Judith Ivory (2 page)

She intended to snag the shadowy Mount Villiars with it and hang him by his local squabbles.

The sun slanted low through the west window of John’s parlor, making the faded curtains brighter than otherwise—they showed how ill his wife, Margot, was and for how long. Everything, once bright, was dull in the house these days. It was one of the reasons Emma couldn’t arrive here without washing things up a bit and dusting things out, since Margot couldn’t, and John didn’t seem to know how. Emma had spent the afternoon helping out, then had tea with them.

Only then did she finally trust herself to broach the subject of her dead lamb and her wanting to string up the villain who’d killed it.

“A villain. Straightaway he be a villain, Em,” John said. He’d been calling her by her given name, or a part of it, since she was a minute old.

He scratched his head as he sat in his overstuffed chair by his freshly lit hearth—which made her pull her mouth sideways. The long, pausing gesture meant he was looking for a way to express deep disagreement with someone he liked.

“Now make no mistake,” he said. “I be right sorry aboot your lamb. No one sorrier, dearie. But bullying Mount Villiars, jings! Ye got no logic to ye, woman. He be our neeb’r, now. Not to mention a bloody vee-count. Vee-counts ain’t villains. And
this
vee-count be the new one of the district, our
only
one. They say he may even take his seat”—his seat in the House of Lords, John meant, which added up to possible political power for the district. “So ye wanna that his first contact with us in, oh, the thearty years or so since he be gone, be with some hen a-harping at him? Ye don’ know what ye’r aboot, girl.”

“His coach didn’t even stop, John, then he wouldn’t see me—”

“Shush. Ye went to Doon’r?”—how the locals pronounced the name of the castle that overlooked their village.

“I did. He wouldn’t even promise to see me later.” She made a face, then made her point. “Too fine for locals, you see.”

“Write to him.”

“Write to him!” She burst out laughing. Oh, fine. Write the viscount who wouldn’t give her the time of day a letter.
Dear sir. You killed my lamb. Please pay up.

John explained, “These city fellas hold a lot of truck with paper. Send him some. Tell him what happened in writing. Ye know how. And be humble aboot it, ye hear me? A polite letter, respectfully addressed to the lord of the district.” He shook his head at her, knowing her too well. “Ye get too uppity, Em, when ye think ye been crossed. I say this fer yer own good. Be humble.”

She sighed, taking to heart what he said as she rose and picked up her hat along with the tall pile of sewing—his and Margot’s mending would fetch her one shilling three pence, a special price she made for them since Margot shook too badly ever again to wield a needle.

As Emma headed toward their front door, she felt deflated. Even a little defeated. Though she couldn’t say why; she shouldn’t. A letter was perhaps reasonable enough. The viscount didn’t drive his own coach or answer his own door, and though he might shrug past someone standing on his stoop, surely he read his own mail. A letter. A polite one. She’d write one; she’d rein herself in. John was right. A sheep farmer, a female one at that, didn’t take on a viscount. No, she’d been living long enough with her own wayward temper to know better than to let it carry her off, half-cocked.

At the door, though, she realized something else. The melancholy she felt had another aspect: loneliness. What John was saying was, if she couldn’t get Mount Villiars voluntarily to do what was right, no one in the district wanted to cross him just yet. She’d be on her own against the new “lord of the district,” as John called him.

From behind, her neighbor called to her, “Ye want that I
get the cart, Em, and run ye home? Hannah can board here till next someone needs her.”

It was growing dark. It had been a miserable twenty-four hours. Emma nodded. John called to Margot, in bed already, almost always in bed, that he’d be right back.

They rode in silence. John, seventy or more, was spry as a young man. A little stooped, a lot wrinkled, but as energetic as a man of twenty. Emma liked him more than a little. He was a favorite among her friends in the village. In fact, he was a favorite of nearly everyone she knew. Hardly a soul in Malzeard-near-Prunty-Bridge didn’t like the man, respect him.

Which was why her heart sank a little lower still when at her own gate he reminded her, “Don’t go daft on us, a’right?”

Daft. Once, she’d gone “daft,” as they liked to say. When her parents had wanted her to marry, at age thirteen, randy Randall Fitz. She’d up and taken herself to London, stayed there, too. She hadn’t come back for four years, and, when she did, she was married already, this time to a man more of her own liking: Zachary Hotchkiss.

She made a little nod as she scooted off the wagon bench. She had no intention of going “daft.” She’d learned her lesson. Even Zach hadn’t been as much her own choice as she might have liked, though she’d loved him and missed him now he was gone. It was just London was no place for a girl to keep herself on her own; it was as simple as that. She’d needed Zach, and he’d been a darn sight better than a sheep farmer’s lecherous, dull-witted son. Zach had been interesting; no one could say otherwise.

At her porch, she turned and waved through the semidark toward John’s silhouette sitting hunched atop the farm cart.

He called to her. “Ye’r a good girl, Emma Hotchkiss, all’ll be fine. Ye’ll see.”

Right, she thought. She let herself and Giovanni, Zach’s tomcat, into an empty house: no fire lit till she lit it, into a cold front room that served as parlor and scullery both. There, in a
drawer, she found a small piece of candle, which she lit and carried into the rear, the house’s only other room. It was a bedroom fit for a monastery: bare wood walls, a neatly made bed, a washstand with a basin. On the far wall, a wood cross hung over the empty cot where Zach had spent his last days. At one time, that same wall had been lined with his books, rows of uneven colorful spines. He’d sold them several years back, which had all but broken Emma’s heart—she’d only gotten through half of them, most of the novels and poetry, almost none of his readings from university and seminary. Being the hardest to read, she’d been saving those for last, for when she was smarter, she hoped, after reading the rest.

When Emma envisioned Zach now, what she usually saw was his lying here, the sight of this bare wall with its martyr’s cross, and the back of his head where he lay on the cot. Or, if she struggled, reaching down into sad memory, she could see his head’s slow rotation at the sound of her cheerful steps—a rhythm she intentionally put into the clink of his teacup,
clickety-clickety, clickety-clickety
, as she carried in his supper tray. His dark head would linger in that turned-away direction, such a fascinating wall, till the last accountable moment, when finally he’d turn his bleary gaze toward her, toward the room’s interior—toward life, she used to think—with rheumy, weary interest.

The dearly departed. She’d thought of him that way for weeks before he’d actually gone. She’d missed him for longer still, perhaps years.

How long had she been alone? It was hard to say. Longer than the five months of her widowhood.

As Emma set the Tucker’s sewing into her basket in the shadows beside her big feather bed, the cat rubbed against her legs, then against something else that clopped over. Ah, one of Zach’s ill-fitting boots, her favorites for working in the pasture or mucking out the barn. Her favorites, period. She preferred them to the shin-high lace-ups she was wearing. To no one, or to the cat perhaps, she muttered, “My lamb
is dead. And there may be little or nothing I can do about it.” God knew, there was nothing she could do about Zach; there never had been.

Some days, it was hard to believe that anything would ever be fine again.

Emma did write. She even said “please” and signed it “yours most respectfully” and used her best handwriting, which she’d learned, thanks to the Public Education Act, then refined beyond imagining in her dealings with Zach and his friends in London.

Her response came in the form of a letter from the viscount’s “London friends”: his lawyers. Emma was surprised by the little stab of wonder as she read the postmark. London. Then, when she opened the letter, the solicitors’ business card fell out.
A calling card
. And she was bemused for a second.

She used to own a little silver box of calling cards herself, more than a dozen years ago now. She hadn’t thought much about London in the interim, yet seeing the embossed card from the London firm made her suddenly remember odd things: a line of half a dozen beautifully scripted calling cards on the mantel…a first-rate meal at a fancy restaurant…a play seen from a velvet-cushioned seat, a well-written play with good actors on a bright, footlit stage. London had been such a marvel to a young girl.

Before, of course, Zach’s games there, which had sustained them, had ended up scaring the Sweet Jesus out of both of them and sending Zach into the arms of God. From marvel to mayhem in one easy lesson. No, she wasn’t unhappy to have fled London. Even wearing a fine dress while receiving and leaving a trail of ornate calling cards in one’s wake, the city was dirty and hard going: It became downright dangerous.

She shoved the dratted business card into her apron pocket and unfolded her formal response from the viscount’s attorneys—at which point a cheque fell out as well.

Emma was overjoyed one moment, then chagrined the
next. The draft was on a French bank for the sum of fifteen francs. She read the explanation:

The viscount’s lawyers informed her that his lordship was “egregiously sorry” for her loss, though the viscount himself knew nothing of his part in such matter. Still, since she was a neighbor—and his lordship being such a generous fellow, his lawyers implied—he wished to offer her the enclosed cheque toward a new sheep, which was the rough equivalent of two pounds sterling. The letter went on to assure her that the draft could be converted straightaway to cash at the Bank of England in London, and that in due time the draft would also be honored somewhere in York, at a bank there and its provincial branches; if she could simply wait, they would tell her which one as soon as they knew. His lordship, they claimed, newly arrived in England, was still in the process of setting up his accounts here. In due time, her fifteen francs might actually turn into two pounds.

Emma was livid. Mount Villiars, a viscount, for goodness sake, probably carried a dozen times two pounds in loose change.

She returned the preposterous check, this time scribbling her response as fast as she could get the words down, never mind fine handwriting or the hemming and hawing of undue respect:

She crossed out the last four words. No, too mild now.

He will please contact me directly.

Never mind his convenience. She considered eliminating the last
please
as well, but left it in.

The viscount’s response to this missive made Emma believe for a brief moment that she was at least coming face-to-face with the man himself. A knock at her door brought her to her window, made her lift her curtain, and she saw a tall, formal man standing on her front doorstep.

When she opened the door, she believed for an instant the thin, sallow man in a hamburg was the viscount. But, no, he introduced himself as Edward Blainey, “assistant secretary” to the Viscount Mount Villiars—he presented a card. She laughed as she accepted it, which took him aback. (Assistant? Typical. Given the viscount’s penchant for indirect contact, an army of secretaries seemed almost reasonable.)

She glanced over yet another printed card, this one in embossed, raised black ink on ivory—she began to think the viscount kept all of London printing alive on cards alone for his minions.

Handing the card back, she asked, “Does Mount Villiars exist or is he simply a fiction invented by a hundred people who print cards, write letters, contact attorneys—and kill sheep—then arrive on my doorstep? Or, no, perhaps he is such a sorry case he needs a hundred scurrying people about
him to prove how utterly and hopelessly important he is.” She leaned forward, a small woman with a large grudge at this point. “Where
is
he? I ask you.”

The man blinked, cleared his throat, and tipped his hat, a tall, thin, older man, tidy in appearance, with the faint, sweet odor and thick, veiny nose of a gin-lover. “Elsewhere, madam. I’ve been sent to settle your complaint on my way into town.”

Indeed. An incidental inconvenience on a list.
Buy champagne, order caviar, settle complaining widow.
All right, good. Finally. She wouldn’t grouse.

In the next five minutes, the man offered her ten quid. An improvement. She refused. She volunteered to settle for thirty, which was still too little, though at least it would mean something to her. The man smirked. He shook his head. He made fun of the smell of a sheep who—happily—nudged him at the back of his trousers, momentarily scaring the devil out of him, a sheep who smelled of sulphur as it should, having been carefully dosed and dipped with Coopers. Which brought Emma and Mr. Blainey, and indirectly the viscount, once more to a stalemate.