12 | The First Funeral

The dreams began with her mother. She lay gasping for breath, that terrible rattling sound. Margaret stood by her bed, unable to move, only watch. Her mother would let out one final gruesome breath and then lay silent. No matter how she begged, her mother never woke up, and never came back.

"You're not sleepin'."

"No," She turned to face him, unable to see anything in the expansive dark. Her fingers slid over the sheets, tangling in his nightshirt. Warm, solid, comforting. Alive. Her mother had been dead four days. She wondered if she would ever sleep peacefully again. "I'm not tired, sir."

"You need to rest," His voice was commanding, but gentle.

"If I sleep, I'll dream," she replied, fingering the ties of his nightshirt. "I don't like my dreams of late. Someone always dies."

The shift of cloth, as if he turned his head sharply towards her. "Margaret—"

"What did you do in London so long?"

He hesitated before answering. "Talked. Too much."

"Were these talks successful?"

"In a way." She felt his eyes searching for her in the dark. Since his return, he watched her constantly, and she him, even when he was at the mill. She couldn't help it. "Why didn't you send for me sooner?" His chest rumbled and vibrated under her hand. She didn't answer right away, chewing on her lips. It had been Doctor Donaldson who'd sent for him before the end.

"I..." She'd written half a dozen letters begging him to come home; written and burned each one. She wrote the first letter the day after Bessie Higgins died. "I wanted to," she admitted finally.

"But?"

But I was afraid you wouldn't come just for Bessie. After all, Bessie was only a hand. Why should he care? But then her mother had taken a terrible turn. She didn't know why she'd not written to him as her mother grew worse. He would've been on the first train home. It was his duty, after all. She swallowed, tears stinging her eyes. She didn't want to be merely his duty.

"Margaret?"

"I wish to attend tomorrow," She turned onto her back, her eyes wandering over the formless black of his room, a few slow tears stealing out of the corners of her eyes. "The funeral and the burial."

She felt him shift, and imagined the accompanying scowl, as he decided whether or not to pursue the answer she'd avoided giving him. He sighed, "Is your aunt not comin' then?"

"No."

"How... proper of her." Perhaps he said it to make her smile. The use of the word 'proper' had become a small point of amusement between them, ever since they were married. But tonight she could find no comfort in it. His hand covered hers. "Come if that's your wish. Proper be damned."

"Thank you."

Her dreams became a gauntlet of her unspoken fears, night after night. Fred drowning at sea or hanged for mutiny. Her father being struck in the street by a carriage or simply never waking up, white and cold. The little Bouchers burning with scarlet fever, or worse, cholera. Mary buried under snow until she froze or taken by the fluff, like Bessie. Even Dixon crept into her dreams.

Thunder rolled overhead while the small procession for Maria Hale plodded its way from Crampton to the nearby cemetery on top of the hill. Rain began to fall, slowly at first, then with growing intensity. Margaret paused, and lifted her face to the biting icy drops, eyes fluttering closed. Rain during a funeral procession meant the deceased had found their way to Heaven didn't it? Who had told her that? Fred or Dixon, perhaps. She knew it wasn't true, but she clung to it, like hope. She felt a firm arm around her and the sudden reprieve from the rain.

John wrapped her close, umbrella in hand. He helped her around a forming puddle, face lined with steel; the Master of Marlborough Mills...and yet somehow still her husband. She clutched his gloved hand in hers, pressing closer. He glanced down. His eyes softened into hers, the man from the carriage shouting silently to her across the rain and the cold biting grief. Are you well? She squeezed his hand and managed a hint of a smile.

There were not so many mourners in Milton as there ought to have been. Had her mother passed from this life to the next in Helstone, the vicarage house would've been full. Still, she caught sight of Mary and Nicholas Higgins standing beneath a large tree. A clap of thunder growled across the muddled grey landscape, the rain lightening to a sudden mist.

He set down two glasses on the small table and filled them with modest portions of whiskey from the crystal decanter he kept in his study. She raised an eyebrow when he handed her a glass.

"What's this for?"

"For the cold. And the pain."

"Mine?" Margaret titled the glass, watching as the firelight caught to cut crystal and brown liquid. She shivered and took a small sip. She wondered if it was the same whiskey from their wedding night.

"And mine."

She looked up. He stared at the fire, the weary toll of the last week sitting heavily in the lines of his face, in the set of his shoulders. He'd carried her and her father through their first shadowy valley. It should've been Fred with us, she thought bitterly. Not him. And yet, her husband had always cared for her mother in his own way, even before it became his duty. It wasn't fair to let her anger target him for its revenge.

"This was my first funeral," she murmured, a tear dropping silently into her lap. She glanced up to where he sat opposite her before the fire. "I hated it."

He chuckled, a harsh, terrible sound. He swallowed his drink whole and set his glass aside. The fire hissed, a piece of coal shifting and settling.

"There are more sorrows waiting for us, aren't there?" She stared at the fire. "Like thieves lurking in the shadows. We'll never escape them."

"Aye."

"Doesn't it frighten you?"

"It probably should," he gave her a small grim smile, before turning back to the fire. The comforting song of the flames filled the room. "When I was a lad, I 'ad a baby sister who died, before Fanny were born." His voice was a soft rumble in the space between them, an offering of solace in a terrible memory. "When we buried her, Father told me to make death a friend."

Margaret knew she ought to look away, but she couldn't. She saw the flash of remembrance, the flicker of pain. In that moment she knew there was so much about him she didn't yet understand. "Did you?"

He slowly shook his head, "I don't know."

"I cannot make friends with death," she almost choked on the words. But they must be said. "Once we came here...sometimes, I think my mother...wanted to die. That she stopped trying to live and—" she broke off and swallowed a large gulp of the hot burning whiskey. It was a sin to speak ill of the dead, wasn't it? "Forgive me."

"No," he kept his focus on the fire. "We agreed there'd be no polite rules 'ere. Only the truth."

She shuddered, as if a weight uncoiled from her shoulders and stomach, melting onto the floor. She slumped against her chair. "When your father..." she licked her lips, afraid to ask, but suddenly desperate to know, "did you...hate him?"

He pressed a fist against his mouth, studying the flames in stern silence. Then he raised his eyes, and she saw the truth before he answered. "Aye."

"Do you hate him still?"

"Sometimes." This time the hint of his smile was gentle, "I'm just a man."

And for the first time since she'd met this particular rough northern man, she was glad it was him, and no one else.

The dreams changed again. She stood before the wide window of Marlborough Mills house, watching the yard. Sometimes the mill caught fire. Sometimes it was a loom or some other terrible machine that caught him, ripping him to pieces. Other times it was a runaway cart horse, trampling him. But mostly she dreamed of the riot, watching in horror as the mob beat John death. Over and over and over. It was her fault and she couldn't stop them.