Chime (28 page)

Bits of the night came back. Snippets of “Lord Randal.” I sang it—yes, I’m sure I did. I staggered through the square, singing, just like any drunken fisherman. How could I show my face in the village again? I should have to stay at home for the rest of my life. It could be done, I knew. I’d heard of an American poetess who never left her house. But I hated poetry.

Eldric had helped me home, hadn’t he? Had he held me upright, or might I have dreamt it?

A thought about Eldric sloshed through my head, passed out the other side.

How thirsty I was. I swung my legs over the side of the bed. The hammering sloshed all about; I felt vilely unwell.
You might not feel very well.
That was Eldric’s voice in my head. I hadn’t dreamt it; he’d been there. Did I make a fool of myself?

The thought sloshed back, daring me to remember. Whatever it was, it was worse than weaving and singing through the square. I didn’t want to remember, but I kept picking at the memory—Eldric, Eldric and Leanne. Leanne was dangerous—she was consuming him alive. But Eldric could not—or would not—believe.

I swallowed hard, but the sick still rose, and all at once I was scrambling across the floor. I was wretchedly sick in the ewer.

The smell of sick jumped out at me, the fishy, gritty smell of eel.
Eels boiled in eel broth.
With the smell came the memory of Stepmother. Sick, and eel-smell, and Stepmother. They belonged together.

I didn’t want to remember Mucky Face bearing down upon Stepmother. But I couldn’t help it, couldn’t help remembering that livid belly rounding over her, curling, cresting, crashing. I’ll never know if Stepmother screamed. I heard nothing but the smack and smash of water.

Stepmother vanished beneath Mucky Face, but he hadn’t finished. On he surged, into the Parsonage, and only in the Parsonage. He preferred it to any other house. He surged through doors and windows, and nooks and crannies, and holes too small for an ant. And there he stayed for weeks, loitering in the dining room and the parlor and the study and the library, where he turned the books into bloated corpses to fester and rot on the shelves.

I sagged to the floor, leaned against the bed. Images of last night slid behind my eyes in a mad kaleidoscope. Prying into Eldric’s past with Leanne. Prying into his past in bars and bedrooms and brothels. Kicking him beneath the table. Standing on the garden steps. The charm of finding myself eye to eye with Eldric, of leaning into his lips.
Give us a kiss, then, love!

And the horridly urgent question of making Eldric understand the danger he was in.

It was almost a relief to be sick again in the ewer.

That afternoon, Tiddy Rex knocked at the garden door. “Miss, oh miss!” He’d gone pale with excitement; his freckles stood out in livery spatters. “Come see, miss!”

“What is it, Tiddy Rex?”

“Sorry, miss. I were supposed to say it with them other words: Mister Eldric would take it very kindly if you might look into the square.”

Eldric. My stomach curled up on itself, like a hedgehog.

“Honest, miss, you’ve never seen nothing like it. It be a surprise. An’ Mister Eldric requests the presence o’ Miss Rose, as well.”

“Rose!” I called into the house. “Eldric has a surprise for us in the square.”

“I prefer surprises,” said Rose.

I had to face Eldric sometime. Staggering and weaving, singing “Lord Randal”—

“Let’s hop along, then.”

“I don’t hop,” said Rose.

It was not quite raining, but the air was wet. You could see the wind. The gallows rose tall and lonely, skin and bones against gray clouds. The wind set the noose to swinging. I turned my back on its Cyclops eye.

The surprise stretched and purred before me.

It was a motorcar. (“Motorcar! O Motorcar!” sing the heavenly angels.) Long, but not too long. Red, but not too red. Sleekest of sleeks, shiniest of shines. And sitting at the wheel was Eldric Clayborne, letting a slop of urchins lay sticky hands all over its redness.

Not really red, but cardinal. Yes, cardinal—Cardinal!—with its overtones of High Churchiness. (Hallelujah! Hallelujah!)

“Don’t she be a beauty?” said Tiddy Rex.

She?

“All us lads, us be jaunting in her soon. That be the properest word, says Mister Eldric. Jaunting.”

She.
Of course the motorcar was a lady. Briony Larkin might fall in love with a lady. That would be quite proper. There would be none of the nastiness of men and their cigars.

The motorcar had been acquired with Leanne in mind, of course, but I’d love her anyway. The motorcar, that is.

Mr. Clayborne’s men had left off their work to gaze at her. Rose walked round and round, touching the candy-apple skin with one finger. All the while, Eldric was helping dirty little boys and girls into the motorcar and sitting their horrid backsides on the white leather seats. One of the boys sounded her goose-voice of a horn.

White leather. I must pause for another color adjustment. Not white, cream. Thick, melting cream, with darling little buttons to fix the decorative pleats and puffs—cream leather buttons, of course. Even the insides of the doors were padded with cream leather.

Each wheel was a spun-candy confection of metalwork. In front, protuberant car eyes peered from protective brass hoods. A brass eagle perched on her nose.

“Do you like her?”

I jumped at Eldric’s voice. “I’m in love.”

“So am I,” said Eldric, “which works out well, as I’ve saved the first ride for you. Pearl has made us a picnic. I took the liberty of thinking you and Rose might join me.”

“I should have thought you’d give Leanne the first ride.”

“After what you told me?” he said.

“You didn’t believe me, though, did you?”

“No.” He smiled; I smiled.
Give us a kiss, then, love!
Ugh. Hedgehog stomach. Ugh.

Rose and I shared the passenger seat. I sank into cream leather.

“Miss!” Tiddy Rex pressed his nose to the window. I found a cunning little crank to open it. “You be taking me next time, miss?”

I always used to be the one who stayed behind, minding Rose, while the others were off eating ice cream or riding sleighs on cold, crisp nights.

I don’t care so much about cold, crisp nights, but I have never tasted ice cream.

The motorcar shivered into life and slid forward.

“Miss? Miss!”

“Next time, Tiddy Rex,” said Eldric. “You can sound the horn.”

Rose talked to Eldric. She actually conducted a conversation. How did the motorcar work? Why did it make such a noise? I could barely hear them, and what I could hear, I didn’t understand. It was all springs and drive trains and liters and cylinders and horsepower. Horsepower? Isn’t the very point of a motorcar the absence of horse?

It was a peculiar exchange, but peculiar things will happen in this new world of motorcars.

The afternoon was weepy and gray, but the car was cozy. I held my hand out the window. There’s a peculiar pleasure in having just a bit of oneself grow cold, while the rest is snug beneath a lap rug.

I sank into the cream leather. “The motorcar makes me feel I am truly a Dresden figurine,” I said.

“Dresden?” said Rose.

“Something precious and fragile,” said Eldric. “Something that ought to be treated with utmost care.”

“Briony’s not fragile,” said Rose. “She always says how strong she is.”

“That’s rather embarrassing, Rose!”

“She’s right,” said Eldric. “That’s what you’re forever saying.”

“Still more embarrassing,” I said. “Don’t you think it’s true?”

We bumped along a rough road, through heather and peat and gorse. The moor rose in lavender folds, dotted with a few arthritic firs.

“In certain ways, perhaps,” said Eldric. But then he got quiet and didn’t finish his thought.

“In what ways?”

“In Amazon of the Swampsea ways,” said Eldric, but I had the feeling I’d just pulled him back from a faraway place and that that was not at all what he’d meant to say.

Now the earth rose around us, cutting off our view of the moor. Banks to either side dripped with rusty mosses and yellow ferns and mushrooms, brown and rugged, like leather. Autumn had taken hold. Just a bit more than a week until Halloween, which was when Eldric would learn I’m a witch.

I watched him adjust the turning wheel. If Michelangelo had lived in this age of motorcars, I knew just how he’d sculpt Eldric’s hand. The long, fidgety fingers, the energy that might, at any moment, turn the wheel into a crown.

We splatted through soggy leaves, then hissed onto pebbles to climb a long rise of moor.

I imagined what those fingers would do on Halloween, when I revealed my true self. They’d go very still while he absorbed the information. And then what? Would he want me to give him back the things he’d made?

I touched the gray-pearl wolfgirl that hung against my chest. If he did want things back, it would be too late. I’d have vanished.

But I couldn’t bear to have him find out that way. What if I were to tell him?

What if?

We pulled over at an untidy pile of boulders. The almostrain had given over to almost-sun. Eldric spread a blanket on the sunward side of the boulders, which were flushed and warm.

Rose turned away, even though the blanket suggested picnics, and Rose was very fond of picnics. She looked down the spill of moor, at the wind tearing through the scrub, at a bundle of ponies tumbling by.

Eldric produced the picnic basket; we set out our supper. A thermos of tea; cold chicken; buns with raspberry jam and cream; and biscuits.

“Look, Rose,” I said. “Buns and biscuits—shop-bought biscuits!”

But Rose did not appear to have heard. She stood smiling, not her anxious-monkey smile, but a real-girl smile. She did have her own thoughts—nice thoughts. Of course she did.

Pearl was a picnic genius. The picnic was the very essence of picnic-ness. She’d given us a quilt, worn and faded to just what a picnic blanket should be. The buns were wrapped in a blue-and-white cloth, and if I were a girl in a story, I’d have exclaimed,
Look, they’re still warm!

Which they were.

“I suppose it’s time to get it over with,” I said. “While Rose isn’t listening.”

“About last night?” Eldric didn’t pretend not to know what I meant.

“I’m so mortified. Asking you those nosy-parkerium questions, and . . . and singing!”

“But I’m glad you did!” said Eldric. “You have a—a dazzling voice! I should never have heard it otherwise.”

I shook my head. “I used to sing well enough, but I grew out of it.”

“You haven’t,” said Eldric. “I’m telling you, you haven’t.”

“Perhaps I can only sing when I’m tipsy.” I smiled to show I didn’t mean it. “And then, on the stairs—oh, I’m so sorry.”

“Too bad about that terrific memory,” said Eldric. “I’d rather hoped you’d forget.”

“I wish I had,” I said. “And this horrid thought keeps coming to me. What if I’m no better than Cecil? What if when I get to drinking, I go about kissing people?”

“You’re not at all like Cecil,” said Eldric.

“What’s the difference?”

“Well,” said Eldric, but he paused, and again, I had the feeling he’d drifted far away.

“Well?”

“I’d never invite Cecil on a picnic,” said Eldric.

“I thought for a moment you were going to be serious,” I said.

“Not even for a moment.”

“I did feel dreadfully unwell,” I said. “Just as you’d predicted.”

“I’ve been under the weather myself,” said Eldric, “in just that way. But I think that members of the Fraternitus, young and high spirited as we are, sometimes need to do such things, just to learn not to do them again.”

“I’ve no intention of doing that again.”

“Not ever drinking?” said Eldric.

“Not like that, at least.”

“A toast at your wedding, perhaps?” said Eldric.

“I shall never get married,” I said. “But I do like champagne.”

Funny how I’d started off feeling so comfortable with Eldric last spring, but that now prickly little pauses kept growing between us. It’s dead opposite to my experience with other people. I usually start out feeling uncomfortable and have to ratchet up the tart-and-amusing side of Briony. But as I begin to despise them, it grows more and more easy, and witticisms fall from my lips like toads.

“Look!” Rose pointed down the bluff. “It’s a horse.”

It was awkward because of Blackberry Night. Blackberry Night ruined everything.

“Oh,” said Eldric, his voice so devoid of inflection that I looked up. He stood beside Rose, looking along her pointing finger, shielding his eyes against the sunset.

“I can tell who it is from that particular shade of green,” said Rose. “I have an eye for color.”

My mouth turned sour. “The horse is green?”

“I can tell that’s a joke,” said Rose.

I joined them, knowing what I’d see. A horse and rider, thundering across the moor. The horse wasn’t green, but I was—turning green, that is. A taste-memory from last night rose beneath my tongue, all sick and eel and grit. I swallowed hard.

The wind strained through the peacock feather in her hat, tugged at her riding habit of hunter’s green.

“She rides rather well,” I said.

“Yes,” said Eldric.

“She appears to be heading our way.”

“Yes,” said Eldric.

“Do we have enough chocolate biscuits?” said Rose.

“Let’s eat them all up,” said Eldric. “Now!”

Leanne was now urging the horse up the bluff, now slowing, now slipping from the saddle, turning toward us, smiling with those overripe teeth.

“What a surprise,” said Eldric.