A Curse Dark as Gold (26 page)

Mrs. Tom's cottage sat in a shady grove overgrown with oak and mountain ash, and an angry-looking vine, winter-naked, sprawled crazily up the wall and across a window shuttered tight behind it. I could barely make out specks of once-blue paint through gaps in the vine. The same blue decked the frames of the other windows, the lintel, and glowed like a great blue eye on the arched door. A "friendship door," we called it -- split top and bottom, each half swinging independently. Today both halves were tightly closed. A painted hex circle in reds and yellow -- not quite flowers, not really birds -- hung where a window should have been, and a faded garland of fall leaves, battered some by the rough winter, curved above my head.

I dropped the hammer of the knocker against the door, my heart jolting once in echo. A moment passed, in which I contemplated my escape, before the upper door creaked inward, and Mrs. Tom's calm face peered out at me.

"Charlotte Miller. I wondered when you'd be coming down to see me. An August babe, if I'm not mistaken. Well, don't stand there gawping in the cold -- come inside, child."

The upper door swung back, and I heard a snap as Mrs. Tom refastened the bolts that held the door together, and then the whole blue arrangement receded inward once more. Pursing my lips, I stepped inside Biddy Tom's house.

And was immediately surprised. What had I expected? Something queer and dark, haunted by shadows and nameless things? The cottage was bright and airy, sunlight streaming in through lace curtains and casting the tidy parlor in cheery light. A whitewashed floor and faded rag rug, polished furniture, the sparkle of pewter and glass on the mantelpiece -- there was nothing eldritch here. Nothing stranger than a massive spinning wheel by the fireplace -- as long as the hearth and probably as high as my shoulder -- and a large panel painting of five serious-looking men above the settle.

"My boys," Mrs. Tom said, "my Tom, and Small Tom, Henry, Peter, and Stephen."

"What -- what happened to them?" I asked, wondering faintly which one of the strapping fellows in the picture was "Small" Tom.

Mrs. Tom burst out laughing, a hearty sound, and warm, like the lowing of cattle. "Nothing happened to them, girl. Small Tom and Henry took to sea and took wives on the coast. Peter is a joiner, and Stephen runs a public house in Trawney. Of course, my Tom died years ago." She gave a wave of her hand, as if the loss of a husband were something to shrug away as casually as a gnat or a fly. "Now, let's get a look at you."

After she had declared me in perfect health, and given me what must be a standard litany of new-mother reassurances, Mrs. Tom asked me to tea. I could scarcely refuse; Gold Valley neighbors do not decline one another's hospitality. And though I confess a strong urge to depart as soon as possible, it was quelled by a mixture of curiosity and absolute dead ordinariness. The midwife's cottage was like every other home in Shearing; what had I to fear?

Besides, I had too many questions.

Mrs. Tom brought the tray, a sturdy, workaday display of plain china and warm biscuits. I offered to pour out, but she waved my hand away. I nibbled my biscuit in silence, a silence that grew as the afternoon light waned, and Mrs. Tom made no move to light lamps. Finally, she arranged her hands in her apron and looked at me across the tea table. "Well," she said. "Say your piece."

I meant to protest, but those clear pale eyes were too intense. I set my cup down and met her gaze. "What causes a curse?"

She frowned slightly, as if to bat my question aside as gently as she had my hand. But a moment passed and she seemed to change her mind. "Anger," she said, and the word rolled over me like low thunder. "Dark, fearful anger -- jealousy, resentment, pain. And, usually," here she shifted in her chair, like a cat tucking and settling in, "violent death."

"And bad luck?"

"Ah," she said. "Now, that's different. A curse you can't do much about, but find way to break it. Luck, though -- lass, you make your own luck. Bad things happen in life, misfortunes fall to everyone in turn. Just a part of the changing years, and nowt to worrit over. You just decide how to face it, is all."

I frowned. Easily said. But an image rose up in my mind: a picture of a mill on a small brown dish. "Great courage breaks ill luck," I whispered.

Mrs. Tom smiled. "Aye, lass. That it does."

I bit my lip. "What breaks a curse, then?"

She didn't answer for a long moment. The sunny parlor was deep in slanted shadows now, golden light chasing the tracery of lace against the faded floor. Finally, Mrs. Tom began a slow, rhythmic nodding, as if to herself. "Well, now," he said quietly. "That's another thing entirely." She rose from her straight-backed chair and crossed the room to a cabinet set into the wall. Opening it, she drew her hand along a row pf books, her fingers hanging scant inches from a selection. "First," she said. "You must know who set the curse. That story's been trailing around Stirwaters a long, long time. Any notion why? What dark dealings in Miller past are hidden in those stones?"

"None!" I said, but too quick, too sharply. What did I truly know? Miller or not, my father had been a stranger here, and the miller before him. Stirwaters had changed hands too many times to keep all her memories alive. But what had I told Randall?
Stirwaters calls its keepers....

The name
Wheeler
had been on the millwheel, on the very heart of Stirwaters, all these years. My uncle's name. Was that simple coincidence? Was Uncle Wheeler's presence here part of some old, old design? And if the turning of the great wheel had brought us all back together again, Miller and Wheeler, then for what purpose?
Anger, pain. Violent death.

Scarcely aware I did so, I clutched a hand to my belly. Mrs. Tom noticed, and came back to sit beside me, the book she sought forgotten.

"Lass," she said gently, "put talk of curses out of your head. If there's one thing bad for wee babes, it's worry. Forget an old woman's nonsense, forget the gossip and the foolish stories. Go home to that husband of yourn and raise up a big brood of Woodstone babies. Forget you ever heard the word
curse"

"I can't," I said. "I can't afford to."

I rose to my feet and thanked her for the tea. She shook her head but followed me to the door. "You come back in a month or two, hear me? Or any time. My door's open to you, Charlotte. If you need a friend."

I felt those strange pale eyes on my back all the way to my own doorstep, but I was halfway home before I realized something: My mother had been a Wheeler, which made me one, too.

And so was my baby.
Chapter Nineteen
Finally,
in the middle of March, the millwheel was ready. It arrived by cart from the joiner's, led by Rosie and Harte, the rest of the village trailing behind like a parade. It was the work of two days to set it into place -- and the event of the season. Like a barn-raising among country neighbors, everyone pitched in to help, millhand or not. Even Uncle Wheeler strutted about like a squire, overseeing the proceedings with an air of administrative authority.

Taking advantage of a day that was almost pleasant, we closed the sluice and emptied the spillway, draining the water from the wheelpit. It was a job we should have done every year, to clear debris and silt from the pit, but like everything else it had been neglected. I hadn't seen the wheelpit empty since I was a little girl. It was a great half-barrel carved out of the earth, lined with grey stone caked with mud. As the water drained away, the pit was overrun by scampering, bare-legged boys eager to burrow through the silt in search of treasures washed into the headrace.

"You lads be careful now," Harte yelled as Jamie Handy shoved little Dan Fuller facedown into the muck. Danny howled with rage and grappled for Jamie's feet with clay-caked fists. Eventually he made contact, and spilled Jamie's legs right out from under him. Everyone laughed, even those of us who knew better.

"Sixpence!" one of the boys shouted. "A real silver sixpence!"

"Ain't that Tansy's shoe, what she lost last summer?"

And so the account rang up, all the detritus of the years, collected in the bowels of Stirwaters. Coins were the property of their finders, but anything whose ownership might be determined was strewn in a filthy strip along the bank. I fell into the column filing past to study the items, amazed at their variety. For a frugal people, we certainly managed to lose our share of things.

Among the battered shoes, broken crockery, and odd bit of harness, there was another sort of booty entirely. I collected no fewer than five straw figures, crudely formed and rather the worse for wear for their dunking in the pond. Stuck with pins or dressed in rags, they had the appearance of sad little victims of sacrifice. One of the wet figures in my hand, I glanced round at my neighbors. Who had flung these manikins into the water, and for what purpose? Was this the "tribute" paid by the Friendly Society? Toss a corn dolly into the Stowe every spring, and the capricious river will spare you and yourn?

I shook off a shiver and gathered up the corn dollies from the bank. I found Mr. Mordant across the pond, watching the to-do from a respectable distance. He was leaning against the fence, whittling a chunk of wood with a blade no longer than his thumb.

"Mornin,' missie." He nodded to me. "What you got there?"
I showed him. "I found these,'' I said. "I -- I'm not sure what we should do with them."

Mr. Mordant gave me a long, appraising look, his pipe dangling from his lip. "Good girl," he said finally. "Tha' done right. Seems to me we can go two ways: cast 'em back into the wash, for there they were meant to stay -- or toss 'em onto the fire, for they done their job already."

"Have they?" I found myself asking. Didn't Annie Penny attest to their failing?

The old dye master glared at me. "You know better'n ask a question like that."

Biting my lip, I shoved the figures toward him. "Here, you decide how they should be ... dealt with." I was happier not knowing. I did hear from Rosie, though, several months later, that she had seen them in the dyeshed, all lined up along the windowsill.

As Mr. Mordant collected the dollies from me, I heard the squish-slap of wet boy's feet against the shale and looked up to see the youngest Lamb running toward us.

"Mistress, Mistress!" he cried, catching me up. His soaked knee breeches dripped onto my skirts. "Ain't this your mam's ring?" To my astonishment, he held out a tiny circle of tarnished tin, all the silver gone, topped by a begrimed paste pearl. "Mam says it were yours." Before I could speak, he scampered away again.

Mr. Mordant grinned at me, dark gaps in his smile. "Now, how 'bout that?"

I showed the ring to Rosie later that afternoon as we were washing up in the butt.

"What do you think it means?"
Rosie held the ring over the water for a long moment, as if watching waves and eddies through the circle. "That it's probably too much to hope your watch will turn up?"

Helplessly, hysterically, I began to laugh.

The following day we hoisted the new wheel into place. Less a spectacle than the empty wheelpit, today's work drew a smaller audience, and a more idle one. Anxious to begin work anew, the Stirwaters folk hung round the wheelhouse, getting underfoot, in case some task might present itself promptly once the new wheel was turning freely.

I stood in the lee of the wheelhouse, watching Rosie and Harte work side by side. Like two parts of one machine, they were well matched, moving easily in one another's rhythm. Rosie would reach out a hand blindly, and Harte would fill it with whatever tool she needed. I wondered what it might be like to have that connection with Randall.

"Fine piece of work, ain't it, Mistress?" I turned to see young Ian Lamb beside me, his mother, Janet, with him. "Still, wouldn't it have been grand to see a great new wheel runnin' the old place?"

Janet gave him a look to curdle cream. "Tweren't nowt wrong with the old design," she said stoutly. "No need to go meddlin' with what's been fine enough all these years. And ain't no call to go diggin' up parts what's been sealed off for good and all. Buried is buried, if you ask me."

"Buried!" I said. "What's buried?"

"Nowt's buried," Janet said, shoving her hands into her apron pockets. "Just talkin' about the past, is all."
"Yes, but you said
buried,"
I insisted. "Is there something buried under Stirwaters?"

"'Course not. Where did you hear that fool notion! You're gettin' as queer as your pa, then, I daresay, Mistress. Buried under Stirwaters!" She laughed -- a bit too heartily.

Something
I'd
tried to bury sprang up vividly in my memory. "Do you know anything about a drowning at Stirwaters?"

"A drowning!" Ian's attention snapped back quickly enough.

Janet cuffed him hard on the shoulder. "No, I do not," she said, her voice firm. "I have never heard such a thing, and I've been here thirty-four years this spring. Ah, Mistress." She gave me a firm smile, as if to close the matter. "Don't pay no mind to the spoutin' of a fool woman plenty old enough to learn when to keep her fat mouth shut."