“People take to him,” Junius said thoughtfully. “He’s like his mother that way. She was like honey to ants. I never saw a woman like that.”
I knew he’d married me at my father’s urging. To protect me. He hadn’t loved me then, just as I hadn’t loved him. But to hear
such words about another wife after twenty years...I couldn’t help the pricking of my vanity or my pride, or the little stab of jealousy I felt. “Is that so?”
Junius put his arm around my waist. “Until I met you, of course.”
I pulled away. “You don’t have to say that.”
He jerked me close again. “It was a long time ago, Lea. Mary was nothing compared to you.”
“You shouldn’t say that either. She was the mother of your son.” I glanced to Daniel again. He had thrown off his hat, and his deep gold hair fell into his face as he danced with Eliza Brookner, and he was laughing, obviously enjoying himself.
Junius said quietly, “Don’t get too attached to him, Leonie. He won’t stay.”
“I’m hardly attached to him. I don’t even like him much. But neither do I blame him for being angry. He has a right. And you should at least make an effort to appease him.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s your son.”
He sighed. His hand tightened on my waist. “Very well. But only because you wish it, sweetheart. I think it’s a mistake. Just...be careful of him, will you? And...I think it’s best if we never leave him alone with the mummy.”
I looked at him in surprise. “Why?”
Junius shrugged. “Just an instinct. Perhaps it’s nothing. But let’s not assume he’s trustworthy until he proves it. I told you—he wants something from me, and he’s not being honest about what it is.”
“The story, he said.”
“Hmmm. Perhaps.” Junius eyed Daniel thoughtfully. “But I doubt it. It’s only blood that links us, Lea. Nothing more. I don’t know anything about him and neither do you.”
“I know he has a fiancée,” I said.
Junius looked at me in surprise. “How do you know that?”
“He told me. He can’t be all bad if someone loves him enough to marry him.”
“That proves nothing. You don’t know that love has anything to do with it. Look at him. Like I said, he’s his mother all over. Ants to honey.”
“You say it as if it’s a crime,” I said.
“Just an observation,” Junius said.
The music ended amid clapping, and Daniel and Eliza Brookner were off the floor. Eliza was snapped up by her husband—I didn’t actually blame him for how possessively he did so. Before the fiddlers started up again, Sarah Estes was stepping shyly up to him. The boy was well able to fend for himself, I thought wryly.
Junius said, with a little nudge, “You planning on avoiding the sewing circle all night?”
I followed his glance to the wives. I could hear their laughter from where we stood.
Another nudge. “You should go say hello at least. Be sociable or they’ll think you’re snubbing them.”
Which was true, I knew. It was also true that I didn’t want them thinking it, that in spite of the fact that I’d been avoiding them they had always been kind enough. And it made Junius happy to see me with them. I knew he worried about the fact that I had no close women friends.
“I’ve nothing in common with them, June,” I reminded him.
“You could try harder,” he said. “It wouldn’t hurt you to come into town every other week or so for coffee and a little gossip.”
“There’s no time.”
“Go on,” he said with a smile. “I’ll be right here if you need me.”
I felt a little surge of panic. Suddenly I wanted to be home, listening to Lord Tom’s stories or drawing relics. I thought of her in that trunk, the lid closed, and I couldn’t breathe; I felt suffocated and alone and it was a moment before I realized that I wasn’t the mummy, that I was alive, and there was no reason to feel trapped or alone, not here. These women were nothing to fear.
As I approached, Jane Mannering looked up with a friendly and welcoming smile that warmed me. Junius was right; it wouldn’t hurt me to try harder. “Leonie! How nice to see you. And here with Junius’s son too. What a surprise that was.”
There were questions in every word, though she was too polite to just ask for the story.
I rewarded her with at least a part of it. “He lives in San Francisco. It was nice that he decided to pay a visit.”
“What a handsome young man,” Elizabeth Jansen said.
I nodded. “He takes after his father.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Oh, he does indeed. And he’s as charming as Junius too. Don’t you think so, Mattie?”
“Oh yes,” Mattie Jansen—Elizabeth’s sister-in-law—said.
Elizabeth said, “I remember the first time I danced with June. He was so sweet. I was blushing and he teased me, but he knew how to flatter.”
Jane laughed. “I remember. He could have charmed the skin off a rattlesnake.”
“Well, his son looks to be no different,” Mattie said. “Junius must be proud. And the boy’s mother, of course.”
Whoever she is. Not you. I thought I saw pity in her expression, and all I could do was pretend not to see it.
“Unfortunately, Daniel’s mother has passed,” I said.
They all tsked in sympathy. Then Jane said, “You’ll be going to Charlotte Thomas’s tea for the minister, won’t you, Leonie? In Oysterville, remember? At the church?”
I thought of what Junius had said, and knew I should say yes. There was no reason not to say yes, and I had opened my mouth to say it when Mattie said suddenly, “Oh! There goes Johnny again in the beer—” and dashed off after her young son.
Jane laughed. “I do grieve for Mattie. That boy will be the death of her.”
“If she can keep him alive that long,” Elizabeth agreed. “He’s not afraid of anything. Honestly, he could give a bit of that fearlessness to Sarah. She stammers at her own shadow.”
“I just read of a cure for that,” Jane said, and they were off, talking about their children and every latest trouble with them. Lost stockings and playing in mud puddles and eating too much pie and whether the teacher was lax with discipline. The talk I’d dreaded, the talk that kept me an outcast, though I knew they didn’t mean to hurt me. It was just that I was something unnatural, a woman without children, and one more interested in dirty Indian relics than in ministers or teas or schools. We had nothing in common, as I’d told Junius, and I didn’t know how to bridge the gap between us, or even if I should. How could I bear being around women whose whole lives revolved around their children? That melancholy I’d pushed away eased back, their laughter and confidences only feeding it, and desperately I glanced around, looking for relief—
And saw the widow Kafkis standing near the entrance of the common room, staring at me with the dark, unfathomable eyes of my dream.
I froze, startled. Bibi had never been to one of these dances before. That she was here was more than strange. I thought of the bracelet sitting in the horn bowl on my dresser, her warnings.
She motioned for me to come to her, and I was so surprised I started to go.
But Jane stopped me. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Leonie,” and when I looked at her, her smile was soft; I saw that pity I’d expected. “Here we are, talking about things that must just bore you silly. Please forgive us.”
Her kindness was genuine, yet no less humiliating for it. I gave them a quick, forced smile. “I really must go. It was so good to see you all,” and then I was off before they could stop me again, relieved to escape them and their talk.
But that relief fled as I fought my way through the dancers to the edge of the floor and saw Bibi’s smile, which was knowing and a little wicked.
I said, “I’m surprised to see you, Bibi. I hope you’ve come about trading the Duke’s canoe. I’ll tell you what: why don’t you just say what you want for it, and I’ll see
what I can do?”
Her gaze fell to my wrist. “You don’t wear it.”
“Bibi—”
“You must wear it,” she insisted.
“It’s very pretty, Bibi, but I’m in water half the day. I don’t want to ruin it—”
“Kimtah kloshe. Mika kumtux alki.”
The music started up again; I had to shout. “What’s not good? What will I understand later?”
“You must wear it,” she repeated. “Mika hyas ticky pe mika halo ikta iskum kumtux.” You need it or you will learn nothing.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What am I to learn?”
She grabbed my wrist, circling it with her thick fingers, drawing me close enough that I smelled the coffee and tobacco on her breath. “She wants you, eh? You do this.” Before I could reply, she went very still. She looked past me. “Who is he?”
I glanced over my shoulder, but I knew before I saw Daniel across the room, watching us, whom she meant. “Junius’s tenas. His name is Daniel.”
Bibi nodded in an odd, self-satisfied way. Her fingers tightened about my wrist. “You wear it. Hyas wake hehe witka yaka how nah. Pe mika sick tumtum.” Very important now he is here. Or you will regret it.
“Now that Daniel’s here? What’s he to do with it?”
She only gave me that implacable glance.
“I’ve had enough of this, Bibi.” I yanked my arm away, rubbing at the impression her touch left behind, trying to erase it, unsettled. Her warnings eerily echoed Lord Tom’s and Junius’s, and I was coming to feel I’d made a terrible mistake in asking Daniel to stay.
But there was no such thing as bad luck, and these warnings and predictions were nothing more than silly superstition, nothing but the messy fancies I’d been warned against my entire life. There was no proof of such things as angry spirits, and no bracelet could protect me from a young man’s vengeance—assuming it was even what he intended.
“You will wear the bracelet?” Bibi asked.
“Thank you for the warning,” I said stiffly. I turned to go.
“Mika hyas ticky,” she said.
You need it.
But I had heard enough of things I must and must not do, and I left her without another word. When I looked back over my shoulder, she was gone, either melted into the crowd or gone from the dance hall completely, which was what I preferred, though the discomfort she’d left in her wake stayed with me as George Bannock corralled me for a dance, and I could not find the pleasure I usually felt. Instead I felt as I had in my dream—colors not quite right, and the world beyond the dance floor shifting and changing, nothing quite familiar, and the fear I’d awakened with this morning hovered, waiting, the dread come alive.
Lord Tom was falling-down drunk when we rescued him from the porch. He’d lost his English almost completely—either that or he was slurring so badly it was incoherent, though it sounded more like garbled jargon to me. Junius put Lord Tom’s arm over his shoulders and lugged him stumbling through the mud to the beach while Daniel and I followed behind. Daniel was quiet, not commenting on Tom’s inebriated state, though I supposed there was not much to comment on. As Papa often said, drunk Indians were hardly a rarity.
It was after midnight when we got to the beach and the plunger. The air was cool, tinged with rain, though it was more mist than anything else, and the heavy clouds scudded over the moon and then broke to reveal it again, from darkness to blue light and back again within moments.
The tide was in, so the boat was floating and we had to walk in water up to our knees to get to it—freezing cold, but it felt good on my feet, which were hot and swollen from dancing. Junius said to Daniel, “I’ll need your help, boy, to get him in,” and the two of them wrestled Lord Tom into the boat. He fell onto the tarp over the oysters, and I winced, thinking of how many shells he’d undoubtedly broken. He passed out almost immediately after. The dance broke up in the distance, the night punctuated with whoops and yells and a celebratory gunshot.
We kept a lamp in the plunger, which Junius lit, and before long we were on our way, cutting through the darkness with the lamp hanging from a hook on the mast, sending a faint glow onto the bay, mostly making it look dark as pitch. The only sounds were the gurgling hiss of the water peeling back from the bow and the rasp of Lord Tom’s snores. We’d made this trip at night a hundred times before, and both Junius and I knew the bay well. He didn’t need anyone’s help to manage it, so there was nothing to do but keep watch. The sense of disquiet I’d felt since talking to Bibi only intensified here, on the nearly silent water, with the moon suddenly making the shadows hard-edged and cold before it disappeared again. I shivered a little, wrapping my arms around me.
“So you have a good talk with the other girls?” Junius asked me.
I glanced at him in surprise. I’d already forgotten it. “There’s a tea for the pastor in Oysterville next week.”
“The pastor? You should go.”
“I haven’t decided yet if I will.”
“Hmmm. Jack Boone told me tonight about a collection that might be for sale over there,” Junius said. “I thought I’d go look into it tomorrow—unless Bibi was talking about trading the canoe?”
Of course he’d seen me with her. I found myself hesitating to explain, and not just because I’d failed to get what he wanted—though I’d been too unsettled to really try. I both wanted his confident dismissal of that Siwash nonsense and felt that such a reaction was somehow...wrong. I glanced at Daniel, who sat across from me now that Lord Tom was snoring in the hold, and I realized he, too, was waiting for my answer. I remembered how he’d been watching me speak to Bibi. I remembered her warnings about him. Very important now he is here, and I wondered how I could say that, how I could tell Junius that the widow agreed with him about his son while that son sat listening.
“It was about the bracelet,” I said finally.
Junius looked confused. “Bracelet?”
“The one she gave me the last time I saw her. Remember? That bit of twine?”
“Oh, yes. What was that about? Some charm, wasn’t it? Something about a dream and the mummy.”
“Yes. Bibi wanted to be certain I wore it.”
“Protection talisman, is it?”
I glanced at Daniel. His watching was so intent and careful that I had to look away, over the side of the boat, into the water foaming back from the bow, pale in the darkness. “Yes, I suppose.”
“More Siwash nonsense,” Junius said with a disappointed sigh. “But you should wear the thing the next time we’re in town, Lea. Perhaps it will soften her toward trading. I need that canoe—and soon. Otherwise...” He let the words fall; I knew what he didn’t say. I should have forced things with Bibi. Next time, I would not let her distract me.
We fell into silence. The breeze was light and steady; the sail fluffed, and Junius tightened the line, and we picked up speed again. Then he said, “Did you enjoy yourself tonight, boy?”
His voice was stiff; I felt his effort in it, and I knew he did it for me.
“Well enough,” Daniel said.
“Everyone seemed to take to you. The women especially. I’ve never seen so many worried husbands.”
“They hardly need to worry.”
“I suppose not, if you’ve a girl back home. Leonie tells me you do.”
Daniel tensed. “Yes.”
Irritably, Junius said, “You’ll have to help me out a bit, boy. I’m trying to make conversation.”
“What have the two of us to talk about?”
Junius threw me a look and settled back into the seat as if he’d made his effort and meant not to make another, and I searched my own mind for something to say and found nothing, because the only things I could hear were Bibi’s words and Junius’s warnings, and I wanted to ignore them. I wanted to be charitable, to give Daniel a chance to prove himself.
But just then the moon emerged again, and I was drawn to looking at him as if the moon willed it, so I saw him change within i
ts light, pale blue and white and black, full of sharp edges, and it was as if it illuminated something within him, and it felt dangerous and frightening.
Bad luck.
I turned away quickly, back to the water, letting the silence grow, letting it have sway, and I did not look back again, not until we rounded the point and I knew the mouth of the Querquelin was near. But now the moon had retreated and Daniel looked only like any other man, tired and slumping in his seat, half-softened by shadow and the pale yellow light of the lamp hung on the mast, and I was embarrassed at how well Bibi’s words had snuck into me.
It seemed a long time before we arrived home, the silence between us tense, punctuated only by Lord Tom’s snores. By the time we reached the shore I wanted only to be away from all of them, to put an end to the night. I got out and moved ahead, letting father and son manage Lord Tom, striding through the darkness, tired and mindless and feeling my own dream in pursuit, hiding in the shadows, breathing, waiting—
I stopped in confusion, glancing about, trying to get my bearings, realizing that in my hurry I had gone right past the house. I was at the entrance of the barn, and the inside was dark as pitch, the trunk a deeper darkness within it, and I could feel her there as if she had called me.
“Lea! What are you doing?” Junius’s call roused me almost painfully.
I shook my head, trying to clear it, and called back, “Nothing! I’m coming!” I turned and walked away from the barn, stumbling exhaustedly over the salt marsh as I made my way slowly back to the house.
CHAPTER 7
I HAD ANOTHER badly unsettled night. I dreamed again about the basket rolling and rolling, the berries spilling, and her unblinking, terrible gaze. When I woke, I was afraid to go back to sleep, so instead I lay staring into the darkness, tracking the night as it inched toward dawn. The horizon had barely lightened by the time I got out of bed. I milked the cow and made breakfast, rushing through it, wanting only to get to the barn and her, but before I could, I heard footsteps on the stairs. I thought it was Junius—I would never get out there quickly enough now—and was immediately annoyed, even more so when I realized it was Daniel. He looked soft with morning, young and almost sweet, even pretty. His hair was tousled, his shirt untucked and hanging to his thighs, and he was stocking-footed. When he saw me, he paused.
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