Chime. Part 39

Eldric does not respond. He is going to tell.

I squeeze all the lace from my hand-bones. I turn my fist to cement. "Don't you dare tell!" I whisper, so he has to draw close. I can easily reach that beautiful face of his. I jab, but I am weak and slow, and his left hand is quick-quick enough, at least, to catch mine.

Eldric speaks very low. "Don't throw your punch from your elbow."

"Stupidibus," I say.

He almost smiles.

I refuse to listen. I put my fingers in my ears. But my imagination keeps following the story. What's he saying now?

When will Father know what I did to Rose?

Does he know now?

Now?

What about Rose?

Does she know now?

Eldric taps my hand. He is done.

No, I amend that: He is done for.

I am going to kill him.

Father has risen. He doesn't know where to put his arms. You wouldn't take him for a clergyman, accustomed to speaking in public.

"I'm trying to sort through what happened here," he says. "But one thing I do know: Rose was born who she is and she's remained who she is. I know she sustained no injury that-"

He searches for the mot juste.

"-that compromised her."

Father is lying to save me. Stepmother was wrong. Father's not so righteous that he'd have turned me over to the constable. I wish I could feel happy about this. Eldric, of course, thinks Father's telling the truth.

"I know it's hard to believe," says Eldric, in his just-between-you-and-me voice. "Do you remember how at first I couldn't believe Leanne was a Dark Muse? It was too great a shock. I couldn't accept that my feelings had clouded my judgment, and that my feelings themselves were the result of a spell."

I could hit him so easily. "Are you suggesting Stepmother was a Dark Muse?" More sarcastic withering.

Father speaks into Eldric's silence. "We were married a year before I understood she was a Dark Muse, feeding on my music. I absented myself as much as possible, so she'd have nothing to feed on."

My mouth tastes sharp and bright.

"We have misunderstood the powers of the Dark Muse," says Judge Trumpington. "She's able to feed on girls."

I have bitten my tongue.

"Happen," says the Chime Child, "us never knowed the powers o' yon la.s.ses. The art they does, it be strong enough to feed the Dark Muse."

"Perhaps Briony misunderstood her own powers," says Eldric. "Perhaps she's not a witch at all."

Eldric's voice again, now for me, alone. "You've gone whiter than I'd have thought possible. You ought to put your head down."

"I told you once to put your head down," I say. I don't recognize my own voice. "But you didn't." He'd gone all distant and wavy, as though I were looking at him through old gla.s.s.

My own strange voice rises, speaks loud as Rose. "Don't tell me I'm not a witch!" My voice is all blisters and scars. "How do you explain that I have the second sight?"

And then my voice, which I recognize this time, except that it belongs to Rose.

"I didn't prefer to tell the secret," says Rose, "but Robert a.s.sured me I ought to."

I let myself look at her. She wears a white coat, not terribly practical, but she does look lovely in it.

Rose understands, doesn't she? I think she has known for a long while. Is it because I talk in my sleep? You tell them, Rose. Tell them I'm a witch.

My throat is full of liquid, but my eyes are deserts of sand.

"Stepmother," says Rose, "was a bad person. Once I told her that Briony had no birthday, and she asked why. I showed her the register in which the midwife had written our names."

"What register?" says Judge Trumpington. "What midwife?"

It was the midwife, Rose says, who attended Mother when we were born. The midwife had brought a book with her that said Register on the front. Inside were written the dates and times of all the babies she'd delivered.

How does Rose know it belonged to the midwife?

Rose a.s.sures us it's simple. Over and over, the midwife had written, Ruth Parks, midwife to, and the name of the baby. Or babies, in the case of twins.

Not even Judge Trumpington can quarrel with Rose's conclusion.

My heart squeezes in on itself.

"I found it when I was very little," says Rose. "But I was a terrifically early reader."

The register. It's not surprising the midwife forgot it in the turmoil of twin babies and a dead mother.

"At first Stepmother was nice," says Rose. "I showed her the register, and she told me never to tell anyone. I promised. She said she'd hurt Briony if I told, which was exceedingly unnecessary because I prefer to keep secrets. I'm breaking my promise now because Robert says I must."

"What was the secret?" says Judge Trumpington.

"Robert says I may tell a secret if it's a bad secret," says Rose. "I know it's bad because it keeps Briony thinking bad thoughts."

It stands to reason the midwife might have chosen not to return to the Parsonage. That she may have decided it was better to forgo the register than to collect it from the reverend, whose wife had died under her care.

"That's right," says the judge. "You mustn't keep a bad secret."

"Midwife Parks wrote it like this." Rose scribbles the air with her forefinger.

Rose Larkin, born November 1, 11:48 pm.

Briony Larkin, born neither November 1 nor yet November 2, but at the sixth and seventh chimes of midnight.

My heart wrings itself out. I am drowning in heart juice.

"Why might your stepmother want to keep it a secret?"

Rose opens her eyes very wide. Hasn't the judge realized by now? "So Stepmother can make Briony think she's a witch, not a Chime Child."

My heart juice is pressing at me, building up pressure, just as secrets do. I think of Rose's insistence that I cover my ears before the first chimes of midnight. She was trying to keep the secret. I think of Rose's collage, of her desperation that she be able to portray the difference between ten minutes to midnight, and midnight itself. Rose was trying to keep the secret yet reveal the truth. I think of Rose's desperation that I see that the Rose baby blob belongs to ten minutes to midnight, that the Briony baby blob belongs to midnight.

Where is my heart juice to go? I squeeze my eyes, but I cannot keep it from leaking out.

Rose couldn't bear that I not know. Rose knew I thought I was a witch.

Judge Trumpington asks Rose to show him the register, but adds that there's no hurry. The trial will end now, register or no.

"I used to prefer that the register had burnt," says Rose. "But now I prefer that it not have burnt, which it didn't."

There is a hubbub of time where great smiling faces press themselves at me and shake my hand and say they always knew I couldn't have done it, but I did do it, and I don't understand: I killed Stepmother.

I begin to rise, but the Brownie lies on my skirt. I don't want to stay here, crying with everyone gathered round, leaking as ordinary girls do, wet inside and out.

Now the Brownie's beside me, clicking at my side as I leave the defendant's box. Great smiling faces back away as I navigate the aisle between the benches. The Brownie and I leave the courthouse, alone.

But someone waits on the steps. I don't want to see her. I can't help but see her. A green coat, a peac.o.c.k feather. Leanne, returned to her old habit of visiting the courthouse. I don't allow myself to look, but I do anyway. Her skin is plastered to her bones. She draws the gray shrivel of her lips to her gums.

"Briony!" She reaches for me. Her sleeve drips from her arm. "Help me! Help me get at Mr. Clayborne and I'll help you escape. I've worked out a way . . ."

I walk on. Leanne's too wound down to realize I'm already free, that I must be, as I've neither constable nor manacle to keep me from going wherever I like.

"Briony, listen!" says Leanne.

She'll lose those teeth soon. She's winding down to her final plink.

"Briony, stop!" says Leanne. "Briony!"

I round the corner, where months ago, I was sick on the smell of eels. The Brownie swings on beside me. Leanne is a Dark Muse. I don't know what I am.

Snow falls on my hair. The world is small and white.

Stepmother was a Dark Muse. She fed on me, she fed on Rose.

"Briony!"

I come upon a tangle of alleys. Weave yourself into them, Briony. Go round one more corner, Briony. Perhaps they won't find you.

I sit beside a rubbish bin.

Snow falls. The world outside is small and white. The world inside is vast and dark.

A figure emerges from the gray and snow.

"Briony?"

My tears go on forever. Snowflakes fall like shredded clouds. My tears go on forever. The figure comes nearer. Eldric's lips are so red they hurt.

32.

Word Magic I am stomping out new memory paths.

It is difficult. There are too many I am wicked paths crossing and crisscrossing my memory. I don't believe the nice things I say to myself.

I like you! I tell myself.

I answer myself: What a stupidibus!

Stop saying that, Briony. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

I like you!

Briony pinches her lips. She says nothing.

I like you!

I don't believe it now. I shall have to reverse the false memories that Stepmother stomped into my brain. You're a witch! She trod out paths to memories that never existed. You hurt Rose. She trod them out over and over, so they appeared to be real, even though they led to nothing at all.

I like you!

It would be easier to believe myself if Eldric said something. I love you. He said it once. But he hasn't said it since. It would be so easy: He sits a mere table's width away. But he stomps out no paths. He is indifferent.

"Wrap that bit around the end, will you?" he says.

"The squiggly bit?"

"That's the one."

It's only March, but today comes with a whiff of spring. From the front porch, Eldric and I have a terrific view of the square. Father and Eldric rebuilt the porch after the trial, while I was ill. I've seen Dr. Rannigan any number of times, but he never says I told you so! I was ill for months. You'd think a person who's lost his hand would need a great deal of time to recover, but it seems that a person who wanders the swamp in her petticoat, then bides in jail for five weeks, needs even more.

A river of steel flows into the village. On it stands the five thirty-nine, snorting and pawing the ground. She's ready for her run to London. But for now at least, the plans to extend the railway into the swamp have been suspended. There's been no draining of the swamp since Halloween. But Mr. Clayborne's contemplating the possibility of sinking great posts into the swamp and floating the railroad on top of them. Then the queen will be happy and the Boggy Mun will be happy.

"This fidget needs a bit of a twiggle," says Eldric, and I twiggle. We have a terrific working vocabulary. But Eldric needs my help less than he pretends. He's worked out a way to tie a knot with just the one hand. I've seen him.