Читать книгу Torn - Karen Turner - Страница 6

The old woman woke from a disturbed sleep. Her candle had reduced to a stub plunging much of the room into darkness. Her legs moved stiffly as she shimmied over the edge of the bed and her toes groped for her slippers. A bony hand supported the small of her back as she shuffled across the threadbare rug on the floor. Fumbling, age-crippled fingers lit another candle from the dying one, and she watched as yellow wax dripped onto a tin plate, before sticking the new candle upright in it.

The additional candle threw a wider arc of light around the room and her solid wooden dresser, mirror, and writing-desk, fashioned in a heavy bygone style, emerged from the thick shadows. Other than her bed, these were the only furnishings.

She stood like an arthritic question mark, muttering to herself while tying the belt of her robe. The local villagers did not think odd Meg’s habit of talking to herself. They had known this woman all her life – known her family and her history. Some more ancient ones remembered her mother. Yet Meg herself considered such conversations terribly odd and, in a curious irony, this was often what she muttered about. But not this night.

Her long grey hair, streaked with the straw colour of her youth, was escaping its plait and she blew it impatiently from her face as she drew up a chair and eased stiffly onto it – for she could no longer sit elegantly – and bunny-hopped closer to her writing-desk.

With a clean sheet of vellum, straight from its box, before her, she dipped her pen into its inkpot and did not hesitate; for months of deliberation had led to this sudden lucid knowledge of what she must do. She did not know why she felt such compulsion, nor did she care. But the responsibility was hers and it would be done this night.

On the top right-hand corner of the page she wrote the date – 14 March 1871 and her hand, steady now, seemed guided by its own will.

You have found the diary, as I knew you would. Are you a relative? I know not. But I have spoken with you in my dreams and I have seen you sometimes in my waking hours. You walk these halls, your lovely auburn hair swinging with your step. I know not if you are aware of me, for somewhere deep inside I know that you do not exist in my time. And for this reason I entrust this to you.

Allow me to introduce myself …

The old woman wrote without pause for a quarter of an hour. When finally she laid down her pen she did not read over the words, but spent several moments massaging her crooked fingers and contemplating a tin box on the dresser.

With the page held between thumb and forefinger, she flapped it dry before folding it carefully in half, and half again, then leaning her meagre weight on the desk, she pushed herself up and shuffled over to the dresser. She opened the tin.

The diary stared up at her. Its scuffed red-leather binding was aged but had survived quite well; its yellowed pages were intact. She held it with hands that had resumed their tremors and slipped the single folded page under its cover.

Back at her desk, she extracted a square of oiled canvas from the drawer and wrapped the diary with great reverence before replacing it in its tin, then with a gusty sigh of finality, closed the lid. Meg tucked the tin beneath her arm and took up her candle.

The elderly house groaned in the darkness as it settled for the night and Meg muttered about old ladies with creaking joints as she navigated the grand staircase with experienced steps.

At the bottom she turned right and tottered up the hall; left, down four steps; left again, four more steps, and into the kitchen. She gave no thought to the lavish meals prepared for important guests in this room a century and more ago. Nor did she recall the times when, as a small child, she had hidden beneath the cook’s table, waiting to pilfer a chunk of biscuit dough. She shambled through the room grabbing a serving spoon from its hook as she went.

The door to the kitchen garden was as stiff on its hinges as Meg, and its grinding protest sounded foreign in the quiet of the night.

She had always disliked the kitchen garden because of the grubs that crawled there, but tonight she was compelled to consign her burden to where it would remain safe.

Shadows seemed to detach from the walls and corners of the old house with a life of their own, following, watching … always watching …

Meg shivered.

She jerkily eased herself to her knees on the cold, hard ground. The winter’s snow had only recently melted and the earth remained frozen – her task would not be easy.

There was no breeze to extinguish her candle, and the full moon shone like a disk of ice between scudding clouds – a witch’s moon, someone from her past had called it, but she could not remember who, and had not the time to think about it now.

She grasped the serving spoon with two hands and found a relatively soft spot beneath a clump of long-dead thyme and began her work, first scratching away the weeds and debris, flicking at a snail or two, and when she had cleared a space, she set about digging.

She dug and scraped, heedless of the brittle dampness hanging in the air, and oblivious to the night creatures rustling and calling to their mates in the overgrown garden. Nor did she hear the laboured rasping of her own breath as she worked for what seemed like hours by the screaming of her back, until the tin sat comfortably in a grave about 10 inches deep.

Before filling in the hole she sat back on her heels. Running her finger over the lid of the tin, she felt her initials stamped there – MMW.

“Margaret Maria Washburn.” Her voice was a thin thread of vapour that lingered before her face. “Were it your life, would you have lived it differently?”

The night seemed to fall silent and Meg cocked her head as though listening. The shadows gave no reply.

The filling of the hole was easier than the digging. The old woman finished her dirty work, then rubbed and massaged her stiff joints into movement before heaving herself to her feet.

Spoon in one hand, candle in the other, and without a backward glance, she shuffled slowly through the kitchen door. The sound of it closing echoed resoundingly after her.