The Book of Secrets (28 page)

I
’
m
watching you
,
little
bird.
Wild
ones
are
good
to
each
other,
hush
come
quietly,
little
sparrow.
’

Kenneth
Falconer
had
said,
‘For
all
flesh
is
as
grass,
and
all
the
glory
of
man
as
the
flowers
of
the
grass.’

The
bird
looks
stiff
and
sore,
as
if
it
had
been
beaten,
which
indeed
it
has.

Maria
observes
it,
hardly
breathing
lest
she
startle
it,
imagines
the
tiny
web
of
veins
like
threads
in
its
wings,
visualises
the
miniature
structure
of
its
body
as
complex
as
that
of
a
human
heart,
muscles
like
fine
shells
pumping
minute
quantities
of
blood,
the
brain
no
larger
than
grains,
its
response
to
the
world
as
finely
tuned
as
her
own.

‘In
the
morning
we
will
find
a
way
out
of
here
for
you.
’
Her
voice
becomes
uncertain.
‘Perhaps,
perhaps.
’

And
after
a
while,
‘Or
perhaps
you
would
like
to
stay
here
with
me.
Well,
now
there’s
a
thought.
Hah.
How
foolish
that
would
be.
No,
let’s
get
you
better,
stay
here
another
night,
yes?
And
in
the
morning
you’ll
be
restored,
it’s
nothing
more
than
bruising,
I
can
tell
that,
nothing
broken,
and
when
you’ve
had
a
rest
you
can
hop
along
to
the
open
window
and
set
off
again.
That’s
what
I
would
do
if
I
were
you.
I
think.
Yes,
I
think
so,
though
it’s
hard
to
remember,
wouldn’t
you
say.
Ah,
bird.’

She
closes
her
eyes.

‘The
grass
withereth
and
the
flowers
thereof
fall
away,
’
says
Kenneth
Falconer’s
voice
from
across
the
years.

The
hole
in
the
window
is
jagged.
To
enter
or
leave
by
that
hole
is
tempting
the
worst
kind
of
tearing
and
disablement,
a
terrible
aftermath
of
scarring
in
its
wake.
She
will
encourage
the
bird,
with
great
gentleness,
to
take
the
proper
path.

Sparks still spat and hissed where once the bush had stood.

This, the book of secrets. Maria’s hand on the yellowed page of Isabella’s journal.

I
have
been
betrayed
by
my
own
people.

The front room, where Maria had passed her days since her mother’s departure, smelled of smoke.

‘Aren’t I the one who should leave the house?’ she had said to Annie and Hector before they went.

‘And where would you go?’ Hector had asked her.

‘There must be somewhere,’ she had said, casting around. ‘Somewhere in the bush, perhaps there’s a cottage, some place I could stay.’

She could see the idea had some appeal, may even have occurred to her uncle. ‘It’s understandable that you should wish to hide your condition,’ he said stiffly.

‘So you’ll consider it? You’d look for somewhere?’

‘There is afterwards to be considered, when the child is taken away. You would have to come back.’

‘It’s my child.’ She was overwhelmed by this new knowledge and oddly excited as well. A child, and her own. ‘You can’t take it away,’ she said.

‘Of course it will be taken,’ said Hector as if she was simple. ‘It will be illegitimate.’ His tongue trembled around the word. Maria saw his Adam’s apple convulsively at work in his throat.

She thought, I must be careful. All of this is so new, so unexpected. I knew so little of what I was doing, but now that it is done I must work through it, one step at a time. She cast her eyes towards the floor.

‘I wouldn’t have to come back,’ she said, adopting a meek tone. ‘I could go away for good.’

Annie sagged, almost falling.

‘Not too far away, mother, somewhere that you could reach me … if you wished.’ She had been going to say ‘me and the child’, but she restrained herself.

‘I would never want to see you again.’

‘You don’t mean that? Mother?’

Annie looked down the garden, to where the last tomatoes were splitting their skins and the vine turning black as the frost melted in the morning sun.

‘Your mother needs rest and care,’ Hector said smoothly. ‘She will find it at my house. She can hardly be expected to receive it under this roof with you. She can stay with us until a place is found for you.’

‘Are you ill, mother?’

‘Of course she is,’ said Hector, as if Annie had lost the power of speech. ‘She is heartsick. It wouldn’t surprise me if you were the death of her.’

It was true that Annie did look poorly, her face puffy and swollen and her body trembling from head to foot.

‘It is as well, then,’ said Maria. ‘I would rather be on my own.’

After they had gone, she took kindling from the box beside the fireplace and set the fire in the stove. Although the sun had come up outside the room was still very cold. As it took on a glow she realised that she was very hungry too. She opened the flour barrel, taking out flour to begin the dough for scones. Her next move was unclear but she was not going to do anything on an empty stomach. She realised how important food had become to her of late. It crossed her mind that she might die.

Perhaps that was what was expected of her, that she die by her own hand? A proper penance, no half-measures; severed limbs and a broken body. That was the price of sin. She looked at the rafters, and then at the narrow ladder-like stairwell that led to the upstairs rooms, and she thought that it would be easy enough. There was cord in the kitchen cupboards, or sheets which could be torn into strips. She shivered, not so much from fear of killing herself, but rather that she might fail. Her mother had once told her in hushed tones of a man in Pictou, before her time it was, but her grandmother had been there so she’d been told — not that Isabella ever told her herself — who had only been half hung in a public execution, a bungled job, he choked in front of everybody and his face was as blue as cornflowers before they got it over. It was no way to go, not even for a common criminal.

But something joyous was welling inside her, pushing aside these uglier visions. She was not going to die. She would not give up her child. The thought was stunning.

Not that it solved anything. An image of Branco swam before her. His child too, even if her feelings towards him had changed. And the thought surfaced: he could help me. It wouldn’t be perfect, it is not what I want now for myself, but together we could make this baby safe, which is all that matters.

The grass was brown and yellow in the autumn light, there were hawthorn berries colouring up on hedges planted round the cleared
paddocks and the air smelled sweet and clean after her long month indoors. Wasps blundered around and near her, groggy in the cooler atmosphere, tumbling towards their deaths. At first her legs felt shaky from misuse, but she was so overjoyed to be abroad again that soon she began to run. Across the paddocks she sped. The river surged past her and her feet felt as if she was flying. There was not a soul in sight. The startled birds rose in a flock beside her and she believed she was as free. For a moment she forgot why she was running across the paddocks, or if she did remember it seemed like a lie, it had nothing to do with her and she was afraid of it. She was a young girl without a care in the world. Down the rough track which had been worn by their feet, and now she could see that it was overgrown and hardly existed at all. Round the corner to where his shack had stood.

It had gone, and in its place was a pile of ashes. She stood
stock-still
, not believing for a moment that she was in the right place. A slight breeze flattened the tops of the grass and caught a small eddy of the black ash sending it skyward then dropping it again onto the smoky bed. Standing in Maria’s path were Hector and his sons. A little behind them stood two more men. Five men, fanning out and barring her path. Across the distance which separated them William McIssac caught her eye and looked away.

She was of course grateful to them. The thought of asking Branco for help had been a fleeting one. He seemed like a dream, a phantom who had played some part in the events which had overtaken her but was without form or substance.

She reconsidered this now with a certain grim amusement. As the last two months had passed, it had become increasingly clear that she could not have dreamed him up. The evidence against this was too real, too increasingly tangible. But that she preferred to be without him, to be on her own, was still the truth and she had been relieved by her relatives of the need to consider his return.

Except that she was never alone. The shadows of the watchers haunted her from the trees.

And now the trees were burnt. Everywhere she turned, it seemed there was fire, so much had been destroyed. They would destroy her if she let them. Alone in a house ringed by fire. A funeral pyre, perhaps. Her rations had been small the past week. Maybe they thought that one way or another they could make the child go away. But the child moved, it was alive.

Still, when all else failed, they would take the child. Fine words, to say that she would keep it, but she knew how hard she would have to fight. They would do what they believed was best for her. And then what? The punishment would not end there. She would be shunned forever. At nights she dreamed of her resistance, but when she was awake she could imagine little action that would be effective against them.

Now, her hand lying on the book.

What
drove
me
mad?
Do
you
know,
I
don’t
know
any
more.
Was
it
the
wild
men
in
the
woods?
Men?
What
men?
I
don’t
think
there
were
any
men.
They
were
figments
…

Isabella, grandmother. What did you know all those years?