Calvin Baker - Dominion

“Yea, there will be time for that,” Content said, standing beside his ancient friend.

“It was you and Dorthea who brought us together,” Merian replied. “You did not tell me then it would be so short a while.”

He walked over to the preacher and pushed a handful of coins into his hand, then turned and went back toward the house.

When the other mourners entered, Adelia had laid a table with foods and tried her best to make everyone comfortable, recalling from earlier times what the visitors and inhabitants of Stonehouses each required — so that when Content called for something they were able to offer him an eau de vie, and the doctor had his claret, and Magnus, when he went to the table, found a small pot of warm milk with his coffee.

He picked it up and smiled at her as he brought the cup to his lips. This was their first intimate interaction since she had come back to the house; he had done his best to avoid her the entire time, knowing she was there on Sanne’s account and not his, and he did not want her to be reminded of their troubles before.

As he looked at her he remembered what he promised Sanne on her deathbed. He knew she would not have told Adelia what had been agreed upon between the two of them, and he struggled to decide whether he was bound to an old woman’s delirious request. He had managed in the time he had been there to find appropriate means of dealing with those urges he could not control, but for the rest he felt as he had all his life. Seeing Adelia then made him curse himself for being so quick to give in to what Sanne had asked of him. He did not know if he could maintain his end of the deal, or even if she would still want him should he presume to try.

“You look very pretty today, Adelia,” he said boldly, just as he had in the kitchen many years earlier.

He had not meant to invoke that memory and worried she would take offense, but Adelia only accepted the compliment with a bashful smile and withdrew into the kitchen.

Magnus realized he did not know where Merian was and searched for him throughout the house until he finally found him sitting in the parlor, where he had been counting what was lost to him and what was left. When he saw Magnus, the old man looked his son over and asked him what his plans for things were.

“No plans but what we have been doing,” Magnus answered.

“That is not what I mean,” Merian told him. “I mean what will you do with yourself when you are alone here?”

“There’s always someone about,” Magnus said to him.

“Ware,” his father said, “that is not good enough. Out here by yourself, this is the loneliest place known to the world.”

“Let me help you to your room,” Magnus offered. Merian, however, continued looking out his window.

“We are exiled here. One day, when we are purified, we will be rejoined with what is beloved.”

Magnus could see then the light had gone out from Merian’s eyes. He thought he knew what had propelled him in his ambition there, but he could see it die that day, and with that it seemed revealed to him that this was never what the older man really wanted but was some elaborate substitution for something that could never be attained.

For Magnus, though, this was what he wanted, a place of safety and security. There was nothing more behind it. Merian loved what he could create and had created, but Magnus he loved that he was without any other’s claim on him.

He helped Merian to bed, where he would sleep alone for the first time in thirty years.

When father and son awoke the next morning both were aware of how much emptier the house felt, a fact that each of them dealt with in quite his own way. After dressing Merian went into the kitchen and took a handful of meal from a cupboard, which he placed in a pot and mixed with water. When Adelia heard him, she came and offered to cook. Instead of accepting or relinquishing to her a place at the stove, he drove her off and continued preparing his own breakfast.

“If you don’t like my cooking you could have told me long ago,” she said. “I’ll be going back to Content’s first thing this afternoon.”

“I cooked for myself for many years,” he answered her, “until I had a wife; then I ate from my wife’s table, and only once another woman’s. You can cook for him.”

Magnus had entered the kitchen and was surprised to see his old father over the cooking fire. He had always suspected that it was the one thing in the world Merian had no idea how to do. The sight worried him, and he thought to remove him and let Adelia make breakfast. In the end he thought better of it; if things got no worse than this they would all be lucky. Adelia looked at Merian and then to Magnus for instruction, and Magnus nodded to let her know she should simply leave him to his devices for the time being.

After Merian had finished cooking his porridge, he removed himself to the dining room to eat alone. When Magnus entered the room Merian gave him an aggrieved look that let him know he wished to be left in peace that morning. Magnus turned and went back to the kitchen, where Adelia was frying eggs for his breakfast. When she brought them to him at the table, he took the plate and then called to her as she was returning to her duties.

“Why don’t you sit with me?” he asked.

Sanne was everywhere and on all of their minds that morning, including Adelia’s. She thought then of what her patroness had said when she had found her looking out of the window one afternoon. “Are you watching him?” she had asked.

When the younger woman admitted she had been, Sanne had said, “He will come to you. You will see. He only needs a bit more time.”

Adelia had not believed her, as she had already given him what she thought was all the time anyone could need, until she began to consider herself unwanted and ruined. When he asked her to sit with him that morning, though, she accepted his invitation so easily he thought she had been waiting for it, and that perhaps Sanne had said something to her after all.

Adelia sat down across from him, and the two of them had breakfast together that morning, and every morning in the future, from that day forward.

The inland roads of the southern colonies were as strange to Rennton as the ice sheets of Greenland, and — knowing the business of their ports — he picked his way across them with as much care. After inquiring about until he found someone who knew the way to Berkeley, he hired a coach to take them as far as Edenton, where they stayed the night. In the morning, after presenting his papers, he secured passage to Bath. Once they arrived he purchased a horse for not too much money, but the dealer was unscrupulous and the beast only survived as far as the Indian fort. From there, man and boy had no choice but walk the remainder of the way.

It was five days through the wilderness, with the trail sometimes becoming nothing more than a footpath in the woodlands. How coaches came that way, if any ever ventured out there, one would be hard pressed to say. When the boy grew too tired to continue, Rennton at first would pick him up and carry him upon his shoulders, but the third time that Caleum cried weariness and requested this treatment, his guardian bid him to toughen up. “I’m not your mule,” the man said to his charge. “Now see if your legs aren’t a little hardier.” The boy responded dutifully after that, and even when his feet began to blister over and shred he refrained from complaining for the rest of the trip.

Nights they made camp in the naked air, and in the morning both were stiff from the cold and did not want to move from their pallet. Rennton invariably ventured forth first and boiled water on the camp embers for the few loose tea leaves he would throw into a pot. The two then ate hard biscuits and charqui saved from the ship before setting out on their campaign again. At midday they had the roasted carcass of a hare Rennton had caught two days earlier, when they first started out. “It isn’t much,” Rennton told him, “but safer than we would have been otherwise.”