“No reason at all,” Mrs. Stiggins snapped. She sat back down and wrung her hands. “They must have opened the tea that morning.”
“And Lord knows,” Miss Mayhew grimly continued, “with all the molasses they sweeten it with, they might have drunk hemlock itself and not known it.”
A silence fell over Miss Frye’s three visitors. They rose to their feet, bid farewell to Miss Frye, and slowly retraced their steps down the street, avoiding the binnacle boy’s eyes in passing, as if this knower of secrets might discover their own with a glance.
Miss Frye did not sleep well that night. The next morning, Tekoa’s revelation still echoed in her ears. When the girl arrived at eight o’clock, Miss Frye set her to mixing up bread dough and stepped outside to the garden.
At a deliberate pace she strolled the paths, searching for comfort in the company of flowers. She smiled to see her larkspur thriving and lad’s love blooming in its appointed season. She gazed upon her Queen Margrets and mint, and sampled the various scents of her roses.
Sitting on a bench, she inspected her tansy, eyeing the cornmeal-yellow petals and recalling how Ethan too had loved flowers. She grinned to remember the morning they’d merrily roamed the cliff, two summers before, collecting posies of hawkweed and chicory — and at once the smile left her lips. For that was the day the loquacious Mrs. Gump had stopped them to chat on their return. The woman’s ill-mannered son had appeared, while she jabbered about her watery eye, and the pain in her lungs, and the history of her limp — till Miss Frye turned around to find the boys gone, dashing through Mrs. Gump’s melon patch and trampling her corn, playing at pirates.
It was not till weeks later that Miss Frye discovered that Ethan was sneaking off in the evenings, to cavort with Mrs. Gump’s son and others. When she’d confronted him, he was unrepentant and had openly mocked her in Sarah’s presence. Recalling her ship-bred, rum-sodden sons, she’d had no choice but to be stern with the boy, determined he’d bloom according to plan.
And now, she reflected, Ethan was gone, his promise lost forever.
Miss Frye marched indoors and entered the parlor, closed the curtains, and approached Tekoa. The girl was setting her dough to rise, and although Miss Frye knew there was mending to be done, she felt driven to find out if anything further about the Orion might come to light.
“Rest yourself awhile,” said Miss Frye, “and aim your eyes on the binnacle boy.”
The girl sat down and no sooner looked out than Miss Bunch, Miss Mayhew, and Mrs. Stiggins made their way to the door.
“Good day, Tekoa,” bubbled Miss Bunch. “And good day to you, my dear Miss Frye. A day especially long for one so recently robbed of her child.”
“Indeed,” said Miss Mayhew. “The very reason we felt bound to help you pass the time.”
Miss Frye’s lips puckered. “How very thoughtful.”
“Perhaps Tekoa could be of assistance,” suggested Miss Bunch.
“If she’s free,” said Miss Mayhew.
Mrs. Stiggins tapped her parasol on the floor. “That justice might be done.”
The women seated themselves in the parlor and Tekoa resumed her place at the window.
An hour passed in silent suspense, Miss Frye’s three guests providing the barest minimum of their promised companionship.
“Tell me, Tekoa,” Miss Bunch spoke up. “How does your precious sister fare?”
“The same, ma’am,” the girl replied.
Miss Bunch shook her head and softened her voice. “I’ve heard it said that Sarah had a sweetheart among the Orion’s crew. Simeon Sprigg, they say it was.” She glanced from one pair of eyes to the next. “They say the two were seen talking together and that he’s the cause of the girl’s affliction.”
Her listeners shook their heads in sympathy, then returned their attention once more to Tekoa.
Patiently, the girl looked out, though no one was near the binnacle boy. She trained her gaze on the swirling swallows and watched the swifts careen through the sky. She studied a sparrow feeding its young — and suddenly noticed a figure appear, approach the statue, and seek out its ear.
“What is it, Tekoa?” Miss Frye demanded.
“Something spoken, ma’am. To the binnacle boy.”
“Naturally, child! But what? Speak it out!”
Tekoa swallowed. She glanced about. Her lips quivered nervously.
“‘He wouldn’t listen. He wished to roam free — and signed himself aboard the Orion.’”
Mrs. Stiggins bolted to her feet. “Quick, child — is this the same speaker as before?”
Gloomily, Tekoa nodded, and Mrs. Stiggins’ eyes blazed.
“I demand to know who it is at once!”
Seeing the woman charging toward her, Tekoa clasped the curtains shut.
“Away, child!” Mrs. Stiggins ordered. She grabbed a curtain and flung it open.
“Sarah!” she gasped. “Sarah Peel!”
The others scrambled at once to the window.
“Protecting her older sister, she was!” Mrs. Stiggins shouted out. “But we’ll get to the truth — believe me we will!”
Snatching her parasol, she steamed out the door, with Miss Bunch and Miss Mayhew right behind her.
“Tekoa, stay here and mind the bread!” Miss Frye settled a stern eye on the girl. Then quickly she followed her guests out the door, and found them standing in a circle around Sarah.
“So it’s you!” thundered Mrs. Stiggins. “You who can’t get a word out your lips.”
“Except to the binnacle boy,” said Miss Mayhew.
“And small wonder that your jaws seized shut.” Mrs. Stiggins peered into her eyes. “With a secret like yours perched on your tongue.”
Sarah lowered her gaze at once and fingered her long brown hair.
“Namely,” Mrs. Stiggins proclaimed, “that it was you who murdered the Orion’s crew!”
Sarah’s eyes opened wide in terror.
“You couldn’t bear your sweetheart, Simeon Sprigg, forsaking you for the sea.” Mrs. Stiggins poked the girl’s shoe with the tip of her parasol. “So you poisoned him — and his mates as well!”
Speechlessly, Sarah shook her head, desperately denying the charge. Her jaws trembled, her lips twitched. She labored to open her mouth and speak, noticed Miss Frye’s eyes upon her — and all of a sudden broke free.
“Seize her!” Mrs. Stiggins screamed.
Panic-stricken, Sarah dashed off, holding the hem of her skirt as she ran.
“She mustn’t escape!” Miss Bunch cried out, and the four took after her in pursuit. Down the middle of the street they scurried, gathering the curious to their cause and shouting for those with fleeter feet to catch the girl at once. Panting, the women turned down an alley and soon trailed the mob they’d called into being. Along the common, past the graveyard, through a field they hurried along, till they crossed a meadow and at last caught up with the rest of the crowd at the cliff.
“And where’s the girl?” Mrs. Stiggins demanded.
A man turned around. “Sarah Peel, ma’am?”
“Of course! And who else?” Mrs. Stiggins snapped.
“Fell from the cliff, ma’am. Drowned, she did.”
Mrs. Stiggins gasped.
Miss Frye closed her eyes.
“Poor, dear Sarah,” she whispered.
Side by side, without speaking a word, the women slowly made their way homeward. Left alone for the final block of her journey, Miss Frye cast a glance at the binnacle boy, turned to her left, and approached his ear.
“Sarah spoke truly — he meant to go to sea. Not Simeon Sprigg, but my Ethan.”
She paused for a moment. “Sarah must have seen.” She licked her lips and drew closer to the statue. “That it was I who poisoned the Orion’s crew.”
Miss Frye glanced across at her planting of tansy, with whose deadly leaves she’d destroyed her wayward son, and the corrupting crew as well. Dreamily, she stared at the flowers, yellow as the noonday sun — and
so failed to notice Tekoa Peel remove her gaze from her mistress’s lips, take a step back from the parlor window, and hurry toward the back door.
Mr. Solomon Quince, master shoemaker, stood beside Nicholas, his fledgling apprentice, inhaled the spring air, looked up at the stars — and, ignorant of the constellations, found the sky strewn with the shapes of shoes.
“Well, now, Nicholas, my lad,” he said. “How does the ancient and honorable craft of shoemaking agree with you?” He sucked on his pipe and surveyed the heavens, picking out jackboots and brocade slippers.
“Very well,” mumbled Nicholas. He cleared his throat. “Fine, sir.”
His master smiled and savored the night. A moon lit up the great city of Charleston, capital of the colony of South Carolina, and threw Mr. Quince’s portly profile onto the walk in front of his shop.
“A noble calling it is, Nicholas.” Scanning the sky, Mr. Quince spied the shapes of glue pots and pliers and mallets and lasts. “Aye, and I wager you’ll serve it well.”
The shoemaker studied his lanky apprentice. The boy was thin as a wrought-iron picket, with a shirt that hung like a sail in a calm. His brown eyes were fixed on the distant stars.
“That is,” continued Mr. Quince, “if you learn to leave off daydreaming and buckle your brains to your work.”
Nicholas started and disengaged his eyes from the heavens.
“You’ve got promise, lad. That’s plain as a peacock. But you’ll have to give up your moonin’ about.” Mr. Quince put a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “Look alive at your work! Keep your eyelids hoisted! Stay alert as a hare, lad — a hare chased by hounds!”
Nicholas swallowed and straightened his posture.
“It’s a worthy trade you’ve chosen, Nicholas. A glorious, an exalted trade.” Mr. Quince lowered his voice to a whisper. “Do you imagine King George could do without shoes? Or the Turkish Sultan? Or the Empress of China?”
Mr. Quince disclosed a knowing smile.
“Nay, lad — they come to us. Crawling on their hands and knees!” Triumphantly, he puffed on his pipe. “And see that you’re ready for ’em, Nicholas! Keep your fingers busy and your blinkers wide open. Give yourself to your work, lad, body and breeches, just like old Saint Crispin himself.”
He gestured toward the weathervane on his roof, a hollow copper likeness of Saint Crispin, patron saint of shoemakers. Nearly as large as Nicholas and sporting a head of chiseled curls, the saint was shown sitting at his bench, his hammer upraised above a shoe.
“Always busy. Blinkers cocked on his work. Mark his ways, my lad — and follow.”
Nicholas studied his patron saint. While the other vanes in sight pointed west, Saint Crispin was facing east at the moment, the result of a blow from a mulberry branch that had struck it during a hurricane. Believing, however, that the figure’s main function was to advertise his shop, Mr. Quince had never bothered to repair it, untroubled that it looked east for days, then found itself stuck to the north, then the south.
“You’ve a friend there, lad. A friend and protector.”
In wonder Nicholas gazed at the saint, who no longer tracked the source of the wind but noted instead, the apprentice fancied, other events, mysterious and sublime.
“Always watching over you, he is.” Mr. Quince turned toward Nicholas. “So you needn’t bother to busy your brains over anything but your work!”
Across the Ashley River came a breeze, bearing, as if to market, a cargo of jasmine and magnolia scents. Mr. Quince breathed in the fragrant air and raised his eyes to the stars.
“Let your thoughts never stray from shoes, Nicholas.” Viewing the sky, he suddenly pulled the pipe from his mouth and gaped at the stars. “And your dreams as well, lad — always upon leather!”
Mesmerized, Mr. Quince peered at the heavens as though he were under a spell. Then abruptly he glanced at his apprentice, as if the boy might have found him out. For his eyes had discovered in the western sky not shoes but the face of the woman he worshiped, the venomous Miss Catchfly.
“Aye, lad,” he stammered, clearing his throat. “Shoe leather! Shoe leather and thread!”
“Shoe leather and thread,” Nicholas murmured, forgetting the words at once. For he too was staring at the western sky, at the very stars Mr. Quince held dear, whose arrangement suggested no scrap of cowhide but rather the girl who worked at Miss Catchfly’s grocery, for whom he pined in private — the comely Juliana.
The next morning, Nicholas ambled downstairs, yawned mightily, swept the shop — and was at once dispatched by Mr. Quince into the sunlight on a round of errands.
Carrying a basket, he strolled down the walk, admiring the fine spring day. He passed Mr. Flinders’s bookshop next door, where he often browsed when he had a free moment, and spotted the owner washing his windows in preparation for King George’s birthday. The event would be celebrated the following day. Bells would be chimed. Balls would be held. The ships in the harbor would fly their colors. The Charleston militia would march on parade and at night the town would glow like a bed of coals with the light of candles and lamps hung from balconies and set before windows.
Cheered by the thought of a holiday from work, Nicholas sauntered down the street. And following visits to the cutler, the baker, and Mr. McPhee, the beekeeper, he found himself standing before the door of the last of his stops, Miss Catchfly’s grocery.
He looked through the window and spied Juliana. His heart burst into a frenzy of labor. Collecting his courage, he flung the door open, ramming it into the ladder from which Miss Catchfly, with broom, was doing battle with cobwebs.
“Thickwit!” she shrieked. “Jinglebrains!” She regained her balance and glared down at Nicholas. “Were you mothered by a mole, you blind-eyed oaf?”
Nicholas swallowed. “No, ma’am,” he mumbled. In apology, he raised his gaze to her daggerlike chin. Then he noticed her shoes and spun quickly around, praying she wouldn’t recall who he was. For the shoes had been made in Mr. Quince’s shop — Nicholas remembered them at once. He himself had nailed on the heels, with tacks, he now feared, that might have been a sliver of an inch too long. Tacks whose tips might possibly sprout up through the soles with wear.
“Next time,” spat out Miss Catchfly, “open your shutters and use your eyes!”
With relief, Nicholas returned his thoughts to the lesser of his crimes. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll remember that, ma’am.”
Miss Catchfly snorted and sneered. “I doubt it.” Armed with her broom, she slashed at the ceiling, vengefully laying waste to the cobwebs and causing a fleeing spider to drop onto Nicholas’s back as he approached the counter.
“Three pounds of coffee beans, please,” he stammered.
Juliana turned, in the act of pinning a sprig of honeysuckle to her bodice. Her skin was fair, her eyes deep green. Two amber curls danced on her forehead.
“Plus a loaf of sugar,” Nicholas faltered. “And a half-dozen nutmegs. Please.”
Juliana turned and stifled a yawn, having lain awake most of the night inventing instruments of torture for the benefit of Winthrop Whistlewood, her faithless, and now former, suitor. Yawning again, she opened a jar, drowsily reached her hand inside and removed, by mistake, one nutmeg too many. While Nicholas nervously shifted his feet, Juliana emptied the nutmegs into his basket — and all of a sudden froze stiff at the sight of a spider climbing over his shoulder.
“Juliana!” Miss Catchfly stared at the girl. “Be your wits out to pasture? Look lively now, and finish filling the young man’s order!”
Juliana gaped wide-eyed at Nicholas, then whirled around and fetched coffee and sugar. Unaware of the spider descending his shirt and breeches and scrambling across the floor, Nicholas paid for his purchases, turned, and set off out the door.
Dreamily, he walked down the street, meandering past the empty slave market, cocking his ear to a mockingbird’s song. He stopped to gaze at a cypress tree and recalled the color of Juliana’s eyes. Eyes, he mused, as green as keyhole
s through which one spied a field of clover. Then at once he remembered Mr. Quince’s lecture and awoke from his reverie. From now on he meant to keep his eyes skinned and his wits as sharp as the point on an awl.
He studied the passersby he met, scrutinizing their manners of dress and deducing their destinations. He noted the wind and appraised the clouds. He marked each carriage that clattered past. He looked down at his basket, inspected the sugar, counted the nutmegs — and found there were seven.
Nicholas stopped dead in his tracks. He counted again, and again found seven.
His eyebrows shot up. His thoughts whirled. He wondered if Juliana had merely miscounted, then recalled the way she’d stared at him so strangely.
His heart fluttered. His mind spun like a top. Struck blind to clouds and carriages, he slowly digested the astounding truth: while Miss Catchfly was busy, and at great personal risk, Juliana had secretly given him an extra nutmeg as a sign of her love.
In awe he examined the seventh nutmeg. He closed his eyes and sniffed it deeply. Entrusting it at last to his pocket, Nicholas drifted down the street while the amazing fact, flowerlike, gradually unfolded itself.
Juliana, he now realized, had only appeared to ignore him entirely every time he came into the shop. In truth, the girl was simply shy. Words did not come easily to her, so she spoke instead in the language at hand — the language of nutmegs and cornmeal and cloves.
Nicholas walked along in a daze, marveling at Juliana’s courage, courage called forth on his behalf. Had Miss Catchfly caught her, she’d have snatched her bareheaded. Why, that woman would just as soon bite herself as part with a shilling or a speck of her flour. No doubt Juliana had planned the deed for days, or weeks, or even months!
Nicholas crossed a street, stopped, and plucked the nutmeg from his pocket. Hypnotized, he stared at it blankly, seeing in it, as if in a crystal ball, Juliana’s image. Then all of a sudden his jaw dropped open.
She’d worn flowers — he recalled it clearly. Honeysuckle, he believed it was. And at once he thought back to a volume he’d opened in Mr. Flinders’s bookshop one day, a volume devoted to the lore of flowers, including the meanings attached to them.
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