by E. L. Ripley
She shook her head. “It’s too still.”
“It’s never too still for me.” Tom set his hat on the dresser.
“You haven’t lived to see as many storms as I have,” she replied. Mrs. Washburn looked well enough; she wasn’t weak or sickly.
“You suspect one’s coming?”
“I don’t have to suspect. It’s clear as day,” she told him before going back to looking outside. “The sky’s the wrong color, and the air doesn’t feel right. Are you here to ask for my blessing?”
“No, but I might as well. Do I have it?”
“Of course not. She has known you less than a month, and you’re nothing but trouble.” Mrs. Washburn gave him a flat look, not exactly challenging, just tired.
“Sorry you feel that way, ma’am.”
“She knows all that,” she added, as though it affronted her that he might not have been aware of it. “But if she wants to overlook it, what am I going to do about it? She’s too old to scold, and I’m too old to do it.”
“You worried about her soul?”
Her poker face held, and she didn’t say a word.
“What about yours?” he pressed.
Tom didn’t have a prayer of staring her down; she was more than a match for him there. He went over and perched on the bed, facing her directly.
“Maybe you aren’t as superstitious as the rest, but you won’t tell me a lie in front of God. You know who she is,” he said, “the one who’s doing this.”
Seconds passed.
“You want to protect a murderer?” he pressed.
“Do I look as though I can protect anyone or anything?” she asked. She wasn’t afraid; she might have been the only person in Friendly Field who wasn’t. Her hands were shaking, but it wasn’t fear. It was rage.
“Did you want Saul dead?”
“No,” she replied at once.
“And I know you had nothing against Jeremiah.” He was wrong about that, though. He’d played cards with her, and he knew the corner of her mouth would give a twitch when she was squirming inside. “Or maybe you did,” he said, and she scowled at him.
“I don’t wish murder on anyone.”
“But you don’t mind standing aside,” Tom said quietly. “You know who it is and why she’s doing it. And maybe you don’t wish it on them, but you’re not putting a stop to her. You don’t blame her.”
Mrs. Washburn’s mouth had become a tight line, but she didn’t do anything as obvious as grip her apron.
“You know why,” Tom said simply. He was right about that much. “What did Saul and Jeremiah do that they brought this on themselves?”
She looked vaguely contemptuous, though only for a moment.
“It’s not them. It’s all of us. Sin might seem to be left in the past . . .” She stopped there for a moment, turning to look out the window. “It’s always there, though. Just behind us. You as well, Mr. Smith. And me.”
Mrs. Washburn didn’t see this woman as a murderer; she saw her as the hand of God. She just didn’t have the stomach to watch up close as it unfolded. That was why, after Saul’s death, when she’d realized what was happening, she’d come here and shut herself up in this room.
And she hadn’t come out when Jeremiah was killed. That meant Tom was right: it wasn’t over.
“I’ll give her a chance to hang it up peaceably if you tell me her name.”
She hesitated. “I don’t know her name.”
Tom wasn’t sure what to make of that. It couldn’t have been an outright lie—she wouldn’t do that. It was still a deception, though. The lie was that she didn’t want these men dead. If she didn’t, she’d tell Tom what he needed to know instead of trying to leave him in the dark.
“What did they do that they needed to be punished for?”
“Nothing,” she replied, smiling bitterly. “They did nothing.”
He wasn’t going to break through, and he couldn’t very well beat the truth out of her. Besides, he had a feeling he’d be on her side when it came down to it—but there’d been enough killing, justified or otherwise. Tom was the last man to open his mouth about pulling the trigger, but someone had to.
“Tom,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“I like you. I don’t like you for a son-in-law. You’re too arrogant. But my daughter likes you, so . . .” She trailed off, waving a hand, then sighed. “Go home and mind your own affairs.”
“I liked to think Jeremiah and I were friends,” Tom pointed out, “or something like friends. Doesn’t that make it my business?”
“You are blind and you are a fool. Go to bed, Tom. Go and stay there. It will cost you if you do otherwise.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
How could Mrs. Washburn have it figured and no one else did?
It had to go back to that witch they’d hanged, but Mary’s mother wasn’t the only person who remembered that. It had been less than twenty years ago. Mary remembered it; most everyone did.
Yet everyone else was baffled. True, Mrs. Washburn was smarter than most, but that alone didn’t explain it.
Tom stepped down from the porch and looked back at Mary in the doorway of the McHenry house. She was worried, but no amount of reassurance from him could change that. She needed to be with her mother, and at the end of a day like this, romance was the last thing on her mind. Tom’s as well.
It still would have been nice to eat with her, but that wasn’t in the cards.
Mrs. Washburn was right about the uncanny stillness that had fallen over Friendly Field. It wasn’t just quiet because of what had happened, though that added to it. The Quakers were never boisterous, but they weren’t entirely without humor. It was almost fully dark now, and no one was laughing in Friendly Field as Tom limped home.
The windows glowed in the house. The kid was good at looking after a home, and he was ten times the cook that Tom would ever be. It would’ve been nice to eat with Mary, as planned, but this was more important.
Thaddeus was at the table with a cup of tea, and Asher nearly had the meal ready.
“Need help, kid?” Tom asked, hanging up his hat.
“No. I will serve presently.”
He didn’t say it for Thaddeus’ benefit; he was as bad as Tom when it came to asking for help. Tom took his place at the table.
“Peace be with thee,” he said to Thaddeus, a touch ironically. The older man was not at peace, though he looked a good deal better than he had in the church.
“Thank you for having me over, Tom.”
“Of course. I hope you aren’t too upset about what was said today.”
Thaddeus shook his head. “No, no,” he replied, “not at all.”
He must not have even heard what Mary said, and Tom wasn’t surprised. Thaddeus was struggling. Of course, even if he’d heard, Tom hoped Thaddeus would be the last man to give anyone any grief about fornication. He might do it in his sermons, but even he wasn’t so far gone that he’d do it face-to-face.
Not to Tom’s face, at any rate.
“Someone has to take charge,” the older man went on. “It was always for Saul and Jeremiah to give voice to God’s will. I don’t know what to do. But to pray,” he added.
“Praying’s all well and good,” Tom told him frankly, “but it doesn’t bring in the harvest. We have to roll up our sleeves and do that ourselves.”
Thaddeus grimaced and nodded. “Yes.”
Asher brought out the meal, a stew with chicken and corn bread.
“Did Mrs. Heller give this to us?” Tom asked.
“I baked it,” Asher replied. “There was a sack of cornmeal in the larder. I expect no one to miss a little.”
“Who taught you to make it?” Tom asked in wonder. There was nothing the kid couldn’t do.
“My aunt.”
“You�
��ve done a nice job.”
“Yes,” Thaddeus agreed.
“Thank you,” Asher said. “I am glad you like it.”
Tom cleared his throat. “Thaddeus, do you know why anyone would want to kill Saul and Jeremiah?”
The older man choked briefly, then peered at Tom with watery eyes. “I believe it is the last thing any one of us would ever wish for.” He appeared to mean what he said.
Tom chose his words carefully. “It’s been suggested that this is balancing the scales for what happened before, years ago. The hanging.”
Thaddeus’ brows rose, as though such a thing hadn’t even occurred to him. And just as Tom predicted, Thaddeus took him at his word. No one had suggested that, not really—no one but Tom. Thaddeus looked thoughtful.
Asher stayed quiet.
“To balance the scales,” the old Quaker mused sadly, eyes distant. “It feels like a long time ago. A lifetime.”
“That’s fair to say,” Tom replied encouragingly. He felt the boy’s gaze on him, and he ignored it. The kid should’ve known they weren’t hosting Thaddeus out of the goodness of their hearts. On the other hand, there was a lot of goodness in the boy. Maybe he had believed this was a simple act of charity. “Was it that bad, what happened?”
Thaddeus groaned tiredly, still staring into the past. The night was so still that every creak and rustle hung in the air.
“The devil came here,” he said with a small nod. “He was in Friendly Field, to be sure. I suppose that was when I learned that none of us is safe from him. No one,” he repeated.
“Would you do it again?” Tom asked. “Hang a witch?”
Thaddeus grimaced. It was clear the memory brought him enormous pain; he appeared to shrink inward just at the mention of it.
“It was a horrible thing to do,” he admitted at last, “to one of our own. And for what?” Tom had the sense that Thaddeus wasn’t really talking to him anymore, but to himself. “For the iniquity of weakness?”
“We all have them,” Tom pointed out.
“Not all weaknesses will take a life, though. An innocent.” Thaddeus’ face was gray now. “A mother,” he added, looking surprised at himself.
Tom almost dropped his spoon. “What?”
Thaddeus blinked and looked up. “Hmm?”
“The woman who was hanged had a child? A daughter?”
Thaddeus grimaced, and it took him a moment to answer.
“Yes,” he replied finally. “She concealed that she was with child from nearly everyone.”
“How old was the girl when you hanged her mother?” Tom demanded, and the old Quaker flinched.
His mouth moved as he floundered. “But an infant.”
“Jesus,” Tom said, forgetting himself. “Where is she now? What’s her name?”
Thaddeus was clearly taken aback by Tom’s sudden intensity.
“I don’t know,” he replied, a touch of defensiveness in his voice. “Gone from here. Taken.”
“By whom?”
“There— Mr. Smith, there were those among us who could not abide what was done,” Thaddeus said, pained. “It was they who took the child and left Friendly Field. They are long gone.”
Of course. Of course, there had been some Quakers who couldn’t stomach a hanging.
“So if that girl came here, you wouldn’t recognize her,” Tom said.
Thaddeus just stared at him.
“I guess not,” he said. “But why would she come here?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
What do you think, kid?”
They stood together by the window, watching Thaddeus carry his lamp into the dark, heading back to his house.
“You’d want to get back at the people who hanged your mother, wouldn’t you?” Tom asked.
The boy licked his lips. “I would,” he replied.
Tom watched Thaddeus vanish into the night. “Me too.”
Mrs. Washburn knew about the baby. She must’ve noticed something that tipped her off that the child had returned. As for how the child got on this path, the Quakers who’d taken her must’ve told her what had happened to her mother. And the girl hadn’t adopted a very Christian view of it clearly. Tom didn’t blame her, but he still had to do something.
“Why do you think they’d do it?” Tom asked, straightening up. “Hang someone like that. Wickedness? Or stupidity?”
“Wickedness,” Asher replied without hesitation. “To kill without cause.”
Tom was surprised; usually the boy was the charitable one. Now the tables were turned. “See, I like to think they believed they were doing what was right.”
“That would give very little comfort to the dead,” the kid pointed out, “or those left behind.”
Tom hesitated, struck by the words. “True enough.”
He was fairly sure there was only stupidity to blame for what had happened—or was there? No one had mentioned the hanged woman having a husband, only a child she’d borne in secret. He remembered—Mary had mentioned the witch lying down with the devil. Well, if the Quakers thought the devil was the father, they were as wrong about that as they were about everything else.
“Kid, you still got my old derringer?”
“Of course.” The boy held it out.
“Thanks.” Tom tucked it into his pocket. “Whatever the reason might’ve been, they’re paying for it now.”
Asher nodded. “So they should,” he said.
Tom leaned against the wall and folded his arms. “All of them?”
“They act as one,” Asher pointed out.
“Some objected.”
“Those who remain did not.” The boy shrugged.
“I reckon that’s what Mrs. Washburn meant. She wouldn’t say what Saul and Jeremiah had done to deserve this. I got a notion they didn’t do a damn thing. They were more or less in charge back then. They could’ve stopped it, but they didn’t. That’s the grudge that got them killed.”
Asher didn’t have anything to say to that. Tom put his hands out toward the window, but the air out there wasn’t moving.
“I guess it would get to me too,” he conceded. “But that’s where I am now, isn’t it? If I get out of the way, I’m just like them. But that’s what Mrs. Washburn wants me to do.”
“Does she really?”
“Yes.” Tom ran his hand through his hair.
“What about your scandalous behavior with her daughter?” Asher asked mildly. “How does she feel about that?”
“She’s got enough sense to know God doesn’t give a damn about things like that.”
“Quite the theologian you’ve become in your time among the Quakers, Mr. Calvert,” Asher said as he went over to sprawl on the bench, fanning himself with a hand. The night just wasn’t cooling off any.
Tom snorted. At least the kid was in a good humor. “You aren’t reading tonight?”
The boy was just lying there. “Not tonight.”
Maybe it was the weather that was making him uneasy; it bothered Tom as well. He’d never felt stillness like this. The kid had made a good point; if the townspeople had really objected, there would have been no hanging. Well, they were just starting to pay for it. The loss of Jeremiah hadn’t truly been felt yet, and it wouldn’t be until his leadership was needed.
Thaddeus was kind and even sensible during calm times, but when things got bad, he was useless. Phillip didn’t have Jeremiah’s brains. In fact, the only person who came to mind who had what it would take to lead these people was Mrs. Washburn.
But the Quakers would talk until they were blue in the face about how they were all equals, and then they’d likely balk in the same breath at the notion of a woman making decisions.
So Phillip would lurch from one hardship to the next, doing the best he could, and Tom would let him unless he asked for help. The one t
hing he wanted even less than to watch the Quakers flail around as the world closed in on them was to be responsible for them.
He wanted to spend his days in the fields and his nights with Mary. And to spend a little time with the boy; now that Asher had a little confidence, he actually made for pretty good company.
“Don’t wait for me, kid.” Tom took his hat and went to the door.
“Don’t you worry that I will look down on you for being of low character?” Asher asked idly. He didn’t even open his eyes.
Tom paused. The kid thought he was going to call on Mary. “Well,” he said finally, “if you were going to look down on me for something, I guess I’d hope it would be for killing folks. Not for this.”
“I told you before, some folks need killing,” Asher pointed out. “Those outlaws, for example.”
“Maybe so.”
Tom went out, and the thick, warm air draped itself over him like a blanket. The quiet pressed in, an invisible fog. It was so quiet that he should’ve been able to hear, but there was only the gentle pressure on his ears.
The windows of the house glowed in the dark. Friendly Field wasn’t his to look after; he was just being a busybody one last time.
Then he could hang it up for good.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Holly was good at fooling people. She had to be; it was part of her business. Tom had been vain to think that because he read people for a living he couldn’t be deceived.
Of course he had.
And Holly? She must have had plenty of practice pretending that her head was empty and that she actually enjoyed the company of men and not just their money. Tom liked to think she had enjoyed his company, at least as much as he’d enjoyed hers—but he had a feeling that a lot of fellows thought that way. They were probably wrong, and he was no different.
He’d never had the slightest inkling that something like this lurked in her, but that wasn’t what troubled him. He’d judged her age as not so much lower than his own. Was she really not even twenty? Well, she just had people fooled in all sorts of ways.
Seducing Thaddeus to make her way into Friendly Field couldn’t have been difficult. Thaddeus’ hiring of her was a little much—it seemed as though everyone had known of his vice, yet Holly’s arrival had been an escalation. Tom sensed it wasn’t something that Thaddeus had done entirely on his own; perhaps Holly had put the notion in his head. He wasn’t a difficult man to persuade, and Tom had his suspicions about just how persuasive Holly could be.