Parliament of Rooks

by Karen Perkins

  ‘On the stairs? What was it doing there?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Anyway, thanks. I’ll leave you to it.’ He glanced at Jayne and Antony, recoiled from the animosity of Antony’s stare, then glared back until Antony dropped his eyes. ‘Well, thanks again.’ He waved the iPad at me. ‘Have a good Christmas, and I’ll see you next week.’ He rushed out, his footsteps beating a rapid tattoo on the stairs.

  Antony rounded on me. ‘Is that him? Are you seeing him?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘It’s only a matter of time,’ Jayne crowed. ‘She’s a catch is our Verity, and now with her own business too, she’s causing quite a stir in the village.’

  I shot her a warning glance, but she was far too interested in winding Antony up and doing her best to hurt him.

  ‘She’s not the meek little wifey you thought she was, not any more, not now she’s free of you. She can do anything she wants, with whomever she wants – she doesn’t need you!’

  ‘Jayne, please, enough.’

  She ignored me, her full attention on Antony. She’d been waiting a long time for a chance to tell him what she thought of him.

  A slow grin spread across his face and my heart sank. I knew that look.

  ‘Antony, I think you should go.’

  He ignored me too.

  ‘Meek little wifey, is that what you think? Maybe you don’t know our Verity as well as you think you do, there’s nothing meek and mild about her, not when she gets going – a right little hellcat she is.’

  Jayne sneered.

  ‘You haven’t told her, have you?’ He turned to me. ‘And I thought you told your girls everything. Not so honest when it comes to your own shortcomings, are you, Verity?’

  ‘Antony, please don’t.’

  He turned back to Jayne. ‘What has she told you about the day we broke up?’

  I jumped as my coffee cup fell off the table, but Antony and Jayne didn’t notice.

  ‘I know she found your catfishing harem on your phone,’ Jayne shouted. ‘I know the messages went back months – years – with different women. How many were there? You’re a fantasist, you’ve got a serious problem!’

  ‘Just words,’ Antony said. ‘A bit of fun online, none of it meant anything.’

  ‘It did to Verity! How do you think that felt, her reading your declarations of undying love, never mind the webcam footage and phone sex?’

  ‘I’ve got a fair idea,’ Antony said. ‘She made it pretty clear at the time.’

  I jumped at another crash, this time from the kitchen area, but was more fearful of what Antony was about to say. I grabbed his arm, but he shook me off. There was no stopping this.

  ‘I should bloody well hope she did,’ Jayne shouted. ‘I’d have killed you if it had been me!’

  ‘She tried to!’

  ‘Antony!’ I shouted.

  Antony opened his mouth to say more, but was startled by a loud bang from the kitchen.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ Jayne said.

  This time I ignored her. I glared at Antony in silence.

  ‘Verity?’ Jayne said. ‘What’s going on? What did you do?’

  I sighed. ‘Nothing. I was just so angry and hurt and humiliated. He wouldn’t get away from me; he kept trying to hug me, talk to me, lie to me. And I wanted, wanted to—’

  Tears were running down my face now and I was dimly aware of noise but I was lost in the memory of that moment.

  I screamed as Antony launched himself at me and we crashed to the floor. Winded, I struggled feebly, then with more strength.

  ‘Stay down!’ He rolled on top of me, his weight pinning me, and I screamed and struggled harder.

  Jayne’s screams matched mine and I grew aware of the other noises: the banging of cupboard doors; smashes and crashes as plates, glasses and mugs hit the walls above our heads, showering us with shards as sharp as knives; the whistle of the kettle, suddenly come to the boil; the gush of water as the taps spouted torrents of water.

  I squirmed my head free just in time to see a bottle of wine on the worktop explode, coating the walls behind with streaks of red. Hysterically, I thought of the TV show, Dexter, and wondered how he would analyse the splatter. Then it stopped.

  The door opened.

  ‘What have you done to them?’ Lara launched herself at Antony, kicking him off me. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Nothing, I didn’t bloody do anything!’ Antony pushed himself off me, clambered to his feet, and backed towards the door, his face white with shock. ‘What the hell is going on here?’

  He turned and ran.

  Lara offered me a hand up off the floor and all three of us looked around the mess of the room.

  ‘I guess your ghosts like Antony even less than they like me,’ Jayne said.

  ‘At least they have good taste,’ Lara said, breaking the tension. All three of us gave a high-pitched giggle, then sobered at the desperate sound of it.

  ‘Well,’ Jayne said. ‘I think it’s time for a drink.’

  ‘White Lion,’ Lara said, and hustled Hannah down the stairs, Grasper leading the way.

  Jayne and I hastily gathered up our coats and handbags, then I dashed downstairs to collect a change of clothes and my toiletries bag. Nothing would induce me to sleep in The Rookery tonight.

  Part Two

  28th December 2016 – January 2017

  “Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

  Wuthering Heights

  Emily Brontë, 1847

  Haworth, West Yorkshire

  1.

  The twelve-year-old girl trudged towards the parsonage, exhausted and chilled after a day in the fresh winter air, yet reluctant to descend from the moors.

  ‘Emily!’

  She stopped at the shout and turned towards the stonemason’s workshop.

  ‘Thee just walked past without passing the time of day,’ Harry complained.

  ‘Good afternoon, Harry.’

  ‘That’s better, see, no harm in passing a friendly greeting is there?’

  Emily smiled at him and Harry beamed in response to the rare show of affection. Emily didn’t make friends easily – not of the two-legged variety anyway. He glanced at the strange collection of animals that seemed to be forever in attendance on Emily Brontë, and smiled when he noticed the new additions of a goose and a pheasant amongst the usual cats and dogs.

  He was proud of the fact he was likely Emily’s only friend outside her family. He knew no other who was as self-sufficient and happy in her own company as Emily – even her siblings were social extroverts in comparison – and he was honoured that she viewed him as friend – even if the other lads in the village teased him over her, calling her savage. And when her temper was roused, she certainly could be; but they had never seen her charm a hurt lapwing on to her hand to be carried home and nursed back to health. They had never seen her free a coney from a snare and care for it until it could return to its warren.

  Although it never had gone back to its own kind, he mused, as he watched it awkwardly hop up to join the rest of Emily’s coterie. The fur never had grown back on that hind leg and, although slower than the rest of its kind, the little bobtail was never too far away from its saviour.

  ‘Thee’d live up there if thee could, wouldn’t thee, lass?’ Harry said, nodding at Haworth Moor rising behind Emily.

  She turned and looked at the landscape. Most would consider it grim and barren at this time of year. Not Emily; she saw naught but life up there and loved it all, even the wind, no matter how hard it bit.

  ‘I’d love to,’ she replied, her voice childlike in the simplicity of her answer. ‘Away from the cesspit of human habitation.’ She wrinkled her nose at the stench of the privies and midden heaps of Haworth – a smell diluted by
the position of the parsonage and mason’s workshop beyond the church and away from Main Street, but still powerful enough.

  ‘It would be much better to live with the coneys and the foxes, the buzzards and the owls. They drink the purest water and eat the freshest meat.’

  ‘Apart from the foxes that scavenge from the midden heaps,’ Harry said with a grin.

  Emily shrugged. ‘Only in the winter, when there’s less food about. Then they’re back on the moor, the air fresh, and the footing sound.’

  Harry grimaced, knowing what Emily was referring to. The recent rains had sent a river of waste from the privies and middens at the top end of Main Street down to the bottom. The steep hill had been lethal, even more so than normal; and people, horses and carts had slithered down it with a filthy, stinking regularity over the past few days.

  He shuddered. ‘The sooner they lay them cobbles they keep talking about, the better.’

  Emily didn’t appear to have heard him. ‘I love the ... space ... up there. No one else to annoy you, just fauna and flora.’

  Harry scowled at her fancy words mixed in with her Yorkshire dialect, itself not as strong as most in the village. That more than anything highlighted the differences between them, and at times he struggled to understand her meaning.

  He glanced at the parsonage then thought of his family’s cottage. Nine of them in two rooms; and that was only because four of his siblings were already in their graves.

  ‘Been up to Top Withens today,’ Emily continued, having mistaken Harry’s silence for interest. ‘Love it up there.’

  ‘Aye, thee can see for miles and there’s no folk to spoil the view,’ Harry said.

  ‘Yes,’ Emily exclaimed. ‘That’s it exactly!’

  ‘Mebbe one day we’ll live up there, together.’ Harry blushed fiercely, wondering if he’d gone too far, but Emily didn’t seem to have understood his meaning. Either that or she had far more tact than people credited her with.

  ‘I’d love to live up there,’ she said. ‘But Papa would never allow it. What time will Mr Barraclough release you?’ She looked at Harry, irritated, and he knew he’d taken too long to respond to her change of subject. He popped his head inside, and received a nod from his master.

  ‘Whenever thee wishes. What service can I do thee for?’ He smiled and winked, but again Emily failed to react.

  ‘Come to the parsonage for tea. In about an hour. Papa was complaining this morning that he doesn’t see enough of you.’

  ***

  ‘Have another sandwich.’ Charlotte proffered the plate. The eldest at fourteen, Harry knew, yet she was so diminutive, even her youngest sister Anne more than matched her for height.

  But whatever her stature, she was the perfect hostess, with impeccable manners, even if she did have a strange manner of peering intently at her guests.

  Must be all that reading she does, Harry thought, that makes her squint so. Bad for thy health, all them books.

  ‘I’ve just finished Don Juan,’ Branwell announced. ‘I found it to be an absolutely fascinating, if a little shocking, study of today’s society. Have you ever read Lord Byron, Harry?’

  Harry refused to let his true reaction to this pretentiousness show on his face. He couldn’t abide Branwell, who lorded it over boys of his own age, especially those of the village. He idolised his father’s sexton, John Brown, and tried to pretend he was of the same age and life experience, despite the thirteen-year gap. Little did Branwell know, instead of appearing learned and a man of the world, he was viewed as a pompous ass by everyone in Haworth under the age of sixteen – unless their surname was Brontë.

  ‘No, I have not, Branwell,’ Harry replied, mocking the other boy’s upper-crust way of speech. ‘My reading tends to be limited to the memorial stones Mr Barraclough carves.’

  Charlotte reclaimed the conversation with a small rebuke to her brother as she defended their guest. ‘Don’t be silly, Branwell, Harry doesn’t have time for such pursuits as poetry, he must feed his family, especially with young Mabel so poorly. How does she fare, Harry?’

  ‘Ailing at the minute, Miss Charlotte, but still breathing so there’s hope.’

  ‘Well, you must take the rest of these sandwiches home with you. Some apples too, we have a good stock, they’ll do her the power of good.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Charlotte.’

  ‘Ha!’ Branwell interrupted, determined to regain the upper hand from his elder sister, and waved a newspaper over the children. ‘Look at this! Mr Rook will have a fit when he sees it.’

  ‘Sees what, Branwell?’ Charlotte asked. ‘Which publication is that?’

  ‘The Leeds Mercury.’ Branwell cracked the paper open in emulation of his father.

  ‘That scoundrel, Richard Oastler, is at it again, he’s blatantly calling for millworkers to strike!’

  ‘No scoundrel, Branwell,’ Emily said. ‘He speaks for many, and there is truth in what he preaches, even Papa says so.’

  Branwell scowled. ‘He should not talk against the mills. Without them Haworth would starve.’

  Emily snatched the newsprint from her brother. ‘You know as well as I the perils of working in the mills. Even now Harry’s sister is in her bed, barely able to breathe for the fluff in her lungs, and only ten years old, the same age as our Anne!’

  ‘Emily,’ Charlotte cautioned with a concerned glance at Harry. His face was white, but he showed no other sign of emotion.

  Emily ignored her sister. ‘Richard Oastler speaks for all the mill children who have no voice. Their parents too.’ She jumped to her feet in her passion, her features pinched as she struggled to express the outrage flooding through her. She pointed at the newspaper, then her brother, and stamped her foot.

  ‘The Yorkshire Slavery he calls it, and slavery it is. Nippers crawling under them awful machines, and girls not much older running those huge spinning frames.’

  ‘Have a care, child. I will tolerate no Luddite tendencies under this roof.’

  Emily jumped, paled, and sat down all in one motion at the sound of her father’s rebuke.

  ‘I am sorry, Papa. I am not speaking against the machines, only the lot of their operators.’

  ‘Those operators are lucky to have the work,’ a new voice said. ‘Without it, their families would starve. Is that not so, Mr Sutcliffe?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Rook,’ Harry said.

  Baalzephon Rook, as owner of Rook Mills the employer of the majority of Harry’s extensive family, nodded and put a hand on the shoulder of his son, Zemeraim.

  ‘What say you, Miss Brontë?’ he said, glancing at Emily. ‘Should I allow those families to starve?’

  Emily met his gaze, lifted her chin, and opened her mouth.

  ‘Come now, Baalzephon. You shall get no sense from a child,’ Patrick Brontë said with a cautionary glance at his most wayward of daughters, who blessedly kept her silence.

  ‘They show rather too much interest in a world they neither understand nor have no business therein,’ Rook Senior pronounced.

  ‘Nonsense, Baalzephon. ’Tis good for the new generations to learn about their world, surely?’

  ‘They do not seem to be learning, but passing judgements beyond their capabilities.’

  Patrick shot another warning glance at Emily, then replied, ‘Merely a step on the road to enlightenment, my friend, ’tis all.’

  ‘And I’m surprised at you, Harry Sutcliffe, keeping such company.’

  Patrick narrowed his eyes, unsure whether Harry or his own offspring were being insulted, but before he could enquire, Baalzephon and Zemeraim had taken their leave and departed.

  Emily looked at Branwell, whose face resembled a thunderous sky at the perceived slight, and giggled.

  Patrick sighed in exasperation.

  ‘I think I should also take my leave,’ Harry said, flustered. Why could folk not just say what they mean?

  ‘I shall see you out, Master Sutcliffe,’ Patr
ick said, and Harry fled.

  ‘Not so fast, boy.’

  Harry froze on the stoop.

  ‘She’s not for you.’

  He did not turn.

  ‘I encouraged your friendship, I know. My Emily does not make friends with ease, not the human kind. You have been good for her. You have saved her life at least once. But she will never be your wife. My largesse shall not extend to that. Set your sights on another.’

  Harry walked away. He did not look back. He would not allow Patrick Brontë to see the angry flush his words had ignited on his cheeks.

  He passed through the gate from the parsonage garden to the churchyard, past the grave of his sisters, past the church, towards home on Weaver’s Row.

  Patrick watched him go, wondering if he had done the right thing. Harry was the only person outside the family and household who understood Emily, who accepted her as she was, who loved the birds and animals as she did.

  But he was a stonemason’s apprentice, and a weaver’s son. Emily was a parson’s daughter.

  With a heavy sigh, he swung shut the front door and turned to see Emily staring at him.

  One of the few things in the world that could make the Reverend Patrick Brontë flinch, was his daughter Emily’s fiercest stare. He not only flinched, but stumbled backwards against the closed door.

  2.

  ‘Are you sure you should move back in there?’ Lara asked.

  ‘Yes, I can’t afford to stay at the White Lion indefinitely when my own place is just across the street. It was lovely over Christmas, but I need to face whatever is going on at The Rookery. Anyway, Vikram and the gang are back today, I can’t put it off forever, and nothing has happened since Antony’s visit.’

  ‘And you’ve had no more dreams?’ Lara asked.

  ‘No,’ I lied, and Lara narrowed her eyes, but with a glance at her daughter, she stayed silent. ‘And even if I had, the dreams aren’t the problem.’