Work Text:
At last they are safe.
This Ian repeats to himself: sometimes a silent prayer, sometimes spoken, but always with the same reverential awe with which the words first passed his lips. At last they are safe.
No longer do they hear the baleful hum of the Bourka goddess, nor the screams of the villagers; no longer can they smell the burning trees.
They are in Lawstown, the skies clear in every direction, the great billowing plume of soot that had marked the site of the once-great Bourka village now nothing more than a memory that will fade as surely as had the smoke.
They are on the Lorelei, the crisp bite of the sea’s saltspray cutting through the shroud of humid heat and drawing into their bones the first chill they had felt since the haze of Africa had begun to smother them.
They are in Southampton, taking their first rolling steps onto the soil of their blessed homeland, breathing air that does not taste of copper, standing atop earth that does not attempt to swallow them down into its depths.
They are in Little Dunthorpe, their carriage passing the riotous blooms of bluebells outside Overbrook for which Mrs. Michael Mittford had defied the decree of the Garden Society, God bless her tenacious little heart.
They are ascending Calthorpe Hill, approaching the manor, and Misery gasps a delighted breath of inexpressible longing.
They are safe.
It has been almost a season since their return to Calthorpe Manor, and still Ian dreams: of Misery lying in her coffin cool to the touch but rosy of cheek, of Misery clad in her ghastly gown of bees, of Misery giving voice to the deathless goddess of the Bourka. He wakes in the night to find himself reaching for her, taking her in his arms while aflame with the unquenchable desire to find himself anew in her.
She does not dream, she says. She very rarely ever does, and never of that. Never of Africa.
She does not remember, and in his worst moments as he ruts desperately into her with a bestial passion that shames him in daylight, he envies her.
There is only one other in Little Dunthorpe who has shared in what he has seen, and so when he finds himself at Oak Hall to open the cub hunting season, they send the hounds to rest and he offers to share a bottle of Pfennig’s with Geoffrey afore the fire. They find the bottom of the bottle, and then of the second, and they are halfway through a bottle of Hyrstmill when finally Ian gives voice to his dreams.
Geoffrey’s dark eyes, pale complexion, and sharp features all conspire with the cast of his sorrowful mouth to remake himself some dark spirit better left to his brooding. “She is alive and whole, old man, and so are you. So is your son. Give thanks to God, and bear this burden so that she may never feel the weight.”
Geoffrey is often a damnably practical man, and while Ian may not draw comfort from him, he cannot find it within himself to argue. They do not speak of it again.
When he returns from the Hall, it is not Misery who receives him, but Mrs. Ramage. “Beggin’ yer pardon, My Lord, but the wee bairn’s teething his first tooth and naught soothes him but My Lady,” the elderly matron says. “She's taken him to the west gable.”
He hears Misery when he reaches the upstairs hall, her voice lilting in a song as sweet as glass chimes:
Bye, o baby bunting
Daddy’s gone a hunting
Off to get a fox’s skin
To wrap my baby bunting in
Mother and son together make for a beautiful scene of domestic tranquillity, as perfect a scene as might have been captured on canvas by any of the old Italian masters. He could watch them forever, this little family of his, and he does for long minutes, listening to his darling Misery loop the lullaby several times, each more tender than the last. Finally he steps forward, and when Misery pauses in her singing in order to curve her Cupid’s bow lips into a smile for him, Thomas sucks in a jagged breath and then expels a wail of such amplitude that young O’Reilly must have heard him all the way down at the stables.
Mrs. Ramage is absolutely correct, as she invariably is when it comes to matters of home and hearth: Misery is the only person who can soothe the savage breast of Thomas. She sings a litany of lullabies and nurseries: Where Little Birdie Goes, The Nurse’s Song, Lullay Mine Liking, and countless others, including, at Ian’s insistence, The King Of France. She sings all day and all evening, and at night she brings dear Thomas to bed in her arms so that she might continue to sing while he sucks on the latest tonic-infused washcloth prepared for him by Mrs. Ramage.
At last her voice begins to tire, growing softer and rougher, and she begins to hum. He recognises the songs she’s already sung, which have finally begun to lose their lustre for little Thomas as his unhappy whimpers begin to hiccup.
Then she begins a new song.
She croons without words, the sounds formless and without shape but the melody distinctive and high-pitched, soaring and rolling and nearly warbling as her once-sweet voice grows nasal and sharp.
Ian knows this song. Knows it sung by a dozen voices in unison, accompanied by the thunderous booming of a titanic, ancient drum, and the insistent hum of a hundred thousand African bees.
As Thomas succumbs to dreamless sleep, so too, for the first time since he once again set foot on his native soil, does Ian.