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I pointed to the violin and in an effort to make conversation, asked, “You play the instrument, Aunt Minnie?”

“I can make it squawk,” she said.

“I can play,” I said. “My mother made sure I had music lessons. I could teach you, if you like. Do you have a bow for it?”

She grunted. “I do not want to play it. I just like the looks of it.”

“Music lessons!” my uncle muttered. “That is the sort of nonsense Duncan
would
pay good money for.”

“My father always did what he thought best for me,” I said quickly. “My mother, too. I am grateful.”

He and my aunt exchanged glances, and I saw her give a small shake of her head.

I was not only not hungry, I had no appetite whatsoever. I did not care for this criticism of my father, and I decided I would not tolerate it. Perhaps my uncle had been softer and more sensitive when they were prosperous. But, to hear it, there had always been the ears. That in itself could make a man cantankerous.

I surreptitiously gazed around the room. There were signs of wealth and signs of poverty. I quickly decided that my aunt and uncle had come down in the world and lost the apothecary business they had had in Brindle. Perhaps they had once owned a large, fancy house, filled with expensive possessions and had carried some of them with them when they moved.

I lifted my spoon.

“Before we eat, we are accustomed to bless the food,” my uncle said sternly.

“Oh.” I bowed my head.

“Some hae meat and canna eat, and some can eat and want it,” he intoned.

I half opened my eyes and squinted at his face.

It was set in a look of stern piety.

I glanced at my aunt Minnie. Her gaze was fixed on me, her brandy-ball eyes narrowed.

My uncle was continuing with the blessing, and I quickly bowed my head again and tried to look pious myself.

“But we hae meat, and we can eat, so let the Lord be thank-ed.” He peered at the two of us. “Amen,” he said.

“Amen,” my aunt repeated.

I felt an unbecoming levity rise in me as I whispered, “Amen.”

My aunt unfurled a stained serviette from a silver serviette ring by her place. Engraved on the ring was the word
BONIFACE
. It must have been a family name from better times past. She spread the napkin fastidiously across her lap.

Suddenly she asked, “Are you healthy, girl?”

“I . . . I . . .” What an odd question. Almost frightening. “I believe I am,” I said. “I did not succumb to the illness that took my dear parents, so I suppose I must be.”

“That’s good,” she said.

I bent my head over the stew.
Are you healthy, girl?
were almost the first words she’d spoken to me. I suddenly thought of the old story of the witch who felt the bones of small, trapped children to see if they were worth cooking in her oven. A shiver trembled across my back. What if Aunt Minnie got up from the table and began poking me, checking to find the fat on me? Asking to see my teeth? Peering down my throat?
Stop it!
I told myself.
Stop these foolish and ghoulish thoughts. There is no comparison. My aunt is simply interested in my well-being. That is all.
And I remembered that it was the witch herself who had ended up in that oven.

CHAPTER TWO

“N
OW WE CAN PARTAKE
of the good food the Lord has provided. With Minnie’s help,” Uncle Caleb said.

I lifted my spoon.

The fish stew was hearty and warm, and though my morbid thoughts had driven away whatever appetite I had, I managed a mouthful or two. It had herring and potatoes and carrots in it. There was smoke in it, too, but it tasted good. There was no table conversation. From time to time, a thump of wind slapped against the walls, making the house shake. And there was another sound that I could not identify. A higher-pitched whine that shrilled through the whistle of wind. It sounded like a dog.

“Do I hear a dog outside?” I asked. “Perhaps he is lost in the storm.”

My aunt continued to spoon her soup, but my uncle said, “It is only Lamb, Minnie’s dog. He is locked in the shed for now.”

“He does not take kindly to strangers,” Aunt Minnie said. “We want to prepare him for you.”

“And you for him,” my uncle added.

“I am accustomed to a dog,” I said. “We had a family spaniel for many years. His name was Ginger.”

The thought of Ginger sleeping by our fire, my father reading the paper, my mother at her needlework, brought tears to my eyes. I squeezed them away.

“Lamb is not a family spaniel!” Aunt Minnie bent her head over the food, and I could see that this subject was now closed.

When we had eaten our fill, Uncle Caleb pushed back his chair. “Now I must speak to you of your parents. I should have sent you our condolences at the time of their deaths. That I did not is my shame, and I trust you will forgive me. We offer our condolences now. Influenza, was it not?”

“Yes,” I said. “They died two days apart.” I tried hard not to look at his ears as I answered him. It was difficult. Why didn’t he cover them with a cap? Or let his hair fall over them? The little beadlike growths shone silvery in the lamplight.

He leaned toward me, and there was something in his eyes I could not put a name to.

“And your parents’ house?” he asked. “What became of it?”

“It awaits me,” I told them. “There is also the trust, money that I will acquire when I am eighteen. In two years,” I added. “I advised Mr. Brougham, my solicitor, that I could live in our home still. I could have a woman come stay with me. I would have been content, and I would not have been a burden to you and Aunt Minnie. But he would have none of it. He would follow my father’s wishes.” I had such a longing then to be back, for a return to those days of happiness and the warmth of my parents’ arms.

I will not weep,
I told myself.
I will weep later and let the heartache come.

Aunt Minnie made a small sound that might have been a sigh. Of sympathy? Of impatience?

“Two years empty? ’Twon’t be up to much when you get it.”

I made no reply.

Uncle Caleb sat back in his chair. “The solicitor was quite right. You are no burden. I am sure you are aware that my brother, your father, made the arrangements for you to come to us long ago. Should anything happen to them.”

“Yes,” I said, and almost added,
Why else do you think I’m here?

But I didn’t need to recall Mrs. Chandler’s advice to young ladies to realize that such a remark would be rude and entirely inappropriate. They had taken me in. I would try to be appreciative. I must not make early judgments.

“We are your only relatives, and your father rightly understood that blood is thicker than water. So you are welcome to be with us for the next two years. My brother and I had not seen each other for the past seventeen years, since before you were born. We have communicated. I had advised him of my successful station in life, my apothecary shop, my splendid house in the town here. He no doubt did not know of my new circumstances. Or that my previous wife, Henrietta, had died and that I had remarried.”

So my father had thought he was sending me into a comfortable situation.

My uncle removed a silver snuffbox from his waistcoat pocket and partook of a pinch. Aunt Minnie suddenly banged her spoon against the edge of her bowl, and my uncle gave a start. “Oh, forgive me, my dear,” he said and passed the snuffbox to her.

I watched her skillfully take a pinch, and almost nothing that had been said or transpired surprised me as much. A woman helping herself to snuff!

What would Mrs. Chandler have to say about that in her etiquette book?

I sat thinking of my poor, ill-informed father, not giving a thought to the possibilities of a change in his brother’s circumstances. And never dreaming that he and my mother would die so soon and together.

“I have a new profession now,” my uncle said, his nose twitching before he gave forth with a gigantic sneeze. My aunt’s sneeze echoed his.

“The work I do now is more to my liking. I believe it was when your solicitor received the information on our change of living styles that he made financial arrangements for me to keep you. You may as well know. We are to receive two guineas a month for your keep and another one hundred guineas from your trust inheritance at the end of two years.” He frowned. “To leave behind him money like that, my brother must have been rich. He was the lucky one. I always got the short end of the stick.”

My aunt spoke quietly, in a remonstrating tone. “We must be thankful for the two guineas, Caleb. And we must take care of our dear niece in expectation of more when she leaves us.” The words were puzzling and not said in a gracious way. Why did I think of them as menacing?
No need,
I told myself.
It is good that she is speaking at all.

“True!” They exchanged nods.

“I am a fisherman now,” my uncle said. “I have a sturdy boat and the gifts God gives me from the sea. We live a godly life, appreciating His blessings.” He pushed back his chair. “Minnie, will you show her where she is to sleep? I fear that carriage driver did not fulfill his obligations and take her belongings where they are to be. You will both have to help me.”

I got up from the table, ready to help with the trunk, but my aunt said, “Bring the lamp. I have handled heavier than this. Caleb. Bring the boxes. Go ahead of us, lass.”

She picked up the trunk as if it were empty and weighed nothing.

I went ahead, up the narrow stairs, holding the lamp high, their shadows coming after me along the wall.

“That door,” she said.

I opened the door she indicated. It was so close to the top stair that I could take one step and be inside it.

She set the trunk on the bare wood floor. Light from the lamp danced across a narrow bedstead made of planks, a small table, a chair, and an ornate chest of drawers. I had a moment to think that it must have also come from their previous home.

“We’ve made it comfortable for you,” Uncle Caleb said. “Your aunt put that quilt on your bed.”

“That was kind of you. Did you stitch it yourself?” I asked. It was a pretty bedcover with squares of pink roses and green leaves.

“No. I found it. I’m not a roses kind of woman.” She gave a yelp of laughter.

“Thank you for letting me use it,” I said.

She did not respond but took a stub of candle from a small drawer in the chest and lit it.

Uncle Caleb lifted the oil lamp and pointed to a row of pegs on the wall. “You can hang your clothes there. Come down again for reading and prayers before you go to your bed. And don’t dilly-dally. Your aunt and I believe in early sleep.”

I didn’t care for being ordered. I didn’t want to go down again. But I was there for two years, and I would have to get used to their ways. I would do as he asked—no, demanded—and I must learn not to take umbrage at an autocratic tone of voice.

When they had left, I studied the room. It had a sloping ceiling and one window set high. When I stood on the bed, I could see through the glass, though there was nothing out there but the dark and one of the twisted limbs of the tree. There was a wooden stool with a basin on it. I could not imagine what purpose the basin had, as there was no water jug to go with it. Perhaps I was supposed to fill one and carry it up so I could wash in private.

I set about putting my undergarments in the dresser drawers and, beneath them, my purse with the small amount of money I’d been given by the solicitor. The books I’d brought,
The Pilgrim’s Progress,
a novel by Maria Edgeworth, and two books of poetry, I placed on top of the dresser. I hung my dresses and skirts and my one jacket on the pegs and laid my red shawl on top of my empty trunk.
One day I will put all my belongings back in this trunk, and I will leave Raven’s Roost and go home again,
I comforted myself.
I will bring flowers to the graveyard where my dear parents lie, and I will be close to them again.

Already the room was cold. The sound of the wind shivered the walls as if trying to lift the house and carry us all away. But I reminded myself that it had stood for a hundred years, and it had survived.

Reluctantly I took the candle and went again down the narrow stairs.

My uncle sat at the table, a large Bible in front of him. My aunt, ramrod straight, was opposite him. She motioned to the chair I had sat in to eat my stew. I was distracted by a heavy silver candlestick with three red candles that now adorned the center of the table. And even more distracted by the way my uncle ran his fingers up and down the strange outgrowths on his ears.

He began to read.

“I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication that thou has made before me: I have hallowed this house, which thou hast built, to put my name there for ever.”

I listened as he read on. The Bible words always thrilled me, the poetry of them, the sense of antiquity. He read from the Old Testament, and I had no trouble paying attention. It warmed me to think of him and Aunt Minnie as God-fearing. When the reading was over, we knelt at our chairs and my aunt Minnie prayed aloud. Her harsh voice commanded the Lord to look after us and keep us safe in all our endeavors. As an afterthought, she thanked Him for His blessings. She ended by saying, “Help us teach this girl obedience and to not question our ways, or Yours.”

I fluttered my eyes open and saw that she was watching me again. It was as if she was talking to me and not to God.

In the moment of silence that followed her prayer, the dog gave a high, piercing whine.

“Be quiet, Lamb!” my aunt muttered, and the whine cut off instantly.

The dog was outside in a shed. Had he heard her voice through the walls and through the clamor of the storm? I had always known that dogs had acute hearing. But was this possible?

We said our amens and rose to our feet.

My uncle leaned across the table and extinguished the candles with a silver snuffer.

“The Three in One,” he said. “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. You know your Scriptures, I hope?”