Bell Weather (43 page)

*   *   *

Tom remained upstairs and no one approached his room, not when a scuffle broke out in the afternoon, nor when the bodies were moved to the yard behind the tavern, nor when Ichabod discovered Benjamin’s hand in one of the saddlebags and ran the frozen prize directly to the Knoxes.

Molly spent the day in a small, stifling bubble. She didn’t know what Pitt had learned from Mr. Bole or how he meant to use it. Now Tom had gone to bed without a word of reassurance, and she hated him for doing so and leaving her alone. Still she craved him in his injury and surliness and sleep. It was almost worth the risk of opening his door. She had earned it. Had she earned it? He had promised he was hers.

Bess focused on her work, preoccupied and shamed by her father’s behavior. Nabby grumbled in the kitchen and was better off avoided, especially after Scratch mauled the ham she’d cooked for dinner. Ichabod confined himself to swift, efficient signs, as if his gestures were reminding him of Benjamin’s severed hand.

Once the taproom cleared and night shrank the tavern, the day’s heavy pall wrapped itself around them. No one spoke. They tidied up and swept the floor, and Tom did not appear. Davey Mun’s body had been carried to the barn—tomorrow they would send him home to Liberty, to family—but the Maimers sat exposed against the tavern’s back wall. The town had not decided whether to bury them or burn them; if winterbears or wolves dragged them off, all the better.

Molly passed them when she walked outside to gather wood. She felt the need to touch one—the youngest—on the face. Her fingertips were moist and fastened to his cheek. It was cold, fully cold, and death was everywhere around her in the dark black river and the glitter-white grass. She tried imagining quicksummer, the transitory season that was said to follow deadfall and offer some reprieve before the full brunt of winter, but the freeze seemed far too permanent to thaw.

Molly pulled her finger off the Maimer’s white cheek. Suddenly a strong, warm fragrance pulsed around her, like the sweetness of a nosegay blooming in the sun. The child ghost was with her. Molly breathed her in. She remembered being pregnant in the summertime in Grayport, the fullness and contentedness of carrying her baby. Then without knowing how, she perceived the ghost’s name and wished that she could hug the little girl and give her comfort.

Molly went inside and rubbed the shivers from her arms.

“Her name is Gwendolyn,” she said.

“She trusts you,” Nabby said. “You must have told a special bit of truth when she was listening.”

The fire seemed dangerously hot inside the hearth and yet approachable and smooth: the special glow of smoakwood. She took a warm stuffed apple from a platter on the table and the sugary meringue put the fear of night behind her. Bess entered from the front with a tray full of cups. Her honey-brown hair was lovely in the light. She hadn’t said a word about her father’s revelation, seeming to expect that Molly would confide in her and obviously peeved that it had taken all day.

“You have a letter out front,” she said, putting down the tray. “The postman hasn’t been. Someone else must’ve left it.”

“A letter?” Molly asked, starting into the taproom.

“It wasn’t there this morning when I cleaned,” Bess said.

They went together to the broad maple table near the bar where the uncollected mail and newspapers gathered. Lying on top was a tri-folded letter. It was on cream-colored paper with a green wax seal and a single word—“Molly”—in a clear, familiar hand.

She crushed the apple she was holding, squishing custard through her fingers. “It’s from Abigail,” she said. “I recognize the
M
.”

“Why would Abigail write—”

“To stay at Benjamin’s side.”

“But why would she write to you?”

Molly snatched the letter up and stuffed it into her pocket.

“Aren’t you going to read it?”

“Later,” Molly said. “I’m going upstairs.”

“It hurts me that you still won’t trust me,” Bess said, blocking Molly’s way and noticing the apple squashed in her fist.

“Your father knows plenty. Go and ask him. Or are you hoping my embarrassment will cover up your own?”

Had she mashed the ruined apple into the depth of Bess’s ear, she would not have left her friend any more astonished. Molly shook her hand, splattering the cream, and stomped upstairs before Bess recovered her voice.

On the lightless second floor, with the stairway behind her and the hallway ahead, Molly stopped at Tom’s room and listened through the door. There was no trace of movement, no snore or subtle breathing.

She was crying in the dark and couldn’t see the blur, but felt the tears warm her cheeks and quickly dribble cold. She raised her hand to knock, but no—she had to wait. She tiptoed away and lit a candle in her room, and then she settled on the bed and took the letter from her pocket, fearing what was in it, dreading it was true.

*   *   *

Abigail dimmed the lantern to its lowest possible flame, a small gold feather glowing on the wick. Benjamin had stirred; all afternoon he’d mumbled in delirium. His scientific mind had fallen to incoherent rambling and his talk of moons and stars, of meteors and tides had sounded mystical to Abigail: words of revelation. He had sipped a little broth but taken nothing else. His injury had bled again, more than she expected when she swapped the old bandage, but the stump looked clean. She prayed it wouldn’t fester, forcing her to tie him down and amputate the arm. Abigail had often seen it done and heard the screams but she had never held the knife, never sawed bone. She would do it if she had to. No one else would help. He was hers, she meant to keep him, and she wouldn’t succumb to fear.

She flipped the cloth upon his forehead, troubled by its heat. It was a beneficial fever that would burn away the bad—unless it ran too red and started burning out the good.

When he had first staggered home he’d been cold beyond belief, bloody and depleted and collapsing at the door. Frostbitten ears, crystallized coat—stiff as winter wood when she dragged him into the parlor. She had stripped off his clothes and salved his frozen skin, rubbing beesmyrrh and spirits onto his chest until he colored. She had not seen him naked in a good many seasons and he’d looked like a child, like an underfed boy. Delicate and trembling. Wholly in her care.

She’d found the strength to haul him up the stairs, where she dressed him in a nightshift and bundled him in blankets. While she worked, he revived enough to tell her what had happened. It distracted him from suffering and let her take control. She found his spare tenaculum, drew the arteries out to tie, trimmed the ragged flesh, and sewed up the flaps. Following his superstitious faith in extra cleanliness, she bandaged him with purified lint and boiled linen. He approved of all she did and seemed relieved when she was done.

She ran to the Kales, and young Esther sprinted to the Orange. Tom and Pitt arrived later and she sent them into the woods; then she sat beside Benjamin and prayed for his survival. Then this morning Mrs. Kale had arrived shortly after dawn, bringing news that Tom and Pitt had killed the Maimers and returned.

Abigail had hurried off to see if it was true. The bodies had neither gladdened her nor weighed upon her conscience. Possibly fatigue had stifled her reaction. But the townspeople’s sympathy had buoyed her profoundly. How the wine had eased her shoulders, how unguardedly she’d spoken! Oh the shame of it, the
taverness
of spilling out her thoughts. She had gossiped with an unfamiliar man—a common traveler—who had asked about the Maimers, Tom and Pitt, Bess and Molly.

“That one,” she had said. “Tom pulled her from the river. Lies and trouble ever since.”

Now she couldn’t put Lem’s revelation from her mind—not what he had said, but that he’d said it to her. “Abigail was right with her suspicions,” he had yelled, as if the two of them were equals in the dirty work of rumor. It was rumor that had sent Pitt riding off to Liberty, suspicion that had angered Tom and kept him at the tavern. Otherwise they might have gone with Benjamin and Davey, four instead of two riding out against the Maimers.

She clasped her husband’s living hand and wished he weren’t sleeping. His face seemed lacking in the absence of his glasses and his larynx looked swollen in his beanpole neck. She had never known the house to feel so still, and she knelt down close and hummed beside his ear. It was a melody she’d learned from his irritating habit, one she couldn’t name but recalled note for note. She hummed instead of praying, wishing that her own frigid hands could draw his fever down, and fell asleep crying in the low-lit room.

She woke before dawn, when the sun was still a blush. Leafwings sang. A smell of smoke was in the air. It might have been the hearth except the odor was impure, as when a thing you shouldn’t burn is thrown upon a fire. She had nuzzled up to Benjamin during the night, and now she felt his forehead. His fever had decreased. He was sweaty, he was cool, and when she relit the room and changed the dressing on his stump, she found the wound had oozed but still looked clean. She felt refreshed, having slept, and Benjamin was better—only what about the morning felt so wrong?

There were voices outside, people in the street. When she listened more intently, she perceived the sounds of hoofbeats and shouts too distant for the words to come clear. She stood before the window and pressed against the glass. Neighbors walked briskly to the river or the tavern. Men leaned forward in their strides, full of purpose, with their hats tipped low to counteract the cold. Women hurried past, some with open cloaks, as if they’d barely thought to bundle when they walked outdoors.

She saw the blacksmith’s wife, her friend Mrs. Bolt. She had her skirts in her fists and hiked above her ankles, trying not to stumble in the icy, rutted road. Abigail ran downstairs and out the door, where the wind blew sharp against her neck and through her clothes. Here the smoke was more intense: something sizable had burned.

“What’s happened?” she called to Mrs. Bolt.

“Abigail Knox! Have you slept through it all?”

Mrs. Bolt came toward her, kept moving, didn’t slow. “Lemuel is dead. His house is all afire!”

Abigail crossed herself, buckling in the cold.

“And that is not the half,” Mrs. Bolt continued. “He was dragged from the flames but the fire didn’t kill him. He was bludgeoned on the head—his skull was driven in. Now the sheriff has arrested Tom Orange in the tavern. He was found this morning drunk and there was evidence upon him.”

Abigail staggered, almost tripping on her heels. She wheeled her arms and caught herself, seeing for a moment, as her head tipped back, a haze of dirty smoke in a nauseating smear.

Mrs. Bolt hurried on, craning backward as she said, “And the young woman Molly up and disappeared. The sheriff wants to find her. Give my best to Benjamin, I’ll call upon you later!”

“No, I don’t believe it,” Abigail said.

But she was talking to herself. She was frozen to the heart.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

After Molly had gone upstairs and read the letter in her room, she sat for several minutes, wondering what to do. So much heat had risen to her skin that her eyesight rippled and her bones felt cold. It was ten o’clock at night but felt much later, and she had to act fast before Bess came up for bed.

When she stood and stuffed the letter back inside her pocket, the movement and the feeling happened out of sync. She saw herself rise and walk across the room but the actual sensation came a second later. It was as if she had an echo or a slow, ghostly twin. She dressed in layers for the cold, donned her cloak and gloves, and took her unspent earnings from the box beneath her bed. She couldn’t risk the stairs and so she opened up the window. The sash scraped loudly and her weight squeaked the floor.

Listen,
Molly thought.
Hear it, come and catch me.

No one came when she ducked outside and straddled the sill, half in and half out, breathing vapor at the stars. Nobody noticed when she climbed out and hung by her hands, nor when she dangled with her cheek against the frost-sparkled wall, nor even when the sash dropped down upon her fingers and she fell to the frozen ground and almost broke her ankle.

She looked toward the barn until she was certain—as certain as she could be—that Ichabod had finished his work and gone into the tavern. She crept to the rear of the Orange, stooping extra low when she reached the pantry windows but afraid, all the same, that Nabby might see.

Around the back beside the garden, Molly crossed the place where she had thrown herself at Tom. It was dirt and dead grass: an ordinary spot. She touched it moving past, leaning down to prize a small frozen pebble from the ground. It warmed inside her hand until it felt like clay. She thought to keep it in her pocket but instead she let it fall.

The barn door’s creak made her insides curl. Night was darker in the stables but she felt more exposed. She smelled the cold manure, the animal warmth of breath and hair. Bones knew her well and snuffled gladly when she passed. She had ridden him and often fed him apples in the summer but tonight she wouldn’t look at him. She wondered if it hurt him.

Ichabod had stabled the Maimers’ horses in the back. She sized them up and settled on a lean roan mare who greeted her with peaceable but spirited comportment.

“Hello,” Molly said, slightly bowing out of instinct.

The mare tossed her head and snorted at her greeting, but it seemed more show than genuine aggression.

Molly stroked the mare’s nose and whispered gently as she bridled her. She saddled the mare and guided her out, again ignoring Bones, who wounded Molly back with his own indifferent silence.

Back in the open night, she resecured the barn, and then she took the mare slowly from the Orange on foot, keeping near the tree line and staying out of sight until she was far enough away to turn onto the road. She mounted up, riding at a softly paced walk, expecting to be noticed—it was not so very late—but spotting no one at the windows, no one out of doors. The town shut its eyes and simply let her pass.