Read Online BONE HOUSE by Betsy Tobin - Free Book Online Page B

village; she did not dream of faraway lands or foreign peoples, nor did she aspire to any other life but the one she inhabited. She accepted Dora for what she was, but granted her no other past. Once when I asked her why Dora had come across the sea, she looked at me a little strangely, as if I had spoken some heresy, and said that Dora had found her place within our village. “But what of her own people?” I persevered. “We are her people,” replied my mother, and with that she rose and turned her back on me, as if to stifle any further questions in my mind.
    So I took my questions to Dora herself, asking her why she’d come so far across the water to settle in a strange land. She looked straight at me then, and her expression deepened, as if I’d vanished right before her eyes—for suddenly her face was taut with memory. She stayed that way for several moments, and then she blinked and looked at me anew. “The world holds many lives for us,” she said finally. “And in the end, I chose to lead this one.” She spoke slowly, choosing her words with care, as if the truth was too fragile to reveal. Or as if she must temper her words for my ears.
    As a child of nine or ten, the idea that one could choose one’s destiny made me almost dizzy with desire. I was too ignorant, too naive, or perhaps too stubborn to see how uncomfortably this notion sat within my mother’s understanding of God or man or the nature of things. I knew only that it was strange and desirable. Now the idea frightens me, for I have learned with age that it contains seeds of truth and possibility. And there are times when I feel the stirrings of my childhood swell and rise within me, but always they are accompanied by fear, so much so that I often think that there are two people who dwell within me: my mother and myself.
    I wake in the predawn light feeling stiff and uneasy. Half asleep, I grope beneath my cushion for the purse of gold, but my fingers scrape the empty sheets and claw at nothing. I sit bolt upright,rubbing my eyes, wondering if I dreamed of its existence. And then I check the floor beside my bed, where I see that it has fallen during the thrashings of my sleep. I reach out to retrieve it, and clutch it to my breast, my heart beating wildly. For the first time it occurs to me that to have so much wealth in one’s possession is perhaps a mixed blessing. What will it mean for the boy?
    I rise and dress, stowing the purse deep within my petticoats. I have no other alternative for its safekeeping, as I will not have an opportunity to take it to the boy until that evening, and I do not wish to leave it in my room. Then I smooth my skirts and go below to take my breakfast with the others, the money brushing up against me like a whisper. When I reach the great hall the others are already hovered over breakfast. A bitter draft buffets their faces this morning, curtailing the normal talk and laughter at the table. The two girls are seated together in their usual place at one end, heads bowed and shoulders just touching. They remind me of two rodents worrying a biscuit. Alice, the elder of the two, is one year my junior but carries on as if she is half my age. The eldest daughter of a yeoman farmer in the village, she is short and heavyset with a ruddy round face and eyes set deep within their lids. She wears her straw-colored hair in a long thick plait down her back, and likes to toss her head about for emphasis, causing the plait to jump and writhe under her cap, like an angry snake. Lydia, the laundry maid, is two years younger, though much the more sensible of the two. She is not unpretty, though her face already bears the burden of hard labor, and her hands are rough and reddened from overuse of lye.
    Little George, the turnspit, sits next to her, his eyes still filled with sleep. He wears a long knitted scarf wrapped round and round his neck which reaches nearly halfway up his face. He is an orphan whom my mistress rescued from the