by M. P. Barker
“No, no,” Ethan said impatiently. “I mean there’s something peculiar about it. There’s a sort of funny bit.” He pointed with his hoe. “Over there. You can’t see it from the road, but—”
Silas straightened, wiping his forehead on his sleeve. He eyed Ethan sharply from under the shade of his tall straw hat. “And when were you wandering over there?”
“Just—just exploring. Sometimes. When I have an afternoon free, I like to walk around and see what’s where. It’s allowed, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s allowed.” Silas ran his handkerchief along the back of his neck. “You don’t know the story, then,” he said.
Ethan shook his head.
“I thought everybody knew,” Silas said. “Come on, then. Let’s take a walk.” Still carrying his hoe, Silas strolled to the fence and hoisted himself over the rails with a smooth, easy vault that reminded Ethan of Daniel leaping onto Ivy’s back.
Clumsily, Ethan climbed the fence and followed Silas across the road to the little rise where Daniel had nearly disappeared from view on the night Ethan had followed him. The site didn’t seem nearly as foreboding in the daylight. The apple trees lining the road had leafed out and now cast soft pools of welcome shade instead of ominous skeletal shadows.
Silas and Ethan walked to the top of the bank and looked down. The ground fell gently away to a broad flat spot where the grass grew thinly.
A scrubby bush stood to one side of the flat space. The scrawny plant was about four feet high and nearly choked by brambles. Ethan noticed something familiar about the weaker plant’s heart-shaped leaves. The wind stirred them, and he caught sight of a few stunted clusters of lilacs, long faded and starting to go to seed.
“It’s here, isn’t it? That funny bit you were asking about,” Silas said.
“I think so.” At first, Ethan couldn’t find the square that Daniel had paced the other night. The raking shadows of the rising moon had revealed contours in the earth that the brightness of midmorning and the long, scraggly grass now hid. His bare feet felt what his eyes couldn’t see. His toes found a depression a couple of inches deep. He felt a subtle difference in the earth and the grasses and weeds inside the depression from those outside it. He paced it off as Daniel had, finding the boundary by walking with one foot on the high side and one on the low. It was a rectangle, not a square, measuring about eight by ten paces.
The odd little mound in the center of the rectangle was easy to see even in the daylight, though it looked much smaller, no more than a foot at its highest point. The grass was thinner there than in the rest of Daniel’s secret spot.
“It used to be Paddy’s house,” Silas said.
“His house?” Ethan’s eyes widened as the puzzle fell into place in his mind.
“Most of the bricks and foundation stones are gone, whatever somebody could use again, and the cellar hole’s filled in. But you can still find the shape of it.” Silas pointed east, toward his own home, which stood like a white sentinel on the hill that overlooked the field. “You can see our place from here. And Paddy could see his house from our attic.”
“What happened?” Ethan asked.
“It burned.” Silas continued to pace the outline of the foundation.
Ethan shuddered.
“Paddy was a little older than you when it happened. He saw the light from the window upstairs and ran down here. We all came down after him, but there was nothing we could do. It was December, and it was hard to get water to put the fire out. We threw snow on it, but we didn’t save much. It was already burning pretty badly when we got there. Nobody could get inside to help Paddy’s family, although he tried.”
“He—he went inside?”
Silas nodded. “He said he could hear his brother crying.”
“Brother?” Ethan repeated, reeling with the new information.
“His brother, Michael. The child must have been three or four. But it was too hot. The house was falling down around Paddy, and he couldn’t reach any of them. Nobody could. We had to drag him out. They made me hold him because he kept trying to go back in.” Silas shivered all over, as if it had suddenly turned winter again. “You’ve seen the scars on him.” He rubbed his forearms.
Ethan nodded.
“His arms and hands were all burned, and some of his hair burned off, too. Even so, he fought me. I held him down and put snow on his burns. I didn’t know what else to do. I never heard anybody scream like that before. I thought he was dying. When we took him home, he was so sick. I don’t know if it was from the cold or the burns or from—” Silas shook his head and closed his eyes. “Maybe all of it. He took a fever, and then he really was dying. The doctor even gave up on him.”
“But he didn’t die,” Ethan said.
Silas shook his head. “Mrs. Nye,” he said. “She wouldn’t give up, even when the doctor said it was no use.” With his hoe, he began to hack at the brambles that surrounded the feeble lilac bush. “So now you know.”
Ethan picked up a lump of broken brick and studied it while he framed his next question. “Silas . . .”
“What?”
“Why does your father hate Daniel?”
Silas raised an eyebrow. “Daniel? Did he tell you to call him that?” Just like everybody else, Silas called Daniel Paddy. Well, not quite like everybody else. When Mr. and Mrs. Lyman or Mr. Pease or Mr. Wheeler said Paddy, it was more than just a name. Or rather, less. There was something sly about it that seemed meaner to Ethan than if they said fool. But when Silas said Paddy, it was just a name. No more than a name, but no less, either.
“No. I just—well, it’s his name, isn’t it?” Ethan watched Silas’s face carefully from under the shade of his hat brim.
Silas nodded, his mouth drawn in a thoughtful line. “I’d almost forgotten—I haven’t heard it in so long. I thought he’d forgotten, too.”
“Your father won’t even let Daniel keep his own name. Why does he hate him so?”
Silas blinked dully at Ethan, as if he didn’t understand.
Ethan blinked back. “You see how he hits him,” he continued.
“When Paddy’s folks died, he was left with nothing but debts.”
Ethan couldn’t understand what Daniel’s father’s debts had to do with the way Mr. Lyman acted. “What about this?” He spread his arms to indicate the field around him. “He had this, didn’t he?”
“It was mortgaged.” Silas didn’t seem anxious to return to work. He kept chopping the weeds away from the pathetic little shrub.
“And now it belongs to you,” Ethan said.
“To Him.” Although Silas hadn’t named Him, Ethan knew from the odd way he said it that Silas meant Mr. Lyman. Ethan cast a sidelong glance at Silas, whose profile was a younger, sharper tracing of his father’s. Silas never addressed Mr. Lyman as anything but sir. Never Papa or Pa or Father. When speaking in Mr. Lyman’s absence, Silas never said my father, but only he or him. Yet somehow it was always clear which he Silas meant, because he said the word in a different way from all the other hes and hims in his life. For Mr. Lyman, all Silas’s hes and hims sounded as though they had capital Hs, the way some people talked about God.
Or the devil.
Ethan shook off the thought. He threw a worried glance up at Silas, as if he feared the young man could hear what was inside his head. “So your father had to keep Daniel because of his indenture?”
Silas shook his head. “Paddy first came here to work off part of his father’s debt. When Matthew Linnehan died, his creditors laid claim to his property—what was left of it—” He made a sweeping gesture that took in the remnants of the house and the scrubby land around it—“to pay his debts.”
“Creditors?” Ethan asked.
“Well, as it turned out, He was the only one.”
Somehow Ethan wasn’t surprised. “So your father took the land and Mr. Linnehan’s debt was paid off?”
Silas nodded. “Legally, that was the end of Paddy’s obligation to Him, and His to Paddy.
So then it was up to the overseers of the poor to take charge of Paddy, since he had no property and no family.”
“Did they put Daniel on the vendue then?” Ethan asked, remembering his lessons with Mr. Bingham.
“The vendue is only for people who have a settlement here, people who were born in this town.”
Ethan’s eyes widened. “What happens if they’re not?”
“Then they have to go back to where they’re from. The overseers of the poor didn’t want to pay anybody to take care of Paddy. They said he would have to go to the poorhouse in Springfield, because he was there first, when his father worked on the canals in Cabotville. But the overseers in Springfield said he was from Ireland, and that’s where he’d have to go.” Silas began to attack what remained of the brambles with his bare hands.
“All the way back to Ireland?” Ethan shuddered, recalling Daniel’s description of the months he’d spent in the reeking, lurching, dark belly of a ship.
“But he didn’t know or couldn’t remember where he came from or if he had any family there. Still, they were going to send him anyway. I suppose they thought his passage was cheaper than having him on the town until he could earn his keep. You see, He could have let the overseers of the poor send Paddy away and have done with him. But He said Paddy could stay with us, and He worked out an indenture for him with the overseers, even though it would cost Him money in the end, since He’ll have to give Paddy his wages when he’s finished his service.”
At least Daniel would get to keep his wages, Ethan thought. From what he understood of his own bond, he wouldn’t even see his wages, since Pa would have to hand the money back to Mr. Lyman to pay his debt to the storekeeper. Ethan doubted there would be anything left over.
Silas continued, “He said it was the least He could do for the boy, even though He got nothing from the town or anyone for it.”
The way Silas put it, it made Mr. Lyman sound compassionate and generous. But if he were all that generous, couldn’t he have just made Daniel part of his family without any indenture at all? Ethan wondered. It seemed as though Mr. Lyman couldn’t even be charitable—if indeed, Daniel’s bond could be called charity—without imposing a legal obligation on the other person, with papers to be signed and prices to be agreed upon.
Ethan squeezed the brick hard, the rough parts biting into his skin. “But—but—”
“If He hated Paddy, He wouldn’t have done that, would He?”
“But he beats him!” Ethan blurted. “He says Daniel’s a thief and a liar, and all sorts of other things.”
Silas shook his head. “He’s only doing His best to raise Paddy not to be any of those things, just the way He did with me. Just the way He’s doing with you.”
“Do you think Daniel’s a thief and a liar?”
Silas frowned, pondering the question so long that Ethan thought he wouldn’t answer it. “He’s never cheated me out of a fair day’s work. But things go on that I don’t know about, I imagine.” Silas nodded, as if settling something inside his head. “Paddy’s a difficult boy.”
“So Mr. Lyman’s right to hit him, then?” To hit us, Ethan added in his head, but he pretended he asked only for Daniel’s sake.
“He knows His business.” Silas’s face began to close up. He wiped his hands on his trousers, his fingers now peppered with scratches from the briars.
Ethan guessed the conversation would be over soon. But he had to ask one more question. “But you don’t hit Daniel.” He knew it was true, even though he’d never asked. Daniel never drooped his head and hid his eyes in front of Silas. There was something about the way Daniel and Silas spoke—not quite as friends, but not as antagonists, either. “If it’s right, why don’t you hit Daniel, too?”
“He knows His business,” he repeated. “And I know mine.” Silas shouldered his hoe and turned away from the scrubby little lilac bush and the remains of Daniel’s house. When they reached the road, he hesitated, turning to look back toward the house site, though it was now hidden behind the little hill.
“He must miss them awfully,” Ethan said softly, thinking of Daniel and his family.
“Awfully,” Silas repeated, his voice distant and strained. “Yes, I’m sure he does.”
“They were all Papists, weren’t they?”
Silas blinked hard, as if Ethan had just woken him from a dream. “They were Catholics, yes.”
“Is it true what Mr. Merriwether says about Papists, that they’re heathens and idolatrous and all that? That they’re not even Christians? Do you think it’s true that people like them go to hell?”
Silas held up a hand against Ethan’s cascade of questions. “What I think isn’t going to make a difference whether somebody’s saved or not.”
Ethan chewed his lip. “It doesn’t seem fair, that somebody would go to hell just for belonging to the wrong church.”
“They seemed like decent people,” Silas said.
It didn’t matter, though, did it? Ethan thought. That’s what the minister said. Being decent didn’t count for anything if you believed the wrong things. He felt heartsick for Daniel’s family. But Daniel, he could still be saved. Was that what Mr. Lyman meant? “What about Daniel? Will he go to hell?”
Silas’s face hardened, as if he’d drawn a set of shutters closed against something. For a moment he looked almost as old as his father. “There’s worse things a boy can have on his soul than belonging to the wrong church.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Why do I have to take my tea in the kitchen?” Ruth said, plucking at Lizzie’s apron.
Lizzie swirled the last bit of icing onto an enormous cake. “Because Mrs. Lyman’s having company.” She turned to the fireplace to dip some water from the massive hot-water pot into the teakettle.
Ruth trailed after, one hand tugging Lizzie’s skirt. “But Florella and Zeloda get to have their tea in the big parlor.”
“Florella and Zeloda are almost grown.” Lizzie gently maneuvered Ruth away from the steaming water. She scooped some coals onto the hearth and set a trivet on top of them.
“Paddy’s bigger’n both of ’em. But he has to have his tea out here.”
“That’s different.” Lizzie set the teakettle on the trivet to steep.
“Why?” Ruth trotted after Lizzie as she headed to the buttery to fetch some cream.
Lizzie rolled her eyes at Ethan and Daniel. Freshly scrubbed and combed, the boys stood in the doorway, waiting for her orders. Ethan pressed his lips together to smother a grin over Ruth’s endless string of whys. He didn’t think Lizzie would welcome his smile. Her face was damp and flushed from the frenzy of cleaning and dusting and sweeping and polishing and cooking that Mrs. Lyman had imposed on all the girls. She brushed impatiently at the tendrils of hair that crept out from her cap, its wilting ruffle flopping over her forehead.
Daniel stooped so that his eyes were level with Ruth’s. “Lizzie’s needing your help with the baby. And you’re better at that than your sisters, ain’t you, now?”
Ruth’s eyes grew wide. “Really?”
Lizzie raised her eyebrows at Daniel, then turned an inquisitive glance toward Ethan. He shrugged. He didn’t think he’d ever heard Daniel talk to Ruth before. Most of the time, the Lyman children and Daniel ignored each other.
Lizzie collected herself as Ruth looked to her for confirmation. “Of course. You’re such a big help to me all the time, Ruth.”
Ruth beamed, stretching herself to stand a full half inch taller. She strutted over to Aaron, who babbled and kicked in his high chair. The two stared at each other solemnly for a moment. Then Aaron emitted a smell that filled the kitchen. Ruth backed away, her lower lip working into a pout.
“Anyway,” Lizzie added hastily, “you can have your own chair in here. And so can Ethan.”
Ruth stuck a finger in her mouth. “But I like sitting on Silas’s lap. Can he have tea with us?”
“Maybe you ought to’a stopped talking while you were ahead, eh, Lizzie?” Da
niel teased.
Lizzie frowned, although her eyes recaptured some of their usual twinkle as she stepped past the boys into the cool dimness of the buttery. “And maybe you ought to fetch some chairs.”
Daniel bowed low, like a character from his fat little book of Shakespeare plays, then spun away.
“What’s got into him?” Lizzie whispered to Ethan. A cloud of flies rose as she lifted the cloth covering one of the milk pans and skimmed some cream into a little pitcher. “He never—I mean . . . well, I could swear he smiled.”
Ethan shook his head, trying to puzzle it out. Part of it, he supposed, was that Daniel had managed to sneak in a brief, secret ride just before milking. The joy of it had stayed on his face all the way through milking, turning the cattle out to pasture, and returning to the house to wash up for tea. But Ethan couldn’t tell Lizzie that. Instead, he said, “I think he’s glad to have his tea in the kitchen.”
Ethan was glad, too. Being exiled from Mrs. Lyman’s company meant he’d have a chair to sit in to enjoy the treats that Lizzie and the girls had slaved over all day: orange fool and lemon pudding and syllabub and jumbles and white gingerbread and other things that smelled tantalizingly of cinnamon and nutmeg and mace and cream and raisins and brandy.
“No.” Lizzie waved away the hopeful flies that hovered by the milk pan. “There’s more to it than that.” She draped the cloth over the pan and tugged it down around the edges. “Something different about him. It’s like he’s . . . not changed, but changing. Just this spring, it seems he’s been, well, not as sour as he used to be. Haven’t you noticed—” She laughed and stopped herself. “Of course you wouldn’t. You don’t know what he was like before you came.” Her eyes narrowed at Ethan, then she shook her head. “Perhaps it’s just Paddy growing up.”
Lizzie’d seen it, too, then: something different about Daniel, the way he held himself, the way he set his face. Something that showed more and more as spring worked its way into summer. Ethan pursed his mouth, trying to figure it out as he followed Lizzie back into the kitchen. But the answer wouldn’t come. “Maybe he’s just glad he won’t have to listen to Mr. Pease’s jokes,” Ethan said.