resolved itself into a picture.
That’s what stories do. They connect the random dots of life into a picture. But it’s all an illusion. Just try to connect the dots of life. You’ll end up with a lunatic scribble.
But Father has to try. It’s his job.
He looked up; the crowd fell silent. Fall silent; fall into the Quicks. Slurp and swallow. Stop, Briony! Please try to remember: Mr. Dreary had a Bible Ball.
Rose and I faced Father; the congregation gathered behind. I was used to playing clergyman’s daughter, dressed in funeral black, down to my ribbons and lace mitts. Rose was identically dressed, but she wasn’t playing. Rose can never learn how to play.
“Black isn’t a color,” said Rose.
I shook my head. “Hush, Rose!”
The daughter of a clergyman will attend hundreds of funerals. She may attend as many as two or three a week when the swamp cough is on the prowl. I’d stood beside dozens of graves since Stepmother died, but hers was the one I remembered. I remembered the dark oblong; I remembered its corners, clean and sharp, like the angles of a hospital bed.
“I match up with pink,” said Rose. “I don’t match up with black.”
I put my finger to my lips. “Father’s speaking.”
But Rose doesn’t like to be hushed. “Black isn’t a color. I want my pink ribbon.”
The crowd rustled behind us. They’d be staring, of course, at the reverend’s peculiar daughter. I don’t mind the disapproving ones so much. It’s the tolerant ones I can’t stand, the ones who smile at Rose, who speak to her ever so slowly and gently. They don’t realize how very intelligent Rose really is. They’re just terrifically pleased with themselves.
“I match up with pink.”
“Come along, Rose.” I turned round; she followed me into the graveyard. I used to stop by Mother’s grave, but I haven’t recently, not for several years. I used to stop to talk to her and tidy up a bit. I used to trim the ivy on her headstone. But now ivy and lichen have run riot over the gravestone carvings, which are not the usual cherubim but sunflowers and daisies—Mother’s favorite flowers. They’re exquisitely carved. I’d say you could almost smell them, except sunflowers and daisies haven’t much of a smell. I wish I might have known Mother. I wonder whether I’d have taken such a very wicked path if she hadn’t died when we were born. She knows I’m a witch, I suppose. I imagine her looking down on me and shaking her head and sighing.
I can’t face her.
Stepmother ought to rest here too, in the Larkin plot, but no: The Reverend Larkin didn’t fancy giving his second wife a proper burial.
I led Rose to the far end of the graveyard, to a tenement of tiny gravestones. They sprouted round our feet like pale mushrooms. So many children had died of the swamp cough this winter. The gravestones were uneasy newcomers, perched at the edge of their seats.
The earth tilted beneath my feet. I sat so I wouldn’t fall. The second sight was coming upon me. Not the ordinary sort of second sight, the sort that links me to the Old Ones. It’s the other sort, the sort that links me to the spirit world.
The sort that, only three days ago, linked me to the skull of Death.
The world shook herself like a dog. She tried to fling me off, but I clung to the nearest gravestone. This sort of second sight is never roses and moonbeams, but death and blood and the smell of fear.
From the grave beneath came a little voice. “ ’Twere the Boggy Mun what sended the cough what taked me.”
It was a child’s voice, thin as skimmed milk. The world swung off its axis and ran uphill.
“The Boggy Mun,” said a second child from the nextdoor grave. “The Boggy Mun, he be that angry his waters been took away.”
The earth tried to scratch me off, like a flea. “Taked me, an’ the baby too,” said a third. “Them last minutes, they was bad, with old Death hisself a-leaning on my chest.”
“An’ now us be asking you for help, girl what can hear ghosts.”
Don’t ask me! Thunder fizzed at my fingertips.
“Them London men, they oughtn’t to have took the Boggy Mun’s water.”
“Tell ’em the Boggy Mun sended the swamp cough, he be that angry.”
“An’ now my baby sister, she be took with the cough.”
The ghosts thought I could appease the Boggy Mun, who would then snatch away the swamp cough. Poor ghosts—well no, they’re not really ghosts. They’re Unquiet Spirits who can’t rest until something in the living world has been set to rights: their murder avenged, their sins confessed.
Their baby sisters cured.
The children’s voices grew thinner.
The Boggy Mun had ruled the swamp since before our human time began. He was lord of the swamp, of the water and the mud, and all swampy states in between. He could be kind, he could be savage. He could kill with the swamp cough, and why not, when his water was stolen away?
And still thinner.
“They oughtn’t to have took no water.”
“Tell the grown folks to fetch it back.”
Until Mr. Clayborne called a halt to the draining of the swamp, the Boggy Mun would strike with the swamp cough, and strike and strike again.
Strike and strike again—oh, you idiot Briony: Ask the ghost-children, quick! “My sister—does she have the swamp cough?”
“Them London men oughtn’t to have took—”
“Don’t go—does she have the swamp cough? Please tell me!”
Please tell me
“Them London men—”
The children’s voices skimmed themselves into extinction. Gravity turned itself right side out. The world bounced up to chase her ball, which was sick making, although it would soon be over. But I’d wish myself sick again if I could do it over. I’d asked the question too late.
“I don’t have the swamp cough.” Rose came into focus. She smiled her anxious-monkey smile, which is the only smile she knows how to make.
“Of course you don’t,” I said, just as Rose hunched herself into her chest for a comfortable paroxysm of coughing. What exquisite timing. If she weren’t Rose, you might think she was indulging herself in a paradox. In a paroxysm of paradoxysm.
But she is Rose.
“It’s time for the funeral-baked meats,” said Rose, squeezing her words past the last crumbs of coughing.
“Right you are, Rose.” We were alone in the graveyard. Even Eldric, the newcomer, knew that every good mourner makes merry in the Alehouse with roast pork, and pies, and funeral biscuits, and sherry and ale. Especially the sherry and ale. A funeral is a thirsty piece of business.
I was dizzy and seasick. “Give me a minute.”
“People can’t give minutes,” said Rose.
Rose, literal Rose. “It’s just one of those things people say. We talked about that, remember, when Father tried to catch the barkeep’s eye?”
“Quick!” said Rose, all in a rush. “Cover your ears!”
I clapped my hands to my ears, pretending I couldn’t hear the church bells chime twelve o’clock. Rose has a peculiar relationship to the notion of time: She won’t let me listen to the clock strike twelve. I can’t say why—I’ve told her often enough that I like the hour of noon—but there’s no understanding Rose.
