today, the surface was almost completely obscured by a large selection of slightly three dimensional printed images, each taken by a compressive light field camera. She turned around on the balcony to face him and, without another word, moved toward the door. Grainger backed inside as she passed.

  The desk which both her father and her grandfather had used before her had been antique but the hotel, owned by the family for generations, had recently been rebuilt from the ground up. Now, most was modern and all was classy. There was no room for antique in the new Portofino, Scalise decided. No room for tradition in the new world, and no place for good old-fashioned fuckups in something which seemed to unravelling as seriously as this.

  She picked one of the images up and turned it slowly in her hand, catching the man printed on the surface from varying angles. It was a simple CLF personnel shot of a security guard suitable for a digital ID. The man was clearly overweight and had an unhealthily cheesy 'family' smile. She found both distasteful.

  “Burgess?” she asked.