The Bog Wife

PERCY

Percy couldn't think about anything else but the orange trespassers in the swale. The headless sprouts were not like the other trespassers that had come before them: not the bull thistle that threaded the property-line, fast-growing and inexhaustible but so shallow-rooted that you could yank it out like hair; nor the out-of-place maples that sprouted close to the bog's mouth, doomed from birth because the earth was too wet to anchor them there; nor like the little flowers that impersonated sedge until their buds opened, revealing blossoms pink and sun-hungry and unembarrassed that made them easy marks (and satisfying) for culling. The orange sprouts had not disguised themselves, but they had met him with a sinister indifference when he tore at them. Tear me out, they seemed to say. You won't get the heart of me. That's somewhere you can't reach. He had clawed at the earth beneath the ripped-out stems but realized quickly that there were no roots to be found-at least, not roots that he could see. The trespassers seemed to have sprouted from nowhere, to have succumbed so easily that they must not have succumbed at all, and the whole swale felt compromised by their presence.

He searched for them in the Field Guide to Flora of the Highland Fens, holding a handful of leathery stems against the brittle pages, but he knew already that he would not find them there and he was right. There was nothing orange-colored in the guide. He suspected from the start that they were a variety of mushroom, but he wished that he'd seen their heads. He had an unaccountable suspicion that the trespassers had devised some way of getting rid of their identifying heads, like a salamander might shed its tail to make a quick escape. If he'd only seen the heads, he might have been able to figure out conclusively what they were. He would have known the depth of the crisis that lay before them.

After three days, not knowing what else to do, he brought the stems to his father.

Charles Haddesley the Eleventh was a small man, inches shorter than Percy, his shoulders even narrower than Charlie's always-hunched shoulders. Sitting upright in the enormous mahogany four-poster bed that had slept all the American Haddesley patriarchs, he looked even smaller. For a long time before he entered, Percy stood in the hallway looking at his father through the crack in the door, trying to rearrange the small gaunt man back into the patriarch. He had spent his whole life learning a version of his father that was gone, and he didn't know how to behave around the man that his father was now. His father used to slam his fists on the dining room table for emphasis when he told stories. His father used to sing ballads in a thunderous voice, pronouncing the ends of the lines as if he were angry at them. His father used to wring the necks of chickens in one deft motion. His father used to pace the lengths of rooms until he wore down the carpet because stillness bored him. Now his father sat staring at the floor to the side of his bed with a look of helplessness and bewilderment. For such a long time, he only stared. Then, as if he sensed Percy was there, his head lifted and his gaze sharpened and he was Charles Haddesley the Eleventh again, and Percy pushed open the bedroom door with the trespasser's stems limp in his clammy fist.

"Percival," his father said, companionably. "Sit down."

Percy sat down.

"Look me in the eye," said his father, and Percy did, forcing himself to keep his stare flat and focused. His father had the Haddesley eyes, green-gray, a point of hereditary pride underlined by the portraits hanging on the walls in which every Haddesley patriarch appeared with the same pond-colored irises. Of the five of them, only Wenna had inherited those eyes, which was ironic because Wenna had decided not to be a Haddesley.

His father's eyes watered, but he did not blink. "That's the difference," he said, after an indeterminate length of time had passed, with the air of someone continuing an ongoing conversation, "between you and Charlie."

Percy let his eyes wander to the door, feeling uncomfortably implicated in whatever crushing and unfair and probably true thing his father was about to say loudly enough for anyone in the hallway to hear, but also longing for his father to go on. A small and spiteful part of him liked hearing that he held up to his father's scrutiny better than Charlie. The trespassers, he decided, could wait a little while longer.

"Charlie," his father went on, "will never look at you. Always hanging his head as if he's just been caught abusing himself in the bushes. Well-not that he could, now. But you, son, you know how to look a man in the face and dare him to look back."

Percy squeezed the life from the stems of the trespassers, agonized and pleased. There was nothing he could say back that was not either an outright betrayal of Charlie or a rejection of his father. "Thanks, Dad."

"You do," his father said, with a vigorous nod. "You do, I see you. Listen to me, Percival. You need to end your brother's life."

Percy thought he must have misheard. He held still, waiting for his ears to untangle his father's words into something other than what they had been. "You want . . . ," he began, when he could not untangle them.

"It need not be violent," his father admonished, as if Percy had said that he intended to bash Charlie's skull in. "It's not about punishing him. It's about what has to be done for the good of the family, the family and the land."

Percy nodded, because his father liked to know they were paying attention when he spoke to them and was prone to speaking with more and more force and volume until he got some kind of indication that he had an engaged audience. It had been a mistake not to close the door when he entered the room. At any moment Eda would come with their father's breakfast or Nora would come looking for him and they would be overheard. At least, he consoled himself, Charlie still could not easily manage the stairs.

"I always had reservations." His father's eyes grew distant, and he no longer seemed to be addressing Percy. "From the first. But maybe he would have been all right, if not for-well. You know."

Percy did know. His father did not need to say that a hemlock tree had fallen like a hundred-foot-long inarguable articulation of the bog's displeasure onto Charlie's firstborn pelvis. "Yes," he mumbled, because he didn't want to say it either.

His father scrunched up his face. "Speak up, Percival."

"I said, yes," Percy repeated, feeling as conspicuous and clumsy as a child.

"Well, good," said his father, prickly now. Everyone, including probably their father himself, knew his hearing had faded. But he wouldn't admit it, so instead he accused them of whispering or pretended he didn't care what they'd said in the first place. "You must act quickly," he went on, regaining mastery of the conversation. "What we don't want is to confuse the bog about who is inheriting."

"You want me to marry the bog-wife?"

His father sneered. "What did you think I was saying? Yes. Someone has to." His sneer loosened. He looked weary then, reduced. His lips trembled. "The line," he whispered, "cannot be allowed to lapse."

Percy looked again to the door. Perhaps Charlie and his father had decided to test him, to see what treachery he might be capable of. If he said yes, Charlie would appear in the hallway bearing one of the gaudy rusted-out broadswords that hung on the wall in the great room downstairs and challenge him to a duel as if they were in one of those chivalric romances that Nora read. This was no more inconceivable than the idea that Percy could just step into his brother's place as if he and not Charlie were the firstborn son. He could not really let himself imagine what it would be like to usurp his brother's role, because both his fear and his longing became unbearable when he did. Hesitantly, he said, "Couldn't I . . . do it . . . without, you know . . ."

"Don't you think I would have said so?" his father snipped. "It gives me no pleasure to ask such a thing of you. But there has never been any case of a younger son inheriting while the elder lives. It would be a betrayal of the compact."

Percy was quiet for a long moment that was made endlessly longer by the way his father's eyes held him. What his father was asking him felt unthinkable. He had never even casually tussled with his brother, much less raised a hand to him with any kind of serious intent. He never needed to. Charlie did not compete for things. He either got them by default or relinquished them without resistance. He imagined, grotesquely, his brother receiving a fatal blow with arms hanging limply at his sides, the expression on his face one of glum resignation.

"Percival," his father said, when he did not answer. "Tell me that you understand."

Percy did not understand, but understanding had never once in his life been a prerequisite to obeying his father. He leaned closer so he could speak under his breath and still be heard. "How would I . . . do it?"

"Well, that's up to you," his father said airily, as if the subject was not an interesting one to him. "You're stronger than he is, you know, especially now. But if it were me, I would use poison."

"Wouldn't everyone know?" He imagined Charlie expiring over a bowl of cowbane-laced...