by Julia Byrd
“I am afraid you will find no tidy explanation for these deaths, Ben. Sometimes terrible, sad things just…happen. Infants are fragile. Did Mrs. Pfeiffer tell you she carried her son for only seven months before he was born?”
I hadn’t thought to ask. “No.”
Juno stepped over a row of rye sprouts. “You cannot uncover a pattern where none exists. I do not choose to linger in your heart’s antechamber, awaiting your judgment.”
“Still. I must do what I can. I cannot remain the silent gravedigger.”
“Something happened back there, didn’t it? At the house, when I saw you near the tree, you were agitated by more than just the fire. What was it?”
As always, Juno had been paying attention. I wavered for a moment, scratching at dried sweat in the rough stubble under my chin. “It was more the omission than the action.”
“It’s always both,” Juno countered. “Opere et Omissione. What did you fail to do?”
“You asked me to take charge, and Miller wanted the same thing. Organize them, help them, lead them, you said. I tried, but I could do none of those things.”
“I believe you could have.” She shivered. “Yes, you stammer, and yes, your family has had its share of grief. But your name holds power. You must decide what you’re going to accomplish with all your perfections and imperfections.”
I did not want to focus on my woes. At least the awful silence between us had eased. I stepped forwards and took her arm. “We’ll talk more later. You need to get clean and warm.”
She allowed me to urge her along, and we trudged up the hill toward Maida House. She even leaned a little weight on my arm, so I knew she was weary. From the gravel forecourt of the house, I looked down the hill at the cemetery. My little groundskeeper’s cottage was just visible, and I longed for its silent simplicity.
Once inside the manor, I relocked the front door. What if the arsonist had been watching as the fire defeated our meager efforts to contain it? What if he—or she—watched as Juno and I walked away? I paced down the corridor.
Juno opened the library door and peeked past the doorframe. “I hate to disturb Everett and Sarah. They’re asleep.” She slid the door closed softly. “She is on the couch in front of the fire, and Everett is wedged into a chair. He’ll have a sore neck tomorrow.”
I gave a faint smile. “He’ll be fine.” I started for the kitchen, intent upon checking the locks, and Juno followed.
The kitchen was still gleaming. The pie plate was still in the center of the table, covered with a clean cloth, and a significant portion of it was gone. Juno and Sarah could have the rest of it in the morning. I reassured myself the kitchen door was secure, then tested the windows.
“Ben?”
“If you open the back door, be sure to relock it,” I said. I brushed past Juno, intending to check the external door on the hot house. Why did any house need so many blasted entrances?
“Ben.”
I assessed the dozens of glass panels in the hot house. It hardly mattered if the door was secured—anybody with a rock could break a pane and walk right in. I’d have to fortify the dining room instead. In contrast to the library and the kitchen, the dining room still felt like a dusty tomb. Juno watched as I wedged the back of a chair under the doorknob.
“Since I need to access the tunnel through here, you’ll have to do this after I’m out. Do you see how the back legs are braced? Maybe you could also drag that sideboard over and—”
“Ben!” She rapped her knuckles on the hulking walnut furniture in question, sending up a little flurry of dust.
“What?”
Juno folded her arms. Her face was still dirty, and she looked like a determined garden sprite. “Pay attention, please. I am trying to speak to you. Are you locking me in, or locking everyone else out?”
A bit of both, maybe. “I am trying to make sure you’ll be safe here tonight.”
“Yes. And after that?”
I stopped my restless limbs. There was a weight of expectation in her eyes I could not interpret. “Pardon me?”
She sighed. “Never mind.”
“Bar the door after me.” As I turned to exit, I remembered her packet of correspondence. “Here.” I drew the bundle from within my coat and dropped it on the dining table. “I pulled these from your desk as I fled the house. I thought you might want them.”
Juno edged around the table and snatched up the envelopes. “My letters,” she said, then pressed them to her chest. “Did you…did you read them?”
“Do you mean to ask if I snooped into your personal papers sometime between the fire and now?” I frowned. She could credit me with a little more honor than that. “No, I did not.”
I left Everett sleeping in the library and crept alone through the tunnel. The hunched subterranean path suited me, as I felt about as humble as an earthworm anyway. My cottage offered not the silent simplicity I’d hoped for but rather aloof condemnation. You are alone, the cold walls whispered. You deserve it.
I lay awake until dawn thinking over the challenge Juno had laid for me. You must decide what you’re going to accomplish with all your perfections and imperfections. The stumbling, stuttering, humiliating interaction with Miller and his neighbors played out over and over in my unsettled thoughts. The fresh memory called up feelings I never wanted to experience again.
Your name holds power. Juno thought the deaths had no pattern, that they were all sad coincidences. Could I trust her? Could I embrace our entanglement? The deaths did not feel like a coincidence to me. Maybe she sought to dissuade me because she feared being implicated. I did not have to check the Maida Green record book to know we had never had four babes buried in such a short period of time. But I had been going about the investigation all wrong—I hadn’t played my strongest card. I needed to make my name and my family history work for me. There was but a single possible response, although the execution of it worried me. My thoughts swirled like the muddy water around the clogged drain in the corner of that field. Only when birdcalls rang through the still air did I finally sink into a fitful doze.
I can’t do it all at once, and I cannot do it alone.
Chapter 16: Rite of Reformation
After too few hours of sleep, I rose and washed in icy water straight from the pump. I had no patience for warming a kettle over the fire. Then I shaved and pulled on clean clothes—for the plan that had formed overnight, I would need the cooperation of my mother, and she would be more amenable to my request if I looked civilized. No funeral services were scheduled in the cemetery so I could spare the time away.
I blew into my mother’s house on a gust of air and strode past the maid with the briefest of nods.
“Goodness,” Mother exclaimed, setting down her teacup. “You’re light on your feet this morning, my boy. What brings you here?”
“Mother.” I bent to kiss the top of her head. “What would you say if I asked you to move back into Maida House, lend me a pinch of your respectability, and pay a social visit with me?”
I pulled out a chair, sat, then raised my eyebrows in question.
“Oh, is that all?” she managed in a croak. “I would say yes.”
“Good. The house will be a lot of work, you know.”
“Hmph. You don’t have to tell me that. I’m in a better position to know than you are. But, darling, I thought you didn’t possess the funds yet?”
“I don’t. Not enough to repurchase all the estate’s former acreage, at least. But recently it’s come to my attention that some of the land may be mismanaged and underperforming, and thus may be available at a better price. The farmers are suffering from neglectful management. And I want to start positioning myself as…as myself. Benjamin Hood, heir to the Hood family’s history, for good or for ill. Men will be more likely to sell to me if they see me as a viable landowner, not some misbegotten younger son crawling out of the woodwork.”
“Consider me convinced.” She pursed her lips. “But don’t say misbegotten, it
puts me in a bad light.”
I laughed. “As you wish. I have another request—you recall I mentioned Mrs. Stephens and a friend of hers have been staying at the house.”
“Yes. I heard about the fire at her house last night.”
“Did you?” Gossip traveled faster than horses. I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Very unfortunate. Juno—Mrs. Stephens—is going to need to purchase some new things. Clothes and stockings and…feminine things of that nature.”
Mother considered me steadily, and I wondered what she read in my face. “I must know something more before I can respond. What is her relationship to you?”
I hesitated for a moment. “I’m not certain,” I said honestly.
For some reason, that lack of an answer seemed to settle my mother’s decision. “I will be very happy to help,” she said with a nod. “It’s the right thing to do. Thank God she wasn’t inside the house.”
“Thank you, Mother. Now, are you ready to pay that social call?”
“Right this moment? Whom are we visiting?”
“Mr. and Mrs. George Horvath. Are you acquainted?”
“Yes. They just lost that baby,” Mother said softly.
“Sadly, yes. He’s a carpenter, and I want to ask him about repairing the dining room ceiling at Maida House. But because of the recent loss, I thought it would be rather better to pay our respects before I start talking about plaster and woodwork.”
My comment about the work was true enough, but my main purpose was to ask about their child. Hopefully, Mother’s presence would help smooth the intrusion.
“Let me find my bonnet,” she said.
Mother collected her hat, then put together a wicker basket filled with almond biscuits and covered it with a cheerful square of fabric. I offered her my arm for the short walk across the village.
It took longer than I expected, however, because Mother stopped to speak with nearly everyone we encountered. Everyone knew me, although I knew no one. It was as if I’d been hiding in plain sight for the past eight years. Mother found a way to draw me into her pleasantries and mention the work I was planning for Maida House. At least I could afford the time for her to talk about our return to the manor. A wary corner of my mind screamed that I was doing the very thing I’d sworn not to do—reopening the house without the financial support of the full estate.
At the Horvaths’ doorstep, I stayed behind my mother’s shoulder as she knocked. A woman answered the door, near my own age with her hair pinned in a pragmatic knot.
“Mrs. Hood,” she said. “This is a surprise.”
“Hello, Emily,” Mother said. “Call me Rebecca, my dear. Have you met my son, Benjamin?”
“Not recently, I believe.” I recognized her pallid face from the morning of her child’s funeral when I had watched her weeping, but I could not mention it. I shook her hand, and she invited us in. “Can I offer you tea?”
“You are so kind, yes. These are for you.” Mother extended the basket of treats.
Mrs. Horvath disappeared into the back of the house, and I looked around the simple but tidy living area. Under the window, a bin of small, carved wooden wagons and horses indicated the presence of young children. The Horvaths kept no servants, from what I could see. We seated ourselves as Mrs. Horvath returned with a tea tray.
“Does your husband build furniture?” I asked, running a fingertip along a carved vine in the chair rail. The work was delicate and highly detailed. Juno would like this. The points of the Hedera helix leaves had been rendered accurately. Someone had been paying close attention.
“He does, and he made that by hand,” she said with pride. “Adele Toth made that embroidered pillow you see on the chair.”
We sipped tea and admired a few other carved pieces around the room. Mrs. Horvath and my mother chatted about mutual acquaintances. Then, in a polite silence, Mrs. Horvath donned a questioning smile. She wanted to know why we had come.
“Emily.” Mother slid forwards to sit on the edge of her chair. “Allow me to express how truly sorry I am for the loss you experienced. I know we spoke briefly at the time, but…those early days pass in a fog. I wanted to repeat my sentiments in a clearer moment.”
“Yes.” Mrs. Horvath set her cup on her saucer with a hollow rattle. “Thank you. To this day I don’t know how I…well.” Her eyes cut to me, and I quickly turned my head to study a framed needlework sample hanging on the wall.
“You went through all the physical effort of the childbed,” Mother said with quiet empathy, “and yet woke up the next morning with empty arms.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Horvath whispered.
“You knew him. He was your son, and you knew him.”
“Yes.”
I glanced at my mother. It was too easy to forget she had a whole lifetime of experience that was not mine to share. Even during the terrible days of grief we had walked through together, we hadn’t truly shared our burdens.
“He knew you, too, Emily. You will always be his mother.”
Mrs. Horvath stifled an unsteady breath. My mother stood, abandoning her cup and saucer, and crossed the room. To my surprise, she knelt at the woman’s feet and clasped her hand. I should not have been there. I was an intruder—a male intruder—in such a scene. And yet I had my own agenda to pursue. I would make myself ask awkward questions yet again because I had told Everett I would, and because I didn’t want to dig more tiny graves.
But before I could muster up a query, my mother spoke again.
“When Joseph…” She swallowed. “When my Joseph passed, I tormented myself with guilt. What had I done wrong, how had I failed him so utterly?” I couldn’t see Mother’s face, but Mrs. Horvath dashed away tears and listened intently. “He was a grown man, of course, and not an innocent babe. But he was still my son. It took me a long time to stop asking those questions and stop accusing myself. I don’t blame God, and I don’t blame Joseph.”
I forced my fingers to unclench from the carved arms of the Horvaths’ chair. I blamed Joseph—I still blamed him.
Mrs. Horvath nodded. “That’s what Mrs. Stephens said, too. That I couldn’t blame myself for the babe’s death.”
Juno. She knew Mrs. Horvath. Why had Juno involved herself with the Horvath baby? I almost groaned aloud. If only she had been nowhere near the Horvaths. Mother turned her head sharply, and we exchanged glances. I gave a tiny shake of my head.
“That’s right, dear,” my mother murmured to Mrs. Horvath as she separated their clasped fingers. With a hand braced on her bent knee, Mother struggled to rise. I lurched to my feet at the sight of her frailty. Grasping her under the elbow, I steadied her and lifted her back to standing. Together we returned to our seats.
“Did you say Mrs. Stephens?” I asked. The sound of my voice was too rough and too harsh for the quiet room.
“Yes.” Mrs. Horvath inhaled a shaky breath, but her next exhalation was steadier. “She was very kind.”
“Is Ju—Mrs. Stephens a particular friend of yours?”
Mother threw me a cutting glance, but I had to know.
“I suppose you could say that. She was so solicitous of my health when I was with child. And then afterward…I found her to be very caring.”
My eyesight darkened around the edges. Please, God, no. Mrs. Horvath said she was kind and caring. She had nothing to do with Mrs. Roberts. She’d been nothing but charitable toward Sarah Greeley.
But hadn’t I also called her an enchantress? Maybe her allure had covered dark truths. She had no children of her own—what if malevolent jealousy lurked deep in her soul? My vision faded further before I loosened my jaw and pulled in a lungful of air.
I stood abruptly. The chair slid back a few inches with a dry rasp. I needed to see Juno, to speak with her. Mother and Mrs. Horvath both looked at me with questioning eyes.
“Thank you for the tea,” I said haltingly. “Please ask Mr. Horvath to call on me at Maida House at his convenience. I expect to have work to offer him soon.”
&nb
sp; Mother rose with considerably more grace than I had shown. She spoke a quiet word with Mrs. Horvath as I fetched our coats.
“That poor woman,” she said once we were outdoors. “Thank you for bringing me here, Benjamin. I should have thought of it myself. Sometimes I am too wrapped up in my own daily life. I hope I did her some good.”
“You are a marvel,” I said.
“Thank you,” she replied. “I’m afraid I cannot take much credit for you, but you are my proudest accomplishment.”
“Me?”
She looped her hand through the crook of my elbow as we walked. “It’s certainly not Joseph,” she said sourly.
I choked out a sputtering cough that trailed into a horrified “Mother!” But then we both laughed at her audacity. Almost eight years had passed since my brother’s death, and it was our first moment of dark humor. Maybe Mrs. Horvath had helped us, too. She’d given me another piece of the truth about Juno.
We parted at Mother’s doorstep. “I’ll be back on Sunday to walk with you to church,” I said. “Afterward, we’ll go together up to the house.”
“Wonderful.”
“I need a horse,” I murmured. “And a carriage, a driver, a boy to work in the stable.” My years of careful savings would pour out like water, especially as I initiated the land purchases. I needed to restart the Maida income stream right away. First, I need to speak with Juno.
“You need a thousand things,” Mother said. “But I’m so glad, Ben. I think it’s time.”
I hope you’re right. On impulse, I bent and folded her narrow frame into my arms. She was smaller than I remembered. “Thank you. For everything. Until tomorrow, then.”
* * *
I departed and walked through the village toward Greeley’s house, intending to ask him about his whereabouts the previous evening. I needed to be sure he’d had nothing to do with the fire. Surely he wouldn’t have risked his daughter’s life.