It’s down by the lake, he thought, tearing westerly through the trees. He flew over the gravel drive and splashed through the lakeside muck.
There he saw Glaser and Hardy out in the small rowboat. Glaser was standing and had a long pole that he kept pushing down into the water and then pulling up again. The other man used the oars to try to direct and steady the boat. A large lump like a soggy blanket was between them. Various servants stood on the far bank. Ploughman was stumbling from the direction of the house, slowed by her age and lack of coordination.
“No! More toward this side!” someone shouted from the lakeshore north of where Jonathan stood.
Hardy rowed this way and that as Glaser used his pole. Ploughman, now at the shore, began to talk with the others and then wailed aloud, her hands at her face.
What are they doing? Jonathan wondered, walking towards the people on the shore.
“There! My God! There!” Glaser pointed down into the water and Hardy rowed the boat nearer to the spot. Glaser cried out for Hardy to help him so he stood and the boat began to rock violently. They bent their legs to settle it and pulled up on the pole.
The people on the shore screamed and gasped as something like a humongous fish broke the water’s surface. It was caught on a hook at the end of Glaser’s pole.
“Too late, dammit!” Glaser shouted. “Too late!”
Muddle-headed servants. What did they drop in the lake? mused Jonathan approaching the group on the shore, peering intently at the mysterious lump. They’re always losing their heads over someth…
The lump had a purplish sleeve and at its end was a hand. A large, pale hand. Realization hit him.
Father!
At the same instant, the sight of a dark-haired head lolling atop the soggy thing in the boat became clear.
Will!
A scream unlike any sound Jonathan had ever made ripped out of him and all the eyes that had been staring at the boat turned to him. Ploughman began to run at him at a speed that no woman with her physique could possibly reach.
“Don’t look!” she screamed. “Don’t look, Master Jonathan!” And then she was there, tackling him with her doughy form, blocking out the terrifying sight.
Standing, she dragged him to his feet, and began pulling him toward the house. He wailed the whole way there, weak-kneed and stumbling, but did not resist her determined grip. Up the steps they climbed, both of them shaking.
Once through the door and in the entryway, Jonathan stiffened and pushed Ploughman’s hands away. Leaning over, he clutched his stomach and heaved an enormous amount of dark red vomit onto the black and white checkered floor.
He stood, staring down into the foul muck of too many half-chewed cherries, remembering the stillness of the sodden lump in the boat and the soggy mass at the pole’s end.
Will and Father…
His stomach emptied itself again.
* * * * * * *
One week later, Jonathan sat on a bench beside Sophia at the grotto. His swollen eyelids felt heavy and his nose was rubbed raw.
Gone, he thought, the emptiness of the word pinging around in his hollow core.
Gone.
Before this week, he had never cried in front of Sophia, but now he did so shamelessly and sometimes noisily. Her own tears fell silently, slipping down her cheeks unchecked, falling onto the front of her black velvet bodice.
They had returned from the churchyard hours ago and the sun was setting over the horrible lake. The sinking sun reminded him of the coffins being lowered into the freshly dug pit.
He raked the arm of his jacket over his nose, the sleeve rough with dried mucus.
“Sir Jonathan,” said a voice behind him.
Jonathan turned to see Pryor, clad in his black servant’s wear, standing a few feet away.
“Sir Jonathan, Lady Clyde wants to see you in the blue drawing room.”
Instinctively Jonathan grabbed Sophia’s hand and the two children silently rose from the bench, turning toward Whitehall.
“I wonder why me and not both of us,” mumbled Jonathan.
Sophia shrugged one shoulder, tightening her grip on his hand.
Their steps echoed loudly across the entry hall and down the passageway to their mother’s favorite room. When they entered, Sophia stayed by the door.
“Come here, my boy,” Lady Clyde said from her settee, extending her arms to Jonathan. Her eyes were swollen and red and her head seemed dwarfed by the largeness of her pregnant belly.
Jonathan felt new tears well in his eyes as he crossed the room to her.
“This has been a terrible time for us. And for you to see…what you saw. I’ll never forgive the servants for allowing that.” She pulled him down next to her and put her arm around him.
He felt stiff and awkward.
“Did you like the monument?” she asked. It took a moment for Jonathan to realize she meant the granite angel that had been erected at the graves. He shrugged, thinking her question odd.
“We can go there and see their gravestone and think…” she paused, her voice gruff, “…of the goodness we had in them.” She patted his knee with one hand and stroked his head with the other. He relaxed a little, leaning his shoulder into her.
“Will you go…” he hiccupped as he tried to stop the tears. “Will you go with us tomorrow morning?”
“Yes, darling,” she crooned. “We’ll go together tomorrow morning. We’ll go whenever you’d like.”
Jonathan couldn’t remember ever crying in his mother’s arms before. Once when he was very small, he had fallen on the gravel getting out of the carriage and skinned his knee. She had been right there so he had reached for her.
“Nurse?” she had said. “Oh, blood. Mind my
