Текст книги "Dominion"

Автор книги: Calvin Baker

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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

eight

After the death of Magnus Merian they tried to put their grief behind them at Stonehouses, telling themselves and one another everything would still manage to right itself by spring. The winter was hard that year – stretching on for weeks longer than it should have – until they had eaten their stores so far down there was little left to them but seed grain. Finally the weather looked as if it was going to relent, and they had a whole week that was warm enough for the lake to begin thawing, which was always the first real sign of the new season. However, by the time warm days should have been upon them, they were besieged again with bad weather.

Several animals had already died from cold during the last storm, and Adelia tethered a lamb that had lost its ewe in a bower behind the house, intending to slaughter it as soon as she decided how best to preserve the meat from spoiling. The old woman was used to hardship from her childhood, when they were first settling that part of the country, and could work as well as any man, so never despaired before her task, as there was little on a farm she had not done before. The girls had also adjusted to this new way of life, following Adelia about as she carried on all the farm chores she knew from her first days at Stonehouses and even made games around all the rigors of their new existence.

Libbie proved less adaptable though, having always accepted farm life, but never needing to engage its most difficult labors, so that, as soon as Magnus’s death sank in, she began to despair of how they would manage out there on their own and even at the funeral had let it be known to her brother Eli how she feared for their future.

Eli Darson assured his sister that as governess of Stonehouses, fire or none, she need never worry. He set about then, from the next day onward, spreading word in respectable circles how his widow sister was prepared to marry again and that she brought with her a handsome dowry for the right suitor.

She was not the only mistress of Stonehouses, however, and, when she learned of her brother’s plan she worried greatly what Adelia would say once she found out. Out of prudence she tried to hide his doings from the other woman for as long as possible.

By the time the second storm had closed in on them, though, she was grown feverish from being cooped up indoors with no way to leave and openly looked forward to being courted, no longer caring for anyone else’s opinion. “I don’t want to live like a half wild woman,” she said to Adelia. “Perhaps we should just sell what’s left here and move into town.”

Adelia heard this as sacrilege and said as much. “You would sell my boy’s land from under him, wouldn’t you?” she asked, not disguising the note of hardness that crept into her voice. “Well, it is not yours to decide.” She left the house to go slaughter the lamb, which she had finally determined that day to kill, and smoke its meat.

When the old woman left, Libbie went to find her daughters, who were playing in the small room upstairs that they all shared. She sat down on the bed next to them and watched their play silently for a while before saying anything. “When I was your age,” she began at last, stopping their game, “I did not know anything in our lives could ever go wrong. Now you poor innocent darlings must suffer because your father went off to war. I just want you to know everything will be right again.”

The girls were very quiet, never certain how to speak to their mother when her mood turned to the past. Unable to take up their game again, they watched Libbie as she went over to the trunk at the end of the bed and picked up the cushion that lay upon it.

“This is what life was like for us when I was a girl,” she said, holding the pillow out for the two of them to inspect. They were delighted by her embroidery but were usually not allowed to touch it, so it was a great treat for them indeed, and they strained forward to feel the material.

“Papa will come back,” said Rose, turning away from the pillow, even though it cost her great self-control not to go on looking at it.

“Dear, sweet girl,” Libbie said tenderly, “you are right to love your father. He was a great man in his way, but I am afraid he is not coming back.” While the main part of her words were compassionate and filled with understanding, her tongue stood very rigid at the word not, reducing everything else before it.

Rose was quiet through all this. When she thought it safe to do so, she simply left the room and went back downstairs, where she sat on the sofa perturbed, looking out the window toward the lake.

When she saw a pair of riders coming toward the house, though, she ran back upstairs, calling to her mother as she went. Her first thought was that it was her father returning, even if she dare not allow herself to say it, or even hope for it too much, but that is who she wanted it to be.

When the riders drew closer, she was glad she had not said anything, as she could see then it was not Caleum Merian but her uncle Eli and another man she did not recognize. Libbie, though, did not seem to be surprised by their visit when she came to answer the door, having changed into one of her old but still elegant dresses.

When Eli and his guest entered, the adults sat down. Rose could see immediately how happy her mother was, as Uncle Eli introduced his friend as a Mr. Paul Waylon from Chase. Libbie was always made happy to see her brother, but she was surprisingly demure toward the other man, especially as she usually held herself aloof from strangers.

After a pass of conversation that left all the adults laughing, Rose, who had been listening to them from a corner of the room and surmised they were plotting something against her father, went to the strange man and stood directly next to him, glaring coldly.

When he turned to her and remarked what a sweet child she was, then asked her name, she was seized by defiance and replied very evenly, “You are sitting in my father’s chair.”

“War is so difficult for young people.” Mr. Waylon smiled, looking at Eli and Libbie but unmoved by the girl’s outburst. “There is so much they cannot understand.”

“Rose, go upstairs this second,” Libbie told her daughter. “She is usually such a well-behaved child.”

“You mustn’t apologize,” Paul Waylon countered, continuing to smile indulgently. “It is all very natural.” He then turned to Eli. “I’m afraid I should be heading back now. I must attend to some business in town before the shops all close.”

“Well, it has been very nice visiting, Mr. Waylon,” Libbie told him pleasantly, though within she was seething at Rose for ruining the afternoon.

Instead of going on to the bedroom as she had been told, Rose hid on the stairs out of sight from the adults and continued to eavesdrop on their conversation.

“Paul, you wouldn’t mind if I let you ride back alone, would you? My sister is a fine cook, and I think I’ll stay here for dinner.”

“Not at all. I will contact you tomorrow.”

“I look forward to it.”

“Well, thank you for coming all this way. It was really a pleasure.”

“It was that, but entirely mine.”

The man could be heard taking his leave, and Eli and Libbie were left alone in the living room.

“He is from the best family of any Negro in the colony,” Eli said, pouring himself a drink from a decanter on a shelf, which had not been touched since Caleum Merian last opened it to offer spirits to his guests. “He can prove his blood too.”

“My husband was one of the finest men I ever knew – of any color,” Libbie countered, letting her feelings for Caleum show for the first time in many months.

“Yes, of course, Libbie, but please don’t behave like the rest of them in this house. You need a man to manage this place properly, and look after yours and your children’s interest. Mr. Waylon will do that, and he is also a gentleman, as you saw when the child behaved so hideously toward him. I think it would be a very successful match.”

“I know what’s in my interest, Eli,” she said. “That doesn’t mean you can sit there and insult my husband.”

“I did not mean to. I only meant Waylon is worthy of you, dear sister.”

At this Libbie softened again. “If he is interested, I will consider it seriously. Do you think it is too soon, though? That I shouldn’t wait longer?”

“The crops have to go in the ground every year, and every year be brought out. Your house has burned down and will not rebuild itself.”

“You are right, dear brother,” she asserted. “I suppose there are widows made every day.”

“You have suffered so much,” Eli said then, making a great show of his sympathy for what she had been through. “You deserve to be happy. You always deserved that.”

“I have been that before, Eli, but thank you,” Libbie answered. In the past she had thought her hardships only the wages for living, but she saw her brother might be right, and there was no need for her to suffer unduly or veil herself in black for the rest of her life. “You will let me know when you have a response from him.”

“I will,” Eli promised. “I cannot imagine it would be anything other than yes, though. After all, what man would not have you?”

On the upper stairs Rose took in all their conversation and grew scared. She strained not to betray herself. However, it was impossible for her to stop, and she flew from the stairwell, screaming, “My father, Caleum Merian, will be back soon!”

Even before her mother punished her, Rose knew she was powerless against what was happening. She went on in the face of their authority nonetheless, if only because she could not bear being silent with what it made her feel, or not defending herself as she had always been taught to do.

Libbie tried not to be angry at the child, knowing how she loved her own father, and how she herself had felt in the beginning. Even after Caleum enlisted for a second and longer tour after the first, she told herself it was in the service of something greater than they were and was an honor for all of them. She received him on breaks during the fighting with open arms and never mentioned the petty worries of her day-to-day life, reckoning that eventually all would be restored and better than before.

“We must master our destinies, all of us who can,” he said to her, before leaving the final time two years earlier. She wanted to believe him but soon knew better, as she came to feel her own destiny was being mastered by his needs and those of the war.

When he finally wrote to say he had decided not to enlist for a third term, she knew it must have weighed heavily on him, as he had taken to army life so well and risen to the point that he had distinguished himself beyond anyone else from Berkeley, and indeed to the point that his name was known beyond their own colony; and might even be known to history. It will be difficult for him to trade that for farm life again, she told herself, but we will make it through all the same.

She had not heard from him since that letter, however, and it was long past the time he should have returned. The last anyone could confirm was that his regiment had been at a battle in New York State, just before his enlistment was to end. Beyond that there were no reports. She waited daily for news and hoped each horse or wagon that came down their lane was her husband. Her heart would set to beating faster in her breast, until she could hear it in her ears as the rider approached – and showed himself to be other than Caleum. At night as well, those first weeks, she heard horse’s hooves beating toward Stonehouses that later proved to be phantom apparitions. Three months? Six? How many days of this before she admitted to herself she was widowed? How many more should be expected of her? The crops indeed did have to go in the ground soon, or else they would starve and the question answer itself.

Libbie looked at Rose, whose punishment she had yet to pronounce, and thought Adelia could hold out as long as she wanted. She had lived to see her husband die at home of old age and had nothing left to fear. Not one in ten other women could claim the same. Of course, she thought, there was still hope. She knew Rose did not mean to aggravate her already uneasy heart but was only showing loyalty to her father, as indeed she should. But the child needed to learn to behave in all matters, and not only those she chose for herself.

“You were very rude today,” Libbie said to the girl, who stood before her, still looking angry. “As punishment, you will go without your supper tonight,” she finished. “You may go now.”

The girl glared at her mother with more outrage at the gross unfairness of all around her and began to march off.

“Rose,” Libbie called after her purposefully, “you may miss your father. You may not defy your mother.”

Rose continued up the stairs with a haughty look on her face, certain of her rights in that house as a magistrate in his own court. She had not intended to hold one parent above the other, but if that is what it meant to keep Mr. Waylon from sitting where he was not supposed to she was prepared to pay that price.

As she sat on the floor in the bedroom sulking, she heard Adelia downstairs, returning from her chores. She wanted to run and tell her what had happened, but knew she would only get into more trouble. Instead she strained to listen as they began preparing dinner.

At table that night Adelia asked where Rose had gotten off to, and Libbie told her the girl was being punished. When pressed why, Libbie was reluctant to answer at first, but finally put down her fork – it could be heard clinking against the plate – and replied defiantly, “Aunt Adelia, I am thinking of marrying again.”

Adelia did not speak but continued with her meal in silence. “That is not right,” she said, long minutes later, after it seemed she would let it pass without comment.

“It is what will happen.”

“But it is not right.”

“It is my intention.”

“That is what you punished your daughter over?”

“It is what will happen.”

The three of them finished dinner, without speaking another word to one another. Adelia had never thought she would live to see such a day, but she was powerless to make the younger woman do anything she did not wish. She only knew she herself would not live there with them if it should come to pass. She would rather live alone in the shell of the old house or even in one of the barns.

Lucky was too young to understand all the rancor that was festering in the house, but felt the tension and tried to hide herself like a garden snail under a leaf.

“Who will you marry?” Adelia demanded to know at last, breaking the tension in the room.

“I am considering Mr. Waylon,” Libbie answered.

Adelia did not know the man and was tempted to ask about him, but she decided to remain quiet and let things reveal themselves – which in the course of time they did.

* * *

Eli Darson rode to the house again the next day to see his sister and tell her of Waylon’s interest in the marriage. When he entered the parlor, he was surprised to find the old woman there as well and so saw no possibility of a private conversation.

“Perhaps I should return another day,” he proposed to his sister.

“No,” Libbie told him, for she had more backbone than her brother. “There is no shame in what I am doing that I need to hide it from my children and relatives.”

“Very well,” Eli went on officiously. “In that case he has suggested, as both of you are well known and reputable – and there stands no obstacle in the way – that you should begin a formal courtship, followed by a timely marriage, with the understanding, of course, that the bridegroom, who does not bring the same resources to the union the bride does, will have certain protections, much as if the scales were reversed. All of which seems reasonable, and as your brother I would counsel you to accept.”

Libbie cast around the room until she caught hold of Adelia’s eye before answering. “It does seem very reasonable, all of it.”

Adelia did not say anything, but Rose, still unrepentant from the day before, said again with perfect evenness, “my father will not like that when he comes home.”

“It is fine,” Adelia said to the girl, before she could get into trouble with her mother. “Everything will work out as it is supposed to, no matter what that might be.”

Eli and Libbie looked at each other. “We can discuss the exact terms when the occasion nears, but I will tell him he is free to call on you,” Eli said with self-satisfaction. He then turned to his niece. “Don’t worry, Rose, you will see that Mr. Waylon is a good man.”

Rose looked at Adelia and held her tongue.

“Your Uncle Eli is talking to you, Rose,” Libbie said, grown furious with the girl.

“It is understandable,” Eli said. “She will come round. I am only glad this is all concluded favorably.” He stood to leave.

Once he had gone, the two women sat there a long spell, looking at each other and thinking about their fate out there, until snow began to fall again on the farm beyond the window. Adelia was slowly resigning herself to the fact that another age had passed there at Stonehouses and that Libbie would eventually have her own way no matter what. She only thought how she herself might best preserve that portion of the land and its memory that was her own, separate from the rest, and keep it out of Waylon’s possession.

As they sat down to supper that evening, the snow was still falling and they were silent, neither speaking to each other nor crossing paths but only sharing the same table. Libbie was decided on her course of action and that it was best for the future.

Rose, for she was old enough to have a will and full conscience of her own, sensed it was inevitable and already began to wish for the day when she would be independent and free of them. She knew the time must come, only she did not know when.

They sat there eating from yesterday’s meat and plotting each her own course, separate from the rest but compatible with her own view of the world and her place in it, and all was silent and blanketed by the snow.

As they finished their meal and began to prepare for bed, though, an awful sound such as none of them had heard before filled the room, sending shivers through each of them and making everything seem stiller than it was before.

The two youngest were afraid, and Libbie knew it was not a natural thing she had heard. Adelia alone had any idea what was happening, although she had never witnessed it but only heard of it, back before in ancient days when her own mistress, Sanne, was alive. She knew then that all was lost and beyond saving.

“It is called Ould Lowe.” She answered their unasked question. “It is an unvanquishable demon.” So say the legends.

nine

Beneath the icy surface of the lake the monster battled against his chains, as he had every day since they were first fastened around him – never ceasing to try and free himself in all the years he had been held captive by the links of iron. Rust had finally softened the shackles enough that he was able to snap one of them, like an enemy’s bones, before swimming to the surface of the water. But he was not yet free. Ice encased the top of the lake, holding him yet in his watery penitentiary. Five nights he did pound against it – and all the length of the days that circled round them – his rage increasing with each desperate knock. As he dwelled then in the refracted light of his aquarium, his memory of the years before began to be restored, like some fearsome returned king, and he knew again his former life and how he had lost his lands and came to be chained. He pushed against the ice in another fit of rage, wanting nothing more than vengeance against those who bound him there.

In the house the women heard the noise the monster made and each day grew a little less certain of what it all meant, trying to tell themselves and each other it was only the ice melting. When strangers came to the house, though, the beast was gravely silent, as if his ire was some private thing meant for them alone.

Rose had her own understanding of his bellow and was least afraid, though, she knew not what he wanted, or how to defeat him, but felt the sound was less separate from the right world than she was first told, when they claimed he was evil refined.

How information passed to the creature itself is more mysterious, but he knew of all that had happened on the land in the time he had been away, and who all everyone was. When at last his raw hand escaped the ice – pulling the rest of his massive frame after it – he was as bold and knowledgeable as he had been when he ruled there before them. He sat on the shore of the lake then, and his only thoughts were to conquer all that had displaced him from his station.

He came forth in the afternoon, letting the sun warm his cold form, and every living thing scattered from that precinct before him. When night fell he was strong again and stood to begin his haunting, letting free oaths as he went that were all the more baleful for having been unheard so long. At sunrise his second day he began a demented singing, which was a wild murderous ode of all he would do in his new reign and all the reasons to fear him.

He grew hungry after that, and spent the morning scavenging for something to fill his cravings. He was all pain and all want. The forest of his former prowling, though, was little more than a tame garden now, and the game he was used to was no longer to be found, forcing him to roam wide on the chase before he hunted down nourishment for his needs. Sated, he went back to wait on the one called Merian.

When his nemesis did not show himself by evening, Lowe grew impatient and went to go look for him, first at the old house, which was destroyed but not yet abandoned, then at the new place, where Adelia, Libbie, and the two little girls were.

Adelia had hung the place with amulets, which Lowe laughed at, but she also left a plate, which he did consume, and it was enough to satisfy him for another day. Soon, though, all his hungers would be filled but one.

He slept that night not in his bed under the lake but out in the open beneath the stars, where he dreamed and cursed in his sleep all through the night, like some wayward handmaiden of creation.

The next day he rose again, and walked the grounds again, swearing without pause. His memory was bitter long and it filled him with rage, until he began a bellowing that lasted half the morning. When it was done there was nothing living in the county that did not know Ould Lowe was returned, and intended to have back his place in the cosmos there, which the man had tried to overthrow. He had never done harm to anyone who left him undisturbed, but all who tangled with him learned ultimately to know defeat and isolation – which is the feeling men were said to have before Lowe stopped their knowing anything else at all – and he longed to bring such knowing loss to the man.

He stood outside and began to call out the man’s name, which was all of their name as well.

It was only when Waylon came for a visit that he gave them a moment of peace that day. But when Waylon left in the late afternoon he was also accosted by the beast, who knew then his intent and called him after that everything but man, driving him off in such a violent manner that he knew it was better not to return, no matter what else it might be worth to him. Libbie suggested then that they leave Stonehouses and move to town but Adelia refused, and despite whatever rancor was between them Libbie was fearful of making the journey with the girls alone.

He now had focus for all his wicked intents and walked by the door of the house constantly, hoping they might venture out, but neither they nor the man showed themselves.

On the fifth day of his resurgence Lowe started to grow desperate for his purpose. What he did then was surprising, but it was to cry tears hot with self-pity – for he wanted only one thing and it was denied him. The sound that emanated from him, however, was such that no one would have thought it crying, yet another verse of his foul hell song.

The next day the cattle began to fall down dead, certain as if pestilence had been unleashed among them. In the same manner they had taken over all that was his, he reasoned, surrounding his name and memory with silence, brought on by guilt fastened around their tongues when they thought of him.

He walked the shores of the lake and he named out all their names in the valley and hill country to show how intimately he knew them, but they too hid themselves from him, like Adam, instead of being as all the ones who would be lord before that who did say, naked and baldly, “I usurp Thee.”

“What have we done?” Rose asked behind the door, thinking it punishment for some crime.

“We have done nothing,” Adelia answered her. “The monster Lowe claims all and does its evil work, as it is wont.”

“My father will kill it,” Rose reasoned calmly.

Adelia smiled at her, and was eased a little in her worries by the girl’s ignorant words. If man could face it she knew Caleum would, but he was not there and it was known the fiend he could not be defeated. The demon himself was first to know of the man’s return, smelling him when he was still far off from Berkeley and did not yet know what had happened to his home. To give him fair warning, or because it was his nature and he could not control it, he started singing his hell song again, which curdled the blood of everyone in the country but especially those few with memory old enough to remember it from other days.

Caleum heard the noise from a distance and it did not frighten him, as he had heard sorrow songs before, belonging half to this world and half to other realms. Nor did he know where it was coming from, but only that something was different in the land he was traveling toward. That had been his lot for many years, however, as he rode toward the sundering of one thing from another, until he held very few illusions about anything anymore.

He reached instinctually for his sword, but it was not there, and he tried to remember where he last held it, but could not recall having it since his injury, though his hands themselves remembered wielding it. He felt a surge in his blood’s pulse and asked the colt for more speed to return him home to Stonehouses. He did not fear the thing, whatever it was. On the contrary he felt pulled toward it. If it was his last labor before walking his own land and seeing his family again, he wanted it to arrive as soon as possible, so he might vanquish it and rest awhile. Nay, he did not know what it was.

The beast felt the man’s progress and was placid. He was prepared for him long ago and would no more fall for his tricks and deception but rout him, as he should have before. He would have satisfaction and rest again in his rightful home.

When Caleum turned onto the road leading to Stonehouses his heart was buoyant and radiant, but he felt the cut of sadness as he approached the main house and saw it reduced by fire. He walked around and looked in the cold ashes, wondering what had happened there, before getting back on his mount and heading to his and Libbie’s place.

On the path on the shore of the lake his blood came to a dead stop as he saw the most fearsome and cruel giant he ever beheld in all his journeys and all his days. He remembered when he was younger and had been told the legend of the monster buried in the lake. Whether it was called Ould Lowe or else Old Love he could not properly remember, but it was only legend, and this thing before him was howling real and intent solely on his destruction. He stopped his horse and tried to think of how he would battle it, when the beast saw him and called.