by Julia Byrd
The man broke into great, wracking sobs. His restless hands flapped from his face to fold over his chest and back again. Mrs. Greeley’s mortal remains were masked by detritus, a thin linen shroud, and a faded blue dress, but the slender bones of her hands and the dome of her skull were exposed. We intruded in the most private of domains. Juno turned her head and pressed her face to my shoulder. I squeezed my eyes closed and sagged against her.
“Now do you see?” Greeley demanded. “Now?”
“No,” I said, eyes still closed. “Please, I implore you. Get out of there.”
Sarah’s voice was strained to the point of breaking. “Stop this, Father.”
“The witch cursed me to see!” he shouted. “No one else saw, on that last day. Only me. But you all will know the truth about what was stolen from me. See, here he is. I told you. Sarah, come forward, now, girl.”
Unwilling, I opened my eyes to a narrow slit. Juno quivered beside me. The wound in my arm was nothing compared to the tight, throbbing ache in my chest.
“Sarah, no,” said Everett. “You do not need to witness this desecration. You shouldn’t have to remember her this way.”
“She is my mother,” Sarah snapped. “Desecration cannot be visited upon her by anything he does now. I will look.”
Everett bared his teeth but steadied her as they approached. The four of us stood in a row, a grim imitation of mourners at a funeral, alongside the grave.
Delicately, tenderly, Greeley pulled aside a faded fold of the blue cotton fabric. Nestled there in the coffin, hidden by the shroud and his mother’s dress, was a tiny skull. An infant.
Juno let out a whoosh of air, and Sarah whimpered.
“How?” asked Everett on a gasp.
“He was the one which led to Anna’s death. She wanted the whole sorry affair kept secret, but it is not a thing easily hidden from a husband. Your little brother’s birth was her demise. Yet he never was recorded nor had his name carved on their shared gravestone.”
Everett shook his head slowly. “Why…why do you call him my brother?”
“I saw him, didn’t I? He was nearly as brown as you. Not now, of course. Now he is the same ivory bone as his mother. But on that day, I knew. Your father, Toth, seduced my wife nine years ago. This son, John, should have been mine. First, I lost him to Toth, then I lost Sarah to the Stephens witch. Both my children…” He shook his head. “It was too many losses.”
“I remember,” said Sarah. Her words were a hoarse, agonized pull of sound. “Oh, I remember. You said…You said Mother was unwell. You said she needed to rest.” With a weak shove, she separated herself from Everett and sank to her knees. Her eyes were trained not on the skeletons, but on her living father, pain, and betrayal foremost in her stare. “You lied.”
“You lied, and you set my home ablaze,” Juno said. “For a son who was never yours, and for a daughter who left you willingly, you would have burned me alive?”
“I did not set fire to your house,” Greeley said. “Just the aspen grove. Regardless, you weren’t even there at the time.”
Something about him did not make sense. I pulled at disparate strands of uneasy thought, trying to form a whole cloth. John. Sarah. As much as Greeley wanted to reclaim Sarah, he did not seem to care for her particularly. As Juno had said, fatherhood for him was about possession.
Greeley climbed out of the open grave, his point sufficiently struck in all of us. Sarah sprang towards him and unleashed an angry jab. Greeley caught her small fist in his larger one but made no move to attack his daughter.
Everett swooped forward to snatch up the musket before Greeley could retrieve it. With a decisive move, he planted the tip of the muzzle against a patch of bare grass between graves and pulled the trigger. The ball unloaded into the earth, and Everett slung the weapon by its strap over his shoulder.
He was thinking much faster than seemed possible for me. My eyes and ears were swaddled in a miasma of pain and exhaustion. I barely comprehended when Juno began a ceremonial recitation of apology and thanks to Anna Rose Greeley. The earlier anger in her voice had been tamped to stark intensity. She laid a hand flat on my belly, either for her own comfort or to keep me steady, I was unsure which.
After Juno had said her frugal words, Everett retrieved my shovel and began scooping dirt back into the pit.
It required a supreme effort of concentration just to stay on my feet, yet I continued tugging at the problem of Greeley. What had happened to Lucy’s cat? Anna Rose Greeley had an extramarital affair with Everett’s father, and Greeley felt the resulting child had been stolen. When Sarah left him, and Christianity, in favor of Juno’s unique teaching, another child was gone. How had he reacted to those perceived thefts? An odd phrasing from Mrs. Roberts tickled my memory. Do not say death… I know that my little John lives in God… And then the comment from Mofflin… I cannot explain what happened to Sarah, but it was not our fault.
Greeley turned from the graveside. “Come along, Sarah. Now you see why you must stay with your dear father.”
But I knew. I gained a dark glimpse of Greeley from my own dual losses of father and brother. After their deaths, I had envied the ease with which other young men complained about their strict fathers and teased their brothers. They took for granted the family that was no longer with me. In some ways, I had taken up Everett as another brother because I couldn’t bear to live without mine. I had taken him for my own.
I peeled away from Juno’s supporting arm and stepped forwards. “Where are the missing infants, Greeley? Where are John and Sarah?”
Chapter 29: Rite of Reclamation
Greeley stopped with his back to me.
“Ben,” Juno whispered, “what are you talking about?”
I spoke only to Greeley, my voice a broken mess. “Are they still alive?”
His head shifted a fraction, a truculent tilt of his chin. The considered response was all I needed to know. I was right. He had taken them, and if my guess about his motivation was correct, they were alive.
Every moment was another second in which those children were in needless, reckless danger, and another second passed while their parents believed them gone.
Rage exploded in me for all the time lost and all the lies. The surge of anger cut through the stifling fog in my mind. With a roar, I took two huge strides and launched myself at Greeley. He was caught off guard and had no chance to move before I hit him. Heedless of the musket wound in my arm, I barreled to the ground with the slighter man trapped beneath me.
“Where?” I asked. “Where are they, you monster?” Fresh blood oozed from under the linen strapping my bicep. Greeley’s face was mashed against the grass. When he struggled to throw me off, I laid my right forearm across the back of his neck and leaned into him.
Everett dropped the shovel and leapt across the grave to join me. Behind us, I heard Juno conferring with Sarah in frantic tones.
“Are. They. Alive?” I panted.
Greeley said nothing. I pressed down on his neck. The temptation was strong to rise up and stomp on the vertebrae.
Sarah and Juno circled around to Greeley’s head. In a swift motion, Sarah sank to her knees. Her young face was pale and blank. “If this is true, Father, tell me now,” she instructed. Her cool tone belied the horror of the situation. Any emotion had fled to take refuge in some other corner of her mind. She had done the same on the day I first met her, the day she lay curled in silent shock on my quilt. “Do not compound error with error. Mother would not have wanted this for you. She loved you, once.”
The breath whooshed out of Greeley’s lungs. His deflated ribcage flattened another inch or two beneath my weight.
“My children. They were both fine when I left them last night,” he rasped.
“Last night,” Juno echoed in tones of horror. “Hours ago! They are infants, you beast, and not yours.”
I eased some of the pressure on Greeley’s throat so he could speak. He had taken the Roberts and Mofflin babes, a boy
and a girl who shared their names with his lost children. “Where?”
“Sarah’s room, of course.”
I jerked my head up to meet Juno’s wide eyes. The children had been with him in his house in the village for weeks. I swallowed down a wretched urge to vomit. If only I had done a thousand things differently, made the connection sooner.
“We need to find them,” said Juno. “Now. Overnight alone is too long for such tiny babies.”
“Find the horse. Go. Take Sarah and ride to Greeley’s house. Everett and I will follow on foot.”
She nodded and took off at a run down the path, Sarah at her side. The wave of anger that had powered me was suddenly gone, and my vision darkened around the edges. Everett caught my arm and pulled me away from Greeley. Instead of standing, I toppled sideways. The pale blue morning sky was an odd, lovely contradiction to the horrible revelations daybreak had brought to Maida Green.
“You need a doctor,” said Everett.
“Just give me a moment.” I sucked in a ragged breath, then exchanged it for a smoother one. The darkness receded from my eyesight. I clasped my right hand over the bandage and returned to my feet in stages—turn, bend, knees, feet. Every step was its own small triumph.
Everett shifted to stand guard over Greeley’s prone form. “What should we do with him?”
I wanted to lock him inside the Hood family vault, but Juno still had the keys. “He’ll have to come with us, for now. We’ll ask someone to fetch the magistrate. Wright will know what to do. Stand up, Greeley.”
We made a slow dawn parade from Maida Green to the lane where Greeley’s house stood at the end of the row. A few villagers paused to watch our procession. With my torn shirt and the musket slung over Everett’s shoulder, we were quite a sight. But Greeley was subdued. Perhaps Juno’s command that he be afflicted with self-awareness had worked.
The lane was quiet. Neither Sarah nor Juno was visible. What if they didn’t find the children? Greeley may have lied. Or what if we arrived too late?
We drew up before the entrance of the shop, Greeley between Everett and me. The front door was flung open. Sarah must have had a key or known where to find one. Everett stared up at the second story. When I traced his glance, I could see no movement through the windows.
“My children are always taken from me,” Greeley mumbled.
“Silence,” I said. To Everett, I said, “I’ll stay with him if you want to go and see—”
Then, a commotion from within the shop. I held my breath as a shadowy figure broached the doorway. My heart clenched, but it was only a black kitten that streaked past—another small creature Greeley had stolen. I had buried its mother under Juno’s oak tree.
Then Sarah rushed out, clutching a swaddled bundle to her chest, with Juno close behind her. She peered down at a small, wrapped shape in her arms. Juno’s lovely face was exhausted and strained with concern, but I knew at once she was not heartbroken.
“Thank God,” I breathed.
When they passed into the sunlight on the street, the glorious, beautiful sound of a furious infant tore through the air.
“A doctor,” said Juno. “Quickly, Everett, please.”
A thousand things began to happen at once, and nobody needed me for any of them. A neighbor, drawn by the sound of crying, emerged and was sent to fetch Wright from his bed. Someone else went to inform the Roberts and the Mofflins. Greeley and I were equally pathetic as a growing crowd of people swirled around us. He made no move to escape, fortunately, for I was in no condition to give chase. Juno frowned at me. She was busy with one of the infants, but I attempted a reassuring smile.
A sunny patch of wall looked terribly tempting. “If it’s quite all right,” I announced to no one in particular, “I’m going to sit by that—”
Then my knees turned to water, and the last thing I remembered thinking was the cobbles in the street were a much harder landing surface than the grass in Maida Green.
Chapter 30: Marriage Rites
I awoke in the wide bed upstairs at Maida House, although for a long moment I contemplated the ridiculous medieval beams in the ceiling before I came to that conclusion. No daylight filtered through the closed curtains. The coverlet was drawn up over my bare chest, and my left arm was propped on a pillow. I tilted my head to examine the neat wrapping around the wound. When I contracted the muscle, hidden stitches pulled at the torn flesh. Somebody had tended to me. The lingering effects of a bitter medicinal draught left my mouth parched.
The chamber door cracked open, and Juno slipped inside bearing a pitcher. “You’re awake.”
I swallowed past a dry throat. “The babes?” I stretched out my hand, and she crossed the room to settle on the side of the bed. The mattress dipped under her weight. I gulped down the cup of water she offered. She set the empty cup beside the pitcher, then our fingers threaded together without conscious effort.
“They are fine. We found the infants filthy in their own waste, and they missed several feedings, but the neglect is nothing they won’t recover from. Before yesterday, Greeley had been tending to them with some effort. The man was so disconnected from reality, I cannot forgive myself for missing it. How long did he expect to keep two stolen children hidden?”
“When Sarah left home, something within him came unmoored.”
“It is not Sarah’s fault,” Juno said.
“No. Is Everett here?”
“He spent the afternoon repairing Mrs. Greeley’s grave. He and Sarah received the brunt of the attention for exposing her father’s actions. By the time Wright arrived to take custody of Greeley, Everett was the one shepherding the man. You probably don’t remember. Both families are overjoyed to have their children restored.” She smoothed her thumb over my bruised, scraped knuckles.
“They should have said they were abducted. I wish I knew how Greeley had done it.”
Juno winced. “I shudder to imagine how he kept those two babies hidden from his neighbors. From all of us.”
“Mrs. Roberts seemed so rational to me. Why wouldn’t she have raised a ruckus?”
“Mrs. Roberts, despite her cool demeanor, feels herself to be a bit of a mystic. She really believed that child was called home by God himself. She netted Mr. Roberts in her delusion.”
I considered. She said she’d smelled roses that day and thought it a sign of the Virgin Mary. Greeley used rose oil in his candles. “And the Mofflins?”
“The Mofflins, it seems, did not want to be persecuted for having misplaced a baby. There was enough fear building in the village after the Horvath boy passed, they didn’t want to land in the center of a witch hunt. They heard about the night Everett was dragged from his bed. I believe they would have spoken with you quietly at the party, except for Greeley’s interruption.” Juno searched my face. “But Ben…you buried those children. You dug their graves and lowered their coffins into the ground. Why didn’t you know they were empty?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t place the Mofflins’ child. Mofflin and the vicar did it themselves. Everett and I would never have peeked inside, in any case. But I have ransacked my memory. Even an inexpensive infant’s casket will weigh a couple of stone, and the Roberts had purchased an ornate version. I suppose I didn’t notice the missing weight of a tiny infant. I should have known. I will regret that error for all my days.”
“Please don’t blame yourself. Somebody else arranged prayers and hymns for an empty box. I wasn’t accusing you—at least you untangled this mess.”
“For the others, the Pfeiffer and Horvath parents, it must feel like a loss all over again.”
“Those deaths really were coincidental. They are still in pain, but it’s the same pain they had last week. You, however, must have a host of new pains. Tell me, do you remember much from dinner last night?”
“I remember the important bits. You, my beautiful girl, promised to marry me.”
Juno gazed into the fire. “Well. That was before you acquired a big, ugly trench in your arm.�
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“No excuses. You already assented. And I will require both your fortunes to restore my estate.”
She turned to face me again and wrinkled her nose. “I suppose that is true. And I need your name to provide a respectable veneer for my witchy ways.”
“There is that, yes. And do not forget, all your plants are already in my greenhouse.”
“Wouldn’t dare to disturb the plants.”
“And I love you,” I said softly. “I want to make you happy. I want your teeth pressed into my shoulder. You shall have everything in my power to give you, including my protection and your freedom.”
“I know,” she replied. “I’m counting on it. I love you, too. And if you misbehave, Benjamin, I will afflict you with something terrible of my own devising.”
She softened the threat with a kiss. When my mother bustled into the room bearing a tray, Juno sprang back like a guilty adolescent, and I laughed.
* * *
The major casualty of Greeley’s revelations, aside from his wife’s disturbed grave, was the romantic attraction between Everett and Sarah. Everett’s interest in Sarah had always sprung from his nurturing side, but the uneasy sense that she should have known something about her father’s crimes was not conducive to courtship. I suspected she carried some of the same willful ignorance that afflicted Greeley. Regardless, Everett and Sarah were both young, and as Juno’s apprentice, Sarah might still recover from her father’s influence. I consoled Everett but did not worry over his heartache or his prospects.
Wright, in his magisterial capacity, had asked a few questions of Everett and the other witnesses, but the evidence of kidnapped children rescued from his house was more than enough to prosecute Greeley. The last I heard of him, he was bound for a London prison.
For Juno and myself, one wedding was not enough. We were married thrice. The first ceremony was in the church before a hundred witnesses, some surely disappointed that the bride did not turn to smoke and ash on the doorstep. My mother organized a sprawling breakfast reception afterwards at Maida House. Two more landowners in attendance opened negotiations to sell me their portions of the estate acreage. Mother made eloquent, brief remarks about passing the management of the household to the new Mrs. Hood, and expressed her intention to enjoy all of us waiting on her hand and foot.