A Wicked Way to Burn

by Margaret Miles

  “What do you want from me?” Frye eventually managed, his throat tight and bobbing.

  “The truth. And a promise that you’ll leave Mary alone, so she might make up her own mind about what to do next.”

  “Well, the Frenchman can have her, and welcome—if he keeps his neck free of a noose! I’ve got more. I doubt anyone else would have her, now. I only tried to get her something better for herself, and for us all! Though there’s some say I ain’t done as well as a father might for his motherless children, I done what I could, all alone, with what I got,” he wheezed, pulling a horrible handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing at an eye, then mopping his forehead.

  Longfellow looked slowly around, sensing that there were others hiding nearby. One young girl in particular was in his thoughts … Mary’s likely successor in Frye’s plans.

  “Let me warn you about something,” Longfellow began again. “If you don’t tell the truth, you could very well anger whoever it was that murdered the miller. In any event, I’ll see that the courts and the lawyers tear apart this story of yours. And they may do far worse! This thing is far from over. Very possibly, it’s about much more than Lynch’s murder. So there will be more questions, until we learn the truth.”

  Frye said nothing. But a girl of twelve or thirteen, wearing a ragged homespun dress, now walked out of the door behind him and stood facing Longfellow defiantly. At first, he thought she meant to join her father, but such was not the case.

  “The miller never came here on Monday, sir. He never came at all last month. Old Man barely knows what truth is, so you’d be foolish to trust him!”

  “Your father had no contact with the miller at all?” Longfellow asked with some surprise.

  “He went to see Peter Lynch last week in Bracebridge, and stayed the night,” the girl replied. “We don’t know what they did, but if it was wrong, it’s not the first time he’s shamed us. Might be the last, though.” She gave a sour little smile to the back of her father’s head. “One day soon we’ll leave, and then he can drink himself to death … if he can find the money.”

  “Has Mary been here recently?” Longfellow pressed her. He watched the young girl’s expression change abruptly.

  “Mary hasn’t been able to come since winter, but she writes us, and I can make most of it out,” her sister replied anxiously. “Did she send you?”

  “No, but I’ve seen her, and she’s well. My name is Longfellow. I live next to the inn where Mary stays. If you have information about your father and Peter Lynch, you might be asked to testify in court. Then again, you might not. You could prefer to keep what you know in reserve … in case someone should try to make you do something you don’t care to—as Mary was nearly forced into doing. If anything like that should happen, go to the Three Crows, and ask Mistress Marlowe to send for me.”

  The young girl nodded sharply, though he thought he saw a question in her gaze. At the same time, the old man seemed to deflate. He again applied his handkerchief in a gesture that asked for pity. A sudden wail from a child sent the girl flying back inside. Longfellow’s eyes followed her in silent admiration.

  What the girl had said probably proved some kind of collusion, he thought when she’d gone. As he had supposed. Satisfied for the moment, he started for his horse.

  “She’ll do what she likes, that one will,” Elias Frye rambled on to himself, after taking another long pull from the jug. “She’s smart, she is, there’s no doubt of it. Go away and leave her old father alone. Ah, let her go! Let her try to find a man herself. She’s no beauty—not like my Mary. My very own, very nice Mary,” he snickered drunkenly to himself, apparently thinking of happier days.

  Was that the real reason the father had kept Peter Lynch on a string—fear of his anger at learning, on his wedding night, the vilest of family secrets? By sending his daughter to work at the inn, had Frye hoped to put the blame for a sin of his own on someone else, if and when time revealed it? Suddenly, the stench of the place became unbearable.

  It was enough, thought Longfellow as he rode away, to sicken a man. Surely it was enough to make a child do whatever it could to be free of the abuse, the squalor, and the ugly lies that life at home had always held. A young woman would naturally dread the continuation of such a life, in the arms of another man equally cruel, or quite possibly worse. That kind of fear, Longfellow realized, might have driven a person like himself to go beyond the law, beyond the rules of sense and decency. Might it even, he thought morosely, in a like situation, have driven him to murder?

  Chapter 27

  IF THERE’S ONE thing I know, it’s human nature,” Diana Longfellow confided. Seated in a chair to one side of the kitchen hearth, she smoothed her skirts, while Cicero shook his head at the old Dutch oven whose three feet straddled a mound of glowing coals.

  “How could he have done what they say?” she went on airily. “There’s certainly no real proof against the Frenchman, and I don’t intend to help your village ruffians tear him to pieces, before they find the real culprit. He’s far too handsome for that! Which is why I’m allowing him to hide in Richard’s greenhouse.”

  Cicero’s gasp did nothing to alter her serene smile; it rarely bothered Diana when she shocked others.

  “He’s already out there?” the old servant finally asked unhappily, knowing trouble when he saw it. And right now he saw it sitting next to the kitchen fire.

  “Well, you didn’t think I’d be making this pot of stew and the kettle cake all for us? I’m sure the poor man hasn’t eaten decently for days. That’s why we’re going to feed him. After it’s dark, when he can come inside. Mary told me he almost froze, out alone in the woods last night.”

  Women who are forever petted and praised, thought her temporary guardian, often display as much sense as the little dogs they keep on their laps. At least this time Diana hadn’t brought along Bon-Bon; not a good traveler, the ratlike thing preferred to stay at home where Diana’s maid Patty stuffed it with sweetmeats. Cicero longed for a chance to try his own hand at stuffing the animal; he had seen a well-mounted skunk in a shop window once, in Boston.

  He poured the yellow batter he’d mixed into the greased pot, covered it, and turned to attempt to reason with his charge.

  “What,” he asked somewhat severely, “will we do if someone looks in and sees him? Have you thought of that?”

  “Well then, of course, we … well, we say we have no idea how he got here. But most of the town will be inside by sunset, because it’s the Sabbath. Besides, it’s quite cold out, and I doubt if anyone really wants to interfere with this house; there’s talk Richard is clever enough to raise the very Devil whenever he wants to. Besides, as we all know, one must occasionally make sacrifices for others.”

  Cicero looked at her sharply. It was not the kind of thing he was accustomed to hearing from the rosy lips of this particular young lady. His own lips moved slightly.

  “Pardon?” she challenged.

  “I only wonder if there’s a new young minister in Boston,” he muttered, leaning forward to look into the stew pot that hung over the fire.

  “I grant you that good works are not my usual occupation, for I generally have enough trouble trying to make sure I’m happy. But today, everyone else has something to do, and here I sit, twiddling my thumbs!”

  “Go home, then,” the old man suggested, seeing a glimmer of hope.

  “To Boston? Back to more of the same? Balls, and dances, and whist parties, and dinners where everyone chatters on and on, like a flock of parrots? I suppose I shall have to, soon enough. But I propose to have some excitement first.”

  “This wouldn’t be something you want to do to bedevil your brother, would it? And what if the town finds out, with him in a position of responsibility?”

  “Richard can take care of himself,” Diana countered saucily. “He always has; he always will. It’s a trait of the Longfellows.”

  “And if Captain Montagu discovers what you’ve been up to?”

 
At that, her eyes twinkled along with her rings in the firelight. “It would be amusing to find out what he would do with me,” she answered with a graceful smile. “You, of course, he’d probably hang. But he’s not here, is he? We’ll tell him all about it some other time—after the whole thing’s over. Now, we will cut up five or six large potatoes, as soon as we bring them up from the cellar, and then we’ll add them to the pot. Don’t be long,” she called after him, wiggling with anticipation on her cushioned chair, while a sighing Cicero took himself down the creaking wooden stairs.

  ACROSS TWO GARDENS, Charlotte entered her own kitchen. A rushed Hannah Sloan had just hurried in with some items for the pantry. Anxious to return home before sunset, she was soon through the back door and gone.

  Alone again, Charlotte warmed the teapot and filled it. Several ideas crowded into her mind, one on top of another. First came thoughts of supper. With Lem gone, fried hasty pudding with maple sugar would do, with dried blueberries soaked in cream for after. She was in no hurry. The kitchen was warm, and the fire right for making up a batch of dye.

  She let Orpheus out when he whined softly at the door. She was surprised that the garden walk hadn’t been enough for him. She supposed that the dog, too, felt restless, probably sensing her own state of mind. Putting dried goldenrod from a corner rafter into a pot of water with a bit of indigo, Charlotte stirred and hoped for a green as good as the one she’d made the year before. She had enough alum for fixing several pounds of wool and a smaller amount of flax for napkins. There would soon be plenty of time to put it to the loom, when the snow drifts began to grow up the sides of the house and barn. Time, and time to spare.

  On Monday, bayberries could be set to boil. Hannah’s youngest had already collected gallons for her from the marshes and rocky wastes—enough to melt off a film to skim and add to beeswax for a few dozen special candles. And she would have books from the Harvard library to explore, if Dr. Warren kept his word. It would be another full week.

  Slowly sipping the tea that seemed bitter as dregs today—it was, in fact, the last of the August-bought tin, and full of powder—Charlotte began to imagine the road to Boston once more, a road as full of memories as any she knew.

  Outside the kitchen windows, the sun hit the limbs of a beech behind the barn, and played among the final leaves of the darker oak branches nearby. As day turned to evening, the world seemed to crackle with electricity. While the frost prepared to fall again like a lace coverlet, the eastern sky turned the color of lapis lazuli, complete with faint gold stars. And the setting sun lit up the barn’s windows, until they appeared to be turned into Indian rubies! She had seen it all many times before, but tonight it was particularly vivid and clear. So were the huge flocks of geese flying through the upper light in long, trailing forks—hundreds, thousands of spots of darkness covering up the sky …

  Charlotte suddenly realized she had been staring blindly into the night through the dark window, seeing nothing, only imagining. Her eyes were wide. Her breath came in swift shudders. And her mouth was dry. Mechanically, she finished the cup of tea, wondering what was wrong with her surroundings. An unlit candle stood beside her. Without thinking, she got up and went to the fire. Fumbling with a splinter, she produced a flame on one end—touched flame to wick—then blew the source away. The resulting smoke coiled up into the air in a thick rope like a monstrous, twisting cobra, hissing and dancing hypnotically. She stared in amazement, then looked away with growing fear.

  And yet the hearth fire still sparked and crackled softly. The pot had begun to steam, the tea was still before her.

  The tea! It was something to do with the tea. Bitter, and musty; she could still taste it on her dry tongue. And the books, what was it about the books she’d been thinking of? Her head echoed with sounds she knew came from her own imagination. With great effort, she concentrated on the few things that still seemed real.

  Of course—this must be what it was like to feel firsthand something that had afflicted others around the village during the week. Curious signs that marked their victims as being … what was the word? Oh, yes, possessed. She had been possessed once; as a wife, she thought dizzily, possessed and cherished. Till death do us part. No, that was over. This was her own kitchen, though a new world. Yet not unlike the old …

  Scratching her fingers against the back of her hand, she looked down to see a red rash. She had seen the same rosy dots before, when she looked down into the miller’s horrible face—

  She saw that dead face again, growing out of the table in front of her. It was a thing too terrifying to look at for long. But at the same time, the words of someone, she couldn’t quite tell who, sounded in her ears. It was a man of Science. Something he had told her. Emotion. No place for emotion in science. She heard herself laughing merrily, and wondered why.

  Clinging onto the back of her chair, Charlotte twisted and rose to her feet, then took the candle to a small mirror by the door. On her face were more blotches, and she could hardly believe that the eyes she gazed at were her own. All black, their pupils completely covered the blue. These were the eyes of paintings, eyes of the beauties of Italy, and Spain. Black eyes, like round chips of shiny, hard coal—eyes as big as saucers, belladonna eyes. Wasn’t that a serious problem? Didn’t people sometimes die of it? The thought was frightening—or might have been, except for other thoughts that overrode her fears.

  “In the midst of life, we are in death.” She knew that to be true, always. Though Death was hardly a friend, he was not entirely a stranger. She decided to sit and watch for him to come, if he would, while she strove to calm the pounding of her heart.

  Had the fire grown brighter? The room was hot, stifling. It was smaller, too, and the china winked with eyes, like cats sitting on the cupboard shelves, waiting to leap down and begin to fiddle in the firelight. There was altogether too much going on in the little room, she told herself, beginning to admire her own control. Perhaps a solution to all of her problems lay outside the bolted door.

  It was difficult at first to raise the latch. But once opened, the door swung inward on its hinges, and Charlotte stumbled out. Suddenly, she felt much cooler, though she soon ceased to notice. The night sky, filled with stars, seemed boundless. As she turned, she saw the constellations twirling, some of them caught in the ensnaring arms of trees, some pulling free. And then, at both sides of the sky, they began to disappear.

  Near panic, she forced herself to be still, and to look down to earth again. What little she saw around her feet was vague and blurred. Something pulled at her; she felt her feet responding. When she next looked up, nearby shapes grew menacing, and her heart leaped to her throat as they seemed to lunge forward, only to subside again into surrounding calm. For a moment, the acrid smell of wood smoke clawed at her throat and made her sneeze. When she again opened her eyes, the ground churned and rolled under her, and seemed to groan. Suddenly, her empty stomach rebelled; with a rush, she felt herself turning inside out.

  Finally, the spasms ceased.

  She realized that it must have been her own voice she had heard groaning, and noticed that she had fallen to her knees. Once more, her breathing quickened as she sensed an unknown presence drawing closer, and closer still.

  Abruptly, her arms were filled with fur. Orpheus had found her on his return from the fields. He whimpered as he searched her face and hair with his nose, wondering what was wrong.

  Her own wild giggles brought momentary comfort, and a partial return of reason. But that was soon lost in a further blur of motion and sound. Again, the wet nose bent over her, and a large tongue licked her forehead. Once more, Charlotte lifted her head and stretched out her arms to encircle the dog’s neck—and then slid back and out of the world entirely.

  Seeing his mistress lying silent, Orpheus lifted his head to the cold stars, and howled.

  WHEN SHE AWOKE, Mrs. Willett was puzzled by the change in the air around her. Now delightfully moist and warm, it was filled with a strong, flowery scen
t. She opened her eyes, half expecting to find the Heavenly City around her. But instead of ethereal light, there was almost total darkness, and a snaking dragon coiling itself in front of her face. Was this place Hell, then?

  The dragon moved away and, she saw light come through the slits in a small copper lantern, on a stone beside her. It was a hard slate floor she lay on, but hardly Hades. Rolling her head to look up, she saw the long fingers of a palm frond against the starry sky, and suddenly knew exactly where it was that her body had somehow landed. How it had arrived there, she couldn’t recall. And why her head, when she tilted it to one side, caused her such agony was another mystery; she’d felt no pain before.

  Focusing her eyes, she saw the dragon approach once more. But this time, she recognized its painted face. It was the same creature she had seen on the little bottle that Diana had shown her at the inn. It seemed like weeks before; was it only two days ago? But now, the bottle was in the hands of Mary Frye.

  Gabriel Fortier also knelt to one side, his face full of concern. The Frenchman bent forward to help when Charlotte struggled to raise her head, and she noticed that Mary’s little bottle went swiftly back into the pocket beneath her skirt. Fortier helped her to slide back against the warm brick wall, and then smiled ruefully.

  “I am unlucky for you,” he began, but Mary wouldn’t let him go on with the thought.

  “It would have been far worse if Mrs. Willett had frozen to death in her own garden, with no one there to find her! It’s a good thing that you heard the dog, and went to look.”

  Mary stood to remove a canvas drapery from its pegs, which she then drew around Charlotte’s shoulders. “But she can’t stay here, and neither can we. We’ll take you in to Miss Longfellow. You haven’t even worn a shawl,” she chided, shaking her head with disapproval, as if at a child. “And then to faint in a lonely spot like that!”

  It was too much to explain, Charlotte realized; and so she didn’t try.