Bitter Eden

by Salvato, Sharon Anne

  "Take her out of the way," the sheriff said to Mary Anne.

  Callie ran forward shoving at each of the men in turn. "You can't take him! You can't! He's done nothing! Why don't you believe him? Why won t anybody ever believe? Oh, please! Please!"

  "Callie, don't," Peter said, trying to get to her.

  Both the field hands from the farm grabbed hold of him. "Let go of me! Let me go to her!"

  "Get him outside."

  Callie ran after them. "Let him go! Let him go!" She clawed at them. Peter turned back, struggling now with a desperate strength wanting to get to Callie.

  The sheriff said quietly to Callie, "I told you he's a condemned man by English law. I'll shoot him if I have to. Nobody's gonna care. I'll get thanked for it. So unless you want to see that happen, Miss Dawson,

  you quiet down and let me do my job the right way, or I wont be responsible."

  Callie looked at him with horror. "Is your job to condemn the innocent? He's done nothing. Why? Why are you doing this? You wouldn't if he were someone else."

  The sheriff unsheathed his gun as Peter pulled free of the two men who held him. Callie leaped forward, throwing herself against Peter. He put his arms around her, ignoring the confused, angry voices of men uncertain now how to take him yet determined to doit

  "If you care for her, Berean, you'll come quietly," the sheriff said, alert now, ready for another struggle.

  Callie clung to him, sobbing as he held her. "Callie, let me go," he said gently, his face buried in her hair.

  "Berean," the sheriff said, moving closer.

  Peter unwound her arms from around his neck, holding her at arm's length. "Don't let them hurt you, Callie, please," he begged. "Just let me go with them now."

  "You've done nothing. They have no right"

  "Callie . . . please. Don't fight them anymore." Peter released her, backing in between the two men who had held him before. He walked out the door guarded by the deputy and the two field hands.

  The sheriff watched, following slowly after. He stopped at the front door. "He'll get his trial."

  "I told you he was innocent! There can be no trial when you believe him guilty," she screamed, once more looking frantically to where Peter was climbing into the carriage. Mary Anne came up, putting her arm around Callie's waist.

  "Come sit down, Miss Callie. Let me get you something to make you feel better."

  Callie rounded on her, pushing her away. "Damn

  you! You knew Natalie and still you condemned him!"

  "Miss Natalie, devil that she was, was a tiny woman . . . she wasn't going to be doing any harm to that big brute. You know that as well as I do, Miss Callie. He was a violent man. He'd murdered before . . ." Mary Anne came near her again.

  "Don't you touch me, you Judas."

  "Miss CalHe!"

  Callie's voice was cold and flat. "Get out, Mary Anne."

  "Out?" Mary Anne said weakly. "But . . . Master Jamie—"

  "You'll never touch his son. Get out, Mary Anne. Get out now!"

  Mary Anne packed her things, making one last unsuccessful attempt to talk to Callie before she left. Callie sat numbly in the study, uncaring that she was now alone in the house, or that Natalie lay unattended on the floor in the hallway. She sat in darkness and thought about Rehoboam, the son of Solomon. Reho-boam, the young and tender-hearted against whom the wicked children of Belial strengthened when he could not withstand them. And who were these children of Satan, who strengthened time and time again with their eyes blind and their ears deaf to all goodness, if not the very people with whom she had lived all her life? Were they not Rosalind turning from him to lust after another; Natalie coveting his son; Mary Anne, who knew him only by the brand on his chest; Frank, whose jealousy caused him to deny his brother's existence rather than risk his own pride? '

  If those were the legions of the Satan Belial, where was hope?

  Chapter 44

  Once in the carriage, Peter didn't speak again. He went as docilely and with as little interest in his destination as the sheriff had ever seen in a man. As long as Callie was left alone and the wary attention was on him, Peter was quiet.

  "You want your brother told?" the sheriff asked as he locked the iron cell door behind Peter. Peter walked to the cot along the wall, lying down without saying anything or indicating that he had heard at all.

  "Send for his brother," the sheriff said to the deputy. "Should be able to find him at the brewery. If not, try Jack Tolbert's place."

  Stephen rode directly to the house. All he knew from what the deputy told him was that it hadn't been Callie who'd died. He saw the pitch-dark house, fright rising inside him. He burst through the front door. "Camel-He didn't hear a sound—no movement, no answer, not even the ticking of the clock. He lit the candelabra in the halL Natalie still lay at the foot of the stairs.

  "Oh, God!" He raced up the stairs, calling her name, "Callie! Answer me. Callie!" He came back downstairs, going from one room to the other. He opened the door to the study. The light from the hall fell across her, sitting motionless on the sofa.

  "Callie . . ." he said softly, coming into the room. He sat down beside her feeling a sick relief to know where she was, and yet afraid to touch her looking as she did. "Speak to me, please."

  "Natalie has finally killed him. She killed him, Stephen. She killed him and we're guilty ," she said, emotionless and staring.

  "He'll have a trial, Callie. It wont be like England. Things have changed."

  She laughed senselessly in the dark. "Things never change. There'll be no trial. There'll be no justice. There is nothing!" she said shrilly, crying again.

  Stephen touched his forehead to her shoulder. She kept on laughing and crying. "Should I give him another code? Another May house, Stephen? Should I tell him to believe? Should I? Believe in what? What is there, Stephen?"

  The painful wrench he felt made him catch his breath. "Oh God, Callie, don't talk like that. Not you."

  Stephen went to the hall, picking up Natalie to carry her to her room. He had never prepared a body. He had no idea of what should be done. He arranged her on the bed, trying to make her look whole and straight. Then he went back to Callie. "Where is Mary Anne?"

  "Gone."

  "Bea?"

  "Gone."

  "Callie . . . something has to be done for Natalie," he said helplessly.

  She sat, unchanged in frigid stillness.

  Stephen moved toward her then stopped, not knowing what to do or say. He wanted to go to see Peter; he couldn't leave Natalie as she was; and dear God, he didn't want to leave Callie this way. "She's my sister, Callie. Please. Peter . . . Peter wouldn't want her left like that . . . not even now. Do it for him. Please. She's dead."

  "She killed herself trying to kill him, Stephen. And you ask me to do it for Peter?"

  "I ask it for him, Callie . . . and for myself."

  When she didn't answer, he said, "I'm going to see Peter. Ill bring someone from the village for Natalie."

  Callie sat quietly as she heard his horse canter down the road in front of the house. Then she got up and went upstairs to Natalie.

  Peter got up from the cot as soon as he saw Stephen approaching the cell. "Is Callie all right?"

  The gaoler let Stephen inside the cell. Stephen looked at Peter, hesitated, and then embraced him as the whole of Peter's thirty-two years passed between them.

  "When does it all end? Isn't there ever enough?" Stephen asked, holding Peter and seeing nothing ahead for any of them but the endless tragedy-torn years that dogged them.

  "Is she all right?" Peter asked again as he and Stephen sat side by side on the cot.

  "She'll be all right," Stephen said, trying to believe it himself.

  Peter sat quietly thinking for a long time; then came a long damned up flood of words and feelings. He began to talk to Stephen of all the things he wanted to leave behind for Jamie.

  Over Stephens protests about the trial, which this time had to be fair, P
eter laid out his plans to insure Jamie's future. When he finished he turned to Stephen and said, "Go to her, Stephen. If there is any sin I need atone for more than others, it is knowing you loved her when . . ."

  "There is no sin, Peter. Callie loves you."

  "Yes . . . and Jamie . . . without her I would have died long ago. She was hope to me. Where Callie stood there was light," he said and paused. He got up and walked to the window. He held fast to the grille, pulling against the bars. "Stephen—I don t want to die taking that away from her."

  He came back to Stephens side. "She gave me love . . . but she loves you. She's not the same without you. She needs you, {Stephen. She always has. Promise you won't leave her alone. You wont let that happen to her."

  Stephen looked at Peter through a haze of tears, unable to speak or promise anything.

  He went home having forgotten to hire someone to tend to Natalie. The house was as dark and unnaturally quiet as it had been before. Again he felt the air of uneasy fear. He looked in the study. Callie was no longer there. He walked through the house and up to her room. She wasn't there either. He went to Peter's bedroom and all the others without finding her. Finally he pushed aside the broken door to Natalie's room. She lay prepared, candles lit around her. She looked as natural as if she had been sleeping. But Callie wasn't there. Fear mounting, he went to Jamie's nursery. Last, he opened the door to his own bedroom.

  Still dressed, she lay across his bed, asleep.

  Without waking her he lay down on the bed beside

  her, knowing as he did that only unknown and in sleep would he be able to come near her. What he had seen, and Peter had not, was the despairing emptiness the day had cast on her. He could not keep his silent promise to Peter because the brightness of Callie's faith in God and man had gone out that afternoon.

  He lay beside her, touching her hair, placing his fingers gently to her parted lips. As dawn crept into the sky and Callie's sleep lightened, Stephen left.

  Peter was tried and sentenced to hang the following week.

  Callie's' visits to him were brief and unsatisfactory. She could no more face him than she had been able to face what had happened.

  Peter thought through the years, going back before he had ever met Rosalind. There were no fears left in the memories. All his fears went toward the future as he saw Callie coming daily, struggling to be cheerful and reassuring when she couldn't accept what would be.

  The morning before he was to hang, Peter waited for Callie to come. She wasn't there at the time he had learned to expect her. He paced the cell, anxiously returning to the grilled window that let him see the street outside.

  When she came in he took the two steps across the room to her before the gaoler had closed the door. "I thought you weren't coming," he said, laughing in relief as he held her.

  "You have no faith," she said, painfully cheerful.

  "Come sit beside me."

  "All right." She sat down on the cot beside him. "I brought you a pie," she said. 'They have it in the outer room." She burst into tears.

  Peter held her. "Don't cry for me, Callie."

  "Oh, Peter, I don't know what to do. I pray there has to be something, and there is nothing."

  "There's the world, Callie. You and Stephen and Jamie."

  She shook her head, unable to speak.

  He kissed her tears. "You told me to tell you when I began to believe again," he said softly. "I do, Callie. Look at me. I remember the May house. It's real, Callie, and I know it." I can t.

  "After all these years, will you turn away from me now? I need you now more than ever before. Don't turn from me, Callie."

  She looked up at him. "I haven't turned from you, Peter. I just don't know what to do."

  "Love Jamie for me. Dream for him as you did for me. Believe . . ."

  "Oh, Peter, please . . ."

  "No. Listen to me. I'll never be able to say it to you again. Jamie's just beginning his life now. I want him to know who I am, Callie, not what I've done or where I've been. Keep Jamie safe for me. Teach him to believe. Oh God, Callie, I don't want him to be as I was for all those years. If I hadn't known you were there somewhere . . ." He turned from her.

  Callie felt as though she were being crushed beneath her helplessness. She'd had nothing of value to give years ago, and she had less now. But she said what he wanted to hear. "Peter, I will. Jamie will know you. And I'll dream and . . ." she said brokenly until she couldn't say any more.

  'Time to leave, Miss Dawson," the gaoler said, clinking his keys against the bars.

  "Peter," she cried.

  He took her in his arms, kissing her long and tenderly. "Keep him safe for me."

  She backed to the door and stood staring at him. She blinked through her tears, trying to smile.

  Jamie was still at the Tolberts', Mrs. Tolbert wisely keeping him until it was over. Callie was alone in the house. All this week she had taken a desolate satisfaction in the emptiness. Tonight, after she left Peter, she noticed the lifelessness for the first time. "There is the world . . . you and Stephen and Jamie," he had said. And there was Peter, all the things he might have been, and all the things he now would never be.

  She walked up to Jamie's room, looking down at his empty bed, going from one cupboard to another, touching the toys Stephen and Peter had made for him. She sat down near the window, looking out onto the cold bleakness of a frozen earth, the soil deathly gray in frost, the trees barren, reaching denuded black arms into a lightless sky.

  As she watched, letting the dry dormancy seep inside her, the snow that was to fall all night long in heavy, soft, moist flakes began, soaking into the hardened earth. "There is the world . . * you and Stephen and Jamie."

  As the warming blanket of white covered, shielded, and nurtured sleeping roots and seeds to begin life anew, Callie's thoughts turned to the brown-eyed, blond-haired little boy who would be so like his fattier were Peter not destroyed by emptiness.

  The snow fell and Callie prayed, groping her way back through the haze of hates and fears and judgments that had been brought down on Peter by others, blighting his life without reason or justice. She had had neither the power nor the wisdom to be able to help him, but she had enough for Jamie, if Stephen

  were by her side. With Stephen to keep her strong, and the world filled with the loving promise his father had given him, Jamie would grow up to be what Peter might have been.

  The gaoler brought Peter out into the bright morning sun. He squinted against the glare it made off the fresh snow. Beside him stood the black-garbed minister who had been with him all night.

  In many ways it reminded him of the long horrible time on Van Diemen's Land, where chains and preachers had the same meaning of endless captivity, and yet it was different.

  The minister walked at his side, reading from the black leather-bound Testament he balanced perfectly on his palm. 'They came to a small estate called Geth-semane, and Jesus said to his apostles, 'Stay here while I pray/ Then he took Peter and James and John with him. And a sudden fear came over him, and great distress. And he said to them, 'My soul is sorrowful to the point of death. Wait here and keep awake/ And going on a little further he threw himself to the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, this hour might pass him by."

  Peter raised his eyes and saw Callie standing off and alone. He knew she'd be there without looking, but he wanted that brief final glance that would tell him of Jamie's future. He felt the tension in his body relax as he read it in her face. There were no tears in her eyes, only the loving smile he had learned no amount of cruelty or debasement could change.

  The minister's voice went on slowly and reverently in Peter's ears as they walked through the snow to the gallows, which looked clean and newly built.

  "'Abbai' He said. 'Everything is possible for you.

  Take this cup away from me. But let it be as you, not I, would have it/ "

  Perhaps that was all the difference there was between this time and the time spent in
Van Diemen's Land. She was there. And she was stronger than anyone he had ever known, because she believed in God. "He came back and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, 'Simon, are you asleep? Had you not the strength to keep awake one hour? You should be awake and praying not to be put to the test. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak/ "

  Stephen was there as well. Not near Callie as he should be, Peter thought. But he was there. Too much could not be asked at one time. Stephen would never trespass in Peter's life. It was best that he die now. His life was over, and Stephen's couldn't begin until he was gone.

  "Again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. Once more he came back and found them sleeping, their eyes so heavy; and they could find no answer for him/'

  Peter wondered if he, sinner that he was, repentant that he was not, could leave his blessings on the three people he loved. He thought it better he did not. Perhaps the blessings of a damned man would damn them as well. And then he thought of Callie's unquenchable trust in good, and he blessed them, waiting with a pounding heart to see if God heard.

  Peter stood at the top of the gallows looking at Stephen, pleading with his eyes for Stephen to go to Callie, praying to God to be given this sign of absolution. Stephen's eyes met Peter's. He walked toward Callie. Peter watched as Stephen hesitated, unsure, waiting for some sign from Callie. She moved toward him, and Stephen's arms closed around her. Peter knew the

  tears that hadn't been in her eyes before were there now, healing and soft

  "He came a third time and said to them, Tou can sleep on now and take your rest It is all over. The hour has come/ "

  Then Peter prayed. Silently, lips firmly closed, but unafraid, at long last within himself at peace.

  The wormwood cup was emptied.