Hide Me Among the Graves Read Free Page B

Her forehead was always damp with perspiration. “I certainly like your cure better than iron filings steeped in beer.”
    â€œYou don’t swallow the iron filings, do you? Is that a cure for angina pectoris?”
    â€œFor anemia, actually. No, they decant the beer off them.”
    Maria was looking at her, but Christina couldn’t make out the expression on her sister’s round face against the glowing western sky. Perhaps she was disapproving of anyone giving quantities of beer to a fourteen-year-old girl, even as medicine.
    â€œYou must be a very good teacher,” Christina said quickly, “to be a live-in governess for such a well-to-do family.”
    â€œThey rejected another girl,” said Maria, “because Mrs. Read felt she was too pretty to be in the house with Mr. Read. I’m employed because I’m not comely. I’d like to have the girls learn Greek and Latin, but I’m only to teach them from the Historical and Miscellaneous Questions —from it they learn things like, oh, when the Diet of Worms occurred, but not a bit of what it was.”
    â€œThey must wonder what other diets were tried before it,” said Christina, smiling. “The Diet of Dirt, the Diet of—”
    â€œAnemia,” Maria interrupted flatly, “angina pectoris, palpitations, shortness of breath.” They were in the long shadow of a western hill now, and the northern breeze from the Chiltern Hills was cooler. “What is it?”
    â€œDoctor Latham says that puberty is often—”
    â€œNot what Doctor Latham says it is. What do you say it is?”
    Christina opened her mouth, and then after a moment closed it again. “Oh, Maria,” she whispered finally, “pray for me!”
    â€œI do. And I hope you pray for yourself.”
    The dark spire of the Read family chapel was visible now ahead on their left, beyond the tall black cypresses and the iron fence of the family churchyard, and it occurred to Christina that it might not have been entirely the chapel’s convenient distance from the house that had led Maria to choose it as their goal.
    â€œI try to pray,” she said. “I can’t go to Confession anymore.” She spread the fingers of one hand without releasing the rein. “What would I— say ?”
    Maria’s voice was gentle. “Say it to me.”
    â€œI—Maria, I think—I’m ruined!”
    Maria rocked back in her saddle, and her mare clopped to a halt. “Ach, ’Stina!” Maria whispered. “You think so? Are you—to be sent away?”
    â€œI don’t know. Can ghosts father children?”
    Her horse had stopped too, and she could see the silhouette of Maria’s head shaking slowly.
    â€œIt was a ghost?” asked Maria.
    Christina nodded.
    â€œI want to understand. You’re saying it was the spirit of a dead man.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIf you’ve been feverish—”
    â€œMaria, I didn’t dream it! Well, I did at first—I saw it outside the house, but then I woke up and went downstairs and let it in—”
    â€œWhy on earth would you let it in ?”
    â€œIt was in already, really—its body, in any case, petrified. Aren’t ghosts supposed to sit by their graves? And it was sick, and weeping, and looked like Gabriel! And you and William too. It looked like family—I felt as if I were letting it back into its own house. And I—oh, I thought it would show me visions of my future spouse, guide me there, as it did for Papa.”
    Maria glanced at her. “Really? I never knew.”
    Christina just shook her head, biting her lip.
    â€œEr … did it? Show you a vision of that?”
    â€œNo. It only showed me itself.”
    For a few moments there was no sound but the wind that shook the grasses and tossed stray strands of Christina’s fair hair across her face.
    At last Maria said, “Was it …