Soil and Ceremony

by Julia Byrd

  Again. He’d said something similar up at the manor house. “You would let your irrational prejudice destroy a daughter’s chance for love? Because of Everett’s foreign ancestors?”

  “Because of the boy’s immediate ancestors,” Greeley shot back.

  I squinted. “You believe in the hex? Mrs. Toth has more Christian integrity in her littlest finger than you have in—”

  “Not her.”

  “Then who—”

  “You’d better start digging, Hood.”

  I stepped backwards. “Pardon me?”

  “You’re the gravedigger, aren’t you? Start digging. Unearth Anna’s bones. I’ll show you what few people know, and then you’ll all understand. Sarah will understand she must be made to stay with me.”

  We had never reopened a grave at Maida Green. The idea turned my stomach, and my heart sped to a throbbing rhythm. The woman deserved eternal peace, not to be subjected to her husband’s madness. “No.”

  “You told me to show you. Everything you need to see is inside her coffin. Now dig, gravedigger.”

  “No.” It was unthinkable. I turned my back on him. If the man wanted to dig up his own wife’s grave, then let him wallow alone in his sin and misery.

  I retreated only a few steps before I heard the distinctive sound of a gun hammer cocking. I turned and watched as Greeley poured a fraction of black powder into the muzzleloader’s priming pan.

  “I won’t be a part of this, Greeley,” I said, raising my hands. “There is nothing in that grave I need to see.”

  “But Sarah does.” The priming pan closed with a snick. Greeley poured powder and cartridge down the muzzle.

  “No.” The only thing worse than exhuming Anna Rose Greeley’s coffin would be if her daughter were forced to witness it. “Stop and think, man. It’s been almost eight years. Whatever you hid in her pine box, whatever you remember from the funeral, it’s not there anymore. This is unholy and unnecessary.”

  He drew out the ramrod and tamped his weapon. “Dig.”

  My shovel leaned against the headstone beside him. With a flick of his toe, he flipped the tool towards me. I made no move to catch it, and it fell with a soft thump near my feet. Then Greeley levelled the musket.

  “Dig,” he said again. With a sharp pull, the hammer cocked back for firing.

  I dropped to the ground and lunged for the spade. By the smoky light of the oil lantern, I grasped the handle and swung the iron shovel head at the musket barrel.

  Greeley fired. My wild swing connected with the gun and forced the muzzle sideways, although he did not release his grip on the stock. The report of the shot and the clang of metal on metal merged in my ears into a single, deafening explosion.

  A strange, elongated moment passed before I realized I’d been struck. My upper left arm was sending urgent, white-hot messages to my slow brain. I dropped the shovel to clap my right hand over the wound.

  “Good Lord, man, you shot me.” I nearly laughed at the absurdity, but it felt too close to a howl. “Are we done with this now? Have you sufficiently illustrated your fervor?”

  He was panting. The rapid rise and fall of his chest irritated me. I’d been shot, and yet he was overexerted. It was ludicrous. My thoughts danced on the edge of hysteria. When I lifted my hand, blood oozed from the thick wool of my new coat.

  “No!” He lowered the butt of the musket to the ground and fished in a pouch on his belt. With shaking hands, he pulled out another twist of black powder. “I want what should have been mine. Open up that grave so I may take it.”

  “I can’t dig, you fool. You put a lead ball through my arm.”

  “Your left arm. There’s enough blood in you to last a few hours at least.” He began reloading the gun. “You don’t want to stake your life over the dignity of a woman who’s already dead. Without you, who would lord over that big house on the hill? Who would rut with your pretty witch?”

  Greeley tossed the ramrod away and levelled the musket for another shot. I weighed my few options, all of them poor. Sweat and warm blood made my shirt cling to my skin. He was right that I didn’t care to stake my life for a skeleton. Perhaps I could buy myself more time. If Everett or Juno had heard the gunshot…

  “No one is coming for you, Hood. You’re not worth it, and no one heard the musket in this weather.”

  The wind was rushing down the hill from the house and over the cemetery. The sound would not have carried. And I wanted Juno to stay far away from Greeley.

  I retrieved the shovel and began to dig.

  With the first cut of the spade into the soft dirt, I whispered to poor Mrs. Greeley, “Anna Rose, forgive me for disturbing your rest.”

  Her erstwhile husband kept his barrel pointed at my chest. My injured arm throbbed with every movement. I carried all the weight of the soil and the guilt on my right arm, as I had done my whole life.

  “Take your peace and abide elsewhere, if you can,” I muttered to Anna under my breath, “and leave this plot to us poor sinners. Forgive your terrible husband. Or ignore him, if you prefer.”

  I made no effort to smooth my stuttering. I spoke as if no one listened. I shoveled again, then a third time. After the tenth motion, I stopped counting. Greeley watched and shifted his feet. The sweet smell of earth and the burn of pure effort had always been my refuge, and I took what solace I could find from the horrible task.

  “How long is this going to take?” he demanded.

  “Would have been faster without the gunshot.”

  “How long?”

  I straightened, then pulled my good arm out of the ruined coat. Carefully, I eased the tight wool fabric off the injured arm. With a gasp at the pain, I tore my linen shirt sleeve at the shoulder seam. The exposed wound was inflamed and angry. The ball had skimmed through two layers of fabric and opened a trough in my flesh, rather than wedging inside. Using my teeth and my right hand, I tied the linen shirtsleeve around my bicep.

  Then I turned my attention back to Greeley. “Everett and I can open a fresh grave in four or five hours. Alone, bleeding, but digging only as deep as the coffin lid, maybe five or six. There are plenty more shovels in the shed if you’d care to assist.”

  He shook his head. “Even under the nose of my weapon, you still talk too much. Keep digging.”

  I dug. Every stone and clump and root in the ground seemed to bar the path of the shovel as if Maida Green herself resisted my rude intrusion. The wound in my left arm was a throbbing mess under the makeshift bandage. Greeley waited by the neighboring headstone with his loaded musket trained on me.

  For the first hour or so, I sweated freely, and the wound bled. Soon, though, I started to shiver. My left hand fell numb, and the wind flung debris into my eyes. The calluses on my overburdened right hand tore open. In my exhaustion, silent tears mixed with the sweat on my cheeks and splashed onto the black dirt.

  I choked out a mirthless snort as another salty droplet flicked off the end of my nose. How many weeks ago had I lamented the ease of digging an infant’s grave? On that dull afternoon, before I knew Juno Stephens or any of the Greeley family, I had argued with the heavens that such a task should have left me bleeding and crying. That prayer had been answered, at least in part. I mixed a good deal of blood and tears into the soil.

  “Get up,” Greeley said, jerking the musket barrel.

  Only then did I realize I had fallen to my knees. I struggled back to my feet and continued.

  I worked through the deepest part of the night in a daze, nearly mindless. I found myself squaring up neat corners out of habit. But there would be no somber mourners arriving to circle around the graveside. If I had misjudged the position of the casket in relation to its stone marker, I might end up cutting further north or south anyway. Would I find the pine box still intact, or would it have rotted to mulch?

  * * *

  Some interminable time later, Greeley twitched and grunted. From my place in the rectangular pit, I glanced over at him. The man passed a rough hand o
ver his face and resettled the musket. Apparently, he had dozed off but startled awake. I cursed myself and my fogged brain. I had missed the moment to catch him unawares.

  “If you’re tired, we could resume at a more convenient hour,” I said. The edge of the pit was just past my knees. I had only another foot or so to clear.

  “You have no idea what it’s like,” he said. “To lose a child. You’ve never had one. I would do anything.”

  “Spare me the false moralism. You haven’t lost Sarah. If you had a single ounce of paternal care for—”

  “Do not pretend to tell me about paternity!” Greeley roared in a sudden fury. He rose from his slouch and strode forward to stare down at me from the edge of the grass. “You pathetic, mumbling creature. You are fatherless, brotherless, childless. Worthless. I had everything until—”

  I stabbed the spade down, preparing to climb out of the pit and argue on even footing, but it thudded against something hollow. The softened planks of an old casket.

  “Until this happened,” Greeley finished, subdued.

  The dirt beneath my feet was damp and spongy. If the casket was only an inch or two below the surface, it had drifted upward over the years, just like in the old London cemeteries. The lid was subject to collapse under my weight. I clambered out of the grave, cradling my left arm to my chest, and rolled to my back in the grass.

  “You don’t want to see her like this, Greeley. The dead must have their peace.”

  “We’ve been over this, Hood. You’re not making the decisions.”

  He leaned over and aimed the musket barrel between my eyes. I was too exhausted to care. With the moment at hand, the prospect of breaking through the rotting wood and exposing human remains was beyond my capacity. Balanced atop the headstone, the oil lantern had gone out. The first glow of dawn limned the top of the east wall, so I didn’t miss the light. Rinsing the grave with sunlight would not improve the task, but at least the rising air pressure would dampen the furious wind.

  “If you want her so badly, finish the job yourself,” I said. “I don’t care. If you shoot me now, you’ll spend your remaining days in a cramped, diseased prison cell. Then you would have truly lost your wife and your daughter.”

  Greeley shifted his aim by a fraction of a degree and fired the musket. I flinched, instinctively pulling my arms up to cover my face, and the movement reopened the congested wound. A sound like a plucked, overstrung violin string hissed through my brain. The fear pouring into my blood etched my limbs like acid and set my heart kicking.

  The shot had missed me, intentionally or not. But he was already fishing in his belt pouch for another cartridge.

  “Not only them.”

  I rolled sideways, arm pressed to my side and teeth gritted. “Who else, then?”

  He tamped the ramrod down the muzzle and stowed it, then leveled the weapon at me. “You said you would see, but you won’t, will you? ‘Show me,’ you stammered.”

  I raised my hands and staggered to my feet. Slowly, I circled behind Anna Rose Greeley’s tombstone. The thick slab would stop another lead ball. “Not like this.”

  “Sarah did not want to know either. Some corner of her knows well enough, but she won’t let herself think of it. She said Mrs. Stephens has been teaching her to pay attention. That is a lesson that girl sorely needs to learn.”

  My limbs weren’t reacting as quickly as I wanted—or maybe I’d lost some perception of time. Exhaustion and pain and Greeley all combined to rob me of sense. The only solid object in the cemetery was the cold granite under my raw fingertips. What did he want from me?

  The musket fired again. A sharp wedge of granite chipped off and sliced across my cheek. Warm blood mixed with the dried sweat and tears. I stumbled backwards. Greeley advanced until he stood at the foot of his wife’s open grave. He reached for his pouch to load another cartridge.

  I turned and staggered away, seeking any refuge from the man and his weapon. The cottage was too far. A few yards distant, a tall, black obelisk tempted me with more cover. I crossed the grass on scuffling strides and prayed for more daylight. Could Greeley outlast me in my own cemetery? How many times could he reload and shoot?

  Before I reached the sheltering obelisk, though, another musket ball tore into the Viburnum tinus by my feet, the glossy little shrub a cousin to the one Juno had appropriated weeks ago. I stopped. The humid morning air rattled in my lungs.

  Rotating, I raised my hands again. Greeley was still standing over the foot of the grave. The barrel of his gun gleamed in the warming dawn light as he shoved another twist of ball and black powder inside. I could think of nothing to say that I had not already said.

  “On your knees,” he snapped.

  The motion that began as kneeling ended in awkward collapse. My legs folded under me. The impact with the ground jarred my injured arm, and I hissed through my teeth.

  It was torturous to think underestimating such a weaselly little man might be my last mistake, so soon after having corrected a lifetime of larger ones.

  He raised the weapon again and seated the butt against his shoulder. His eyes were hectic and vacant. Did he even understand what he threatened?

  The quivering forefinger of Greeley’s right hand tightened on the trigger. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, to forestall him, but my lips and tongue did not seem to be functional. I was locked again in my old silence. Not from fear or humiliation, but because my entire body was rejecting my commands. There was nothing I could do.

  “Stop.”

  The voice, when it came, was Juno’s. The blatant, uncanny command in her tone caused both Greeley and me to twitch, and his gaze shifted up over my head. The musket did not waver. Even so, I could not stop myself from twisting towards her.

  She strode down a slight rise in the path, her fur-trimmed cloak flashing behind her like a proud pennant. The hood slipped back and revealed the dark coil of her hair. She was beautiful, and she was angry. Everett and Sarah trailed after her. They must have come through the underground passage and emerged from the Hood tomb like avenging spirits.

  “Stay back, witch,” Greeley said. “I am warning you. I will shoot him again.”

  Juno stopped a few yards away. “I have had more than enough of your interference, Mr. Greeley. It ends now. You are finished here. Leave this man and—”

  “I am not through with him. He hasn’t—”

  “Do not interrupt me!” Juno ordered. She advanced a step. “Are you paying attention, Mr. Greeley? Ben might have shown you patience, and even a kindness you did not deserve, but he has always been more charitable than I. You will leave him be. He is under my protection now.”

  I blinked through a cloud of fear and confusion. Juno’s blazing eyes made her appear every inch the witch people had always accused her of being. She had come for me. A witch or an angel, I could see no way to discern—nor any reason to.

  Greeley screeched an objection. “None of you understand—”

  “I am not interested, Mr. Greeley.” Juno came another pace forward. “Benjamin Hood carries all the rights and consequences of my name, now, just like Sarah. Interfere with either of them at your peril.” She drew a deep breath, rolled her shoulders back, and raised her hands. “I afflict you, Charles Greeley, with the self-awareness you have always lacked. You will see your mistakes. You will attend to your faults. You will bear witness to your own nature.” Her ivory palms slashed a hard stroke through the air. “No more will you hide your eyes in a moral blindness of your own making.”

  Then, in a resolute tone, Sarah spoke. “So be it.”

  His daughter’s voice made Greeley start. For a long moment, we kept silent as Greeley gaped. I recalled that same feeling from the night Juno brought her whisky and her commands to the cemetery to loosen my tongue.

  The angle of the gun dipped as Greeley weighed Juno’s curse. I struggled to rise, one hand pressed against my thigh for leverage.

  Everett appeared at my side and hoisted me to my f
eet. “Hold on, Ben,” he said softly. “I’m sorry we delayed for so long. Sarah and Juno argued over it, and Juno said we must wait no longer than dawn to find where he had taken you. When I heard that musket shot—”

  His voice came to a jagged break. What was he so worried about? I draped my arm around his neck. The crest of Everett’s shoulder settled against my ribs.

  “Father, come along,” said Sarah. “Leave Mother to rest.”

  “She took him from me,” Greeley croaked.

  “Who?”

  “She. Your mother. He should have been mine, but that was never my fault. Maybe the others were.”

  Sarah stepped forwards. Juno thrust out a restraining arm, but Sarah brushed past her. Greeley stared down into the open grave.

  “Who, Father?”

  “Sarah, no,” said Juno. “You don’t want this.”

  “He would have been your brother,” said Greeley. Then, with a wet, strangling laugh, he lifted his head and pointed at Everett. “And his, too, I suppose.”

  Everett stiffened.

  “What are you talking about?” Sarah whispered.

  “I tried to show Hood, but he became stubborn. Dirty gravedigger was too scrupulous to finish the job. Do you want to see, Sarah? Your witch’s curse said I could not hide my eyes. All that impedes us now is a few inches of dirt and rotting wood. Do you want to see?”

  “No.”

  Greeley’s foot shifted. He peered into the pit before him.

  “Stop,” I said. I lurched forward, off-balance, but Everett’s hold kept me upright.

  I was too slow anyway. Greeley jumped down into the hole. In a puff of noise and rising dirt, the lid of the coffin imploded. Sarah shrieked. Everett jerked away from me and went to her, using his torso to block her view of the disturbed grave.

  Greeley fell in a slip of damp soil as the earth rushed to fill in the casket. He tossed the damned musket aside to free his hands. Everett kept Sarah away, but Juno and I were both drawn inexorably forwards.

  Blindly, I reached to clasp Juno’s hand. Together we crept closer to the sheared edge of the grass. Greeley knelt among the dirt and rotted wood—and, yes, the alabaster gleam of bone.