Amy Snow (54 page)

•  •  •

We sit and spin dreams together, just as we did in Bath, except that now I need not censor what I say. Now I will not be sent off to some strange city at a moment's notice. It is as though a vast purple thundercloud has moved off from above me, taking with it all the tension from the air and a headache I hadn't known I suffered.

We sit close, heads bent together in the sunlight, until we hear the grassy thrumple of Joss's cart in the lane. He sizes up the situation in a glance.

“Amy, have you dispatched my wife and children so you may entertain your lovers again?” He leaps to the ground and throws the reins over the horse's head. “I jest, of course! Sir, you must be Henry.”

“No, sir, I am Randolph Boniface,” replies Henry with a worried expression.

I swat his arm. I am sure there will be no peace when these two become acquainted.

Before we leave York, I light a fire in my room, even though it is June and so hot that every window in the cottage must be open else we could not breathe. I have known for some time that I must do this. I take all of Aurelia's letters and I burn them.

First of all, those early letters, full of desperately constructed lies—the anxiety they concealed and the anxiety they caused. I watch them blaze, blacken, and vanish. And then the clues in the treasure hunt, one by one. I read Aurelia's final words to me for the very last time.

This is good-bye at last, little bird . . . I can call you “little bird” no longer . . . I love you . . . Now and forever . . .

It seems impossible, still, that the immense part she has played in my life is at an end. Yet so it is.

“Good-bye, Aurelia,” I murmur. “I love you too. Thank you, dear friend, for everything you have given me.”

I watch as all her words and all her secrets turn to ash, taking with them as they crumble the truth of Louis Capland's parentage. It is the story of one small life—so cherished, so loved, and so vital—obscured forever.

My own chronicle, too, I set alight. I take the pages that I have covered with heartache and memory, and a sizable sheaf they make. It is all here, my life to date: nights in a scullery and days by a stream; a great friendship and a painful loss; exile and a quest. My history, my hopes, and my heartache. Questions—some of which have been answered and some of which may never be. They flare and flourish. And suddenly they are gone.

I say my farewells not only to the treasure hunt, not only to Aurelia, but to this whole part of my life: seventeen years, begun in snow and ended in flames. I shed my misfortunes in the fire; they do not define me. And in this way I claim another blank canvas on which to paint my identity—and my future.

For it is as Aurelia said: death is one thing, but life is quite another.

Twickenham, April 1849

An announcement appears in the
Twickenham Herald
that Mr. Henry Mead of Hertfordshire and Miss Amy Cardew of Twickenham are to be married on the twenty-ninth of that month. And duly we are.

I am married from Mulberry Lodge, where I have spent the intervening months. I wear a striking gown of bridal silver with a stole of pale-green silk, embroidered with forget-me-not. The reception is held in the garden, from whence guests may easily stroll to the river. Edwin Wister gives me away in the local church and Madeleine is my matron of honor. Little Louisa, now five, does sterling service as flower girl; Michael is an usher.

The ceremony is attended by assorted Meads and Crumms, by the Caplands of York, by Mrs. Ariadne Riverthorpe, resplendent in saffron silk and yellow diamonds, and by the entire Wister clan, of course. The number of Wisters at Mulberry Lodge remains unchanged; Constance gave birth to Caroline Aurelia in January (a month I am determined to learn to love), by which time Madeleine had already left home. She became Mrs. Renfrew in the autumn. My joy at being there for both events may be readily imagined.

And now I am Mrs. Amy Mead. It seems that my wintry identity has thawed altogether, from Snow to a name I am pleased to fancy invokes summer—for who ever thought of a winter meadow?

When it came to placing the notice in the
Herald
, we chose a name that ensured there would be no written record of Amy Snow. Anyone who ever knew aught of my parentage could never find me now. But I am long reconciled to that.

I have, after all, obliged the Vennaways. Amy Snow is quite, quite lost, vanished like a melted footprint.

Hatville Court, May 1848

The road back to Hatville is long and straight. It strikes me as laughably symbolic. My daughter was right about one thing. Women may be reared to be virtuous, innocent, and pleasing but there is no reward for it in this life.

I do not know why I went to Bath to find Amy Snow. At any rate, it was fruitless, like so much in my life. I return still burdened with my secret. It is not such a sensational secret: the world is not transformed for the keeping or the sharing of it. 'Tis merely that loose ends chafe.

The roofs of Hatville are visible on the horizon above the trees, although some miles remain of this road that does not curve or yield. I remember the Bible story about walking the straight way, the narrow way, never deviating nor meandering; it is what I have done. All my life.

It is what I tried to teach Aurelia, but she would not learn. I am as mystified as ever about my daughter. I do not know how she came to be born of Charles and me, for she was nothing like her father and, except in appearance, nothing like me. I was a very great beauty.

Once, the fact gave me such pride and pleasure. Of all my sisters I was the brightest and best. The eldest of seven girls, all born within a year or two of one another. I scarce had time to draw breath and look into my mother's eyes before a sister came screeching into the world, then another and another . . .

When I married, I never doubted that I would produce a brood of children. Charles and I were both awash with siblings and I was young, strong, and healthy. “A man's dream,” he told me on our wedding night. As he ripped open my corset, I turned my face towards the wall.

•  •  •

My first pregnancy, seventeen months after marriage, was the most wonderful thing that could possibly have happened. When I told my husband, he snatched me up and whirled me around in a boyish, joyful way. He looked at me with a tenderness I had never seen before.

Parents, his and mine, rained congratulations upon us, and I could feel the collected sigh of relief. There would be an heir to Hatville after all.

Perhaps no child could survive such a mighty weight of expectation. At any rate, mine was lost two months later in a flurry of blood.

There are no words to describe what I felt then.

It was scarce a month before Charles resumed his conjugal visits, though the doctor bade him wait longer. My body and spirits were ravaged and sagging. Four months later I was again with child. This one stayed with me only four weeks. In any case, I could not feel for it what I had felt that first time.

Then a new possibility suggested itself to me, a new life to dread. Instead of worrying that I would never conceive, I worried that my body would be put through this endless cycle of hope and loss, hope and loss, on and on throughout the years. Even if I did birth a child, one would not be enough, and so it would begin again. That was the first time I started to feel that my life, perhaps, was not a bearable thing.

Two more years, and two more children vanished before I could grasp the reality of them. One stayed for two months and one, cruelly, for five. Four sons or daughters, but I never saw one face. Vanished. Melted away as though they had never been, and I thought my suffering heart must break.

And then, the miracle. It happened six years after my marriage—six years during which the Vennaways senior believed their line was fatally compromised. I conceived again and
this
time, month after month after secret, silent month crept by; Aurelia was born. My child!

Charles despaired that she was a girl, but I would not change one thing about her, not even that. As a baby, she was a true cherub: ruddy gold curls, a mouth as pink and sweet as a kiss, and wide violet eyes that never changed color or faded.

She looked just like me. In her I saw all my second chances. She was so lively, pleasing, and merry that she reconciled her grandparents to her sex to some considerable degree. Despite everything, I had succeeded in changing our situation. A girl, at least, could be married, and a girl such as this could be a treasure indeed.

Yet we continued trying. I conceived again and again, as if my body had learned, from Aurelia, that it could indeed do this thing. The day Aurelia brought Amy Snow to the house, mewling, blue, and hideous, my seventh pregnancy since Aurelia's birth had recently ended.

When Amy was laid before me on the Indian rug, wrapped about in my daughter's sky-blue cloak, I was already weary, wretched, and stretched taut to the utmost degree. Perhaps that is why all I could think as I looked at the babe was, “My son would not have been so unappealing. Why is that child here instead of him?” I could find no compassion in my heart. I believe it was all wrung out of me. After all, small lives, dead before they'd begun, were commonplace to me.

•  •  •

Amy Snow was a thorn in my side from the beginning, contaminating Aurelia with her unsavory birthright and the offensive ease with which she slid into the world. Marriage, love, duty, within the best families, are not like that. They are hard. Hard fought for, hard come by, and
hard
.

I knew the fact that she was found on our estate prompted talk. The gossip was all that she was Charles's love child, placed on Hatville snow to shame him, but I knew the truth. The shame was intended for me.

Everyone speculated about Amy, my fanciful daughter most of all. But the truth was that no one knew where Amy came from apart from her mother. And me.

•  •  •

During the long years of my suffering I had, as befitted the lady of Hatville Court, visited the poor: handing out baskets, dispensing trite courtesies, and so on. I cannot say I enjoyed it. My manner with those people has never been easy. I believe they could sense my discomfort and scorned me for it. The differences are so very great.

However, I was able to make a connection with one young farm girl. She looked forward to my visits, and for my part I found them not so uncomfortable as the rest. I believe she admired my beauty and refinement, and had some aspiration towards improving herself.

I knew I must not encourage her in that, for her father was a dairyman and her mother likewise an ignorant nobody. The world would never favor her. She was not especially lovely to look at, although she had an open, frank manner and an unruly thatch of beautiful golden hair the color of corn. Her name was Sophy.

One day, in May of 1830, I found the girl alone in her cottage in bitter distress. Through her tears she spilled out her sorry tale, one snuffling fact at a time; she was, of course, with child.