His Cemetery Doll (2 page)

Shyla was a golden child: fair where Conall proved tawny and dark; silky blonde with a cherub nose and soft eyes of differing blue and green, where he had sharp features and irises of amber. Con told everyone she'd been his sister's child because it avoided a lot of extra complications, but he could barely understand how his neighbors believed it. It couldn't be more obvious he and Shyla didn't belong to one another. Whoever delivered her into his graveyard probably hadn't realized who they left her with.

The mystery of it bothered him. Who could possibly abandon their little one there in a cemetery at all? Then, the answer came: someone to whom the shelter of a sturdy rock, and the hope of a stranger's kindness, were preferable to whatever circumstances led her to them.

That
affected him. It affected him so profoundly, he'd made a decision no one would understand.

He chose to raise the baby himself.

***

O
ver lunch, he told Shyla about the trip into town. As always, she listened obediently, nodded when he finished, and stood to begin her afternoon chores without being asked. She'd clear the table, tidy the house, and then go outside to tend their small vegetable garden. With those tasks finished, she'd bathe and dress for a visit with the Trasks.

Conall knew Shyla always made an effort to be a little extra presentable when going to town. It was as if she suspected the ladies there were continually looking for a sign she needed their help and guidance, that Conall couldn't possibly understand how to raise a growing girl. She hated to let anyone think he hadn't provided for her.

Today, she glanced out toward the graveyard before clearing the table from their lunch, her gaze falling on the path leading down to Maya's circle.

"What are you thinking about?" Conall asked.

"Nothing, Dad," she replied softly. Her eyes shifted subtly away as she collected his plate and deposited it in the washbasin.

Conall furrowed his brow, but he said nothing.

On his way back out to the twins' grave, he made a quick detour to pay a visit to Maya.

Visitors often said the statue clearly exhibited a master's touch. They ran their hands over the smooth lines of her slender arms: one held tight over her chest in prayer, the other extended out to the open sky. They marveled at the painstaking detail in the feathers of her angelic wings, and the folds of cloth swathing her sculpted figure, flowing as though caught in the wind. They lauded the emotiveness of her expression, which Conall had always considered rather sad. Of all the detail he'd envisioned of the statue, her face came to mind first, yet he'd carved it last.

He'd dreamed about her for weeks before he finally channeled the vision into his sculpture. She'd come to him in sleep in the nights following his discovery of the baby, when he'd fretted over the crying, hungry infant, scrambled to create a place for her in his cold old house. Soon thereafter, when tucking her in became a welcome nightly routine, he'd begun dreaming of Maya.

She never formed in his mind as a
person.
He didn't imagine a flesh-and-blood woman: always cold, white stone, always frozen, and always a sentinel amid the tombstones. He had no idea what possessed him to begin carving away at the boulder where he'd discovered Shyla either, or why he'd been so driven to bring shape to the angel in his dreams.

He'd also never understood why the statue came out so
well.
When others lauded her as the work of a skilled sculptor, he didn't understand. How could his hands have crafted something aesthetic? They were the hands of a laborer, a groundskeeper, callused from hard work in rough dirt and shapeless rock. He barely managed to chisel fresh inscriptions on the tombstones when they grew too eroded to read. How his angel had taken form and been so much like the alabaster creature in his imagination—
exactly
like her, exactly as he'd envisioned, down to the elfin ears and delicate, tender fingers—Conall couldn't fathom.

He'd never had the compulsion to sculpt anything else, either. Even if his first attempt had revealed some sort of hidden genius, he didn't believe he'd ever repeat it.

Even though most folks found Maya impressive at first, perhaps cheered by her appearance in the somber old graveyard, they grew unsettled with her in time. The change became a palpable thing to him, an inevitable, creeping distrust from anyone spending a prolonged amount of time in the cemetery with her. Where, if one did ascribe to fanciful imaginings, she might
see
them.

She'd been sculpted with her eyes closed, but, even so, she always appeared to be
watching.

He plodded down the dirt path, taking in the sight of her standing amid the circle of headstones and reaching out to heaven. The trees cast dancing shadows around the area, but none of them fell on her: under a noonday sun, she stood perfectly untouched, at center stage waiting for curtain to rise.

What
did
Maya wait for? Why did she watch these stones?

Why did
he
attribute any emotion whatsoever to a figure sculpted out of plain white rock?

Conall scowled. Maya, of course, offered no reply. He did, for a moment, imagine he sensed something
more
...some unwelcome intelligence.

Dad?

There's a strange woman outside.

In the cemetery...by Maya.

"You keeping my girl up at night, you bloody troublemaker?" he asked the statue.

Maya said nothing.

"I don't need you filling her head with bad dreams or more strange ideas," he continued, as though a statue could actually understand him. As though
it
had anything to do with Shyla's midnight mumbling at all.

"So...no more nonsense, you hear?"

For the briefest moment, something at the edge of the trees caught his attention. He glanced away from Maya and stepped out, toward the flicker of motion: something like the flutter of a bird's wings, gray or white perhaps. Except...had he heard a footstep?

He stared, trying to make out the shapes and shadows. He'd caught sight of it near the path to the graveyard's oldest section, which stood above the river passing by his property. He moved another step toward the brush.

Then, he stopped himself.

No. He'd seen nothing there. He'd let Shyla's spooky, sleep-addled ramblings last night actually get to him for a moment.

He shot Maya another warning glare and shook a finger at her.

"You," he said, "are getting to be more trouble than you're worth, lass."

Then he returned to the path, following it down toward the twins' graves.

He still had a bramble to conquer.

F
ather Frederick stood several inches shorter than Conall, which always made for an amusing picture when the older man greeted Conall with a clasp of the hand and a one-armed hug. Frederick had to reach quite high to get his arm around Conall's shoulders, but he used this brotherly greeting every time, regardless.

"Conall!" Frederick welcomed him cheerfully. He turned to Shyla next, extending a hand to her, which she shook with a smile.

"Hello, Father Frederick," she recited.

"And hello to you, little one! So good to see you. Will you be joining your father and myself for our evening repast?"

Shyla glanced up at Conall, and he shook his head.

"Alderman Trask's wife offered to have Shyla to her table tonight, and I'm sure she'd prefer the company of Ora and Toby to us."

Ora and Toby were the Alderman's two children, and two of the few people in town Shyla ever kept company with. Shyla gave the Father one of her dutiful little curtseys and excused herself to the Trasks' kitchen.

"Such a dear one, your girl," Frederick complimented. Conall, as always, remained stoic, but he gave the man a nod of thanks.

"Come, sit. Join me."

They sat together at the table nearest the tavern's open front window, where they could bask in the nighttime breeze.

It had been some time since the two men had met like this. Usually Fred made an effort to meet with Con every few days, especially if the priest had been out at the nearby convent to say Mass on a particular morning. On the return trips, he always stopped by the tavern and sent out an invitation for Conall to join him.

The convent, about two hours or so upriver, housed a small order of mostly-secluded, contemplative nuns who called themselves the Little Sisters of Margaret. Saint Margaret of Antioch served as the patron saint of pregnant women, childbirth, convalescence, and the dying. As such, the sisters studied nursing, and they took in unfortunates in need of care. When Conall first came to the countryside—a man disoriented and heavily injured in a violent highway assault—he'd been taken to the Little Sisters for aid. He'd met Father Frederick there, on one of the priest's visits.

Fred somewhat adopted Conall, becoming the next closest thing to family. They shared common histories. As a soldier in the Second World War, Conall worked as part of the Special Air Service before a debilitating injury to his leg sent him home again; Father Frederick spent his own tour of duty as an army chaplain in the northern regions of the continent until his own early discharge. They made fast friends, and Fred arranged for Conall to become the groundskeeper of the graveyard, thereby giving the itinerant ex-soldier an honest job, and a real home.

Trask brought them their drinks without having to ask their orders: an ale for Conall, mug of tea for Frederick. They accepted them with a nod of thanks, and the alderman informed them they'd be having roast rabbit for dinner, before walking away and leaving them to their conversation.

"Nice to see you again, Father," Conall said. "I'd been wondering when you'd feel the charitable call again to minister to your prodigal agnostic. I'd almost missed the attention."

"Ah, yes," Frederick muttered, smiling as he sipped his tea. "Well, circumstances have been a little more demanding than usual, I'm afraid. I'm quite sorry if you've felt neglected..."

Conall sat back in his chair and took a long slug of his own drink. "Not at all. So how've you been, then, Fred?"

A bit of mirth sparkled in the monk's eyes. Conall might be the one man who ever addressed the priest so informally. "Quite well, Conall. Thank you. I suspect the graveyard has to be a bit of a torment, in this heat, yes?"

"Bloody troublesome, yeah," Conall muttered with a bit of a growl. "And the woods creeping up on me on every side. Ought to uproot the whole plot and start over."

"Conall!" Frederick admonished. "Such disrespect for the dead."

"I respect them more than most," he replied.

Trask returned with their dinners, and Frederick offered him payment, which he refused. He wouldn't have, if Conall had been the one to offer.

"The graveyard is doing quite fine," Con continued. "I'm hoping you didn't ask me here to tell me we'll have another patron there, soon."

"Not of which I am aware," Frederick said. As they set into their meals, however, Conall recognized the subtle shift in the man's tone. Frederick
did
have a motive to this meeting, even if it wasn't to arrange a burial. The longer he put it off, the more Conall suspected it would be a very
unappealing
subject.

"How has little Shyla been?" Frederick asked after a moment. Conall had been right.

"Shyla is fine," he said. Why did everyone have such a vested interest in his daughter today?

"Keeping up with her chores? Behaving herself?"

"Yes," Conall replied warily. "She always does. What's the question, Father?"

"Well, Conall..."

Fred put down his eating utensils and templed his fingers. "It has been on my mind lately...Shyla is old enough now she'll be needing some direction soon. Don't you think?"

"Hadn't given it much consideration," Conall replied. "She's got direction enough, for a lass of thirteen. She has school in town during the week, works with me other times. She's always had an appreciation for her studies and for her household responsibilities."

"It's very good to hear, Conall. However...don't you feel she ought to be considering something more?"

Conall also put down his utensils, mostly because the tone his friend used now gave him a very uneasy feeling.

"I don't see what's wrong with things as they are," he said. "She's learning quite a lot of skills already, for a girl her age. She's a quick study at sewing, gardening, and I've started teaching her a bit of carpentry—"

"Carpentry?" Frederick raised an eyebrow. "What will she ever need carpentry for?"

"Might have to build herself something someday," Conall muttered. "Like a door, in case ours blows out in a storm, or a table, if ours busts a leg. Same reasons she'd need to be able to grow her own food and mend her own clothes."

"Conall..."

"I don't aim for her to be a helpless lass unable to care for herself. She's too bright for that."

"Conall," Frederick said again. "I see why you would be protective—"

No, you don't.

"—but Shyla
is
a lady, and she could benefit from a stronger education."

Conall flicked his glance out the window. "What do you want to say to me, Fred? You suggesting I send her to a boarding school?"

"I'm asking if you might start considering sending her to the Little Sisters."

Now the gravekeeper sat up straight.

"To the church?" he shot. "I'm not sending my daughter away from home to...to be a nun!"

"Oh, no, not at all," Frederick said with a frown. "Conall, I've spoken with the prioress. She's agreed—as a favor to me—to consider taking Shyla in and schooling her in nursing. She would be taught by the sisters in the abbey cloisters; they would take
excellent
care of her. Why should you ever object to such a thing?"

"Because she's my daughter," Conall insisted. "And I don't mean to send her
away."

"I don't mean to
take
her away," Frederick replied. "She wouldn't be required to take monastic orders, if she chose not to. She would learn exceptional skills. Nursing, hospice care."