“She is God’s way of testing me and I am failing miserably, Elspeth.” Lucien had said those words to her two weeks ago. It was the night on which he’d kissed her for the first time. Chastely and on the forehead only, but she had understood the deeper message. He felt clean with her and able to resist temptation. She was not some gaudy peacock of a woman with all her assets on display. He could be strong with her because she made him strong.
She picked up the last picture. This one showed the woman full length, standing beside her car, a frown on her face as she looked in the general direction of the camera as if she felt someone watching her.
Lucien had not exaggerated, he had failed spectacularly. She was pregnant. That whore of Babylon was pregnant with the Reverend’s child. Elspeth felt a wave of fury so big it lifted her up out of her chair and before she even realized what she was doing she had taken her sewing scissors and was hacking at the pretty blood-colored silk, until it lay in tiny shreds around her feet, blazing scarlet in the last light of the evening. Glittering strands of the woman’s hair lay scattered amongst all the shreds. It reminded her of a beautiful Japanese doll she’d been given as a gift long ago. It had been one of the nicest things she’d ever owned. The doll had been made from porcelain and had a white face with the palest pink blush to her cheeks. Delicate little slippered feet had peeked out from under a scarlet kimono which had been embroidered with tiny silver dragonflies. A matching parasol had sat just so upon the doll’s fragile porcelain shoulder and a sash of silver and lavender had been wrapped around her porcelain waist. A small scroll that had come in the box with the doll said her name was Chiyoko and that it meant ‘a thousand generations’. Elspeth had loved the doll and taken exquisite care of her. Her mother had smashed Chiyoko the night she caught Elspeth looking at her newly-budding breasts in the mirror. Vanity was a sin, her mother had said, and so she must be punished. The whore made her think of Chiyoko in some of her pictures, porcelain skin with that shell-like flush to it and the dark hair and perfect oval of forehead and cheeks and chin. Yes, men were weak to be pulled in by such simple things.
She took her bible down from the shelf above the table where she kept it. There was a verse that applied to this situation. It was in Genesis. She turned to the chapter and verse, for she had it memorized.
‘And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter-in-law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, ‘Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.’
This time she would send no letter. She did not want the whore to have any warning of her coming. Her path was clear now. She knew what she had to do.
Had anyone chanced to run into the Reverend Lucien Broughton that evening it wasn’t likely they would have recognized him. His own mother would have trouble recognizing him just now, he thought, slipping a key into the side door of a garage he kept under an assumed name in the town of Newry. He went inside under the cover of thick darkness, just as he always did. He never visited this place in the light. It was too dangerous.
Inside there was a car and a sink and a hose. The car was covered with a heavy tarpaulin so that it wouldn’t get dusty. He pulled on a pair of black gloves and then slowly folded back the tarp so that the car stood gleaming under the lone light bulb. He ran a hand along the hood. The car was in flawless condition. He’d stolen it a long time ago. It had been parked on a farm which he’d been acquainted with and he had taken it one night knowing he had a need for it. This car might be the truest love he’d ever known in his life. It had been utterly faithful to him and his purpose. It had kept his secrets. In return he had taken it on some of his grandest adventures. What few sexual experiences he’d had in his life had taken place in this car.
He was tying off loose ends, the car was one, Elspeth would be the next. Elspeth was slightly more unhinged than he’d bargained for. To use the Belfast street parlance, she was a right nutter. She was becoming dangerous, in a way he no longer cared for. He had known for a long time that she would have to go. She had seen the pictures he’d kept in the envelope in his bureau. He had never known exactly how much she’d understood of what she’d seen and, secretive wee bitch that she was, she’d never mentioned it. No doubt she thought it was further proof of her devotion and loyalty to him. He needed a loyalty that was completely blind and he feared Elspeth’s no longer was.
He pulled a watch cap down over his pale hair and flipped up the collar of his dark coat. He hadn’t taken the taxi out in a very long time. It was time to part ways. There was another garage waiting for it under the name of a different man, a man who could not be hurt by the discovery of this car. And it wasn’t like the man had been entirely innocent. No, he’d had plenty of blood on his hands. A little more wouldn’t hurt his memory. He wondered if Pamela Riordan had really put the wheels in motion to end the constable’s life. If so, it made her more interesting to him. She was a more formidable player in this little game of his than he’d previously believed. He’d understood that when she joined forces with Noah Murray. She seemed to have little fear; he found that quality intriguing.
He drove the car out of the garage and parked it some way down the lane. Then he returned to the garage and doused the inside of it with petrol. He lit a match and watched it burn blue and gold until it touched his gloved fingers and then he threw it. The garage went up with a whoosh and there was that void in the center of the world that was fire, as it drew in a long breath before exploding outward in fury.
He would have liked to stay and watch, he was so rarely warm these days it seemed and the fire was throwing out a lovely heat. But he could not afford to linger. He walked swiftly to the taxi and got in, driving away into the dark slowly, for he wouldn’t turn on the head lights until he was well away from here.
Once he moved the car and then tipped off the police on where to find it, this chapter of his life would come to a close. He would miss it, but it was time to move on. He was settling all his personal business because things had become slightly unraveled of late and a policeman, one who clearly didn’t understand the Reverend’s power, had come sniffing around recently asking some very inconvenient questions. This car was one loose end, and using it to make it appear that Constable Blackwood had been the man the police unofficially called ‘The Butcher’, was a tidy way to tie it off and relinquish it to his past. Then he needed to deal with Elspeth.
Chapter Eighty-one
Bittersweet Peace
SEPTEMBER HAD BEEN a long and beautiful month of fine days of sun and nights filled with soft winds. It had been a season of depth and sweet fire and she had inhaled it each day, savoring this final season in her own home—both the bitter and sweet of it. This season of mist and madness and mellow fruitfulness. Her garden had been plentiful, the lone apple tree bent with the weight of fruit. A certain peace had come to her this autumn, which had been entirely elusive in the years before, but it was a bittersweet peace, for it was, she knew, a reconciliation with loss.
Conor had begun school a few weeks before and had adjusted to it well as he did to most things, though he was annoyed by how much his attendance at school circumscribed his time out-of-doors. Today was Saturday, so he was free to play outside all day. It had been a fine day, if chilly, for they’d had their first frost that morning. Isabelle had played outside with her brother for several hours, and was now upstairs having a much-needed nap.
September had also been a month of pleasant surprise. She had gotten her first royalty check from her US publisher and while it had been miniscule it gave her a feeling of accomplishment. Another check had arrived too, from a publishing house in London, for royalties on the book of fairy tales Jamie had written and she had illustrated. This one was not so miniscule, and had gone some way to relieving her financial worry. The check had been large enough to make her think Jamie may have arranged to have all profits on the book diverted to her.
All the plans were in place for the wedding
. It only remained for the paperwork to come through. Tomas thought it would be done and in her hands before October’s end. She only wished it felt like a new beginning, rather than an ending. Nevertheless, she began her preparations for moving house. She had spent the afternoon packing up some of her special china and dishes, things that she didn’t use on a daily basis. She thought she might leave the beautiful set of Belleek dishes here with Vanya, because the china had been a housewarming gift from Jamie and she couldn’t see herself using those dishes with Noah.
Conor came into the kitchen, in his usual fashion, fast enough that he slid across half the floor. She sighed, she had just darned all his wee socks three days ago. He was wont to dash outside without his shoes or boots, though she always made certain his footwear was handy by the door through which he most often exited.
“What are you doing, Mama?” he asked, one small and thoroughly grubby hand digging in the cookie jar for the two cookies she had promised he might have for his mid-afternoon snack. She took a moment to answer him, for it wasn’t a topic of which Conor was fond.
“Packing up the stuff we don’t need every day,” she said, and then went a bit further, because she suspected that he really didn’t understand they truly were leaving this house in the next month or so. “We will have to start packing up your room soon too, Conor.” She hated saying it, because she knew it upset him, and it put a sliver in her own heart but they did need to get on with the task of getting the house sorted properly.
“I like my room,” he said, calmly. “I don’t want a room in Noah’s house.”
She gritted her teeth. She understood Conor’s feelings, but her patience was wearing a little thin in regards to his stubbornness.
“Conor, I know you don’t like the idea of it. I understand that, sweetie, but I am marrying Noah and so we have to move.”
“Ye're already married to my daddy,” he said. His words struck her to the core, because he couldn’t possibly understand just how true his statement was. She was, indeed, married to his daddy, in a way that neither death nor disappearance could lessen the hold of those vows on her heart. There was no way to explain a marriage of convenience and protection to a child. “What if Daddy comes home an’ we’re not here?” he asked, his dark eyes filled with worry.
She knew she had to answer him, for it was a real worry to him, this child who had clear memories of the father who had loved him and shown him the world around him in its beauty and detail. Who had made him feel safe in a way she could not. It was long past time, she knew, for her to be brutally honest with this wee son of hers. It made her feel sick. She hadn’t said the words for his sake, but also for her own, because she did not want to say it and see the heartbreak in Conor’s face, nor feel it in her own chest.
She went to where he stood and stroked her hand over his soft curls which were not the curls of his babyhood anymore. He was growing up, faster than she would have wished. She remembered the day he had been born, the terrible storm that had raged around the house, and she with only Casey to help her bring their child into the world. He had been afraid and worried, but he had been a rock for her. She needed to be so for this child they had created one night in a field, with the scent of grass and buttercups all around.
“Conor,” she began, feeling the air heavy as stone in her lungs, as she sought for the words to tell him this thing, “Daddy has been gone a very long time. He loved us very much and if he was able to come home to us, he would have long ago. Conor, Daddy isn’t ever coming home.”
The dark eyes turned a deep grey. “My da’ is goin’ to come home,” he said, a defiant note in his voice that was a direct echo of his father.
“Conor,” she began, knowing it was important he didn’t live any longer with the illusion that Casey was returning to them.
“He can’t come home right now,” he insisted, cutting off the words she was formulating to say to him.
She felt the sting of tears as she looked at her son, so like his father, right down to the stubborn set of his chin. She felt the helpless love and anguish of a mother who can no longer protect her child from the harsh realities of the world.
“Conor, if Daddy could come home he would, it’s that simple.”
“He can’t right now,” Conor repeated and she could feel the frustration in him building. He was slow to anger like his Uncle Pat, but once he exploded he did it with no small force. If he wasn’t ready to acknowledge that his father was no longer in this world, then perhaps it was best for her to let it lie until he could more readily understand. His certainty made her want to believe, too.
“What makes you say that?” she asked, a small frisson of unease coiling its way around the base of her spine at his vehemence. Conor rarely got agitated and so she took it seriously when he did.
“Daddy told me so, that’s how.” There was no small defiance in her son’s face and she gave him the dignity of not denying what he believed. He was a Riordan, so odds were she couldn’t shift his mind anyway.
“Daddy told you what?” she asked, keeping her tone even.
“He told me he can’t come home right now, but that he will some day.”
“He told you? What do you mean? He talks to you?” She thought he might well have been dreaming about his father and that the veil between day and night being far thinner in childhood, he might believe he really had talked with Casey.
“No,” Conor said looking up at her. His eyes were like smoke now, meaning he was nearing the end of his patience with his apparently obtuse mother. “He leaves me things in the fairy’s home.”
“What do you mean?”
“He leaves me things. I’ll show you.”
He ran off up the stairs to fetch his proof and she stood in the kitchen feeling cold all over. She couldn’t fathom what Conor meant, but he was not a child given to fancy for the most part, if he said someone was leaving him gifts, then someone was. It wasn’t his father, though, so just who in the hell was it?
Conor came back down the stairs at his usual break-neck speed, jumping off the last three stairs. He held a little bag made of rough canvas, contents bulging out here and there. It was only a small bag, brown and rather grubby, but Pamela felt a breathless fear that its appearance was entirely deceptive and that this bag was actually a Pandora’s Box which should not be opened.
He sat down on the floor at her feet and opened the bag, small head bent over and the tender stem of his neck visible. Around them the kitchen glowed warm in the afternoon sunlight, but she felt a chill spreading out from her core which no amount of sunlight could penetrate.
Conor extracted the contents one by one, as he always did with treasured objects, and arrayed them carefully in an order, no doubt, known only to him. There was an agate, beautiful really, large and golden like a small sun sitting there on the pine floor. A feather that she thought had probably belonged to a barn owl and a length of bark which had the face of an old man in its rumpled folds. Last, there was a carving, and it was this item which made her vision go fuzzy for a moment, her breath caught high up in her chest so that it felt like she was choking. It was a small horse. It was beautifully carved with a proudly-curved neck and hooves caught in the act of prancing. It was made from silver driftwood. It looked like Phouka. It was the lines of the carving itself that made it so she had to sit down and clutch at the arm of the chair. Casey had always had a rare hand with wood, something he had told her he’d inherited from his own grandfather. He had carved Conor any number of toys those first few years of his life: animals both exotic and domestic, cars, fanciful figures from his own imagination, boggarts and sprites and a particularly wicked looking leprechaun which still gave her the wamblies when she came upon it unexpectedly. This horse had the touch of him in it. She would swear it had been carved by his hands, if she didn’t know it was impossible.
“Conor, why do you think it was Daddy who left all these things?” Her voice was shaking and Conor looked up at her, a small frown wrinkling his brow.
>
“Because I found them in the fairy house. The aggie was in the kitchen sink, an’ the feather under the bed. The bark was on the stairs.”
She took a breath. All those items, while certainly things Casey might have given to his son, could be explained away easily enough. But the horse, the horse was another matter entirely. She picked it up and turned it over in her hands. The wood felt like satin to the touch, it had been sanded to a fine and flawless finish.
“What about the horse? Where was it?”
“It was on my window seat one morning,” he said, head already bent back down to his treasures, unaware that what he’d just said had tilted his mother’s world on its axis.
“In your bedroom?” She couldn’t feel her lips and was surprised her words weren’t slurred together with panic.
“Aye,” he said, as if she were thick indeed, for what other window seat could he possibly mean?
“Conor, how long ago was this?”
“A while ago,” he said and she took a breath, so that she wouldn’t howl with frustration.
“Do you mean a week or in the spring time—last spring or winter maybe?”
Conor shrugged, his sense of time was somewhat malleable at this age. She did remember that he’d had the wee horse in the car that day they had gone to Noah’s to see Khamsin. That had been two months ago.
In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4) Page 92
