The Snow Song Page 4

  Still, be still, Edith told her worried mind. He will come back; you must believe it, you know it in your heart. He’ll be here before the first snowflake touches the ground. You must believe it.

  And another day passed and only now did she wonder why she’d never asked where he had come from. It was the simplest of questions. It seemed at the time unimportant for the cords that bound them wouldn’t be broken. But there was no one to ask. She didn’t even know his family name. He had told her he came from a town, that he had been educated; but in which city, he never said. He loved gypsy music and the outdoor life, and that had led him to become a shepherd, to learn the old ways. He’d told her that her grandmother was famous, that her stories had travelled far. Travelled where? She should have asked Demetrius so many questions and hadn’t, believing they would have a lifetime for answers. She had no answers.

  Panic engulfed her. What if he’d had an accident? How would anyone know? The village elders must send a search party to find him. She dreaded asking them but she had no choice.

  The head of the elders was the butcher and she was relieved he was standing behind his colleagues while she begged them to find Demetrius.

  ‘No,’ was their firm answer. ‘He is not from this village, not from this mountain. He knows little about our ways; he is not one of us.’

  ‘I am betrothed to him.’

  ‘Who says so?’ they asked.

  ‘My father gave his consent.’

  ‘He didn’t ask our permission. Were rings exchanged? Was there a betrothal supper?’

  ‘No, but none of that matters. We are engaged.’

  It was as if a wall was falling on her brick by brick, all hope being buried. Why wouldn’t they help? The answer was simple. She could see it in the butcher’s hand.

  He showed the elders the piece of paper Edith had signed.

  ‘No,’ they said again. ‘We will not search for the shepherd.’

  Shaking with rage, Edith let out a howl of pain. It came from deep inside her, it rose to fill the room, loud enough to wake the mountain giant.

  ‘Silence,’ said the elders. ‘Such a noise is unseemly. Perhaps we should set a date for the wedding.’

  ‘No!’ cried Edith.

  ‘Not another word, woman.’

  ‘I can wait until the snow comes,’ said the butcher magnanimously. ‘After all, that was the promise.’

  ‘There will be no wedding,’ said Edith.

  There was nothing more she could do. Only too aware of her powerlessness, she walked home with the elders’ word ringing in her ears, through her whole body. Silence. And she felt that the root of her tongue had begun to wither.

  ‘It’s what women do: bear sorrow quietly,’ she said to herself. ‘All our grief we keep hidden in empty wombs.’

  She would go down to the stream in the evenings and look up at the mountain, hoping, praying that Demetrius would appear.

  ‘You know what happens to maidens who stay out after dark,’ her father would shout. ‘The bloodless come for them.’

  Each day that autumn, she felt her words fall away. The cabinet maker, taking no notice, became more indebted to the butcher. She had tried to argue with her father but it was hopeless.

  ‘The butcher will destroy us if we don’t pay him back.’

  She noticed as she said it that the words weighed heavy on her tongue. It had become difficult to speak.

  ‘But I will pay him back.’ A lie, another lie. Her father’s words corrupted by deceit. ‘The debts are cancelled the minute you marry him,’ said her father.

  He was pleased to see the yard filled with logs and his cellar filled with wine, hams hanging in the kitchen and apples stored for the winter. And, better still, no sign of the shepherd.

  The mornings were thick with frost and the air smelled of snow. Every day Edith found the effort to talk harder. The walnut tree in the yard was losing its leaves just as she was losing her words. They fell from her one by one.

  She had to do her household chores, to listen to her father gloating. Even her friends seemed to take delight in Demetrius’ absence.

  The women were gathered at the miller’s house when the first snow fell. Edith stopped her work and looked out of the window at the sky. She didn’t realise she was crying.

  ‘I told you so. It’s your grandmother’s doing that you believe those fairy stories,’ Lena said. ‘But no golden prince is coming to save you from your promise. Perhaps he makes a habit of wooing young women.’

  Edith knew she no longer possessed enough words to quarrel with her friend. They were buried inside her, lying under the root of her tongue. The ill-advised oath was going to seal her fate. She thought of leaving the village but who in the town would employ a village girl? And what if Demetrius returned and found her gone?

  She couldn’t sleep. When her father was in bed she would wander round the house, haunted by a vision of Demetrius lying dead in a crevasse, his violin case by his side, his raggle-taggle dog gone. How did she know?

  ‘Some people see what others can’t,’ her grandmother had told her. ‘You are one of those.’

  One night Edith seemed to see her grandmother’s ghost sitting by the kitchen fire, rocking back and forth.

  ‘Where is he?’ she wordlessly asked the ghost.

  ‘Dead,’ crackled the fire. ‘The violin by his side and your gold coin in his hand.’

  When the first snow covered the village in its velvet blanket, Edith was silent. She had no more words in her to whisper against her teeth. Overnight her hair turned white. Speechless, she held the weight of his loss in her soul.

  Chapter Eight

  The Wedding Gown

  The cabinet maker let out a cry when he saw her. Genuinely frightened, his hands shook as he poured himself a glass of plum brandy.

  ‘What have you done?’ he said. Edith didn’t reply. ‘If you think this will stop the marriage, remember – you gave your word on your mother’s bible.’ Emboldened by the brandy, he shouted at her, banging his fist on the table. ‘Tell me – what have you done?’

  Still Edith said nothing. There being no mirror for her to gaze in, it didn’t matter if her hair was black or white though she took some pleasure in the look of horror on her father’s face.

  ‘Speak,’ he shouted.

  But Edith couldn’t speak. She’d woken that morning, her mouth a hollow cave, empty of sound. She watched her father, his arms flailing, and realised for the first time that this silence was a room she could live in. No one speaks to a closed door. There are two parts to a conversation.

  ‘Do you hear me?’

  No, she thought. Because I don’t want to. You can argue with yourself. Perhaps that’s who you’ve been arguing with all your life. She didn’t try to stop him when he poured another glass, his face contorted, his breath stale as he came close to her. Had she ever loved him, she wondered. She’d loved her grandmother.

  Her grandmother had told her, ‘If you don’t like the story you are telling yourself, make up a different one and change the ending.’

  Edith had tried to change the ending to her father’s story. Now she didn’t care. The only way to endure the rest of her life without Demetrius was to tell herself stories. Stories would be the furnishings of her silent room.

  Her father’s jaws moved up and down; he had an ugly set of teeth. She was surprised at how easy it was to let go of another person’s words. They became a jumble of sound, a mass of cockroaches, click-clicking, all marching in the same direction.

  ‘Your feet have always dangled above the earth,’ he yelled. ‘You’ve been like that since the day you were born. You will marry the butcher.’

  Demetrius, my love, when the ground has become too hard, when winter has crept into this house, when the darkness begins to fill the cracks with the ghost of a summer past, you will be in my heart, a snow song away. Never leave me.

  The cabinet maker didn’t know what to make of this silent, white-haired daughter. She seemed not to
care what he said to her, never showed any expression.

  His mind fragmented by drink, he feared that Demetrius had become one of the bloodless. Hadn’t he sucked Edith’s voice from her? It would explain the paleness of her skin, her white hair. In fear of an attack, the cabinet maker started to wear his shirt inside out.

  He was anxious that the butcher might think it unlucky to have a wife with white hair who stared at you instead of speaking. What worried him more was that his daughter might not keep her promise. Promises, as he knew all too well, were easily broken. He couldn’t remember how many times he had made a promise to stop drinking and not one of them had he kept. His excuse was that the devil was in the bottle. No matter what he did, the moment the cork was pulled, the devil came calling with no regard for the time of day. But surely a promise sworn on a bible in front of the mayor was a different matter? You couldn’t break that without holy consequences.

  He told the butcher about Edith’s hair and her silence. He kept his thoughts about the bloodless to himself.

  ‘I have two daughters,’ said the butcher. ‘They have more than enough to say. Why would I need a talkative wife?’

  The butcher thought back to when Edith had pleaded with the elders for help. Silence was what they’d demanded of her.

  ‘It’ll pass,’ he said and sent the cabinet maker home.

  When the villagers heard that a wedding date had been set, there was a collective sigh of relief.

  Still, the butcher wanted to be sure that her white hair had not detracted from her beauty. Dressed in his Sunday best, he called on Edith, taking with him two rabbits he’d shot. Seeing her made him certain that he was the luckiest of men. He placed his offerings on the kitchen table and sat opposite her. She didn’t move. She caught his stare. Not once did she lower her eyes as she used to.

  Edith told herself, don’t look away. She watched as the butcher, not knowing where to rest his eyes under her bright gaze, studied his hat and, for the first time, felt his hands to be too big, his shoes to be too heavy. Embarrassed, he could only steal a look at her.

  He said, ‘The wedding will take place in a month’s time. What do you say to that?’

  Silence.

  ‘I’ve decided to have a wedding dress made for you – the kind that the grand women in the town wear. I can well afford it. Would you like that?’

  Not a word. Not a change in her expression.

  Twisting his hat in his hand he said, ‘I’m not a bad man.’ He dared to glance at her again as he said it. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard talk. Unfounded talk. My late wife, unlike you, she never stopped with her words. Never a day of peace, made up of complaints. You met her.’

  Edith knew her silence to be her only protection, an impenetrable shield against him. She listened as he went against the grain of all he believed with the promise of a wedding dress. Did he think that was enough to buy him her consent? A way to appease his conscience? What role, Edith wondered, had he played in Demetrius’ disappearance? She didn’t doubt that he had something to do with it.

  Her silence rattled the butcher. He was used to noise, the squeals of dying animals, his daughters bickering, his granddaughter arguing. But in this thick silence he could hear his own unanswered questions.

  ‘Should have shaved better,’ he said as he ran his hand over his chin. There was not another sound to disturb the peace. The butcher cleared his throat. He told himself Edith would come round to the idea of being married. He was doing a good thing. It was simple: her father was a drunkard; she needed a husband and, although he was old enough to be her father, he was also the most powerful man in the village.

  ‘Good,’ he said standing, hitting his hat on his legs. ‘That’s agreed. I’ll ask the seamstress to visit you.’

  The cabinet maker was waiting on the verandah.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

  The butcher was startled to hear someone speak.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Give me a silent woman any day.’

  Her father told Edith she should be grateful that an upstanding man was prepared to marry her.

  ‘There was gossip after you were born. People said your mother must have brought you back from the goblin market. Quiet!’ he shouted at the silence between them. ‘I need some peace.’

  And taking his pipe he went to his room to drink his brandy.

  Edith held to the memory of her shepherd. Their future was gone and only a dark forest stood waiting. Her loss of speech and the loss of her lover were as one; her grief a leaden sadness. A month, just a month, and she would be married to the butcher whose hands smelled of blood.

  Chapter Nine

  A Pretty Penny

  Every spring, just after the snow had melted, the seamstress would say farewell to her brother the blacksmith, leave the village and make the long journey into the nearest town. There she would stay in rooms rented from the Schmidts. She would wear her own gowns and make dresses for wealthy ladies who pored over French fashion plates and wanted nothing to do with the traditional costumes of the region. In the winter, before the heavy snow set in and made the roads impassable, she would return to the village, content to abide by its customs, its strict rules regarding clothes, and never talk about what she did for a living.

  This time she brought home with her a brand-new sewing machine. It was this that had made her business more successful than ever before. For the first time she had enough orders to keep her employed through the winter months and enough money to buy her brother a present: a cuckoo clock.

  The blacksmith looked at it, amazed. He had never seen one before.

  ‘Does it work?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Flora, laughing.

  Her brother held it as if it were made of glass rather than wood and with great care hung it on the kitchen wall. His face lit up like that of a child when the wooden bird cuckooed. Such a strange noise, Flora thought, to hear at this quiet hour. The blacksmith sat at the kitchen table, mesmerised by the clock. Almost in a whisper, as if words might frighten the wooden bird away, he said, ‘I’ve cooked a meal for us.’

  Flora smiled to herself. She was always impressed by how tidy and clean her brother kept the house. She said she was going to change her clothes, adding, ‘I’ve so much to tell you.’

  He caught her hand and brought it to his lips. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said. ‘Stand in the light a moment.’ Flora moved to the fire. The blacksmith said, almost to himself, ‘You look beautiful.’ And then his face clouded. ‘Is there enough money? You bought a sewing machine and a cuckoo clock.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have done if there hadn’t been enough,’ she said and took a fat package from her bag and put it on the kitchen table.

  ‘What would I do without you?’ said the blacksmith.

  They were having breakfast the following morning when Flora looked up and in the gloom of the new day saw the butcher standing in the middle of their yard.

  ‘What’s he doing here?’ asked Flora.

  ‘I should have told you last night,’ said her brother. ‘But with the cuckoo clock and all, I forgot.’

  There was a knock on the kitchen door and the butcher came in.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said. He looked at Flora. ‘You’re back?’

  There was little point in answering such a foolish question.

  ‘That’s as it should be,’ said the butcher.

  She had never liked this man. He was crude and a bully. Her brother’s face remained expressionless. Reluctantly she offered the butcher a cup of coffee.

  ‘I can’t stay. I’ve come to ask you to go and see Edith.’

  ‘Edith?’ repeated Flora. It seemed a strange request. She couldn’t think why he would want her to visit Edith.

  ‘I’m going to see her today,’ said Flora.

  The butcher looked awkward and went to study the cuckoo clock.

  ‘Does it make a noise?’ he asked.

  ‘It does,’ said the blacksmith.

  ‘Must hav
e cost a pretty penny,’ said the butcher, ‘for some bits of carved wood.’

  The fact that Flora earned a living and wasn’t dependent upon a man was one of the reasons she was looked on in the village with suspicion. The other reason was that she wasn’t married and no one could see a rhyme or reason to that one.

  ‘I had hoped to be back in time for her wedding,’ said Flora. ‘I’m sorry to have missed it. She’s been much on my mind.’

  ‘When does it make the noise?’ asked the butcher.

  ‘It makes a soft noise on the half hour and on the quarter, and then a full-blown cuckoo on the hour,’ said the blacksmith.

  ‘Then there are four minutes until I hear it,’ said the butcher.

  Flora put down her coffee cup and was going to excuse herself when the butcher said, ‘It’s not yet.’ She couldn’t think what he was referring to. ‘You haven’t missed it.’

  Flora looked at her brother who shrugged.

  ‘Edith’s marriage to Demetrius?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said the butcher. ‘The shepherd never came back to the village. He probably went off and married another girl.’

  Flora stared at him incredulously. ‘What makes you think that?’ she said. ‘Did anyone go looking for him when he failed to return?’

  ‘What?’ said the butcher. ‘Pull him back by the scruff of his neck like a dog and make him marry Edith?’

  Flora felt herself bristling with anger. ‘There would be no making him – or Edith for that matter – do…’ She stopped. The butcher’s eyes were hard.

  ‘Edith is marrying me,’ he said. ‘I’ve told her she can be married in a wedding dress, the kind you make for those fancy ladies down there in the town.’

  ‘You?’ she said. ‘She is to marry you?’

  The news was so shocking that she hardly knew what to say. ‘Edith… Edith has agreed?’

  The butcher ignored the question and said, ‘A white wedding dress to match her hair.’