Hide Me Among the Graves

anyone.

— Christina Rossetti, Time Flies: A Reading Diary

That September the summer twilight still extended past supper and the hour for the Read girls to go to bed, and so Maria and her visiting sister were permitted to take horses from the stable and ride as far as the family chapel and back.

The rosemary-scented breeze fluttered the girls’ skirts as they rode slowly along the dirt path between the shadow-streaked grassy hills. Maria wore a long black riding habit loaned to her by Mrs. Read, and in spite of her stoutness she rode comfortably sidesaddle on a chestnut mare, but Christina, though she was riding more securely astride a man’s saddle, was terrified whenever her gray gelding broke into a trot.

“He’s a gentle old thing,” Maria called to her. “You can simply relax and move with him.”

“I feel like a tennis ball,” said Christina breathlessly, “being bounced up and down on a racket. One time I’ll — miss the racket when I come down, and I—don’t see any way to fall off which doesn’t — involve landing on my head.” She smiled, but her face was misted with sweat and she felt as though her teeth might at any moment start chattering.

Maria reined in her own mount so that Christina’s would subside to a steady walk.

“You’ll be returning to London with a much rosier complexion than you left with,” Maria observed. “Sun and fresh air have done it.”

“Possibly.” Christina knew that she had not regained any weight during this week in the country at the house of Maria’s employers, and on the few occasions when she had ventured out into the sunlight she had been wearing a hat. Her forehead was always damp with perspiration. “I certainly like your cure better than iron filings steeped in beer.”

“You don’t swallow the iron filings, do you? Is that a cure for angina pectoris?”

“For anemia, actually. No, they decant the beer off them.”

Maria was looking at her, but Christina couldn’t make out the expression on her sister’s round face against the glowing western sky. Perhaps she was disapproving of anyone giving quantities of beer to a fourteen-year-old girl, even as medicine.

“You must be a very good teacher,” Christina said quickly, “to be a live-in governess for such a well-to-do family.”

“They rejected another girl,” said Maria, “because Mrs. Read felt she was too pretty to be in the house with Mr. Read. I’m employed because I’m not comely. I’d like to have the girls learn Greek and Latin, but I’m only to teach them from the Historical and Miscellaneous Questions—from it they learn things like, oh, when the Diet of Worms occurred, but not a bit of what it was.”

“They must wonder what other diets were tried before it,” said Christina, smiling. “The Diet of Dirt, the Diet of—”

“Anemia,” Maria interrupted flatly, “angina pectoris, palpitations, shortness of breath.” They were in the long shadow of a western hill now, and the northern breeze from the Chiltern Hills was cooler. “What is it?”

“Doctor Latham says that puberty is often—”

“Not what Doctor Latham says it is. What do you say it is?”

Christina opened her mouth, and then after a moment closed it again. “Oh, Maria,” she whispered finally, “pray for me!”

“I do. And I hope you pray for yourself.”

The dark spire of the Read family chapel was visible now ahead on their left, beyond the tall black cypresses and the iron fence of the family churchyard, and it occurred to Christina that it might not have been entirely the chapel’s convenient distance from the house that had led Maria to choose it as their goal.

“I try to pray,” she said. “I can’t go to Confession anymore.” She spread the fingers of one hand without releasing the rein. “What would I—say?”

Maria’s voice was gentle. “Say it to me.”

“I — Maria, I think — I’m ruined!”

Maria rocked back in her saddle, and her mare clopped to a halt. “Ach, ’Stina!” Maria whispered. “You think so? Are you — to be sent away?”

“I don’t know. Can ghosts father children?”

Her horse had stopped too, and she could see the silhouette of Maria’s head shaking slowly.

“It was a ghost?” asked Maria.

Christina nodded.

“I want to understand. You’re saying it was the spirit of a dead man.”

“Yes.”

“If you’ve been feverish—”

“Maria, I didn’t dream it! Well, I did at first — I saw it outside the house, but then I woke up and went downstairs and let it in—”

“Why on earth would you let it in?”

“It was in already, really — its body, in any case, petrified. Aren’t ghosts supposed to sit by their graves? And it was sick, and weeping, and looked like Gabriel! And you and William too. It looked like family — I felt as if I were letting it back into its own house. And I — oh, I thought it would show me visions of my future spouse, guide me there, as it did for Papa.”

Maria glanced at her. “Really? I never knew.”

Christina just shook her head, biting her lip.

“Er … did it? Show you a vision of that?”

“No. It only showed me itself.”

For a few moments there was no sound but the wind that shook the grasses and tossed stray strands of Christina’s fair hair across her face.

At last Maria said, “Was it … substantial, your ghost?” She waved one hand. “Did it have weight, did the floorboards creak?”

“Weight? Not at first,” said Christina bleakly. “Later, yes. Yes.” She sighed. “As I diminished.”

Maria was deep in thought and absently said, “I don’t think anybody would say a ghost can ruin a girl.” She looked up. “I thought Papa—”

“But I know.” Christina’s face was damp and chilly as she made herself speak. “Oh God. It wasn’t — he, it, didn’t force itself on me.”

After a pause, Maria nudged her horse into a walk with her left heel, and Christina’s moved forward to keep pace.

Maria said, “I thought Papa kept that damned thing on a special shelf in his room.” She looked at Christina and shrugged. “Of course I know. What other ghost could it be?”

“Oh. Yes. Papa was keeping it in the pocket of his robe, lately. He thought it helped his vision. But then he gave it to me, three months ago.”

“And where—” Maria’s head whipped around to face Christina. “Jesus save us! You didn’t bring it here, did you?”

“I’m sorry! I thought you’d know how to … make it stop, free his soul from the statue, lay him to final rest! You’ve read so many—”

Maria’s eyes darted over Christina’s long coat and bunched-up skirt. “Do you have it with you now?”

Christina nodded miserably. “I carry it around with me, very close. Not that it does me any good.”

“I cannot believe you had it in the house with Lucy and Bessie!” Maria peered at the open gate of the cypress-shadowed churchyard, only a dozen yards ahead now along the rutted dirt path. “We could bury it in consecrated ground.”

“I don’t think it would lie … inertly, in peace. And Papa entrusted it to me — I know he’ll want it back, sooner or later. Oh, Maria, I don’t want to hate him for this!”

“Hate which?”

Christina blinked at her sister, then answered softly, “Well — either of them.”

“You say he led Papa to our mother.” Maria’s voice was flat. “And he resembled Gabriel and William and me.