Pray for Reign (an Anne Boleyn novel) (32 page)

Maggie peered across the
room as she got up. She could see that Ma finally slept. Even teatime came and
still she slept. Da wouldn't look at her. Instead, after tea, he carried the
bundle of wool out into the spring air and Maggie crept to the doorway to see
what all the goings-on were about.

The bundle lay on the
ground next to the well, and Da seemed to be looking for something. She
scratched her leg again, wondering, when she saw him dragging his shovel from
the barn, what he wanted it for.

"Ah, lass," he
said, noticing her. "Come to." He waggled his bony fingers toward
her.

She shoved on her shoes
and pulled a plaid tight to her neck; maybe he would show her some new
lambs...although it was still a little too early, or so he'd said yesterday.

"Would ye like a
walk, lass?" he asked. "Just us two?" He hefted the shovel over
his shoulder and reached out a hand. "It's a bonny day for it."

The way he said bonny
day, and the way it almost sounded stuck in his throat made her think he had a
surprise for her—a bath perhaps, somewhere out past the barn where he could
have got it ready without her knowing. She shook her head in answer.

"Come to,
lass." He took a step toward her. "We'll go out to the moors, and ye
can scare up a grouse or two if ye've a want."

"OK," she
said. "I'll scare eight of them," she said, and held up all of the
fingers on one hand to show how many she'd roust for him. 

She expected him to get
excited at the thought of so many grouse for supper but he just left the bundle
on the ground next to the cottage and he started away. If she wanted to scare
the birds for him, she'd better get moving. Oh, how Ma would sleep with them
all gone. The quiet. The peace. Even the hound followed. Watching Da, Maggie
thought he moved an awful lot like the hound with its short legs fighting to
pass through bushes much taller than it was.

It was fun to imagine
him and the hound as brothers. They did look alike in some ways: the great
brown eyes, the huge ears. She laughed at the thought as she slowed down enough
for him to catch up. The smell of seaweed came up and over the moss at her,
bringing with it a shiver of fog. She could see the spine of An Sgurr, off in
the distance, through the jumbles of juniper brush, but it would disappear
soon; Ma always said that even An Sgurr couldn't escape the mist.

Da said nothing as he
stopped at the spot where they had all come for a picnic last summer. He looked
about, and with a grunt, began digging into the earth. Maggie chased the hound
while she waited; if there were birds to scare, best to run all around so
they'd lift right where he could see. Besides, it would be supper soon, her belly
told her so and he didn't even seem to be looking for any grouse for the pot.

Before she could find
any, he was holding her hand again as he led her back to the croft. She liked
holding his hands. they were big and warm and as soft as a lamb's ear, even now
when muck covered the palms.

They weren't home but a few minutes when he lifted Ma into
his arms, wrapped in the coarse bed sheet and carried her outside.

"Where you taking Ma?"

He pointing to the milking stool with his toe. "Sit ye
there till I get back," he told her.

Then went the sister-sized bundle, too, off in his arms.
Maggie sat with the hound outside the cottage like he told her. It was tough,
though, to sit on the milking stool for so long. She hated sitting, doing
nothing. Good thing he came back soon enough.

"Where's Ma?" she asked him. "Where's the
sister?"

"We'll go to them now," he said, but he wouldn't
look at her. Instead, he brushed at his breeks where some mud had collected and
closed his eyes as though he was tired. Maybe he was if he was going to keep
walking back and forth to the moor. Sure enough, off they went again back to
where two mounds of dirt like black molasses buns sat on the moor. She liked
molasses buns, especially the way Ma made them with oatmeal freckled over the
top, but there was something wrong with thinking about these piles of dirt the
same way.

Still, she sprinkled the freckles of daisy petals atop like
Da told her to because they were Ma's favorite. When the fog wet her lashes,
she pretended the tiny globes of water that blurred into
burns
so close
to her eyes, were drops of faerie water, ready to change her green eyes to
silver. Da's lashes were wet too. And his cheeks. She wondered what he
pretended.

She felt his arms wrap around her in a great squeeze that
nearly squirted the air out her nose.

"Yer Ma's gone to peace," he told her. "Gone
to God, lass, where she won't suffer no more."

How grand for Ma that she wouldn't have to cough no more all
the time. He hadn't said anything about the sister, and his voice sounded as if
it had a hard time coming up through his throat, but still, Maggie was sure
things would be back to normal now that the belly was gone and Ma wouldn't
cough no more.

Still, it was odd that he sighed so sadly when he gave one
last look over his shoulder at the mounds.

When they got home, she ran to see if Ma was awake, but her
bed was empty, and Ma gone, like he'd said. Still, Maggie could swear she heard
her whispering everywhere she moved: next to the linen chest, beside the
mattress, underneath the table. Everywhere. She sounded impatient, like she
sometimes did when she wanted Maggie to come close instead of dawdling. Maggie
liked to dawdle, but this time it wasn't fun. No matter how much Ma whispered,
Maggie couldn't find where the voice came from; she couldn't make it to Ma.

She finally went to where Da was dropping bowls onto the
table.

"Where Ma?"

"I told ye, lass, she's gone. Now come get yer
supper."

She crawled up next to him on her chair and scooped up her
spoon At least she didn't have to answer Ma now because it was mealtime; a wee
lass should never talk with her mouth full. Still, he seemed so sad, so quiet
with Ma gone, that she wanted to help him somehow, tell him Ma needed the
peace.

Looking up from her bowl of watered mutton stew, she peered
into his eyes and told him, "I glad Ma gone."

He made a choking sound that started her belly squirming
again.

"Careful, Maggie," he said. "A good lass
doesn't speak ill of the dead."

Dead? What was dead? Did dead mean Ma? Poor Ma. Now she
wouldn't moan anymore, but did that also mean she hadn't gone to get better?
Had Maggie just made things worse; would Ma's voice go away now, too?

Oh no. She'd really done it now. Da pushed back his chair
and ran like a beetle over to the fireplace. He turned to the hearth where he
was lit with bits of yellow light that Maggie knew came from the burning peat
he'd collected three nights ago. He looked like he was trying hard to stand up,
and he never looked as though he would fall even when he played with her in the
meadow, chasing her and chasing her till he said he had to sit or fall down.
His legs were good strong things that could chase her for hours but he never
had to sit. He never fell down.

Not now. Now he looked as though he was about to fall. He
kept running his fingers through the bush of hound's-fur hair, shook his head
as he looked into the fire.

"Not good to speak ill," he mumbled. "Not
good."

Ah, so that was it. Maggie wasn't a good lass; how could she
be, for she'd talked, and Ma would get ill for it. Da said,
ill
.

Speak
.

Ill
.

Dead
.

All tied up together like knots in an apron. What if he got
swollen up and sick like Ma? What if his voice got left behind, too, all for
the troubles of ill-speak?

She didn't think she could stand having Da go away too, or
become another voice in the corners that she couldn't find. It was hard enough
trying to hear the words Ma made in the corners, bad enough there was no body
to find. But for Da to go too?

She wanted him to make her squeal with pig bites to the
belly, for that's how she got the hole there, he said. From a pig bite her Ma
had sewn up when she was a
bairn
but ten days old.

Maybe if she kept her lips pressed together so no ill-speak
could get out, maybe that way the way things that used to be would be again.
Every night for days and days she wished for it with her stomach, deep, deep
down underneath where her pig bite was. She wished so hard that the bite
started to get sore.

It got sore and stayed sore all the time. Straight through
the cold that comes with the frost, her belly ached and as the leaves fell from
the trees it got more sore and her chest felt tight, all closed up and
blanketed with yucky stuff that came up when she coughed.

She waited and waited for Da to tell her it was ok to talk,
but all he did was grumble about her not talking, about her lying in bed and
coughing until finally he said, "Ye're to have a new ma, Maggie."

He beamed at her as if his words could make her belly stop
hurting. "A new ma. And she can help ye, lass. Make ye smile again."

The words made her belly hurt more, and when she cried
because she wanted it to stop, he said, "Ach, don't cry, lass," and
wrestled with the fire.

"She can't replace yer real Ma, I
ken
, God how I
ken
, but a lass needs more than an old dog to tend her, and I
ken
naught of frills."

She started to cough more. Shivers ran across her skin. It
was Ma's sickness, she knew it; it felt like the hound's tongue licking from
her toes to her hair, probably because it was tired of having hairs pulled out
of its ears. No big belly, though, and she figured it had something to do with
the sickness running out her nose instead of swelling up her pig bite.

She wanted to ask Ma
about it. But Da had said she was dead. Because of the ill-speak. And Maggie
found it awfully strange that although Ma's body was no longer in the cottage,
her voice continued to find its way into the oddest of places: beneath the
table, coming from the dirt when Maggie played there, in the corners when she
ran to them to escape the sound of that familiar and heavy brogue.

Perhaps that was what
dead was, being a voice with no body. A voice that had to come through dirt,
out of corners, and suffer being ignored. And because of all this, she was
afraid to speak back to Ma, petrified she'd get a devilling for killing her,
for ignoring her voice. A devilling that, even though it came down to words,
could hurt as surely as a switch to her bum.

She felt hot all the time. And she shouldn't be hot, for Da
said November made the air cold. She shouldn't be hot when he lit a fire first
thing in the morning and got up in the middle of the night to feed it.

She was so hot he took to putting cool cloths on her
forehead and telling her, "It'll be alright, lass. It'll be alright. Just
ye hold on."

But it wouldn't be alright. Maggie knew she was bad. She had
killed Ma—her ill-speak had killed Ma—and now, because she held it in, it
attacked her belly.

Maybe it would be better to let go, better for Da, better
for the new ma that was coming.

Maggie closed her eyes and waited for the ill-speak to take
her.

...........

To read more :
Throwing
Clay Shadows

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