Wildwing (27 page)

A Necessary Prompt

I
enter the classroom, and there’s still an empty desk. Every head turns as I walk over and set my satchel down. Miss Rowland stands at the board, a piece of chalk frozen in her upraised hand.

“I’ve come back,” I say.

A smile brightens her face. “That’s wonderful, Addy. Please be seated.” She brings over a textbook. “We’ve moved on to this one.” As she gives it to me, her hand presses mine.

And then she’s all brisk again at the board. I’ve missed more than a month, so I just listen and read, catching my place. It feels different, and not only because I was so long away. I can’t put my finger on it. A new intensity, a new kind of wanting.

When the bell rings and I’m gathering my books, andthe others are starting to file out around me, Miss Rowland says, “Addy, would you mind waiting for a moment?”

Caroline sashays past. Without turning her head, she whispers, “Don’t forget your mop and bucket!”

How long has it been for her since we met at the grocer’s? Two weeks, three? Her words feel so little now; she still thinks she’s heading a great army, but behind her trails nothing more than a flock of harmless yellow chicks.

When everyone else has left, Miss Rowland sits in the desk beside mine and sets down a slim volume. I look up from its title in surprise.

“The play,” I say.

“That’s right. It’s still two weeks until we go on. I’m afraid the role you had is taken, though we are having some”—she pauses, searching for the right word—”some
challenges
with that role at the moment. But there is a part open, one I cut from the script when I had nobody to play it. Putting it back in makes the play much stronger.”

I’m surprised at the excitement I feel as I think of working with lines, finding a character, bringing her to life. “What is the part?”

“The nursemaid.”

The part Caroline had before she became queen.

“A nice, solid role,” says Miss Rowland. “A no-nonsensewoman with a big heart and a good dose of humor.”

I know just the person to model her on. “I’d be honored,” I say.

She walks to her desk and scribbles a note. “Give this to Mrs. Murchie at the theatrical society, and she’ll find you a costume.”

I have to wait for a moment in the street. The door to the theatrical society is wide open, but it’s blocked by two burly men trying to fit an overlarge ornate chair inside. They turn it, and tilt it, and then with a stubborn push—and a small
snap
?they’re through. One of the chair’s gilded feet lies on the step behind them.

I pick it up on my way in and hand it to one of the men.

“Bloody thrones,” he says.

I walk downstairs. The door to the costume room is ajar. I look around, wondering which dress they’ve put Caroline in, what the old woman thought when she couldn’t find the red and gold gown.

There are footsteps on the stairs, slow and careful, and then the old woman appears at the door. “Oh, it’s you,” she says in her scratchy voice.

“Mrs. Murchie?” I hand her the note.

“Hmm,” she says, reading. “A nursemaid. I haveseveral that might work. This is Miss Rowland’s production. Medieval, yes?”

I nod.

“Then we’ll need the one with the wimple. It’s brown, if I remember correctly. You search through that side, and I’ll begin over here.”

The rack is crowded with costumes waiting to be brought to life. I go through them more slowly than I should, running my hand across this sturdy homespun, that elegant lace. It makes me think of the last time I was here, how I found the glove…. I look down, and my heart stops. There it is, right where I left it. A falconer’s glove.

I pick it up, and as I touch the well-worn leather, I feel a changing wind blowing my hair back once more. I smell the field, the trees, the dried grass. I slide my left hand into the glove, bending my arm as if Pilgrim stood there.

“Here we are!” exclaims Mrs. Murchie, turning to me with an armful of brown wool. She stops when she sees the glove on my hand. “That old thing! I never could figure out what it’s for. Sometimes I think this room needs a good sorting out.”

I’m remembering how Will took my hand that first time, how he shaped my fingers with his, showing me how to hold the jesses… .

Mrs. Murchie holds the kirtle up against me to measure the length. “Far too big,” she sighs, shaking her head. “And heaven knows when I’ll find time to alter it.”

“I can do it,” I say. “If you don’t mind my taking it home.”

“Well, if you’re sure.” She rummages around in a corner and comes back with a wimple. “Do you know how this goes on?” I nod. She puts the costume in a sack and holds it out to me, waiting.

But the glove doesn’t want to leave my hand. I see Will, reaching out to me, to the door of the lift… . “Please,” I say. “May I take this glove as well?”

“Not for your costume, surely?”

“No, I just—I just need it. I’ll pay you, of course.”

“Take it,” she says. “I never could figure out why there was just the one. One glove! What good does that do you? And you’re doing my work with the alterations.”

She pulls the glove from my hand, tosses it into the bag with the rest, and offers it all to me.

The rehearsals have already moved to the stage. I have to work quickly to learn my blocking, and the others have to remember to wait for me to speak, since they’re used to doing it without me. Jane, as a glamorous lady-in-waiting, keepsstepping right on top of my lines; each time, she throws up her hands in exasperation, everything grinds to a halt, and we have to start all over again.

But the biggest problem isn’t lines. It’s Caroline, the queen, the center of the play. With all her natural haughtiness, she should be perfect for the role. But the moment she takes the stage, she looks down as if she’s searching for her lines on the floor; she speaks so softly, at times it feels like she’s actually shrinking.

There’s part of me doesn’t mind one bit, watching her struggle, seeing her face as Miss Rowland tells her to take a line again and again. But she’s not the only one who will pay the price for a bad performance. The entire cast will suffer. Miss Rowland has worked so hard to give us this chance with real costumes and a real stage?and not a soul in the audience will be able to bear it.

“Again,” says Miss Rowland. “From ‘Bring me my cloak.’ “

Caroline clasps her hands in front of her like a good little girl. “Bring me my cloak,” she says, all flat.

Ah! It’s enough to drive me mad! And finally it must, because all of a sudden, as I bring up her cloak, I find myself whispering, “Is
that
all you can do?”

I see her shoulders tighten. I place the cloak aroundthem and lean up close. “You hate me,” I whisper in her ear. “Then use it. Use it like a grand lady!”

She whirls around to face me—which is right, she should be turning toward the door—and for once there’s fire in her eyes. Under her breath, she threatens, “Why, you …”

“You’re a queen,” I whisper, my back to Miss Rowland. “To you, I’m nothing. You rule the world! God put you there!”

“Who do you think you are, telling me—”

“That’s it,” I whisper, backing away, seeing her blazing eyes, her shoulders thrown back, hearing the disdain in her voice. “Now do it with your next lines.”

She flings back her cloak and says her next line in a voice that would make her mother proud at the back door, a voice as disdainful and cold as Lady Winifred’s thin lips.

Miss Rowland stands, applauding. “I think we’re getting somewhere!” she exclaims.

Caroline does what helps Caroline. By the time practice is over, she realizes I’ve been useful to her. Over the course of the rehearsals, she listens as I whisper asides to her about how to hold her head when she addresses her lady-in-waiting, how to adjust her stance when she speaks to the king, where to pause in her lines, when to strike a pose.

And by the night of the performance, as I peer out fromthe wings at the audience filing into the theater, taking their places in the plush red seats; as I see Mum coming in, and the grocer, and the women from Mrs. Miller’s shop, and even a man from the local paper; as the house lights dim and a hush comes over the room and Caroline strides out on the stage, I know we’ll do all right.

A Visitor

A
nother month goes by. One morning I’m clearing our tea things from the table when there’s a knock at the door. I open it to a man in a city suit.

“Miss Adelaide Morrow?” I nod in surprise. “Bertram P. Halliburton, Esquire, at your service.” He hands me his card. “I am, that is to say, I was, Mr. Greenwood’s solicitor.”

I step back, staring at the card, dumbstruck. What could he be doing here?

Mum waits for a moment, but when I don’t speak, she comes to the door. “Won’t you come in, Mr. Halliburton?” she says. She offers him a seat at the table. They both look at me, and I realize I’m to join them, so I pull up a stool.

The solicitor sets his attaché case on the table. He opens the clasps, pulls out a sheet of thick ivory paper, and hands it to me with a flourish. “Please read it, Miss Morrow,” he says.

Wondering why he’s giving it to me instead of Mum, I start reading aloud. “I, Alec Greenwood, being of sound mind and body—”

It’s his last will and testament. My voice catches; the paper blurs.

Mum, seeing I can’t go on, gently takes the paper from my hand and reads the rest. “—being of sound mind and body, do hereby bequeath my worldly goods, including my house and all its contents, to Miss Adelaide Morrow of Little Pembleton, in thanks for the friendship and warmth she brought to an old man’s life.”

“I won’t take it,” I say.

Mum’s eyes go wide with shock. “But, Addy, you’ll live in comfort! You’ll never have to work again.”

“I won’t take it. He may still be coming back.”

They both look at me so sadly, I almost start crying again. The solicitor shakes his head. “I’m afraid that is highly unlikely, Miss Morrow. Months have passed with no sign or word of him. I’m sorry.” But when he sees I won’t change my mind, he closes his case and stands. “The estate will be held in trust for you, in case you change your mind.”

What good would they do me, his house, his money? They won’t bring back Mr. Greenwood. They won’t give me Will.

The Bridge

T
here is a part of me that always seems to be waiting. That will be waiting my entire life for something I can never have again. Like a fool, I wander the churchyard, trying to make out the names on the oldest stones, to see if his is there, because then I would know.

One day I pull aside vines on a stone and find a carving of a tree in full leaf, and soaring above the tree, a bird, and fluttering below the bird, something that might well be a veil. But the words underneath are eaten away by time, and I can’t make them out.

The stone doesn’t show the rest of them. The king and his knight staring in astonishment at the miracle taking place before their very eyes. Or the dear woman whose ringing shouts pierce the air like a falcon’s cry. Or the lad with hisarms outstretched, trying to grasp the empty air:
It’s with you I belong
.

It’s only in memory now I can feel his breath warm on my cheek, hear his voice murmuring low and sweet in my ear.

And so, once again, I start up the road toward the castle ruins, to pace out the distance from the keep to the spot where the mews stood centuries ago. That’s where I sit these days when I reach the top of the cliff, not in the window seat, but on a pile of stones in what was once the bailey.

He’s so strong in my mind today, I barely see the shops along Market Street, or notice when they disappear and trees take their place. But as I pass the edge of the village and the road begins to climb uphill, I hear rapid footsteps coming up behind me. I pause to let them pass, so I can be alone.

Mrs. Miller and several of her plump friends scurry by, their hats bent toward one another in eager argument.

“Yes, a prank,” says one. “Why else use it to block the bridge?”

“Nonsense. It fell off a wagon.”

“And landed upright? And not a twig broken?”

Their strange conversation makes me aware, again, of the world around me. Now I notice a bunch of children running up the road ahead, as excited as if it were a holiday, and glancing back, I see a swagger of lads coming from town.

What could be pulling them from their tasks this time of day?

When I round the curve, I can’t even see the bridge, there’s such a cluster of people around it. It makes me think of the crowd I pushed my way into so long ago at the fair, to discover the bear dancing on its hind legs. Intrigued, I walk to the edge of the crowd and stand on tiptoe, craning to see, but the women’s hats bob like oversized flowers, blocking my view.

“That’s a door, it is,” says a man. “You’re meant to go in it.”

“When it’s crafted so strange?” says another. “More like a house for a forest creature.”

“—blocking the road!” comes a haughty voice. “I demand—”

I edge past Mrs. Miller and her friends, nudge several men aside, slip around a group of lads, until I reach the front of the crowd.

And now my heart starts pounding, because I can see something none of the rest of them have figured out. It’s exactly the size and shape of a lift. But no lift you ever saw; no, it’s more like a fairy creation. The bottom half is carefully fitted planks, and the folding door is lighter slats, but the top half is woven of curving willow branches, strong and light.

I reach out a hand and push in the folding door.

“Careful!” cries a woman. “It could be an anarchist’s trap, meant to blow us all sky high!”

I see why she’d think that. There’s a panel on the side wall, with the most elaborate maze of wiring you ever saw, like a labyrinth. And no ordinary wire: this has been hammered out by hand, leaving bits of thick and thin, round and flat, just like the texture of chain mail.

It couldn’t be. And yet here it stands in the middle of the bridge, the one place he’d be sure no tree had grown… .

I turn to a man beside me and ask, “Has anyone new been seen about since it came?”

“Only the toff,” he says, nodding toward a man in a motoring suit. “Demanding we make way for his precious motorcar.”

I stare at every face in the crowd, hoping against hope. It couldn’t be! How could Mr. Greenwood make another lift from twigs and bits of hand-pounded metal? But as much as my brain is refusing to believe, my heart is pulling me past the lift and out the other side of the crowd.

I was heading for the castle, Sir Hugh’s castle. But if it is Will, if by some miracle he’s come, he won’t have gone there.

A special place for me, this is.

The field! It isn’t a field any longer, but the land around Mr. Greenwood’s house, and Will won’t know of the new road leading to the door… . I edge back from the crowd, slip down to the stream, and I start to run.

The path is so much more tangled now than it was in the past, barely a path at all, and I’m weaving between tree trunks and bushes, leaping from stone to stone in the middle of the stream. The sounds of the crowd disappear behind me, replaced by the slap of my feet, the water’s vibrant song. Every part of me—my heart, my mind, my skin, my very blood?is burning with the most unreasonable of hopes.

The stream curves; there’s a slight rise. And then I hear it, each note incandescent in the air: a whistled fragment of a tune. Pilgrim’s tune. And the longing in me, the need, the fear that I’m dreaming, the strangeness, all make me walk slowly now, silently, toward the source of the music.

That’s how I come to see him before he sees me. He’s leaning against a tree, like part of the forest himself in his green tunic, his brown leather boots. As I watch, he closes his eyes as if summoning some inner power, and he whistles again. But it’s no falcon he’s whistling down; there’s no glove upon his hand. No, he’s calling to me.

I step into the open. “That’s what I always wanted,” I say softly. “A song to come back to.”

And then his arms are around me; his lips, those fine broad lips, are on mine; his hand is in my hair and mine in his as if we could pull each other even closer. And our hearts are beating together, as they must. As they always will.

We’re sitting on a flat rock by the bank, watching the stream’s dance. I lean back into the shelter of his arms. There are words, and they flow as easily as the water—about my life now, and Mum, and school; and getting him clothes and how he should come into town—our talk is light with the feeling it will all work out somehow.

And then, “You didn’t tell me I had two fathers,” he says with a smile in his voice.

“That wasn’t mine to tell.” My heart speeds up. “Did Mr. Greenwood come?”

“Neither one of them,” he says. “I’ve my own life to live, is what I told them. A new life to make.”

I’ve heard those words before. But now I know that a new life doesn’t mean erasing who you were. It means finding the strength in it, like a tree drawing moisture from the earth.

Like a falcon facing into the wind.