Chime (34 page)

That’s easy enough. It wasn’t an illness as much as an exhaustion. I awakened every morning wearier than before. One morning I was able to rise, the next I was not.

I pause frequently; I wait for Eldric to catch up. He writes like a child, dragging his left wrist across the paper. His fingertips have now gone white. He turns letters into spiders, sentences into valleys.

No one offers to help.

“What did she do to amuse you while you were ill? To help you pass the time?”

I say that Stepmother brought me paper and ink. That she thought it might be healing for me to write.
Healing,
that was her word. So although I was often too tired, although the writing often wore me down, it was difficult to refuse. She was so delighted to help. Delighted with everything I wrote.

“You’re saying, then, that the writing was not healing?” says Eldric.

I suppose that’s what I was saying, although it feels like a betrayal to admit it. “It ground me down, rather. I felt as though I were a music box in want of winding.” Yes, as though I were a music box and the tune were my life, playing more and more slowly with every passing day. Finally, not even I could recognize it. The notes were stretched too far apart. They were no longer notes, they were
plinks.
I wound down to a
plink.

“You were unwinding,” says Eldric. “What then?”

My gaze betrays me. It moves to Eldric’s face. He looks much as usual, in obvious, surface ways. A month must be enough time for a strong young man to recover from the loss of his hand. But he looks different in underneath ways. Gone is the pounce and bounce. His eyes are dark, and although he smiles, he doesn’t mean it.

He hates me.

“Then I got better.”

He hates me because I murdered Stepmother. He hates me because the Dead Hand took my clumsy right hand and left me with my useful left. He hates me because the Dead Hand took his useful right hand and left him with his clumsy left. What’s a strong, fidgety boy to do without his dominant hand? What happens when there’s a Cecil Trumpington to knock about?

“Tell me about the fire.”

I know even less about the fire. “I can’t say why I started it.”

“Not the why,” says Eldric. “Just the details. How did you start it?”

I have two sets of memories about the fire. Both start with me dragging myself into the library. I hurry, best I can. I must do what I need to do before I am entirely unwound. My nightdress drags on the floor as though I’ve shrunk.

I pause in my telling. Here, the memories diverge.

“This is where you have to forget you’re Briony Larkin,” says Eldric. “Forget that you’re clever, that you always have the right answer. The only right memory is the one that first comes to you.”

This, I cannot believe.

But Eldric doesn’t care whether I believe. He just wants me to be as honest as I can, with the court, of course, but also with myself. This seems a peculiar thing to say, but I proceed.

“I brought paraffin and matches with me into the library. I doused the books with paraffin, the piano too. I struck a match.”

I pause, look into Eldric’s switch-off eyes. “The problem,” I say, “is that that’s not the true memory. I didn’t set the fire. I called the fire up; I know it.”

“Are you sure?” says Eldric. “I remember a situation in which you were unable to call up fire.”

Yes, just before I punched your nose. If I weren’t so weak, I’d do it again. But if you want the wrong story, you’ll get it. What do I care? Hanging is hanging.

“There was a great whoosh of fire,” I say. “I stood there watching for a bit.”

I do not say aloud that I watched the exercise books whoosh into flame. There went the story of the Reed Spirits. There, the Brownie’s story. There, Rose’s favorite, in which she gets to be the hero. I do not say aloud that this cannot be the true memory. Why would I have destroyed the stories I’d labored over so long? I’m wicked, not mad.

“I heard my stepmother in the corridor. I suppose she smelled the smoke. She was almost at the door when I shoved my hand into the flames.”

I haven’t expected there’d come a great gasp, that dark caves would open in those snow-splat faces. Father hid his eyes behind his forearm.

It’s a waste of emotion, although regular people seem to have an overabundance of the stuff. I’m playing Eldric’s game, telling my false memories. But the truth is that I called the fire, which raged out of control and bit me.

“I don’t know how Stepmother managed to make it to the library. I’ve already told you how I injured her spine.”

“Perhaps you didn’t,” says Eldric.

“But I saw Mucky Face strike her,” I said. This conversation is just between the two of us, too low for the others to hear. “If I didn’t call him, who did?” I shall wither him with sarcasm. “Stepmother?”

“Perhaps.” Eldric writes for a long while. What exactly is he writing? My every word? When he looks up, his eyes shine with wet.

“Stepmother assured me she wouldn’t tell anyone. She was terrifically loyal. She never told anyone the other wicked things I did.”

“What other wicked things?”

But I don’t care to discuss Rose in front of the entire village. For that matter, I don’t care to discuss Rose in front of Rose. There she’d be, under the magnifying glass, the butterfly with the torn wing, the whole village looking on.

“Those wicked things are private. I told the Chime Child; they’re not for everybody’s ears.” Eldric knew, though. I told him the night of the bloody nose.

“I’ll tell then,” says Eldric.

“I told you that in confidence!”

“I took an oath, on the Bible,” says Eldric. “I swore to tell the whole truth.”

“But you have no right hand,” I say.

Eldric’s eyebrows jump. He makes a line of his curling lips. I have wounded him.

“In Italian,” I say, “the word for
left
is
sinistra.
‘Sinister.’ It would be wrong to lay your sinister hand on the Bible.”

Eldric does not respond. He is going to tell.

I squeeze all the lace from my hand-bones. I turn my fist to cement. “Don’t you dare tell!” I whisper, so he has to draw close. I can easily reach that beautiful face of his. I jab, but I am weak and slow, and his left hand is quick—quick enough, at least, to catch mine.

Eldric speaks very low. “Don’t throw your punch from your elbow.”

“Stupidibus,” I say.

He almost smiles.

I refuse to listen. I put my fingers in my ears. But my imagination keeps following the story. What’s he saying now?

When will Father know what I did to Rose?

Does he know now?

Now?

What about Rose?

Does she know now?

Eldric taps my hand. He is done.

No, I amend that: He is done for.

I am going to kill him.

Father has risen. He doesn’t know where to put his arms. You wouldn’t take him for a clergyman, accustomed to speaking in public.

“I’m trying to sort through what happened here,” he says. “But one thing I do know: Rose was born who she is and she’s remained who she is. I know she sustained no injury that—”

He searches for the
mot juste
.

“—that compromised her.”

Father is lying to save me. Stepmother was wrong. Father’s not so righteous that he’d have turned me over to the constable. I wish I could feel happy about this. Eldric, of course, thinks Father’s telling the truth.

“I know it’s hard to believe,” says Eldric, in his just-between-you-and-me voice. “Do you remember how at first I couldn’t believe Leanne was a Dark Muse? It was too great a shock. I couldn’t accept that my feelings had clouded my judgment, and that my feelings themselves were the result of a spell.”

I could hit him so easily. “Are you suggesting Stepmother was a Dark Muse?” More sarcastic withering.

Father speaks into Eldric’s silence. “We were married a year before I understood she was a Dark Muse, feeding on my music. I absented myself as much as possible, so she’d have nothing to feed on.”

My mouth tastes sharp and bright.

“We have misunderstood the powers of the Dark Muse,” says Judge Trumpington. “She’s able to feed on girls.”

I have bitten my tongue.

“Happen,” says the Chime Child, “us never knowed the powers o’ yon lasses. The art they does, it be strong enough to feed the Dark Muse.”

“Perhaps Briony misunderstood her own powers,” says Eldric. “Perhaps she’s not a witch at all.”

Eldric’s voice again, now for me, alone. “You’ve gone whiter than I’d have thought possible. You ought to put your head down.”

“I told you once to put your head down,” I say. I don’t recognize my own voice. “But you didn’t.” He’d gone all distant and wavy, as though I were looking at him through old glass.

My own strange voice rises, speaks loud as Rose. “Don’t tell me I’m not a witch!” My voice is all blisters and scars. “How do you explain that I have the second sight?”

And then my voice, which I recognize this time, except that it belongs to Rose.

“I didn’t prefer to tell the secret,” says Rose, “but Robert assured me I ought to.”

I let myself look at her. She wears a white coat, not terribly practical, but she does look lovely in it.

Rose understands, doesn’t she? I think she has known for a long while. Is it because I talk in my sleep? You tell them, Rose. Tell them I’m a witch.

My throat is full of liquid, but my eyes are deserts of sand.

“Stepmother,” says Rose, “was a bad person. Once I told her that Briony had no birthday, and she asked why. I showed her the register in which the midwife had written our names.”

“What register?” says Judge Trumpington. “What midwife?”

It was the midwife, Rose says, who attended Mother when we were born. The midwife had brought a book with her that said
Register
on the front. Inside were written the dates and times of all the babies she’d delivered.

How does Rose know it belonged to the midwife?

Rose assures us it’s simple. Over and over, the midwife had written,
Ruth Parks, midwife to
, and the name of the baby. Or babies, in the case of twins.

Not even Judge Trumpington can quarrel with Rose’s conclusion.

My heart squeezes in on itself.

“I found it when I was very little,” says Rose. “But I was a terrifically early reader.”

The register. It’s not surprising the midwife forgot it in the turmoil of twin babies and a dead mother.

“At first Stepmother was nice,” says Rose. “I showed her the register, and she told me never to tell anyone. I promised. She said she’d hurt Briony if I told, which was exceedingly unnecessary because I prefer to keep secrets. I’m breaking my promise now because Robert says I must.”

“What was the secret?” says Judge Trumpington.

“Robert says I may tell a secret if it’s a bad secret,” says Rose. “I know it’s bad because it keeps Briony thinking bad thoughts.”

It stands to reason the midwife might have chosen not to return to the Parsonage. That she may have decided it was better to forgo the register than to collect it from the reverend, whose wife had died under her care.

“That’s right,” says the judge. “You mustn’t keep a bad secret.”

“Midwife Parks wrote it like this.” Rose scribbles the air with her forefinger.

My heart wrings itself out. I am drowning in heart juice.

“Why might your stepmother want to keep it a secret?”

Rose opens her eyes very wide. Hasn’t the judge realized by now? “So Stepmother can make Briony think she’s a witch, not a Chime Child.”

My heart juice is pressing at me, building up pressure, just as secrets do. I think of Rose’s insistence that I cover my ears before the first chimes of midnight. She was trying to keep the secret. I think of Rose’s collage, of her desperation that she be able to portray the difference between ten minutes to midnight, and midnight itself. Rose was trying to keep the secret yet reveal the truth. I think of Rose’s desperation that I see that the Rose baby blob belongs to ten minutes to midnight, that the Briony baby blob belongs to midnight.

Where is my heart juice to go? I squeeze my eyes, but I cannot keep it from leaking out.

Rose couldn’t bear that I not know. Rose knew I thought I was a witch.

Judge Trumpington asks Rose to show him the register, but adds that there’s no hurry. The trial will end now, register or no.

“I used to prefer that the register had burnt,” says Rose. “But now I prefer that it not have burnt, which it didn’t.”

There is a hubbub of time where great smiling faces press themselves at me and shake my hand and say they always knew I couldn’t have done it, but I did do it, and I don’t understand: I killed Stepmother.

I begin to rise, but the Brownie lies on my skirt. I don’t want to stay here, crying with everyone gathered round, leaking as ordinary girls do, wet inside and out.

Now the Brownie’s beside me, clicking at my side as I leave the defendant’s box. Great smiling faces back away as I navigate the aisle between the benches. The Brownie and I leave the courthouse, alone.

But someone waits on the steps. I don’t want to see her. I can’t help but see her. A green coat, a peacock feather. Leanne, returned to her old habit of visiting the courthouse. I don’t allow myself to look, but I do anyway. Her skin is plastered to her bones. She draws the gray shrivel of her lips to her gums.

“Briony!” She reaches for me. Her sleeve drips from her arm. “Help me! Help me get at Mr. Clayborne and I’ll help you escape. I’ve worked out a way . . .”

I walk on. Leanne’s too wound down to realize I’m already free, that I must be, as I’ve neither constable nor manacle to keep me from going wherever I like.