47. Sam The Arbor
Sam: The Arbor
Esconder : It isn’t possible, technically speaking, to render a thing invisible. But it is possible to conceal things in plain sight, and esconder is the simplest means of doing so.
—Euphemia Parra, Encantos de palabra (translation mine)
A short time later, we were once again aboard the horseless carriage, now with rather less space on the driver’s seat.
But Clem needed to see the road to drive, she and her mother wouldn’t be parted, and I certainly wasn’t going to ride inside.
As a result, we were all crammed together, Clem and Lydia very happily so, while Clem clung to her mother and directed the carriage simultaneously.
“I’ve been so worried for you,” Lydia said to Clem. “That last note you sent me…”
“I was unwell,” Clem admitted. “Very unwell. The realm did something to me. You saw, Sam,” she said to me.
“You lost yourself a little bit,” I agreed. “I was quite worried as well.”
“But now you seem better,” Lydia observed. “What changed?”
“It was Sam.” Clem smiled. “Sam reminded me of who I was. None of this could have happened without him.”
Lydia wrapped one arm around Clem and one around me. “Thank the spirits,” she said softly. “Especially you, Sam.” I was touched by this, but I could not say anything in reply, given the speed of Clementine’s driving.
“And now to the last part of our plan,” Clem said. “Hello, I almost missed the turn,” she announced, veering the carriage suddenly off the main road and onto a gravel path.
I looked around. “What? Where are we going?” I spotted a small plaque, bright green with verdigris, on the brick pillar that marked the entrance; it read “The Arbor.”
“This is where the Ainsleys live,” Clementine said by way of explanation, which, in fact, explained nothing. She allowed the carriage to slow its pace.
“Walter and Iris?” I asked, perplexed.
“Walter, Iris, Bernadette, and Georgina. I believe they go by Bernie and George,” Clem noted.
“Their parents are on a European tour, so George is in charge. She’s a painter, the oldest, and very reliable.
I think you’ll like her, Sam. And Bernie…
well, Bernie is a little strange, but in an endearing way. ”
I struggled to understand the relevance of the Ainsley sisters to our present situation as the carriage rolled along the gravel path.
The house came into view. It was a sizable brick Georgian that stood sedately beside a massive copper beech.
On the other side, where a series of gardens descended toward a lawn overlooking the ocean, was the eponymous arbor laden with Concord grapes.
Clem leaped down from the carriage and began walking briskly toward the arbor.
Lydia and I followed. The house was oddly familiar.
I had never been to it, but somehow I had seen this estate before.
Under the arbor, I could see as we approached, three women sat at the patio table.
I recognized one of them as Iris, and the other two were certainly Bernie and George.
One, who was gazing at the distant ocean view with a dreamy expression, wore a peculiar dress of crushed green velvet that looked faintly historical.
Her hair was braided and gathered into buns behind her ears.
The other sat comfortably back in her chair, arms crossed over a paint-splattered apron.
In the formal gardens just a few steps below, a very odd couple walked arm in arm, considering the last blooms of the season.
Walter was in shirtsleeves and a vest, for the afternoon was very warm.
On his arm was a woman in a pink dress who wore, of all things, a visored helmet.
They walked slowly, leaning toward each other, and anyone with an ounce of perspicacity would have seen at a glance that they were fond of each other.
A few feet away from them, near a boxwood hedge, stood a short figure entirely clad in armor. It was Erauso.
I was so confounded by the sight of Erauso that I was momentarily distracted from all other considerations. Erauso? But why was Erauso here, of all places? How had he arrived? When? And whom was he protecting?
At the sound of Clementine crunching on the gravel walkway (Lydia and I were soundless), the residents of the Arbor turned, one by one. “Clem!” Iris exclaimed, jumping up. “We heard. We heard all of it. George was in Salem and brought the news.”
George was apparently the paint-splattered sister, and she rose to her feet with a smile.
“Congratulations, Clem,” she said warmly.
But she said nothing more, and everyone was now looking at the helmeted person on Walter’s arm, waiting for her reaction.
Lydia drifted toward her, eyes bright, as if drawn by a magnet.
The woman on Walter’s arm pulled away from him. When she spoke, her voice, which was already muffled by the helmet, quavered. “Can I really take it off?” she asked.
“Yes, dear,” Lydia said, drawing close to her. She herself helped to pull the helmet carefully upward, revealing a crushed pile of messy brown hair, a pale face, and brown eyes brimming with tears. It was Rosetta.
I realized with shock why the place around me looked familiar. I had seen it in Clem’s thoughts. I had seen Rosetta here, holding hands with Walter, in Clem’s thoughts.
Where Clem had wept silently on her mother’s shoulder, Rosetta sobbed without restraint, causing Walter beside them to draw out an embroidered handkerchief—for his own tears, which he dabbed at quietly.
Bernie also appeared quite overcome, and she reached for her linen napkin and blew her nose.
George and Iris exchanged looks of satisfaction.
I turned to Clem, utterly baffled and incensed. “Explain,” I demanded. “Rosetta is alive? But how? I was there—I saw the stones strike her.”
Clem turned to face me, her expression remorseful. “That, dear Sam, was my mother. Disguised as Rosetta.”
I stared at Rosetta. “That’s why Roy couldn’t find the body.”
“It couldn’t be helped. I knew from the moment Rosetta saw a semblance of our father’s spirit outside the window that the stones would come for her.
I needed everyone—as many people as possible—to believe that she’d really died.
Even Wister. Even Roy. I knew the Cisneros Society’s thews would be searching for her. ”
“And they would see her reflected in someone’s thoughts,” I realized.
“Yes. Rosetta’s helmet is made of lead. That would protect her from being visible to any thews. And I had to hope that the Ainsleys wouldn’t draw their attention. We’d only just met them, after all.”
I pondered all this in silence. “But when?”
“I brought her here on the night of the fifteenth.”
The fifteenth. That day, and the next, I’d been with Roy, leading him all over Salem and Boston to identify members of the Society. “And your mother took her place,” I said, putting the pieces together.
“Only for a short while, so that Throckmorton wouldn’t notice.”
I shook my head. “And I thought I was watching you closely.”
“I was surprised, too. When you thought I’d come to the realm for Rosetta.”
“You deceived me,” I said quietly.
Clem took my hand and looked at me earnestly. “Sam. I’m so sorry I couldn’t tell you; Mother swore me to secrecy. Do not tell a soul, were her words. I had to comply. I did almost tell you, by accident.”
“You did…” I said slowly. “I saw her here with Walter in your thoughts. And you said you felt fear for her, not grief. But when she died…or seemed to die. That sorrow…”
“Was real,” Clem said solemnly. “It was my mother I held. The mother who had been stolen from me, whom I hadn’t held for seven years.
And Sam, I didn’t know then if the ruse would work.
Or if I would lose Rosetta all the same.
I have feared that until today. Every day since we returned from the realm, I have feared that they would find her.
” She glanced across the garden at Rosetta.
“And for a time, I’d given up. When I lay in the lilac room at Keel House, I had almost accepted it.
That they would find her. That I could do nothing to stop it.
” She turned back to me, and I saw in her eyes the truth of it.
“I understand,” I said, slowly reconciling myself to the deception. “But then if you didn’t go to the spirit realm for Rosetta, why did you go?”
Clem searched my face. “You don’t know?”
“No.” I truly didn’t. And then she showed me her thoughts: a strange jumble of impressions, all of them about me.
I sat by her bedside in the lilac room; I smiled at her in the kitchen at Keel House; I wiped the dirt from her face, calling her name, on the lawn of the Manse.
I recognized myself in her thoughts, but I had never seen myself that way.
“Sam,” Clem said quietly. “When I was in danger, you warned me; when I was alone, you comforted me; when the entire might of Cisneros was arrayed against me, you gave me strength.” She smiled, a tender smile that I didn’t recognize and that made my stomach drop.
“I didn’t know who you were, but I could feel who you were. So I went there to find you.”
There was a strange sensation in my chest, a peculiar feeling similar to what I’d felt when Clementine took the shroud: a sudden lightness, as if I’d just given a part of myself away.
I couldn’t think how to reply. I took Clem’s face in my hands, and she didn’t recoil at the coldness of my fingers.
Her eyes met mine; she smiled. I leaned forward and pressed my forehead to hers.
A laugh from Rosetta drew us apart. She and her mother were pulling Walter into their embrace. Clem put her arm around my waist and leaned against me.
There we were: two souls, standing together, watching the sun set over the autumn garden.