CHAPTER THREE
THREE WEEKS LATER
It's morning and I'm behind the house in Jepson's old apron, working.
Before me is the chopping block ringed with a halo of sweet-smelling chips. Behind me is the ivy-covered hulk of the stone barn, gated by a moat of deep limestone troughs hewn for the oxen of prior centuries. Once the barn could house all the village's tenants, in a crisis. Now all it contains are the bowed skeletons of carriages, a fair amount of rats, and a year's worth of wood, split and stacked by me.
I took firewood duty over from Jepson as soon as I was old enough to manage it and he spent that day speechless with fury although it was clear to all of us that the work had become too much for him. Later he forgave me by taking me aside and telling me that I was awful at it. I miss him. Even his worst moods, I miss.
The sun's broken through the wet banks of morning haze. My shirt catches on the sweat between my shoulderblades every time I swing. Winter is over. We don't need this much wood. I'm out here because it's all I know to do, and because no one knows in which manner they will grieve until they find themselves doing it, and because once they have begun grieving it's difficult to stop. I continue to chop wood because he cannot. When the hammer lands the halves fly away from each other like hands clapping in reverse, and for some reason, it's soothing to me.
What is needed is someone to take over the rest of what Jepson left behind. Old and lazy as he was, he was necessary, and if I want to keep this coming spring from roaring through the fields and pulling the walls down- or, more pressing, if I want to eat this winter- we'll need to replace him.
Were it up to me I would let it all run wild. It isn't up to me, however, and never has been. Harthome is a legacy. The upkeep of legacy is never a solitary act. I will need help. I need to find another groundsman. I cannot, of course, find another confidante, which is what I truly want, but I suppose that is the inevitability of growing up- that the people who understand you best must fall away.
The problem of the groundskeeper, though, is complicated in itself. In the ordinary way it would be simple: Agnes would ask in the village, a selection of large, lumbering men would appear at the door, she would select the least worst, we would welcome our new groundsman. The catch is myself. We cannot risk the resurrection of the old rumors. Bad enough, the little bent-straw hexes I find on the gate, and bad enough that the oldest villagers keep alive the superstition of not passing Harthome after nightfall. We've lain quiet for a long time but the fourth Brack back from myself was indiscreet and ended up with a musket-ball in the gut. Our family was quick to cover up what we could and people never knew the worst of it: when the ball came out under the undertaker's knife it glinted like fine silver, because it was. Someone had cast it themselves. From jewelry, maybe, flatware, a baby's rattle.
His portrait hangs in the hall with the others, a yellowing, well-rendered oil of a handsome black-haired laughing man. Behind him Harthome's tangled forest in silhouette. Pinned to his lapel, a few pale pink brushstrokes: dog-rose, Agnes tells me. The musket-ball sits tarnished on the ledge of the lower lip of the frame. A reminder, a watchful little grey eye. A note of caution. It killed him, of course. Another fact the undertaker was paid not to mention was that when he opened the body on his table he discovered the musket-ball had burned it hollow from the inside out. This is why Harthome keeps close to itself: some folktales are true.
The Crown has its own eye on us still. We were once useful the way dynamite is useful. Our title was both compensation for our past and a means of keeping rein on us. But it's not really the Crown or that crumbling parchment in the wall that stays me inside my gate. Like all monsters, I fear the village.
And the village holds all the power. Silence is difficult to keep. We've done our best: Rosalind's been here four years now. Agnes found her in the farmsteads just outside the village- she was a relation of Jepson's, in some complicated way- and, selecting her for her youth and natural close-mouthedness, wheedled her into Harthome's kitchen. In all this time Rosalind has never shown a hint of suspicion. In the mornings and afternoons she cooks; in between she walks to the village or reads pulp romances in the kitchen garden. We pay her a bit too well. She's never asked why.
At first I tried to make her comfortable here by talking to her whenever I had the chance, but she would flush and try to escape, and at some point Agnes informed me that smiling politely at her from a distance would be best. So I do. I thank her every evening before she leaves for her family's dark, ramshackle farmhouse in its raggedy field, and wish her good night, but that's the most of it. If she were to pry around we'd know it but she doesn't and never has. She is as much a mystery to me as I am to her, it seems. By all means I realize how lucky this arrangement is and also how difficult it will be to replicate, especially due to the fact that unlike Rosalind, the groundskeeper will sleep at Harthome. In the cottage. Within sight of the house. Which means that he will have opportunity to see what happens here at night; which means, if he is watchful at all, that he might notice a pattern.
It's the pattern which is the problem, the start of the old whispering. This could lead to someone asking questions, listening to stories. The problem with a curiosity is that it forces answers. That's how a curious man might find himself trying the lock of the cellar's inner room, just to see; that could lead to an accident.
A terrible accident. You wonder just how terrible. I certainly have. In my dreams I recall the doves' breasts cleaving open between my teeth. Living things are hot, slippery, strangely tasteless. To eat flesh alive is disconcertingly like biting your own tongue. Blood, when it first fills your mouth, could be nauseating. Assuming you are a man who has had centuries to forget the memory of crawling from the cave, that is. Unfortunately for myself that first red bite was, I regret to say, the restoration of my nature. I loved it. And I do not believe any of us firstborn Bracks have ever forgotten, or been able to disavow, the dark cave of our origin.
Myself included. Which is why, some days ago, I sent in an advertisement to the City paper for a groundsman. A stranger. Someone unknown to the village. So that, should he leave abruptly- should there be any kind of problem- an accident- he would not be missed. If the notice is answered, which I doubt, it will most likely be by a drunk like Jepson, a tramp, someone with no prospects. A person of no great consequence. In my mind I've already pictured him, his ratty wicker suitcase, his blotched face and swollen hands. I used that picture to craft the advertisement: Without encumbrance, older age accepted if capable, rations and residence provided, expect heavy work daily. Remote estate. No one but a rootless man would answer such a post, if anyone does at all. Which is why it was safe to send it in.
I stand up and wipe the pepper of chipped bark from my face with the crook of my elbow. The back-kitchen door bangs. The sun slants bright in my eyes as I turn. There is Agnes in her black dress, stumbling across the overgrown lawn towards me.
"Henry," she calls, wavering little voice alarmed, "someone's come."