The River Sings

by Sandra Leigh Price

  She came and sat beside me, put her hand to my forehead, a forked line of worry running across her own, but I had no fever, all I had was the cold truth brushing up against me and I wondered if I’d be strong enough to withstand it.

  “Your father was born in a storm, did you know that?” she said. I shook my head. I knew nothing of my father’s life outside of this house, outside of the dolly house.

  “The men had gone bokra-choring, sheep stealing, his father lost his life for it at the end of a farmer’s gun.” The Romany words flushed into me with familiarity but their meaning disappeared like smoke in the daylight.

  “All my husband’s belongings were put to the flame, lest the spirit remain and weigh heavy on the living. I was to move into his parents’ caravan with the baby. But I’d had enough of the road and the country life, the selling of baskets and pegs, the silver across my palm for a fortune told. I wanted to strike out and find my own fortune, not have it dictated to me by my in-laws. I wanted more. In the dead of night I took our horse and all I owned tied into a shawl strapped to my back, and with another shawl strapped the baby to my front. I sold the horse to the first person who offered me money for it on the outskirts of the city, on Makepeace Lane, and I changed my name accordingly. At night we slept under the twisted canopies of hedgerows, hedgehogs rootling for night crawlers around us, waking to hayricks alive with sparrows.”

  Why was she telling me this? All the hairs on my arms stood on end, the shiver running feverishly across them as the thought formed in my head. That baby was my father. Makepeace was my grandmother. Makepeace nodded her head, reading the doubt in my frown. “Yes, child. This is the truth. Amberline never wanted me to tell you, but I can tell you now he’s gone.” She looked away then, but I could see the pain in her face, the mastery of her tears.

  “I walked into the heart of the city and picked another street, all the colourful painted doors and beautiful whitewashed steps, polished door knockers like horse brasses on fair day. I knocked proudly on each and asked for work and was turned away from every one. My baby strapped to my chest was a repellent to employment, but I would not surrender him as a foundling or return him to the life I was so desperate to leave behind. He cried for the breast and I took him down to the riverside, settling beneath a willow, watching the hair-like leaves waft in the water and the gaping mouths of the little fishes dart, listening to the happy suck, wondering what I would do next, when a young lady approached me, her miniature image dozing beneath a silk coverlet in her arms. She was dressed in a long muslin gown, her hem tainted green, stained by the grass. A snug little red velvet jacket cloaked her, damp at the breast where her milk sprang. The lady took me on as a wet nurse for her baby in exchange for a room and meals. She was Mrs Fitzroy. She’d lost her husband in the wars and was glad of company for herself and her baby daughter, Ada. She employed me as her wet nurse first. Later I became her housekeeper.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” I said, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. How could she have kept me at a distance for so long?

  Makepeace’s eyes clouded over. “We’re all the family left that each of us has got, Eglantine.” She took my hand in hers. I wanted to pull away. This was my grandmother, the only family I had left in all the world, and she was holding my hand. My emotions shot through me with as much force and colour as looking at the diamond through Old Sweet’s loupe, all of them overlapping and vivid. All her little tendernesses added up. Housekeepers didn’t tend to the children of the house as she did. But she was my father’s mother, her bedroom was the tiny room off the kitchen, bereft of light.

  “You have lived like a servant.”

  “It was your father’s idea, Eglantine. I’d kept this house for years already by the time it came into his possession,” she said.

  “And how did he come to own this house?” I said, the truth hovering somewhere between us, but I was unsure if she would pin it down, for once and for all.

  Makepeace sighed and looked out the window. “Amberline and Ada grew up side by side, he was the shadow to her light. Their games and laughter filled the house. But when Ada came of age, Mrs Fitzroy decided it was no longer appropriate for her to be so close with a servant’s boy. Amberline was old enough to earn his keep. But this sent him into a temper. His taste of fine things only made him want more. He found a job at a stable, but he felt it was beneath him, shovelling shit and hay. He became wilful, uncontrollable. He’d steal to buy Ada gifts and fancies. It was when Mrs Fitzroy discovered his gifts to Ada that she sent him away.”

  She released my hand to smooth the chatelaine chains along her skirt. “He made this for me, did you know?” she asked, trying to divert my attention. Her chatelaine was more lock than key. It was a weight that had anchored her to my father, to his house.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” I said. I would not let her distract me.

  Makepeace sighed. “I didn’t see him for some time, though I ached to hear of him. And then, one day he reappeared, with his fine clothes and money in his pocket. He didn’t tell me where he’d been or where the money had come from and I knew better than to ask. And in his arms he held you. He left you in my care while he paid his respects to Mrs Fitzroy. I knew he was keen to see her face at his change in fortune. And I was amazed and relieved, for I not only had my son back, but I had a new grand-daughter, named for me. I kept you quiet in the kitchen. But not long after Amberline returned, Mrs Fitzroy died. Amberline only had to ask for Ada’s hand and she gave it. Your father passed you off as a foundling and Ada, soft-hearted creature she was, took you in. When he married her, the house – and all her wealth – became his. I stayed on as housekeeper. He wanted it so.”

  The walls seemed to press in on us; this house had been the centre of my father’s empire? I looked at the ceiling and the floor. The house was just an illusion. It wasn’t made of four safe walls and a sheltering roof, it wasn’t a place of safety and refuge, it was my father’s masterstroke, his biggest theft yet.

  “You must believe me,” Makepeace said, “too long I’ve kept it to myself. The weight of it.”

  Our home was something my father had taken by stealth. All of me was incendiary. I wanted to see the house burn. The last of my father’s litany of thefts gone in smoke. But the place was so damp, I doubted a flame would bother to take.

  “What about my mother?” I said and saw Makepeace flinch, not realising how much she had given away, forgetting how the silences usually fuelled my questions about my mother. “When did I come to live here without her?” Makepeace looked at me. All the pieces shone dangerously and I struggled against putting them together, not wanting to see the blade that they had become. “He was married to them at the same time?” Makepeace went pale with the truth of what I had gleaned.

  “He’s my son, Eglantine. What was I to do? Even as a boy he was full of his own thoughts and ideas. When I tried to teach him his letters, they wouldn’t stick, he was all for playing tricks with his hands, unable to sit still. I came and saw you and your mother every chance I could.”

  “What sort of excuse is that?” I prickled.

  “The Rom in him loved your mother, but he craved being a gentleman and marrying Ada gave him that. He was his own man, Eglantine, I’d no more influence over him as a grown man.”

  Outside a cat wailed and sent my heart racing, for my ears perceived it as a child’s cry first before I made sense of the sound. Makepeace, too, sat a little higher, stiller, until we both breathed again. She squeezed my hand gently in hers and I felt the papery dry skin of her hand. I wept. Angry tears. My own doll held tight in my fist, my first theft, I was a thief’s daughter, whatever way I looked at it. He’d stolen this house, and all the contents of it. I was just another spoil. And somehow, still yet unbeknownst to me, he’d stolen my mother from me. I’d no proof, but I felt it in my marrow.

  At the first opportunity I got, I took the pillowcase of money and my doll and consigned them to the darkness at the bott
om of the cellar. I’d not be his walking legacy, the keeper of his flame. I’d not be the strength of his hands.

  EIGHTEEN

  Patrin, 1819

  As the season turned, wind gusted under our door and through the cracks in the walls that I had stuffed with rags to try to stem the cold. Rain fell intermittently and slipped through a hole in the ceiling, a bucket beneath to catch it. I lifted Little Egg to my breast and felt the dry radiant heat of her cheek on my breast.

  “Amberline,” I called, but he was not here; his absence was growing more familiar than he was. I let my daughter drink, hoping my milk would cool her, before I carried her to the fire, the flames throwing their light across her small body, the telltale spots, the painted rouge of illness on her cheeks. The scarlatina. Quickly I stripped her of her swaddling cloth and gown and saw the rash lick down her arms. Eerily she didn’t cry out, just lay on my lap with her tongue, speckled like a strawberry, resting in her mouth. The red lines on her throat looked caked with blood, like twisted rope. I ran a damp cloth down her face and limbs hoping to cool her. I rocked her in my arms, all the while a prayer on my lips, one hand on my daughter, one hand on my putsi, willing her well with whatever power could hold true. Saint Sarah of the Sea deliver us.

  Amberline came in from the darkness, the rain dripping from his hat, elbows, shoulders; like the face of a mountain he had his own waterfalls. His face just as impassive.

  “What on earth are you doing? She’ll catch a chill,” he scolded, wanting to scoop my daughter from my arms, but I moved away from him, so all he gathered was air.

  “She has the fever, the scarlatina.” The words bobbed in my throat, yet my mind still clung to the prayer. “We have to draw the fever away,” I said, trickling a little water into her mouth. “This is your doing, Amberline, taking her out to see your mother, wherever she lives, without my knowing.”

  Amberline peered into her face and I looked away, not wanting to see his fear, my own was too large, it prickled around me and I held her tighter.

  “I’ll go to the apothecary,” Amberline said, his hand on the door, not waiting for me to respond. He hurried out, leaving behind him a pool of water that snaked towards us. Should I take her out in the rain? Would that even cool her? My mother would have known how to bring the fever down and I at once felt the burden of leaving her behind, how little thought I’d given to anything at all, intoxicated by a kiss and the promise of a new start.

  Amberline returned with a dirty-looking bottle stoppered with cork and some scribbled instructions that the rain had run to babble. His hand shook as he tried to pour the required amount into a spoon, some escaping its lip and down onto the floor, the smell of alcohol strong and sharp in my nostrils. It trickled into Little Egg’s mouth and for a moment her face contorted red before she vomited it out. Her little tongue grew more swollen, a slug in her mouth.

  The fever burned us together. All the love we had, united against the illness, a presence inside the room, making the three of us four.

  By the second night her breathing grew ragged and Amberline thought we should have her baptised in a church and a blessing from the Holy Spirit. It was the only thing we hadn’t tried. We owed her that, he implored. We looked at each other, the fear unsaid between us. That the debt of my father’s life was yet to be paid.

  Out in the rain, Amberline pulled his coat over us to try to keep us dry, but the rain would not be deterred. We staggered through the streets, knocking on every church door we passed. Most of them were locked against the poor, frightened that their silver plate be the stuff for the dollyshop. If anyone came to answer we were met with expressions of disgust; few would even exchange a word with us before the door closed between us. All Amberline’s fine clothes were worthless now, the rain had reduced us to the damp origins of what we were – gypsies – and that was all anyone saw: the despised, the vagrant, the poor. Our one true joy was strapped to my chest and I willed my heart to pick up the slack beat of hers.

  The next church door we arrived at, Amberline’s foot was wedged in the doorway before the churchman forced it closed. A coin allowed us in, but he wouldn’t baptise our daughter until we were married in the eyes of his Lord, our Romany union had no place here. I thought of my father’s happiness at our union, my mother’s distrust; how I longed for them both now, my father’s strength, my mother’s knowledge, together we’d scatter this fever to the winds. Amberline gave him another coin.

  The churchman waited scowling and I wanted to tell him that Little Egg had already been baptised by a river, but what good would that serve? Our wet clothes dripped onto the floor and the churchman’s eyes looked at the puddles of us and no doubt wished us gone. Would Amberline dig into his pockets again? Would I have to shake him to make the pennies rain down onto the floor? Why did he hesitate? He disappeared outside through the doorway into the rain and left me with the glowering parson. I saw myself through his eyes – nothing more than a beggar with a soul not worthy of his breath and my baby’s worth even less. He saw me not as a person but as an inconvenience. Amberline stepped back through the doorway, his face impervious.

  “We shall wait a little longer, dear sir,” he said, placing another coin in the parson’s palm, dripping water onto the lines in which my mother would have forecast a fortune for her grand-daughter’s life. How did Amberline’s pockets overflow with silver, his clothing so fine, when we lived as we did? How much money would he pay to save our daughter?

  The church was all stone and cold. Would God hear a prayer from in here? In response the wind crept beneath the door and howled through the room and into the rest of the church.

  We must have waited an uncomfortable half an hour with the churchman drinking from a flask he had hidden about himself and dozing in a pew, the only thing that held him the promise of more coin, like Judas’s secret bargain, when a pounding came at the door. Amberline swift upon his feet opened it to admit the soaked visitors – an older woman and a tattered child who disappeared from the doorway as soon as Amberline bestowed a shilling, a child made of raindrops, then darkness, then gone.

  The older lady stepped forward and threw her shawl from her head, a soft lace cap stuck around her face, a silver chatelaine glinting at her waist, vanishing into her voluminous skirts.

  “Give me the child,” she said urgently, reaching her hands towards my chest. I resisted. Who was she and what did she want with my child? Amberline nodded to me to do as I was directed and carefully I unstrapped Little Egg from my chest, her lace-worked bonnet matching the trim on the older woman’s cap. Hawk-eyed I watched her, lest she try to remove her from the church. Amberline stamped his foot and the churchman bumbled up to the altar and said the most perfunctory of vows which we agreed to, short one witness so the churchman signed the register. I wrote my name as best I was able and Amberline made an X, while the older lady waited, her pale blue eyes not daring to meet mine. He handed her the pen and she took it slowly and applied it to the writing of her name. First an E then a Stark. She was Amberline’s mother. My aunt, the first Eglantine Stark.

  Mrs Stark handed the baby to the churchman reluctantly, undoing the little ribbons under Egg’s chin gently, before he tilted her backwards and let the holy water trickle over her fontanelle, the cool water making her blink, but she did not cry out. Where was the singing, where was the beauty of the river running free over her limbs, where was all the welcoming joy? This was a baptism of tears.

  Mrs Stark took Little Egg back into her arms before unwrapping her swaddling cloth, her little chest peeking from the woollen shawl also a rouge-pot red. Her fingers gently ran themselves over the corded red marks around her neck, enflamed with the scarlatina. Gently Mrs Stark wrapped her back up again and looked into my baby’s mouth. The parson stood, about to speak, to encourage us to leave, but Mrs Stark silenced him with a glance and handed my daughter back to me.

  From within the cavernous folds of her skirts, Mrs Stark drew out a small bottle and dipped the tip of her finger
in before offering it to Egg to suck. I fought back my aversion for another woman’s claim to closeness with my child, for I knew she was only trying to help. There was something about her, the surety of her hands, the ease around Egg, the net of her love thrown wide around her.

  “It is foxglove. It will take her fever down,” Mrs Stark said as Egg sucked upon her finger and winced. Mrs Stark dipped her finger in the font and dripped some holy water into Egg’s mouth.

  The churchman mumbled under his breath but we ignored him. Carefully Mrs Stark untied Egg’s little shoes and I felt my breath strain in my throat, the little shoes my father had made for her on her first baptism day. She carefully blew into each little piece of stitched kid and the shoe inflated like a drinking bladder does with water. She reached into her pockets and sprinkled the crushed bloom of the foxglove at the toe of each shoe, before she carefully dipped Egg’s feet back into her slippers.

  NINETEEN

  Patrin, 1819

  Little Egg recovered from her bout of scarlatina; Mrs Stark’s medicine had worked better than the apothecary’s bitter brew. The only remnant of it was the red flush that had seeped into her cheeks. The lines around her throat faded but their presence ate at me, the thought of that rope going over my father’s head, my mother’s curse, the fear that they had somehow mingled together on my baby’s flesh. I bathed her skin in chamomile, but the herb was old and withered. How long ago had it been picked? Desiccated as ash.

  I was bathing Egg’s tender skin when there was a knock at the door and I stood, my hand suspended between bowl and skin, unsure what the sound was for a moment, when the knock came again. No one had knocked on our door before. I wrapped Egg back up and carefully opened the door, my foot wedged against it, expecting someone to push it in. But when I opened it there was Amberline’s mother, her lace cap pushed up by the wind.