think I knew what I would find there before I even saw it. There was something heavy and terrible about the silence, a disturbance in the air, quivering with secrets. I shouldn’t have been surprised when I saw the blood-flecked straw. Something pure and loving made base, a pile of inert organs and tufts of black fur.
I don’t know how long I stood there, unable to comprehend what lay in front of me, and after this it gets hazy.
I found myself outside, storming into the street with pounding ears and a film of red behind my eyes. It’s funny, because for all the racing of my heart and the tightness of my throat, I have the recollection that I was remarkably calm. I had a sense of purpose, of what needed to be done. But for all that, I still didn’t know how I was going to do it.
The Bishop boy was there. He blinked when he saw me coming, the slow, lazy blink of someone who either doesn’t know what they’ve done, or else doesn’t care. Why, he didn’t even try to hide the fact that there was fur on his cuffs, that his brown shoe was damp with splattered blood. He just gave me that infuriating blink and then turned back to the stash of pebbles he was collecting.
There must have been at least a dozen people gathered around on the cobblestones by the time Tommy Bishop lay whimpering and crying out for his mother. That was when I came back to myself, when I realized just how many eyes were on me and what I had done. From somewhere behind the crowd Mother was calling to be let through, elbowing her way past a fainted Mrs. Tucker and snatching me up before a mob could form.
More than anything else I was frightened of what would happen to me. Would she tell Father? Would I be sent away? Catherine had told me that bad children were often sent to Australia, a desert land where they were forced to build their own prisons out of sunbaked mud bricks. The only food was rats roasted on spits, and there wasn’t a book on the whole island.
Mother installed me on a bench in the garden and I drew my knees up to my chest, willing myself to disappear. A tear welled up as I thought about the little body in the stable. Would they at least let me give her a proper burial before shipping me off to Australia? I hastily wiped the tear away and braced myself for my sentencing.
But it never came. Mother took my hand in her own, her soft brown eyes studying my face, the lines around her mouth tight with worry.
“So,” she said at last, “that answers that.”
I had no idea what the question was, or even what exactly had been resolved, but something in her tone told me I wasn’t going to be punished, and in my young mind that was all that really mattered.
She went on to tell me that I must never speak of what happened in the street again. If anyone were to ask about it, we would say only that it was a scuffle. Children get into scrapes all the time and sometimes they get out of hand.
“And Lydia,” she added before I could dart away back to the stable, “you must never show the world what it is that you have inside of you.”
So I carry it like a little locket, tucked deep down beneath my breast, never taking it out to open, but knowing that it will always be there should I choose to peep inside. We would never speak of it again after that day, but Mother made it clear that should it come bubbling out of me again, that we could find ourselves turned out of our home, or worse.
No, I never considered that we might be turned out for other reasons, and certainly not for the rumors that surround us now—which are just that: rumors.
1821
“IT MIGHT AS well be the edge of the world,” Catherine says with disgust. “As if being banished weren’t humiliation enough.” She huffs and throws herself back against the padded carriage seat.
Mother assures us that it is neither banishment, nor the edge of the world, and that if it hadn’t been for the horse that went lame outside Concord it would be a three-day journey from Boston. It might only be a matter of a few days, but as our new house looms into view, all I can think of is how isolated it is, how utterly cut adrift we are from everything familiar. No more rows of neat brick houses, no more cobblestone roads filled with the traffic of a bustling city, no more safe and sheltered existence.
“You’ll be real country girls now.” Mother follows my gaze out the carriage window to the jutting silhouette of our new home. Ever since that spring day ten years ago, there’s been a pooling of sadness behind Mother’s dark eyes, a heaviness to her once pretty face that has only worsened with the events of the recent months. “There’s a ballroom on the third floor, and we’ll hold parties and dinners. You’ll be surrounded by fresh air and good, simple people.” Desperation tinges her words, and Emeline stirs in my lap, looking up at me to confirm that this is something good, something that we sought out rather than were forced into. I force a thin smile for her sake.
“A ballroom?” Catherine perks up a little, craning her head to get a better look as the carriage lurches up the drive.
Willow Hall is fine, I will give Father that. Three stories of pristine white clapboard, and windows flanked with crisp green shutters. A carriage house abuts it on one side, a barn on the other. It stands in defiant contrast to the forested, sloping hill behind it. I try to imagine the windows glowing yellow in welcome, a stream of merry visitors jostling and laughing their way up the winding drive and I fail. It may be a handsome house, but this place will never be home. Yet at the same time I want to untether my heart, toss it up into the sky and let it take wing. There’s a wildness here that, if nothing else, holds promise, possibility. Who needs society? What has it ever done for us?
A cloud passes over Catherine’s face and she must be thinking the same thing, though for different reasons. She slides the little curtain closed. “There won’t be any parties though, will there? No one will come. Fifty miles from Boston is still too close. We could be in Egypt and still it would be too close. We should have at least gone to London,” she says with a wistful sigh. “If we were going to run out of town with our tail between our legs we might have at least gone there.”
Everything is London with her these days, a faraway Mecca or Xanadu where the world is bright and polished, gleaming with possibilities.
Mother doesn’t say anything, just wipes at her perspiring brow and twists the handkerchief through her hands over and over. Her ideas for painting our situation in a rosy light ended with the balls, and now she has given up. Poor Mother, who has sacrificed her prized garden and the house she called home for near on two decades. Catherine, Emeline and I are young and adaptable, but she is like an uprooted oak, and I fear she will wither and fade. And Charles...well, I’m sure Charles is fine, wherever he is.
It’s nearly dusk when the carriage comes to a stop. Apricot and coral streak the country sky, and fireflies flit across the broad lawn, blinking at us from the surrounding trees. My neck prickles under the scrutiny of a thousand eyes.
Emeline is the first to alight, throwing the door open before Joe even has a chance to come around. She’s running ahead, up to the imposing white house. I follow her, slowly, stretching my aching back and wiping the sweat from my lip.
We put our feet on the hard ground, take in the night air and look around as if this whole place has sprung up for us and us alone. Not just the house, but the ancient trees, the watching insects, the stars and even the moon. But they have all lived without us for lifetimes that make our own look like the blink of the eye. The house, with its strict walls and severe lines, is shamefully out of place, something
