The Thirteenth Tale

FIRE

Miss Winter seemed to sense the arrival of Judith, for when the housekeeper looked around the edge of the door, she found us in silence. She had brought me cocoa on a tray but also offered to replace me if I wanted to sleep. I shook my head. "I'm all right, thanks."

Miss Winter also refused when Judith reminded her she could take more of the white tablets if she needed them.

When Judith was gone, Miss Winter closed her eyes again.

"How is the wolf?" I asked.

"Quiet in the corner," she said. "Why shouldn't he be? He is certain of his victory. So he's content to bide his time. He knows I'm not going to make a fuss. We've agreed to terms."

"What terms?"

"He is going to let me finish my story, and then I am going to let him finish me." She told me the story of the fire, while the wolf counted down the words.

I had never given a great deal of thought to the baby before he arrived. I had considered the practical aspects of hiding a baby in the house, certainly, and I had a plan for his future. If we could keep him secret for a time, my intention was to allow his presence to be known later. Though it would no doubt be whispered about, he could be introduced as the orphan child of a distant member of the family, and if people chose to wonder about his exact parentage, they were free to do so; nothing they could do would force us to reveal the truth. When making these plans, I had envisaged the baby as a difficulty that needed to be resolved. I had not taken into account that he was my flesh and blood. I had not expected to love him.

He was Emmeline's, that was reason enough. He was Ambrose's. That was a subject I did not dwell on. But he was also mine. I marveled at his pearly skin, at the pink jut of his lips, at the tentative movements of his tiny hands. The ferocity of my desire to protect him overwhelmed me: I wanted to protect him for Emmeline 's sake, to protect her for his sake, to protect the two of them for myself. Watching him and Emmeline together, I could not drag my eyes away. They were beautiful. My one desire was to keep them safe. And I soon learned that they needed a guardian to keep them safe.

Adeline was jealous of the baby. More jealous than she had been of Hester, more jealous than of me. It was only to be expected: Emmeline had been fond of Hester, she loved me, but neither of these affections had touched the supremacy of her feeling for Adeline. But the baby… ah, the baby was different. The baby usurped all.

I should not have been surprised at the extent of Adeline's hatred. I knew how ugly her anger could be, had witnessed the extent of her violence. Yet the day I first understood the lengths she might go to, I could scarcely believe it. Passing Emmeline's bedroom, I silently pushed the door open to see if she was still sleeping. I found Adeline in the room, leaning over the crib by the bed, and something in her posture alarmed me. Hearing my step, she started, then turned and rushed past me out of the room. In her hands she clutched a small cushion.

I felt compelled to dash to the cot. The infant was sleeping soundly, hand curled by his ear, breathing his light, delicate baby breath.

Safe!

Until next time.

I began to spy on Adeline. My old days of haunting came in useful again as from behind curtains and yew trees I watched her. There was a randomness in her actions; indoors or outdoors, taking no notice of the time of day or the weather, she engaged in meaningless, repeated actions. She was obeying dictates that were outside my understanding. But gradually one activity came particularly to my attention. Once, twice, three times a day, she came to the coach house and left it again, carrying a can of petrol with her each time. She took the can to the drawing room, or the library or the garden. Then she would seem to lose interest. She knew what she was doing, but distantly, half forgetful. When she wasn't looking I took the cans away. Whatever did she make of the disappearing cans? She must have thought they had some animus of their own, that they could move about at will. Or perhaps she took her memories of moving them for dreams or plans yet to be realized. Whatever the reason, she did not seem to find it strange that they were not where she had left them. Yet despite the waywardness of the petrol cans, she persisted in fetching them from the coach house, and secreting them in various places around the house.

I seemed to spend half my day returning the cans to the coach house. But one day, not wanting to leave Emmeline and the baby asleep and unprotected, I put one instead in the library. Out of sight, behind the books, on an upper shelf. And it occurred to me that perhaps this was a better place. Because, by always returning them to the coach house, all I was doing was ensuring that it would go on forever. A merry-go-round. By removing them from the circuit altogether, perhaps I might put an end to the rigmarole.

Watching her tired me out, but she\ She never tired. A little sleep went a long way with her. She could be up and about at any hour of the night. And I was getting sleepy. One day, in the early evening, Emme-line went to bed. The boy was in his cot in her room. He 'd been colicky, awake and wailing all day, but now, feeling better, he slept soundly.

I drew the curtains.

It was time to go and check on Adeline. I was tired of always being vigilant. Watching Emmeline and her child while they slept, watching Adeline while they were awake, I hardly slept at all. How peaceful it was in the room. Emmeline's breathing, slowing me down, relaxing me. And alongside it, the light touch of air that was the baby breathing. I remember listening to them, the harmony of it, thinking how tranquil it was, thinking of a way of describing it-that was how I always entertained myself, the putting into words of things I saw and heard-and I thought I would have to describe how the breathing seemed to penetrate me, take over my breath, as though we were all part of the same thing, me and Emmeline and our baby, all three one breath. It took hold of me, this idea, and I felt myself drifting off with them, into sleep.

Something woke me. Like a cat I was alert before I ever had my eyes open. I didn't move, kept my breathing regular, and watched Adeline from between my lashes.

She bent over the cot, lifted the baby and was on her way out of the room. I could have called out to stop her. But I didn't. If I had cried out, she would have postponed her plan, whereas by letting her go on with it, I could find out what she intended and put a stop to it once and for all. The baby stirred in her arms. He was thinking about waking up. He didn't like to be in anyone's arms but Emmeline's, and a baby is not taken in by a twin.

I followed her downstairs to the library and peeped through the door that she had left ajar. The baby was on the desk, next to the pile of books that were never reshelved because I reread them so frequently. Next to their neat rectangle I saw movement in the folds of the baby's blanket. I heard his muffled half grunts. He was awake.

Kneeling by the fireside was Adeline. She took coals from the scuttle, logs from their place by the hearth, and deposited them haphazardly in the fireplace. She did not know how to make a proper fire. I had learned from the Missus the correct arrangement of paper, kindling, coals and logs; Adeline's fires were wild and random affairs that ought not to burn at all.

The realization of what she intended slowly unfolded in me.

She would not succeed, would she? There was only a shadow of warmth in the ashes, not enough to relight coals or logs, and I never left kindling or matches in reach. Hers was a mad fire; it couldn't catch; I knew it couldn't. But I could not reassure myself. Her desire for flames was all the kindling she needed. All she had to do was look at something for it to spark. The incendiary magic she possessed was so strong she could set fire to water if she wanted to badly enough.

In horror I watched her place the baby on the coals, still wrapped in his blanket.

Then she looked about the room. What was she after?

When she made for the door and opened it, I jumped back into the shadows. But she had not discovered my spying. It was something else she was after. She turned into the passage under the stairs and disappeared.

I ran to the fireplace and removed the baby from the pyre. I wrapped his blanket quickly around a moth-eaten bolster from the chaise longue and put it on the coals in his place. But there was no time to flee. I heard steps on the stone flags, a dragging noise that was the sound of a petrol can scraping on the floor, and the door opened just as I stepped back into one of the library bays.

Hush, I prayed silently, don't cry now, and I held the infant close to my body so he would not miss the warmth of his blanket.

Back at the fireplace, head on one side, Adeline surveyed her fire. What was wrong? Had she noticed the change? But it appeared not. She looked around the room. What was it she wanted?

The baby stirred, a jerk of the arms, a kick of the legs, a tensing of the backbone that is so often the precursor to a wail. I resettled him, head heavy on my shoulder; I felt his breath on my neck. Don't cry. Please don't cry.

He was still again, and I watched.

My books. On the desk. The ones I couldn't pass without opening at random, for the pleasure of a few words, a quick hello. How incongruous to see them in her hands. Adeline and books? It looked all wrong. Even when she opened the cover, I thought for one long, bizarre moment that she was going to read-

She tore out pages by the fistful. She scattered them all over the desk; some slid off, onto the floor. When she had done with the ripping, she grabbed handfuls of them and screwed them into loose balls. Fast! She was a whirlwind! My neat little volumes, suddenly a paper mountain. To think a book could have so much paper in it! I wanted to cry out, but what? All the words, the beautiful words, pulled apart and crumpled up, and I, in the shadows, speechless.

She gathered an armful and released it onto the top of the white blanket in the fireplace. Three times I watched her turn from the desk to the fireplace, her arms full of pages, until the hearth was heaped high with torn-up books.Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Woman in White… Balls of paper toppled from the height of the pyre, some rolled as far as the carpet, joining those that she had dropped en route.

One came to a stop at my feet, and silently I dropped down to retrieve it. Oh! The outrageous sensation of crumpled paper; words gone wild, flying in all directions, senseless. My heart broke.

Anger swept me up; it carried me like a piece of flotsam, unable to see or breathe; it roared like an ocean in my head. I might have cried out, leaped like a mad thing from my hiding place and struck her, but I had Emmeline's treasure in my arms, and so I stood by and watched, trembling, weeping in silence, as her sister desecrated the treasure that was mine.

At last she was satisfied with her pyre. Yet whichever way you looked at it, the mountain in the hearth was madness itself. It's all upside down, the Missus would have said; it'll never light-you want the paper at the bottom. But even if she had built it properly, it would make no difference. She couldn't light it: She had no matches. And even if she had been able to obtain matches, still she would not achieve her purpose, for the boy, her intended victim, was in my arms. And the greatest madness of all: Supposing I hadn't been there to stop her? Supposing I hadn't rescued the infant and she had burned him alive? How could she ever imagine that burning her sister's child would restore her sister to her?

It was the fire of a madwoman.

In my arms the baby stirred and opened his mouth to mewl. What to do? Behind Adeline's back I softly retreated, then fled to the kitchen.

I must get the baby to a place of safety, then deal with Adeline later. My mind was working furiously, proposing plan after plan. Emmeline will have no love left for her sister when she realizes what she tried to do. It will be she and I now. We will tell the police that Adeline killed John-the-dig, and they will take her away. No! We will tell Adeline that unless she leaves Angelfield we will tell the police… No! And then suddenly I have it! We will leave Angelfield. Yes! Emmeline and I will leave, with the baby, and we will start a new life, without Adeline, without Angelfield, but together.

And it all seems so simple I wonder I never thought of it before.

With the future glowing so brightly it seems realer than the present, I put the page irom Jane Eyre in the game bag as well, for safekeeping, and a spoon that is on the kitchen table. We will need that, en route to our new life.

Now where? Somewhere not far from the house, where there is nothing to hurt him, where he will be warm enough for the few minutes it will take me to come back to the house and fetch Emmeline and persuade her to follow…

Not the coach house. Adeline sometimes goes there. The church. That is a place she never goes.

I run down the drive, through the lych-gate and into the church. In the front rows are small tapestry cushions for kneeling. I arrange them into a bed and lay the baby on them in his canvas papoose.

Now, back to the house.

I am almost there when my future shatters. Shards of glass flying through the air, one breaking window then another, and a sinister, living light prowling in the library. The empty window frame shows me liquid fire spraying the room, petrol cans bursting in the heat. And two figures.

Emmeline!

I run. The odor of fire catches my nostrils even in the entrance hall, though the stone floor and walls are cool-the fire has no hold here. But at the door of the library I stop. Flames chase each other up the curtains; bookshelves are ablaze; the fireplace itself is an inferno. In the center of the room, the twins. For a moment, in all the noise and heat of the fire, I stop dead. Amazed. For Emmeline, the passive, docile Emme-line, is returning blow for blow, kick for kick, bite for bite. She has never retaliated against her sister before, but now she is doing it. For her child.

Around them, above their heads, one burst of light after another as the petrol cans explode and fire rains down upon the room. I open my mouth to call to Emmeline that the baby is safe, but the first breath I draw in is nothing but heat, and I choke.

I hop over fire, step around it, dodge the fire that falls on me from above, brush fire away with my hands, beat out the fire that grows in my clothes. When I reach the sisters I cannot see them, but reach blindly through the smoke. My touch startles them and they draw apart instantly. There is a moment when I see Emmeline, see her clearly, and she sees me. I grip her hand and pull her, through the flames, through the fire, and we reach the door. But when she realizes what I am doing-leading her away from the fire to safety-she stops. I tug at her.

"He's safe." My words come in a croak, but they are clear enough.

Why doesn't she understand?

I try again. "The baby. I have saved him."

Surely she has heard me? Inexplicably she resists my tug, and her hand slips from mine. Where is she? I can see only blackness.

I stumble forward into the flames, collide with her form, grasp her and pull. Still she won't stay with me, turns once more into the room. Why? She is bound to her sister. She is bound. Blind and with my lungs burning, I follow her into the smoke. I will break the bond. Eyes closed against the heat, I plunge into the library, arms ahead of me, searching. When my hands reach her in the smoke, I do not let her go. I will not have her die. I will save her. And though she resists, I drag her ferociously to the door and out of it.

The door is made of oak. It is heavy. It doesn't burn easily. I push it shut behind us, and the latch engages. Beside me, she steps forward, about to open it again. It is something stronger than fire that pulls her into that room.

The key that sits in the lock, unused since the days of Hester, is hot. It burns my palm as I turn it. Nothing else hurts me that night, but the key sears my palm and I smell my flesh as it chars. Emmeline puts out a hand to clutch the key and open it again. The metal burns her, and as she feels the shock of it, I pull her hand away.

A great cry fills my head. Is it human? Or is it the sound of the fire itself? I don't even know whether it is coming from inside the room or outside with me. From a guttural start it gathers strength as it rises, reaches a shrill peak of intensity, and when I think it must be at the end of its breath, it continues, impossibly low, impossibly long, a boundless sound that fills the world and engulfs it and contains it.

And then the sound is gone and there is only the roar of the fire.

Outdoors. Rain. The grass is soaked. We sink to the ground; we roll on the wet grass to damp our smoldering clothes and hair, feel the cool wet on our scorched flesh. On our backs we rest there, flat against the earth. I open my mouth and drink the rain. It falls on my face, cools my eyes, and I can see again. Never has there been a sky like it, deep indigo with fast-moving slate-black clouds, the rain coming down in blade edges of silver, and every so often a plume, a spray of bright orange from the house, a fountain of fire. A bolt of lightning cracks the sky in two, then again, and again.

The baby. I must tell Emmeline about the baby. She will be happy that I have saved him. It will make things all right. I turn to her and open my mouth to speak. Her face- Her poor beautiful face is black and red, all smoke and blood and fire. Her eyes, her green gaze, ravaged, unseeing, unknowing. I look at her face and cannot find my beloved in it. "Emmeline?" I whisper. "Emmeline?'* She does not reply. I feel my heart die. What have I done? Have I…? Is it possible that…? I cannot bear to know. I cannot bear not to know. "Adeline?" My voice is a broken thing. But she-this person, this someone, this one or the other, this might or might not be, this darling, this monster, this I don't know who she is-does not reply. People are coming. Running up the drive, voices calling urgently in the night.

I rise to a crouch and scuttle away. Keeping low. Hiding. They reach the girl on the grass, and when I am sure they have found her I leave them to it. In the church I put the satchel over my shoulder, clutching the baby in his papoose to my side, and set off.

It is quiet in the woods. The rain, slowed by the canopy of leaves, falls softly on the undergrowth. The child whimpers, then sleeps. My feet carry me to a small house on the other edge of the woods. I know the house. I have seen it often during my haunting years. A woman lives there, alone. Spying her through the window knitting or baking, I have always thought she looks nice, and when I read about kindly grandmothers and fairy godmothers in my books, I supply them with her face.

I take the baby to her. I glance in at the window, as I have before, see her in her usual place by the fire, knitting. Thoughtful and quiet. She is undoing her knitting. Just sitting there pulling the stitches out, with the needles on the table beside her. There is a dry place in the porch for the baby. I settle him there and wait behind a tree.

She opens the door. Takes him up. I know when I see her expression that he will be safe with her. She looks up and around. In my direction. As if she's seen something. Have I rustled the leaves, betrayed my presence? It crosses my mind to step forward. Surely she would befriend me? I hesitate, and the wind changes direction. I smell the fire at the same moment she does. She turns away, looks to the sky, gasps at the smoke that rises over the spot where Angelfield House stands. And then puzzlement shows in her face. She holds the baby close to her nose and sniffs. The smell of fire is on him, transferred from my clothes. One more glance at the smoke and she steps firmly back into her house and closes the door.

I am alone.

No name.

No home.

No family.

I am nothing.

I have nowhere to go.

I have no one who belongs to me.

I stare at my burned palm but cannot feel the pain.

What kind of a thing am I? Am I even alive?

I could go anywhere, but I walk back to Angelfield. It is the only place I know.

Emerging from the trees, I approach the scene. A fire engine. Villagers with their buckets, standing back, dazed and with smoke-blackened faces, watching the professionals do battle with the flames. Women, mesmerized by smoke rising into the black sky. An ambulance. Dr. Maudsley kneeling over a figure on the grass.

No one sees me.

On the edge of all the activity I stand, invisible. Perhaps I really am nothing. Perhaps no one can see me at all. Perhaps I died in the fire and haven't realized it yet. Perhaps I am finally what I have always been: a ghost.

Then one of the women looks in my direction.

"Look," she cries, pointing. "She's here!" and people turn. Stare. One of the women runs to alert the men. They turn from the fire and look, too. "Thank God!" someone says.

I open my mouth to say… I don't know what. But I say nothing. Just stand there, making shapes with my mouth, no voice, and no words.

"Don't try to speak." Dr. Maudsley is by my side now.

I stare at the girl on the lawn. "She'll survive," says the doctor.

I look at the house.

The flames. My books. I don't think I can bear it. I remember the page oijane Eyre, the ball of words I saved from the pyre. I have left it behind with the baby.

I begin to weep.

"She's in shock," says the doctor to one of the women. "Keep her warm and stay with her, while we put the sister in the ambulance."

A woman comes to me, clucking her concern. She takes off her coat and wraps it around me, tenderly, as though dressing a baby, and she murmurs, "Don't worry, you'll be all right, your sister's all right, oh, my poor dear."

They lift the girl from the grass and place her on the bed in the ambulance. Then they help me in. Sit me down opposite. And they drive us to the hospital.

She stares into space. Eyes open, empty. After the first moment I don't look. The ambulance man bends over her, assures himself that she is breathing, then turns to me.

"What about that hand, eh?" I am clutching my right hand in my left, unconscious of the pain in my mind, but my body giving the secret away.

He takes my hand, and I let him unfold my fingers. A mark is burned deep into my palm. The key.

"That'll heal up," he tells me. "Don't worry. Now, are you Adeline or are you Emmeline?"

He gestures to the other one. "Is this Emmeline?"

I can't answer, can't feel myself, can't move.

"Not to worry," he said. "All in good time."

He gives up on making me understand him. Mutters for his own benefit, "Still, we've got to call you something. Adeline, Emmeline, Emmeline, Adeline. Fifty-fifty, isn't it? It'll all come out in the wash."

The hospital. Opening the ambulance doors. All noise and bustle. Voices speaking fast. The stretcher, lifted onto a trolley and wheeled away at speed. A wheelchair. Hands on my shoulders. "Sit down, dear." The chair moving. A voice behind my back. "Don't worry, child. We'll take care of you and your sister. You're safe now, Adeline."

Miss Winter slept.

I saw the tender slackness of her open mouth, the tuft of unruly hair that did not lay straight from her temple, and in her sleep she seemed very, very old and very, very young. With every breath she took the bedclothes rose and fell over her thin shoulders, and at each sinking the ribboned edge of the blanket brushed against her face. She seemed unaware of it, but all the same, I bent over her to fold the covers back and smooth the curl of pale hair back into place.

She did not stir. Was she really asleep, I wondered, or was this unconsciousness already?

I can't say how long I watched her after that. There was a clock, but the movements of its hands were as meaningless as a map of the surface of the sea. Wave after wave of time lapped over me as I sat with my eyes closed, not sleeping, but with the vigilance of a mother for the breathing of her child.

I hardly know what to say about the next thing. Is it possible that I hallucinated in my tiredness? Did I fall asleep and dream? Or did Miss Winter really speak one last time?

I will give your message to your sister.

I jerked my eyes open, but hers were closed. She seemed to be sleeping as deeply as before.

I did not see the wolf when he came. I did not hear him. There was only this: A little before dawn I became aware of a hush, and I realized that the only breathing to be heard in the room was my own.