by Lisa Cach
“Cease!” he roared into the crowd, surprising the watchers, but doing nothing to break up the brawl. He had no time for that. He recognized the innkeeper’s wife at the edge of the water, and pinned her with his gaze. “Where is she?”
She looked quickly to the mob, then down at her hands. Nathaniel followed her gaze to the rope she held, the other end of which disappeared into the water. In the next moment she was sprawled in the mud, and he was hauling on the rope, barely aware that a few other hands had joined in, while the men continued their battle.
How long had she been under? Long enough for a fight to break out, long enough for a woman to run for help. Long enough for the last of her breath to break the surface and vanish, the water absorbing the last trace of ripples.
Her chest and every muscle ached with the need to take a breath. She had lost count of how long she had been under, her mind filled with the pain and the utter necessity of not breathing. A small part of her knew she rested on the bottom of the pond, in the cold silt, and could feel the pressure against her ears, the aching pain of the frigid water that was nothing compared to the pain of her body’s cry for air.
Her control was slipping, her concentration fading. She would breathe against her will, she felt it coming, she was losing the battle. . . .
And then she was in a sun-filled meadow, in summer. The pain was gone, and the cold, and all was quiet except for the sound of summer insects. Two black-haired toddlers came and took her hands, giggling, leading her through the wildflowers and grasses.
In the center of the field a group of people sat around a table having dinner. As she approached they turned and looked at her, then one by one stood and came forward. The little girls dropped her hands and went to play together in the grass. Valerian stood still, knowing this place although she had not seen it like this, and knowing the people who came toward her.
“Mother? Father?” They looked as they had when she was twelve. “Aunt Theresa?”
Her mother touched her face, and then took her hand and led her to the table. “Your grandmother,” she said, gesturing to an older, graceful woman, who smiled warmly. “Charmaine’s daughters,” she said, inclining her head toward the little girls rolling about in the grass.
“Yes, I know,” she said, for she did know. And she understood as well that Theresa had died, and felt around her in the air the souls of countless kin she had never met, as well as the souls of people she had known in her life and who had passed on, even those who had been but an acquaintance. Yet, at this moment, she knew them all, and felt the warmth of their souls moving in the air about her.
“I could not hold my breath any longer,” she said, almost an apology.
“You held it long enough,” Theresa said. “We could not have asked more of you.”
“You have a choice about remaining with us,” her father said, sitting her at the table and pouring her a glass of wine. The others sat as well and resumed their meal. “Last time you did not.”
“I am not dead, then?” She took a sip of the wine, sweet and fruity.
“The difference is small,” her grandmother said between dainty bites of custard. “And you rest upon the division.”
“So the choice is yours,” her mother said. “You may remain on Earth, or move on. You have shared your gift, even in the face of distrust and threat to yourself. You have lived well. It is for you to decide if you have lived fully.”
Valerian sat back, looking around the table. Everyone she loved was here. In life she had darkness and cold and people who feared her, a cousin who disliked her, a few friends who were kind to her, but could not erase from their eyes or hearts the doubt that she was one of them.
But then there was Oscar, the foolish bird. Who would care for him if she was not there? And Nathaniel. Just as she felt the bond with those around her, she could now feel the bond she shared with him, and the pull he exerted on her heart. He would suffer if he lost her like this, to a murderous mob he had thought he could control. Laetitia had drowned, and so would she. He might never recover from the guilt of it.
“I cannot leave him alone,” she said.
“No one is ever truly alone,” Theresa said.
“He will not know that. He will not understand. I must go back.”
As soon as she said the words the field began to fade, and then she was hovering above a small crowd lit by torchlight. Her body lay in the mud, wet and pale, and Mr. O’Connor was using a knife on the ropes around her hands and feet. Nathaniel knelt with her head in his lap, his hands moving frantically over her face, pushing back her hair.
“Valerian, come back. Valerian. Wake up, wake up, please, wake up. Oh God, please,” he cried over her, his body rocking.
The bonds came loose and Mr. O’Connor and Sally straightened her limbs, and she felt herself sucked down and into her body.
Her breath came in on a wrenching gasp. She was cold, so cold. She opened her eyes to a blur, feeling kisses on her forehead, and then Nathaniel lifted his head and she could see the tears in his eyes, and he was laughing, laughing and holding her cheeks and bending down to kiss her on the mouth.
“Cold,” she whispered. From somewhere a blanket appeared and he wrapped her in it, lifting her in his arms. “I came back for you,” she said into his chest.
“Yes, you did,” he said, laughing. “And you had better stay here now that you have.”
The clarity of her time with her family began to fade, but she clung tight to the sense of connectedness she had felt. She would not let that leave her, she promised herself, as she was carried away from the pond. She would not forget that no one was ever completely alone.
No matter who rejected her here, she knew a place where she belonged.
Chapter Twenty-seven
“I must ask you all to leave in the morning.” A room of stunned faces turned to his voice, and Nathaniel took a step farther into the drawing room. “There have been some . . . unfortunate occurrences in Greyfriars. I will be better able to deal with them if I do not have a houseful of guests to worry about.” He knew he was being astoundingly rude. One did not kick one’s guests out of one’s home.
He did not care.
“What has happened?” Kate asked, and then, her tone supercilious and half-mocking, “Have the peasants revolted?”
Nathaniel looked at her, formulating an answer that would suit his audience, and then abandoned the endeavor. He did not care to explain. He wanted them out of his house. He did not want them here with Valerian, did not want them asking their uncaring questions about Theresa, did not want to see them lounging on his furniture and eating his food and playing their pointless games.
“Paul,” he said, turning to his friend. “I would like you to stay, with your father. At least for a time.”
“Certainly.” There were questions in Paul’s eyes, but he did not ask them.
“You may, of course, call upon any of my staff to help you in your preparations,” he said to the group. “Good evening.” He gave them a stiff bow, turned on his heel, and left. He strode across the great hall and down the opposite corridor, not wanting to be anywhere near them when their shock wore off. They probably thought he had lost his mind.
On the contrary, he felt as if at long last he had found it.
Valerian sat on the edge of the chair by the fire in Nathaniel’s bedroom and allowed Judith to gently rub her hair in a towel. Maids had already taken away the tub that she had bathed in with little consciousness of her own actions. Indeed, she might have sat in the tub indefinitely, staring into the fire as she was now, if Judith had not been there to help her.
Everything seemed to be happening underwater, as if she were still at the bottom of the millpond. Nothing was quite real. She knew everything that had happened today, but it was as if the connection between that knowledge and her heart had been blocked. She could summon no emotion, no thought for the future, no care for where she was or was not. She dimly recognized that she was in shock, and knew it woul
d fade in time.
But for now, she stared into the flames, and did not notice the sound of the door opening, or the sensation of Judith draping a blanket over her shoulders, lifting her damp hair above it to keep it from soaking the clean chemise she wore.
“Valerian.”
She heard her name and turned her gaze from the flames. Nathaniel sat across from her, his muddy knees not four inches from her own. There was distress showing in his eyes, though he was trying to keep his face calm. She vaguely wondered how he could summon so much feeling.
“Your breeches are dirty. You should change them,” she said.
He glanced down, then back at her, the distress in his eyes deepening, and then dissipating, his face relaxing. She could see his emotions so clearly. Perhaps he had taken on hers for the time being, and that was why she could not feel.
Nathaniel held Valerian’s glazed blue eyes. She is in shock, he realized, and felt a breath of relief. Shock was something he had seen before, in the army. Felt it, as well. Given rest and quiet, she would come out of it.
“I need to find Oscar,” she said. “He does not like to be alone.”
“I will find him for you.”
“Thank you.”
She was silent again, her gaze returning to the fire, and he waited, not knowing what to say. She did not seem in any condition to hear that her aunt had died.
“I will need to bury Aunt Theresa,” she said, still staring into the flames. “Will you help me with that? She died today, I am not certain when. She had been ill for several months.”
He stared. How could she know? No one would have told her, he had ordered them not to. Or perhaps the question of how she knew was foolish considering the talents of her family. “I was with her when she died,” he said at last, softly. “Paul’s father was there as well. He knew her in her youth.”
She turned back to him, a smile on her lips. “That is good. She would not have died alone, but I am glad that you were there with her.”
He nodded, although he could not quite make sense of that statement. “I think it is time you got some sleep.”
“If you wish.”
He shook his head in mild exasperation, and scooped her up into his arms. He carried her to the bed and tucked her in. Her lids began to droop as soon as her head sank into the pillow, but she managed to hold onto his hand.
“No one is ever truly alone,” she said, “but will you stay with me tonight?”
“I will not leave you.”
Her grip on his hand weakened as she began to drift off to sleep. “But find Oscar first,” she murmured.
Well, that put him in his place. Second to an ill-mannered bird. But Oscar could not take care of her the way that he could, and the way he was going to. When her shock faded, she would probably think there was nothing wrong with going back to the cottage or to her cousin’s house, even though half the town had just tried to drown her.
For a moment the image of Laetitia’s waterlogged body, pulled from the Thames, merged with that of Valerian as he dragged her from the millpond. His life was repeating itself. He had the chance this time, though, to do it right. He could keep Valerian safe, could give her a better life than she would have scraping by as a healer, alone in the woods, despised and feared and shunned.
Perhaps there was a God, and this was his God-given chance to make amends for his past.
He went into his dressing room and changed his clothes, glad to remove the damp breeches and all traces of what had almost happened. A few seconds longer, and she would have been dead, he had no doubt of it. He had thought her dead when he pulled her from the water, for there had been no breath in her, her skin cold, lips blue.
A shudder ran through him, a delayed reaction, and he sat down, his legs and hands shaking. A few seconds more, and those bright blue eyes would never again have looked into his, alive with mischief. He would never again have heard her voice explaining to him the use of a plant he had never before noticed. Would never again have followed her confident lead through the rain, or lain beside her on a cliff top, or held her naked in his arms, warm beneath the covers of his bed.
He clenched his hands tight. He had not lost her. And he would not, not ever.
“Poooor hungry bird. Poooor hungry bird. Poooor . . .”
Valerian dragged her eyes open as the refrain continued. That pitiful plea would wake the dead.
“Poooor hungry—”
“All right, Oscar! Enough!” She squinted against the daylight, her body heavy as she struggled to sit up in bed. She felt as if she had been asleep for days. She could feel the dampness of sweat between her breasts, the sticky taste of sleep in her mouth, and the uncomfortable pressure of a full bladder.
Oscar hopped from the headboard behind her down onto the bed, waddling awkwardly over the folds and lumps of the covers. She scratched him gently over his eye ridges. “We shall have to find you something to eat,” she cooed.
“The bloody bird already had half my breakfast,” Nathaniel said.
Valerian turned to his voice. “I did not see you there,” she said, finding him at last in the chair by the dead fire. He looked clean but tired, a book discarded face down on the small table beside him.
Oscar hop-flapped his way to the end of the bed, then flew the short distance to the back of the chair opposite Nathaniel. “Eee-diot!”
“Oscar!” Valerian scolded.
“Ungrateful wretch,” Nathaniel said, looking sourly at the raven.
“Oscar is a superior bird,” Oscar said. “Biscuit.”
“Biscuit, my foot. ’Tis eggs and sausages you prefer.” And to Valerian, “How do you feel? Are you hungry?”
“I could eat something.”
“Then I shall go find you something to eat.” He rose from the chair with his customary grace, sending her a brief look that made it clear he was more concerned than he let on. She was suddenly certain that he had spent the entire night in that chair, watching over her.
“Thank you.” She was not truly hungry, but knew she should eat, and that it would comfort him to see her do so. As she washed and took care of her personal needs, bits and pieces of the night before came back to her, but it was too much to consider at once. She focused her mind instead on the fragments of the vision she had had at the bottom of the millpond.
Aunt Theresa lived still, with Charmaine’s daughters and her own parents. She would see her again. She was not gone forever.
But, oh, how she was going to miss her in the meantime. She felt tears sting her eyes, and the ache in her jaw as she clenched it against the grief that sought to well forth. She would not let it. Aunt Theresa still lived, beyond her death here. She was not gone. She was not.
“Valerian?” Nathaniel’s voice came to her, and she felt his hand on her shoulder.
She looked up at him, confused for a moment. How had she come to be sitting on the side of the bed? “I must tend to Aunt Theresa. And tell Charmaine.”
“I had your aunt brought here. She is in the chapel, and if both you and your cousin agree, then she will be buried here.”
Valerian nodded. “She would have liked that.”
“I have sent word to Charmaine’s husband. He will tell her of her mother’s passing.”
Valerian nodded again. “Thank you.” Her gaze drifted off into space, and she brought it back to Nathaniel with an effort. She needed something concrete to do, something to distract her mind and her hands. She was acquainted with grief, and did not want to disappear into it for months, for years even, as she had when her parents died.
“I should go to the cottage.”
“You are going to stay here, at the hall. It is not safe for you to be alone.”
She focused on him, frowning a bit. “I know I cannot be there alone, but you cannot keep me here, either. Your friends are here.”
“They left this morning.”
She raised her eyebrows at him.
“It was time for them to seek their amusements elsewhere
. You will stay here.”
She nodded. She did not know where else to go. Not yet, anyway. “There are things I need at the cottage, and things I do not wish to leave unattended. The books, my clothes, the medicines that have been prepared . . .”
She could see he did not want to let her go back, did not want her to so much as leave the bed if he could help it. “ ‘Twill be better for me if I have things to do,” she explained. “And I will need your help.”
Those appeared to be the magic words, for at last he nodded his assent. “We will make a brief trip today. In a few days, after the funeral, we will bring a cart and staff and do a more thorough job of it.”
“Thank you,” she said, and felt her mind begin to drift again.
The funeral service was short, given by a priest who had not known Theresa, but had apparently heard of her reputation. His hands shook, and his voice lacked sincerity when speaking of the good she had done for her neighbors. Valerian knew that Nathaniel had spoken with the man beforehand, making clear to him that Theresa had been a woman of God, devoting her life to easing the pains of others, and that any suggestion to the contrary would be unacceptable.
Charmaine stood silently with her husband, still pale from her ordeal, but when Valerian met her eyes, she could see no ill will there. Somehow she had erased those hellish visions of a demon from Charmaine’s mind. She could only wonder at the pain her cousin must be feeling, to have lost her mother and her children at the same time.
Also present were Sally and her husband, and their boys. Jeremiah O’Connor and his family, including Eddie, were present, and Mr. Miller, as were a small handful of other villagers who had been unwilling to condemn Valerian out of hand at the millpond. They looked shame faced, as if they felt somehow responsible for Theresa’s death, as well as for the misdeeds of their neighbors and their own inability to stop what had happened to Valerian.
