Dad Hears My Thoughts novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: Daisies

The new stone in the Queen's chapel yard was so white it hurt to look at.

The Keeper's name was cut into it, and under the name:

Loyal to the Crown.

A woman was kneeling in front of it in a brown country cloak, setting a jar of dried daisies in the snow.

She was older than her sister had been, broad in the shoulders, with pale hair going gray under her hood.

She heard our boots and stood up fast, wiping her face with the heel of her hand.

"Mistress Harcourt," she said. "My lord."

"Just Cicely," I said. "And he's just Tristram, unless he's charging you."

She didn't smile. She was looking at the bundle on Tristram's chest.

Tuppence had her daisy blanket round her and the knitted cap on her head, pulled down over one ear.

She stared at the woman.

She stared for so long that Tristram looked at me.

Daisy lady, Tuppence said slowly. Smells like Mama. Smells like Mama's box.

Then she leaned out of the sling with both arms.

The woman made a sound I'd heard once before, from an old man on my stool at midnight.

Tristram lifted Tuppence out and put her in her arms.

The woman held her.

Tuppence patted her cheek, wet from crying, and then licked her own hand to see what it was.

"Salty," the woman said, half laughing. "Yes. That's tears, little one."

"I taught her that stitch," she said to me, touching the daisy hem. "My sister. When she was seven, by the kitchen fire."

"She did it better than me. She did everything better than me. She went to the city."

She looked at the white stone.

"I've a farm two days north. A husband, four boys and a cow that kicks."

"When the chaplain's letter came, I packed a bag. I meant to take her home."

My hand found Tristram's sleeve and held on.

I didn't say anything. It was hers to say.

She looked down at Tuppence for a long time.

Then she turned and walked a little way off along the chapel wall with her.

She seemed to want to show her the snow on the yew trees.

Tuppence let her. She seemed to be thinking.

Five steps. Six.

Then she twisted round in the woman's arms, found us over her shoulder, and held out one hand.

Not howling. Just holding it out.

Cici, she said. Papa. Here.

The woman stopped walking.

She looked at the little hand, and where it pointed.

"My sister was like that," she said. "Knew her own mind before she could walk."

She came back and gave her to me.

"I'll be her aunt," she said. "If you'll have me for one."

"We'll have you," Tristram said.

"Then bring her north in summer. There's a field behind our house that goes white with daisies in June."

"Her mother lay in it with me when we were girls and said she'd marry a prince."

She laughed, wet.

"She'd have liked you. Both of you. She'd have liked the shop."

Then she put her rough hand on my arm.

"May I have her one night?" she said. "Just one. Before I go back."

Tuppence slept that night at the widow's next door, in the bread basket by the ovens.

Her aunt slept in the widow's spare bed beside her.

It was the first night since the snow that she hadn't slept within reach of one of us.

I lay in my loft and listened to the wall.

"She's fine," Tristram said, from the ladder. "She says the daisy lady snores."

"She does not say that."

"She says it's very loud and she likes it."

He came up the last rungs with a candle.

The Duke had sent a new mattress down the hill the week before.

It had taken two of his men and the chandler to get it up the ladder, and it nearly filled the loft.

"I have something of yours," I said.

I held out my hand. In my palm lay his mother's ring.

The glass stone was gone. In its place sat the little sapphire, cut and set, the color of the sea under ice.

He held it up to the candle and turned it, and it threw small blue lights over the slant of the roof.

"It's real," he said.

"Under the girdle," I said. "Look."

I took the loupe off the cord round my neck and put it in his hand.

"My father's star," he said. "You put it on."

"It's my mark now."

He took my left hand and slid the ring onto my finger, slowly.

He turned my hand until the sapphire caught the street lamp.

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