But Matthew did not come.
Chapter 33
Tuesday, 7 February, 1699
The bairn died first.
Still a month shy of his first birthday, he had caught a chill that soon turned to a fever and within the space of a few days he’d gone. And then Walter’s wife, weakened from grief and starvation, took ill with that same fever, and by the week’s end had followed her son to the grave.
Walter was inconsolable.
Barbara insisted on rising from bed for the burial, even though Archie did all that he could to forbid it. He cursed her red hair and her stubbornness, but she went anyway, leaning on Simon’s arm.
It was the last time she left the house living.
Now, the evening after Lily’s birthday in the second week of February, Lily was returning after taking Walter’s dinner to him. It had not been much but he’d been eating far too little, so she’d sat with him for company and made sure that he’d eaten it, and tried to keep him from resorting too much to his drink, and she had listened while he talked.
And walking home along the Shore as twilight fell, she’d seen a small boat drawing closer; heard the splashing of its oars and seen the warm light of its lantern. It had minded her exactly of the boat she’d seen that first time as a child, when she’d collapsed upon the ground in her despair and utter weariness and watched that light grow brighter, and heard Barbara’s voice say, “It’s a lass!”
Watching this boat coming nearer now, she saw two figures seated in it—one the boatman, rowing, and the other a cloaked woman. Then the woman turned her head and looked at Lily. It was Barbara, with her bright hair and her lovely face. She smiled.
And faded in the air as though she’d been imagined, leaving no one but the boatman, rowing steadily toward the harbor wall.
A chill gripped Lily’s heart, because she knew then what she’d seen. She spun around and ran for Riddell’s Close.
But she arrived too late.
In Barbara’s chamber, Archie had already closed her eyes. He sat beside her, with his hand on hers. His head was bent.
When he heard Lily’s footsteps, he half turned his head and she could see his own eyes were red-rimmed.
“Get out,” he said. And when she did not move, he stood and crossed to slam the door himself, to shut her out, to shut himself in with his private grief.
He was a hateful man and Lily could not pity him, but Barbara had been right. He’d truly cared for her, in his way, and it appeared she might have been the only person he’d allowed to reach that place inside him that had not completely frozen—that was still remotely human. And God help them all, now that Barbara was gone.
*
By Easter everyone had heard the news that the African Company had received word from its colony, being the five ships that sailed out of Leith had all landed in safety at Darien in the Americas, founding a town that was now called New Edinburgh, in the new colony named Caledonia.
Lily took the atlas of the world down from its shelf and used it to teach Maggie part of that day’s lesson. Archie’s atlas was not near as grand nor brightly colored as the one she’d loved to look at in the Graemes’ house, but it did show the countries and the seas, and Lily could show Maggie where the colony at Darien lay, not far above the curving coast that sheltered Cartagena. “Do ye see here, how this piece of land is narrow, in between the seas? Well, as it is, all ships that wish to sail to trade with India must either pass around the Cape of Good Hope, at the southern tip of Africa, or else go all the way down here, around Cape Horn, the southern tip of the Americas. But now, with Caledonia—that’s our colony at Darien—our company can bring ships in from this side, the Atlantic, and then carry all the cargo overland, because it’s not so far, and load it onto other ships that they have waiting at the other side, on the Pacific. D’ye see? ’Tis a much shorter way that will save time and make us the master of both seas, and of the route to India.”
Maggie became briefly enamored of maps, but not even that could take the place in her heart of the chivalrous knight Don Quixote. Although she could read his adventures herself, she still liked being read to, and when she was finished her lessons in writing, she claimed her reward of a chapter or two from her favorite book.
Lily was not bothered by the ritual. She was inclined, like Don Quixote, to escape reality awhile, because the world both outside and withindoors was increasingly unpleasant.
Walter was descending into drink, and Henry was depressed, and Simon had been sent off to recover payment of a bond four days ago and had not yet returned. The famine was continuing unaltered and it seemed to Lily every day that she was walking in a bitter wasteland. So many horses were dying all over the countryside and at the side of the road from starvation that there’d had to be a proclamation made to have them buried.