And then his meaning dawns on me, for in my arms I hold the devil’s child, and it is both his brother and his son.
The painter gathers up the bedclothes and the remaining food and, with me still carrying the infant, we begin our descent. Long Boy follows soundlessly behind us. Slowly we edge our way
back along the crevasse with the painter in the lead and Long Boy bringing up the rear, his face impassive, as if in a trance. As we near the bottom I pause and turn to see that he has stopped several yards behind. He turns back and begins climbing toward the cave and I call to him, but he is moving swiftly, purposefully, and does not respond. The painter, too, pauses and we exchange a worried glance. Perhaps Long Boy has forgotten something, though the cave appeared empty when we left it.
He reaches the opening and does not stop, but continues past it, clambering along the crack in the rockface. From there it narrows until it provides barely more than a handhold, but he moves easily, hauling his giant frame across the rockface like an oversized insect. The rock rises another twenty feet from the level of the cave entrance, and we watch helplessly as he reaches the top and hauls himself up over the edge, disappearing from view.
I shout his name from down below, and my cries bounce against the sheer rockfaces, mocking me. We wait in silence for a moment, hoping he will reappear, knowing that it is pointless to follow. Even if we were to find him, he is far too strong for us to restrain. We wait in silence, can hear nothing now but the trickle of the stream below, and the deathly silence of the forest.
And then he reappears atop the ridge some distance downstream, where the rock reaches its highest point, perhaps a hundred feet above the streambed. He moves forward to the edge of the cliff and I watch in knowing horror as he contemplates the water far below. I call to him one last time and he does not appear to hear, does not even glance in our direction. And then I see him raise his arms and cast himself forward, as if he were a giant bird, soaring down across the rockface, plummeting toward his mother far below.
He lands facedown on a bed of jagged rocks that line the water’s edge, and we watch in horror as his blood slowly mingles with the icy waters of the stream. The painter slowly edges back toward me, reaches out a hand and pulls me to him, for I stand
frozen in the crevasse, unable to tear my eyes from Long Boy’s lifeless body. I clutch the infant tightly to my chest, as if by doing so, I can still preserve its life. But they are all dead now, the mother and her sons, and there is nothing I can do.
Later, I sit upon the bank and watch as the painter drags his body from the rocks onto the snowy shore, laying him facedown. I no longer feel the cold, feel only the weight of the tiny child in my arms. Somehow she must have known it was the boy’s. I can only wonder what must have gone between them: the mother with the body of a thousand women, the child with that of a fully grown man.
W
e leave him there facedown upon the icy banks and return to the village with the dead child still locked in my arms. This time it is the painter who leads me through the forest, for I have no more consciousness than a sleepwalker. He takes me straight to the alehouse, and I stand by the kitchen fire unable to speak while Mary gently pries the infant from my grasp. The painter then knocks upon the magistrate’s door, and spills forth the story of the boy and his mother and the terrible fate that claimed them both.
I wait by the fire while they speak, a tankard of untouched ale between my palms, and Mary by my side. Try as I might, I cannot banish the image of the boy in flight from my mind, his arms spread wide to catch the earth.
At length the painter reappears, his face grim but relieved. He kneels in front of me and takes the tankard from my hands, presses his palms against my own. I look into his eyes, try to lose myself in them, and feel an overwhelming tiredness, as if I have lived a lifetime in the course of a day. He draws me slowly to my feet, urging me to return with him to the Great House. But I shake my head and silence him, for there is something I must do.
Together we walk to my mother’s cottage, and at her door I leave him, insisting that he return alone to the Great House. Once he is gone, I enter quietly and find her dozing in a chair beside the
fire, her fingers clutching a skein of half-wound wool. A low-burning taper flickers in an iron holder upon the table, casting a muted circle of light around it. My mother does not wake when I enter, and I stand for a moment watching her while she sleeps, her head lolling gently to one side.
She is no longer the woman who inhabits my childhood memories, but another person altogether: a woman who is privy to dark secrets, and one who has been preyed upon by her own people. Such things come to bear upon a person, make their mark: and she will carry it with her always, just as I will. I look for it now in the line of her sagging jaw or the fleshy folds of her neck, or the wrinkles upon the backs of her hands. Her life has held much toil and sadness. And yet I have no doubt that when she wakes she will not harbor bitterness against her accusers, for it is not in her nature to dwell upon the past, any more than it is to dream of the future. She is like the river salmon bent upon its homecoming: she will only seek to repossess her former life.
I lay a hand gently upon her shoulder and she wakens with a start. “It is only me,” I say softly. Her eyes drift over to the taper.
“I did not mean to sleep,” she says, drawing herself up in the chair. I pull a stool across to face her and seat myself, not quite sure how to begin.
“The boy is dead,” I say finally, starting at the end. And then I tell the tale in its entirety, while she listens, close-lipped, her knuckles white against the chair. When I am finished she gives an enormous sigh and we both turn our faces to the dying embers of the fire. I sense no malice from her, no trace of blame as I had feared, and for that I am grateful. Indeed she appears more calm than I have seen her in some days, as if the truth has stilled her.
“Did you know of this?” I ask her finally. She looks at me and shakes her head.
“No.” She gives another sigh. “Perhaps a part of me knew.” She squints at the memory. “She wanted me to understand. She gave me clues. Toward the end, there was a great longing in her
to repeat the past, to undo what she had done. She needed to atone . . . but most of all she needed sympathy . . . and absolution.” My mother looks at me. “The latter was not mine to give.” Her voice trails off in sadness. “The day before she died, she told me that she had not chosen fate, but rather had created it. I did not understand her meaning until now.
“I told her that our fate was in God’s hands. And she said that his judgment had been harsh and terrible.” My mother looks at me. “As always, she was right.” We sit in silence for a moment.
“I am sorry about the boy,” I say finally.
“I thought that I could save him from her sins,” replies my mother. “But I did not know that they were
his
sins too. They are both in God’s hands now.”
“We have been to see the magistrate,” I say. “You are free now.” She nods then, frowning into the flames.
“It will be hard to carry on without them,” she says. “At least with the boy, I had a piece of her.” I reach for her hand and take it in mine, a gesture only Dora’s death has allowed me. I think of my master and my mother, and the private battles they will have to wage before they are set free. For grief is like a mountain to be climbed: only from its highest point can we see beyond.
I leave her staring into the fire, her hands newly tangled in the wool. Even my mother is not alone, for we are all strung together in our longing.
When I reach the Great House it is late, but I do not climb the stairs to my tiny chamber, and go instead to the tower. As I pass the library, a feeble light shows beneath the door, a sign that my master remains restless within. I glide past his door without a sound until I reach the painter’s chamber, which I enter without knocking, surprised at my own boldness. He is reading in bed and looks up when I enter, his eyes anxious in the half-light of the candle beside him. I lock the door and move across the room without a word, and he closes the book and moves over in his bed.
I lie down next to him, place my head upon his chest, and close my eyes to all that I have seen and heard. The painter strokes my hair for a moment, then leans over and extinguishes the candle, and before I know it sleep has taken me.
I wake in the light of predawn, still fully clothed, my back aching from the rigors of my corset. The painter sleeps and I take care not to disturb him as I rise. I need to undress, to release my body from its cage of whalebone stays and cotton ties, even if only for a few minutes, so I steal out of the room and return to the privacy of my bedchamber. Once there I quickly remove everything and slip beneath the bedclothes, shivering in the morning cold. I close my eyes and once again fall into sleep, but though my bed is empty I am not alone.
She comes to me in my dreams, and this time she is no longer troubled but strangely calm. She stands in the cave entrance, her white dress billowing in the wind, and there is an air of poignant resignation about her, as if the worst has happened and been overcome. I call to her from down below and slowly her eyes swivel round to find me. I try to scramble up the crevasse but my hands and feet cannot find their hold, and when I look again she has disappeared from view. I stand there searching the cave openings, desperate for one last glimpse of her, and after a moment she reappears atop the ridge in the same spot where the boy jumped to his death. This time Long Boy is at her side, nearly a head taller than herself, but clutching her hand boyishly like the man-child he is. I raise my arm to wave at them but this time she does not respond, does not even look in my direction. They stand there together for several moments, and then she turns and leads him away from the cliff edge, away forever from my view. I turn and look along the creekbed to the spot where Long Boy landed and his carcass is still there, facedown upon the banks, but I know that it is empty for his soul has flown.
And then I look upon my hands, and they are not my own but
hers: large and strong and scratched and bloody from the fall that claimed her. I stare at them, wonder whether she has bequeathed them to me, and if so, what purpose they will serve. And in the next instant they are gone, for suddenly I am wide awake, looking out upon the cold light of winter in my chamber.
It is only a matter of hours before news of Long Boy’s death spreads through the village, as do the details of the events which preceded it. A posse of men retrieve his body during the course of the morning, and by dusk he has been laid to rest alongside his mother in the graveyard, the boy infant in her arms. We all attend the burial, just as we had done not ten days earlier, but so much has happened in the interim that there is little to recall that earlier scene. My mother draws a few glances from the villagers, but by and large they keep their tongues and their wits about them. And when the burial is over, my master shuffles slowly across the frozen earth and clasps my mother’s hand in both of his, a gesture which surprises both of them. Only my mistress is conspicuous in her absence, for she lies dying in her bed.
She has refused to speak to me since yesterday, and waits patiently, almost longingly, for death to claim her. When I went to see her in the morning, she closed her eyes and turned her face away, a gesture of repudiation which, oddly, left me unmoved. Perhaps she simply acknowledges with her actions what we both know to be true: that the ground has shifted beneath our feet, and nothing remains as it was.
For once, the people of the village are struck dumb by the truth. Though many are horrified by Long Boy’s crimes, he was her son, and she was sacred to them. When the burial is over they purse their lips, draw their cloaks more tightly round their shoulders, and slowly return to the numbing silence of their work.
* * *
After the burial I accompany my mother to Dora’s cottage, to claim those things that were most precious to her: the wooden chest and its contents, including the tiny shattered portrait of her mother and the diary filled with words she will never understand. I hesitate when my eyes come to rest on the spot where her money lies buried. I cannot bring myself to unearth it now, but know that it is there—that it may one day purchase opportunity. The painter waits patiently outside while we go through her things, and when we emerge, my mother clutching the wooden box tightly to her chest, the two of them come face to face. She hesitates, then nods at him and he falls in beside us, and together we return to her house, just as night begins to fall. We leave her there, the painter and I, and she does not seem to question his presence any longer, merely thanks us for our help and bids us good night.
Together we walk slowly back to the Great House, pausing at the graveyard one last time. I stare at the freshly mounded earth that covers them, knowing that they are somewhere else, atop the ridge, far away. The painter takes my shoulders in his hands and turns me slowly round to face him.
“Come with me across the water,” he says. My eyes flicker back to her grave: I think of her flight and the world she left behind, the world of the diary. At once I see my own life on its yellowed pages: the years of loneliness and servitude, of visions and nightmares. Like her I long for more—but I do not wish my flight to end as hers has done.
The painter looks at me and reads my thoughts. “We cannot know our end,” he says. I nod, knowing he is right, look down at my hands and this time see my own flesh and bones. If not her hands, then what has she bequeathed me? I close my eyes and struggle to see her, cannot find her features in the darkness of my mind.
But instinct tells me she is there, somewhere deep inside me, and that she will set me free.