The River Sings

by Sandra Leigh Price

  “Patrin,” she said, “let me in.” And I hesitated. In the daylight, looking at her, I saw my mother’s features, the shape of her face, her frame, her forthright stare. All I wanted was to be back with her, not having the stink of the street come up to us every time the door opened, the neighbours’ effluent on our threshold.

  I opened the door and she stepped in, kissing me chastely on the cheek, her eyes on Little Egg, her grand-daughter, her namesake. In her arms she carried a basket filled with food. A bottle of milk stoppered up with a clean rag, apples, a loaf of bread. She cast her eye quickly around the decrepit room but said nothing about it.

  “How is she then?” Amberline’s mother asked and I was struck with not knowing what to call her – Mother, Eglantine, Aunt.

  “She is well, thanks to you,” I said and her face coloured with pride. She leaned down and ran a cool finger across the redness in Egg’s cheeks, her touch resting on the red lines around her throat. I knew she wanted to hold her, but I held firm. For all the blood we shared she was still the stranger.

  “She’s had them since she was born,” I said, looking at the chain-like wrinkle of skin. Amberline’s mother looked at me.

  “I’m sure they’ll fade with time, maybe just a little rash is all. I’ll bring some ointment next time I come.”

  I nodded, wondering if she was telling the truth; the lines around Egg’s neck seemed angry, permanent.

  “May I hold her?” she asked and reluctantly I handed her over, placing myself between the door and their embrace, frightened that she would try to take her back to whatever place she had come from. Her clothes were modest and simple, yes, but the weave fine, not a thread loose. Her boots were of fine leather and peeked from beneath the hem of her skirt. Her lace cap, like her blouse, was moon-white; how she got her clothes so clean without soot or dirt, I didn’t dare ask.

  “I was very sorry to hear about your father,” she said. “He was the finest of men.” My stomach clenched and I thought I’d be sick on the floor. “He saved my son,” she continued. “I’ll never forget it.”

  “But still he continues. Stealing things. For someone who wants to avoid the noose, he is doing all he can to court it,” I said, bitterness swirling in my words and in my voice.

  She looked at me blankly, as though not sure what to say. “He is his own man, for good or ill. I’ve hopes he’ll find his way yet,” she said, “but it weighs heavy on me the loss to your mother and yourself for his sake.” Her words were kindness, but they were empty to me. Amberline was a slippery knot between us, I could not make the shape of it or find where the ends were to unravel it.

  Little Egg’s hands shot up to her grandmother’s face and Mrs Stark laughed, her laugh so similar to my mother’s it squeezed at the core of me. Her little fingers caught on something and from beneath the fabric folds of her blouse a small pouch dangled in the air between them, Little Egg’s hands batting it, all a game. So Amberline was wrong, the old ways were not all gone from London.

  “Amberline has forbidden me from speaking our tongue,” I said without thinking, but she didn’t look up from her granddaughter’s face.

  “I wish that surprised me. It is partially my fault, I’m afraid. I’ve raised him without a father, outside of what even I knew myself, so forgive him if he tends to strike strong opinions.”

  I stood straighter, the anger rising.

  “He’s like an airborne seed. Look up at the top of the buildings and you’ll see them, trees taken root in the crevices and corners of the tallest of buildings, their roots clinging in shallow dirt and muck, still reaching towards the fresher air, the brighter light. Reaching. Determined. That’s Amberline.” She handed Little Egg back to me and I could smell in the folds of her swaddling cloth and her cheek the fragrance of Mrs Stark’s perfume, lavender, and for a moment I was jealous that she smelled of her grandmother and not of me.

  “Perhaps it is just a bit of milk rash around Little Eglantine’s neck. Let the air get to it and it should clear up.”

  “And where am I supposed to find that here?” The bitterness was in my voice again. Her fingers toyed with the chain of her chatelaine.

  I pined for the signs of living green things, for the sound of freely running water rather than the dirty splash of the well and the stink of the chamber-pot.

  “Down by the river, it’s only a few streets from here.” She bent down and kissed Little Egg on the cheek before she wrapped her arms around me in an embrace that made me stiffen, fighting my tears.

  “I’ll come again,” she said and I was unsure whether to believe her or not.

  That night Amberline asked me to pick the monograms from the pocket handkerchiefs he had stolen and to launder them of whatever pestilence he’d brought in. And I resentfully did as he requested. As I put the needle to the first initial he stoked the fire, a fresh batch of silver falling from his pockets, readying to run as molten as mercury, the air turning sour and coating our nostrils. If ever we had need of air it was now.

  In the morning I waited for Amberline to leave before strapping Egg to my chest, I didn’t want to ask his permission to go out in case he denied it. I wasn’t a prisoner, though all the buildings of the city made me feel caged. I walked out the door and stood in the lane – no bells clanged my doom, no one cast a sideways glance. How quickly my world had been curtailed, how quickly the end of the lane rushed towards me and I walked out into the wider street. Egg’s little eyes watched me, a yawn twisting her little features and then the inquisitive little blink. I took heart in her tiny face and I stuck to the side of the street where the weak sunshine fell and lifted my face to it as a sunflower does. I would have followed it anywhere, a golden sign in the sky. I followed the direction that Mrs Stark had given me, for a good half an hour, until I heard the sounds of the river rush up to me – the waterman’s call, the wash of water upon pebbles, the tern’s cry. I ran and felt the wind blow my scarf from my head.

  We came to a bridge and I leaned over. The water danced with light. Little Egg’s eyes tried to follow each glittering shard of it, her hand reaching out to them as if light was something to catch and keep and kindle in the palm of your hand. One foot carefully after the other, I walked down the small stone steps to the pebble-lined shore of the river, the smell of the city still filling my nostrils, but with the running water and the light and the wind, it felt like a broom sweeping all the crowded and confined oppressions from my heart and mind. All this time I had been carrying a stone in my chest, how little I had breathed, as if it was I who had been laid in the earth bereft of air and light. This was my grief. Little Egg’s fine lace bonnet flittered in my fingers as I walked down to the water’s edge. I bent down and let the water rush across my fingers and I whispered her secret name into the fragile whelk-shell of her ear. If she could survive this life, so could I. We would endure. The bargeman’s singing, clipped notes, sliced across the waters and filled me with longing to see my mother, though now we’d be marime, outcast. Surely she’d forgive and embrace us and call us her own? Amberline’s affections had burned bright for but a season, half in love with the idea of his past than the reality of us, with the law full of the scent of him.

  Down on the shoreline things dazzled at the corner of my eye, shining wet, demanding my attention, a patrin of a different kind, the patrin of the lost and torn away. I squinted against the sunlight and kicked at the pebbles. Little Egg’s head lolled onto my chest asleep, her eyelashes moving like moths. What do babes dream of? The river had left its own messages amongst the clumps of water weed and pebbles – an old blue apothecary bottle, a button, a shoe with no sole – all had the otherworldly gloss from the glistening water yet to dry. In the distance I saw a figure bent, scouring the lip of the shoreline, plucking up whatever thing their foot turned up, a human waterfowl.

  At my foot I turned over a glossy moss-veined stone, thinking it would be a pretty enough thing to keep on our windowsill. But there beneath something winked, caked with muck, som
ething golden. I picked it up and rolled it in my palm, blowing off the grit, spitting on it to reclaim it from the river’s silt, to return it to its shine. Egg stirred awake. Holding it to my eye, I surveyed the whole river through the circle of beaten gold, the whole world roaring around Little Egg and me like an ocean, but in that circled view all was quiet. I held the ring up to her little eye and peeked through at her and a smile ran fleetingly across her dimpled cheeks at my game. It was cold when I placed it on my finger, and I spun it round, large as it was, a gold flashing wheel fit for a fairy’s wagon.

  I wanted to wear it on my finger – the bride of the river – but I knew better; things bauble-bright would disappear as they appeared, submitted to the flame, changed form, turned to liquid, made new. Amberline was a thief, things danced through his hands, would he dance us through them with just as much lightness, with just as little thought? I opened my putsi, the leather squeaked as I tucked the ring deep inside, feeling the other things brush against my fingers.

  From across the stones the mudlarks approached. Had the glint of the gold caught their eyes, a lure as for a fish? As they neared I saw they were only children. One was half my height and tipped his cap at me with a “Morning missus”, while his companion in a coat fit for a scarecrow, beyond mending, pulled the holey fabric tighter around himself and stood tall, chin a-jut at me.

  “What did you find, missus? You know right well this is our patch and whatever you find belongs more to us than to you,” he said, running his hands through his lank hair, the sparse growth of first whiskers atop his lip.

  I admired his pluck, but I’d not have a child bully me. “Where is it writ?” I said. “Be off with you and find your own,” and I stepped forward, not intimidated.

  “We’ll make you give us what you found,” he said and I felt the iron run in my blood.

  “Will you now?” I said. “Then I’ll raise the spirits to curse you, I will, for I am gypsy by birth and I’ll make sure they harm you until you plead for your death.” The words ran out of me, and Little Egg, who had remained concealed beneath my shawl, began to cry like a curlew, thin and high, caught on the wind.

  But it was enough, the two boys thought my baby’s cry was the beginning of my curse and ran, losing their balance on the stony shore.

  “Be off with you,” I cried and threw a stone wide, not wanting to hit them, but enough to give them the gift of speed. Little Egg bawled then and I lowered my breast into her mouth as I resolved to stand my ground, to find the mettle in me.

  Amberline was waiting for us when we returned and he was livid, his eyes burning at me as soon as I entered, an interrogation flying off his lips. But my confrontation with the mudlarks had given me a new boldness, the secreted ring concealed around my neck fortified me.

  “Am I your prisoner now?” I said, my voice low as Egg snuggled up to my breast, asleep, her snuffles warm on my skin. Amberline’s face went white and he stepped backwards as if my words were a blow. The fire of Little Egg’s fever had burned off all illusions. Is this what I wanted for my child? A squalid room, impossible to keep clean in the middle of a city? A city that would strip you naked to sell your rags if it could? Yet Amberline and his mother always seemed well kept, a steady stream of silver ran through his hands, but none stopped with us. Amberline had dazzled me with his fine clean hands and his fair skin, his clothes from a tailor’s workshop, but he was no gentleman. He slapped me then. The back of his hand rang across my face. The blow turned my world black and white. I staggered backward, trying to protect Little Egg with one hand, trying to steady myself with the other. He had struck me with no thought for her.

  I drew myself up high and felt the words course through me.

  “Damn you straight to hell, Amberline Stark.”

  He pulled me away from the door by my hair and I felt I was drowning in mid-air trying to keep my arms as a shield around our daughter, more fearful for her safety than my own. With an agonising tear, a clump of my hair came away in his hand. In disgust he threw the dark threads of it to the floor and left us, the door shuddering in its frame. I sat upright and looked at that patch of hair and skin and blood which had most recently been fixed to my own head and recalled my father attaching a piece of meat to a string and twirling it round and round his head to tempt the trout before skimming it across the water, the lips of the fish reaching towards the surface.

  Amberline could twirl my hair and skin, my very breath, and I’d come when called, but I’d be biding my time. Little Egg whimpered in my arms, my mind was already running. Better a bride of the river than his. The patrin in my mind’s eye marked the way, the secret route to escape.

  When Amberline returned he was all remorse, all repentance, his hand gently brushing where before it had pulled, though I flinched. From his pocket he produced a red ribbon for my hair and I thanked him for it and tucked it down the front of my bodice. It would be the ribbon I’d tie on the thornbush of my father’s grave. Amberline kept a close eye upon Little Egg and me, as if we were the jewels that he would not be parted from, jewels to be used bright as lures, tangled in his schemes. And I submitted, knowing it would lull him into trust.

  He bid me walk with him, Little Egg strapped to my chest, a little play all mapped out on the streets fanning around us. Little Egg’s boot was loose enough to fall on cue just as a mark passed by, the delicate pink squirm of her foot, her toes the worm. The retrieval of her boot was bait, providing enough distraction for Amberline to get closer, his fingers hovering like mayflies before they danced through the Samaritan’s pockets, while I looked at the handiwork of my father offered back to me in a stranger’s palm, thanks spilling out of my mouth. How did it come to this? How had Egg and I become Amberline’s feeble instruments? My father had sacrificed his life to give us a chance, but Amberline appeared unable to grasp what that chance was. My father had made these little shoes for Little Egg’s feet, all his love for her fixed with each stitch. The leather warm. I had to pretend to be grateful to the stranger, all the while bristling with the charade, knowing full well that Amberline’s trick would be enough to have us all transported if caught.

  TWENTY

  Patrin, 1821

  When Little Egg’s baby shoes no longer fit her feet, I put them away, the little stitches and knots of my father’s making still held true. In the darkness while Amberline slept I ran my fingers over that stitching, round and around, a little amulet. I felt my father’s skill with the needle, the reinforcement of the leather at heel and toe. The leather had taken on the wear of Egg’s small foot and given the shoe the ghost shape of it – heel, arch, toes. I didn’t know whether it cradled my hand or my hand it. Little Egg was growing faster than my eye could track her. She’d already pulled herself up by the leg of the table and had taken her first tentative steps, her hands outstretched for balance as if she was floating in air. As soon as she walked she ran. Out to the well she’d run around the puddles, her feet hitting them, sending the water skyward.

  But Amberline had grand plans.

  One day towards Egg’s second birthday, Amberline came in the door holding a large box, looped with a string, a fine stamp upon it. He placed it down on the rickety table and Egg climbed up onto a chair, the feet of which wobbled. Amberline reached out his hand to steady her. She looked at the box as if it was a thing in itself, her finger reaching towards the lid, and I felt a dread come over me as to what was inside. Amberline slid off the string and she helped him lift the lid, a tumble of bright satin spilling over the edge. The chortle of her voice. Her little hand reached for it but the slipperiness of the fabric evaded her fingers. She laughed, reached again and pulled out a white satin dress; the glare of it in the gloom made it look like silver. Around the waist was a dark blue velvet sash. Beneath it in the box was a small dress in the reverse: a blue velvet dress and a white satin sash. Amberline held it out towards me, the plush of it, soft to the touch. I held it to my cheek and closed my eyes, seduced by the nap of it. Amberline kissed me on the
mouth unawares and I was startled, I’d forgotten the sweetness of his lips. How much had these dresses cost? How many weeks’ rent would they have provided? If he could afford dresses like these, could we afford a better place to live? Better food to eat? A better life for all of us? They were too fine, too delicate.

  “Come, try them on,” Amberline smiled and though I was wary I remembered that face when I first saw it, the glitter of those eyes, that smile that reeled me in. Amberline waited on the other side of the curtain as we dressed and as soon as I slipped the dress over my head I felt transformed, the fabric cool as water. Little Egg fidgeted as I fastened the buttons and tied her sash, eager to see her father’s smile. With a lock of her dark hair, I tried to tempt a curl around her face. She was so excited and wriggling that she spun off my fingers, enjoying the feel of the silken fabric on her legs. Amberline’s gifts were extravagant, blinding. With a flourish of the curtain, we stepped out into Amberline’s smile, all light, all brightness.

  From under the table he pulled out two identical hatboxes and plucked out a pair of bonnets then helped Egg tie the big blue ribbons beneath her chin, his tickling fingers making her laugh.

  “And lastly,” Amberline said, lifting Little Egg onto the chair, her little feet swinging in the air, “take a look in my pockets.” She looked at him and looked at his pockets, her hand reaching in and pulling out a small boot from one and its pair from the other. Amberline kneeled down, fed her foot to the boot and tied the laces, the leather white kid. Once the laces were firmly tied, she leapt down and grinned at me as the sole made a resounding thwack.

  “Are you ready?” he said.

  “Ready for what?” I asked, but he wouldn’t answer me, he just smiled and opened the door.

  Amberline led us down to the river which crawled with people, all waiting for the royal ship upon the water. The wind whipped at our skirts, a spray of water crested our heads and sprayed the canopy of stallholders selling chestnuts, ale, silhouettes for half a crown. The fresh air was tonic. Amberline wove us through the crowds and ushered us into a tent and the portraitist rubbed his hands together at our entrance, bidding us take our seats behind the screen, a candle flickering from the draught distorting our shadow, so that sometimes I was small and Egg was large and Amberline’s hat arched over us, a dark sky.