Love by the Morning Star

by Laura L. Sullivan

  “Where you’ll get lost, or set yourself up with a false identity, or marry a Communist farm girl for cover.”

  Teddy threw back his head and let loose his free and beautiful laugh. Then he kissed his father on the brow. The old man tried to brush him away . . . but he didn’t try very hard.

  “Just be sure you come home safely,” Lord Liripip said with growling affection. “I don’t like to think what your mother would say if I told her we needed to produce another heir. On the other hand, the shock might kill her.” He seemed to perk up, then: “No, wouldn’t be worth the unpleasantness I’d have to go through doing my marital duty. Har!”

  Teddy, who wasn’t any fonder of his mother than he absolutely had to be for the sake of propriety, took this in stride.

  “It’s near dawn,” he said, drifting to the window. “I’ll have to leave soon.”

  “Dawn, hell! It’s the middle of the night still. Look at you, already skulking like a proper spy.” He looked oddly proud, and not for the first time did Teddy wonder exactly what his father might have done in his youth to serve his country. Neither he nor Burroughs, his father’s old friend and now Teddy’s professor of German literature and secret handler, would say, though they hinted broadly at great deeds and derring-do. For all Teddy knew, it might have been anything from fetching coffee at an embassy to political assassination.

  “Throw open the window, would you?” Lord Liripip said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. It was painful to walk, and nearly as painful to sit all day and half the night. “I want to feel the night air. I’ve half a mind to make you push me around the grounds in my bath chair.”

  “Another ploy to keep me home?” Teddy unlatched the window and swung it open, leaning out into the starlit darkness. Can I be nostalgic for something I haven’t lost yet? he wondered, affected more than he realized by his father’s grim warning about the fate of spies. The night was cold, clean, with delicious earth smells rising from the landscaped and wooded grounds. In full light the land had the melancholy grays and browns of the decaying season, but when it was blanketed in night, only the best of the turning year remained. The autumnal world was drowsy and bittersweet, like a child’s tucking-in after a long day of play.

  Only, Teddy thought, a child is always sure there’ll be a tomorrow just as crisp and bright.

  Behind him, Lord Liripip closed his eyes, lost, as he was so often lately, in a memory. There had been another night such as this, chill, starlit, just before the dew had risen on the crisping leaves. There had been a girl, singing . . .

  And then, there she was, or her voice, in any case. It was a different voice, but he was familiar with the ways of those reminiscences that were half dream. Details were different, merged and oddly juxtaposed, but he could always tell when something was meant to be a sign of the woman he had loved and lost. She had been a singer, untrained but with the purest voice, as light and flirting as birdsong. And like a bird she would lead him on a chase through the forest, singing her siren melody, luring him deeper into the trees and, at last, into her arms.

  This singer, though—her voice was much lower than the one he remembered. Where hers had been a bell, a flute, this one was an oboe, a bassoon, but somehow still feminine. A voice deep with emotion, with secrets and longing, singing a low, caressing whisper loudly enough for all the world to hear.

  She was singing in German.

  That makes sense, Lord Liripip thought, believing he must have slipped into a dream after all. She fled from me, from my proposal and my title, and went to Germany. Back then the language had been English, her spoken voice showing her aristocratic blood, her singing voice shifting delightfully from sweet pastorals to “Cockles and Mussels” fishwife songs to bawdy ballads that even he had blushed to hear. She had always been so free, so unashamed. There must have been something of that in me, too, that came out in my son, he thought. Why didn’t I show it to her? She might have stayed.

  “It’s she,” Teddy said in wonder, leaning as far out the window as he dared. “Have you ever heard such a voice, sir?”

  Lord Liripip’s half-mast eyelids sprang open. “You hear it too? It’s not a dream?” He was still drowsy, confused. It’s she, Teddy had said. Can it be my she?

  “It’s my step-cousin-in-law-thingumie. Anna.” Teddy grinned into the silvered darkness, searching for her. Her blond hair must positively gleam in the starlight. But though the voice was quite obviously coming from near the gargantuan Liripip Yew, he couldn’t see so much as a golden glint through its thick evergreen needles. “It must be. Mum said she’s a singer, though from the way she said it I fancied she stood on tables in her scanties and sang ‘A Guy What Takes His Time’ in a Mae West impersonation. I never dreamed she sang like this.”

  “What is she singing?” Lord Liripip demanded, struggling to his feet and crossing to the window in an undignified, agonizing hop. He had learned a bit of German in school, but it, along with his French, had largely deserted him. (The Latin had been beaten into him so severely by various headmasters that it stuck.)

  “It’s Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody,” Teddy said. “The lyrics are by Goethe.”

  “How on earth do you know that?” Lord Liripip snapped, almost resenting his son’s erudition. “When I was your age we didn’t have to know so much, and someone punched us in the nose if we let on we did. What are the words? Tell me!” Would there be some balm in them to ease his heart? A visitation—not from beyond the grave, because Caroline was alive—but from across the years?

  Teddy closed his eyes, listening intently to the low, reverberating words that seemed to echo off every dying leaf. “‘Who is that apart?’” he quoted, then paraphrased. “It is about a man, a misanthrope, walking through the wild. The foliage all closes behind him, leaving no sign he’s been there.”

  To his utter astonishment, Lord Liripip felt a tear course down his cheek.

  “He was scorned, so now he himself scorns the world,” Teddy went on. “Then the singer begs the Father of Love to help him. To open the clouded eyes of the thirsty wanderer, so he might see the thousand springs surrounding him.”

  His eyes burning and wet as that thrilling voice sang on, Lord Liripip knew his best days were behind him. His love was gone, belonged to another, and his pride, his joy, his son, was embarking on a dangerous new journey that might well end in death. But was there a way to seize both of those things, the lost and the soon-to-be-lost?

  Vivified with a sudden inspiration, Lord Liripip felt young again. The perpetual throbbing in his foot receded, his breath came easier. He knew what had to be done.

  No one, not even Lady Liripip, would ever work with more determination as matchmaker. He decided then and there that, come hell or war or revolution, Teddy would marry Caroline Curzon’s daughter.

  Then he would never risk himself in spy work.

  Then Lord Liripip would have a piece of his lost love after all, grafted onto the family in perpetuity.

  “Go to her, my boy,” he said throatily. “No girl sings like that without calling to someone. It’s you she hopes hears her. Go!”

  “I thought you didn’t take to her,” Teddy said with a grin.

  Lord Liripip didn’t, really. He never could quite care for that big, busty blond sort, and there was something in her manner—exactly what, he wasn’t certain—that he didn’t trust. But he dismissed his concerns. That was only because I loved and hated her mother, Lord Liripip thought. And because she is so different from what I’d imagined. I’ll cultivate her, I’ll be her friend. Between the two of us, we’ll make Teddy marry her.

  But since he knew that children thrive on opposition, he only backpedaled and said with a shrug, “She’ll get by with a good shove.”

  “Goodbye, Father,” Teddy said, taking the arthritic fingers tenderly in his own oar-callused hand.

  “Don’t rouse your mother, boy, but as she’s awake, you might as well let your cousin-in-law, or whatever she might be, know that you’re leaving.”
r />   Teddy left without answering.

  “She’s not really a relative, you know,” Lord Liripip shouted to the closed door. “Not by blood.” Then he staggered to the window and watched. The anodyne of hope fled, leaving his gouty foot to throb again, but still he stayed standing until he saw a shadow he thought must be Teddy slip out the door and stroll into the garden.

  “There,” Lord Liripip said. “Night and solitude and stars. Drink that potion and anything can happen, even in a few moments.” He looked up and saw one star, particularly bright, the diabolical morning star.

  Lord Liripip glared up at it with an old man’s anger. “I asked you,” he told the star. “I begged you for it, and you wouldn’t give her to me, damn you. You owe me now, star!” He shook his fist at the luminous dot hanging in the plum-dark sky just over the grand yew. “You owe me one loving wife, one happy marriage.”

  The little boy in him, the part that made him whining and petulant, also made him steadfastly believe in the power of a wish made on a star. It was the part of him that Caroline Curzon had loved. But she had not loved it enough to marry him.

  The morning star winked at him, but it made no promises.

  Teddy and Hannah Are Not Formal

  THOUGH IT WAS CALLED the Liripip Yew, it was not one yew but two (a tongue twister Hardy the under-gardener had perfected for his occasional tours), growing so close together that they had merged before Caesar’s troops set foot in Britain. Now they were barely distinguishable, their lumpen, gnarled trunks fifteen feet wide with a hollow cave big enough for a hermit’s comfort in the bole. It was a squat tree, fat at the bottom, dense at the top. It was not nearly as tall as some of the nearby firs, but they were callow youths, a mere two hundred years old. It was smaller even than some of the old oaks, enjoying a spry middle age of five hundred years. But it was dense with years and patience, well rooted.

  Teddy ambled with his hands clasped loosely behind his back. Another time he would have whistled, but he was too charmed by a reprise of the Rhapsody, breathy this time, broken at odd intervals, as if she were talking to herself. He could hardly see; the moon was new, and what had been a gently starlit garden of mixed geometric beds and isolated specimen trees from above was now dim as a cave. He knew the paths intimately and he did not hesitate, but still he walked slowly, and even when he was quite near he couldn’t see the singer. Her voice had taken on a strange muffled quality.

  “Anna,” he called into the darkness as he neared the twin yews.

  From very near, the singing stopped.

  “Anna?” he called again.

  Another moment of silence, then, in German, “Is that you, Lord Winkfield?”

  He answered in the same language. “It is, but you must call me Teddy.”

  “I can hardly hear you, which I think is a good thing after what you have said today.”

  “Where on earth are you?” Teddy asked, circling the bulbous trunk.

  “In my concert hall,” she answered. “I am trying very hard to make a joke of it, but I’m afraid I can’t quite. The acoustics are lovely, but the audience is so small.”

  “It has grown,” he said. “I was listening upstairs in Starkers. My father, too.”

  “You could hear me? Ah, I’m not supposed to sing. Or talk, more than necessary. I thought that the garden was big enough, your stone walls thick enough, that I wouldn’t bother anyone. If you’re not to let me sing you may as well shoot me. It would be kinder.” She gave a little laugh to lighten it, but again, it fell flat. “I forgive you, you know,” she added.

  “You do?” he asked, bemused. For what, exactly, was he forgiven? For his little scene at dinner, he assumed.

  “Yes. One must be allowed to say what one thinks and do what one likes. Now more than ever. Others have the right to disagree, but you have the right to say such things, I suppose.”

  “And do you agree that the lower classes are a different species, and that everyone is foreign except the English?”

  “Oh, your poor mother!” Hannah said with a low giggle. “Despite everything, I almost feel sorry for her.”

  “I am not a good son,” Teddy said, mock solemn.

  “But I think—also despite everything—you might be a good man. Too flippant and flirtatious, but perhaps good, too.”

  “I try,” he said.

  “It is a start. But you must do so much more than try. I wish there were something I could do. I am safe, and I have my troubles still, yes, but there are so many who have not been able to leave, or who, like my father, will wait and wait, never believing the moment for running has come. Your family doesn’t care for my father, I know.”

  “I don’t think any of us knows your father,” he said to the talking tree, trying to see her in its pit, wondering if he dared join her. There was plenty of room for one, but it would be a tight squeeze for two. Particularly if one of the two was so amply buxom.

  “But still you condemn him, because my mother married him. Which is silly, because if she hadn’t, she might have married your father, and then none of us would have been born. Do you know, your accent is truly atrocious. Where did you learn German?”

  “At school. My first teachers weren’t natives, and I’m afraid I’ve gotten in bad habits. What do I sound like?”

  “Like a turnip-headed child. People would hear you speak and think, The poor thing—when he was a baby his mother picked him up after making sausages and he slipped right out of her greasy hands and landed on his head. And then you leave off bits of sounds, and add others. Quite as bad as dropping your H in English, which I do not like to point out, but you also do on occasion.”

  “Never!” he said, delighted.

  “You do. You just did a moment ago.” It had been hard to hear him from her little cavern, but he had definitely mangled her name. Still, it was sweet, somehow, to hear her name on his lips at all.

  “Will you correct me?” he asked. “In German, I mean. I need to develop a very good accent, and quickly.”

  “Perhaps. If I have time. I have a great deal to do.” Sally had written out a list of her daily chores, a shocking schedule that had Hannah rising at five and laboring until the family had gone to bed. She was so nervous she’d oversleep that she got up at three, splashed water on her face, and paced her tiny room before finally succumbing to the calls of music and the outdoors and slipping outside.

  “My mother can be very demanding, but surely you can find a little time for me.” He leaned his head into the hollow but still couldn’t see her, though he caught a faint whiff of strong lye soap, a jarring, unexpected note where he had thought to smell violets or lavender.

  “I have time now,” she said.

  “So do I. But only a little. I have to go.”

  “Back to Oxford?”

  “No . . . not exactly. To Germany for a while. I wish I could tell you more. You of all people would appreciate it.”

  “Ah, is it an assignation? A secret lover?” Hannah giggled.

  “What? No, of course not! Only, a friend and I are traveling . . .”

  “And this friend, she is beautiful?” Hannah made sure there was not the slightest trace of pique in her voice.

  Nonetheless, she was relieved when Teddy said, “This friend smokes a pipe and wears bespoke suits from Savile Row with creases sharp enough to cut a good steak.”

  “Sounds like a dear friend of mine, and she is quite beautiful. Though she cannot afford good clothes these days.”

  “Well, my friend is named Maurice and he is also quite beautiful, but since the days of Wilde we in England don’t admit to such things.”

  “Oh, are you Wildean?” She felt another little quiver of alarm.

  “No.”

  “Ah, good.” She paused. “Not a good in and of itself, because there is neither good nor evil in desire. But good because you seem to have a knack for making women smitten with you on short notice. Even by insulting them you seem to attract them.” She sighed.

  “Are you smi
tten?” he asked.

  “Would I be such a fool as to admit that? You are charming. I say no more. It would not be appropriate to feel a jot of anything for you. What would your mother say?”

  “I figured out long ago that only one of us could ever be happy. When I was a child I tried to make sure it was her. As I grew up, I realized it had to be me. We cannot live our parents’ lives.” Even as he said this he had a vague romantic notion, the same his father had had not long ago. My father loved her mother and lost her, he thought. What an interesting idea it would be if I loved Anna.

  Gregarious, joyous, vital Teddy liked nearly every congenial person he met and fell half in love with every attractive woman. That first half always came easily, the second half, never. In the last week alone he had been momentarily enchanted by four women. There was a femme fatale in clocked stockings whom Burroughs had brought in to teach them some of the most common slip-ups for an Englishman masquerading as a German—forgetting to slash their sevens, looking the wrong way before crossing a street. There was a piquant redhead in a coffee shop. There was the extraordinarily loquacious servant girl who looked like a small, dark bird. And there was his glorious, golden kissing cousin.

  The more they talked, speaking always in German, interspersed by her gently teasing corrections, the more he forgot everyone but Anna. It was better, almost, to hear her without seeing her. Her beauty was so incandescent that if he could have indulged his eyes he might have fallen for her looks alone, and he was idealistic and self-analytical enough to know that this would not do. All the same, as she spun her delightful stories of cabaret life, of the lost bohemian Weimar era, he did enjoy knowing that concealed within the intertwined yews was one of the great beauties of her generation. It was like talking to a dryad, a nymph, a secret voice that transcended flesh . . . though the flesh was there too, waiting to be touched.

  To his astonishment they agreed on nearly everything, and where they differed it was only that she pushed him beyond the places where even the most liberal aristocrats dare to go. Yes, believe that, she would tell him, but believe it more intensely! I feel that too, but you must think beyond that, to the next step! Nothing shocked her, except when they discussed their species’ capacity for stupidity and brutality.