“Tell me what you know of her,” I said. “You’ll find me plenty grateful, I assure you.”
She said she had heard May mumble of mysterious doings when she thought herself to be alone. Of beatings, of fire, of everything she’d lost. And that horse! How often she pulled his old head to her own and whispered into his ear!
“Horse?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“She came in to town like a right farmer’s wife, driving a cart with baskets and blankets and the like. Fine quality. The Shakers had given ’em to her, that’s what she said. That’s how she made out when she first come by. But she couldn’t find work, so she sold the cart. Then the baskets. Then the blankets—though with winter at her back, I’d wager she was sad to see those coverlets go. There was a knacker who pegged her horse for the grinder, saying he’d give her a note or two for him, but she near tore off his head at the suggestion. Yessir, she arrived looking like townsfolk—scrawnier but enough of a likeness so’s no one ever noticed that she was one of us, only that she’d come from someplace else. ’Course, she should have been warned out with the other unworthies, but that woman can shift herself into all sorts. She’s queer that way. That’s how come she ended up on the block with us today.”
“You mean she was one of the lucky ones?” I asked, sarcastically.
“You think it’s better to be out in the cold?” the old woman asked. “This time a year, there’s not much I wouldn’t do just to keep a roof over my head.”
“And the nag?” I said. “You say she still keeps it close?”
“Put up such a fuss this afternoon when we were being moved that Mister Tanner himself come out and told his man to tie the poor thing to the back of the wagon and leave be. She’s in with the animal now. You’ll see for yourself.”
Peering up at me mischievously from the shadows, she granted me a toothless grin. “Now, I done my part,” she said. “You stay true and tickle my palm a little.”
“Thank you,” I said. “You have been very helpful. Can I ask one more question of you? Did May Kimball ever mention her children?”
The crone looked surprised for the first time since we’d spoken. “I never heard her say nothing of kin,” she said. “Only that she’d left her old life for a new one and had not a shred of an idea where the wind might blow her. Children, you say? I should have known she’d lost more than she’d ever tell.” The old witch sat for a moment, then poked me sharply. “Go on, now. She’s just there, but I’d approach slow if I was you. Otherwise that horse’ll call you out. They’ve got a tie, I tell you. Stronger than most humans, I’d say. Now, off and leave me be.”
She tore the hem of her skirt in order to hide her money, but stopped when she saw that I was watching. “Don’t you be thinking you’ll steal this back. I’ve a pair of sharp eyes—that, and I’m scrappy, so consider yourself advised.”
Backing away, I checked first to see that the stable boy was still asleep. The single lantern that had shone so weakly across the way shed more light on the stall where May Kimball was sleeping. As I approached, her horse nickered and there was rustling in the hay. Peering over the top, I watched as she arranged herself quickly, sitting with a regal bearing that was strange for one who had suffered such humiliation. She patted her skirts about her on the straw while her nag lowered his head as if to whisper news of my approach.
I will say that whatever comfort the horse’s presence might have given her, it cannot have supplied her much in the way of physical fortitude, for now that I could see her more closely, she appeared gaunt and empty. Hung over the set of her expression like a loose cloth, the skin on her face was dull and old beyond its years. But it was her eyes that struck me most. As level a gaze as they possessed, they were dead of all hope.
I slid back the bolt on the door, surprised to find it unlocked. How easily she might have freed herself! Then I entered the stall and knelt down, asking if I might speak to her. She turned from her initial wary inspection of me, looked blankly into the dusty air, and stroked her horse’s leg. Again, the nag whinnied—an answer to my request, which apparently disposed May Kimball favorably towards me.
“I know why you’ve come,” she said. “You’re the law and you’ve come about the fire.” Turning slowly, she searched my face to see if she’d guessed right.
“I have come about the fire,” I said. “But I’m not the law.” After we’d spent months looking for her, it was difficult to believe that we were finally speaking. “Your husband…”
She sat up. “What of him? Lying, whatever he might have said to you. Where’s he now?”
Time was running short. I was unsure as to how I should lay out all that I wanted to tell her.
“If he’s as bad as I have heard him to be, Madam,” I answered, “then he is in Hell.”
“Oh, I know Hell, sir,” she said. “And it’s no match for Silas. Where is he really?” She looked at me warily.
“Did you not see the notice in the paper, Madam? He’s dead, Mrs. Kimball. In the fire. He…”
“Dead?” she said quickly. “Dead?” She paused as though contemplating how best to react to this last piece of news. “So you are here about him and the fire? Because you don’t need to ask anyone else. I’ll tell you what you want to know. That fire…”
“Was an accident, Mrs. Kimball. That’s what I came to tell you. Please listen. The fire was an accident. As I have already explained, I am not the law but the law will follow what I say. I am an inspector. A fire inspector. And I have written my official report. The fire was an accident.”
“But how?” she asked, trying to find the catch. “How would you know such a thing?”
“I know because I pored over what’s left of your farm. I’ve been looking for you and your daughter…”
“Polly?” she asked sharply. “What do you need with her? You think I’d say a word about…”
I reached for her shoulder then thought better of it as she drew away. “Your daughter must be told that the fire was an accident, do you understand? As soon as possible. She needs to know that it’s all in the report. An accident.”
“But Silas,” she said. “You say he died. That’s…”
“A tragic accident, Mrs. Kimball. Nothing more.”
She needed a moment to take in what I had told her. If she had had her suspicions about the circumstances of the fire—and she would not have hidden herself through the winter had she not—she no longer needed to fear. She was free. Free, perhaps, for the first time in her life.
“You say you’ve not yet seen my Polly?” she asked. “Because she needs to know—”
“Yes,” I interrupted. “She needs to know. I’ve seen your Polly, but I wasn’t allowed to speak to her.”
“Not allowed to speak? By those people?”
“The Elder Sister silenced me. She won’t let me see your daughter unless you come with me,” I said. “Now, if she only lets you in, you can warn Polly. You can be the one to tell her about the accident.”
Her face blanched. “What about Ben? Did you see him, too?”
“I did not see your son, Mrs. Kimball,” I said. “But I fear for him as well…”
She pulled on my sleeve and looked into my eyes. “Why? Have they done something…?”
“He’s fine,” I answered. “But I am concerned for the three of you. There are people who are very interested in your whereabouts, Madam. And if they got hold of one of your children, they could threaten…”
“Threaten?” she asked. “Threaten to hurt them? But I…I left them far away so they’d be safe from all that. I left them…” She looked down and started to cry. “Silas tried to kill him,” she sobbed. “My boy’s alive because I grabbed him out of that bucket. Promised Silas I’d hide him, never let his name be written in any records. Now you say there’s others who’d do him harm?” She was agitated, tapping her leg with a piece of straw and then passing it through the lantern flame.
My silence was answer enough.
“Al
l this over that cursed farm?” she asked, incredulous. “That’s all Silas cared about. Once he took it into his head that it might not be his, that he might not be able to rid himself of us and sell it—that’s why my girl…”
“Remember, Mrs. Kimball,” I said quickly. “The fire was an accident. You’ve no need to worry about yourself or your girl now, provided we can get to her.”
As she flicked the straw silently back and forth, I worried she might start another conflagration. But there was so much else to think about, I didn’t try to stop her. Instead, I went to the heart of the matter at hand.
“I must ask you, Madam. Who is the rightful owner of the farm?”
“Rightful owner, you say?” She laughed ruefully, then was quiet a long time. Finally, she looked up.
It was then they struck—two men on horseback, galloping into the barn, headed straight for the stall in which we were sitting like they knew exactly where to find May. One jumped the wall and knocked me down while the other grappled with the latch and threw open the door. May turned away and crouched, scuffling in the hay she’d used as a blanket. Then as one of the men threw his arms round her waist, she screamed. The stall suddenly seemed a tiny space for all that was taking place within it. Her horse reared at the intrusion as the men fought me off and dragged May through the door. I turned in time to see her yanked up onto one of the men’s horses as he threw a leg over the back of his saddle and whipped his mount forward. Then the other looked at me—a familiar slab of a face he had. One of Hurlbut’s bullies. He slammed shut the stall door, rattled the latch closed, and jumped onto his horse. May’s screams and the pounding of hooves faded into the darkness.
I cursed, leaping quickly to my feet as May’s horse began to paw at the ground. His eyes were wild and white-rimmed, his nostrils flaring as they emitted clouds of steam in the cold dawn air. Arching his neck and nodding furiously, he hurled his great head upwards and screamed, a piercing call, shrill with panic. Old as he was, he had once been a handsome animal—hardly one I’d call a nag now that his spirit was so plainly on display. Built more for the hunt than the plodding chores of farm work—a rich man’s horse is what he’d have been in another life. Benjamin Briggs’s horse, I thought, though no doubt just a colt when his master died.
The nag had worked himself into a state, throwing his head this way and that, tilting it sideways to stare down at me with one spooked eye, all the while nickering low and then screeching, backing and starting again and again in the close wooden stall.
“I daren’t get near,” the stable boy called out. He had come running from his overturned pail just as the men ran off with May, and now he stood paralyzed by the animal’s desperation. “He’ll run harder at the door if I try. Look, he’s already cut up his front legs a good bit. Would’na thought so old a horse had that kind of fight in him but he’s turned wild.”
My thoughts raced to the stall itself. I needed to get down in the muck of it: Perhaps one of the men had dropped something during the struggle—it was all I had to go on. Moving slowly I met the animal’s wild, rolling eyes and spoke as if to a frightened child. I intended to open the door and set him free, if I could only get near enough without spooking the animal into harming itself any further. I extended my hand towards the horse’s muzzle, palm facing upwards. There was no stopping myself from shaking. I was frightened, I’ll say that, telling myself over and over to keep calm, mind my wits, never drop my eyes from his.
“See now?” I said. “I won’t hurt you. There. You can watch as I take a small step. I shall move just the tiniest bit closer to you. There now. Easy…”
I felt for the moist, steamy breath and the velvet muzzle. So close now.
“There, we have done it, see?” We touched, the animal and I, my cold bare hand grazing the soft fur of his elegant nose. We were both easing towards each other, and I felt him beginning to go calm as the trust between us grew.
A scream as his nose whipped away and upwards. The horrid sound of hooves exploding against wood, a sickening crack as he hurled himself down from where, just a half-second before, he had reared up, towering above me. I thought I had passed muster with him, but then he decided to trust in me no longer, for he punched his delicate legs through the stall door, screaming again and again as he pulled his forelegs free of the detritus and reared, this time flinging his limbs so hard that the sound of his leg breaking as it hit the shattered boards was itself alive—moist and hard, pure viscera. I could not pause to think or feel, could not but look at what had become of the noble beast, fallen now but still thrashing, fragments of white bone sharp and jutting from where his leg had all but snapped in two.
My pistol. I reached without thought for the Colt I carry with me yet rarely find reason to fire. Inching my fingers round its smooth, cold handle, I pulled the gun from my belt, acting on instinct, kneeling and leaning with all of my weight to still the horse’s flailing head, holding the gun steady against the quivering fur behind the poor beast’s eye. Then I fired. One single explosion: all movement slowing in the spray of blood that covered me. A wisp of blue smoke rose from the black hole in his skull.
I could hear little but the echo of my shot, though men had come running and shouting from all directions. They had not yet reached the barn. Raising myself up on quaking legs, I peered around the stall. One of the walls was wet and stained red. But as my focus sharpened, my gaze snagged on a flash of white amidst the dung and straw.
Buried but peeking out from beneath the refuse of the stall was a sealed packet of papers. The animal’s frightened pawing must have unearthed it. Lunging over the dead horse’s neck, I grabbed for it before others had the chance to notice. Something in crude char was scrawled across the face—May Kimball had put to good use the stalk she had burned in the flame of my lamp.
It read: TRASK.
Barnabas Trask? I had no time to ponder his connection to May Kimball. The men were moving in. Varnum Tanner had been disturbed from his bed, they murmured. He was on his way. I backed to the edge of the crowd. My exit would be ghostlike. I had told May about the fire, that much had been accomplished. But only part of my errand was complete, and I felt burdened by memory, death, and the sudden disappearance of another life I had tried to save.
Sister Charity
THE WHEEL SPINS, my foot on the treadle, the wool feeding out, the yarn twisting thin. It spins without thought from me, the yarn getting longer and longer, all sight of the beginning lost in the loose-combed wool and no end to it either. How I hate the noise in the workshop today—the slapping and creaking of the great loom, the talk, talk, talk of my sisters.
My Polly’s womb was hard under my fingers, and had I not slipped a near-full measure of the White Poppies into her tea, she would have cried out in pain as I pressed it beneath my hands. Perhaps I squeezed it so firmly because I wanted to be sure that what I thought I felt was true, perhaps I did so out of hurt and anger. I will say that my thoughts were black. I, who had believed her to be even greater than a Visionist, discovered her to be little more than a rutting farm girl. That was why her mother dropped her here, as do so many. For if a young girl does not abandon her own infant with us—as was my fate—then it is common enough for a mother to abandon a pregnant daughter. Such is the logic of carnal sin: Pass along the shame, hide it as though to put it out of sight is to cleanse the earth of it forever.
No doubt, the girl I had known as my dearest friend had known another in a very different sense. A farm boy? A young man about town? I could not say to whom my Polly had lost herself before coming to The City of Hope, but the imagining of it disgusted me so that it was all I could do not to run from inside the workshop and throw up in the snow. How I wished I could purge my disillusionment with the same ease.
As Sister Polly lay on the table, her mind misted over, could she truly see the Harvest Feast as I described it? Or had she misled me then, too? Like the interloper in the bushes, was she blind to all that we do here? Has she always been blind? It is pa
rticularly galling to me that, with her face as pale as the moon, the believers imagine her to be holier than ever. “Mother’s Light!” they whisper when they look upon her. Am I to allow them to fall further under the spell of such a lie, or do I save them from the fate that has befallen me? When is it better to dash faith on the rocks of truth? That is the question before me.
I thought of seeing my dear sister staggering up the stairs of the workshop not three days earlier to help in the sorting of newly dyed wool. She took her place and wound the yarns round the folding wooden swift. Crimson against her blue-white skin, the skeins reminded me of blood. My eldress had been right all along. I was indeed blinded by love.
Now, I spin and spin and nothing around me holds its shape save the wool I feed into the wheel, faster and faster. My mind travels back, and I am a girl again. Elder Sister Agnes holds my hand, and we are alone in the apple orchard on a cool fall day. I am small enough that she can lift me into the branches of one of the trees, for in it I spy a red fruit hanging high above us, its skin gleaming against the deep blue sky. I am reaching and reaching, though my caretaker’s body sways uncertainly under the weight of me and she begins to laugh. We teeter this way then that, all the while my arms flailing. My fingers want only one thing in the world: to claim what I cannot reach.
She asks, laughing: “Would you not take the one beside it?” I squeal and shake my head. “The one below, then?”
Again I shake, this time so hard that we careen to one side and fall down. She laughs again, and the sound is all the happier for the fact that we are away from the other believers and, for once, my eldress is free to play. It is rare that she indulges in such silliness, and I know somehow that if I settle for an easier apple, our game will end. A strange determination grows within me; I want so much for this lightness between us to endure that I become serious, intractable in my intent. Our mirth begins to dissolve, and though I try to pull her up from the grass, she is tired of my insistence and grows cold and irritable. Fear is welling up inside me, and I want none of it. Oh happiness, do not disappear! I cannot imagine when we will laugh again, and I begin to cry for the apple.
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