The Caged Graves (4 page)

He hadn't known he was sending her love poems. He'd let his sisters pick out the book—and the gloves, and even the hair ribbons. Her temper flared. “Did your sisters write your letters as well as choose your gifts?”

They were now walking five or six feet apart, separated only by the breadth of the road, but it might as well have been a canyon. Nate's silence for the span of several paces was answer enough. Then he said: “No, I wrote my own letters. That is, they gave me advice about what I should say . . .”

Verity could picture it in her mind now: this awkward young farmer bent over a desk, writing under his sisters' instruction, while
they
composed the words that would win her heart. No doubt they'd stuffed him into formal clothes and combed down his hair for the photograph, too.

She was walking—no, running!—down this horribly steep lane with a complete stranger. And here, to make matters worse, was the church in which she was expected to marry him! The Mount Zion Methodist Church was nothing more than a plain log building on a country road. Verity had left a home with a beloved family in worldly Worcester to live in a backwoods mountain town with a father she didn't know and to marry a man who'd let
his sisters
court her.

As the road leveled out, her steps slowed, and she put both hands to her face, trying to catch her breath and calm her thoughts.

“I warned you it was steep,” Nate said behind her. She shot him a glance of irritation. He had
not
warned her it was steep; he'd merely reminded her they'd have to walk back up—something she didn't think she could do just then. They'd have to poke around the cemetery until she recovered her breath.

Verity had no idea what to talk about now. Every conversational topic she'd chosen had led to disaster, and he didn't seem capable of helping. He was looking around as if he might find something worthwhile by the side of the road, scowling as if he regretted meeting her at all.

She too looked around, hoping to find a neutral subject for discourse, and her eyes alighted on an interesting sight outside the graveyard. “What are those?” she asked, and strode across the grass to get a closer look.

Outside the cemetery wall stood two odd metal frameworks that looked like tiny conservatories without the glass. Verity had never seen anything like them.

Behind her she heard Nate's voice. “Oh . . . no—wait a minute.”

They weren't conservatories—how could they be? Now they looked like overlarge birdcages.

“Verity!”

Strangely large iron-filigree cages, each one about as high as her shoulder and—she felt a shiver run through her—not much longer and wider than a casket.

“Miss Boone!” Nate exclaimed.

Hearing him return to a formality they had left behind in their letters made her turn around. His sisters had decided when he should ask permission to use her given name. They had read
her
responses, Verity suddenly realized, and possibly decided as a group how Nate would answer each one. He
should
go back to calling her Miss Boone, she thought indignantly. He should start from the beginning and introduce himself all over again.

“Please,” he said urgently, still standing on the road and holding out his hand to her. “I think we should go back.” He looked so wretched that she felt sympathy for him in spite of her disappointment.

She would have done what he asked without another word if he'd stopped talking then, but he didn't. “I'm sorry I brought you here,” he said. “I should have realized you hadn't seen them yet.”

Verity felt as if her heart had dropped straight through her body. He wasn't apologizing for being a buffoon; he was apologizing for something else entirely. Ignoring his hand, she turned back toward the cemetery.

Outside each cage there was a headstone.

She broke into a run, holding up her skirt in both hands, her feet pounding across the grass.

Iron cages surrounded two graves outside the cemetery wall. With a growing dread she approached the nearest one, and her eyes made out the lettering on the marker.

 

SARAH ANN

Wife of Ransloe Boone

 

THE WORLD tipped sideways.

Her mother's grave, confined within an iron cage, seemed to swing around to stand on its side, the blue sky pitching over the grass in a sickening, topsy-turvy wave.

Two hands gripped her shoulders, and then she found herself wrapped around by arms strong enough to support her even if her legs gave way. Verity raised a hand, slipped her arm free of the protective embrace, and punched Nate in the chest.

“Ow!”

“Let me go!”

She staggered backward as he released her. He stared at her, looking tousled and confused. “I thought you were going to faint!”

“I never faint!”

Her fists clenched at her sides, she turned around to look again at the marker on her mother's tomb.

 

SARAH ANN

Wife of Ransloe Boone

Entered into Rest

November 15, 1852

Aged 22 Years

Beloved Wife and Mother

 

It was all very ordinary information, nothing Verity had not known before. Except that the marker stood beside an iron cage that completely enclosed the grave, and the grave was
outside
the cemetery.

She wrapped her fingers around the heavy wire that crisscrossed the structure in a diamond pattern. Her hands were slender, but she would have been hard-pressed to reach through the latticework. There was a small stone marker inside the cage, engraved simply with initials:
S.A.B.
A hinged door at the far end of the cage was padlocked shut.

“Why?” Her voice was raw and hoarse. “Why is my mother's grave inside a cage?”

Nate was watching her worriedly. “I'm not sure.”

“What do you mean, you're not sure?” She looked up. “You must know.”

“I don't know the whole story.”

“What did she do? Why is she buried outside the churchyard?” Verity drew in a horrified breath. “This is unhallowed ground!”

He looked uncomfortable. “I think you should talk to your father.”

Rather unsteadily, she walked over to the other caged grave and read the tombstone.

 

ASENATH

Wife of John Thomas

Entered into Rest

November 15, 1852

Aged 17 Years

 

A second round of chills ran up and down her body. “Who was this?”

“John Thomas's first wife,” said Nate. “Your aunt by marriage, I suppose.”

Her mother and her aunt, both confined in iron bars outside the cemetery after death, as if they were . . . what? Witches?

“They died the same day,” she said. “Was it a sickness?”

He shook his head again helplessly. “I really don't know.”

Verity looked at her mother's grave again, a terrible pain in her heart.

“Well, I know two men who
must
know,” she said.

 

Ransloe Boone was not happy with Nathaniel McClure. “You took her to the cemetery?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Of all the darned fool things to do!”

“Yes, sir.”

Verity lifted her head. As angry as she was, she noticed that Nate did not make excuses or try to divert the blame but honestly acknowledged his mistake. It was a point in his favor, and heaven knew he needed one.

“It was my idea to walk down that road,” she said. “I don't think he thought about what I would see there until it was too late.” Then, having accepted the responsibility that was hers, she turned on her father. “It was
your
place to tell me. He should not have needed to worry about it.”

Her father ran a hand through his unkempt hair and paced the length of the parlor. “I would have taken you there,” he said finally. “I just didn't have the chance.”

“Why?” Verity demanded. “Why is she buried outside the churchyard in a
cage?
”

Her father leaned against the back of the sofa, staring down at the floor.

“It was protection for her,” he said finally. “To protect her remains from . . . from grave robbers.”

“Grave robbers?” Verity repeated in disbelief. “What was she buried with that anyone would want to steal?”

“Nothing,” Ransloe Boone said sharply. “Why would you ask that? Who's been talking to you?”

Startled, Verity held her hands out. “No one! You said grave robbers!”

Nate cleared his throat. “In Ohio last year, bodies were stolen from graves and sold to medical students for study. Is that what you mean, sir?”

Ransloe Boone cast a grateful look in Nate's direction. “Yes . . . something like that.”

“Sold to medical students?” Verity repeated, horrified. “For
study?
”

“There was some reason for concern,” her father explained. “There'd been an . . . incident at our cemetery. We were worried, and your grandmother was nearly mad with grief. To lose her daughter and daughter-in-law so suddenly, not to mention the babes they were carrying—”

Verity's fingers curled around the fabric of the settee. “They were expecting? My mother was carrying a child?”

Ransloe Boone's face, when he looked at his daughter, was drawn and gray with old sorrow. “No one ever told you?”

She turned away, stricken by grief for a mother she didn't remember and a sibling who'd never been born. She herself had been sent away at the age of two to be raised by her father's relatives. Who would have told her?

She wiped at her eyes before tears could fall. “Why aren't they in the cemetery? Why did you bury them in
unblessed
ground?”

Her father rubbed his brow as if in pain. “That's more difficult to explain. It was just easier that way, Verity. It was the quickest way to get them a decent burial.”

“I don't understand. Had they done something wrong?”

He looked up, his eyes ablaze. “Your mother never did anything wrong. Neither did John's wife, for that matter. Asenath was hardly more than a girl—no older than you.”

“Then why—”

“Because people are spiteful.” Verity blinked to hear him echo Aunt Maryett's words. “I gave in because it was simpler that way. I regretted it afterward . . . but there are plenty of things I regret that I can't do anything about now.”

Abruptly, he turned on his heel and left the room. Verity bit her lip and dug her fingers into the upholstery again.

Nate stood up. “I should go. I've caused enough trouble for one day.”

Verity rose, too, and faced him with embarrassment. This had been far from the meeting she'd hoped for. “It wasn't your fault,” she said. “I'm sorry that my family”—
shame
was the word that came to mind, but she corrected herself—“circumstances led to our outing ending so badly.” It had begun badly, too, but she didn't want to remind him. “If you come again, I promise I'll be better prepared to receive you.”
Especially if you don't appear at the back door without warning.

He glanced away, shuffling his feet, and Verity suddenly realized she'd said
if
instead of
when.
“I'm taking the spring crops to Wilkes-Barre in the morning. I won't return until Friday.” When he raised his eyes to her again, Verity could see that he was just as discomfited and uncertain as she was. “I suppose I'll see you then . . . at my mother's party?”

Did he think she would revoke her word? End the engagement because of one ill-planned encounter? Did he
want
her to?

“I'll be there,” she promised. He nodded and bowed politely, but she couldn't tell what he was thinking.

 

That night, she brushed out her hair in front of her open window.

The night was very dark, the moon only a sliver in the sky. Worcester was hardly ever dark—there were streetlights, and some of the better houses were lit by gas. It was noisy, too, with carriages passing at all hours and the sounds of people talking and laughing in neighboring homes. Here, the nearest houses were out of sight.

She'd gone to bed the previous night tired and a little homesick but hopeful for the future. A mere day later her heart felt like a stone in her chest. She'd upset her father, insulted and
punched
her intended husband, and as for her mother . . .

This is why Aunt Maryett didn't want me to come back here,
Verity thought. In spite of her father's denial, her mother must have done something that made her an outcast, she and her brother's wife between them—something that resulted in their burial outside a Christian cemetery.

Turning from the window and laying down her hairbrush, she tried not to think that returning to Catawissa had been a mistake.

IN WAKING the next day, Verity was seized with a need to do something about those graves. She didn't know why her father and uncle had allowed them to be erected in that manner, barren and isolated and shameful—but Verity Boone was not going to tolerate it. Her father claimed that his wife had done no wrong, and Aunt Maryett said she'd been generous and warm-hearted. Sarah Ann Boone had been a midwife, a daughter and a sister, a farmer's wife and a young mother. She deserved a better memorial.

Verity marched into the kitchen that morning and caught her father at his breakfast. “I want to go into town,” she said without preamble. “Can you take me?”

He chewed a mouthful of bread before replying. “I need the wagon in the fields today. But John usually goes to town every morning. Perhaps you can ride with him.” Verity snatched a slice of bread from the table and ran upstairs to fetch a bonnet and her coin purse.