第16章 The Festival

Blackmore held its first festival in August, a celebration of the harvest and the house and the life that had been rebuilt from the ashes. The villagers came from miles around, drawn by the story of the cursed estate that had been freed, by the legend of the widow who had married the rake and broken the spell. Eleanor stood on the porch, watching the dancers, the singers, the children running through the gardens, and she felt a gratitude so deep it brought tears to her eyes. Sebastian joined her, his arm around her shoulders, his hand on her waist. You did this, he said. This is your house. Your festival. Your life. I did it with you, Eleanor replied. Always with you. He kissed her forehead, and she leaned into his side, and together they watched the sunset paint the sky in shades of gold and pink and red, the colors of a house that had survived fire, of a curse that had been broken, of a love that had been chosen. Blackmore held its first festival in August, a celebration of the harvest and the house and the life that had been rebuilt from the ashes. The villagers came from miles around, drawn by the story of the cursed estate that had been freed, by the legend of the widow who had married the rake and broken the spell. Eleanor stood on the porch, watching the dancers, the singers, the children running through the gardens, and she felt a gratitude so deep it brought tears to her eyes. Sebastian joined her, his arm around her shoulders, his hand on her waist. "You did this," he said. "This is your house. Your festival. Your life." "I did it with you," Eleanor replied. "Always with you." He kissed her forehead, and she leaned into his side, and together they watched the sunset paint the sky in shades of gold and pink and red, the colors of a house that had survived fire, of a curse that had been broken, of a love that had been chosen. The festival had been Eleanor's idea, suggested one wet afternoon in March while she and Sebastian were laying out the new drainage for the kitchen garden and he was complaining that the only pleasure remaining to him in life was a warm pair of dry stockings and a glass of claret before dinner. She had argued, half in earnest and half in jest, that a man who had been lord of Blackmore for less than a year and who had already survived a fire and a curse and a London solicitor who had tried to contest the will should be able to endure a few more months of damp without complaint, and that what the household needed was something to look forward to besides the slow process of rebuilding and the sound of hammers from dawn until dusk. The festival, she said, would give the village a reason to come up the hill. It would give the children a reason to behave. And it would give Sebastian a reason to wear the new coat he had ordered from his tailor in town and which he had been hiding in the back of the wardrobe because he could not bring himself to admit, even to himself, that he owned a coat that fit him as well as the coat he had been measured for in London. The planning took five months. Eleanor sent letters to every house in the parish asking what food they would bring, what games they would play, what songs they would sing, and she received replies that ranged from the formal and the generous to the single-sentence and the grudging, including one from the rector's wife that consisted only of the words "As you wish" and that Eleanor kept, pinned above her desk, as a reminder that even the most austere of village matrons could be moved to brevity when asked a question that struck her as both indulgent and overdue. The musicians were three brothers from the lower valley who played fiddle and pipe and a small drum that had been in their family for four generations, and they rehearsed in the kitchen of Blackmore on the Sunday afternoons of July, filling the house with music so loud and so uncontained that even the cook complained and even the children danced on the tables. On the morning of the festival, Eleanor woke before sunrise and walked the grounds alone, checking that the lanterns had been hung, that the long tables in the courtyard had been laid with cloths she had borrowed from the village hall, that the roasting pits were clear of debris and ready for the fires that would be lit at noon. The dew was heavy on the grass. The roses were heavy on the wall. The air smelled of wood smoke and baking bread and the particular scent of late summer in the hills, which is the scent of bracken drying and blackberries ripening and the slow descent of a year toward its close. She stood by the gate for a long moment, looking down the lane toward the village, and she thought, with a clarity that surprised her, that she had never been happier in her life and that the happiness was not the kind that had to be defended or explained but the kind that simply existed, the way the light existed, the way the air existed, the way the house existed behind her, vast and patient and ready to receive whoever came through the gate. The first guests arrived at eleven. By noon the courtyard was full. The fiddler struck up. The children began to dance. And Eleanor, who had planned every detail and had imagined every moment, found that the moment itself was different from anything she had imagined — better, more chaotic, more alive, full of mistakes and laughter and the unlooked-for grace that only happens when a hundred people who have known each other all their lives decide, for one afternoon, to forget the smallness of their grievances and remember the largeness of what they shared. She stood at the edge of the dancing and watched them, and Sebastian stood beside her, his new coat dusted with flour from the kitchen, his eyes bright with something that looked, if you did not look too closely, like joy. ---