A Wicked Way to Burn

by Margaret Miles

  She turned back toward the fire. This time, she saw Lem and Orpheus watching her. The old dog rose and padded to the door. When it was opened, he loped off into the darkness, curious but still unconcerned.

  She could let her imagination run wild, Charlotte told herself, as well as anyone in the village. Maybe she’d seen her first moonlit ghost, or a goblin! More probably, it was just another trick of smoke and mirrors, this time staged by Nature. She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her twitching nose. The night was getting colder. She felt herself shiver. Suddenly, the powerful surge of an idea, almost a premonition, threatened to overwhelm her.

  She had good reason to believe that love sometimes found ways to reach back from the grave. What, then, about pain—or even a blazing hatred? Somehow, she felt sure that the old man she had seen on Tuesday afternoon was not dead. But her intuition also told her that something sinister had entered Bracebridge. What that something was, though, she couldn’t say.

  Tomorrow, she, too, would have a talk with Jack Pennywort. And then she would tell Edmund Montagu what she suspected about the old merchant, the mirror, and the brown fibers. After that, the captain could continue to search for Middleton for his own mysterious reasons. She would be quite happy to return to thinking about her farm, and her neighbors, and her own quiet business.

  IN THE TAPROOM of the Bracebridge Inn, Edmund Montagu sat over a superior bottle of Madeira, after a surprisingly good supper.

  No matter what lack of manners might be shown by the rural clods one had to deal with, he thought, their comforts here were substantial. At least the innkeeper was bearable. Even if he did have the misfortune to possess a bitter-faced, sharp-tongued wife.

  Montagu still smarted from a mistake of his own, that had started things off entirely on the wrong foot that afternoon. But it had not been entirely his fault. Unfortunate that the horse had shied when he rode up the road toward Mrs. Willett, Longfellow, and his startling sister. He hadn’t intended to alienate them from the very beginning—but that’s apparently what he had done. Regrets mixed with shame had made him more formal, more officious, more galling, perhaps, than he ever meant to be.

  If he hadn’t borrowed Peabody’s damned horse when he left Boston—did the thing never tire? Had he been a better rider himself, more than appearance suggested, it might not have seemed … he might not have needed to pretend …

  Later, he’d been unsuccessful with the others, as well. Three of the village selectmen had called on him, but each had been busy on his own farm on the previous day, just as Longfellow had predicted. Although they wished him well, they had been very little help. The constable, a buffoon named Bowers, had scratched out a written statement, but beyond this he seemed unlikely to venture. He and two others had even asked Montagu to lead their local investigations. This he had agreed to do, temporarily, to avoid more questions about why he was there, as well as to keep these bumpkins from accidentally intruding into his own plans.

  After they’d left him, Montagu had reviewed the notes in his personal journal. There, accumulated bits of information from the records of Boston and other places gave him a surprisingly long and detailed account of the elusive Duncan Middleton’s past. No, it really wouldn’t do, Montagu thought again, for his fellow inquisitors to follow him too closely, or too far.

  As for Pennywort, the little man had obviously told his story so many times that anything he said now was bound to be out of proportion. Jack had no real explanation of his own for what he’d seen. Montagu had also sent for and spoken to several others who had been at the nearby tavern on the night in question. An uncouth flourmonger had disclosed some interesting things about a visiting Frenchman. A few had quietly mentioned witches, speaking behind their hands. In fact, one had insisted that his cow had been made dry by the evil doings, and asked quite seriously who would repay him for his loss.

  But Montagu had drawn no nearer to discovering if anyone might have learned where Middleton had actually gone, or if the merchant had employed any help in going. And that was the heart of the matter.

  Someone, he thought, must know more than he, or she, had already told. Others might unwittingly have seen something that would be of use to him. So far, the only sensible people he had met in the town were the three he’d offended, but he hoped to do better on the morrow.

  Montagu stuck to his conviction as he slowly sipped from a long-stemmed glass. Someone knew something. Eventually, someone would talk. In the morning, with that in mind, he would start again.

  Chapter 11

  Thursday

  THE YOUNG BOY who tramped the river marsh was buffeted and chilled by the night winds. But an object over his heart warmed him as he sloshed through the dark. The sun was an hour from the eastern horizon; no color yet showed in that quarter of the sky. To the west, through racing clouds, the boy glimpsed a dying moon. Its pale light was reflected on thin ice along the edges of the Musketaquid’s leaden passage.

  As the river mud pulled at his boots, Sam Dudley balanced his long fowling piece in one hand, and wiped his running eyes with the other. He made for a small lean-to made of stones and brush, used by village men when they were after waterfowl. It was a place where they could wait out of the wind for the light of day, and for the flights of ducks and geese that settled onto the marsh at sunrise.

  This morning, Sam’s thoughts were far from ducks and geese. He had taken his gun in case anyone should be up to see him leave the house. And he had announced he’d be off early to go hunting. But it was not exactly the truth he’d told his mother the night before, while his father was still out drinking. He had gone hunting for something, but not for birds.

  Once he was seated cross-legged in the rough hut, Sam’s mittened hand reached up to the small deerskin pouch he wore around his neck, the one his mother had sewn and embellished with shell beads and given him at Christmas. If he played his cards right, what was inside held the answer to his future. It would be the first of many, he devoutly hoped. And he thought that if the Lord did help those who helped themselves, as his father and Reverend Rowe so often told him, then he was as close to heavenly assistance now as he was ever likely to get. Because it was for what he had seen and confronted on his own that he’d been paid his shiny gold piece two nights before—as well as for what he’d sworn he wouldn’t tell.

  Sam thought again of the way he’d doubled back and waited alone on Tuesday night, in the clump of firs just off the road, to see if goblins and witches might appear after all. He had seen someone come down from the woods, enter one of the village habitations, and converse with its owner. He had seen someone leave. Then, there had been the red gleam of the large bundle going down into the black water, weighted by a stone.

  It was really all a joke, and only a matter of business … not life and death at all, as people had been led to believe. And business, he’d been instructed, was a thing that a man had to learn about firsthand … something he had to be on the lookout for, unless he wanted advantage to pass him by. Well, the sooner he learned how business worked, the sooner his friends would have to follow his example. He would lead all of them in building up profit, if things went well.

  It was a little like a game, he decided, when you were not quite sure of the rules. It wasn’t anything like education in the dame school, where an old woman taught you letters and sums. It wasn’t like hunting or farming, either. There, what your parents or grandparents or uncles taught you would usually be right, and would help you do a job properly. No—this was a final initiation, he reckoned, into the real world of manhood, where you had to take things as they came and make the best of them … even without being sure if they were really right.

  He frowned, but realized it was too late to reconsider. From the sweeping clouds above he heard the uncertain winnowing of a snipe, like the lament of a lost child. Maybe he would take the money he was about to make and go West, to start a new life. He’d heard—

  Sam turned at a crackle of ice. Walking toward him
on the river path came the one he had expected to meet. Gun in hand, the boy rose with a greeting.

  The two spoke for a few moments, and then Sam was asked to turn and estimate the time from the slowly spreading glow in the eastern sky. He looked and considered, appreciating the long thin line of scarlet under a blanket of dark cloud. It wasn’t yet dawn, but it was the closest thing to one the boy would ever see again.

  An arm reached up behind him and came down swiftly over his face. Sam dropped the flintlock, as another arm tightened around his throat. He clutched frantically through heavy mittens. But with wool-covered fingers, he was unable to find a grip.

  Then it was too late.

  After the boy had lost consciousness, the other dragged his limp form to the river’s edge. Sam began to revive when the cold water touched his face. But he was pushed down hard into a pool of icy mud and held there, until his body ceased to move.

  Before leaving, the murderer tore off the deerskin pouch that hung around the boy’s neck, opened it, and dropped the contents into one hand. There was a packet of powder, some extra shot … and a gold coin. Pocketing the latter, Sam’s instructor in life tossed away the rest, and walked off briskly into the moonset whistling a tune—having no idea that what had befallen Sam Dudley had been witnessed by other eyes.

  THURSDAY BEGAN FOR Charlotte Willett when she rolled over and patted Orpheus, who sat beside the bed. Thick clouds through her window promised a morning of bleak gray.

  When she made her way outside just before sunrise, she found the yard had been transformed. Bushes and trees had been stripped of their leaves. The tall oak over the barn shuddered and wailed in protest under a renewed high wind, while in front of the house, the tops of the younger maples swayed and bent in supplication. Clutching the hood of her cloak against the fierce gusts, she bent forward and hurried on.

  When Charlotte opened the small side door to the dairy, it was wrenched from her hand and flung against the low building’s clapboard side before she quickly claimed it back. Once she had pulled it shut from the inside, she stood gulping the sweet aroma that surrounded her.

  Her eyes soon adjusted to the subdued light that came in through a line of small windows. Facing her was a long row of dark, empty milking stalls. Hay had already been put into the continuous manger, at the edge of the flagstone aisle where pails were cleaned and stored. Lem had taken care to fork the manger full the evening before, working from a pile of loose hay near the double door. That door was still barred on the inside. She removed its crosspiece from large metal supports. In a few more minutes, her young helper would lead the herd in from the barn. Then they would both begin to fill the wooden pails with warm milk for her buyers—and for their own breakfast.

  This morning, Charlotte felt oddly uneasy in the darkness, despite the quiet, and the familiar animal smells of the barn. She picked up one of the empty pails, removed its lid, and examined it for cleanliness. Then, a small sound that seemed to come from the middle of the dairy made her look up. Whatever it was, it stopped almost before she could be sure she’d heard it; turning her head, she could hear nothing more. It might have come, she guessed, from the trench against the wall where the cows soon would be driven in. (Occasionally, a rat from the fields decided to move in as well, until Orpheus changed its mind.) Even though the hay inside tended to absorb noise, she could still hear the wind’s sharp play. Perhaps something had fallen onto the roof. She tilted another bucket and began to examine its depths, sniffing.

  And so it was a complete surprise when the door she had recently entered blew open again and banged repeatedly. Shock caused Charlotte to lose her balance and fall back. Happily, her descent was cushioned by her heavy skirts, as well as the pile of hay behind her. She had just begun to laugh, when she quickly stopped. It had taken only a moment for her hands to feel the hay she had fallen into, truly feel its texture, its depth, and above ail its unexpected warmth.

  Charlotte stood up with a movement almost as sudden as the one that had seated her. Quickly, she turned around to stare at the dim depression. Very recently, someone else had been on that same hay, out of the wind, hidden in quiet sanctuary.

  The door banged again. She remembered the careful way she had latched it against the wind when she came inside. Then she heard a cowbell, and in another second a tall figure opened one of the double doors behind her, fastening it back so that the black and white animals he escorted could amble slowly to their stalls.

  A look of surprise grew on Lem’s face as he took in her dazed expression. And then, once more and with a whoosh, Charlotte Willett sat down.

  “IT STILL MAKES me fidget,” said Hannah Sloan later in the morning, “to hear of that Frenchman around here somewhere, up to no good.” She pulled a pile of bread dough into another large fold, and pushed it down again into the low wooden bin in front of her. Charlotte looked over from the table where she tallied her accounts.

  “But you never felt that way about any of the Neutrals before.”

  “We never before had such strange things going on! An old man disappears … and Emily Bowers says Hiram’s had reports of all sorts of trouble—from a child with fits, to a horse with the staggers. Though I suppose such things aren’t unheard of during the best of times. But as to this Frenchman, why, what if he was to lurk around, waiting to prey on a woman alone? Worse yet, what if one of the local men was to find him here?” Hannah added with a darting look.

  Charlotte was glad she hadn’t mentioned the unknown guest in the diary that morning. But had Hannah seen him go?

  “Mary Frye seems to think Fortier is an honest man,” she finally answered. “Good enough to marry, according to what Nathan tells me.”

  “When does a girl who’s lost her heart have any control over her head? Oh, I don’t blame Mary—she’s all right. But he’s an angry one, from what I’ve heard. And I’m not sure but he’s got cause to be. The way they were all treated, sent off from their homes like blackamoors, by His Majesty’s fine governor! If you ask me, it’ll be a long time before the Acadians forgive our king. Who’s to say war won’t break out all over again? What if the French should decide to come back? I say I’d rather know where the Neutrals in this country are, and keep my eye on them.”

  “It’s my guess that Gabriel Fortier isn’t here. He probably went home to Worcester,” said Charlotte, skirting complete honesty.

  “He might have … but with Peter Lynch pressing Mary for an answer, I doubt if the Frenchman’s in any mood to go far. No, he only left the Blue Boar to avoid the miller. He’s still around, somewhere.”

  “But do you really think he’s guilty of any crime, Hannah?”

  “Well, he was the first to leave, just in front of the merchant that night… though probably all of them had the same idea of lining their pockets,” Hannah said with a sniff as she thumped the stiff dough. “Still, I don’t see how anybody could have robbed the old man and then made him disappear that way, without being seen. But somebody must be guilty of something! I hear from my boys,” she continued, “the talk at the tavern, and the apple press, and the mill; and they tell me stories have come back from Concord and Worcester. Some are saying crime goes unpunished in Bracebridge, that ungodly things have been happening, and that it’s not safe here anymore. Well, the way our own men are starting to talk about taking the law into their own hands, it may be all too true!”

  MEANWHILE, OUT IN the barnyard, Lem drove a maul deep into a section of pine. While the report of his hammer still rang, he stooped with a practiced, easy movement to throw the split pieces onto a small mountain of winter firewood. As soon as he saw Charlotte approaching, he greeted her with a broad, lopsided grin.

  Admiring his work and enjoying the scent of the fresh slabs, she returned his silent greeting. More than the countryside had grown during the summer, she realized. Nearly to full height now, Lem seemed to have found a new grace, after a year or two of tripping over his feet. There was a promise of strength in his broadening shoulders, too. It
was a fair trade for the sweat he put into his work.

  “Autumn’s the busiest time for most of us,” Mrs. Willett began cautiously.

  Lem agreed with a nod, wiping his face with a sleeve.

  “So many jobs to take care of all at once. Do you think you could use some help this afternoon?”

  He gave her a curious look through a lock of hair, and rubbed his hands over his upper arms, making no guesses.

  “I only thought,” Charlotte added, “that we might share some of the work, and a little food, with someone less fortunate.”

  He had to agree with that—and to admire again her kindly way of thinking.

  “Like Jack Pennywort,” she added.

  Now he looked at her with plain astonishment. He shifted from one foot to another, waiting to hear more.

  “I have an idea he’ll be sitting in the Blue Boar, still telling his story. I’d like you to go and ask him to come here in about an hour. And Lem …”

  He brushed some wood chips from his sunburned arms, still listening.

  “… if you should happen to see, or hear, anything that might be interesting … you might tell me about it when you come back. If you’d like to talk. Over a cup of tea.”

  He gazed at her with new concern. Maybe he should think about asking Mr. Longfellow to drop in and speak with his mistress more often. Mrs. Willett must be desperate for someone to talk to … however impossible that seemed. Though it was pleasant to know she considered him a source of conversation. But he was apparently on a par with Jack Pennywort there. Lem wished he knew what he should say.

  “I know what I’m asking may seem strange,” she went on, after trying to read his look, “but you see, I’m going out to dine later, at the inn. And I was hoping to learn more of the truth from Jack about what’s been going on. More than he’s thought to tell—or has been willing to! I need your help to get him here,” she finished in a rush.