by Van Reid
Her father’s clothes smelled smoky when she leaned over him, and the aura of rum hung upon his faint breath. She kissed him on his damp temple, something she had never done before. If she ever had a son, she thought, she would do that while he slept.
In another moment she was outside, having pulled the sash down as she touched the earth. She hunkered in a crouch, though she knew she mustn’t hide or appear uncertain; true concealment would rely on being seen without being noticed. Hawk of the Hurons had walked among the Iroquois in just that manner. That’s what Tim had told her.
“What are you doing here, Droone?” said a plump red-faced boy to Melanie when she appeared from around the side of the summerhouse. “You had better get back down with the rest of you,” he added belligerently.
She was pretty sure she could handle him in a fair fight and was tempted to throw a fist at his broad nose. Instead she moved closer to the center of the crowd, where Droone and Normell alike either avoided her or dismissed her by taking no notice. She looked more Droone than Normell—small and narrow—but there were a few exceptions to the Normell girth, and her hair was neither dark nor light but a medium brown. People of both sides imagined that their lack of recognition was simply a sign of her belonging to the other clan. One or two noticed her boy’s shoes and scoffed at their neighbors’ inability to dress their children. They looked no further.
Mr. Flyce was standing in the midst of the crowd, and Mr. Moss was walking back up the path from the pond with the two Normell men, Jeffrey and Charles, and the tall Mrs. Droone. Everyone seemed anxious that some agreement had been realized. Melanie searched for a neutral place among them, but this portion shifted as Normell, then Droone gave her the look to indicate she was standing on the wrong side of things. Every glance was a danger to her scheme, but she knew she must be seen by Mr. Moss, so that he would know where she had gone and what she was doing, and so that he would not suspect anyone else of making off with her.
It suddenly struck the little girl that he might not know her any more and her heart plummeted into a moment of icy fear and loss, as if she had died in her father’s place, and were but a ghost and invisible even to those who cared about her.
But that look of loss on Melanie’s face was what drew Sundry Moss’s attention, and it was her strange resemblance to someone he knew that kept it. He was coming up the path to the summerhouse when he saw her, and a natural sympathy caused him to wonder what so troubled the little girl. His second look must have hinted at more recognition than he experienced, for Melanie’s face glowed with sudden relief.
Sundry’s heart came into his throat, and it was only because he was so astonished that he didn’t show how astonished he was. She was a pretty child in a plain pale blue dress, a yellow coat, and a crude pair of boys’ brogues. If anyone between the Droones and Normells had been willing to claim her, they might have noticed that her dress was on backward. She was so happy to be comprehended by him that her smile might have given her away if Sundry had not distracted everyone else. He stopped to take off his boot and shake an invisible stone from it.
“What was that?” asked Charles Normell, who was on the alert for tricks.
“That rock has been digging my heel, I guess, since before I noticed it,” said Sundry, which was just the sort of backward statement Charles would have to pause to consider. Mrs. Droone eyed the crowd like an alarmed bird. “I guess there isn’t any trouble knowing which side anyone is on,” said Sundry. He himself was tall and narrow like a Droone, but dark of hair and eye like a Normell.
“We are not very fluent in the details of one another’s individual members,” said Jeffrey, sounding almost cheerful. “So I recognize anyone I don’t know as a Droone, and I guess you judge by the same coin, Mrs. Droone, if on the other side.”
She turned that hawklike gaze upon Jeffrey, but he was undaunted.
“In your words, Mrs. Droone, that makes it simple,” said Sundry.
“That makes it simple, yes,” she said, looking suspicious.
“Just like brushing footprints from the snow,” said Sundry. There was no reply, and Jeffrey, to whom he directed this statement, only blinked at him. Sundry cast an eye over the crowd for Melanie Ring, but she was gone. “If that’s a bedroom,” he said when they brought him and Maven into the summerhouse, “we’ll leave Mr. Ring’s unfortunate remains where they lie and sleep in there.” He nodded to the left-hand door at the back of the house
“I’m sure that’s fine. We can help you arrange the body.”
“No. Thank you. You’ve done quite enough.”
Jeffrey did not respond to Sundry’s irony. Charles was bustling into the summerhouse kitchen with three members of the opposite clan. “You’ll be wanting something to eat,” said Jeffrey.
“We’ll keep to our own provisions,” said Sundry. Someone had brought his sack into the kitchen, and he lifted it from the table. Without asking for permission, he took up a lantern.
“It’s all right,” said Jeffrey to Charles. “I went through the sacks.”
“You will be wanting your rest,” said Charles. “Don’t let anything disturb you. We will be watching the house carefully.”
“We’ll sleep like babes,” said Sundry, who was not going to be outdone in wry delivery. He let Maven go before him into the room that housed Burne Ring, then stepped inside himself and closed the door behind.
Maven had said nothing, or very little, since they arrived at Dutten Pond, and even now he stood in the room and simply gaped at the two framed pictures on the other side of the bed. “Oh, my!” he said, finally, when his eyes shifted to the form on the bed.
Burne Ring was doing such a good job looking the part of the deceased that Sundry leaned over him to be sure he really wasn’t. Sundry held his own breath in hopes of hearing Burne’s, and for a moment he thought the man might have breathed his last after all.
“Not yet,” said Burne Ring in a hoarse whisper.
“I am amazed!” said Maven Flyce, though perhaps no more so than he was at any given moment of the day.
“For some reason, they think he’s dead,” whispered Sundry. “But as Mr. Ring informs us, not yet.”
“Who would have guessed!” Maven did not spend much time on this particular marvel but peered a little more closely at the bucolic pictures on the wall. “Isn’t that something!” he said. “That looks just like a cow I saw today!” He took in the rest of the room and said, “Where’s the little girl?”
“Where’s my daughter?” echoed Burne.
“She’s asleep,” said Sundry.
Burne grunted three or four times, looked paler than he had a moment ago, and said, “I think I’m feeling better.”
Sundry stretched out on the bed in the next room. Maven had settled himself in the chair by Burne and fallen into a snore-rattled sleep in a matter of moments. Sundry could hear him drag each breath like a stick along a picket fence and didn’t think he could sleep with so much to think about and so much racket. In a moment he roused himself from a doze and sat up.
After dull reassessment, he fashioned the facsimile of a child beneath the covers. Then he lay down beside the lump of pillow and stared at the lantern-yellowed ceiling. He was tired. He had napped on the hill after eating, but the day had been trying and filled with unexpected miles. Could it have been only last night that he danced with Miss Morningside at the Morrells’ ball? Could it have been only this morning that he went to the Underwood’s, to find Miss Morningside had left?
A wave of sadness washed over his tired bones like a current strong enough to drag him out beyond his ability to swim. He lay there with his chest constricting till he might have drowned had he not reminded himself of the little girl who depended upon his being there if she was caught sneaking down Dutten Lane in search of help.
Looking up from the bed, Sundry considered the shadows cast by the lantern on the ceiling. His heart grew more regular in its labor. His breathing slowed. He had no intention of going to sleep, and wh
en he woke, it was with the sensation of falling and he gripped the covers to steady himself through that instant of panic. He sat up and considered the still-burning lantern, the quality of light and sound from outside and from the front of the house. With the sort of presentiment that he did not usually believe in or trust, he was quite sure that someone stood on the other side of the door, waiting for another minute to pass to rap upon it and rouse him.
47. The Path of Best Intent Went Both Ways
She wondered where the moths had got to and half expected them to kiss her cheek with their wings again and guide her. As she walked, even skipped down the moonlit lane, her eyes were up to the task, but her heart and her lack of knowing and her expectation of the woods sometimes called out to startle her and stop her in her tracks, not unlike that unidentifiable voice she heard so often.
The breeze itself was like a voice, and the trees squeaked and groaned and rubbed one another’s backs. It was not an old wood; but she was not an old person, and it seemed old to her. Neither were the trees tall (for trees); but she was not tall even for a six-year-old and she felt almost, but not quite, beneath their notice. Melanie Ring had usually been beneath notice, which circumstance had eased her disguise as a boy for the most of her life and also greased the skids of her recent escape. She hoped to remain invisible just a little longer.
Thaddeus Spark often read to Timothy from those grand adventures written by a Mr. Benjamin Granite Gunwight—books filled with the exploits of Boone and Hawk and Wilma. Tim would relay these exploits to Mailon Ring and, in recent days, to Melanie while they sat on the roofs overlooking Portland Harbor, or waited in ambush for a rival tribe in the oaks at Deering Park. These tales were not diminished for having been heard third or even fourth hand. (Who knew where Mr. Gunwight got them?) They were not diminished as she moved among the pools of moonlight. They were what gave her any understanding that she could have done what she had already done and any belief that she could finish doing what she intended. Before long she was not walking or skipping but running. She did not consider that the way might be guarded, that the boy might still be at the gate, or that others might be watching the path from Normell Acres to the common road.
She would have no memory of touching the fence as she vaulted over it and no recollection of her awkwardly shod feet pounding the rutted path to the road above Dutten Pond. She was out of breath, looking east, then west for a light or some other sign of habitation, but there was only the moon hanging over silver fields. A bat wobbled, mothlike, in the cobalt air. For no good reason that she could have explained, she began to walk, panting, toward the east, the night’s pale light casting an outsized shadow before her.
It was a mile or so along an unpopulated stretch of road that she began to flag. Even the stories could only lead her so far or carry her so far. In a little grove of birch she lay down and fell asleep before she knew what she was doing, and when she woke, however many minutes or hours later, she had the rested sense that she had been going in the wrong direction.
48. Light and Dawn (June 10, 1897)
Growing up on a farm in Edgecomb, Sundry had often risen when first light had yet to pink the east, more usually in winter months, when snowy fields embraced their own blue shimmer against the stars and the milk cow gave off welcome warmth in her corner of the barn. In summer months a person must rise early to beat the sun, but when Sundry did, as in this morning hour, he thought it quietest just before dawn, when the owl takes her ghosdy flight home and the nighthawk hides his head beneath a wing, but the robin and the veery have yet to wash their faces and greet the day.
He came out of the bedroom before anyone could knock or enter. Charles was by the door, looking as if he had expected their guest to rouse himself at the proper hour. Both Normells and Droones sat at the kitchen table. Sundry asked them to let Mailon and Maven sleep. “It’s been a rough night for the poor kid. He had a dream that his father was still alive, so every noise he hears he thinks is Mr. Burne in the next room. But he’s asleep now.”
“It’s just as well if they do sleep,” said Charles. “No one will bother them.” Sundry might have warmed to the man if there had been more sympathy and less business in the response.
The frogs and peepers were still, and the wind made no ripple on Dutten Pond; even the people down by the shore, standing in pools of lantern light, seemed to have lost their voices. Charles and Jeffrey Normell led Sundry down to the boats without a word, and Bridey Droone greeted him with only an expectant look. The crowd had not thinned or its anxiety diminished. Their chiefs seemed to be on their nerves; even Jeffrey’s normally light expression was pulled into a grim frown.
“You people should go to bed,” said Sundry offhandedly. “I can take care of this.” It was his backward humor employed in backward circumstance, and perhaps a shade or two of contempt, but he was sorry for it in the next moment.
Everyone was startled by his flippancy, and a low note of discomfort ran through the crowd till one man—a Normell—said to Charles, “You’re not letting a stranger drag it up?”
“Be quiet!” said Charles.
Bridey Droone looked as if she might say something herself, but the man who had spoken, a large enough fellow moving gingerly, stepped forward. “But he’s not to bring it up,” he said. “Not a stranger—”
“Be quiet, you idiot!” said Jeffrey this time, but it was too late. Charles had already come around with the back of his hand and as much weight as he could put into it on short notice. He caught the man on the side of the head with a loud crack, then drew back and hit him again in the face. There were shouts from the others—more in fear than anger—and people on both sides leaped and fell back (sometimes over children) as Charles Normell waded into his kinsman, knocking him down and pummeling him with hands and feet.
The attack was silent, but for the sound of blows and the gusts of expended breath. Charles’s face was purple with rage, and his eyes started from his head like a madman’s. Sundry did not know when he had seen such awful fury, the more awful for manifesting itself in someone who might otherwise have looked the part of a jolly uncle.
Sundry snatched at Charles’s collar and violently yanked him back. Charles rolled onto his feet and looked about for whoever had the temerity to step into his wrath and intent. Charles was large in every sense of the word, but Sundry knew better than to imagine that the size of the man’s girth indicated he was either soft or weak.
Charles had not entirely lost his mind, however, and was perhaps the more dangerous for his ability to regain his head and alter his course. Sundry thought he had the look of a bully with the upper hand, almost smiling as he gasped. “The house is still guarded, Mr. Moss,” he said between breaths. “And the boy is still in there. And your friend.”
Sundry would have liked nothing more than to disabuse the man of some of this, but for all he knew, Melanie was still sneaking away or hidden someplace in the woods, and he did not want to chance a general search for her. With the level of suspicion between the two clans, he might easily set the Normells and the Droones at each other’s throats, but he likewise feared endangering the children in the crowd. He must take his satisfaction from his own secrets and go forward. They expected him to perform as commanded on the strength of the boy’s tacit imprisonment in the house, and he would play the part.
From someone in the agitated mob, Bridey retrieved the fork of an apple bough, which divided a foot or so from its base and was, in overall length, about three and a half feet long. “We have picked some others,” she told Sundry as she passed this to him, “in case you find this one ineffectual. Take the bow, Mr. Moss.” It was a moment before he realized she was indicating not the branch, which she had already handed to him, but the end of the boat that he was supposed to occupy.
“Be thorough,” advised Jeffrey.
More astonishing to Sundry than Charles’s sudden fit of violence was the relative calm with which everyone else—Droone and Normell included—accepted it and w
ent on. He took the apple bough and weighed it in his hand.
The boat swayed as he stepped past the Normell steadying it. The Droone in the stern said nothing but lifted the lantern by his side as Sundry took the bow, and by this light Sundry saw ropes and weighted nets at his feet. The boat dipped and rocked as it was cast off and the Normell climbed in past Sundry to sit at the thwart. Drifting beyond the encompassing trees, turning slowly beneath the gap of bluing sky, Sundry was conscious that day birds chorused the more distant tracts of field and wood, but that the nearer groves remained quiet and hardly seemed to stir, even with the breeze that lightly roughed the pond and moved the trees on the opposite shore.
His companions were silent, and the people on shore watched without comment, waiting at the water’s edge like unhappy ghosts staring after life. In happier gatherings, Sundry noted, it was usual to see children at the fore of a crowd, watching fireworks or a parade, but here the elder Normells and Droones lined the front ranks, their forms dim and amorphous in the near dark, their faces strangely lit by several lanterns.
“Where do we start?” asked Sundry. Experimentally he held the forked bough out over the water by its two tines.
“In the northeast corner where it becomes too deep to wade,” said the man in the stern, whom Sundry was to refer to as Mr. Droone; Mr. Normell rowed them across the border into Albion and Droone territory.
Sundry had his own idea of where they might find something but said nothing. There was birdsong and a rising breeze in the wood on the other shore; water purled against the freeboard, and the oars rubbed in their locks; but otherwise silence had mastered the air, and Sundry had long moments to think as he hovered the bough above the water. He suspected that he had not been told the truth about this business, or at least not all of it. He could understand that both families would be apprehensive to know who had murdered whom, but their fear and their stagnant dread, rather than anger and action, indicated to Sundry that more than knowing who was guilty would result in anything he discovered.