Fairer than Morning (19 page)

She gazed at the circle of red against the white ground, so like the pure white of linen. The spreading blot, so like the color of her mother's vanishing life. Her vision blurred and a roaring in her ears blew her off balance. She fell forward, her arms plunging up to the elbows in the snow. Inches from her face, it seemed that two pools of scarlet joined in past and present, a stain seeping over her entire field of vision.

A hand touched her shoulder. “Ann.” Her father's concerned face bent down to her sight level. He helped her sit up. “Breathe. Don't look at the blood.” She did as he said, turning her head back toward Allan and the coach.

“There, your color is a little better now,” her father said. “Let's attend to Allan and get him home.” He assisted her to stand, and they made their slow way back to where the younger man lay.

Her father crouched down next to him and looked back at Ann. “Are you well enough to help me?” She knelt again beside them, unsure of how to proceed. Perhaps she should take one of Allan's arms.

“Mr. Holmes is dead,” her father said to the younger man.

An expression of satisfaction crossed Allan's face. There was something terrible in it, to see a good man rejoice in killing.

She thought of mercy, and Amelia Holmes, and how she would have felt were it Allan or her father lying there. Nausea crawled through her. Would Amelia wake up at night sobbing, as Ann had after her mother's death? Would Amelia see Mr. Holmes in her dreams?

Ann's mother had given her own blood to bring new life into the world. A life given for a life. Mabel's new little soul had shown through her deep-blue infant eyes as Ann held her and wept. As God took away, he gave, both death and birth in blood.

But when men took away, there was only death. Here there was no sacrifice, and no beginning. There was only damnation, as men made themselves into little gods who wrenched away breath with metal and black powder. And this murder had been done in her name.

At the taking of a human life, there was some impalpable change in the air. She trembled, knowing that the all-seeing gaze of the Almighty fell upon them as they crouched over the telltale red patches in the snow.

Two days brought no respite from the constant return of the bloody scene to her mind. Ann could only hope that when they left the city tomorrow, as her father had announced, the haunting of her imagination would cease.

But first, courtesy required that she and her father stop by the Burbridges' home.

Louisa and Mrs. Burbridge received them with a kindness that shamed her. She hoped Allan had spared them the details of her sordid attack, but they must know something of it, or they would not be so forgiving. Or perhaps he had told them nothing at all. That would be more like him.

She dreaded seeing Allan. Mr. Holmes's terrible last curse had followed her since the morning he died. It had to be a sin, as her father had said, for Allan to take a life in that way, no matter the cause. Allan must feel the burden as well, and even more heavily than she.

But he seemed quite cheerful, considering. He lay in bed, propped up against a few pillows, a book on the table beside him. A maid poked her head in the room while they were there, but when she saw visitors, she withdrew. Ann's father sat on the far side of the room and paged tactfully through a newspaper.

“So you will leave me, then?” Allan's eyes were bright with teasing. “To languish in my boredom while you taste the delights of Rushville society?”

“The delights of Rushville society include tending to cows, horses, and pigs.” She folded her hands in her lap. No matter her inner state, she must be light and respond to his wit in kind. “You are welcome to join me in my social rounds, provided you have appropriate attire. A pitchfork is mandatory.”

He chuckled. “Don't tempt me. I just might jump aboard a steamboat in a few months.”

She felt herself growing warm and looked for another topic. “Are you certain, Allan, that the Holmeses will not seek legal remedy? I thought they threatened to call down the law on you.”

“No fear of that.” Allan relaxed, resting his head back against the headboard. “The law would ignore them, first of all. Matters of honor are usually kept quiet. But I also informed them as decently as I could of what had led to the duel. They do not want those circumstances made public.”

Those circumstances, in part of Ann's making, had deprived the Holmes women forever of a husband and father. Guilt robbed her of words for a moment. She adjusted her bag in her lap. “But they are already gone?”

“Yes, they left yesterday.”
Thank heaven
. She would not be able to bear encountering them on the return steamboat voyage.

After a few more entreaties from Allan that Ann return to see him, they took their leave of the Burbridges. The doctor's coach took them on another somber, quiet ride through the streets of Pittsburgh. When they arrived back at the doctor's house, there was nothing left but the last of the packing.

She folded clothing and stowed it in the small trunk. Her sisters were in the library with Dr. Loftin, enjoying their last opportunity for his company. He had grown quite fond of reading to them.

“Ann!” her father called from downstairs. She stood up, stretched her stiff back as well as she could in her stays, and walked out of the bedroom to the landing.

“Yes, Father?”

“I'm finishing some legal matters with the doctor. Will you take a message for me?”

“To whom?”

“Will, the apprentice.” She would have liked to refuse but had no good reason. She could hardly tell her father she felt awkward around the apprentice since their secret meeting.

“Certainly.” She walked down to meet her father at the foot of the stairs, and he handed her a sealed letter.

“There's another letter inside this one,” he said. “Tell Will to read the outside letter and use the address I've enclosed to deliver the one inside.”

“Very well.”

“It's to our friends in Arthursville. We have good news. The man in the beaver hat—his name is Jack Rumkin—has apparently fled the city.”

That was only partly good news to her. She wondered where he had gone.

As if reading her thoughts, her father added, “That will be wonderful for John and Clara. They can leave the city unnoticed and head north.”

That was some comfort. The memory of their branded and mutilated faces made her sad. They deserved their freedom.

“That is good news,” she said. She turned to the coat hook, donned her cape, and paused at the back door. “I'll be back shortly.”

“Thank you. And tell him not to forget what we spoke of.”

Strange
. But she would pass it on.

When she walked out the back door, she heard Lucy the pig snorting uneasily in her pen. The doctor had said over breakfast that he put the pigs inside because the almanac forecasted more snow today. Ann called softly to Lucy, but the pig did not come over to sniff her hand as she usually did. The piglets squealed and trotted back and forth; Lucy grunted and swung her head toward the gray sky. It must be the weather making them restless.

Will stood out by the pump behind the Goods' house, filling a bucket. He seemed taken aback at the sight of Ann.

“Excuse me,” she said. He stopped working the handle and stared at her. She approached gingerly, extending the letter toward him. “This is from my father. He would like you to deliver the letter inside it, as a favor. We are leaving now.”

His stricken look was quickly hidden, but not before it struck an answering pain in her.

“I will do Mr. Miller any favor,” he said shortly, taking the letter. “You're leaving?”

“Yes.” She didn't know what else to say. “My father said not to forget what he spoke of.”

“Tell your father I thank him. For everything.”

“I will,” she said faintly. She spun on her heel and nearly ran toward the doctor's house.

Will might not survive his apprenticeship whole—Master Good might scar him somehow, as John and Clara's master had mutilated them. If his master continued to beat him so savagely about the head, Will might not even retain his reason. How could she leave him to such a fate, having done nothing to truly help? Guilty tears came to her eyes, but she turned her head and let the wind blow them away. If she could not help him, she must forget his plight, for her own peace of mind. It was all too likely she would never see him again.

Eighteen

L
UCY HAD ESCAPED THROUGH THE FENCE AGAIN
. Will watched her nosing around the edge of the line of trees that began twenty yards from the barn. That section of the woods was all Master Good's land. The master would be livid—his hidden fury increased with each successive pig invasion.

“Tom, let's get Lucy back to the doctor's.” Will dropped a log back onto the wood pile.

Tom laid his axe down on top of the old tree trunk. “It'll be hard to get the piglets without the master hearing. They're noisy.”

The piglets were wandering around behind their mother, little more than small blobs in the murky half-light that preceded sunrise. “We have to try. It'll be better if the master doesn't see them. He may not be awake yet.”

“All right.” Tom started toward the closest of the piglets. It trotted away toward its mother and the tree line.

The back door of the master's house flew open with a clatter. At the sight of Master Good standing in the doorway, Will stopped in his tracks. Tom moved back to the wood pile and picked up his axe, and Will also began to chop again as if he had not noticed the pigs. The master's temper would be worse if he could claim that the pigs were distracting his apprentices from their work.

The master cut across the yard, not too near them, but instead went past the barn toward the trees. He had something in his hand, but in the dimness it was hard to make out. Will kept his gaze lowered as he picked a new piece of firewood from the pile. The master was passing closest now, only about ten yards away. Sneaking a glance at him, Will saw that he was staring at the apprentices, as if defying them to speak.

Will drew in a sharp breath. That dark object in the master's hand was a pistol.

Tom had noticed it too—he turned wide eyes to Will, his face pale.

Will turned back to Master Good. The master's eyes were noticeably light and deadly even in the gloom, his lips clamped together as if he forcibly contained a stream of invective. But Lucy had disappeared from sight among the trees, and he turned to follow her, quickening his pace until his figure also melted into the gloom of the woods.

Will dropped his axe and ran for the doctor's gate. If Dr. Loftin met Master Good in the grove, the master would not dare— A pistol shot cracked through the morning air, leaving a wake of ominous, deep silence.

Will faltered and stopped. What now?

“Psst.”
Tom called to him from to the wood pile. “Stay here. You can't get mixed up in it now.”

He reluctantly returned. “But if I get the doctor, he might still be a witness.”

“It won't matter. If the master has a brain in his head, he'll leave through the far side of the woods. There won't be anything to witness.”

“I need to go see what he did.”

“You know what he did. What if he's still in there?”

“I don't care.” Will brushed past Tom and headed for the woods. He slowed as he passed through the trees, peering hard for any sign of movement. There. A few small shapes milling around near a tangled bush. The piglets.

He stepped over fallen branches and frozen dead leaves, his heart thudding. The dawn was coming, turning everything a paler gray. Master Good did not appear to be here. Perhaps Tom was right and he had left through the far side, where the trees opened out onto the road some way past the Loftin home.

A piglet skittered ahead of him. He followed it around the large bush and stopped short.

Lucy's motionless body sprawled on the hard ground, her legs limp and dangling. Two of her piglets sniffed at her belly. One made a whining noise he had never heard from a pig.

He knelt beside Lucy. “Don't be afraid,” he said to the piglets, which jumped back. “I won't hurt you.” He extended his knuckles to one of them. It approached and sniffed his hand, then bumped Lucy with its little nose.

Lucy's once-bright eyes were fixed and dull, like black marbles. A trickle of blood ran from a hole in her forehead. Master Good must have called her and shot her point-blank.

Will stroked her fuzzy head and her round cheek. His heart was heavy and dull. What a sickening waste. Lucy had been a good mother to her little piglets. He ran his hand over her side as if he could comfort her. The piglet still whined next to her, rooting under her neck as if to wake her up.

He wiped his eyes with cold knuckles and stood up.

When he came out of the woods, Tom was still splitting wood.

“He killed Lucy,” Will said. His blood pounded and his breath came fast. He picked up his axe and vented his wrath on a piece of wood. Splinters flew up past his face, stinging his cheeks. He chopped even harder.