A Secret Alchemy (20 page)

I try to tell myself that it is the Devil who has seized his opportunity to cast me into sinful despair when aid may yet come. But I cannot quite believe it: this despair is born of God’s truth.

Sure, my sins are manifold—as are any man’s—and despair not the least of them, nor yet the most. Only true penitence can save me, that I know, and I am penitent. Yet I have never been able to think Louis’s and my love sinful. It is like believing that white is black.

Perhaps I have the advantage—or the disadvantage—of learning: I have read enough in the works of holy men such as Saint Aelred to know that even in his time, the time of the second Henry, true love between men was not thought sinful, and their lusts no more so, though no less so, than other men’s lust for women or drink or fighting. Yet now it is preached to be a sin like few others but murder.

How will God judge me? I confessed my sin many a time, and tried to feel it to be one, as Rome and its holy men tell us it is. And yet, though their judgment changes, God’s judgment—His wisdom—is unchangeable, and His love infinite. How can what Louis and I did be a sin in His eyes, when it came from the power to love that God Himself gave man?

One of the men-at-arms points ahead into the blue distance, to the cleft in the land beyond which the great rock stands, topped with the broad, high towers of Pontefract.

Una—Friday

Mark wants to take me all the way home, but I say in as firm
a voice as I can muster that I have things to look up in the Saint Bride Library of printing, and get him to drop me as soon as we’re over Blackfriars Bridge. I walk through the neat, old alleys and steps, which are centuries-worn but corporate-clean, the prosperous bustle of the City behind me apparently wiping out the last, louche remains of Fleet Street. Without Mark at my side I don’t have to feel anything for a while: it can all be dry, cool professional activity.

I try, I really do. I pick up a form for making regular donations from abroad; I look up Caxton’s records to track his production
against Elizabeth’s and Anthony’s known movements; I try and fail to work out where one might look for evidence that it was Anthony who arranged for Malory’s manuscript of the
Morte Darthur
to be delivered to Caxton’s workshop and printed. I even tap on the librarian’s door. Once he was one of my best students and now he is very pleased to see me, and what with tea and bibliographers’ gossip I spin things out for a full hour more, until long after his assistant has popped her head around the door to say she’s leaving us to lock up. But in the end I have to go home.

The tiredness of too much feeling has gone, though, and the tea was strong, and my bag’s not too heavy; I decide to walk as I often used to walk this way home after a day shut up in Saint Bride’s: Ludgate Hill, Saint Paul’s Churchyard, Cannon Street, across Gracechurch Street and into East Cheap…

I hope I didn’t turn down Mark’s offer to take me home too brusquely. I did at least promise to be in touch before I fly. Have I hurt his feelings? I cross Saint Mary at Rood so I’m striding along Great Tower Street; my thoughts begin to break loose. No, there’s something different in him, a kind of acceptingness of what you say, as if nothing will rock his stability, and for some reason I think of his smile when he talks of Morgan. Yes, there’s something different in him, something that doesn’t shy away, not like…not like he used to.

After that day in the workshop—the day I’ve always thought of as the beginning—I waited to see if my heart-thumping, ringing-in-the-ears sense of his existence echoed in him. I didn’t tell anyone, of course. For days and weeks and months I looked for silent signs from him, and got none.

None. I got used to it, in a way. But even though the giddiness subsided, the misery at my core—the central, painful joy—didn’t
go. It was like one of those illnesses which doesn’t get better and doesn’t kill you, just waxes and wanes; you never quite know how much or why or when, until even your skin seems to be made of it, until it seems that everyone must realize. But no one did, not that I could tell. Besides, everyone knew without saying that Mark adored Izzy, so if they were looking at all, they weren’t looking at me. No one allowed themselves a more complicated or threatening verb than “adored,” though. And everyone knew without saying that though he lived at the Chantry and worked for Uncle Gareth, he wasn’t family, or the son of friends, or an art student changing track; no one allowed themselves a more complicated or less tactful word for him than “local.” No one, really, talked about what he was.

I didn’t really mean to do it, I thought afterwards like a miserable child. One moment—all those moments—I wasn’t going to do anything, because I couldn’t believe he would say the only thing I could bear to hear him say. Telling him, asking him…it might be the end. Maybe it was
because
I knew I wasn’t going to do anything about it that, suddenly, I did.

It must have been nearly Halloween, and half-term, because Aunt Elaine asked me if I’d mind picking the last of the D’Arcy Spices, and she didn’t usually ask me to do extra jobs in term time itself. I changed into some old flannels of Lionel’s that I used for grubby jobs, and a shirt I’d inherited from Uncle Gareth, hauled them in with a belt, and fetched a handful of the bags that Grandmama made out of old potato sacks, for fruit-picking. The D’Arcy Spice was the biggest of the apple trees by then, and I had to fetch the ladder to clamber up onto the lowest branch. I got up with a bag slung on my shoulder, and then across the broad central fork to one slightly higher and farther out, from where I could reach
through to most of one side. The bark was rough under my hands in that fine-grained way that apple trees are, damp after a shower and the apples smelling faintly, not sweet as much as freshly spicy. The curdle of rain-gray cloud was beginning to move away and the sun spread out around the edges, but the apples would need drying before they were stored away. For now I just reached through the leaves to each one, tugged it free with a scatter of raindrops, and put it carefully into the bag so they wouldn’t bruise each other.

“D’you want a hand?”

Through the leaves and branches I could see Mark looking up. Maybe because he’d made me jump, my heart started to slam more than usual. “If you’re not busy.”

“No,” he said. “Shall I come up?”

He picked up the two empty bags I’d dumped at the foot of the tree, reached for the lowest branch, and hauled himself straight up onto it with hardly a scramble, then got himself settled on the opposite fork from me. To reach the branches on his side he was half-turned away from me. For a while we picked without saying much.

“You off school, then?” he said at last.

I was used to sounding ordinary when I felt anything but. “It’s half-term.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I forget. Long time ago, school.”

“Sometimes I wish it was for me, too,” I said, and then wanted to kick myself, because I’d been trying not to sound too young and I’d just sounded condescending instead.

But he didn’t seem to mind, or he didn’t hear me the way I did. “Not going too well, then?”

“Oh, it’s all right. But they keep going on and on about how working hard is what matters. I know that, I always have, and I do. It’s only them who make it sound so dreary.”

He turned at that, with an apple in his hand, and smiled. “You do, don’t you: work hard. All of you. On the things that matter, anyway. You just have to look at Mr. Pryor, or Mrs. Butler.”

“Or Izzy,” I said, because I couldn’t help myself.

“Yes, her most of all…Any more your side? I’m just about done, I think.”

“Yes, I think I’ve got everything. There are some more up at the top, though.”

“It’s a bit spindly up there, with the breeze getting up. Give us your bag, and you can pass them down to me one by one.”

It was true, my bag was bulging and heavy. I held it out to him, and gently he lowered the two full bags to the ground one after the other, then slung the last, empty one over his shoulder and settled himself solidly in the central fork. “Up you go.”

Up high, he was right, the wind was noticeable: blusters of damp air buffeted through the leaves, swaying the branch I stood on as if we had cast off from land and were sailing on the wind. Over and over again, I reached, plucked, turned, and put an apple into his upstretched hand, for him to put in the bag, almost swinging as we moved to and fro, together and apart, until there were none left to find.

“That’s it,” I said, almost sorry to finish, though my shoulders ached and my hands were scratched and very cold from the raindrops. “Pity they’re not nice till they’ve been stored.”

“Yes, would have been a good snack, eating a few.” He took the last apple from me as I started to slither down to the highest fork.

While he bent to lower the bag to the ground, I turned so as to come down backwards, feet and hands moving independently, childlike, monkeylike; I’d been climbing trees all my life. But then
my shoes skidded on the branch, my hands couldn’t grip, and I felt my sleeve tear, I barked a knee and cried out, and then started to slip and I was falling, almost, yes, falling—I felt Uncle Gareth’s shirt catch and tear harshly—and then Mark’s arm suddenly came around my middle, hard and strong, and I wasn’t falling at all, I was completely safe, my side pressed into his front so hard that I knew he could feel the fear still slamming around inside me.

“You all right?”

“Y-yes. Fine,” I said automatically, but he must have heard I wasn’t really fine, because his arm gripped tighter.

“Sure?” He meant it; I looked up at him and he was looking down at me, worried, even a little bit shaken, and I couldn’t help it, it was knowing that he
was
worried, it was knowing that I mattered. Everything rushed up hot in me, and I stretched up, it wasn’t so far, and kissed him on the mouth, and he came to meet me.

For a split second the whole world whirled around us, and the wind seemed like the ringing of bells.

And then he moved, and everything stopped whirling, but only when he was sure I was holding on to a solid branch did he very carefully let me go.

All I could do was look at him.

At last he said, “I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“For—for doing that. Shouldn’t have. Not right.”

“But it was me. Me who did it, too. I love you.” It was said and the blood began to thump in my ears and my cheeks were burning with it.

Then he said, “I—Oh, Una, I…don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

How could everything change in no more than a breath?

There didn’t seem to be anything to do except clamber out of the tree, but he had to go first, and though when he’d jumped down he went to steady the ladder for me, as soon as I was safely on it he moved away, and was bending to pick up the bags of apples.

For a dreadful moment I thought he was going to walk away without another word, and maybe he thought he would too; I felt his body wanting to, only he didn’t, he turned back to me.

“Una, I’m sorry. It’s—it’s not something that should happen.”

“No?” It was hardly a question.

“No. You’re so young. Yes, that’s it. You’re so young and I’m…I’m not right for you. Not for someone like you.”

“I’m not like me. Not like that, I mean—oh, you know!”

He smiled but shook his head. “Just because you’re all so kind and friendly. But you can’t ignore it. Or you being so young.”

And the horrible thing was, I knew what he meant: no one thought we were the same kind of person. Not even us, maybe. But I didn’t want it to be like that. Maybe he was just using it as another reason…So why did my one last hope feel so forlorn? “Never?”

He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be fair. Best you know that. I’m sorry…”

I shook my head because I didn’t want it to be true, and because the tears were burning their way up my throat and I couldn’t speak. He seemed to hesitate, then took my hand and gave it a squeeze, and turned away.

For a moment I just stood there as if none of it had happened, was happening. As if Mark wasn’t walking away from me, fast but
carefully because of the apples, across the rain-sodden lawn to the house. He would get a cloth from Aunt Elaine and dry each apple carefully and lay it even more carefully in the trays, stalk-side up, in rows but not touching, only the perfect ones, because the imperfect wouldn’t keep. Then he’d carry them out tray by tray to the cool, earth-smelling apple-room to sweeten and stay safe for the winter. He would do all this so I didn’t have to, so Aunt Elaine wouldn’t ask where I was or come and find me.

If he could do all this for me, why couldn’t he love me?

Why can’t you love me? I wanted to ask—cry—howl. Is it because you love Izzy? Why her, and not me? She doesn’t care! She’s only interested in her work. If she loves anyone she loves Paul, and sometimes I wonder even about that. Why not me? I cried, Oh, God, why not me?

By then I was halfway up Avery Hill, where the ack-ack guns I’d never heard firing had long gone but the concrete platforms and bunkers remained, broken now, with twisted bones of rusting steel, and shadows and hollows, and stairs that led down to nowhere.

The rain’s pitting the slack surface of the river; the tide hasn’t turned yet. It’s lunchtime, a heavy, gray day. I slept badly after I got home, tired and footsore from the walk, and found nothing much to eat in the house. Too hot, too cold, too hot…And then was woken in the dark by the blare of a huge ship’s horn from the river, as loud as if its bows towered above me, and I lay in a prickle of sweat with my heart thumping.

But strong coffee, a shower, and a morning of telephone calls and arrangements have done the trick. I reach for the phone yet again and dial briskly.

“Isode Butler.”

“Izzy, it’s Una. Listen, the most amazing thing’s happened. Mark’s come back.”

“Mark who?”

“Mark Fisher. He turned up at the Chantry yesterday.”

“Goodness! After all these years! How lovely. How is he? Well, I hope.”

“Fine. And—and, listen. He thinks we can save the Chantry.”

“What? How?”