The Windflower (9 page)

The rooms within were narrow rectangles with low ceilings, eerily quiet at this time of day while their elderly host and his wife napped, nicely insulated from the street noise. Everywhere beautiful imported furniture in the French taste gleamed sleepily in the hazed sunlight, and walking soft-footed through the corridors, it was hard to believe that not many days' journey away American settlers lived in rough cottages and feared Indian attacks.

Willing temperance to her breathing, Merry laid her hand on the door and entered quietly into the cream-and-copper suite that her aunt had enjoyed these last seven days.

Merry's aunt, protector, and guardian was on her knees laying tissue-wrapped nightgowns in a cedar chest. Her gaze flew like a startled pigeon to her niece. She couldn't have looked more guilty if she'd been hiding a corpse.

"Aunt April, it's not true. Is it?" asked Merry tightly.

Aunt April stood, her face raw with worry. Beseechingly she offered her hand. "Merry—forgive me, Merry."

They were like mother and daughter. Between them there was no need for accusation, for evasion, or for lies. Merry saw confirmation of Granville's words in her aunt's fearful eyes, in the set of her chin; no spoken words could have announced the truth more unmistakably. Anger, love, and pity met between them and remained unspoken also, clashing and mingling like great waves, which broke in lonely desolation into helpless undercurrents. Compassion fought the keen smart of betrayal within Merry; moving clumsily, like a machine that needed oil, she took her aunt's hand. And when she could force herself to speak, the words came out like a sigh.

"Aunt April, we can't do it. We simply can't do it."

"There are papers of transit—Sir Michael has arranged them."

"My father will never allow me to leave this country," Merry said faintly, still hardly able to believe that this was really happening.

Aunt April looked as though she were experiencing physical pain. "But it doesn't make any difference. Not formally. Because, you know, your father put you legally into my care." April paused, and then her words came out in a flood. "Merry, an old friend of mine has offered to cover our fares. In fact, she has commissioned Sir Michael—well, perhaps not commissioned, but asked him— Merry, he is to escort us back to England."

"No." Unimaginable that Merry should say that word to her aunt. "I won't go, Aunt April. I
can't
go. I'm an American."

"You're not; you're British. Half-British. And from one of the first families of the country."

As gently as she could, Merry said, "A name disgraced. The name of a family that had to flee the country in debt."

April's gray eyes snapped. "A name is a name. Our connections were of the highest!"

Connections who never answer your letters, Aunt,
thought Merry. Why in the name of heaven had one of them decided to invite April back now?

"Aunt April, I don't
want
to go."

"Oh, Merry." April put her hands on Merry's shoulders and drew her close, her embrace intensely loving. "What have you here? We live like nuns in a cloister, in a farming village full of bigots. You should be mingling with people your own age, your own class—you should have beaux and dances and nosegays and rides in the park. How are you going to be married here? Do you think your father's ever going to trouble himself with the matter? Every time I've written to him about it, he's replied that it will sort itself out. But it won't, Merry. We'll both of us only get older, lonelier, and more eccentric. People aren't like us here, Merry. They're too interested in superficial change, and not interested enough in the things that last, and that have lasted." She drew Merry away from her and gazed into her eyes, her hands pressing into Merry's shoulders. "Don't expect Carl to find you a husband! There'll always be something that interests him above you. Now there's the war. Then there'll be the business of reconstructing the country after the war, and then he'll take a wife and he'll have a family of his own to think about. Do you want to live on the fringe all your life, Merry? I've never said this to you before . . . but you're a beautiful girl, far too special for this rough backwater of a country."

Merry took her aunt's hands from her shoulders and held them in her own and repeated, "I'm not going to go, Aunt April. I don't
want
to go."

April slid her hands from Merry's, and she crossed her arms in front of her and walked slowly to sit on the edge of the bed, her thin shoulders slumping. As the cloudy tears slid down the pale cheek Merry suddenly saw the crumpled figure in a new way.
Why, she's not old.
Merry thought.
She's only forty. I always thought she was old.

"I shan't go either, then," said April softly. "I can't leave you here with the country at war. ..." One of the pins slipped from her tired bun, and the freckled bird-boned hands replaced it. April walked to the window, looking out with the same look that Merry had often seen when she observed her gazing out of the drawing-room window at home—but, she realized, the hope that had been in the gaze was replaced by desolation. "I'm sorry, Merry. I wanted just one time to see my home again."

Merry went to stand behind her. "Go without me—please, Aunt April."

April shook her head in a definite way, and Merry knew she would never talk her into that.

For one human being to cause a tragedy in the life of another is a responsibility that not many would choose to shoulder. Adult resolution, patriotism, fear, and even common sense were seared to ash by love. Two days ago, if someone had asked her, she might have said that there was very little she would not do for her aunt, but now she realized there was
nothing
she would not do for her.

CHAPTER SIX

Putting up a very good front to cover her hysteria. Merry stepped into the carriageway, securing the neck button of her tan wool redingote, her gloved fingers slipping nervously against the dark-brown embroidery on her silk collar. "Such a nice slim neck you have, Miss Wilding," the village dressmaker had said and added emphasis to her point by cutting Merry's dresses a size tighter at the neck than Merry would have liked. This evening the sensation that she was being slowly choked was more intense than ever.

Across the yard Henry Cork was making fast the trunks in the hired mule cart. The trunks had grown dusty (not that Aunt April would notice such a triviality on this day of all days) from sitting in the yard all afternoon waiting for Henry to rent a cart and load them. You had to give Henry Cork plenty of time to do a thing.

Merry wandered to the hired carriage that waited, shabby as a workhouse hearse, to convey her to the dock where she would board the British ship that would sail on the dawn tide for England. One of the carriage horses eyed her curiously. She raised her hand to gently stroke its friendly nose as Henry caught sight of her and hurried over with the wind lifting his untucked red flannel shirt like a flag to expose the spiky black hairs on his round, chalky belly. Drooped over his bowed legs were baggy pants of gray sailcloth cinched with a frayed rope, because he doggedly persisted in losing the leather belts Aunt April had generously bought him, one after the other. No doubt he sold them. On her first day here Merry had heard him telling one of the kitchen maids what a sad time he had of it, being indentured to a tight old witch who wouldna' even give him a belt to make himself decent. . . .

Joining Merry, he said crossly, "The auld vixen, she's as good as kidnapping you, ain't she?" A string of tobacco juice escaped one corner of his mouth and ran down his long, grizzled chin.

"Oh, no, Henry," Merry answered, looking over her shoulder to make sure her aunt hadn't been following her closely down the stairs. "That's not true. We'll be back next spring-—Aunt April promised. This is something my aunt has wanted for years, Henry. If she likes, she can stay, and I will come back happy, knowing that I let her have the chance to live in the land of her choice once again. And besides, it might be a lot different than she remembers it."

"Paradise would be a disappointment to her, the way she talks about England," he said.

"Well, if that happens, she'll be more content to come back," Merry ventured.

"Aye, the old besom. Yer old man is likely to load up a dozen men-o'-war and come sailing after you as soon as he gets wind of this."

"With Achilles, a dozen Argonauts, and a wooden horse?" said Merry. "I'm not Helen of Troy. Father will understand if you give him my letter. You won't forget, will you?"

"Don't fret yerself about that now, Miss Merry. I'll see that he gets it. You'll have enough to do, keepin' on yer feet on the wide, wide sea." There was the sound of a door opening behind them, and Henry winked at her strangely. "Ah, there she is now. She'll get a going away surprise from me."

"Henry, what did you do?" Merry whispered, but he had left her already, walking toward her aunt, outstretching his arm in a theatrical gesture to show April where he had strapped the trunks, as if daring her to find fault with his method. It was too late to ask him. Merry turned to the steps that the groom was letting down for her, hoping that in her aunt's happy mood even Henry Cork's devilment wouldn't be taken too much amiss. Behind her she heard Henry tell her aunt, "The trunks are on, corded nice and tight like you ordered, ma'am."

"Thank you, Henry," answered April. Her aspect was nearly benign. "And I shall just have to remember at the docks to have Merry's trunk taken to my room and hers to mine."

Merry had had a headache all morning, a going-to-England headache. It was painful, like an open wound with lemon water dripping on it in regular pulses, alternated with a feeling of numbness. The numbness was fading, the pain returning, and she dimly heard Henry's voice in the background as she mounted the steps.

"Now why would ye do that, ma'am?" he was saying.

"1 don't know what business it is of yours, Henry Cork, but we changed trunks before packing so Merry could fit the new folding easel and paint pots into the larger trunk. Now, Henry, when you get back to Fairfield—" And then April added a few more domestic instructions to the long list she had been providing Henry with since they had decided to leave; at last she turned and joined Merry in the coach. The driver released the carriage brake with a solid clack, and Merry leaned out the window, waving at Henry, forcing herself to wear a smile which she hoped desperately would exude cheer and confidence. She had expected Henry Cork to be upset about her leaving for England with her aunt; never would she have predicted as the carriage drew her away that Henry Cork would look appalled.

The journey to the docks came to Merry as a series of vivid details splashed against the blunt backdrop of her headache. The jarring crunch of the wheels in traffic, the jostling stop and start, the high breeze, the shouting of frustrated, traffic-bedeviled grooms ground into her ears. Disciplining herself, Merry made smiling responses to her aunt's stream of excited conversation. Merry hid her tears and her terror inside, like battered islands in the nucleus of a hurricane.

The harbor lay in bitter silence. Everywhere one could feel the effects of the British blockade. The roads had fallen into disrepair, rutted by erosion in some places and overgrown with weeds and grass in others. The ghostly, creaking ships stood rotting in their slips, and here and there neglect showed itself in a torn and drooping canvas, a skinned rope that no one had bothered to replace, a board warping in the weather and needing paint.

It was an odd sight in the dying light. Where so recently there had been the scurrying of sailors up the mast and the steady thud and bump of cargo being unloaded, there was only the scurrying of the rats and the lap, lap, lap of water, forlornly trying to tug the empty ships away from anchor out to sea.

The sun dropped as their carriage passed the rows of bare masts, spiking up like the trunks of a burnt forest, to the British frigate HMS
Guinevere.
One of the few inhabited ships in the harbor, she rode high at her mooring, stripped as she was of cannon and powder for the diplomatic purpose that had brought her with immunity to this enemy shore. Rags and special insignia marked her peaceful intent, but still a discreet guard of American soldiers was quartered about her—"for her own protection," as they say.

The
Guinevere
rose out of the dark vessels around her, her burning lamps like a festival of lights. All Merry was to remember later was the blur of the lights, the friendly officers—from the British Navy—handing her down from the carriage with her aunt and helping them to come safely onto the deck of the slip, men with features she could barely distinguish. Under her feet was a pleasant tug as the moored frigate sidled in the ship; and she said and did what she hoped were the right things in the last painful moments before she was left mercifully alone, with her trunk, in the small cabin that would be her home for the coming six weeks. The door closed, footsteps pattered away in the corridor outside, and there was a small moment of panic brought on by the realization that she was now properly on the boat. She rushed over to unbind and throw open her trunk on the vague thought that it might distract her to unpack. But even unpacking required more than a vague concentration, so when the trunk lid had snapped open and she had lain it back to fall heavily on its hinges, Merry turned from it and walked to the window.

She could see the outline of the city—black and simple geometric figures that rose and fell slowly with the swell of the sea. There were fog-softened patches of yellow light from the streetlamps, and a low murmur of traffic—now and then a shout and the whinny of a cart horse. At the end of the dock a circle of light from a lantern picked out the complacent features of Sir Michael, who stood with one boot resting on a coil of rope, indulging in some quietly derisive laughter with two British sailors. Near to his foot the wind found a trio of withered brown leaves and tossed them playfully into the air before dumping them carelessly on the swell like a spoiled child.