A Wicked Way to Burn

by Margaret Miles

  And just how far would Peter Lynch have gone to keep up the pretense of the merchant’s death, if Sam had stumbled onto the truth? Worse yet, the miller could have truly killed Middleton, to remove the merchant from the scheme Peter planned to carry on himself. What if that was what Sam had realized? Peter Lynch might have given one of the coins to Sam for his silence … knowing he could reclaim it soon—and end the boy’s life in the process!

  She fought against the whirl of her thoughts, determined to calm her mind and methodically examine its quick conclusions. So far, these were all mere suspicions, without solid foundation. And surely, not all the gold in the world belonged to Duncan Middleton! What if Sam had gotten the coin somewhere else, and been envied by a friend who clumsily tried to take it from him? Or, he might actually have stumbled and fallen by accident, as his mother believed.

  One never knew what fate held in store. That’s why, thought Charlotte as she continued on her way, all days had to be cherished, like precious jewels. Or gold coins—Dutch guldens that could mesmerize and enthrall even a small girl, let alone a hardened, twisted soul full of jealousy and greed, and capable of the worst crime imaginable!

  It was an awful thing to ponder. To accuse the miller would be a most difficult thing. Yet her conscience told her that men and women were not put on earth only to enjoy goodness and innocence, nor should they refuse to see or hear the evil around them. And so she continued to screw her eyes into a fierce squint. But they were focused on the muddy ground now, rather than on higher things. And they saw very little that was uplifting along the winding trail that guided her feet.

  SO DEEP WERE her thoughts that Charlotte barely heard the first quick calls of a familiar voice, as it began to peal through the open air. Her concentration was finally shattered when she recognized it as the sound of the brass bell that hung over the meetinghouse. On the Sabbath, it rang out in a joyful manner. Occasionally, as on the evening before, it tolled more ponderously to announce the death of one who had belonged to the community. But now it rang with a clamoring that was nearer to its third purpose, that of summoning folk to a fire. Yet she could see no smoke coming from the village houses. Certainly no flames threatened from the wet forest, or the thoroughly dampened fields.

  Still, someone rang the church bell with a great deal of determined energy. From both sides of the river, she saw people hurrying toward the meetinghouse at the edge of the Common, some arriving with buckets and tools in hand, others with their skirts and aprons and petticoats lifted out of the new mud as they looked around in puzzlement and alarm. Charlotte, too, hurried over the hillside’s slippery grass and down onto the Boston road. But before she could reach the meetinghouse, she saw several of the same people who had just gone in come back out again. Leading them was the unmistakable figure of Reverend Christian Rowe. So he was back! Apparently, the preacher had summoned them all with the now-silent bell to his (and God’s) house.

  And then the reverend began to run, leading his flock with an animated face framed by flashing white collar ends. His black coattails flew out behind him like witches’ weeds, while his white-stockinged legs twisted and bent like a spider’s, as he attempted to look around and move ahead at the same time. Where could they all be going? Charlotte saw the crowd cross the stone bridge over the river. There wasn’t much of anything on the other side, except for the tavern … and the grist mill!

  Sure enough, they turned south on the road to Framingham. But instead of heading for the mill’s wide doors, her neighbors turned off and went around to one side, back to the millpond. And there they stopped, flapping and buzzing like a disturbed hive with something decidedly ominous in mind.

  Chapter 19

  EVERYONE IN THE village knew the still reaches of the millpond that took its water from the river. Overhanging branches were reflected on its black face, ringed with pickerelweed, arrowhead, and water lilies. It was a fine spot to spend an hour in meditation, or to walk with a valued companion, or even to throw stones at the flat surface of the water in the hopes of rousing a frog. It was a sheltered, peaceful place loved by many—even by the Reverend Rowe, who might be seen following its encircling path while he searched for inspiration.

  Perhaps that was what he’d been doing this morning, thought Charlotte as she caught up with the rest near the water’s edge. He might have been trying to shed the taint of Boston in this quiet haven. Had the reverend received a startling message from above, or been given divine commands, like Moses?

  What the Reverend Rowe had to show for his early morning walk was something far more down-to-earth, Mrs. Willett realized when she joined the gasping crowd. At its head, deep voices and weed-draped arms had joined to negotiate the removal of a sagging, dripping body.

  There was little question how the miller had met his death. Peter Lynch’s face and forehead were horribly cleft in a gaping line that ran for nearly five inches, light pink and clean, its edges resembling the flesh of a large pike ready for the pan. Behind this peeped something else that would also be familiar to a frugal cook—something convoluted and gray.

  All in all, it was a terrible sight. If the wound had not been so fascinating, thought Charlotte, who was by now encircled and supported by the crowd as it swayed collectively—if it had looked less awful, it would have been impossible not to gaze first and overlong at Peter Lynch’s eyes. For they, too, were ghastly—open, staring, bulging from white sockets. The eyes were surrounded by puffy folds of skin, some of which showed what looked like a reddish rash. Other parts had already helped to sustain the pond fish.

  There was nothing to be done for Peter Lynch, except to lift him. As the corpse came up, a rush of dark water dropped onto the shoulders of several men, who turned their faces away. Then, getting firmer grips, they began to convey Peter toward the meetinghouse, where he would be lowered directly onto the coffin boards, to wait until a box could be made. These boards had held many other corpses in their day, in a dim alcove just off the unheated buildings entrance. But the miller would no longer care about the cold.

  Clutching her cloak for warmth, Mrs. Willett was very glad to have more air and room as the throng spread out and moved away, following the body. Up to this point, most talk had been in the form of short and sharp reactions, or brief, necessary orders. There had been only one or two simple questions. (What there had been none of, she noticed, were tears for the miller.)

  But by now, numbed minds were beginning to function again. Charlotte watched with quiet concentration, reflecting on many of her own recent thoughts, while voices rose up around her. It seemed to her that the crowd had begun to steam and swell, like a pie without a vent.

  “How could it happen?” one of the village women asked her husband, who gave no immediately answer. “How could a man as big as a tree be hit in the head like that? There’s no one here large enough to do it—not that I can see!”

  “I’ll bet he was robbed, too,” threw in Phineas Wise, speaking his own worst fears.

  Dick Craft, too, found his voice, which showed less sympathy than one might have imagined. Yet he, too, seemed puzzled.

  “The miller was no ordinary man to be fooled, as we all know. He’d fight, by God—unless whatever came after him had more than mortal strength …”

  “Oh, come,” began another, soon stopped by a chorus demanding that he and all the rest let the man speak.

  “First, a rich old buzzard disappears,” Dick went on. “Then a young boy dies, and now a man in his prime is clearly murdered. I say, it looks like someone trying out his powers, until he’s sure of ‘em. Someone who doesn’t belong here, and doesn’t care what in hell happens to the rest of us! It looks to me as though the Frenchman came to Bracebridge to practice his evil arts, until he got good enough to overcome his rival, Peter Lynch, face to face!”

  “With black magic!” and “Witchcraft!” joined in several voices at once, to a furious wagging of heads.

  “The French themselves are extremely nervous on that subject,” b
egan Tinder from the Blue Boar, and Flint immediately began to reflect on witchcraft in the Pyrenees, which he had visited in his youth.

  “Done with his own hatchet,” called a voice panting behind them a minute later. “The one Peter kept buried in a post, inside by the big stone. It isn’t there now. But there’s blood there! Dripped onto the floor!”

  “Most likely the hatchet’s in the pond,” someone else ventured, to more nods and shouts.

  The Reverend Christian Rowe watched the growth of discontent and fear with lofty pleasure, holding high his head with its astounding halo of flaxen hair, waiting for the right moment to take command. Before long, it came.

  “I tell you,” began the Reverend Rowe severely, causing some to stop dead in their tracks. Unfortunately, the preacher continued to walk, and so they had to hurry after him again.

  “I tell you something foul has been happening here in my absence, but now I mean to get to the bottom of it! Certain members of our church came to me late last night to talk of these matters, and to ask me to set things right. And that is what I intend to do! I have also heard there are those from Boston who’ve come to our village to give us their opinions—with no good result. I tell you it is time for the people of Bracebridge to take their own business in hand, and root out the cause of their own trouble!”

  Strong approval from every side greeted this idea, but again the reverend held up his hand, and this time he did stop walking. The few behind him who thought they had learned their lesson kept on until they bumped into the men carrying the miller’s corpse, which added a few new snarls to the general confusion.

  “What news is there of the whereabouts of this Frenchman?” Rowe called out. “Who is sheltering him?”

  Several voices spoke up at once, but one rang above the rest.

  “He’s gone over to the inn! Peter came and told us so, back at the Blue Boar last night. Jonathan Pratt offered Fortier work—and this even after the Frenchman threatened to kill the miller!”

  “Threatened to kill him?” Rowe repeated, glaring from left to right.

  “He’s not the only one who’s made threats against him, either!” came a rejoinder.

  “That’s right! Peter told Mistress Willett he knew she’d hidden the Frenchman on her farm, when we were looking for him—”

  “He did! And she accused him of terrible things—”

  “Mrs. Willett!” Rowe’s voice thundered. Then it turned to honey, as he spied her in the crowd. “Mrs. Willett … why have you given refuge to this unwelcome stranger in our midst?”

  “It’s true he told me he’d slept in my dairy,” Charlotte began, speaking loudly enough to be heard by the reverend across several heads. “But I know him to be innocent of anything to do with the first—”

  “Innocent! And how is that for you to say? I would have thought you would have plenty to do just now, madam, without the help of a man on your large farm, without even a man to protect and instruct you, and with harvest time upon us. And yet, you come here and tell us that a fugitive whom we all seek is innocent?”

  “Reverend Rowe, there are things known only to Captain Montagu which—”

  “Ah, Captain Montagu! The man sent here to assure our safety. The man whose presence has done nothing to prevent one certain murder, and possibly even two!”

  A worried rumble rose around the preacher as the others considered his bold statement. An official from Boston was, after all, a voice of authority, and one to be heeded rather than annoyed, if such a thing were possible. But could the death of the miller, and that of Sam Dudley, now somehow fit together? And would Montagu do anything about either of them?

  “Mrs. Willett,” Rowe added, his voice softly menacing again, “how is it that your hair has fallen down in a most unusual manner? Could it be that you’ve had no time to put it up after some recent … rendezvous! It would be well for you to remember that what’s often overlooked in Philadelphia, or in Boston, will not be tolerated here! Go home, and look to your own person, and to your own business!”

  This barb met with derisive laughter that caused Charlotte’s cheeks to flame—though little enough of it was meant for her. More than a few of the men and women present thought Rowe had gone too far in his personal attack on a neighbor. Phineas Wise, for one, disagreed with Rowe. After all, he asked several of those around him, weren’t the Quakers plainer folk than most of those now living in Massachuetts? And didn’t Charlotte Willett take pains to follow many of their ways? Hardly a brazen woman, she—though certainly comely, one might admit. Even so, he couldn’t remember there being any scandalous talk about Mrs. Willett’s virtue before. (At least, nothing that she could be blamed for.) And as for adequately running her brother’s farm, well, what was wrong with that?

  “An interfering woman has hidden the source of our contamination, and led to murder,” shouted Dick Craft, using a biblical turn of phrase that astounded more than one person in the crowd. “Let’s go and search her farm, to see what else someone might have hidden there. Maybe that’s where the gold is!”

  For a moment, the crowd held its breath, and considered.

  “First,” Reverend Rowe jumped in, “we’ll go to the inn and find this Frenchman.” It seemed to Charlotte now that even Rowe wondered if he had overstepped his bounds, at least in the case of her appearance.

  “I doubt if he’d dare to stay there if he did kill Peter Lynch,” spoke up Mrs. Hiram Bowers. A few other women agreed that this was only sensible, including Esther Pennywort, who still scanned the crowd from time to time, looking for her husband.

  “We will divide ourselves, for speed,” instructed Rowe, “into two groups. I will lead the first to the inn, where we will inquire of this Captain Montagu what he knows, and where the Frenchman might be. The second group will escort Mrs. Willett to her farm—for her own safety—will look for the same Frenchman, and do whatever else must be done. Let us be quick and let us be quiet, lest the guilty be warned.”

  By this time, they had reached the meetinghouse doors. Those who carried Peter Lynch made their way inside, where the unwieldy body of the miller was deposited with little ceremony into the alcove, and the damp men who’d carried him tromped out again into the chilly morning air.

  “What about Bowers?” one of them inquired, and the rest hesitated, although many were on their toes to go.

  “Where is the constable now?” Rowe asked, looking around.

  “Gone off somewhere this morning,” his wife announced. “With Mr. Longfellow, he told me.”

  “I believe Mr. Longfellow—” began Charlotte, until one of the surly men clasped his hand firmly onto her arm.

  “Yes, Mrs. Willett?” asked the reverend, as he would have asked a tiresome child what it wanted.

  “Nothing,” she replied, and left it to them to find out for themselves.

  “We may not have had a body before, but we’ve got a body now, by God—and a murderer to catch,” thundered a tall man in the back, who beckoned to the rest. “Let’s go and find him!”

  At that, the crowd started out, scuttling on its way like a centipede, one undulating segment carrying along a captive woman with flying, cider-colored hair.

  HANNAH SLOAN LOOKED up as she heard shouting. Before she could rid her hands of laundry water and cover a wooden tub with its lid, two men who held Mrs. Willett between them entered the low kitchen—only to find that the odds were now about even. Hannah’s stern countenance, and her firm-footed stance, told them that they should advance no farther—at least for the moment.

  “We’ve come to find Fortier,” one of them said, causing Hannah to look at him closely.

  “Here? There’s no one here! And what do you mean, holding onto Mrs. Willett that way?”

  “We’ve escorted her home, where she ought to be.”

  “I happen to know she’s been out this morning offering her assistance to Mrs. Dudley. I doubt you can say as much good for yourself, Ephram Dawes. What was the bell for? And why are these men—” Hann
ah stared in disbelief out the window. “… stealing Mrs. Willett’s chickens?”

  “They’re searching the farm, although I guess it’s not going to do much good. I came here, Hannah, to keep this lady from harm. There are some who think she deserves a lesson, after what they heard in the Blue Boar last night from Peter Lynch—”

  “Who is dead,” Charlotte interrupted, stating hard at Hannah.

  “Murdered, you mean,” the large woman answered sharply.

  “And just how would you know that?” Ephram asked, suddenly suspicious. “We only found him a few minutes ago!”

  “A lucky guess. Now, run upstairs, open all the doors, look where a man might hide, and then leave this house, or I swear I’ll carry you both out myself. It’s a child’s game you’re playing, and no mistake.”

  Shaking her head grimly, Hannah set about starting a pot of tea, while Charlotte gazed at Ephram, seeming to ask if he needed any further instruction. He did not.

  The two men went into the next room and through the house quickly, then left by the kitchen door with something like an apology offered in passing.

  “I think,” said Charlotte, removing the last of her pins, “that they may have difficulty finding what they’re looking for.”

  “Was Peter Lynch really killed?” asked Hannah Sloan, sitting down. Charlotte nodded thoughtfully, holding on to a twist of her hair.

  “And I don’t believe he’s the first, either. What I have to wonder now,” she added, staring at her friend, “is whether he’ll be the last.”