Black Spring Page 6

  IX

  I remember the first days of Damek’s residence as a kind of dark tunnel, a memory reinforced by the continual rain which kept us indoors. It seemed endless, although it must have lasted little more than a week or so. The master left the day after delivering Damek into our care and Lina blamed Damek, for no reason at all, for her father’s absence. It simply confirmed the boy’s evil in Lina’s eyes; she resented him bitterly, and did her best to make him run away.

  She confessed as much to me the first morning. “We don’t want him here, do we, Anna?” she said as I brushed her hair. “He’s nothing but a dirty peasant. Look at his skin! Why has Papa done this to me?”

  “I’m sure he has his reasons,” I said. “The king—”

  “Oh, the king!” Lina swept that aside impatiently. “What could the king care for a lowborn bastard?”

  I was shocked, and told her that she ought to show some respect. At the back of my mind, I saw the Wizard Ezra and his talk of some mysterious truce; although I didn’t understand the complex dealings of adults, which took place in a universe over the top of my head, I couldn’t but believe that somehow Damek’s presence and the wizard’s obscure warning were connected.

  “I’m going to make him run away,” she said. “I hate him. I don’t want a brother. And if he runs away, Papa can’t do anything about it. It’s not his fault, is it? How could the king blame him then?”

  I began to tell her that if Damek ran away it would shame our house, but Lina tossed her head and said she didn’t care. And nothing I said in the following days could persuade her to care for the honour of the king or her father.

  Her strategy was simple: she made herself as unpleasant as possible to everyone in her vicinity. This was sufficient to turn the household into a purgatory. There was Lina at breakfast, brows like thunder, throwing her plate at Damek and scalding him with hot porridge; Lina in the passageway, screaming and kicking my mother, who was attempting to stop her pulling Damek’s hair; Lina brooding in the front room, sending black clouds of dolour through the entire house, so that everyone was cross and impatient and out of sorts.

  The part of me – a very small part – that wasn’t irritated with Lina beyond endurance couldn’t help but admire her stubborn persistence in the face of every rebuke and punishment; there was not one moment where she wavered from her obdurate hostility. I have sometimes wondered whether that week showed the first sign of her powers, because when she walked into a room, everyone flinched against the turbid energy she brought with her. Even when my mother, her patience tried to breaking point by Lina’s perversity, whipped her with a belt and locked her in her room without meals for a whole day, she shouted and screamed for hours until her voice was hoarse, hammering on the door so her knuckles bled. My mother only let her out because she was afraid that she would make herself ill, and I vividly remember the flash of triumph in Lina’s eyes as she stalked out. And then the first thing she did was to find Damek and slap his face for causing her to be locked up.

  I confess that although in those first days I could not like Damek, I admired how he bore with Lina’s persecution. Even when she threw porridge at him, he didn’t react; he merely stared at her expressionlessly and wiped it out of his eyes. He never once attempted to hit her back, and never answered any of the horrible names she called him, nor complained to anyone. Once or twice I saw a flash in his eyes that hinted at a dangerous and implacable anger, but he suppressed it at once. I have since wondered where he learned such stoicism; I suppose he must have come from a place where he suffered much cruelty. This lack of response, as I think he knew, only irritated Lina to further extremes: she pinched him until his arms were mottled black and green, and kicked him in the shins, and pulled out chunks of his hair. Nothing my mother could say or do abated Lina’s behaviour. Used as I was to her, I was shocked: this was different in kind from her tantrums. It was unforgiving and bitter, with no swift following laughter to clear the sky.

  Without warning, when all of us were limp with exhaustion and despair, the oppression lifted. Lina came down late to breakfast, her face set in her now habitual scowl, and as she sat down a beam of sunshine broke through the clouds and shafted across the table. It scattered a spectrum of colours over the white cloth as the beam broke through the glass decanter and struck fiery sparkles from the silver cutlery. As it glanced on Lina’s face, she looked up with a sudden luminous delight, her dark mood ambushed and destroyed by this stray sunbeam; by chance her eyes met Damek’s, and she stopped, arrested. I don’t know what passed between them in that moment; I remember her sitting in the room, as still as if she had been caught out of time, the smile lingering on her lips, her eyes serious and dark, but quite without hostility. She looked most of all as if she were remembering something important that she had forgotten.

  I’ve often wondered what happened when Lina was ambushed by that stray sunbeam. It was such a tiny thing, but it changed all our lives. She would never tell me, even when I asked her directly; she would simply laugh and say that someone like me would never understand. I’m not sure that even she could explain it. I surmise that in her unguarded joy, her soul flung open its doors, permitting her to see Damek for the first time. But what did she see? A brother, perhaps, moved by the same passions as she was, a wild kindred soul who chafed as she did against the mean laws in which we lived, a will as stubborn and obdurate as her own? I never realized until much later how lonely Lina was. Even I, who was closer to her than anybody else, often failed to comprehend her. It may be that her sense of isolation sparked her childish rages: while every human being desires to be loved, perhaps we crave understanding more.

  For the first time for days, breakfast passed peaceably. Lina was atypically demure and polite; she was playing the southern-born lady again, and said please and thank you, instead of haughtily demanding my service and trying to slap me if I was too slow. (Not that I accepted such behaviour without giving her a sharp telling-off. She ignored me, but it relieved my own anger.) She didn’t speak to Damek, but at the end of the meal, when she pushed her chair back to leave the table, she met his eyes again and nodded slightly before she left. Damek seemed much struck, and it was a few moments before he too laid his napkin on the table and left.

  As I tidied up after them, I drew a deep breath. Perhaps this was the end of the storm, and our little household would be an easier place. I had chores to attend to and didn’t see either of them all morning; I was therefore wholly taken aback when Damek and Lina walked in together to the luncheon table, and sat down as if they were intimate friends.

  “What?” I said to her. “Are you talking now to your brother, Miss Lina?”

  “Oh, Anna, he’s not my brother!” said Lina. “That’s the mistake. He’s my friend.” And she smiled radiantly and leant forward, in a pretty manner she then affected, to brush a lock of hair out of his eyes. “Aren’t we the best of friends, Damek?”

  He muttered something I couldn’t hear in response, and she laughed and turned to me.

  “He’ll be less surly soon, I’m sure,” she said. “It’s only that he’s shy.” At this I saw the back of Damek’s neck redden. “But he has forgiven me my lack of manners.”

  “Well, Mr Damek is a better human being than you are, Miss Lina,” I said. “Look at those bruises on his arm! For shame!”

  Lina tossed her head, quite unembarrassed. “If he don’t mind, I don’t see why you should, Anna. And you’re just a servant anyway. It’s not your place to make remarks.”

  Lina had never before asserted her rank – it was of the nature of an unspoken agreement – and that stung me. I had opened my mouth to protest when my mother came into the room with a roasted peahen and put an end to our conversation. After that I was coming and going from the room, waiting upon the two of them. I was still hurt by Lina’s remark and was, I fear, excessively formal, though I’m sure Lina never noticed. I studied her change in manner towards Damek with amazement, unable to believe that she was sincere. She
pulled her chair closer to his and murmured to him as they ate, her eyes flashing mischievously. He said very little, mostly nodding now and again in response, and I mistrustfully wondered what devilry she was hatching now.

  I confess a little pain of jealousy started in my heart, watching the two of them huddled together so intimately; Lina and I had always been close, for all our differences in rank and sensibility, and now it seemed that she was replacing me in her heart with this sullen, mysterious boy.

  X

  It’s difficult to remember things precisely. All this happened so long ago, and when I reflect it seems to me that I have forgotten many important things, while others which perhaps seem trivial stand out vividly from the shadows. I was, you know, a most ordinary child, with no precocious abilities; I had all the usual childish griefs and joys and my life has been, for the most part, remarkably without incident or tragedy. Lina used to laugh at my equable nature, claiming I had all the sensibility of a stick, and as a little girl I did feel that I was a dim and shadowed lamp next to her brilliant flame. Yet for all that, I never envied her; I would always have far rather been as I am. Which is a happy chance, really, since I have no choice in the matter.

  In my education I was fortunate above most of my peers, because when the master employed a tutor from the south for Lina and Damek, he instructed him to teach me as well. This was not really an enlightened decision on the master’s part, although I certainly benefited; his kindnesses were almost always self-interested. Lina was at best an erratic student, and predictably she regarded the classes (as I think her tutor did) as a means of torture, which she thought was especially devised to frustrate her deepest desires. Even her father’s disapproval, which could cast her into a pit of despair for days, did little to make the necessity of staying indoors to study verbs and history palatable, even with Damek for company. However, when I joined the morning lessons, her natural competitiveness was fired, since she couldn’t bear to be outshone by a mere servant. I enjoyed the classes, and even earned the tutor’s praise on occasion, and this made her turn furiously to her work.

  Thus it was that I learned my letters, and was given one of the great consolations and pleasures of my life. It is no boast to say that I am probably as well read as any on the Plateau, since Master had collected an excellent library and permitted me to read freely in my spare time. Like many things in my life, it altered me, and made me different from my kin. My mother disapproved of my education: she would never dare to gainsay the master, and did his will as always, but I think no decision of his angered her more. She said it would give me ideas above my station, and would take me away from my roots. In this, her instincts were correct: although I can’t say I have suffered from it, I have always been a little outside things. I was fated, it seems, to be between: neither northern nor southern, neither an illiterate servant nor a noble. Once, when I was young and foolish, I did wish that I was the same as everyone else and could fit in more easily; but I was lucky enough to marry a good man who saw my virtues with a straight eye, and I have led a decent and hardworking life, which is more than can be said for some of my kin.

  But forgive me; I am wandering from the story.

  After that day, Damek was Lina’s slave. I watched them suspiciously, unable to believe that it was more than a passing fad on her part, but all I saw was sweetness and light. Certainly, their friendship made a great deal of difference to Damek. I think it likely that he had never had a friend before. As in everything she did, Lina approached the friendship with all the force of her fierce passion, and any resistance he may have felt quickly melted. At the time I was surprised by his instant capitulation – given those bruises, I would have coddled my resentment for much longer. But now I suspect that they might not have become so close if Lina hadn’t behaved so cruelly to begin with, and that part of his respect for her stemmed from his initial experience of her demonic temper.

  Patiently, with her rare gentleness, she coaxed him out of his sullen silence, and he began to seem more like any boy of ten; she drew him into her games and pranks and, although he never quite lost his wariness, for the first time we saw his face animated with laughter. I know you will not believe me, but I began to like Damek myself then; he was a handsome boy, and could be an amiable playmate. I am sorry for what he became. Perhaps he would have become what he is in any case, but I think he could have been a different man, had things turned out otherwise.

  Lina and Damek would disappear for hours on end, returning with their clothes torn and filthy with mud and their eyes shining with secret mischief. Their antics were the despair of my mother, who felt both their impropriety and their inconvenience, since they doubled her laundry and darning. I was moved by less pragmatic considerations: to put it baldly, I was jealous. The pair stole away on their excursions without telling anybody, and after they returned home would whisper together like conspirators. I was locked out of Lina’s private world, and I felt my exile keenly.

  I caught them leaving the house one day when I knew they had been expressly forbidden to do so, and demanded that I should come too, or I would tell my mother. Lina stared at me impatiently, biting her lip.

  “Why would you want to come with us, Anna? You know you wouldn’t enjoy it.”

  “I would so,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t,” she said. “We don’t do anything special, do we, Damek? We just go racing in the wind by the river. You know you don’t like running much. You’d just get puffed and spoil it all and we’d have to come home.”

  “I won’t spoil anything!” I said heatedly.

  Lina exchanged a glance with Damek that I couldn’t read, but its intimacy fanned my jealousy. Damek shrugged. “Come, if you want,” he said. “But you’ll only get into trouble.”

  I was already regretting my importunity, but it was too late now to withdraw. Lina cast me a dark look, but she tolerated my tagging behind. As we reached the meadows that led to the river, she broke into a run. Damek cast a swift glance over his shoulder, which was not without sympathy, and then raced to follow her.

  I plodded stubbornly behind them in the distance, sweaty and uncomfortable. I finally caught them up by the river. Lina was swinging from a willow branch with her back to me, as Damek sat on the ground looking up at her. With a pang of envy, I saw that for once his face was unguarded. He was staring at Lina with the same intense expression of worship I had sometimes seen on old women praying before the Madonna in church. Even as this incongruous thought crossed my mind, he sensed my gaze and turned his face away, and I saw a flush spread across the back of his neck. I already knew that I was pushing myself where I was not wanted, but suddenly I felt a new discomfort; it was as if I had glimpsed something that shouldn’t be witnessed. I hadn’t seen them doing wrong, don’t misunderstand me; what I saw was completely innocent. I felt clumsy and embarrassed, as if I had stumbled without permission into a hushed church in the middle of an important ceremony.

  Lina dropped down from the tree and turned towards me.

  “See,” she said. “I said you wouldn’t enjoy it!”

  “But I am!” I said stoutly, and sat down to catch my breath. “Maybe we could make a house now. You could be the mistress.” Even in my confusion, I wasn’t going to admit that Lina was right and I wanted to return to the world of our ordinary relationships, undisturbed by the strange depths that had briefly opened before me.

  “Sometimes you’re so dreary, Anna,” said Lina. “What do we want with houses here? Look at the mountains!” She pointed into the distance, where the Black Mountains stood clear of haze on the horizon, their flanks shading to deep purple. “Aren’t they beautiful? They’re just like Damek.”

  “You mean he’s purple?” I said, bewildered by her fancy, as Damek cast her an angry look. I think she must have broken a confidence between them, because she coloured a little.

  “No, stupid. If you can’t see it, I’m not going to explain.”

  Before long, Lina announced that she was bored and
we went home. We were gone so briefly that nobody had missed us, and the next time Lina and Damek disappeared, they took good care to avoid me. I was cured of wanting to join them, and I told myself that I didn’t care, but of course that wasn’t true.

  Shortly after Lina’s rapprochement with Damek, the master came home again. Had he returned while Lina was still tormenting Damek, the consequences would have been unthinkable, and all of us – with the exception of Lina herself – felt the relief of disaster averted. In all my life, I have never met anyone with such a talent for ensuring her own unhappiness as Lina; despite his partiality, her father could not have countenanced her cruelty, and even his mildest disapprovals had the power to cast her into the depths of despair. And Lina in despair, in the midst of the extremity she had already so gratuitously created, was a vision none of us wished to contemplate. I knew even then that my mother feared for Lina’s health, perhaps even for her sanity; for all the trouble she caused her, she cared for Lina as if she were her own child.

  Thus we all covered for her. On his first day home, the master noticed the fading bruises on Damek’s arm and frowningly asked whence they had come, and whether Damek had suffered mistreatment. We all started, unable to know how to answer without delivering an outright lie, but Damek steadfastly denied any abuse and claimed they had come about from a fall during play. The master studied Damek sceptically, and I was sure that he didn’t believe him, but since it seemed that all was well, he forbore to say anything further.

  This time, to Lina’s delight, the master stayed at home for the entire summer. He spent much time in his study going over the accounts, and when he emerged he was often grey-faced with exhaustion. I still have the ledgers, and once went through those for that year out of, I confess, a vulgar curiosity. The southern estate had suffered an early frost followed by unusually severe tempests, which had devastated the vineyards, and there had been besides an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the cattle. The bulk of the annual income came from that estate, and those disasters I think accounted for his presence, as the accounts also showed that when he was away from the Plateau, he led a life of considerable extravagance – indulgences to which his finances would not stretch that year. We believed that his constant absences were due to what we all vaguely referred to as “business”, but the plain truth was that the master had no great love for the Black Country. Ties of blood, honour and money kept him here, and those bonds, which he could not break, were twisted tightly with threads of resentment or even hatred. Of course I only understood this much later. I don’t think even my mother, his most faithful servant and perhaps one of the few people besides Lina who really loved him, knew this.