The Girl from Rawblood Page 6

  “You are ill,” I said. My heart rose bitter in my throat.

  He grimaced, his white face creased like paper. “Yes. As you observe, I am. It is an old family affliction. It has dogged the Villarcas since…well, since there were Villarcas, I suppose.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, as caustic as I could manage, “you might be a touch more specific. I am, after all, a doctor.”

  “I have seen all the doctors. Let it be. I am here because I had need to see Rawblood again. To touch its walls once more, warm from the sun. To feel my house breathe about me in the night. Rawblood and the Villarcas are one in ways that perhaps I cannot fully explain. If I am to die, I will do it here.” There was silence for a moment, and then he said, “But that is not all, Charles. Why have I asked you here? In your heart, you know.”

  “I will not guess, Alonso.”

  “I have come back to revive the work.”

  It seemed to me then that in that darkened room, the shades of what we had known and done together lay in the long gabled shadows and played about the flickering edges of the fire. The past was all about us, strong as wine. I closed my eyes and spoke firmly—not to the wreck that sat so quietly in the chair opposite my own, but across the years, to the man I knew then. “It is a sad fact that a man cannot recapture his past,” I said. “We cannot be as we were.”

  “Nor would I wish it,” he answered me tranquilly.

  No, I thought, it is I who wish for it, that you, at the least, could be restored.

  I said, “I do not know that I would have the heart for such things now. I think that we were wild young men.” Even in saying so, I moved myself ever closer to his mind. For we began to settle in our old parts: his to lead, and mine to caution.

  Alonso made a steeple of his hands. He leaned toward me. The light moved over the young eyes, the ravaged face.

  “Une longue et affreuse cuisine,” he said. “Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you indeed?”

  I did not know how to answer him.

  He went on, “Your French was always execrable. A tonic, then, for your memory: the science of life is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall, which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen.” Alonso regarded me, turning his ring on his little finger. It is a peculiar thing for a man to wear: fine and gold, set with white and red stones. It looks made for a lady’s hand, an engagement band perhaps. Most men would not wear it. Fire caught the gems. Motes of light threw themselves across the darkened walls. He did not press me; he knows better. Only the muted grumblings of the fire and cheerful trickle of cider from jug to cup intruded on our silence. I knew myself to be in Rawblood, but other places moved before my inner eye, places that were peopled by my younger selves, suffused with other desires. A tonic for my memory, indeed. I have but one Father, who art in heaven; the earthly one that was, I do not consider. But it was Alonso who taught me how to reason, to see wherein lay our purpose beyond toil, dirt, and suffering. It was Alonso who raised me from the childhood of my thought.

  So I rose and took a candle. With it, I went to his kitchen. It was in darkness now and smelled of cold fat. The shadows fell thickly everywhere in the guttering light; nevertheless, I found what I sought and returned holding it before me.

  Alonso smiled when he saw the knife. I may say I laughed too. I made the old pledge—pricking my finger and handing the blade to him. He did the same. We saluted with bleeding fingers and pressed the mouths of the wounds together. We sat there both, two men in our middle years, clutching our fingers and grinning like schoolboys. He sighed, as one does when pain is relieved.

  “Will you swear,” he asked, “not to bring any person near Rawblood? Especially into the house. We cannot have local gossip dining out on us.”

  “I cannot think I will have occasion—”

  “Swear it, Charles.”

  “Very well,” I said. “I swear!” There was a peculiar sensation at the base of my neck, akin to effervescence; my mind was unclear, and my thoughts moved as clouds do, quick and light, through my skull: the emptiness of the house, the shadow I had seen in my chamber. I looked on my friend, and it seemed that his face was what it had been when we were young, and then there sat before me once more a ruined stranger.

  It became apparent to me at this juncture that I was drunk. I must have said something to this effect to Alonso, for I heard his voice drifting up to me from a great distance, and he seemed to be speaking of cider.

  “For a West Country man, I have an unpatriotic indifference to it; I cannot stomach it. However, it is said in the village that the apples were small and bitter last year, and that may account for its strength. Is it not to your taste? I will give you port.”

  “No, no, it is very good…” I took another draft, which exacerbated matters, and said carefully, “I fear I do not have the head I used to.”

  “For the best, perhaps. I would that you slept soundly tonight.”

  I thought how good he was, and how careful of me. He was ever so. Moved, I drained my mug. I heard him murmur, but I could not catch it.

  My head began to gradually detach itself, or so it seemed, from my body. When I made to describe this interesting sensation to Alonso, he looked at me strangely, and it became apparent to me that I had giggled, and muttered, but said nothing. I judged it time to take my leave.

  As I mounted the stairs in a meandering fashion, I was troubled by a stray thought that demanded that I sit: I cannot recall it. It was a conviction of the firmest order. Thankfully, in good time, I rose and dismissed the matter.

  “Men are whole,” I said to myself, “only in the company of other congenial men.” I was favorably impressed with this epigram and repeated it several times. It spurred me as far as my room.

  There was business to be attended to there. The furniture seemed to have lost its definition, moving and dancing so as to turn up in just the right place for a man to bark his shins on it. What a to-do, I said to myself as I clutched my aggrieved leg. But I made shift and wrestled myself out of my clothes and into a nightgown. With a negligence that is quite unlike me, I neglected to speak my prayers. I fell, slowly and long, toward white linen and coverlets and the hot brick that warmed the whole, and passed straight through them into a fair, where a fellow with the head of a bear was attempting to persuade me to marry his sister, while I expressed my urgent desire to shave him of his fur and return him, I said, to the state of man.

  4 October

  The sunlight pours in through the leaden panes, giving affront to my aching head. I am once more abed, for as well as pain, I am suffering from an excess of impressions, at which I grasp, fruitlessly, through the dull fog that lies behind my eyes.

  I awoke this morning to nausea, my vision uncertain. The neuralgic headache, my old enemy, was hard upon me. I have been prey to it since I was young. Headache is the symptom of numerous afflictions; in most instances, the cause of the difficulty is to be found not in the head but in various organs of the body. It is a doctor’s bane, in that it is the commonest of maladies, yet debilitating, and it has as many causes as there are diseases of the body or mind. In me, it descends abruptly, like a hawk, when my nervous system is overset by excitement, or travel, or alcoholic drink. In this particular case, all three were at work, and I was not surprised.

  Sometimes, air will dispel it, though the effort of getting out into it and staying there with that brass band playing within one’s skull is repulsive to the sufferer…

  To that end, I rose and went out of the house and into the garden, which gives on to the moor. I avoided the front of the house. I had a desire for solitude. The day is crisp, and white clouds pass busily about in a blue sky, as if to confirm that far above us is a world of intention and great moment, of which we paltry creatures know nothing.

  I thought of Meg. The presence of trees, grass, and wide horizons
seemed to bring her closer; when I am in the city, the odor and the hubbub come between us, and I cannot call her to mind. I cannot summon her face, for the pattern I have is one blurred with the roundness of infancy, the character overlaid with that lisping winsome quality that all little girls share. She will be sixteen next summer, and I will choose for her some bauble or ribbon and send it to her, and that will be that. I have not laid eyes on her for twelve years. She may have grown into any kind of a young woman. She is my sister, but I might pass her in the lane tomorrow and know no better. I am ashamed to say that I prefer it so. By report, she is unmanageable. It must be thought on, for she is assuredly no longer a child, and something must be done.

  I will take this opportunity to describe the house, for I saw it at good advantage today from a gentle rise by the drive, warm in the sun, which played over the ancient diamond panes.

  To a modern eye, the building is barbarous, having none of the cleanliness of line and purpose with which the wise builders of today fashion their work. The angles all disagree, many windows are inserted in the stone front in a dashing sort of way, and it crumbles at the edges here and there. It is very low Elizabethan, the roof adorned liberally with gables and that sort of thing, which gives it a peculiarly imposing silhouette.

  The house is not high, stretching to three floors only, and from above, it seems to cling to the ground, lending the building an air of permanence and solidity. I have found it a place of comfort in the past—it lends one’s thoughts wings and one’s heart ease. It has stood during ages, through terrible storms and high winds. I am not as well apprised of the history of these parts as I should be, but I imagine that it has withstood battles also, those tempests that are made by man. It seems evident from the very name of the place that this is so.

  The two wings extend back from the front, creating a U shape, and they form a partial courtyard behind which is a haven from the worst of the moorland bluster. I recall that Alonso ordered it cleared many years ago to make a rose garden. In doing the work, the men’s hoes struck often against some ancient and curious piece of machinery, half buried in the black Dartmoor earth. There were uncovered some fragments of tile and coins, a rudimentary system of lead pipes, the remains of a fire iron and wooden shoe. These accoutrements of the quotidian become bizarre when viewed at the remove of centuries.

  The garden that was put there was an agreeable arbor, forming a perfect palette of color. Pink Duchesse de Brabant roses flourished in particular, and the nodding of their pale heads against the old walls and verdant paths was a pleasant thing to see on a summer evening. Odd (I am considering many things odd today, but so it is) that a man of Alonso’s character should have conceived such an idea as a rose garden. But he is full of oddities.

  I am sorry to record that the garden is now turned to wilderness. Nettles and furze combat each other in a vigorous tussle for supremacy. Brush and bramble abound. The sparse patches of dry grass that remain uncovered are dwarfish and doddered. Instead of damask and blush and crimson, the place is colored with the villainous yellow of ragweed. It is a complete briar patch and a perfect breeding ground for vermin. I will mention to Alonso a ratting dog.

  It has always struck me as strange that Rawblood, this little piece of England, should be the property of one who is not truly English. I have heard the account of how my friend came by his complexion, his name, and his house. The Hopewells are Alonso’s maternal ancestors. A violent, hot-blooded line. Rawblood was theirs. But they lost through imprudence—a wager, I believe—and the family scattered and dwindled. Many years later, a Spanish nobleman heard a young woman, the last of the Hopewells, speak sadly of the end of her family and her lost childhood home. Greatly moved, he searched the county end to end, purchased the house, and gave her back the deeds—just to see her smile. They married later, of course, and so their son Alonso is half a Spaniard, half a Devon man. That is how Rawblood came to the Villarcas.

  It is a pretty romance containing, as all good romances do, great tragedy. Alonso and I both were orphaned young.

  Looking at the house in the yellow light of this autumn morning, I thought it did not seem an ill inheritance, though it was bought with pain. I traced the familiar lineaments of windows, doors, and corners, my eye resting lazily on the geometry of the casements, the furtive ivy that laid thin tendrils up the walls. The sun was higher now, and I removed my hat. The air was sweet, and the breeze blew by me, and I began to feel that the pain flew away with them little by little, and I became playful. I kicked a stone, dallied with it, passed it from foot to foot, strolling to and fro on the sward.

  Standing on that rise, clutching the weathered brim of my hat, the dew creeping into my boots (badly in want of a mend), I felt at peace. I may have spread my arms wide, to take in the morning. I am sure I closed my eyes and removed my shirt collar. The air played about my face, and the call of wood pigeons rose from the coppice behind.

  It seemed to me then, as I stood on that little knoll in an obscure corner of Devonshire, that I could see England spread before me, in dense, bright fields, bound by ancient hedgerows of rowan and hawthorn; in high, bare moors and cushions of heather; in little cobbled towns where the mills still turn in the old way and carts make their way to market in the morning under the early stars; in dark lakes and high peaks, where red kites circle—all the work of the Creator wrought in infinite symmetry.

  “Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?”

  —EXODUS 15:11

  As the clouds scudded for a moment over the sun, my eye was caught by a movement at a window. I peered, and obligingly, the clouds gathered closer over the day. I saw a pale face looking at me, oddly bisected by those diamond panes. There was that peculiar illusion created by dark clothes that the head was suspended in air. My reverie was observed!

  To think oneself alone and surrender to whatever vagaries of thought are presently occupying one, to perhaps scratch one’s head and whistle a tune only ever heard in the imagination—only to realize that, all the while, there have been eyes to see and a mind to judge—it is not a pleasant experience. In this instance, I felt cold, as if I had one minute past swallowed a chip of ice. With a violence that is quite unlike me, I shook my fist at my audience, my anger, I am sure, writ clear upon my face. Pain renewed itself around the plates of my skull.

  They were gone as soon as looked at, in a flash of pallor. No features were discernible; there had been some kind of hat, which hid them in shadow, and yet, I received a strong impression of disdain.

  I counted the windows from the corner, determined to remonstrate with whatever housemaid could be so remiss as to look on me so. I counted and counted again, for it seemed impossible that my outrage could be so neatly justified. Once more, I numbered them: one, two, three, four. There could be no mistake. The intruder had gazed upon me from my own room.

  My host was knocking mud from his boots as I came to the door. I found this homely and peaceful action enervating, out of reason. Alonso should control his household better; he must ensure that his servants do not peer at people through windows.

  We went in together, he unhurried and I stalking ahead in my offense, stumbling a little in the dark hall, my eyes unprepared for the change of light.

  “How did you rest?” he asked. “One of those d--ned birds has got in again.” He swore again and batted with his hand at a small, dark shape that sped by him.

  The swallow rose and beat itself against the roof of the hall; it hammered itself against the high glass window. There was a terrific rush of air as the bird flew past me on the stairs. Such a wind, produced by so small a thing!

  I arrived at my chamber precipitously and investigated it thoroughly. As was to be expected, perhaps, it was empty. My ascent had given the intruder some minutes in which to withdraw. Nothing had been disturbed—I could trace only the signs of my own occupation.
The room bore still that thick quiet of recent slumber. The bedclothes lay in the tumbled disarray in which I had left them. My shirts hung in good order in the garderobe, the door slightly ajar as I had left it. A fly buzzed urgently in the casement, punctuating the silence with its efforts to penetrate the glass. Several dark hairs were tangled still in the comb, flung carelessly on the dresser. My shaving water sat, congealing, on the washstand.

  And yet, I was not satisfied. There was a quality in the air, not so definite as to be called a scent, but for me an unequivocal confirmation that I had not been misled; someone had been here. I moved to the window and looked. There, I saw the sward, rising above the drive, still sunlit, where I stood moments ago. Under the cedar tree was something…a pile of earth, something…

  A crudely dug rectangle scarred the vivid green. A fresh grave, not large. Long enough to hold a small woman or an older child. The sight filled me with peculiar feeling, as if all the sadness in the world had been drawn down into that spot. Memory and longing were in me. I was on the verge of recalling some monstrous secret of existence. My insides were pulled about with sadness. There was something unpleasant about it, as if these feelings belonged to someone else, and I was but a vessel for them.

  But it was impossible. I had walked on that spot beneath the cedar tree not ten minutes since. The turf was unbroken then. And yet, there it lay below, before my very eyes. I caught the scent—or thought I did—of dark earth in the morning air… I bent and peered through the imperfections in the old glass. I thought I could perceive some mist there, as though it had been closely breathed upon. I thought, I am standing where she stood; thus, she must have watched me. It was strongly borne upon my recollection in that moment that there were no servants in the house.

  A feeling of great cold descended upon me, and I felt that the window receded, that I was being drawn back, far away from the room, from the light, and from the green world outside. I was in a tunnel, whose destination was somewhere cold and black and deep. I gasped, staggered, and fell. I wriggled blindly as a worm toward the door but was defeated and lay gutted upon the dusty boards.