Bone River (17 page)

I stared at him, bemused. “How do you know to do that?”

He shrugged. “I remember it from somewhere.”

It was odd, that he would know something so detailed, and something about his explanation rang vaguely untrue. I thought of yesterday again, and I felt suddenly cold. “I suppose you know how to interpret these numbers too.”

He glanced down at the notebook. “I’m afraid I don’t. I only remember the technique. I was fascinated by it, I suppose. Nothing like rocks and bones and snakes to pique a young boy’s interest.”

He smiled, and it was charming, dazzling, distracting. It drew one in impossibly. “You can’t have been that kind of boy.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Your...the poetry,” I said.

“I told you my mother read poetry to me. Not that I enjoyed it.”

“But you can quote it.”

“It stays in one’s head. And I suppose I grew to like it in time. But you haven’t told me what
you
think these numbers mean.”

I glanced down at her again, caught up once more in the mystery of her. “I don’t know yet. I have a copy of the
Crania
in the house. And Agassiz too. I’ll have to find them. But even they won’t tell me enough.”

“Whether she’s Indian or not isn’t enough?”

I shook my head. “It won’t tell me how she lived. Or why she died the way she did.”

“The way she died?” His voice sharpened. “You know how she died?”

“She was strangled,” I said, shrugging away the prickle between my shoulder blades, the memory of my dream.

A quick glance. “Murdered?”

“Yes, but it could have been ritualized. A sacrifice.”

“How would you tell that?”

“Most rituals don’t encourage suffering. Victims are offered things to ease the pain. Plants, mild poisons. Things to numb or even to bring visions. Often there’s evidence of that. Leaves or something.”

“Have you found that here?”

I shook my head. “So I don’t know. Maybe it
was
murder. I wish I knew. Her stomach contents would tell me if she ate something, but—”

“So you mean to cut her open?”

I kept my eyes on her, the soft black eyelashes, the browning nubs of teeth, the shine of her hair in the sun, the peek of an ankle beneath a skirt...“It’s why Junius wants to send her to Baird. Because he thinks I’m too sentimental. That I can’t do what needs to be done. My father wouldn’t have hesitated.”

“So why do you?”

I met his gaze. “Look at her. If the means of her death was violent, at least she seems at peace now. I can’t ruin that.”

“Violent?” he asked. “You just said she would have been given things to numb the pain.”

“If she was, it didn’t work. There are bruises on her arms where she struggled. She was afraid—” I caught myself, swallowing the words. “At least, I imagine she would have been afraid.”

“What does my father say about her death?”

“Well...I haven’t told him.”

He looked confused. “You haven’t? Why not?”

I couldn’t explain it to him. I couldn’t even explain it to myself. Not why I hadn’t told Junius nor why I’d told his son instead. “I don’t know.”

“One can see the way she preoccupies you. Your gaze goes to this barn a hundred times a day. Do you know what it looks like to me? It looks like you’re protecting her, but when I ask myself who you’d be protecting her from, the only answer I have is my father.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I think you’re afraid he’ll take the things you’ve learned for himself. That he’ll take credit for your theories.”

I couldn’t help it; I looked at him with shocked surprise. I had not thought those things, but now that he said them, I realized they were true, or at least they were part of the truth. Protecting her—yes, I wanted that. But why? Because I wanted time to form theories of my own? To not let Junius’s thirst for recognition force what we discovered to fit his theories, instead of the other way around? Or something else? Something more...emotional? The thought troubled me. I tried to bring myself around to rationality, to what I
should
be thinking and feeling about her.

“I’m right,” Daniel said with satisfaction.

I shook my head. “Not really. Or...not just that. It’s...June wants her to prove his theories about the Mound Builders, and—”

“You don’t want to have to tell him you disagree.” Then, at my further surprise, “You told me, remember? When we first met. You said you didn’t believe it.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe it. They’ve found beautiful things in those mounds. And this fabric...it’s far too fine.”

“But?” Daniel urged gently.

“But I can’t look at those winter ceremony masks and think they’re anything but beautiful. And...and
not
primitive. The workmanship is too skilled for that, and imaginative. I think...I think she comes from a different culture than Lord Tom’s, but do I think it was a superior one? I don’t know. Junius would send her off right now and tell the world what he thinks if I let him. And then he’d be made a fool if it turned out he was wrong. I won’t let him do that. Baird’s approval means everything to him. He wants to be the preeminent ethnologist in the Northwest.”

“Even at the expense of his wife?”

“We’re partners, Daniel. I’m not sacrificing anything.”

His gaze was thoughtful. “I never said anything about sacrifice.”

He flustered me. I took a deep breath. “I should get to drawing.”

“Tell me first how you found her.”

I hesitated. “It was the morning after a storm. My birthday. The bank had fallen away and there...there was a heron standing there as if it meant to call me over...and I...well—” I laughed a little, embarrassed that I’d revealed the fancy, trying to regain myself.

“A birthday present,” Daniel said with a smile.

“That’s how I thought of her,” I admitted. “As if she’d been put there just for me.”

“You said yesterday that Sanderson’s basket was like the one you found her in.”

I didn’t want to think about that. I motioned to the basket against the barn wall. “There. She’d been buried in it.”

“It looks like any other Indian basket.”

“It isn’t. The designs on it aren’t like any from around here. They’re not Shoalwater, neither Chinook nor Chehalis. I don’t
know what they are.” I frowned at him. “Shouldn’t you be writing this down?”

“It’s your notebook.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I’ll remember it well enough. And you’re here if I need to ask questions to remind myself.”

I nodded and went on, “In any case, by the time I got it half–dug out, Junius and Lord Tom came home and did the rest. That’s all. I found nothing else to indicate who she was or where she was from. Just her. And the basket.”

“And now you’re going to draw her and cut her open.”

I winced. “If I don’t, Baird will.”

“I wonder...” He looked thoughtful. “Have you ever considered sending her elsewhere?”

“Elsewhere?”

“There are places other than the National Museum that would be interested in her, you know. Places that won’t destroy her.”

I frowned. “Such as...?”

“A curiosity museum, for one,” he said. “I imagine one might pay well for something like this. And she’d remain intact.”

“A curiosity museum? But...but that’s not science.”

“It’s entertainment,” he agreed. “But you’ve already had plenty of men out here to stare at her, so I don’t think you’re that averse to it, and wouldn’t it be better to not have to cut her apart? With the story you’ve just told me about how she died, people would be fascinated. If you like, I could make inquiries...I might know of one or two in San Francisco that would be interested.”

“But that’s even worse, isn’t it?” I said quietly. “To have people gawking at her? She’s...she’s very rare, Daniel. She’s so much more than a curiosity.”

“But you don’t want her cut up.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want. Science makes its own demands. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t...if I
couldn’t...” I trailed off, looking at her, imagining her in a glass case, people pointing and making faces, a show of oddities. It wasn’t what she wanted, I knew. “She was alive once. It’s...something like this is sacred.”

“I thought you said you were a scientist. That you didn’t believe in the sacred. You said her soul had passed over.”

I said, “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“I do understand,” he said. “She’s remarkable. I’d have to be a fool not to see that. And your devotion to finding the truth of her is remarkable as well. I’m not suggesting you give up your research. I just think a curiosity museum might be the answer when you’re done.”

“Junius would never permit it.”

“So you’ll send it off and let him take credit because it’s what he wants. I wonder...what is it
you
want, Leonie?”

His voice was low and intent. When I looked at him I saw that strange tension in him again, the same I’d seen yesterday, and I was wary. I said, “I think you want the answers to be simple, Daniel. But they aren’t.”

“I don’t think they’re as complicated as you pretend, either,” he said.

But I’d had enough. I held out my hand for the notebook. “I really must get to drawing.”

Silently he handed it back to me, along with the pencil. I looked down at the page, at his handwriting listing my measurements—how neat was his penmanship, clean and precise, the reflection of a well-ordered mind, one where everything had its place, boxed and stacked and labeled. Which was what he was trying to do with me, I realized. And Junius.

Well, let him. He would learn the truth of things soon enough. Twenty-seven was not so old; he had years to discover that there were pieces of one’s life that could still surprise, dreams unrealized, regrets one had never thought to keep.

But as I settled down to draw and he leaned back against the barn post to watch, arms crossed, and the silence stretched between us, I felt the questions he’d asked hovering, the conclusions he’d made, and there was an insistence in them that would not fade, even after the minutes passed and I was lost in my drawing and I forgot he was there. I saw only the lines of my pencil, the broad strokes and shading beneath his precisely drawn numbers, her foot taking shape upon the page, and yet the things he’d said remained, whispering in my ear, soft as the brush of abalone charms against my skin.

I
WAS BRUSHING
out my hair when Junius came into the bedroom, shutting the door softly behind him. The night was very dark beyond the windows, the reflection of the candlelight haloing against the glass, reflecting Junius too, so I saw the dim image of him pausing, watching me as I pulled the brush through the wild, tight curls of my hair, straightening it only for it to spring back when released, forming a cloud around my face.

I asked, “Are you and Lord Tom on speaking terms again?”

He came back to me as if he’d been lost in reverie, slowly, blinking. “Seemingly. Apparently he’s forgiven me for McKenna’s skull. Thank God he doesn’t know about those Stony Point skeletons, or he might be silent a year. How’d the day go with the boy?”

“Daniel is his name. And the day went well.” I put aside the brush and began to braid my hair. “He was a good assistant. He has very neat handwriting.”

Junius nodded. He unbuttoned his shirt and drew it off, and then he went to the basin and splashed his face. “Discover anything new?”

I felt the words lodge in my throat, the fervency of reluctance.

You’re afraid he’ll take your ideas as his own.

But my worries were groundless—why should I expect Junius to do what he’d told me he would not? What reason had I? Quickly, before I could think better of it, I forced myself to say, “I’ve discovered how she died.”

Junius straightened and reached for the towel. “You did? And how’s that? Disease, as I suspected?”

“She was strangled,” I said.

He paused in the midst of drying his face and looked at me over the edge of the towel. “Strangled?”

“Garroted, actually. With something very thin.”

“A sacrifice?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t look like it. There were bruises on her arms, as if she fought it. I think it was murder.”

“Then why mummify her?”

“I don’t know that they did, June. Perhaps it was just...a natural...phenomenon.”

He shook his head. “Doubtful. It’s too perfect. I’m certain there are signs of deliberate mummification to be found. Did you check for holes in the septum? Incisions in the chest?”

“I haven’t got that far—”

“Just because they didn’t wrap her doesn’t mean she’s not stuffed with herbs and rags. You can’t make assumptions like that until you’ve cut her open, Lea.”

Uncertainly, I said, “No, of course not, but—it seems odd, don’t you think, that there were no funerary relics buried with her? There’s nothing at all in the ground where we found her.”

“How long did you spend out there? A day? There’s more digging to be done.”

“I was very thorough.”

“I’m sure you were, sweetheart, but you haven’t the strength to be exhaustive. I’ll send Lord Tom out there as soon as the rain lets up. He’ll dig so you don’t have to wear yourself out.”