The River Sings

by Sandra Leigh Price

  “Where is my father and Amberline, Mama?”

  My mother stared towards the road leading from the hops farm. Over the rise of the road my father and Amberline came with the base of a wagon pulled between them, human drays. She set the bread down and grabbed my arms.

  “Patrin, it’s not too late to change your mind if it’s something you don’t want.” Her thumb caressed my cheek. “There are other men who are a better match. Just say the word and we’ll have an end to this.”

  Amberline’s and my father’s faces were red with exertion; a few of the other harvesters ran to help, the sound of their voices rising in the morning air towards us. Just seeing Amberline smile made me do the same, an invisible thread joining us together. He looked up at me and waved and I waved back, my mother watching all the while.

  “Will you not give me your blessing, Mama?” I said and she stopped and put her hands on my shoulders and inspected my face, her eyes scrying every inch before she wrapped me in her arms and kissed my cheeks.

  “Yes, my darling girl, if you will it.” But her unease lingered with me.

  EIGHT

  Eglantine, 1833

  When I was fourteen, my father made me his apprentice. The shine of his attention was on me and I felt myself grow like my name, becoming more briar than the rose.

  After my lessons with Makepeace in the kitchen, my father led me out onto the street, my steps trying to keep up with his stride. I hurried, trying to avoid the horseshit and the spilled ale from a keg, the muddy streams, the grimy froth tipped from someone’s washing, spoiled fruit, puddles and rough cobbles. All the while I glanced down at my own double reflection, the size of a teaspoon on the mirror surface of each leather shoe – free from ripple or blemish, two small faces. A pie man stood with his tray, whistled out his “Come all ye” and winked at me as I passed. We turned into the old lane, the well still standing amid the cobbles, to the door of our old home. The last time we had been here, my father had burned whatever remained before I could even touch it.

  “Come, come,” my father said, beckoning me through the door and into the room, but I hesitated, the room seeming so much smaller than I recalled, dark like a trap, but I did as I was told.

  My father squeezed himself behind the table and flipped his coat-tails up as he sat down on a crate as if he were about to conjure music from the table’s gouged surface, but he just rested his hands, his fingers splayed, his head lowered, composing himself. My heart was uneasy in his silence; I took surreptitious glances around the room. There was nothing from what was before except the crate and table, the chairs having been consigned to the flames. On top of the table was a small chest of drawers I’d never seen before, like the sort the apothecary kept. My gaze returned to my father, grey hair swirling down from his temple.

  “Eglantine, my girl, my firstborn, this is your future, your inheritance, my little secret dolly house.”

  Dolly house? Was he making fun of me? In his face there wasn’t a tinge of irony, all I saw was his pride. Dolly house? There were no dolls anywhere except the one in my pocket, no porcelain heads, no trays of arms and legs, no horsehair brushes and palettes of colour. No hanks of human hair or elfin-sized clothing. No wooden bodies. No pegs. The drawers were too small for all that, surely? My father was waiting for me to speak. The doll was in my hand at that moment. He cocked his head in my direction, eyebrows raised, but I brimmed with anger. What doll’s house?

  “Ain’t no dolls here, Father,” I said, the hairs on the back of my neck rising. My father laughed then, a great big bellow that incensed me. I slapped the table but this made him laugh all the more.

  “And dolls ain’t your inheritance, all you need is the velvet touch,” he said and he peeled open my fist, examining the length of my fingers. “Your inheritance is in your hands, just like mine.” My father dropped my hands and I watched in wonder as he proceeded to pull out and name jewels from my hair, my neck, my sleeve with his sleight of hand – diamond, ruby, sapphire, amethyst, tourmaline, pearl – their names incantations. I reached my hand in to touch one but my father brushed away my fingers.

  “Who owns these jewels?” I said.

  “People who didn’t take care of them well enough. Pick one, whatever catches your fancy.” My fingers hovered over the stones, the light sending a sparkle through their facets, coloured fire on my skin. I picked up the sunniest stone, a brooch like a sunflower, petals shaped in diamonds, and handed it to him.

  “Yellow diamond, surrounded by white, marquise cut. Mounted in gold. That is what the constable’s report will say.” I pulled my fingers away as if the stones were ice. My father was a thief? All that we had was built on someone else’s loss?

  He pulled out a roll of tools, carefully selecting a pair of fine pliers. He peeled back the prongs and released a yellow diamond so it fell into his palm like an apricot stone. The other settings followed suit. The fire was burning in the grate but something about it filled me with unease. The smoke stung my eyes. He threw the gold setting bereft of stone into a little leaden pot sat on top of the flame, the gold setting like insect legs dissolving before my eyes, until all that remained was a small puddle of gold. My father strapped a leather glove onto his hand and gingerly poured the gold into a mould he had laid out, the heat from the burner rouging his cheeks, a moustache of perspiration beading on his upper lip. He doused the flame in a bucket of sand.

  “What now?” I said, unsure what this display meant.

  “This is our trade, my girl. We take what is stolen and turn it into something else and sell it back as supplies to the jewellers. The original is untraceable of course.”

  “But why?”

  My father shucked off the glove, clutched my hands and spread my fingers to inspect them.

  “You have the Stark hands, long fingers. If we were another family I would have thought you’d a talent for the piano.”

  I snatched my hands away and looked at them, imagining them upon ivory, but they weren’t fine enough for that. I curled them into a fist. My father reached out, took my hands back into his and blew onto them as if they were merely daisy-clocks and he the wind, readying them for the opening.

  “How?” I said.

  “Don’t you remember all those games we’ve played? Hiding and seeking with these fingers? You were born into it, my dear girl. You have that little doll still, the one you keep in your pocket?”

  I nodded, exposed. The doll with her painted curls and pointed little face was my solace, the thing that belonged solely to me and me alone. I had to resist the urge to pat my pocket to see if she was still there, the panic spread through my body that my father had, with his flighty fingers, relieved her from my person.

  “Your doll was your first theft, Eglantine, but you were too young to remember.”

  I was confused: all my memories began with the house we lived in. Of Ada in her room, her poor swollen belly and her jewellery box. Makepeace in the kitchen. My father’s game of the handkerchiefs. If I tried to think beyond it, to the time when I was smaller, there was nothing but fog. My Miss Poppet was stolen? I’d stolen her? No memory of such an event offered itself to me. She had always been with me, as much part of my body as my fingers.

  “Now you’ve grown, who knows what you’ll be capable of.” He kissed my fingers proudly and ran his thumb over the lines on my palm. “It wouldn’t surprise me if you had the lightness of touch to steal the royal sceptre.” I felt the colour rise into my face, the heat from the fire running down my arms and into my fingers. “Come, let’s see what you can do.” His voice encouraged me, but yet I doubted.

  My father stood, his eyes closed, and I stood with my hands weighted by my sides, the room heavy with his expectation. I couldn’t see what it was my father saw in them, their promise hidden from my eyes.

  “Come, Eglantine, trust your fingers, let them be your divining rod, whatever is in my pockets is your water,” he said, and my fingers sang. His pocket watch was in my fingers, but my father jus
t stood there, his eyes closed.

  “Come, my girl, at least try,” he said.

  “Father,” I said.

  “Eglantine, you must trust yourself,” he said and I spun the watch in my hands, twirling it on its chain. The light caught it and sent shards dancing across his eyelids. “Eglantine?” He opened his eyes and blinked. And he smiled, seeing the watch already dangling from my fingers.

  My father took me by the elbow and led me out onto the street. A woman walked past us from the well, a tattered apron tied around her waist. She stared, but my father ignored her; he was smiling down at me and I felt the full force of his love and attention.

  “Did you see anything on that woman that would draw your eye? That is the first lesson. Let your eyes do the work,” my father said.

  The woman continued on down the lane, the contents of her bucket breaking the surface with each step, sending droplets of crystalline water into the air. If only I could catch those and fix them, they would contain more than just light, but silver, diamond, pearl. The woman turned and looked at me then spat on the ground. “Gypsy brat,” I heard her say before disappearing around a corner. Her spit wobbled on the ground.

  “Why did she say that? Who is she?” I said. The way she said the words burnt my cheeks.

  My father continued his steady pace, patting my hand, but would not answer me. I kept hearing her words, gypsy-brat, gypsy-brat, gypsy-brat in each toe tap of his shoe. My father lifted my chin with his finger and saw me frowning. “Pay her no heed, Eglantine, it is jealousy that makes her say such things. Look at us, what don’t we have that we can’t take for ourselves? The world is our oyster, my girl, and with our bare hands we will open it.”

  My father led me through the streets until I was disoriented and I held on to his elbow as if it were my anchor. He led me to a street that was lined with bookstalls; all the books and pamphlets were arranged on tables, and spread around them, like pigeons at crumbs, were city clerks, browsing pages. “Watch closely, Eglantine, look first, reach second, vanish third.” I saw fob chains, the gaping lining of pockets, the silk thread trailing from a misplaced handkerchief; I was browsing people as they were browsing the pages of the books.

  “Pick one,” my father said, “and I’ll wait for you here. Don’t run, just walk. All will be well.”

  The books, the clerks, their pockets, made me dizzy. “Pick one?” I echoed, and my father’s face clouded.

  “Pick a pocket,” he said, and I heard the shadow of disappointment in his voice.

  I walked towards the young men in their suits and they took no notice of the likes of me, dark-haired in my plain clothes, following my father’s footsteps, gypsy-brat still ringing in my ears. A young man with a pince-nez, his nose hidden in a book, was midway down the table, his hand on his hip, oblivious. I saw his pocket wide as a mouth, his handkerchief tip sticking out like a cat’s tongue at the cream. I looked at my father. He’d picked up a book himself and appeared to be absorbed in the words, though I knew he was not a man for letters; he caught my eyes and nodded me onward. Quickly I lurched forward and plucked the tip of the handkerchief, but I was too fast, my movements too clumsy, I bumped into him enough to draw his attention from the book to me, to my hand on his handkerchief. His eyes appeared blue and huge in the reflection of the pincenez and time was suspended. What did he see? A lady, baby, gypsy, queen? A girl, a thief, a gypsy brat?

  “Sorry, sir, is this yours?” I said and hoped my voice didn’t betray me as I held out to him his handkerchief as a peace offering. He took it from my hands and returned to his book. My hands were shaking. Where was the power of my fingers now? Where was their dexterity as my father had promised me? My father didn’t meet my eyes but carefully put the book down and walked towards me, his face all frown, his disappointment bearing down on me. I couldn’t breathe.

  I felt the need to run, my feet called for it, to hit the road. How was this be my inheritance, how could he even ask me? His voice was in my ears, calling me, but I ran.

  The whole of London spread before me like a body of water and I timid at its edge. At the end of the street the world roared up at me, a street seller’s voice crying out above it all – “Milko, Milko, Fish, Fisho, Dust, Dusto” – my feet ran to the music of it. The sounds of commotion behind me were quickly replaced with the sound of my own heartbeat, the rolling drums of an execution. I ran through the swill and horseshit, puddles engulfing my boots, the liquid seeping in past my stockings, chilling my bones. The faces I passed were greasy streaks, their voices but a common roar. I ran until nothing seemed familiar, except the river, a constant.

  Sunlight split through the clouds and something twined around my chest, a memory, the calling of the water, the call of my mother’s voice. My face was a furnace, all I wanted was to be cool.

  I slipped my shoes off and rolled off my stockings, the cold rushed around my legs, the pebbles and dirt clinging to the soles of my feet. The first step into the water made me gasp, the current caressing my skin, making me want to walk in until only my neck remained above the water. I held it in my hand and the water trickled through, clear fingers to my flesh ones. The water came up to my thighs and ballooned my skirts around me. I went deeper still, and then taking a big gulp of air, I dipped my head below the surface and looked through the gloom at the light as it sliced through the surface, hitting the orange paddle of a swan’s foot.

  The bird was upon me, her wings summoning the air, whipping the water, her long neck snaking forward hissing at my face. I tried to back away but the swan lunged again, its wings high and holy like an angel’s, brushing at my face. The beak and wings buffeted me between feather and water. The swan clacked its beak close to my ear, enclosing me in its wings, until I heard a voice in my ears: Be still. That is all the swan wanted, my stillness, and that I could give. The swan’s beak snapped at my hair, which seemed to tangle with each clack, and I watched it beneath my eyelashes, frightened to look it in the eye. Once it had finished grooming my hair, it rested its head on my shoulder, damp down soft on my chin, its breast feathers warm against my own chest as the current swayed around us. I heard the swan breathing, the river breathing, my own heartbeat stilled by the waters enclosing around me, when I heard a voice coming from no direction in particular: My Riverling. Riverling, Riverling, until I doubted myself as to whether someone spoke at all or if it was just the sounds the water made as it swirled around me.

  My father called me and I felt the whip of feathers and the whoosh in my ears as the swan flew away, the whistle of the pebble my father had thrown splashing and rippling in the water.

  The house was silent except for the constant time-keeping of a clock. I put my hand on the banister and took the first step, the floor rushed up to me, the house rang like a bell in my ears, tick-heartbeat, tick-heartbeat, but I forced my feet onwards, hanging on to the banister, my lifeline. I was drenched through, wet and cold. The whole house was dark. I heard the words in my head, a voice running through the soles of my feet, words that I did not know but somehow understood: patinor – leave, hoffeno – liar, Puvvo – earth. My father barely met my eye, as if he was frightened of something strange looking back at him through me. My feet hummed with words.

  Makepeace appeared out of nowhere and helped me shed my wet clothes and change into a dry shift. She brushed my hair back from my forehead before she exhaled, a burdened breath, and I braced myself, seeing myself in the pair of milky glasses perched on her nose like a cat’s eyes glinting in the dark. The pad of her fingers ran themselves over the strange knotty lines around my throat, my birthmark angry from the water, and down my arms. I pulled away, not wanting her disapproving touch on my skin.

  My doll fell out of my pocket and onto the floor, leaving her own damp stain. Makepeace’s eyes followed her fall. I quickly retrieved Miss Poppet. I knew it was time to put childish things behind me, but Miss Poppet was the only possession I had from my time with my mother.

  Makepeace pulled back the bed and bid
me get in it, before she turned to close the sash window, stopping a gust of air slicing through the heat of the room. She tormented the fire with the poker.

  I was restless to be up, to be out, to catch the world from the window, to see the comfort of the river. Returning to the dolly house again had unnerved me. It had never occurred to me how my father made his way in the world; he came and went with his own business and Makepeace and I remained at home. I looked at my own hands, the wrinkles of the water still pruned my fingertips. My father expected so much from them.

  Makepeace pulled a needle from her chatelaine, plied the blunt end beneath my nails and cleared the silt from there, her touch as familiar as a mother’s, but it lent no reassurance. Was she as much my father’s tool as he expected my hands to be? Makepeace never gave anything away. Did she know how my father provided for her keep and mine?

  Her touch was gentle as she methodically swiped the needle beneath my nails, her eyes large behind her glasses. The dirt she harvested fell into her apron; when she had collected it all and my nails were as shells, she tossed the dirt into the flames, whispering something beneath her breath. She was as familiar to me as my own shadow, always nearby, so close and constant that I’d never stopped to see her as someone apart from me or my father. Yet here she was. It was Makepeace who had shepherded me in the days after Ada’s death, shielding me from my father’s grief. It was Makepeace who had taught me my letters and comforted me in the night when I called for my own mother, though I had no memory of her face. It was Makepeace who had tried to fill her absence.

  “What happened to you, child? Always a magnet for the water you are,” she said and the fireplace hissed as raindrops scattered down the chimney.

  I should have said the water was a magnet for me. I heard the voice in my head again, the one I heard in the river, soft as a whisper. Prey o pani, it said. The river.

  “Prey o pani,” I said.