I found myself thinking—as one does, at a certain age—that I’d rather like to have a funeral like this. Outdoors, among friends and family, with people who’d known me, whom I’d served for years. A sense of deep sorrow, yes, but a deeper sense of solemnity, not at odds with sunlight and the deep green breath of the nearby forest.
Everyone stood silent as the last shovelful of dirt was cast on the heaped grave. Roger nodded to the children, huddled mute and shocked around their father, each clutching a small bouquet of wildflowers. Brianna had helped them pick the flowers—and Mandy had of course insisted on making her own bouquet, a loose handful of pink-tinged wild clover and grass gone to seed.
Rachel stood quiet, next to Bobby Higgins. She gently picked up his limp hand and put a small bunch of the tiny white daisy-like flowers of fleabane into it. She whispered something in his ear, and he swallowed hard, looked down at his sons, and then walked forward to lay the first flowers on Amy’s grave, followed by Aidan, the little boys, Jem, Germain, and Fanny—and Mandy, frowning in concentration on doing it right.
Others stopped briefly by the grave, touching Bobby’s arms and back, murmuring to him. People began to disperse, drifting back toward home, work, dinner, normality, grateful that for now, death had passed them by, and vaguely guilty in their gratitude. A few lingered, talking quietly to one another. Rachel had appeared again beside Bobby—she and Bree had been taking it in unspoken turn not to leave him alone.
Then it was our turn. I followed Jamie, who didn’t say anything. He took Bobby by the shoulders and tilted his head so they stood forehead-to-forehead for a moment, sharing grief. He lifted his head then and shook it, squeezed Bobby’s shoulder, and stood aside for me.
“She was beautiful, Bobby,” I whispered, my throat still thick, after all the tears already shed. “We’ll remember her. Always.”
He opened his mouth, but there weren’t any words. He squeezed my hand hard and nodded, tears oozing unheeded. He’d shaved for the burying, and raw spots showed red and scraped against his pallid skin.
We walked slowly down the trail toward home. Not speaking, but touching each other lightly as we went.
As we neared the garden, I paused.
“I’ll—get some—” I waved vaguely toward the palisades. What? I wondered. What could I pick or dig up, to make a poultice for a mortal wound to the heart?
Jamie nodded, then took me in his arms and kissed me. Stepped back and laid a hand against my cheek, looking at me as though to fix my image in his mind, then turned and went on down.
In truth, I didn’t need anything from the garden, save to be alone in it.
I just stood there for a time, letting the silence that is never silent sink into me; the stir and sigh of the nearby forest as the breeze passed through, the distant conversations of birds, small toads calling from the nearby creek. The sense of plants talking to one another.
It was late afternoon, and the sun was coming in low through the deer palings, throwing dappled light through the bean vines onto the twisted straw of the skep, where bees were coming and going with a lazy grace.
I reached out and put a hand on the hive, feeling the lovely deep hum of the workings within. Amy Higgins is gone—is dead. You know her—her dooryard is full of hollyhocks and she’s got—had—jasmine growing by her cowshed and a good patch of dogwood nearby.
I stood quite still, letting the vibration of life come into my hand and touch my heart with the strength of transparent wings.
Her flowers are still growing.
Part Three
* * *
THE BEE STING OF ETIQUETTE AND THE SNAKEBITE OF MORAL ORDER
31
Pater Familias
Savannah, Royal Colony of Georgia
WILLIAM HAD BEEN HALF hoping that his inquiries for Lord John Grey would meet either with total ignorance or with the news that his lordship had returned to England. No such luck, though. Major General Prévost’s clerk had been able to direct him at once to a house in St. James Square, and it was with thumping heart and a ball of lead in his stomach that he came down the steps of Prévost’s headquarters to meet Cinnamon, waiting in the street.
His anxiety was dispersed the next instant, though, as Colonel Archibald Campbell, former commander of the Savannah garrison and William’s personal bête noire, came up the walk, two aides beside him. William’s first impulse was to put his hat on, pull it over his face, and scuttle past in hopes of being unrecognized. His pride, already raw, was having none of this, and instead, he marched straight down the walk, head high, and nodded regally to the colonel as he passed.