CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Usually I don't recall what happens in the cellar. All that's left the next day is the sensation of having done impossible things in a same-but-different body, of huge stretches of time happening in just moments, of an immersion that is now gone. A soaring blur. Like a dream of flying.

And then, once in a while, it sticks. I do remember last night. The moon sang to me through the walls. My body landed against the cellar door, over and over. Dust shook from the ceiling; dust mixed itself with the bright smell of my blood. I remember the old door creaking in its jamb as I hit it and the sound brought me a sudden recollection, not my own, of the door when it was a tree, alive and creaking in a November storm. A shared memory.

Now it's noon and I am upstairs. My hands are resting on my chest, salved and bandaged. Earlier this morning I drew all the splinters out with one of Agnes' embroidery needles. And now Agnes is here; she woke me up by pulling a chair up beside the bed. She's brought me whisky in hot tea, which I can't have until I listen to her, she tells me.

"It's regarding Mr. Tulloch."

She's waited till today when she knows I'm defenseless. I close my eyes. "Later. Or not at all. Please."

Instead she sits down. I hear the soft shifting of the upholstery. A dry hand settles across my brow. I open my eyes.

She's leaning over me. Her face is carefully neutral. "It's time you knew about the references. I wrote to them even though you asked that I not. I waited. Nothing came back. So, I wrote the post-offices of the towns. Do you know, Henry," she says, and her voice is flat, "none of those references exist? Not a one."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that they are not real. He's made them up. The names, the addresses, all of it."

Somehow this is no surprise. "People do that."

"Yes, they do. People do that when they're hiding something. Henry, answer. Was he in gaol?" Her grip on my arm is tighter than she would allow if she was conscious of it.

"No, he was at sea."

"At sea. But for some reason he couldn't simply say that, he had to lie. Do you hear how you sound?"

I do, of course. Why lie about the references? I can think of a reason, myself: a respectable past, without the misery of having to live it. But I keep my mouth shut. I am edging in on a secret, his secret, our secret, and I need to be careful.

"I'm not worried about what he's done," I say, which is mostly true, and put my wrapped hand over the little claw gripping my arm. Her entire hand fits inside the cup of my palm and I press down gently, catching it there. "His references don't matter. If he becomes a problem, isn't it better that none of those people exist? Don't you think?"

Her face loses its anger, and what replaces it is a mix of derision and affection that makes her look, just in that moment, strangely girlish. "Oh, if only." Her hand slides out from under mine and pats my cheek. "Say what you will, you could no more harm that man than you could me. Henry, look at you. What did you do to yourself?"

"It's nothing. I hit the door."

"Yes. I heard it all the way upstairs. When will you come to your senses? How can you expect me to stand by while you sabotage yourself?"

Sabotage myself. She has no idea how much will it takes to lock myself in each time. "Is that what you believe is happening?"

She shakes her head. "I believe you are a very brave young man in a very difficult situation. And I believe you are, perhaps not consciously, trying to find a way out of it." She pauses, breathes out hard from her nose. "It's my opinion that you are allowing Mr. Tulloch to do the dirty work."

She does not, I gather, mean gardening. "What dirty work?"

"I think you are giving him the responsibility of your secret."

I blink.

"I know how difficult it must be. But I've been with you all of your life. I love you and your brothers as if you were my sons and not Margaret's, and I cannot condemn you for any of the ways you are. You are just yourself, and," her voice softens, is lost, comes back, "you might as well be my own child. But I am old, Henry, not blind." She half-turns, her birdy little profile fine as an etching. "I see what's happening. Always outside, out of my sight. Always together. Morning till night. But I've heard how you speak to him and how he speaks in return. The questions he asks you. I see him hanging on you, manipulating you. It's obvious. And you are obvious as well. You want to give him the opportunity to break you," she says, her voice a whisper, "because you cannot bear your life."

My mouth is dry. This is what has been sitting unspoken in her mind.

"You keep letting him closer. Sitting up half the night in the library. You both stop talking when you hear me on the stairs. What else am I to think? He is a danger, Henry, and you know it. Why else would you let him in?

I answer honestly. "For his company."

She snorts and looks away. Now there is only derision. "Company."

My words are coming out on their own, now, even as I regret them. "Who broke Row?"

It's her turn to flush. I have never seen her eyes so hollow. "He let you in," I tell her. "He told you what was wrong with him. You had the responsibility of his secret, too. Did you break him?"

"Stop it. That- that is not- that was not the same. This is none of your- "

"Did you?"

It's so quiet that I can hear the grandfather clock downstairs. It knocks eight times before she responds. "No," she answers. "He did what he did by himself. I would give anything to unmake that choice of his. But it was only his. And you are never to ask me about it again."

I nod. She hands over the cup of tea so that she can fish her handkerchief out of her pocket, and I drink it while she wipes her eyes. Mine are tearing too, but from the scotch. Downstairs the ticking of the clock has seemed to slow. As I'm waiting for each strike I find that what I am hearing loudest instead is the breath of silence in between. And as I sit there listening a realization opens itself in my mind, clear and simple and true: Row was never allowed to be what he was either. Not for a moment. It is Agnes who cannot bear my life, not me.

"Agnes." Even though my heart is flooding with the ache of empathy I still need to answer her. I put my hand in hers. It's like setting a brick down onto a china saucer. "Agnes, here. Look." I pull the bandage away. And there, sticking out from a wide red split in my knuckle, is a thick tuft of black fur matted in the dried blood, where it caught, in the morning sunlight, on its way back into my body. Her breath stills.

"I am this," I tell her. "This is me. This is how it is."

She pulls the bandage back over it, fast, flustered. "Oh, no- here, let me get my scissors-"

I laugh. "It's all right. You can't cut it out, Agnes, it's me. It's part of me. You can't cut it off and you can't keep it safe. There is no safe. And there is no dirty work to be done." She's gaping at me, her earlier youthfulness completely drained away. "It's all right. I'm only showing you because I want you to remember it. And to let me try to be..." I search for the word while she re-pins the bandage, "...complete."

"Complete," she mutters to herself, her head bent over my wrist. When she looks up and our eyes meet I see that our relationship to one another has now changed, a tiny shift, a tiny and irreversible tilt. I love her. She loves me as I am, I know it. But she still would get her scissors.

.

I am, in fact, worried; no longer so much by Seamus' knowledge but by his patience. If he wanted me burnt in the field with a lump of silver in my chest, he'd have done it already. He's known something about me since he arrived. He is waiting for something. He's testing the waters. I would like to know why.

I can remember of the sound of the cellar door creaking. Harthome was built by hand, each stone brought down from the cliffs, the wood from the wild forest outside. Generations ago a tree was split down into planks. The plank became a cellar door to be trapped behind. Easy to forget that it is still a piece of the forest. That inside of it are veins of frozen sap. I think of the singing moon. I think of yesterday evening, Seamus with his hand on my arm, taking his leave, and how the pad of his thumb moved back and forth almost imperceptibly against me and how my body understood that infinitesimal movement to be a caress. How my body leapt howling to receive it. All of that power in such a tiny touch. And then I think how the cellar door still cried like a windstorm when I hit it, even though it has not been a tree for a century.

I am convinced that Seamus has his own secret; I have some reasons for this. Among them is something Rosalind said when she met him. One is a line from an old book that I can barely remember. One is the piece of information I have just received from Agnes: that he has erased his past. And one is that caress. Who, knowing what he knows, would then choose to touch me like that?

I should check the cellar door in the morning. To make sure it isn't cracked. Can't break any further. I should, and I suppose I will.