Lying in bed, looking at Landish who was asleep, Deacon thought about the night before. Deacon had heard Landish tell the Blokes that Mr. Vanderluyden wanted Deacon to live with him. “Surely,” Gough had said to Landish, “the only question you should concern yourself with is does Deacon want to live at Vanderland.” Mr. Vanderluyden had Goddie but he’d never made a contribution. He wanted a boy but he still didn’t like Mrs. Vanderluyden enough to make a contribution. Landish—though decks awash—had told the Blokes that Deacon might like to have the run of Vanderland—he could play in the whole house. He would still have dinner with Goddie but he wouldn’t go back to The Blokes when they were done. He would have his own big room. They were penniless on Dark Marsh Road. How would he like to go back to the world of business buckets, noblemen and wealth inspectors? No banquet halls. Baths in wooden tubs so small your head got stuck between your knees. Landish said he’d be set for life, to say the least. He said wealth wasn’t the worst thing you could abandon someone to. Or for. He said maybe Deacon would be all right if he went his merry way. Landish seemed to be still decks awash when he came to bed, but he’d said nothing to Deacon.
Deacon began to cry. He wondered if Landish had been speaking with Esse. Maybe she’d told him Landish would be better off without him.
Deacon felt like he did when Landish had been feverish, when his eyes were open but he didn’t know anyone was there and couldn’t hear him when he said his name, so it was like he was the one who wasn’t
there. He remembered looking at Landish and trying not to think about the Tomb of Time.
He thought about Vivvie, and his parents, and all the people in the Tomb of Time who were never coming back. If Landish left him, they’d each have their own path in Just Mist. They wouldn’t walk the same path anymore. He didn’t want Landish to go his merry way, but he didn’t want him to stay if he didn’t want to.
He got out of bed and shook Landish until he woke up. He told him he didn’t want him to go and Landish hugged him so hard that Deacon’s back sounded like when Landish cracked his fingers. Deacon wasn’t sure if the hug meant Landish wouldn’t leave him after all or was going to but didn’t want to say so.
“You should tell Mr. Vanderluyden that you picked me first,” Deacon said to him, his arms around Landish’s neck. Landish made a face as if he had said something silly.
“I picked you, too,” he said.
“Did you?” Landish said.
Deacon nodded.
“Now that Mr. Vanderluyden has spoken to you about you leaving, I’m terrified.”
“Yes,” he said. “So am I.”
“I can’t imagine that the two of you will ever be apart.”
“I try not to imagine it.”
She had said that when she first heard him speak she thought he was from Ireland. He had smiled. It made him feel better not only just to look at her but to listen to
her
voice, in which there was still some of the drawl of Virginia.
“Have you been too worried about Deacon to write?”
He shook his head. But he told her that the thought of losing Deacon had somehow led him to wonder if he would burn what he
wrote no matter how good he thought it was. She looked perplexed. “I’ve been thinking lately,” he said, “that the burning might be the most important part. Maybe I write only to keep myself supplied with pieces of my life that I can burn.”
Perhaps, he said, his book would be finished when it was literally “finished.” Done when it was gone. Perhaps he was slowly ridding himself of the urge to write.
She said it sounded like a gradual form of self-destruction. He thought about it. When he burned the pages, he felt frustrated, angry, but ultimately—he couldn’t find a word for it.
She had a friend among the governesses whom she was certain she could trust, she said. Her room, and all the other rooms in the wing, were empty in the middle of the afternoon.
“There’s a daybed by the window,” she said. “We can sit on that and talk and still keep watch on the outside steps.”
But the curtains were closed when he got there. At first, the window was the only thing other than her that he was able to make out in the gloom. She was sitting on the daybed, at an angle to him. He sat beside her.
He looked at her lips. It would have been necessary to bend forward no more than a foot to press his own against them.
She looked as if she was not wearing a corset. Her dress had shifted to one side and he could just make out a measure of bare skin beneath her hair. As he drew her towards him, she rose so that she wound up sideways on his lap. She put her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder, her forehead against his cheek.
As she nestled against him, he brought one hand up and brushed her hair back from her face, her mouth and neck. He inclined his head with the intention of kissing her, expecting her to raise her mouth to his, but she remained as she was except that she held him tighter and
pressed even harder against him, then pulled away so that, for an instant, he thought she meant to get up.
Her hair was not red. It was orange. The colour of a blasted tree. Thick tangled strands of it hung down across her cheeks and some of it was wet and matted to her forehead.
He was startled by how warm and soft her shoulder felt beneath his hand. He thought of how bereft he had been for so long of something so nourishing.
“Tug on my dress,” she said, staring at his throat. “Just tug and it will slide down off my shoulders.” He did as she said and she pulled her arms out of the sleeves until the dress, beneath which she was wearing nothing, was bunched around her waist. She held out her arms and he pulled her to his chest.
It was fall now, coming on to winter. Van had not spoken to Landish in months about his proposal. Landish hoped—and knew his hope to be in vain—that he never would again. Van was waiting, perhaps trying to wear down Landish.
It was almost a week since the night in the Rume when Van proposed that he leave Deacon with him. Landish had found himself staring at Deacon whenever he could without the boy noticing. And he saw him undefined by his relation to anyone or anything, a nameless, timeless child who existed in a kind of pure present, ever-ongoing, never-changing. The soul, unless you believed it was a register of sin, would be like that, wholly without context, inviolate, unaltered by a journey that ended in the Tomb of Time.
He remembered the look in Deacon’s eyes when they lived in the attic and he had told him he was going out but would soon be back. And no matter how many times he broke his promise that he would never get decks awash again, Deacon believed him when he crossed his heart and hoped to die. Each betrayal hit, surprised and hurt
Deacon like the first one. Nothing but another promise that Landish knew he wouldn’t keep could console him.
But Landish doubted that he could manage without the boy. Not even the company and love of Esse would sufficiently bolster his spirit to make up for the loss of Deacon. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure he could manage
with
the boy, even without Van’s threat to scuttle his every endeavour hanging over them. He didn’t want the boy to end up as the mass of people did, spending their lives at work from which they earned just enough to keep their bodies strong enough to do more work. He could think of no future that he was confident Deacon would even survive into adulthood, let alone enjoy, if he left Vanderland.
Sometimes, lately, at twilight, he would walk for an hour or so searching for clarity in his thoughts. He would stop on a height of land and survey the great house, the hundreds of columns of blue smoke rising straight up from the chimneys when the evening wind died down. And there would sweep over him the certainty that he was but a fleeting incongruity that would leave no sign in this place of ever having been here.
They went out walking on the Deer Park bridle path. Landish said he wasn’t decks awash, but he was groggy from the brandy in the Smoker that evening. Landish put him on his shoulders. He hadn’t done that for a while, so it felt special. There was snow along the edges and the trail was wet and muddy in the middle. Deacon grabbed Landish by the hair so he could lean back and look up at the sky. The snow had fallen straight down like it almost never did in Newfoundland, large flakes of the kind they used to get just before it rained. But large ones didn’t turn to rain when there wasn’t any wind, and the evening was very still.
He bet the first stars were out between the Blue Ridge and the Smokies.
“How much day is left?” he asked.
Landish said you couldn’t get lost on a path this wide or trip on one this flat so it wouldn’t matter how late it was when they turned back.
Landish said he might go away.
Deacon knew what he meant, but he said, “Where will we go?”
Landish said he wasn’t sure but he might have to go away for a while by himself. Not to go away for ever, like Mr. Vanderluyden had said, but just for a little while. And Deacon would be fine and well looked after, and play with the Blokes and Goddie. Then he’d come back to see him.
His voice was like it was the night he went out by himself to steal the hat. When he told him what to do if he wasn’t back by the time the sun came up. Or when he went out to visit one of the Fair Ladies and pretended he was looking for food to eat. Deacon’s heart beat fast and he thought he might be sick.
“How long?” he said. Landish said that sometimes you could never tell. It all depended on things you couldn’t know until after you were gone.
He said the two of them should leave tomorrow, pack up everything, say goodbye to everyone, and ask Mr. Vanderluyden to give them tickets like before so they could take the train to somewhere else this time, go back the same way but get off at one of the places that looked nice when they didn’t know where they were going.
Landish asked how they would get by. You couldn’t make a go of it if you had no money, no food, nowhere to stay. He said he’d never last in any kind of job that he could get and even if he did, how would he take care of Deacon? He said Deacon deserved better than a life of barely getting by or worse. Deacon said they would find another wealth inspector who would give them vouchers and they would walk around looking for odd jobs like they did before.
Landish said Deacon was too young to understand. You couldn’t spend your whole life in an attic.
Deacon said he could.
He told Landish to put him down, but Landish took hold of his legs and said no because he might run off, get lost in the woods and freeze to death. Landish said he would be better off without him. Landish sounded like he was crying.
Deacon said it wasn’t his fault that Landish stole Captain Druken’s stupid hat back from the man he gave it to. He said he bet Landish had to leave because of Captain Druken’s hat. They had to leave the attic because Landish stole the hat. They had to leave Newfoundland and come all the way to Vanderland just because Landish wouldn’t let the nobleman keep the hat even though he gave it to him. And now Landish was leaving again, and maybe the hat already arrived and Mr. Vanderluyden had it and he’d steal the hat again from Mr. Vanderluyden. Nothing mattered to him but the hat.
Landish stopped walking. Deacon pulled his hair with one hand and drummed on his head with the other. Landish pulled him off his shoulders and carried him in his arms so tight he couldn’t move. He tried to get away but Landish wouldn’t let him.
Landish said nothing was decided yet, nothing was decided. Deacon cried and Landish told him not to. Don’t cry, Deacon, don’t cry. I won’t leave. I changed my mind. I promise.
Deacon squirmed until he faced away from Landish. He threw back his head and hit him in the face. Landish dropped him.
Deacon landed on his feet and ran from the path into the woods where it was darker. “Stop, Deacon,” Landish shouted. “Don’t run too far, I’ll never find you.” Deacon kept running. He was lower than the lowest branches. He didn’t have to duck. There was light enough for him to see the trees.
He heard Landish cursing. Deacon hoped he was bumping headfirst into everything, getting scratches on his face. Soon he couldn’t hear him. He must have stopped so he could listen for him. Deacon stopped. He counted to a hundred twice until he was sure Landish had gone back to the bridle path.
Deacon wasn’t sure which way to go. He ran until he couldn’t see the trees in the deepening darkness. Then he walked with his hands in front of his face. He came out on the slope that led down to the stream that ran into Lake Loom. Olmsted’s stream. It was easy to find. The water was silver because of the moon.
He could walk around Lake Loom and then keep going straight until he reached the wall. Goddie said the road was just outside the wall. He wasn’t sure how far it was. Maybe farther than the Crosses. It was so cold and the moon was so bright he could see his breath. Palmer said that if you knew the sky well enough it became a kind of map that you could use to get where you were going, especially at sea but even in the woods if you went high enough above the trees to see the stars.
The lake was frozen and covered in snow except where it was broken by the stream that went beneath the ice about six feet from shore. He might make it to the wall if he could walk across the lake, but he didn’t think he would if he had to walk around it. There wasn’t a path. There’d be no moonlight in the woods. There might be other, deeper streams that he couldn’t cross or that he might drown in like Landish almost did when they lived on Dark Marsh Road.
Landish said he weighed so little that if he walked on water it would only come up to his ankles.
Deacon stamped on the ice with one foot. It cracked and water bubbled up. The ice was not much thicker than glass. He bet that in the daytime you could see right through it. He wished he could skate across. Goddie had skates but Landish had never bought him skates. It wouldn’t take long to skate across if you knew how.
He looked up at the moon. It wasn’t in the same place as before. It would get orange and bigger as it sank below the Ridge. Then there would be nothing but the stars. He looked behind him at Vanderland, high up on the hill. More than half the lights were on. He wondered what the Blokes were doing and where Landish was. He wished he was
in the Smoker listening to Landish making fun of Sedgewick. But then he thought about what Landish told him on the bridle path and he knew he was lying and was going away for ever. He looked up at the sky and shouted “Landish!” It felt as if he was shouting at the stars.