xxxiii. In which Charlotte sees her father’s portrait #2
“Don’t think there’s anything of Maggie’s to find.
If she’d been here recently like your brother, likely she’d’ve been in the sketches, or we’d’ve seen something sitting right out in the open.
Less’n she took everything with her and got home, but I didn’t come after her until a good week after she was supposed to’ve returned.
Told you, I know I’m probably looking for a corpse.
For a moment, those sketches made me think . . . but she wasn’t in ’em.”
She ran a hand through her hair. She was seated precariously, one leg swinging off the side of the chair. Charlotte touched
her thigh, hoping to comfort her.
Elspeth gazed at Charlotte’s fingers.
“Look, even if I hadn’t already tore the whole house apart . . . you need someone to take care of you. That’s me, long as
we’re together. Whether that’s till our business is done, or . . .”
Charlotte longed to know what words clung to the end of that or, but she didn’t ask. She patted Elspeth’s thigh, then folded her hands in her lap so she wouldn’t do it again.
Elspeth bit her lip. “Well, I’ll take care of you. And I don’t mind doing it, neither. That’s all.”
The water boiled. Elspeth retrieved Charlotte’s medical kit.
“Which plant? There’s one in here for pain, aye? Or more than one?”
“It’s . . .” Charlotte couldn’t remember the word. It danced at the tip of her tongue, but all she could come up with was
silverweed, and that wasn’t right. “Just bring me my kit.”
“Sure, you don’t expect a city slicker to know her plants,” Elspeth said with amiable belligerence, but she obliged, then
started closing the cupboards she’d wrenched open this morning.
“It’s not that,” Charlotte mumbled. “I can’t . . .”
She shifted the things in her kit aside until she found the plant. The name of the dried white petals floated frustratingly
close to the surface of her mind without breaching it.
Silverweed, her brain supplied unhelpfully, over and over. Silverweed silverweed silverweed silver—
She frowned, massaging her forehead with her knuckles. Elspeth turned from stuffing socks into their drawer and doubled back.
She crouched before Charlotte, touching her knee.
“Find anything good down there? God staring back at you, maybe? You’ve been contemplating it long enough to be took for a monk.”
Charlotte handed the not-silverweed to her. Elspeth took it with an air of bemusement.
“Meadowsweet, aye. That’s the one, is it?”
“Meadowsweet,” Charlotte echoed, both relieved to remember what the plant was (not silverweed) and mortified she’d been unable to do so on her own. “Yes. I couldn’t think what . . .”
It would help with the pain. Whether it would help with the brain fog was less certain.
She fell asleep in the armchair, warm with meadowsweet tea. When she awoke, sometime early that afternoon, the plant creature
had abandoned its spot by the stove and wrapped around the branches overhead. Elspeth was coming in from outside, stamping
snow from her boots and burrowed deep into her cloak and the borrowed fur. She shook them out and hung them on the pegs by
the door to dry.
“Built up some shelter for the animals. Ain’t snowing now, but you never know. How you feeling?”
Charlotte settled deeper into the chair. The tea had burned away the worst of the pain.
“My headache’s gone. And I think I can think now.”
Elspeth kicked off her boots and knelt before her with a soft groan. Her hands were freezing, her hair damp. Her eyes were
bruised like Charlotte’s so often were, like she was exhausted.
“You ought to warm up,” Charlotte said. “Is there any tea left?”
“So much pain earlier you couldn’t remember a plant, but it’s me you’re worried about.” Shaking her head, Elspeth peered into
Charlotte’s face. “You look better. Think the rest done you good.”
“I will learn nothing from this.”
Elspeth’s mouth twitched. She squeezed Charlotte’s hands and turned, stiffly, to build up the fire. Water dripped from her
braid into her collar. Orange light flickered on her face and arms, outlined her figure through her shirt. Charlotte looked
away, thinking of how she’d frozen Elspeth out the other day for suggesting they were the same. The way Elspeth had taken
care of her since, though Charlotte had been frequently unpleasant.
“There was this woman,” she blurted, in a low voice. Elspeth paused in sticking another log into the stove. “Ages ago, a couple
of years after John’s death. That is . . . I’d known for a long time that I . . .”
Her hands fisted in her apron. She’d never told anyone about this, not even Arthur.
“Her husband was a local boy. He’d moved to Glenwhistle looking for work, and he’d married her and brought her back to show
off to his family. She was . . .”
She’d had a laugh that went through Charlotte like music and a smile that left her desperate to do what she could to see it
again. Only Charlotte’s sense of propriety had kept her from making a fool of herself.
“Well, I—I wanted her.” Charlotte licked her lips. Admitting it felt like a crime. “I didn’t do anything about it—of course
I didn’t, she was married, and even if she hadn’t been—”
She hadn’t been sure which was worse: that she’d wanted a married woman or that she’d wanted a married woman. She’d thought the woman smiled at her more than at others, clasped her hand too long during the sign of peace, but she’d told
herself she was imagining it.
“After Mass one day,” she said, “she asked if she might speak with me in private. About a medical issue, I assumed, but she
took me around the side of the church and—”
The moment they were alone, the woman had pressed Charlotte up against the building.
Starving for the intimacy she’d shared with John, taken with this beautiful girl, at once elated and terrified that she might want what Charlotte wanted, Charlotte had touched her face.
The woman had taken her other hand and laid it on her bosom.
Elspeth turned to gaze at her. “She kiss you?”
Charlotte shook her head. “Her husband came around the corner looking for her.”
Elspeth whistled, long and low. “What happened?”
“Nothing, thank God.” Charlotte twisted her hands in her lap. “I was terrified, but she didn’t bat an eye. She told him she
had asked me to look at a rather concerning birthmark, and I managed to gabble something about it being nothing to worry about,
and she thanked me and took his arm and went home. They left for Glenwhistle the next day. I never saw her again.”
“Lucky for you.” Elspeth looked away; Charlotte was relieved. “Lucky nothing happened, I mean. Last time a man caught me with
his wife, I got a black eye for it. Didn’t even know she was married.”