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
“—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 lasses. 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 glass.
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 assured 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
How does Rose know it belonged to the midwife?
Rose assures us it’s simple. Over and over, the midwife had written,
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.
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 peacock 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
“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.
