A Curse Dark as Gold (11 page)

I put a hand on my sister's arm. "You know Father left no will. If I'd been a boy, they wouldn't even question my claim. But as it is ..."

"But can't we do something?"

I shook my head sadly. "If we fight this, the Wool Guild could take Stirwaters from us."

"Well, that's easily rectified," my uncle said. "Go on," I said carefully.

"I would be happy to step into the role, of course; take the reins, as it were."

"You!"

"Of course," he said again, smiling confidently. "I am here to help in whatever capacity necessary."

I nodded slowly, unable to address this idea, yet. Losing Stirwaters would be a catastrophe -- but having someone like Uncle Wheeler, however well-meaning he was, at the helm was nearly as unthinkable. Stirwaters was a
Miller
property; it had never been otherwise. And Uncle Wheeler had no interest in the wool business; how could we be sure he'd make decisions that were in Stirwaters's best interest?

And, to speak plainly, I wasn't ready to give it all up just yet. "You said two options," I said tentatively.

"Ah, yes," Uncle Wheeler leaned back in the chair. "This, of course, would be an excellent opportunity for you to sell."

Rosie burst to her feet. "Never!"

"Rosellen, calm yourself."

"No, I
won't,"
she cried. "It's past time someone around here got angry! You sit there and smile at us over your wine --" She turned to me. "And
you
-- you're just going to let them pick and scheme and chip away at us?"

"What are you talking about?"

"What else? Pinchfields! Oh, you
must
see this is one of their schemes! They're obviously in league with these trustees, or the Wool Guild...."

I watched her with dawning horror. Was it
possible?
Oh, mercy -- it would make so much sense: If they could keep us from selling our stock, they could ruin us.
You'd best reconsider, before your name and your label are all you have left to sell....

"Now, girls," Uncle Wheeler said, "let's not be irrational. Scheming against you? Oh, surely not. To what purpose? You told me yourselves that this business is fraught with risk. It would hardly take a robber baron to judge that Stirwaters hangs on by mere threads. Rosie, I won't have you spouting nonsense and upsetting your sister.

"Now." He lifted the teapot and poured us each a fresh measure. "I must impress upon you the importance of viewing these events in the proper perspective. Perhaps this is a sign that it's time for you to give up your foolish attachment to your father's little operation."

"But I don't understand. I thought you wanted to help us."

"Rosie, dear, of course I do. That's why you must listen to reason now. I was willing to play along with your little fancies, for your mother's sake. I know how fond she was of the mill, after all. But it's time you saw sense."

Rosie shook her head and pulled her hand out of Uncle Wheeler's soft grip. My uncle had opened his mouth to speak, but I rose to my feet. "Uncle, please," I said. "We appreciate everything you're trying to do, but as I said when you arrived, we simply
can't
sell the mill. It's impossible." I added, much more confidently than I felt, "We'll just have to find somewhere else to send the cloth."

Up in the bedroom, I peeled my damp stays from my body, splashed some lukewarm water on myself, and slipped into a clean shift. The air was stifling; no breeze at all lifted the curtains on the open window. I collapsed onto the bed and watched the late sun burn the afternoon into dusk as I turned futile thoughts over and over in my mind.

Rosie arrived with a tray from Rachel, dumping it unceremoniously beside me. Grabbing a roll but not eating it, she paced between the window and the bed, a frown creasing her forehead. She had a fire building in her, and there was nothing for it but to let it burn out. Finally she said, very quietly, "Maybe it's true, what they say."

I pulled myself up on one elbow. "What?" Rosie looked at me. "You know. The curse. No -- listen. We've had more than even our share of bad luck this year. Father, and then the mortgage, and the cloth -- and now this?"

I sighed. "Rosie, honestly. Everything that's happened has a rational explanation. I think your first theory made more sense."

She sat down beside me. "Pinchfields?" I nodded grimly.

The news was all over the village by morning. Shearing gossip is a force of nature; besides, what was the point in keeping it a secret? I passed through a crowd of pale, questioning faces as I went to unlock the mill doors. I lay a hand against the rugged wood, but made no move to open up.

I turned to them. "It's all true," I said. "Everything you've heard."

"What'll you do, then, Mistress?" Eben Fuller asked. His voice was gentle, but I was bone weary and thin on patience.

"I don't know. Look, go home, all of you. There's nothing to do here today."

"But, Mistress," Mrs. Hopewell said, "it's bearing-home today."

"Go home," I repeated. "Call it a holiday, call it -- call it whatever you like. But there's no reason for any of you to be here. Not today. Not..." I meant to say, "Not anymore," but I just couldn't get the words out.

A strong arm took me by the shoulders, and I was grateful for it. It was Harte, of course, and with a few calm words, he got everyone to disperse.

I had told the millhands to leave, but I could not take my own advice. Despite the baking oppression of the mill, I climbed up to the office. My father's atlas lay open to the map of Worm Hill. I lifted it to put my finger on our stall, my lost, forfeit stall, and nearly dropped the book.

It read
Pinchfields
in curvy, spidery script. I closed my eyes tight, sure I was imagining things. A count of ten passed before I looked again, and surely as the turning wheel, the word remained. My hands shook, and I slammed the book shut and clutched it to my chest.
A person needs rest after a shock.
Maybe my uncle was right. Maybe I was finally breaking under the strain.

"Charlotte?"

I started. Rosie had followed me up, and with cold hands I opened the book for her. Her eyes grew wide and then looked straight at me. "Is this some sort of prank?"

I let out all my breath in one great rush. Of course, that's all it was. Just nasty commentary from a disgruntled millhand. But no one had been up here --

Rosie studied the page, rubbed at it with a finger, scowled. "You can't change
Stirwaters
to
Pinchfields
this tidily, not without leaving some mark. This is clean; nothing's even been rubbed out. How?" She looked at me, wonder in her eyes.

I grabbed it back from her. She was right -- for all I could tell, this page had read
Pinchfields
for ten years. All traces of our own name had disappeared. It was impossible. Involuntarily, I felt my gaze rise from the atlas to the far wall, where the violet-and-gold hex sign watched over us like a great angry eye.
Chapter Seven
That
dark mood prevailed for the next few days, that unshakable sense of some threat looming toward me from the distance. And no wonder, I suppose: If I didn't come up with Mr. Woodstone's money, we were doomed. Desperately, I pulled the packs apart in the woolshed, separating the plain cloths from the fancier sorts. I could sell the kerseys at market fairs in the Valley, I thought, and perhaps Mrs. Post's customers would be interested in the plaid blanket cloth. But such sales were crumbs and scrapings, at best. There was nowhere I could divest myself of one hundred lengths of cloth. Not in time. If only I hadn't dismissed Captain Worthy's offer so hastily....

I kept thinking I must
do
something -- fight it somehow, file a protest with the Wool Guild, or write to someone: to the bank -- to Mr. Woodstone. But I didn't dare. As I had told Rosie, the Wool Guild could challenge my claim on Stirwaters too easily; and while Mr. Woodstone had seemed nice enough, his loyalties were with the very people who wanted to take my mill from me.

For her part, Rosie was uncharacteristically silent those days, carrying Father's atlas with her and ducking my gaze when we passed in the mill. I put her down as stewing, and deservedly so, but when I did chance to meet her eyes, she looked merely thoughtful, and not angry. I ought to have suspected she was up to something; she is never that meek unless there is trouble afoot.

The millhands kept coming back to work, of course, however futile that work was seeming by the day. As was custom, the Friday we spun the last of the spring wool, we all took a half-holiday, although it was difficult to summon up the proper festive mood. Instead of the traditional afternoon toasting the season (and the miller) with Drover's ale in the yard, that year everyone just trickled off home. I lingered in the shadow of the millwheel, listening to the water dribble sadly into the pit.

"I don't know," I whispered back, the rough cool stones digging into my shoulders.

I watched the grey planks of the millwheel cut through the low water, steady as an executioner's blade falling, over and over. Green lichen stained the weathered boards, and the sound of the water was a mere dip and murmur in the hot afternoon air. I could stand there for hours, gazing into the depths of the pit, looking for answers that would not come. Better to just collect Rosie and head home.

I found her in the spinning room, in the widest clear space between two aisles of machines. She was silhouetted against the glare of the windows, and I could not immediately make out what she was doing. She crouched on the floor, a circle drawn round her in white chalk. A stub of a candle, ground into wax on the floor, sat beside her, the smell of tallow sour and rank in the room. The room was uncharacteristically silent, the turning gears a mere whisper in the still air, no sound at all from the slow-turning wheel.
I stopped in my tracks and stared at her. Her back was to me, and I watched her pause to glance at the floor, where Father's atlas lay open at her feet.

"Blood to bone, I summon thee," she read aloud, casting something to the heart of the circle with a fling of her right hand. "Hearth and home, I summon thee --"

"What in God's name are you doing?" I cried. I took three long strides and arrived at Rosie's side. Grabbing her by the elbow, I yanked her to her feet. "Have you lost your senses? What is this -- is that
mandrake?
Did you take that from the dyeshed? If you got one speck of red on my spinning room floor --"
"Your
floor? I have wept and sweat and bled for this mill every
bit
as much as you have." She turned away. "Blood to bone, I summon thee --"

I glanced down at Father's book, to the passage she'd been reading from:
To Summon Faerie Aid.
"Oh, for mercy's sake! Why not stand by the pulpit at church and ask angels to intervene?"

"I've done that," she said.

I couldn't bear it. She looked so lost, and so young. It was easy to forget she was barely more than a girl, when I felt so old. I wrapped her in my arms and pressed her head to my shoulder. "I know you want to believe all those old stories. But this is nothing but superstition. Stirwaters needs help,
real
help. Not some fairy story you found in a book."

"Ha," she said, pulling away from me. "What we need is a miracle."

"I don't think this family is eligible for miracles. Rosie, I'm tired. Let's get this stuff cleaned up before someone comes in and sees it." I bent to collect the scattered remnants of her "spell" -- a bowl of salt, the black candle, a packet of herbs wrapped in muslin. "Where did this all come from, anyway? Did you raid the dyeshed? Or --" I looked sharply at her as I recognized a dried flower I knew hadn't come from Mr. Mordant's supplies. "Don't tell me you've been to see Biddy Tom."

She looked sullen. "So what if I have?"

"I can't believe you'd waste what little money you have on this rubbish. If Mam were alive --"

I never had a chance to finish, for at that moment Rosie looked past me and turned absolutely pale. She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me standing. Someone was in the room with us, casually leaning against the hex sign.

"Beggin' yer pardon, misses." The figure stepped into the light, not some eldritch savior from Fairyland, but a perfectly ordinary, somewhat shabby man of about my father's age. A bit stoop-shouldered, in a coat much too large for him, he lifted brown fingers to his hat brim and nodded genially.

Rosie still clutched my arm. "Welcome to Stirwaters!" Her voice was pitched somewhere between gaiety and hysteria.

"Was there something we could help you with, sir?" I said.

He took another step toward us. He had a queer sort of shambling walk, as if troubled by rheumatism. "Well, I was thinking there might be something I could help
you
with," he said. "That is, you might have some work for someone like me."