The Book of Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page B

blanket beneath my lover and me. I looked like a wild creature.
    The night, too, was wild as I hurried towards our meeting place. The wind that had fretted round for months was rising. I called Branco’s name, softly at first, then greatly daring, louder and louder.
    There was no reply, and I drew close to the shack where he had taken shelter. Throwing caution to the winds I gathered myself together and ran.
    In the evening light, the door hung open on its rusting hinges, banging forlornly backwards and forwards. The room was empty. There was no sign that I could detect at first of his few possessions. The straw mattress that we had lain upon had been ripped open and its contents were strewn over the floor. My foot caught in the pitcher he used, crumpled as if a boot had been placed on it.
    I looked around in disbelief, as if somehow I could make himmaterialise from the draughty corners of the room. There was a box on its side where he had kept a picture, a little daguerreotype of a woman with shining wings of black hair and a close and secret look on her narrow face, the woman I knew to be his mother. She was gone.
    I knelt on the floor and began to cry. I don’t know how long I stayed there but it was quite dark when I got to my feet. As I walked home the shadows were menacing and I was afraid; I felt I was being watched from behind every tree and log.
    When I entered the house my mother was sitting by the fire rocking, backwards and forwards, not looking up as I came in.
    ‘There is broth made. Sit down and eat some.’
    ‘I don’t want anything.’
    ‘You may not, but you’ll have it. You look like a scarecrow.’
    ‘That’s my business.’
    She had lumbered to her feet, and her voice was raised. She had never shouted at me before.
    ‘Pull yourself together, girl. Stop all of this.’
    ‘Stop what, mother?’ I knew she meant my tears which had started again, but there was nothing I could do now about that.
    ‘Everything. This unseemly crying and noise, this perversity, this … this man, this roadmender. You hear me?’
    ‘Oh aye, I hear you all right, mother.’
    ‘Or I tell you, the wrath of God will strike you dead.’
    Like a voice from some other place, I heard myself answer her. ‘He’s already killed me. I’m dead now.’
    ‘That’s enough. You’ll not take the name of the Lord in vain. No more of this wild talk.’
    I looked at her trying to unravel what she was saying. I felt so tired. The fire cast its flickering light on her. I thought she looked crazy, but then I knew that I was seeing myself reflected in her.
    ‘I cannot stop, mother, I cannot.’ I could hear myself again, bleak and piteous.
    She picked up the poker. I thought she was going to strike me. ‘You’ve heard of the five foolish virgins?’
    ‘What have they to do with me?’
    ‘Who knows? When the hour comes it might be too late.’
    ‘Mother, it is already too late.’
    There was a silence in the room. At last she said in a whisper,‘Too late? You do not mean a word you say, lass. You don’t know what you mean.’
    I did not reply, steadfastly watching the fire. It is the heat in the room, I thought, the rising wind outside, the sound of a defiant heart beating, and hers, plodding its way towards eternity; we are locked into this room with madness and no way of escape. Her voice had become pleading. ‘Tell me you do not mean it, Maria, my beautiful girl. Tell me.’
    And to ease her pain which was overwhelming me I said, ‘I do not mean it, mother.’
    ‘Aye.’ She rocked backwards and forwards, not just the chair but her whole body. ‘Aye, that’s better. You, you’ve been touched by the hand of the Man, by Norman McLeod himself.’
    ‘He died before I was born,’ I said, sick of the old notions that were in conflict with anything that seemed important to me now, yet too weary to contradict her any more.
    ‘Yes, but don’t you remember all that I told you of it when you were a bairn?’
    ‘Tell me