unfortunate accident. The victim of this accident had been found with a piece of stationery from our inn in his pocket. The youth had described this unfortunate man to the innkeeper and had been told that I’d been staying with him.”
Papa reached for his pipe from the side table. “I hurried into the youth’s carriage, of course. After half an hour we arrived at a great iron gate, behind which stood a palatial home.”
Wiping his eyes, he said, “After the gatekeeper let us in, we were met by an old periwigged man. In a puckered voice, he introduced himself as Lord Lewis Pakenham. He begged my pardon for dragging me away from my inn without warning, then took me to the small stone chapel standing next to the main house. There … and there …” Papa hung his head and cleared his throat. “There, John,” he continued, “I discovered a blood-spattered blanket covering a body lying on a straw mattress.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Once the blanket was removed, I saw the gaping hole in Midnight’s chest that had been made by a musket ball. His color had grayed and the expression on his face was none that he had ever worn in life.”
Father turned to the wall and continued speaking, his voice desolate:
“Pakenham told me that his gamekeeper had discovered the ‘black boy’ — that’s what he called Midnight — poaching on his land, and he fired three shots at him. It was the very last one that killed him … the last one.” Papa faced me, enraged. “That periwigged English wretch offered me a pinch of snuff from his silver box as though it might make up for my loss.
“Not wishing for what he called ‘this mishap’ to disoblige me in any way,” Father continued, “Pakenham then offered me a servant for the rest of my stay in England. I declined, of course. There’s little more to tell you, son. Just that the Bushman’s shirt and coat had been found nearby, hanging from an upper tree branch that no one save a cat could have reached. In his waistcoat pocket, among other trifles such as seeds and burrs, had been discovered a single sheet of stationery from the Swanage Inn.”
Papa produced the piece of paper in question and unfolded it. “Read this, John,” he said, handing it to me.
As I took it, Papa rubbed my cheek affectionately. I began to read Midnight’s last words.
It was not a lightning bugyou swallowed, but a lightning bolt. I know that now. And I will tell you a secret. Only very, very rarely does Mantis choose someone who is not a Bushman to carry him. Know that he rides now between your toes. And always remember that you carry him with you wherever you go.
Upon reading this, vague, cold thoughts filtered through my head like mist. I seemed miles and years away, and I did not understand who Midnight had intended these words for.
When I expressed my bewilderment, Father patted my leg and said, “They were for you, of course.”
XX
The first week after learning of Midnight’s death, I neither dressed nor left our house. Papa took breakfast with me in my room. We scarcely talked or even ate, but his presence was comforting. I was unaware of what my mother was doing at the time, for she remained behind her locked bedroom door most of the day. Very occasionally, in the late afternoon, I would come downstairs to find her embroidering. She refused to speak of Midnight.
Sitting with her, staring into her lost red eyes, I slowly came to understand that we now lived in a house of silence. Midnight was dead and I was alive — this seemed a great mystery to me.
By the time Papa returned home from his office in the early evening, Mama had already locked herself back in their bedroom. He and I would eat cheese and bread by the hearth, or sometimes in my room. My bed became a sea of crumbs. He sometimes made fennel soup as well — his one specialty.
Father got into the habit of leaving Mother’s supper outside their bedroom door, then returning downstairs, at which time we’d hear the door click open and the food being carried inside. Two or three times I placed some late-blooming yellow dahlias from Midnight’s garden onto her tray, hoping this would, in some way, console her, but she never mentioned them to me.
Father said many times, “We must have patience, lad. Your mother … she is not a woman to be rushed. She lives by her own rhythms.”
Papa kept telling me that time would heal my suffering, but I did not believe him. He quoted Robert Burns whenever his own words failed him, and I remember these lines in particular, because they reminded me that I’d someday meet Midnight again on the Mount of Olives:
At times, he tried to inspire hope in me, telling me that I was such a likable lad that I would soon find more loyal companions. We both knew this was a lie, since it was obvious by now that I had not a whisker of aptitude for befriending boys my age, but we pretended we believed it.
After a time, I moved many of Midnight’s belongings into my room. I slept in one of his nightshirts because its weave had captured his smell — or at least, I imagined that it had. I even took his quiver, bow, and arrows with me into the woods one day, but I never managed to hit so much as a hare.
In truth, I did not want to harm anything but myself.
I never did ask my father how I might win Maria Angelica’s hand.
When I felt stronger, he and I took Fanny and Zebra on walks together outside the city. He told me of Dr. Jenner’s keen interest in my ornithological gifts and suggested that I might even consider a period of study with him. He proposed that in another year or two I stay for at least a few months in London, adding that such an experience would surely help me decide what I wished to do with my life.
He also promised that we would travel together that summer to Amsterdam, a city I had often longed to visit because of its thriving Portuguese — Jewish community. I remember bursting into tears for no reason when he told me. I often cried now with no good cause. Or for reasons that were hidden deep inside Midnight’s grave.
Locked out of their bedroom by Mother, Father was forced to sleep on the sofa in our sitting room. We stopped inviting guests over and even intimated to Benjamin that it would be better if he stopped joining us for our Friday night meal for the time being.
Mama would often watch me from her window as I romped with the dogs in the garden. If I waved or called up to her, however, she would draw her curtains.
Then, one Tuesday morning in the middle of January, she walked into the kitchen dressed in the elegant blue silk dress she normally wore to dinner parties. Gripping her pearl necklace, she announced she was off to market. I expected Father to be as curious as I was as to this change in her disposition, not to mention her odd choice of attire, but he was too relieved to ask any questions. Jumping up, he rushed to her and pressed his lips to her cheek as though welcoming her home from a dangerous journey.
That night she admitted my father back into their bedroom.
I hoped that she had recovered from her initial shock and grief, but over the next week or so she seemed like a frail creature preparing for a long winter. She scurried about the house from task to task as though a pause to rest might prove her undoing. Once, she mistakenly prepared tea with oregano and another time left jagged pieces of shell in our supper of eggs, codfish, and potatoes. This indicated to me that her mind was on a great voyage elsewhere. Perhaps she was off to England to lay roses from our garden on Midnight’s grave. I know that I often
