Probable Claws

by Rita Mae Brown

  “But they are. The work has been spectacular and accurate.” Harry loved both of those gifts to America.

  “Sorry. I’m not being clear. The wildlife, the trees, shrubs, the obvious botanical archaeology, so to speak. We also want to encourage the return of the wildlife at the time.”

  “Oh, Lisa, with all those visitors, most of them city people, how can you revitalize, say, bobcats? It will scare them to death.”

  “Now see, I disagree.” She smiled as Pirate slept at her feet. “If we explain the life cycle of the animal, do not disturb their dens or nests, I think all can coexist. Obviously we will need to feed them. We wouldn’t want your pussycats to be lunch.”

  “Lunch! Why I have Odin, a coyote, for a friend. I’m not afraid of anything. I have battled a giant spider!” Pewter immediately shot off her mouth, waking the puppy.

  “Spider?” The Irish wolfhound blinked.

  “You’re scared of that spider. Big as a teacup, that thing.” Tucker grimaced. “Don’t worry, Pirate, the spider’s not here.”

  “I am not scared of the spider. Not scared of a bobcat!” The gray cat puffed up to twice her size, unpuffed she was a large lady, puffed she truly needed Jenny Craig.

  “You go right ahead and infuriate a bobcat. I am not messing with our larger cousins,” Mrs. Murphy sensibly chimed in.

  Lisa, hearing the commotion, cocked her head, looked down. “Are they always like this?”

  Harry laughed. “Such strong opinions. Well, I don’t mean to take up your time. Thought I’d drop by.”

  “You’re not taking up my time. Before you go, Kylie has been investigating the Kushner Building, which will be the Cloudcroft Building, for six months now. The minute word got out about a forty-story replacement she started research. Finding a skull is a godsend. TV coverage was extensive. The newspaper actually wrote about the history of the Kushner Building. Have you read today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch?”

  “No,” Harry answered.

  “Nature First took out a full-page ad suggesting city leadership include Nature First in all planning activities for buildings and parks. Of course, there is not one plan for a park.”

  “Bet it cost a lot.”

  “Four to five hundred dollars, maybe more.”

  “Why now?”

  “The skull,” Lisa replied with ill-concealed glee.

  “I was there.” Harry then relayed why she was at the pit, the condition of the skull.

  “Why didn’t you tell me!” Lisa nearly shouted. “Felipe! Raynell. Come into my office.”

  The shouts upset Pirate. “What’s going on?”

  “Human drama.” Pewter smirked.

  Pirate put his head on his paws, keeping his eyes wide open.

  Harry recounted her story.

  “Do you think there’s more down there?” Raynell asked.

  “I do. I doubt there would be a disembodied head. Of course, the police will be very careful. You almost need an archaeologist for something like this.”

  “Toothbrushes,” Felipe added.

  Lisa, a bit overenthusiastic, said with confidence, “If we can delay further construction for a while, cost Rankin and Cloudcroft millions because they’ll have to keep everyone on payroll, all those big companies will take us seriously. Listen to us before they dig.” Lisa gloated.

  “You might be right but I wouldn’t want to test those waters,” Harry quietly replied.

  “Why not?” Raynell wondered.

  “There’s a dead man in that ground. Who knows why. If the authorities find out maybe it means those big companies played hardball then and they would now.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Raynell blurted out. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend. It’s just big companies are so powerful why bother to kill? Anyway, it’s just a skull.”

  “For now.” Felipe folded his arms across his chest.

  “Buy a Times-Dispatch,” Lisa counseled.

  As Raynell turned to go back to her office, a small spider dashed across the floor. “Lisa, we need Orkin!”

  “Why?”

  “A spider.”

  “Raynell, if I called Orkin every time I saw a spider or a stinkbug, I’d blow our budget.”

  Raynell grimaced, did not reply, headed to her office as Lisa shook her head. “Really. Would blow the budget.”

  “That would be interesting on the annual budget: spiders, stinkbugs, water bugs.” Harry looked down at her buddies. “Come on, freeloaders. See you, Lisa.”

  The four left Nature First, walked down the hall to Over the Moon.

  Harry pulled open the door. “How can you keep your floors clean with all the snow outside?”

  Anne de Vault pointed to a mop leaning beside the door just a bit out of sight. “Woman power.”

  “Keep you in shape but then you always are.” Harry walked up to the sales counter, cats and Tucker in tow.

  Anne might once in her life have carried one extra pound but that would be it. Willowy or lean, depending on your vocabulary, would best describe her.

  “You’re too kind. I have a wonderful book by Harold Evans, Do I Make Myself Clear? Put it on your pile?”

  “Sure.” Harry could rarely resist a good book. “Have you seen the work at Nature First?”

  Anne nodded. “Lisa Roudabush pops in every day to say hi, look at what’s new.”

  Another customer, a woman in her twenties, knelt to pull a book off a shelf.

  “I suggested that Lisa visit Sandy McAdams at Daedalus. He would have vintage books, some hand bound, to augment her research at his used bookstore. Not only can he find you anything, he remembers everything. Everything. Knocks me out.”

  “He is a wonder,” Harry agreed. “So no new books on fashion or biography? I loved the one on LouLou de la Falaise. Boy that was expensive, too.”

  “Big book. Anytime a book is oversize it’s more money, plus the paper was very high grade. Lisa sticks to environmental books, animal books. What you would expect. She’d never buy a fashion book. Most of what I sell or anyone sells today is cheap paper, by the way, thermographed. Awful, really, but cheap.” Anne returned to a favorite theme, cheapness of things.

  “Doesn’t hold up.”

  “Doesn’t hold up because Tucker chews it,” Pewter tattled.

  “I don’t know if spiders poop, but I hope the teacup spider poops on you!” She bared her teeth.

  “Will you two stop?” Harry glared, then returned to Anne. “They were noisy at Nature First.”

  “Harry, they’re usually noisy. Forgot. Lisa loves books about dinosaurs. She’s like a kid.”

  “Well, I recall she had some in her pile just after Christmas. I thought maybe I’d get her a book. I love to give books.”

  Anne advised, “Even if someone receives a book about something different, not a special interest, I think it feeds their curiosity.”

  “That’s a good idea. Let me get that book, paperback, about Von Humboldt. Susan will be intrigued.”

  “Bottom left shelf.”

  Harry, Tucker with her, found the book. The cats sat behind the counter.

  “Did you ever see Jurassic Park?” Harry asked. “Given Gary’s collection of tiny rubber dinosaurs, Lisa’s interest, maybe we should watch it again.”

  “No,” Anne emphatically said. “Those little raptor dinosaurs in the kitchen were horrible.”

  “Made me want to keep the lights on,” Harry agreed.

  “Not a bad idea.” Anne nodded. “Who knows what’s out there?”

  “I know Gary came in here. He’d tell me what was new on the table.”

  “Glad you dropped in.”

  “Me, too.” Harry walked outside.

  23

  March 20, 1787

  Tuesday

  Lowering clouds, clearly seen from the huge arched panel windows in St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, promised cold, snow, or sleet. The windows, a daring design by Charles West, started at four feet off the floor, soaring to top stories, nearly to the
high ceiling. The back part of the church contained a balcony. The effect was one of grandeur, soaring hope. The cost for glass proved outrageous, but it did look sensational.

  The exterior of St. Luke’s, the stonework, had been finished for months now. Interior work took longer. The two-story buildings at the ends of the arched walkways from the main building echoed the main building. They would contain offices, housing for visitors, perhaps even some students of the faith. The pastor’s house, clapboard as opposed to stone, at a distance from the church itself, sent up smoke from the large fireplace in the parlor. Men continued to work in the home, finishing touches. They could work faster if warm.

  The interior of the church at this moment was not warm. Given the size of the space, two enormous fireplaces proved necessary. One heated the front of the church, placed in the right corner, and one at the rear, in the left corner. The balcony also had a small fireplace, which would keep the choir and those in the balcony reasonably warm. This tapped into the main flue from the left fireplace.

  The large panel windows, three sections cleverly made to look like one, could be tipped outward in hot weather. Charles sited the church for the wind flow off the Blue Ridge Mountains. Although not trained as an architect, studying the buildings in the mid-Atlantic, a few from the late-seventeenth century, gave him a freedom he would not have felt in his native England. However, living with castles, churches, abbeys, and stables, some built right after the Norman Conquest, provided a useful education. He grew up with structures made to last, and he hoped to create a church that would last long into the future of this New World.

  As it was, St. Luke’s was anchored to the past with the arches recalling monks walking from the cloisters. The proportions of the church carried a hint of Norman grandeur, but the interior was quite modern.

  Charles designed pews to be as comfortable as possible. They would be topped off with long cushions. Most of the carpentry work was complete. Pulling his scarf a bit tighter around his neck, he stood with Rachel, who helped sort out decisions and copy his drafts, for her hand was good. However, no one’s hand could match Charles’s. His penmanship would have put a royal clerk to shame, and he could imitate anything.

  “The organ will sound heavenly.” She smiled as Frank Ix sanded down the pulpit one more time.

  “Cost a fortune. The men to install will demand a high wage. Rooms will be ready for them. We will pay, for no one here can do what those Germans can do.” Charles crossed his arms across his chest. “This is not a thriving congregation, as you know. They have given so much. I have never met a group of people so united in their faith, so determined that their children should be brought up Lutheran.”

  “And neither of us were.” She slipped her arm through his because she liked being close to him, but he would warm her hand even though it was gloved.

  “I did as I was told. Trudged to chapel at Harrow, same at Oxford. Never really thought about it. For my father, church was another social obligation. A way to stand above, since as a baron, he would be called upon to contribute and seated in front in the family pew, which has been there since the fourteenth century.”

  “And now your brother?”

  Charles’s father had died. His older brother, Hugh, inherited the title, along with massive debt since Baron West had denied himself nothing. To his credit he did see his two sons to a good education, then packed off Charles to the Army. Well, the young man had to learn something, and he certainly wasn’t cut out for the church. So like all younger sons in England, Charles found himself socially desirable but impoverished.

  “Hugh will try.” He sighed. “He keeps borrowing against the estate. We have no mines, a source of wealth. All we have is land, and father proved a poor manager. He always overrode the true manager. So my brother struggles. He is not profligate but one does incur heavy responsibilities in his position. I am grateful to God that I was captured at Saratoga, sent down here. The long march from Saratoga to Virginia opened my eyes to the future. Someday, my love, you will see the country of my birth. It is beautiful and yet, here, here I can do and be as I wish.” He beamed at her. “And I met you. There aren’t women like you in England, sweetheart. One marries according to one’s station. Love has little to do with it, although over the years a couple can learn to care for each other.”

  “No love matches at all?”

  “A few, but in the main, no. One must raise troops for the king if so commanded. One must attend at court, especially if one wishes a political career. I did not, but there are times when one must go for the good of the family. And the social season. Endless balls, empty chatter, a fortune spent on clothes, men as well as women. A good wife advances her husband, the family. Here I can come and go as I please, and I can use my mind. I’ve found work I love, a woman I love. I have two beautiful and noisy daughters. I have Piglet.” He looked down at his faithful corgi, who survived war and capture with him. “But someday, when the girls are older, I would like them to know their father’s land.” He stopped a moment, grinned. “And I would like some of my old chums to see the woman I married.”

  “You’ll have to teach me how to address people. I know that’s very important over there.”

  “I will.”

  Karl called down from the pulpit. “We can’t paint and we can’t gild. Too cold. I had hoped for an early spring, as did the Missus.”

  “Karl, if there’s one thing Virginia has taught both of us, it is that the weather is variable.”

  Karl had been in the prisoner-of-war camp at the Barracks with Charles. Although Karl was a Hessian they struck up a friendship, as did Charles with John Schuyler, his captor. Fate. Charles believed in fate.

  “Indeed.” He dusted off the pulpit with a chamois cloth. “Well, we will be down there looking up, but at whom, I know not.”

  “Oh, the pastor will appear.” Charles smiled. “In good time.”

  “Aye.”

  Charles looked out the windows again. “Karl, might as well stop. Looks ominous.”

  Karl followed Charles’s gaze. “Does. Miles for us to get home.”

  “Let’s hope we make it before the heavens open.”

  Cloverfields, seven miles from Wayland’s Corner where St. Luke’s was being built, was at least on a decent road. Mostly it was straight with a curve or two. It wasn’t until one drove or rode just east of Cloverfields that the road twisted, dipped, dropped over Ivy Creek, and became churned mud or slick ice quickly, too quickly.

  They made it. Karl worked and lived at Cloverfields. Ewing, like others, used the prisoners for temporary workers during the war. Highly skilled, the only impediment proved to be language. In time that ironed out.

  Charles drove Rachel to their door then turned, driving Castor and Pollux, two large horses, to their stable.

  Tulli dashed out. “Mr. Charles. Gonna be hateful mean.” He pointed to the sky.

  “Well it is. I’ll help you unhitch and wipe down so you can go home before the worst.”

  Jeddie walked into the draft horse stable. “I’ll do that, Sir. You go on home. If it gets too bad we can bunk up here or maybe make it down to my cabin.”

  “How do you like living alone?”

  “I like it fine. People keep giving me things. Bumbee gives me blankets and Barker O. brought me a chair. And I have my own bed.”

  “Can you keep it warm?”

  “I stoke the fire before I go to sleep and the first thing I do in the morning is stoke it again.”

  “Good, and I’m glad you can keep warm. Thank you, Tulli. You, too, Jeddie.”

  It would never occur to Charles not to thank the two boys, well, Jeddie was a young man. He hated it as a child when he’d watch the monied people treat those beneath them, and they literally were beneath them, rudely. Charles, like his father in this regard, thought human society a pyramid. No matter where one is in that pyramid, everyone needs one another.

  He walked into his home, Piglet at his heels.

  “Tea?”
/>   “Oh, what a wonderful idea.”

  Just as he said that a fist of wind hit the side of the house, shaking it.

  Rachel joined him. No sooner had they sat down when John burst through the door.

  Charles stood up, seeing his friend in distress, for he knew John well. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. Come quickly.”

  Within minutes they were in John and Catherine’s house. Father Gabe and Bettina were there along with Ruth, good with all children and with the gift of healing.

  Rachel walked into her sister’s bedroom. The men hovered at the door.

  Catherine smiled at Rachel. “I’m such a bother.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Bettina, on the other side of the bed, held Catherine’s hand. “She started bleeding.”

  Ruth brought a pan of warm water. Shooed the men out except for Father Gabe.

  “I can get up.”

  “No,” Bettina forcefully commanded.

  As Father Gabe gently lifted her up, the two women washed her. Towels rested under her on the bed. Rachel removed them, hurried down the hall for more.

  When she returned, Father Gabe lifted Catherine again. Rachel placed clean towels underneath her.

  “The bleeding slowed.” Ruth squeezed out a wet rag, placing it on Catherine’s head.

  “I’ll be fine,” Catherine said weakly.

  “Of course you will, but you do as Bettina and Father Gabe and Ruth tell you. And me, too.” She smiled and Catherine smiled back.

  “Listening to them will be easier than listening to you.”

  “Are you in pain?”

  “No. I was climbing down the stairs and I felt the sharpest pain I have ever felt in my life. Then blood gushed out of me. I could barely reach the top of the stairs. I called for John. I could see from his face…well, anyway, he carried me in here, ran for Father Gabe then ran for you. Father Gabe brought Bettina and Ruth. That’s all I remember.”

  “Did you pass out?”

  “I don’t remember.” Catherine closed her eyes, then opened them. “I don’t hurt at all now.”

  John and Charles tiptoed into the room.