The Vespertine (20 page)

"What did she say?"

"Ask again next week."

I laughed, but before I could ask more, a crack rent the air. A ripple ran through us, and Caleb cried out. He rushed across the lawn and was nearly on Sarah when I realized that she'd crumpled to the ground, letting the bow fall where it may.

A halo of gold passed before my eyes, and I felt the weakness in Sarah's knees as she staggered and stood. I looked into my hands, and then pulled Mattie to me, hiding her from that next thing she would see.

Without the glimmer of sunset, the blood that spilled through Sarah's gloves only shocked.

"Bring her, Caleb," Thomas said, suddenly commanding. A center of calm in this storm, he turned to Zora and told her, "Run! Fetch her parents!"

Sweeping Sarah into his arms, Caleb dared any to say something against it. Zora took Mattie by the hand, dragging her in the opposite direction. Only Nathaniel and I hesitated, and we had a silent argument.
Can't you do something? Can't you take her faster?

The shadow on his brow was his reply; he could but he couldn't.
How to explain disappearing, reappearing? How to explain being in one place, then somewhere else in an instant?

"Yours is a parlor trick," he said aloud, his face ashen. "Mine could be witchcraft."

Nodding, I backed away. He did, too, widening the gulf between us. Then, at the same moment, we turned. I would follow Zora to deliver bad news; Nathaniel would follow Thomas and Caleb to offer only his strength.

For two so gifted as we, how utterly useless we were.

***

Though the news concerned our friend and cousin, Zora's parents kept it from us in whispers. Notes came, and then neighbors—each time, Mrs. Stewart sent us upstairs to work our samplers. Never had we cared so little about stitching our names in floss, and rarely had we so flagrantly disregarded Mrs. Stewart's command. Once voices started in the kitchen again, we crept in stocking feet to the top of the stairs.

"And to happen to such a pretty girl," Mrs. Stewart told someone, for the third time at least. Zora had started to lose her temper at it, and I stayed her with a hand. We wouldn't find out anything if she tore down there in a rage.

"Dr. Rea said she can have a glass one," a woman said, casually, as if discussing a new lamp furnace. "Enamel's the best, but too expensive."

"Ghastly. Perhaps we could take a collection?"

Zora surged beneath my hand again. "Would they wound her twice? Bad enough her eye, but her pride, too, treating her to charity?"

"They mean well," I said.

"It's all well-meaning," Zora said, collapsing on the step in frustration. Tears streaked down her cheeks. The narrow stairs closed around us, dark and warm, almost like a chapel. Pulling her sleeves over her hands, she swiped at her face. "You know her, Amelia. What of her prospects now?"

I sank to sit beside her. "Caleb wants to marry her."

With a dismayed groan, Zora waved me away. "Who knows if he really means it?"

"He does. He asked her."

"She didn't say anything." Sniffling, Zora rubbed her fingers beneath her red nose, too ladylike, at least, to wipe that with her sleeve. "Did You see it?"

Shaking my head, I leaned against the wall. "Mattie told me."

"Then that should be the thing to cheer her," Zora said, though she didn't sound like she meant it.

"I've never understood, precisely, what Caleb and Sarah are to each other," I admitted, for I couldn't quite believe it, either. "They sparkle and crack, but she's always refusing to admit him—what is that?"

A silence of immeasurable weight stretched between us. Then, softly, Zora said, "You must never repeat this."

Cold banded me, and I nodded. "I vow."

"He ruined her," she said, so low I had to lean to catch her words. "They've barbed each other since they were babes, and summer last, it spilled over. We'd gone to the beach for a clambake, and nightfall, and atmosphere, and the caves nearby..."

Shocked, I swear, I felt all my blood drain out at once. "He forced himself on her?"

"No!" Zora shut her mouth, listening to see if we'd accidentally called attention to ourselves. When the conversation below continued, so did she. "He called and she answered. It was a lapse, and no one knows it. But
they
know. He wants her hand, and she wants a choice in the matter."

Oh, how sharp that admission felt, pulling between my ribs. "But what sense does it make to refuse him if she wants him?"

Her smile starting to quaver again, Zora gathered herself and stood. She had her own fondness, her own memories, and quite plainly Sarah's maiming had struck a deep wound in her as well. It took a moment for Zora to still her breath, and even then the threat of tears came in her voice. But she managed, at last, to answer me.

"None. It makes no sense at all."

***

"She refused me," Mattie said, turning and turning her teacup but never lifting it to drink. She seemed almost of paper, not just pale, but easily creased as well. "So I hoped if we should all call together, she'd change her mind."

"I'd like that," I said.

Managing a bit of wan sympathy, Mattie turned her cup again and said, "You must feel such guilt."

Tea went bitter on my tongue. "We all do, I suppose."

"But you saw it," Mattie said. Her eyes strayed toward mine, each blink slow as surrender. "And handed her the arrow that did it, besides."

The kitchen walls seemed to close on us. Suddenly, the heat from the stove became unbearable, burning all the air from the room—at least, that's how it felt to me. Trying not to rattle my cup on its saucer, I looked from Zora to Mattie and said, "But I wasn't the cause of it."

"Oh, I know." A mirthless smile touched her lips, an attempt at etiquette and nothing more.

Zora stood to gather our dishes. Briskly, much in the mode of her mother, she said, "Let's take her a pot of ginger apples."

"I'll go pick some if you scrape the ginger," I told Mattie, already at the back door. A rude hostess, indeed, I didn't wait for her reply. I just hurried into the yard, suddenly breathing again once I'd escaped the kitchen.

Ducking beneath the heavy arms of the tree that shaded the yard, I rose in its bower, hidden away for just a moment. The earth smelled dark and rich around me, teased at my feet with the sharp hint of fermented apples, and sweet in a haze around my head with the promise of still-ripening ones. Bees hummed as they ate their fill, and sunshine, pure and clean, slipped in sparks through the leaves above.

"Nathaniel," I said, pulling my polonaise out to catch the apples I picked. "Do You hear me?"

The wind answered, the slightest rush to tug at my hair. I pulled another apple from its branch and called again—more in thoughts than voice. And on the third, I turned and he was there.

The branches shook sunlight across Nathaniel's face, and for once no impish humor lingered in him. Dressed out in a plain muslin shirt and suspenders, he came across black and white, and strangely severe. When he stepped closer, he greeted me with the sharp scent of turpentine on his skin.

"I was working," he said.

A pang struck me anew that I still had no idea what it meant that Nathaniel did what he liked. Winter colors stained his skin, blues and grays and whites, and thoughtlessly I took his hand to examine it. "What are you making?"

"A pietà," he said. Then deliberately he rubbed a cerulean stain into my lace sleeve, making a permanent mark of himself there. Abandoning his distraction to consume me with a look, he pulled me against his chest. "You're troubled."

With a sigh, I laid my head on his shoulder. "Sarah won't see anyone, and everyone's unsettled."

Impossibly close, Nathaniel pressed his brow against my temple. "Aren't you?"

"No, I am, but I can scarcely call my distress as great as theirs. They've known her such a long time, and I, such a short one." I longed to bury my face against his neck, to feel his skin warm on mine. "And I've disturbed you only to send you home again. I only came out to pick apples."

Nathaniel carefully caught my hand and raised it to his lips. He didn't kiss; instead, he caressed, tracing across his mouth with both our hands, then set me free. "If a minute or an hour, I would always come for you."

"I should have told you before," I said, filled with his tender sentiment and a rush of my own. "That I love you, too."

Stepping into a blaze of light, Nathaniel smiled at me crookedly. "Go on, then."

"What?"

"You didn't say it before. Will You now?"

In spite of myself, I laughed, turning away from him, then turning back, just to taste the shock of heat that rose brand-new to my skin, on looking at him again. Pressing myself against him, I gazed into him and said into him, with my mouth and my mind, "I love you, too."

To answer, he leaned as if to kiss me and dissipated. He wasn't even a cool breath on my lips—simply there, then gone. And that made me laugh, too, the odd, glorious secret we shared and more so—knowing he would suffer for want of that unfinished embrace as well.

Ducking beneath the branches again, I surfaced in the yard and took two steps to find Mattie staring at me. I had never realized just how pale came the blue of her eyes, not until that moment, when light slanted into them, illuminating them like pools.

"The ginger's grated," she said. She had no guile to her, just a frigid stiffness.

"I've got apples." I lifted my polonaise in uneasy reply.

She very nearly let me by, but at the last caught my elbow. "I thought I heard laughter in the yard."

"It must have been the wind," I said.

And truly, was that a lie?

A
GREAT CRY WENT UP
in Eutaw Place that morning. One that seemed to go on endlessly, echoing in agonies that spread from house to house as a plague. It reached our doorstep in the shape of Thomas Rea, whose countenance came so gray we thought he might expire at the door.

"I need your father," he told Zora, brushing past her as he had never done, his eyes this once in search of someone besides his beloved. "I'm sorry to call so early."

Grasping his arms, Zora tried to catch him and keep him. "Thomas, what's the matter?"

"I need your father," he repeated. He pulsed with low urgency, and all but leaped at Mr. Stewart when he came around from the kitchen. Pulling him aside, he stole glances toward us, then had the gall to lower his voice.

Zora trembled beside me, clutching the ribbons of her housedress and skittering up two steps with me when her mother appeared and joined the frantic conversation in the hall.

"Oh, mercy," Mrs. Stewart said, then became her brusque self again, pushing both gentlemen to the door. "Breakfast can wait. I'll save a plate in the warmer, go on, go on."

Thomas apologized again and threw one thin and anxious look in Zora's direction as he opened the door. But he said nothing to her. Neither did Mr. Stewart, who put his best coat over his shirtsleeves and left the house without a wink orajestor even a smile.

The moment the door closed, Zora and I spilled into the parlor.

"Mama!" Zora cried, our bare feet clapping against the kitchen floor. "Mama, what's all this?"

Mrs. Stewart turned from the basin, smoothing wet hands over her face. There could be no mistake that she'd tried to blanch away tears. Her eyes were already red with them, her voice thick. "Sarah's taken a turn."

A cold, iron bolt set my spine. "Is she ill?"

When her mother said nothing, Zora slapped a hand on the table. The sharp sound startled all of us, for a ripple passed between us as Zora asked, "Mama, is she ill?"

"It's a terrible pain she's been in," Mrs. Stewart said. Gathering herself, she held a hand out to take Zora in. Yet she spoke not, not until I had come into her arms as well. I trembled on the edge of crying now, just knowing that no good could come of this.

"Please just say it, Mama."

"The bottle said two tablespoons," Mrs. Stewart said. All ragged hell played in her voice, catching and clicking as she tried to wheeze out the rest of it. "She took it all."

Zora cried out, a raw pain that ground into the bones. She clutched her mother's gown, sobbing into her shoulder. Grief so took her that she swayed the three of us. Every cry rocked into me, every heaving, gasping breath reverberated across my skin.

"She doesn't suffer anymore," Mrs. Stewart said, emotion unraveling her again.

In my numb horror, I stood still and stiff, as if I could escape an awful truth by hiding from it. But an awareness crept on me, a black thought winding like miasma to cloud my mind. I forced myself to speak, asking rather than guessing, because I prayed to be wrong. "What use is a lawyer to any of them?"

Some of Mrs. Stewart's sternness returned. Slowly, carefully, she answered, for it was a direct question she could hardly dismiss. "Emily Holbrook's sent for the police. She says the prescription is to blame."

"Oh, my poor Thomas," Zora cried, dissolving again. "His father is all he has!"

Quickly, I wrapped my arms around Zora from behind. I wanted to be there to catch her, to squeeze her, to carry her to the ground when the poisoned thought that rose to my mind spilled from Mrs. Stewart's lips.

"They're coming for Thomas, my duck. He wrote the prescription."

***

As if mocking our tragedy, the sky refused to give up its startling clarity for mourning or burying. It relented not when the white crepe was hung to signify her death nor as our procession carried us through the heart of the city to Greenmount Cemetery.

Summer seemed determined to see Sarah Holbrook buried in her own colors: golden, bronze, blue.

Though I was family in abstract, I was only barely so. Thus, once we left our carriage, I let Zora go with her parents to the front and humbly excused myself to the back. I would have ample chance to give my regrets—but it was none my place to do it before even a single relation.

When I finally did reach the casket, I laid my pretty bundle of delphiniums among the rest and pressed a kiss to the pewter plate that read
At Rest.
With a fortifying breath, I made myself look into the window above it. All those who said a body in death looked very like that dear friend in life spoke in lies.