When she was done she went and thanked her father again for the orange. “It was the best thing I ever ate,” she told him. He smiled at her and reached into his pocket, from which he pulled out another.
“I was saving this, but since you like them so much why don’t you have it,” he offered. She could not believe her good fortune but took the orange from him and ran around the room, laughing in happiness.
This was the scene she tried to embroider as she lay in bed: a family at the holidays and a little girl eating an orange. It was very difficult, as the orange always seemed too big and the girl too small, but when Caleum saw it he proclaimed her work so well done he could smell the fruit itself on the fabric. He always loved her creations and found they put him in whatever mood she had hoped to invoke.
“You’re the best wife a man could have,” he said, sitting down beside the bed. “All will be safe.”
She smiled at him, as she thought how one day she must create a scene that was not only from her own head but from their life together there at Stonehouses. Alas, it would not be one from that winter.
With the exception of Christmas Day itself, she stayed in bed through the holidays until the first of the New Year — though she counted it bad luck to be idle on New Year’s Day. She ate the food Claudia prepared for her in the kitchen, and took her medicine as well. When Adelia visited she said she thought the girl looked in far better health than she had that time last year, and left thinking it only required patience before all was over and well.
Caleum, living with her every day, was more anxious by then but careful not to let his wife see his growing worry. There was, after all, nothing that had triggered his concern except her own, and his wanting everything to turn out as it should. As late as the third week of the year he could still hope this would be the case — things turning out as they should. However, he entered the house one day, after a morning spent out in the barns and curing sheds, to hear his wife’s diminishing sobs and Claudia saying, “There there, mistress.”
It seemed to him then he could hear a woman crying in each earthly direction outside the window, and her maid with her, replying with the same consolation. “There, there, mistress.”
He went to his wife’s room, where he found her no longer in bed but seated in a chair next to it. “What happened, my Libbie?” he asked. “What has gone wrong?”
Claudia looked between the two of them, then hurried from the room. Caleum looked after her retreating form and felt an unpleasantness in the bowels of his stomach.
“The baby,” Libbie said. Her tears had dwindled by now, so there was scarcely any emotion on her face. “I have lost another child.”
When she was finished speaking Caleum heard echoing in his ears again Claudia’s words from when he first entered the house. “There, there, mistress.” His first gesture was to give his wife a solacing embrace. His mind, however, immediately began to race with suspicions. “It is not your fault,” he consoled. “Only bad luck.”
When she heard him say this, she knew that was not the case either; it had nothing to do with luck at all. “It is simply a woman’s lot,” she retorted. “Just as it is sometimes her lot to have children, she sometimes must lose them.”
Caleum had never heard his wife speak so hard before, and his impulse was to try to shield her from her own words; to say she did not mean what she had said. However, looking at her withdrawn face, which was like some ancient stone mask, he thought it better to hold his tongue for the time being, deferring to her in the matter. “Is there anything you need?” he asked.
“No,” she answered, looking at him tenderly for the first time during that conversation. “Let me rest now. Everything will be as it is supposed to be.”
He took comfort in her words as he left the room, thinking she certainly knew best, and if it was what she thought then all would indeed be as it was supposed to be. As he sat alone in the darkened parlor, though, drinking a glass of rum, which for him was very rare since his days as a schoolboy, his comfort began to leave him and his mind to grow cold. In each direction he turned then, he heard again his wife’s cry.
When Claudia came to ask what he wished to eat for supper, he looked at her distantly and the machine of his fears began to whir and hum. He was not a hard-hearted man, but felt very passionately for what had befallen his wife, and that passion found then a place to alight — before he even knew that it was searching. “It’s a shame about your mistress,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Claudia answered him. “But it ain’t no more than she can bear.”
He looked at the woman narrowly and knew he could see her guilt. He thought then only of punishing her. “Claudia, I think I’ll have supper over at the main house,” he informed her. “I must attend to something I forgot about before. Please look after Libbie.”
He was so cold as he answered her that Claudia knew instantly she had somehow misspoken. “I’m sorry if I said something out of turn,” she offered, not knowing why she apologized. His reply, though, was all equanimity.
“You didn’t say anything but what was on your mind, Claudia. There couldn’t be anything evil in that.”
He was conciliatory when he spoke, but when he left the room she felt herself to be in gravest danger, though, of course, she did not imagine for one moment the cause.
Caleum walked the half mile through the frigid evening to the main house, thinking the entire time about revenge for the wrong he had suffered. When he entered the room where his uncle and aunt were sitting down to dinner, he tried to calm himself. Adelia invited him to join them at table and called Rebecca to make another setting. When he sat down in his customary place, he felt a great weight lift up from his shoulders and was soon enveloped in the comfort of familiarity and security.
His aunt had prepared roast beef, which was cooked pink as he liked it, and he took a slice from the serving platter and placed it on his plate. He cut into it and ate silently for a while, with his head bent down, looking neither at Adelia nor Magnus.
“Caleum, what has happened?” Adelia asked, after she thought he had enjoyed sufficient time to warm up from the cold.
“Why do you ask me what has happened?” he asked. “Can’t I only come by for a visit?”
“And to that you are always welcome, but something has happened to upset you,” Adelia answered, not seeing any reason to argue or to explain how she knew this to be true.
“Aunt Adelia, Libbie has lost our baby,” he answered, sitting up straight, only to slink back down in his seat. A caul seemed to descend on the room when he said this, and they were all silent where they sat.
“How is she now?” Adelia asked finally.
“Resting,” said Caleum. “She is out there with the witch who poisoned her. I would not have left, but I don’t see what further harm she can do to her now.”
“Caleum, what are you talking about?” Magnus asked.
“Claudia,” he said, looking at his uncle directly. “She is a witch who has poisoned my wife.”
“Did Libbie tell you that?” Adelia asked.
“No,” Caleum replied.
“Then what do you have against her to sustain your charge?”
“She walks at night in the fields, or else the woods. I have seen her.”