“Besides,” said my father, ignoring the question, “your conception of a life is fully Western, fully modern. We’ve lost that innate sense of service, no longer need to see our kings as gods. What need was there, back then, to live on without your maker, your captain, your light?”
Burial in itself was a difficult concept to me, though I supposed dark ground was preferable to being wild beasts’ vittles. In the graveyards, I knew, the buried waited for salvation, revelation, words that meant their lives would become more. What if, I once said, giggling, I was to dig them up and fulfill this desire? Would the dead wander, brittle-boned and fleshless, through the village? Would they take to their shrunken patellas and pray? Peter had not laughed, and told me not to belittle what others believed, which seemed contrary to other things he’d said to me. I could only assume that he was thinking of my mother, her own grave site, the life he had lived in her wake. I had asked him where she was buried, if we could make a visit to her grave. His only response was to shake his head and sigh. He seemed so lost, so dejected, so unlike the Peter I knew, that I did not press him further.
COEURS CROSSING’S GRAVEYARD was a jumbled collection of stones, a menagerie of styles and faded colors. A marble angel stood watch at the gated entrance, arms spread wide, her eyes closed, moldy wings whitewashed with bird droppings. The hill beside her had once been a sacred landmark, ravaged by raiders some centuries back, and among the neatly ordered graves the stubby foundations of a ruined church burst from the grass like old, worn teeth, its only lasting wall covered in moss, a reminder that the whole place was a palimpsest, dead buried upon other dead, the past never erased.
Matthew explored a small chapel at the cemetery’s center while I walked the rows of tombstones, looking for the spiral pattern, squinting to read names of the deceased. My mother’s grave I found in the far corner, surrounded by her fellow dead Blakelys—MARIAN JEAN, 1810–1852; JANE PATIENCE MULHOLLAN, 1690–1772; EMMA CORDELIA, 1812–1817. This last was just a child, and I pictured her miniature toes, her tiny fingers, her compacted skull decomposing under my tennis shoes. Below her name, carved in her stone, was a crude rendering of Peter’s triple spirals. Life, death, and resurrection. The interconnection of everything. A mother and her child.
And then I saw it, LAURA ANN, engraved in curling letters, a hairline fracture splitting the top of her stone. No spiral for my mother, no angel, no rose. No words of comfort, written mainly for the living, which might grant her guidance from her first life to the next. Marlowe settled by her side, curling himself into a fluffy ball, and I noticed that his coat was precisely the shade of the soil on which he lay.
“Mother,” I whispered, testing the word, bending to touch the rough granite.
What need was there to live without your maker?
At ten years old, in my princess-print pajamas and an old pair of rain boots, I had snuck out of the house a good four hours after my bedtime and used my touch to bypass the padlock on the door of our wooden garden shed. Peter found me rifling through broken flowerpots and tangled hoses.
“What is this, Maisie? It’s past midnight.”
I was looking for a shovel.
“And why do you need a shovel?”
“I need to dig up a grave.”
Peter, in his bathrobe and slippers, sank down next to me onto the floor of the shed. He sighed and adjusted his glasses.
“You need to dig up a grave,” he repeated.
Of course I did not dig up a grave, not that or any other evening. Peter patiently explained that it would take more than a child with a shovel to unearth my mother’s coffin and lift it from the ground. Even with the right equipment, if it were opened, I would not look on my mother, just a dry tangle of bones.
“How do we find her, then?” I asked him.
Peter tapped the side of his head with a finger. “In our memories,” he told me. He tapped the left side of his chest. “In our hearts.”
In the years following, I’d tried not to think much about my mother. In part, this was because it seemed she did not think of me—not now, where she lay buried under layers of soil in the Blakely plot, nor years ago at my conception. Had she felt me, there inside her? In those first few weeks of life, as I’d curdled to creation, had she sensed the small sprout of me suckling? A secret, Peter called me, a grand surprise she had been waiting to unveil. But he could not know that. We could not know she’d been aware of my existence at all.
Your mother waits for you. Ever since I’d first heard Mother Farrow’s tale of the mother whose love rescued her child, I had dreamed of our reunion. I’d imagined, despite myself, that one day I would wake to find my mother leaning over me, stroking my forehead, whispering her forgiveness, assuring me of her love. This fantasy required a sort of mental balancing act, a recognized delusion that sat opposite the scale from practicality. I had to cast aside all logic to even entertain the possibility, yet I knowingly found myself wondering: Was the murmur of the trees beside Urizon proof of Mother Farrow’s story, or merely the swagger of the wind trying to make itself known? In the indifferent light of day I knew my mother was not waiting for me, watching me. She’d never once come to offer me rescue from the prison of my body, nor the stifling confinement of the house. Hoping for her was foolish; it would only lead to heartache. And still, late at night, I would wake in my room in the darkness, and wish, despite myself, its walls might be her womb.
UPON ENTERING THE graveyard, Matthew and I had been alone, but now I saw that we’d acquired company. Several yards to my left, Matthew was making conversation with a stocky woman carrying an elaborate, ribboned wreath. To my right a figure crouched beside a headstone, uncomfortably close, having slipped in beside me and Marlowe without catching our attention. As he stood I could see that he was a young man, tall and handsome, with dark hair and a strong, dimpled chin. He had thin lips, a straight nose, thick, shapely eyebrows. The same man I’d seen speaking with the workers by the van, who had gone into the souvenir shop after Matthew. Up close he was undeniably handsome, reminding me of the figures on the covers of some of Mrs. Blott’s more torrid romance novels.
Marlowe followed my gaze and scrambled up, displacing dirt, catapulting two muddy front paws onto the young man’s chest and nearly knocking him over.
“Marlowe!” I said. “Naughty!” In such a place I should have had my dog on a leash, and now I silently blamed Matthew for not making the suggestion. To this new young man: “I’m sorry, he’s generally calmer. I hope he hasn’t disturbed your . . .” Was mourning the appropriate word to use? The stranger was far more self-possessed than the blubbering woman still speaking with Matthew, calmer than I was as I appraised my mother’s headstone, but why else would he have come to a graveyard if not to pay respects to the deceased?
“Not at all,” the young man said, stooping down to ruffle Marlowe’s ears. “You’re a pretty boy now, aren’t you?” He straightened and held out a hand for me to shake. “I’m Rafe.”
Flustered, I bent into a semblance of a curtsy, almost tripping on a partially concealed grave and grabbing a statue to steady myself. A bit of moss brightened. I took a step closer to Rafe, trying to hide its transformation.
“A fascinating family, the Blakelys,” Rafe said, gesturing toward the stone that had stopped me. “A sordid, tragic history, theirs. There’s a woman in the village that keeps up their old estate, though I’ve never heard of anyone visiting. Some remarkable rumors surrounding the family, as recent as that gravestone there, for Laura.”