A Curse Dark as Gold

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  “Where did they go?”

  “They?” Uncle Wheeler blinked at me. “If you mean our friends the ghost lights, they’ve winked out—and left us stranded here in the middle of nowhere, no doubt.”

  I stared at him. Had he not seen it? But, no—surely…I knew he had seen Spinner materialize from the earth in a puff of fog. But the rest of it? I was never to know for certain what, if anything, my uncle witnessed in that crossroads on All Souls’ Night.

  All manners, he helped me to my feet and only lightly brushed his hands after touching me. Unruffled, he headed back toward the trees.

  “Wait—”

  He turned back, glaring at me. “What now?”

  Biddy Tom had said to bring something back, and I had a little jar tucked into my cloak; but for the beech tree, nothing stood to remember or commemorate the dreadful scene I’d witnessed. Unless someone happened upon this spot on All Soul’s Night, who would know? Or was I privy to that performance solely by virtue of my name and legacy?

  I glanced around hurriedly. What was there? The beech limb was obviously too heavy; perhaps I could prize free a stone from one of the fence posts. I made my way across the fallen branch. Souvenir-hunting at the haunted crossroads: Such a lovely way to spend an evening. Exhausted, hysterical, I wanted to laugh.

  As I scraped my fingers trying to pull a stone from one of the posts, a glint of white in the moldering leaves below caught my eye. I brushed aside the debris to reveal the tiny fragile bones of a mouse. Thoughtful, I glanced back over the deserted crossroads. I couldn’t bring John Simple’s bones back, but I could bring the next best thing. I pulled the fallen limb aside and scrabbled through the dirt at what I hoped was the spot I’d seen the mist appear. The earth was dry and soft, and I had no trouble filling the jar with it.

  As I gathered the earth into the glass, I nearly shrieked as my hands brushed something hard and cold. But it was only metal—a silver coin, its denomination obscured with age. Something else was in the ground, as well: a glint of garnet enamel in the moonlight, a glow from a mother-of-pearl watch face, showing the time: ten past twelve. I rubbed the dirt from the case with trembling fingers. My watch…what else might I find, if I dug deep enough? Would I find something, perhaps, of my father’s?

  That thought made a ribbon of fear slip through me, and I hastened to my feet, the jar of earth in one hand, the coin and my watch in the other. It seemed a bit sacrilegious to steal earth from a man’s grave—no matter how unhallowed it may be—so I mumbled a benediction, best I could remember one.

  “Please forgive us,” I whispered, and fled back into the trees.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I climbed back into the carriage feeling cold and sick and close to tears. I could barely look at my uncle; his face was drawn and nearly as pale as the spectre of Jack Spinner. Perhaps, I thought, so was I.

  We were both of us silent as the carriage pulled away from the cross-ways, a clap of thunder rolling overhead. I turned toward Haymarket; I had no strength left in me for another journey tonight, and would seek out some lodging.

  A cold, miserable drizzle began to fall as we drove into Haymarket, glossing the black trap and the black horses with wet lamplight. Well past midnight, the town was dark, the roadway empty. I was focused on guiding the horses through the darkness, and Uncle Wheeler was presumably lost in thoughts of his own. Pilot bore the rain with equanimity, gazing out over my shoulder into the night.

  I wanted someone to explain what I had seen, to take my hand and say that it was just a trick of the moonlight, the workings of an overwrought imagination. But Uncle Wheeler was not that man—and what I had seen was important. I could not pretend, as generations of Millers before me must have done, that we were blameless in our misfortunes. I had been privileged to view what I did in the crossroads, no matter how miserable I felt about it.

  A shaft of lightning shattered the darkness, lighting up the road like midday. I jumped, my heart in my throat. One of the horses skittered sideways in the reins, and the skies broke open in an icy torrent.

  “We must find a stable and an inn,” I said, my voice pitched to carry above the storm.

  “Up the road about two miles,” Uncle Wheeler cried back. He held fast to the carriage with one hand, fast to his hat with the other. “The Red Drake.”

  “Two miles? We’ll never make it!”

  “They’ll be sure to be open.”

  “On a night like this? They won’t expect anyone to be out.” I shook my head, but drove ahead through the downpour. What choice was there?

  Then, abruptly, there was a choice. Just ahead, down a twining side road, I glimpsed a light burning in a window, and under the crack of thunder from the heavens, the storm flashed a sign into brightness: hostelry.

  “There!” I said, pointing with the reins. “Straight across. It doesn’t look like much, but it’s right here.” I snapped the reins and the horses found more speed, carrying us up the little alley.

  Suddenly, Uncle Wheeler reached across and wrenched the reins from my hands. He gave them a firm tug and eased the horses to a halt. “I thank you for the lift, my dear girl—but if that is where you intend to go, then I shall indeed be leaving you now.”

  “Are you crazy? It’s pouring rain—you’ll freeze to death!” I wondered why I cared. “What’s the matter—what’s up there?”

  He gave a hint of his old thin smile. “If you’re so keen to know, go have a look for yourself. I think you’ll enjoy the irony.” With the ghost of a bow, he strode off into the rain, his black coat glossy wet.

  I watched him leave, weary and perplexed, but eventually weariness won out. All I wanted was a hot bath and a warm bed, and a good thousand cups of tea. I pulled into the inn yard and descended from the carriage. My foot slipped on the rain-slick running board, landing me in a puddle that splashed icy muck up to my waist. Close to, I saw the hostelry as a rather shabby affair; unpainted for years, the yard littered with bits of moldering harness, rotting straw, and the droppings of horses. Still, I stepped gratefully under the overhanging roof and rang the bell. As I was wringing water from my skirts, the door swung open, warmth and light pouring out across the threshold.

  “Gracious me!” said the woman who answered. “Oh, dear—come in out of that, then, won’t you? I’ll send Hank to see to your horses and your wee damp doggie, poor things.”

  But I was staring at her, just a tavern maid in a patched and dingy frock, and in a flash like storm light, I understood it all. I saw it in the arch of her eyebrows, the dainty pink mouth, the sharp chin—everything that had distinguished Uncle Wheeler’s appearance from my mother’s. Behind her, an older man with the same features leaned against the bar, his sharp eyes keenly green, even from where I stood. A rank smell of unwashed floors and unwashed bodies wafted into the rain, like steam. I whipped round to look at my uncle again, but he had all but disappeared, only a moving black shape in the endless black night. I don’t know how long I stood there, gaping like some open-mouthed half-wit.

  “No—” I said finally, senselessly. “No, I’m sorry to bother you, Miss—”

  “Lowman,” she said with a smile, pointing at the sign. “Ellie Lowman.” And there in the lamplight were the words, in weathered, peeling paint, that spelled out a name, a life, a world that my Uncle Wheeler could never have been able to accept: LOWMAN, it read. LOWMAN & SONS, LODGING FOR MEN & BEASTS.

  “Well, don’t stand staring,” she said with a laugh. “Get inside before you’re drowned!”

  “No—” I said. “No, I don’t want lodgings. I’m sorry, I—I’ve made a mistake.”

  I found him, soaked to the skin, a quarter mile away. I pulled alongside him, but he did not look up. “Get in,” I said, but he only kept walking. “Don’t be an idiot—get back in the trap!”

  He turned his face to me then, and what I saw there was nothing like the man I knew. Just a flash, mind you, and well I knew that by the time I truly looked at him again, the old sneer would hav
e returned, the haughty lift of his chin. But what I saw then was bitterness and rage, and it twisted any beauty out of his face. It made him look, in fact, like an angry little boy.

  “Are you truly my mother’s brother, then?”

  He gave a laugh, sharp and mirthless. “In the flesh, my dear Charlotte. Born side by side in the muck, we two, both of us Wheeler bastards. Does that surprise you? Does that offend your merchant-class sensibilities?”

  I said nothing, but in truth, I wasn’t surprised. It seemed to make sense of so many things. But Uncle Wheeler took my silence for disgrace.

  “Oh, now I’ve hurt your feelings, have I? Can’t stand the ugly truth? How will your society banker like knowing he’s married the daughter of a baseborn factory girl? I don’t suppose she ever told your sainted father, either.”

  My father wouldn’t have held such a thing against her—he wouldn’t have known how. “Why would it matter?”

  He was incredulous. “Why would it matter? Why, it’s the only thing that matters, you foolish chit!” The rain streaming down his face made him look waxen, fiendish, as though a mask were melting away.

  “Get in,” I said again, my voice low and weary. “We must get out of this weather.”

  Finally, finally, he consented, climbing into the trap with something still of his fastidious grace. The drive to the new inn was very long, and as the wheels of the carriage spun over the pocked road, I heard an echo of Biddy Tom’s words: All things return to their beginnings. The great millwheel turns, bringing us all back round again. Inevitably.

  By the time we pulled into the yard at the Red Drake, the embittered young man from the gutters of Haymarket had faded away, becoming once again the refined Ellison Wheeler, Esquire, gentleman from Harrowgate. The transformation left a cold pit in my belly, well out of proportion to the chill night.

  It must have been nearly two in the morning by the time Uncle Wheeler and I were settled in the cosy private parlor, swathed in borrowed dressing gowns, our cloaks and clothes hung to dry by the kitchen fire. We ought to have gone straight to bed, but we had to wait for bricks to be heated and beds turned down, and our own nightclothes were near as wet as our travelling dress. Besides, I’m sure neither of us was relaxed enough for sleep just then.

  They had wakened an upstairs maid to help undress me, her sleepy fingers fumbling with the wet buttons and soaked stay-laces. Peeled out of my sodden clothes, I was still freezing, despite pot upon pot of steaming tea and the roaring fire in the parlor grate. The maid heaped a very fine eider quilt atop me, but it helped little. I think the shivering went bone deep—deeper, even; the night in its wild entirety had left me cold to the very soul.

  Uncle Wheeler paced the room like a clock that won’t wind down. He had doffed even his wig, and though his damask dressing gown was as fine as they come, the difference in his appearance shocked me. His hair, cropped close, was an untidy smear of red; without powder, his face was blotched and freckled. He did look more like my mother, then; but still more like the folk I had seen at Lowman’s.

  “The woman I saw,” I said, tucking my numb toes beneath my legs. “Who was she?”

  Uncle Wheeler made a little sound, full of derision.

  “A sister? A cousin? Who can tell? They all look alike,” he said, and the venom in his voice was enough to sting me from across the room. “They breed like rabbits and live like roaches, and by God, I wasn’t going to spend my life among them, kissing the gentry’s pompous behinds and scraping dung from their boots! I was Harrison Wheeler’s son—I had every bit as much Wheeler blood in my veins as any rich brat up at Highton Park, and nobody was going to keep me from what was mine by birthright.”

  He turned to me then, one hand still on the fireplace mantel. “You’ll be thinking it didn’t look so bad, I’m sure. But trust me, my sweet niece, you have no idea what it really means to be poor—so poor you know you’ll never be able to clean the grime from your fingernails or wash the stench from your clothes. You play at genteel poverty, but you wouldn’t last a day if you had a taste of the real thing.”

  “What about your mother?” I said, very quietly.

  “She? Oh, she had the decency to die in childbirth, rather than live out life as a fallen woman. Left me at the mercy of her big brother, she did—didn’t even leave word as to what I should be called. So I became—” he nearly spat out the words, “Enoch Lowman. Enoch! Named for my generous patron, who thought enough hard, dirty work would wash the stain of illegitimacy right off me.”

  “And my mother?” I said, and his face softened—but briefly.

  “Who knows? I think her mother—oh, yes, Charlotte, different mothers. Are you scandalized more than ever now? I think she must have been a servant at the big house; that sort of thing is common enough, after all.”

  My mother had weathered it well, it seemed; her halfbrother, caught between worlds, had nurtured a keen resentment that burned still to this day. He had emerged from behind the mask he wore, and it was like pulling a scab off a wound. The man underneath was raw and festering, and far more frightening than the face on the surface.

  “How did Spinner—our mutual acquaintance—come into it?” I said.

  “My father died when I was fifteen,” he said. “By that time, I understood who he was—what I was. Picture me then, Charlotte—not only a bastard, but an orphan. I knew better than to expect a legacy, or a nod, or the least little crumb off the dead man’s table. A man like Harrison Wheeler can give his name to a dozen little girls and no one so much as drops a handkerchief over it.”

  “But not a boy,” I said, understanding. Mercy, who knew better than I what it meant to have a son to inherit? “Not an illegitimate son.”

  Uncle Wheeler was lost somewhere in the past. “He found me at Highton Park, banging on the postern gate in the middle of the night, sick and drunk and looking like I’d crawled straight out of the slime I’d been born in. I don’t know what he was doing there—it didn’t occur to me to wonder at it. I was just a boy, and when a gentleman pulls up beside you in a four-in-hand and invites you in for a brandy and cakes before you catch your death of cold…”

  “You climb right in,” I whispered, recalling the glint of gold thread by fading sunlight. How easily had Rosie and I given in? Surely it took less to lure a desperate, angry boy into his influence. Oh, surely it had taken far less!

  “You climb right in. He whisked me off in just such a coach as I’d been polishing since I was big enough to reach above the axle. He introduced himself as Mr. Smart, and he had calling cards to prove it. Rob Smart—” he gave me that same bitter little smile, “Esquire.” Uncle Wheeler laughed, startling me. “They don’t carry cards that say ‘Others.’”

  “No,” I said. “No, indeed they do not.”

  The carriage had carried him all through the night, he said—but only that one night. He’d have sworn to it. By the time morning broke, they had arrived in Harrowgate, and young Enoch’s filthy working clothes had become the clean, soft dress of a young gentleman: brushed wool frock coat, white stockings, tapestry waistcoat, and silver-buckled shoes.

  “Dressed me up just like the rag-girl in the fairy story,” Uncle Wheeler said. “And, would you believe it? He dropped me right off at the ball.”

  Not a ball so much as a gentlemen’s club of the sort Enoch Lowman could never have gained entry. But that Enoch Lowman was gone, and a new young dandy stood in his place. He could hardly believe his luck.

  “What did he want from you?” I asked. “For payment?”

  Uncle Wheeler laughed again, and it was a sound that had not the slightest mirth in it at all. “Oh, that is the best part, isn’t it? What did he want? In exchange for a new life, a new identity, a new wardrobe, and a purse full of silver?” He shook his head, as if he could not quite believe it, all these years later. “I had half a crown from my father—the only thing he’d ever given me. Like a tip. I was happy to be rid of it, just then.”

  The boy Jack Spinner had dropp
ed at the club in Harrowgate was already well on his way to becoming the Ellison Wheeler that had descended upon us in Shearing so many months ago. But the pouch of silver would not last forever, and young Enoch—now calling himself by an array of fancy names as varied as his wardrobe—found himself in a constant scrabble for income.

  “But I was young, and handsome enough, and hungry. I found a series of diverting occupations, and more than enough willing…affiliates to assist me. The right clothes, the right manners, the right names…that was enough to get invited to their dining rooms, their game rooms, their bedrooms. And if things occasionally got too close, he was there. A debt I couldn’t cover, a husband whose ego couldn’t be soothed. Get in a scrape, and who should be round the next corner but my old pal Rob Smart?

  “I knew what he was, by then, of course—or close enough. I was playing the game too well to have any illusions about the ‘help’ he was giving me. A whole new identity all over again, and all for just my mother’s tattered handkerchief, a lock of my sister’s hair? He steals from you, bit by bit, and you pay up freely. But what care had I for the scraps and trinkets of a life better forgotten? As I said, I was more than happy to be rid of them.

  “But then, oh, then! I had my grand idea. I had had enough of skulking about the fringe of Harrowgate’s great society. I was tired of being Jack Harrison of the Wakefield Harrisons, William Pendleton, Edward Holmes-Whitley. I wanted my own name—my father’s name.”

  He paced before the fire, spark animating his recollections. I felt cold and sick as I watched him. “What did you do?”

  “I marched my way into Old Wheeler’s—let’s see, that would be your great-uncle, I believe, good old Harrison’s big brother—Old Wheeler’s study, and told him, flat out, what I wanted. Papers drawn up declaring me, by legal right, a Wheeler by birth and name. Once I suggested it was better worth his while than to have me start spreading the word that his precious new axle-bearings were really the work of a machinist at Spinney and Sons, he was more than happy to oblige me.”