by Van Reid
“Father was born in 1784 and grew up in the tavern that his parents built and managed downriver from here at Bowdoinham. It was a roughhewn affair at the outset, but Grandfather made improvements over the years so that there was hardly a finer inn or finer food to eat along the river than at the Kennebec House.”
Daniel thought that a man telling this story must have a pipe or a mug of something before him, but Larinda told her tale with a sweet, sad smile and her hands knitting without needles before her. Her head leaned to one side, so that she had the wistful air of one who listens carefully for something she wishes, but doesn’t expect, to hear.
“A Father and his siblings grew, they became part of the tavern, and as his older siblings came to maturity, they went off to sea, or married perhaps and helped settle some nearby town, till there were only Father and a sister left to help.
“One day the stage came up, as it did several times a week, and a man, his wife, and their daughter took rooms at the Kennebec House. Father was sent out to get their things, and he was pulling their bags from the top of the carriage when he first set eyes upon Mother.”
A general sigh went up among the sisters. “It was a love match from the first,” informed Lavilda.
“That is what they always said,” said Larinda. “Mother was a frightened young woman. Her family, as it happened, was running as well, but from matters of less credit, I fear. The story was never fully told, but Mother’s father was fortunate, it was whispered, to leave Kennebunk in one piece. He had purchased land in Richmond and planned to set himself up in business.
“But Mother’s family’s stopping at the Kennebec House was, as they say, fate without hiding its face. They stayed three days, and on the first, Father said, he spoke to Mother as a servant, on the second he spoke to her as a peer, and on the third he spoke to her as a suitor. He was twenty, and she was only eighteen, neither yet people of their own in the eyes of the law. She was frightened of him, really, but did not forget him when she and her family continued on to Richmond, and Father contrived somehow to see her now and again, though without her parents’ knowledge.
“One day he went to Mother’s father and announced his intentions, whereupon he was called a rapscallion and his father a traitor, for the old man had heard rumors of their Tory background. Well, it was worse than the pot calling the kettle black-”
“The kettle calling the porcelain black, is what Mother called it!” said Lavona.
“Mother’s father had all but been convicted of criminal doings,” continued Larinda, who seemed oblivious of the interruption, “and here he was cursing a man because his father honestly stuck to his beliefs. But Father was a canny one, you see, and let the old man believe he’d been subdued by the tongue thrashing. He conspired to see Mother again, in Richmond village, whereupon he proposed the elopement.
“Father was not one to leave anything to chance, so he traveled the roads to Augusta like a scout and arranged the wedding and considered every possible pitfall. Then, by chance, he heard of Old Kalf while tarrying at a tavern in Hallowell; the Finn was something of a legend in the town, and it was said he had the power to talk with animals and affect the weather.
“I am told Old Kalf’s house even now stands upon the bank, overlooking the river, and that there are shadows still upon the ridge, not entirely the manufacture of the oaks and maples there.” Larinda’s eyes glistened with the mystery of her words, and she appeared to have much in common with some younger variant of herself. “Old Kalf’s house was on the way home for Father that day, and the ancient fellow himself was sitting on his stoop looking out over the river when Father passed by.
“‘A fast bit of work cut out for you, aye, boy?’ the old fellow said when Father pulled his horse up below the wizard’s house.
“Father never blinked. ‘I wished the next time I pass here,’ he said to the old man,’I had leave to be as untroubled as now.’
“‘Ah, well,’said Old Kalf,’there’s things might get between you and those behind.’
“‘Do you have something?’ asked Father, as bold as can be.
“‘I have some weather in this bag, ‘said Kalf,’which is doing me no good and is fit to spoil.’ He held up a cloth sack, pulled tight with a drawstring.’It was a big wind when I put it in there,’said the old man, ‘but it’ll be nothing more than a little rain and a sunny day thereafter if it isn’t used very soon.’
“‘If you have no use for it,’ ventured Father, ‘I might find something to do with it.’
“Whereupon Old Kalf offered the bag up to Father, saying, ‘Point it where you will, but remember that the wind will do nothing for you that your own goodwill won’t do better.’ And the Finn, his beard down to his waist and his eyes mostly blind, turned about and disappeared into his strange house.
“Now Father didn’t exactly believe in wizards, and he didn’t believe at all that you could catch a wind in a bag, even if, as he said when Mother wasn’t nearby, his prospective father-in-law was something of a bag of wind.” Larinda laughed, and one of her sisters gave a “tut-tut.”
“But the bag itself had a peculiar way about it, bobbing in the air like a kite where he tied it to the pommel of his saddle, or like an empty barrel in the water, and when he put his ear to it, he thought he could hear the sound of a wind, but far away, as if there were a storm in the next county.
“And he brought it home, and he hid it, and he made his plans, and the next time that Mother was to meet him, he came with an extra horse.”
“You should understand, Mr. Plainway,” said Louella, “Miss Burnbrake, that Mother was more than fond of Father by now. He was a gallant sort of young man, she told us, tall and with a straightforward way of looking a person in the eye.”
“He had hair then too!” shouted Lavona.
“Of course he had hair,” said Louella.
“Father had bought a new cape for Mother,” continued Larinda, this time more conscious of the interruption but willing to overlook it. “A new cape as a wedding present and as a means to disguise her, he hoped. It was broad daylight, however, and some word was quickly broadcast that Mother had left with a strange young man. Mother’s father was furious and charged after with several pillars from the village community.
“Father was an excellent rider, but Mother had little experience on horseback, and their progress was necessarily slow. By the time they were crossing the line into Hallowell, they had glimpses of pursuit from the tops of hills. It was early May as well, and the roads were still wet enough so that their tracks were plain to see, and turning off would do them no good.
“Finally, at the top of a rise, Father turned about and saw their pursuers cresting the hill behind them. He and Mother came to a small bridge that crossed a stream, a tributary to the Kennebec, and here he told Mother to ride on. Taking Kalf’s bag from its place at his saddle, he laid it in the road, pointed it toward the bridge, and pulled it open.
“He felt as if the ground were shivering beneath him, and the sounds coming from the bag were like the sounds of a gale when you are safely indoors. He did not stay to hear or see any more but jumped on his horse and rode after Mother. The sound behind them only increased as they hurried toward Hallowell. But as they came up beside Old Kalf’s house, Father reined in, for the wizard was sitting on his stoop again, looking down at them.
“The roar of the wind behind them had grown almost deafening, and Father called up to Kalf, ‘What have you given me?’
“‘What have you taken?’ asked the old man in return.
“Father heard other sounds-the crash of water and the cries of men and he wheeled his horse about and charged back to the bridge, which was gone in a sudden wind-rushed torrent. Several riders were steadying their mounts on the opposite side, but Mother’s father was not among them, and the men were shouting and pointing. Father saw a horse scrambling up the bank of the swollen stream and also the figure of a man struggling in the water.
“Without thinking twice, F
ather leaped from his horse and dived in after the man who had cursed him and his family. Mother arrived on the scene in time to see the two of them carried by the torrent to the Kennebec and thought then she had lost both father and lover.
“But down the stream Father caught hold of the old man’s collar with the one hand and a length of exposed root with the other. It was the root of an oak tree, and the oaks around this house were grown from acorns found beneath it. Father filled his pockets with them before he left that place.”
“So he saved your grandfather,” said Charlotte when there was a lengthy silence. Daniel thought she had gone asleep and had been watching her a little more intently than decorum allowed. Now he was startled, thinking that she might have been watching him in return from partly closed eyes.
“He did indeed,” said Larinda. “And it is difficult to bear ill will against a man who has risked his life to save your own. They were never overly fond of one another, Father and Mother’s father, but the old man gave permission for his daughter to be married as soon as she was twenty.”
“And what happened to the bag?” wondered Charlotte dreamily; the heat of the fire seemed to slow even her speech.
Larinda was astonished by the question, and she referred to her sisters, each in turn, and met the mirror image of her expression in them all. “My word!” she said when she turned back to Charlotte. “We never asked!”
The fire in the parlor hearth was banked, and the lamps were dimmed. Louella and Lavona led a procession up the stairs, and they paused at the landing to listen to the hiss of snow and the wail of the wind. The sisters embraced one another gently, and those sisters not accompanying one of the guests bussed Charlotte and Daniel as well; then they wished one another “Happy St. Nicholas’s Eve” and parted.
The hall above the kitchen, where Larinda and Lavilda had inherited their rooms (and a room or two besides), was deemed by the sisters to be the warmest and Charlotte and Daniel were led to chambers on opposite ends and opposite sides of this wing.
“I think one of Father’s nightshirts would fit you just fine,” said Larinda, who stopped before one door and, from her own candle, lit the candle that sat upon the stand outside the room. “I’ll get you one.”
“Please,” said Daniel, “I will be fine without it.”
“If you are sure?”
He nodded. His eye was caught by a large, ornately carved door across the hall. Charlotte, who was being led by Lavilda, stopped to consider the portal.
“That is the locked door,” said Lavilda when she realized that Charlotte had not kept up with her.
“Don’t say a thing,” said Larinda, in a hush that could be heard the length of the hall. “Lavona is convinced we’ll fly up in flames if we so much as blink at it.”
“It’s very impressive,” said Charlotte.
“It’s the locked door,” said Lavilda again, nodding softly. She waved a negligent hand. “I hardly see it anymore.”
Daniel wanted to approach the door, to touch its heavy carvings, to peer through the keyhole, which, he suspected, must have a hinged guard on the inside.
“Thank you, Mr. Plainway,” said Charlotte. She was in fact glad for the company of the two sisters at this point.
The two sisters, contrarily, wondered if they should scramble out of sight and stood uncertainly, even awkwardly in the midst of the hall, blinking at one another.
“It has been a memorable day, Miss Burnbrake,” returned Daniel, “and a pleasant one.” Her smile, as she turned away, was reward enough.
“Leave your boots outside the door, Mr. Plainway,” said Larinda, with a shake of her finger, after she had pecked him on the cheek.
“Oh? Do you have a bootblack, or are you afraid I’ll run off in the night?”
“No, silly,” she replied. “It’s St. Nicholas’s Eve. You must leave your boots outside your door so that he can leave you sweets.”
He made no answer but a silent 0 and nodded his understanding. Down the hall Lavilda was showing Charlotte her room.
“Good night, Mr. Plain way.”
“Good night, miss,” he intoned to Larinda.
His candle seemed of little value in the lofty room beyond the door. In the far corner was the dark form of a curtained bed, and he considered the spectral shapes of draped furnishings as he made his way across the carpeted floor. The shadows upon the ceiling as he moved were dim and shapeless, and a chair by the bed looked like an animal, crouched and watching.
He pulled off his boots and wondered how he could be so tired and not have noticed it till this very moment. The distance between the chair and door seemed like a mile to him, but he dutifully picked up his boots and carried them back. The hinges of his door whined; leaning from the room, he laid his boots on the hall runner.
Across from him was the locked door, and he considered this for a brief moment. Then he looked down the hall toward Miss Burnbrake’s room and saw her dropping her own boots outside her door.
Charlotte gave him a conspiratorial smile, and he thought she even laughed softly to see him set his boots out for St. Nicholas. Daniel chuckled all the way to the bed; it had a deep feather mattress that he sank into, feeling the warmth of his own body reflected back upon him almost immediately.
There was a sudden crack and a crash as the bed broke beneath him. Daniel was startled almost into shouting but found himself laughing quietly instead. He climbed from the embrace of the feather bed, disentangled himself from the covers, and considered what was to be done. Had anyone heard? Would they come knocking in a moment to see what was the matter?
He waited, but no one knocked, and the room was so dark he couldn’t see well enough to think about putting the bed back together-and he was weary. He shook the mattresses all the way to the floor and climbed back in beneath the covers, the ghost of his former warmth still glowing there.
He lay for some time, thinking of his day, and finally realized that the crashes had indeed come in threes. He thought Charlotte would be amused. She missed this one, however he thought, which was unintentionally suggestive, and he blushed in the darkness.
BOOK FOUR
December 6, 1896
33. Gifts
The sound of the a struck Lydia’s nerves; it hadn’t the rhythm one came to expect, and of course she knew, as a parent would know, the effort and pain that went into every stroke. It was not the first time she begrudged Sean for preceding her into the next world; such burdens, such pain and effort, bear better on two pairs of shoulders.
It had been more than a week since Wyck began to work with the ax, and his mother wasn’t sure that he had done anything but harm to himself. He had pushed too hard that first morning, and the second morning he had not lasted long, shaming himself. On the third day he worked a little more slowly and on the fourth day he worked a little longer again. Each day he returned looking pale and used up, and each day Lydia felt a little used up as well.
Mollie Peer was the name of the young woman who had given Wyck the ax, along with the tale of her own father who had brought a shattered knee to life by riding a bicycle, and it was Mollie Peer’s name that sometimes rang in Lydia’s head with every a stroke. Wyckford had plainly fallen for the young woman, and Lydia knew that her son’s feelings unacknowledged, if not entirely unrequited—hurt worse than the near mortal wound.
Bird too had a strong attachment to Mollie Peer, which was more difficult to explain; Mollie’s had been the deed that set all else in motion, but she was also the person most perplexed by his admiration. She had revealed an awkward affection for him the time she had come to the O’Hearn farm by bringing him a toy, the same day she had given Wyck the ax and left with a self-conscious handshake.
The ax blow came again, more the impression of a sound than the sound itself, but loud enough to Lydia’s ears and always out of rhythm. Wyck would swing the ax, then wait for the pain to subside so that he could swing it again; sometimes the pain was greater, and sometimes he got angry and didn’t wai
t for the pain to die, and sometimes the ax slipped from his hand. The days had grown more difficult, Wyck’s intentions further hampered by several snowstorms, not the least of which had been dying this morning when Lydia rose from bed (having dressed herself under the sheets).
The house was quiet, save for the thunk of the ax. She wished Ephias were home to keep an eye on Wyck from the barn, but Ephias and Emmy had made the trek into church by sleigh and hadn’t yet returned. Lydia’s fat dog, Skinny, lay at her feet, asleep.
Bird stood on the porch, looking cold. Wyckford wouldn’t let the boy near him when he was chopping wood, certainly for safety’s sake, but also so that the little boy would not see him in such pain. Bird had lost interest in helping Ephias with the chores the last few mornings, and Lydia thought Ephias missed him. But Bird wanted only to stand on the porch and wait for Wyckford, to know as soon as the big man returned around the corner of the barn that he was all right. There might be other reasons, less obvious for this, and Lydia had been thinking on them.
She was a practical, God-fearing farm wife who had little use for superstition. Her kitchen had no herbal charms (only remedies), no upturned horseshoe or rabbit’s foot; if she spilled salt, she scraped it off the table and put it back in the bowl, with none wasted over her shoulder.
But she lived in a world of superstition: words to ward off evil influences and prescriptions to avoid hats upon the table or empty shoes beneath it. Even Ephias, who eschewed such beliefs, would stop a chair from rocking when someone got up from it, and few would open an umbrella in the house or whistle past a graveyard. Lydia believed in cleanly scoured surfaces and simple prayer. Ghosts and the remnant intentions of the dead did not enter her philosophy.