The Caged Graves (24 page)

After a moment of silence, Liza said, “But there
is
a body in there.”

Verity shook her head. “It was stolen.”

Liza crossed her arms. “No, it wasn't. They put it back when they were through with it.”

“You can't tell me grave robbers
returned
her body,” Verity exclaimed.

“Hey!” Johnny yelled from halfway across the cemetery. “If you aren't working, neither am I!”

Liza threw him an angry look, then turned back to Verity. “What are you talking about? What grave robbers? It was Eli Clayton who did it; everybody knows that.”

“Did what, Liza? What happened at this grave?” She was so tired of secrets and lies and misbegotten legends!

“Why do you think your father put a cage over your mother's grave?”

Verity rose to her feet and faced her cousin. “Why don't you just tell me?”

Johnny stuck his head between them. “What're you two arguing about?”

“You really don't know, do you?” Liza looked triumphant.

“About what?” Johnny asked.

“She doesn't know why there's a cage over her mother's grave!”

“To keep people from chopping her up.” Johnny looked back and forth between Verity and Liza.

Verity winced at his words. “That's right,” she agreed. “Medical students.”

“Who told you that?” Liza demanded. “That's nonsense!”

“Then what
did
happen? For pity's sake, won't one of you just tell me?”

Liza pointed a finger at the place where Rebecca lay. “
She
died. Then other people in her family got sick. A whole bunch of them. They thought it was the family curse—a blood curse, because Silas Clayton betrayed his comrades and his country, and every one of his descendants is destined to pay the price. They thought Rebecca had come back from the grave to kill her kin, just like Caleb got out of his coffin and tried to kill his wife. So Eli Clayton dug her up and cut her body into pieces.”

Verity stepped backward. She felt lightheaded, as if all her blood had rushed toward her feet.

“That's what the mountain people do if they think someone's not
completely
dead,” Liza went on. “Her own father chopped off her arms and her legs and her head. Then he cut out her heart and burned it.”

Johnny licked his lips nervously. “Stop it, Liza.”

“He fed the ashes to the people who were sick, and those people recovered.” Liza's eyes were alight with malice. “The other ones who died—he chopped them up
before
they went into the ground, just in case. That's why the cages are there. Our family built them so the Claytons would think Sarah Ann and Asenath couldn't get out—but mostly so the Claytons couldn't get
in.
Grandmother told me. That's the truth.”

Verity's limbs had gone numb with cold, even in the heat of July. She staggered and tripped on her skirts, falling to the ground in a heap. Liza smiled in satisfaction and returned to the bunting, while Johnny stood there, looking back and forth between his cousin and sister.

This was a terrible,
backward
place—full of ignorant, violent people. Why had she ever come here? She wanted to go home—to Worcester—to a civilized place where things like this didn't happen.

She might as well go back to Worcester. Nate had loved her, but she'd spoiled it with her doubts. And Hadley Jones had never wanted anything but a dalliance. She ought to pack her things and take the first morning train . . . back to Aunt Maryett, who was the closest thing to a mother she'd ever known.

Verity lifted her head. She could just make out, on the other side of the cemetery wall, her mother's headstone:

 

SARAH ANN

Wife of Ransloe Boone

 

Her father had lived alone with his grief, guarding his wife's grave, for fifteen years. No matter how humiliated and brokenhearted she was, Verity couldn't abandon him.

“Cousin Verity, are you all right?” Johnny leaned over her. He pulled a handkerchief, expertly starched and ironed by his mother, out of his pocket and offered it to her. “I don't know why Liza has to be so cruel. That is, I guess I do know. She likes your fellow. But he never even looked at her.”

Gratefully, Verity pressed the boy's handkerchief to her face.

“Mother puts such thoughts in her head, but you're so pretty,” Johnny said. “If I were Nathaniel, I wouldn't look twice at Liza, especially if you were my—I mean—”

She needed to stop her twelve-year-old cousin before he ended up pledging
his
love to her. “Johnny—” She broke off and stared past him, over his shoulder. “Who's that? Do you know that man?”

A young man with long, straggly locks of reddish-blond hair was talking to Liza on the other side of the cemetery. He awkwardly tried to drape a wreath of flowers over a grave, and she approached him to lend a hand.

Because the young man had only one hand of his own.

“No,” said Johnny. “I've never seen him before.”

Verity scrambled to her feet, recognizing the patient she'd overheard arguing with Hadley Jones last week. Even before the thinking part of her brain had caught up with her instinct, she was sprinting across the cemetery. “Liza,
run!
” she yelled.

Liza looked back with annoyance and did the exact opposite, stepping within reach of the one-armed young man—the one whose voice, Verity now realized, had spoken from the shadows in the alley on the night of the Fourth of July.

When he saw Verity running toward them, he tossed the flowers aside and grabbed Liza around the throat with his one hand. Liza staggered, her hands clawing uselessly at the one clenched around her neck. Then, recovering her wits, she started beating at his face.

Seeing Liza fight back, Verity diverted her path, her eye on a fallen tree branch, thick and sturdy. She scooped it up and kept running. This fellow had only one hand and could barely hold on to Liza. How could he harm Verity?

Hefting the branch over one shoulder, she ran straight at him. He jerked back and yanked Liza under his foreshortened arm, wrapping it tightly around her throat. Then his hand snaked into his coat pocket.

Verity skidded to a halt, a revolver leveled directly at her head.

“Drop it, Miss Boone,” he said, staring her down. His eyes were a surprising light blue.

Behind her, Johnny yelped in alarm. Glancing over her shoulder, Verity saw him struggling with a large figure who'd appeared from the woods behind the cemetery. She didn't need a good look to recognize this new arrival.

Across the street, Reverend White's house remained closed up tight. The Whites were not home and, Verity realized, had probably not sent any letter to the Thomas house.

Nate and her uncle were gone to Tamaqua, summoned by telegram.

Realizing just how gullible they all had been, Verity cast the tree branch to the ground in defeat.

ONCE THEY reached the woods behind the cemetery, the scar-faced man released Verity and Johnny with a shove. Johnny stumbled to his knees, but Verity steadied herself against a tree. She turned to face her assailant, rubbing her wrist where he'd gripped her.

Tall and broad-shouldered, he was just as formidable here as he'd been in the alley on the Fourth of July. Even more so: the darkness that night had concealed the vicious sneer on his face and the leering way his eyes wandered over her figure. Verity shuddered, and he laughed as though reading her mind.

“We've got an extra one, Harwood,” he said. “You weren't expecting
her,
were you?”

“Oh, I had a feeling Miss Boone would involve herself eventually.” The younger man pushed Liza toward her brother and cousin. “Tie this little hellcat's hands.” He felt gingerly at his face where Liza had scratched him.

Verity looked around for anybody or anything that could help them. There was nothing, of course, nothing but trees and rocks and the long incline down to the Shades of Death.

The man with the scars drew a length of twine and a pocketknife from inside his coat. With casual cruelty he wrapped the twine around Liza's wrists, twisting it tight enough to make her wince. He tied it off and cut it, then bound Johnny and Verity the same way.

“You going back for the woman?” Harwood asked.

“I'll need one of her children as a shield against her damned buckshot.”

“Take the boy. He's a sniveler.”

Johnny made an attempt to scramble away, but the scarred man grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back. “Can you handle both girls?”

Harwood threw his lank hair out of his eyes with a toss of his head and eyed his companion angrily. Verity saw he didn't appreciate having his weakness pointed out to their captives. “Tie the Thomas girl to my belt,” he ordered.

The other man took a section of his remaining twine and tethered an unhappy Liza to the one-armed man.

“We're going to take a walk, Miss Boone,” Harwood said in a mockingly pleasant voice. “Your cousin is coming with me, and you'll walk in front of us. If you move more than ten feet away from me, I'll shoot her. Then I'll cut her corpse loose and come after you. Do you understand me?”

Johnny bawled, and Liza trembled from head to foot, but Verity eyed him steadily. “I won't cause you any trouble,” she said with a calmness that surprised her. “You don't need to frighten the children.”

The man with the scar pushed Johnny ahead of him and started back through the woods. Harwood waved the gun at Verity. She looked into his eyes, suppressed a shudder, and then picked her way downhill between rocks and fallen tree limbs.

There was something strangely familiar about this man. She'd seen him briefly at Dr. Robbins's office, and on the Fourth of July she'd heard his voice. But now that they'd come face-to-face, Verity felt as if she knew him from somewhere else as well.

With their hands tied, Verity and Liza were unable to steady themselves against tree trunks or boulders as the ground grew steeper. Their captor tucked the gun into his belt so that he, at least, had his one hand free, but his infirmity left him off balance, especially with Liza tethered to his body. When she lost her footing and fell on her bottom, she nearly took him down with her. Verity turned around, hoping he would fall, but the young man grabbed a sturdy tree branch, bracing himself and stopping Liza's slide. Verity trudged back uphill to help Liza. The girls linked hands, and Verity pulled her cousin to her feet.

When Liza was steady, Harwood ordered Verity to back away, reaching for his gun. She stepped back obediently and felt him watching her as she preceded him down the hill.

Eventually they reached the lowlands by the river, where the ground was wet and slippery. Harwood called out, “Over there—that cabin.”

There was a cabin perched precariously on rocky ground near the edge of the bog, although
shed
might have been a more accurate term. It didn't seem large enough for anyone to make it a home, but when they entered, Verity could see that people had been living in it. There were two bedrolls on the floor, a couple of haversacks, and the smell of a recent fire in the tiny stove. Drying animal skins hung from nails on the wall, and fishing poles stood in a corner. A long table made of roughly hewn wood, heavily pockmarked and bloodstained, filled most of the space. Angrily, Verity thought the Catawissa search parties had been frustratingly incompetent if Harwood and his ugly companion had been hiding here all along.

The young man released Liza's tether and made them sit on the floor, in separate corners. Then he set the gun down on the table, turned his back to them, and began to untie the knotted sleeve over his stump. Verity kept her head down in an attitude of submission, watching through her lashes. Harwood was sweating from the effort of the walk, and when he eased back the sleeve from the stump, she could see he was in great discomfort. The amputated limb had been raw and swollen when she'd seen him in the doctor's office last week. Now it was inflamed even worse, with red lines radiating up from the stump.

Harwood cursed under his breath and rolled the sleeve back down, looking over his shoulder at his captives. Liza was staring at the floor, lost in her own misery, and when he turned his gaze on Verity, she had already cast her eyes down innocently as well.

But her mind was churning restlessly. If she wasn't mistaken, this man was ill, weakened by blood poisoning. If they were alone with him long enough, perhaps he would make a mistake.

The other man had gone for Aunt Clara. She supposed they were after the Revolutionary War treasure but hadn't gotten any satisfaction out of beating her uncle. Now they'd sent him on a wild goose chase while they kidnapped other members of his family. Nate was gone—too far away to help her—and Verity felt a pang remembering how she'd promised him she'd be careful. Instead, she'd left the house without telling anyone. Her father would be at work in the fields until dusk, and Beulah would assume she'd gone visiting.

She glanced up at the mysterious Mr. Harwood, who was now lighting a pipe with his one shaking hand. He'd probably been the person in the graveyard the night she'd walked down from her house. He'd been smoking a pipe and contemplating the deserter's grave, wondering where Silas Clayton had hidden his stolen treasure. She wondered if she dared ask him questions—
What are you going to do to us? If there is no gold or we can't tell you where to find it, will you let us go?
—but she decided there was no point. She feared she knew what answers he would give.

They'd been sitting on the floor of the cabin for half an hour when Liza began to sob quietly. Harwood, who'd been leaning against the opposite wall, smoking his pipe and looking pale, sighed. He laid down the pipe and bent over to remove a war-issue canteen from one of the bedrolls. “Do you want water?” he asked roughly.