A Curse Dark as Gold (6 page)

"But --"

"Ha! Here we go, lass." He pulled a ragged paper pouch from beneath a stack of empty jars and peered inside it. "Won't last the season out, this. Have to get more."

"All right," I said again. "How much, and from where?"

He swiped the list from my hands. "I'll do the ordering,
mistress.
You won't get my secrets this year!" He broke into wild, crowlike laughter.
I stood there, stunned into silence. How had my father done this? The man was clearly crazy. And then I had my great inspiration.

"You know," I said, "I've heard some interesting things about the reds coming out of Springmill this year."

He raised his head slowly, a look of cunning in his dark eyes. "Never. Not Springmill?"

"Oh, yes. Nearly as good as the imports. Or so I've heard."

He was quiet a good long moment. I watched him draw a circle with his foot on the stained earth floor. Finally, he sidled up to me and, in practically normal tones, said, "I'll just make up a list of the things that I need, lassie, and bring it up to the office later this afternoon. Don't worry about a thing. Springmill reds, my foot!"

I let out a measured sigh. "Mr. Mordant, I do wish you'd consider taking an apprentice."

"I'm not dead yet, missie!" he said, a little too cheerily.

"No, that's the point, sir. At the very least, write down some of your recipes. You could keep them in the strongbox in the office, if you like. Safe and sound."

His narrow lips pursed tight. "Can't write them down. That's how the other ones trick you."

"The other ones?"

"Other Ones, missie, Other Ones!" he said impatiently. This time I clearly heard the emphasis -- the Naming. "You Millers," he said, "always writing, writing, writing." He ripped the list right down the middle. "Put everything down where it can be seen by anybody. And what good's that ever done you? Nay, They'll not trap
me
that way, They won't!"

He kicked the fragments of my inventory into the embers beneath the dyevat. "Never you mind about Them. We're safe from 'em here,'' he said, patting me on the arm. "But I'll tell you what, lass. You send that pretty sister of yourn down here once-a-while, and I'll show her one thing or another."

I looked round the little dyeshed, at the pots and bottles and little packets, and thought about the real magic Mr. Mordant pulled off in here. "I could learn it," I said.

Mr. Mordant eyed me for a long moment, then shook his grizzled head. "Nay, lassie."

"Why not?"

"Because you don't want to know how things are made round here -- not really."

"That's not true! I'm every bit as interested --"

Mr. Mordant's hand fell on my arm and stopped my mouth. He pointed to the wool boiling in the vat. "Lass, if I put this here wool to rinse in water drawn upstream from the mill, it won't come out as dark or pure as if I rinsed it in water drawn downstream."

"But that doesn't make any sense --"

"No, it don't. And there ain't no reason to explain it, neither, but that something gets in the water at Stirwaters and makes it take color better. Something ... not natural. This mill, it has
moods,
lass, queer humors. Like a person -- fair one day and foul the next, and you've got to know how to listen to it." He nodded and turned away again. "And that's what you don't want me to tell you. So you send that sister of yourn. She don't mind what I'll have to teach her."

He took up his heavy stone roller and began to grind up a bundle of bark, clearly finished with me for the day.

***
Rosie grabbed me on my way back into the mill. "It's about time you showed up! Tansy Eagan's in your office!"

"Tansy Eagan! What can she want?"

"Oh, I'm sure she'll tell you." She lifted a corner of my Stained apron. "Where have you been all this time?"

I said nothing -- yet -- about Mr. Mordant's offer (let alone his moods and humors). No need to push my luck this morning.

Tansy, a tall, gangly girl about Rosie's age, was pacing furrows in my office floor. "Ah," she said as I cracked the door. "I've come for me brother's wages."

I looked her over as I came inside, doffed my hat, and sat down. She had the look of the queen hen about her -- proud, puffed, and strutting.

"Pay day's Wednesday -- bearing-home day, you know that." Stirwaters always paid out wages on the day each week when our weavers brought back their finished cloth and fetched home the yarn for new work.

"Heh," said Tansy, with a smile that showed her cracked teeth. "Won't be no more bearing-home for Paddy. Our mum's decided this place is too chancy. She'll be keepin' him home where it's safer now."

Paddy's wages were nearing those of a man grown. Mrs. Eagan must be mad to make him quit. "What's he going to do?" I asked. "Is she taking him to the loom?"

Tansy sniffed. "Can't think so. I'm her 'prentice. Be workin' me own loom soon enough." She held out her wide, angular hand. "The wages?"

Tansy tapped her foot impatiently as I counted out the coins (with a few extra we could not spare, for I was fond of Paddy and shuddered to imagine him home all day with Tansy and her mother. Spun from the same wool, those two were). "Have you got me mum's yarn, then?" she asked when I was done.

"No, I have not. Come back on Wednesday."

She shrugged. "Mum wanted me to tell you that she'll be askin' more for each piece."

"What?"

"Your piece rate's too low. Her sister in Burlingham makes three pound a week, and you best keep pace or you'll lose your best weavers."

I leaned back slowly into my chair, torn between disbelief and anger. The piece rate for weavers was set by established tradition and overseen by the Wool Guild, and Peg Eagan had no call to try and raise it for herself. Three pounds! That raised the price of the cloth she wove to nearly its market value. Even if I could afford such a rate, I'd be a fool to pay it. I'd never get it back -- not on plains and packing cloths.

Tansy watched me smugly, letting her words sink in. It was a hard matter -- Paddy had taken a goodly share of their family income, and if I cut off mother and daughter as well... It was no small thing to send a family into ruin. But if Mrs. Eagan wouldn't see reason, what could I do?

"Well, Miss Eagan, I'll be sure to let your mother know if something comes up for that rate."

Tansy's smile faded as she took my meaning. She tucked Paddy's wages into her bodice and glared. "You'll be sorry. Just you wait. Me mum'll have words to say about this!"

"Give my regards to your brother," I said. "There will always be a place for him at Stirwaters."

Tansy slammed the door so hard a bit of plaster fell off the lintel.
***

For the next several days, Stirwaters attentions were divided among carding and spinning and the fixing of broken steps ... and gossip about my uncle. It was just as well; I'd grown heartily sick of hearing about falling signs and our visit from Biddy Tom. Who was this strange gentleman, folk wanted to know. Was he to be the new master? Despite my own misgivings, I did my best to assure them that he wasn't. There had been no further mention of selling the mill, but each morning at breakfast our uncle made polite inquiry about the state of our affairs, and every night at dinner, gentle commentary on the state of our health and dress. True to his word, he even engaged a serving maid for the Millhouse: Rachel Baker, who donned a white cap and apron and took to calling Rosie and me "Miss," as if she hadn't known us all her life.

I was determined to look on this development as a sign that Uncle Wheeler intended life to continue in this vein. He knew how Mam and Father had loved it here; surely he could see that staying was the best thing for Rosie and me, as well. Indeed, I often saw him standing in the millyard, gazing at the mill buildings and the river as if drinking in the view, and I believed that he felt Stirwaters working its way into his bones, as well.

Reassured, I turned my full attentions to Stirwaters. If Rachel and Uncle Wheeler could polish up the Millhouse, surely I could do the same for the mill. The repairs I had asked for continued apace; we had managed to unstick the yardside doors and rebuild the back steps, and if the windows were still broken, at least now they all had solid casements. We had not yet replaced the fallen sign, however, and repeated efforts to rehang it ended in failure.

"I can't explain it, Mistress," Harte said, scratching his head with his hammer. "There's no earthly reason the bolts won't take, but every time I get up there, the stone just crumbles away."

"It's dry rot," I said. "The place is riddled with it."

Harte gave me a long, even look, but finally nodded. "I'll get some paint, then, Mistress."

At the end of the week, I found Mr. Mordant in the yard, mixing up a big batch of whitewash under a fine sky.

"Bad day for dyeing," he said when I stopped by, indicating the weather with a nod of his head.

"How's that, then?" I asked. "Is it too cold?"

Mr. Mordant broke into wild, braying laughter. "Nay, missie! Friday!"

I closed my eyes.
Friday.
Of course. Still, since he had the whitewash, there was one particular project I was eager to take on myself. I hauled bucket and brushes up to the spinning room, which was badly in need of attention. Most of the walls were exterior and stone, but a few were plaster, and I doubted they'd had fresh paint in generations -- certainly not the back wall, where someone, long ago, had put a hex sign. The wall was worn and sun-faded, the image dim with age. Its original colors and swirling designs were hard to make out, especially where the plaster had chipped away. It dated back farther than anyone at Stirwaters could remember, and I doubted anyone took much notice of the thing, or could remember why it had been painted there in the first place.

Picturing the wall fresh and gleaming white, I applied brush to plaster with relish. As I painted, I imagined replacing the superstitious symbol with a painting of Stirwaters's coat of arms, the gold millwheel on a green shield, crowned by a ram. Harte could do a splendid job emblazoning our arms there. I stepped back to appraise my work -- and promptly kicked over the pail of whitewash.

Cursing, I scrambled to catch the spill, mopping up my sodden boot and utterly ruining my skirt in the process. I ran for rags and water, leaving white footprints everywhere, and was on my knees scrubbing frantically when I heard a sound like crows behind me.

Mr. Mordant was bent over the righted pail, laughing coarsely. "Told you, missie. What did I say, then?"

"Friday," I snapped. "Fine, Friday. Here, help me get this up."

When we had the floor as clean as possible, only faint white streaks seeped into the grain of the floorboards to betray my clumsiness, Mr. Mordant helped me gather up the rags and bucket. As he eased himself off the floor, supplies in hand, he stopped cold, staring at the wall.

"Ah, lassie," he said quietly. "Ill done, I think. 'Twere ill done, indeed."

I gripped my bundle tighter. "What are you talking about?"

Mr. Mordant gave a long sigh. "That mark's been up there all these years, and ain't nobody painted over it before. Never wonder why? Did you not think, then, that whatever that thing were warding against, it's still out there?"

I could not get the dire look in Mr. Mordant's eyes out of my mind. I kept telling myself he was nothing but a queer old man having a jest, but it was no good. The workmen's insistence that Stirwaters did not want to be repaired did little to ease my mind. New blocks set into place worked loose by the following morning, a crack patched here sprang up again a few inches away. And every time I passed the newly white wall, I thought I saw the old colors of the hex sign -- a shadowy, faint impression, but certainly more than imagination.
It's the whitewash,
I told myself. It always took several coats.

But it didn't. No sooner than a second -- and then a third and fourth -- coat of paint had gone up over the hex sign, the colors seeped through again.

Rosie watched me, altogether too silent for my taste.

"What?" I finally said at the end of the fourth coat, sweaty and exasperated.

"I just think maybe you ought to leave it alone," she said. "You heard what Mr. Mordant said."

"That's ridiculous. There's no --" I stopped, hearing Harte's voice echo in my mind.

Rosie must have heard it, too. "No earthly reason you can't paint that wall?"

I was too hot to feel the chill. I mopped my forehead with my paint-speckled apron.

"Fine!" I said at last, addressing the wall directly. "I give up! You win. I'll even send Harte up to repaint the fool thing."

Bold against the fresh white background, the newly painted hex sign looked like a great watchful eye gazing over the mill.

Finally, we reached a state where we could call the repairs more or less complete. The mill was cleaner, certainly, enjoying a fresher, brighter aspect and fewer cracks and crumbles. Patches were put on thin spots in the floor, and if their corners popped up occasionally, we just tapped them down firm again.
Harte never did manage to rehang the sign, but stirwaters woollen mill was now spelled out in glorious barn red on grey, lichen-free limestone.