“White Cloud is a very wise woman,” she said. In the stillness of the house the crisp pop of the green pods and the rattle of peas falling into the pail were loud. Caroline waited for Magpie to say more, unsure of how to reply to this statement. “She can make many medicines,” Magpie went on at last. Caroline glanced up and Magpie met her gaze with steady, black eyes.
“Oh?” Caroline said, with as much polite interest as she could muster.
“In the days before, when she lived among our own people, in the lands far to the north of here, many Ponca would go to her for advice. Many women would go to her,” Magpie said, with heavy emphasis. Caroline felt warmth prickle her cheeks, and she got up to light a lamp against the dull afternoon. The yellow glow shone on glossy braids and brown skin. Caroline felt like a wraith of some kind, as if Magpie were real and she herself were not quite so. Not quite whole, not quite flesh. The lamp did not light her in the same way.
“Do you think… White Cloud would help me?” she asked, in barely more than a whisper. Magpie looked at her with great sympathy then, and Caroline looked down, studying the peas as they blurred in front of her.
“I can ask her. If you would like me to ask her?” Magpie said softly. Caroline could not speak, but she nodded.
Later, Caroline stood and watched from the window as the first drops of rain began to fall. It was not a violent rainstorm, just a steady soaking that fell straight down from the sky. Not a breath of wind was blowing. Caroline listened to the percussion of it on the roof, the gurgle of it in the guttering as it sluiced down into the cistern. It took a while for her to work out what was making her uneasy. The rain had come on slowly, out of the northwest, the same direction in which the men had ridden away. They would have seen this rain closing in, drawing a gray veil over the horizon. It would have found them long before it found the ranch, and yet they had not returned. There would be no hunting in rain like this, and it was late. Magpie had put a rabbit stew in the stove and had left, over an hour ago. The table was set, the stew was ready. Caroline had scrubbed her nails to get the stain of the pea pods out from underneath them. She stood at the window and her unease grew with each drop of rain that fell.
When at last she thought she saw riders coming, the end-of-day light was weak and made them hard to discern. Two hats only, she could see. Two riders only, and not a third. Her heart beat in her chest-not fast, but hard. A steady, slow, tight clenching that was almost painful. Two hats only; and, as they drew nearer, definitely only two horses. And as they drew nearer still, she saw two horses with dun coats and no black one.
Chapter 5
For I was reared
In the great city, pent ’mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Frost at Midnight
On Boxing Day I wake up to hear voices in the kitchen, the clatter of the kettle on the Rayburn, the tap running, water clunking through the pipes in the wall by my bed. It sounds so like the mornings of my childhood here that I lie still for a moment, with the dizzying feeling that I have gone back in time. I expect I am the last one up, as I always used to be. Still full and heavy with yesterday’s rich food, I go up to the attic in my dressing gown, unwrap the bone ring from Caroline’s trunk and take it downstairs with me. On the stairs hangs the smell of coffee and grilled bacon; and against all logic my stomach rumbles.
The four of them are at the table, which is properly laid with plates and cutlery, coffee mugs and a huge French press, a platter of bacon and eggs, toast tucked neatly into a rack. Such quirks of the generation gap make me so fond. I would never think of setting the breakfast table, putting toast in a rack instead of on my plate. The four people I care most about in the world, sitting together at a laden table. I lean on the door jamb for a second and wish that it could always be this way. Warm steam in the air; the dishwasher grinding through its noisy cycle.
“Ah! You’ve decided to grace us with your presence,” Dad beams, pouring me a coffee.
“Cut me some slack, Dad, it’s only nine o’clock,” I yawn, sauntering to the table, sliding onto a bench.
“I’ve been out already, to fetch in loads more wood,” Eddie boasts, smothering some toast with chocolate spread.
“Show off,” I accuse him.
“Ed, would you like some toast with your Nutella?” Beth asks him pointedly. Eddie grins at her, takes a huge bite that leaves a chocolate smile on his cheeks.
“Sleep OK?” I ask my parents. They took the same guest room they always did before. So many rooms to choose from, and we all of us have filed into our habitual ones like well-behaved children.
“Very well, thank you, Erica.”
“Here, Mum-this is that bell I was telling you about, that I found up in Caroline’s things.” I hand it to her. “The handle looks like it’s bone, or something.”
Mum turns it over in her hands, glances up at me incredulously. “It’s not a bell, you dope, it’s a baby’s teething ring. A very lovely one, too. This is ivory, not bone… and the silver bell acts as a rattle. Added interest.”
“A teething ring? Really?”
“A very old-fashioned one, yes; but that’s certainly what it is.”
“I saw something like that on The Antiques Roadshow not that long ago,” Dad adds.
“Ivory and silver-it must have been for a pretty rich kid,” Eddie observes, around a mouthful of toast.
“Was it Clifford’s? Do you remember it?” I ask. Mum frowns slightly.
“No, I have to say I don’t. But I may have forgotten. Or…” she reaches behind her, takes the family tree from the sideboard. “Look at the gap between Caroline getting married, and Meredith being born-seven years! That’s rather unusual. There’s my great aunt, Evangeline-she died before her first birthday, poor thing.” She points to the name preceding Meredith’s, the pitifully short dates in brackets beneath. “Two babies in seven years is not very many. Perhaps she had a son that died, before she had Meredith, and this ring belonged to that poor little chap.”
“Maybe. But wouldn’t he be on the family tree, even if he’d died?”
“Well, not necessarily. Not if he was born prematurely, or was stillborn,” Mum muses. “I know that Meredith lost a child before I was born. These things can run in families.”
“Perhaps we could talk about something else at the breakfast table?” Beth says quietly. Mum and I button our lips guiltily. Beth miscarried a child, very early on, before Eddie was born. It was little more than a slip of life, but its sudden absence was like a tiny, bright light going out.
“What are we going to do today, then?” Dad asks, helping himself to more scrambled eggs. “I, for one, feel the need to stretch my legs a bit-walk off some of yesterday’s excess.”
“To make room for today’s excess, David?” Mum remarks, peering at his plate.
“Quite so!” he agrees cheerfully.
It is brighter today, but gray clouds nose purposefully across the sky and the wind is brisk, penetrating. We take a route through the village, westward past the little stone church that nestles into a green slope studded with the gravestones of generations of Barrow Storton’s dead. In the far corner is the Calcott plot, and in unspoken unity we drift over to it. It is about two meters wide, and as long. A cold bed of marble chippings for our family to sleep in. Henry, Lord Calcott, is in there, and Caroline, with the little daughter she lost before Meredith. Evangeline. And now Meredith has joined them. So recently that the remnants of the funeral flowers are still here in a small, brass pot, and the cuts of her name on the stone are sharp and fresh. I can’t help thinking she would rather have had her own place, or lie next to her husband Charles, than spend eternity cooped up with Caroline, but it is too late now. I shudder, make a silent pledge that I will never lie in this claustrophobic family grave.