A Curse Dark as Gold (27 page)

I frowned at her in silence a moment longer, meeting her stubborn gaze. She turned away before I did, giving her son a shove.

I had little time to reflect on that conversation, for Randall drove into town just in time to see the new wheel hauled into place. I watched him park the buggy in the yard and toss a coin to one of the lads, who led the horses away.

"Haul away, lads, easy there!" bellowed Harte, and I looked away for a moment, to watch the men heave hard on great levers and lift the wheel enough to slide the blocks beneath. When I looked back, Randall was jogging over the slick wet grass.

Suddenly, I saw him fall.

I saw his boots hit a slippery patch, watched him lose his footing, gasped as he pitched headlong into the pit. I heard the great painful crack of the rotted sluice gates giving way, sending the pent-up water racing down the channel like a burst of storm tide.

I stifled a scream and grappled against the wall for a handhold. I squeezed my eyes closed for a count of five and then looked up again, and all was as it should be. The work continued -- Randall had paused to chat with one of the hands -- and up the race, the sluice gates still held fast. No one else had seen it -- yet it had seemed so
real!
I pressed a hand to my waist and took several ragged breaths. Ten feet below me, the cold damp stones of the wheelpit lay smooth and worn beneath the curve of the wheel.

Fighting vertigo, I stared back at them, waiting.
What is it?
I asked them silently.
What are you trying to show me?
Was it a message -- or a threat? I was still staring at the pit when Randall slipped in beside me, circling my waist with his arms.

"It's freezing out here. Here." He draped his frock coat round my shoulders, and I stood stiff and still, smiling and pretending I was glad to see him there.

I could not stand to watch them all crawling around the empty pit much longer. Pleading a chill, I retreated inside the mill, with Randall's overwhelming approval. At first I just sat, listening to the clamor of the work outside. Harte's voice hollering, the creak of the ropes ... but as I listened, the sounds seemed to shift, subtly -- a shout, in a strange voice, thickly accented -- a sound of hammer on stone. I could not hear the river, not even a gentle ripple as it flowed past the mill.

I started, as out of a dream.
Oh, mercy.

I yanked book after book from the shelves, flipped through pages, tossed them aside again. May Day celebrations, funeral bills, awkward transitions of handwriting as the mill changed hands, over and again through the years. But nothing I sought, nothing near old enough. We had records going back to the days of Stirwaters's founder, but none at all from the building of the mill. And I could not credit that.

Rosie came in at length and found me pacing the office, the ledger from Edmund Miller's day in my arms. "We're getting ready to open up the sluice," she said. "Start the water flowing again. We thought you'd want to see."

I barely heard her. "They dammed the river, didn't they?"

Rosie paused. "Who?"

"When they built Stirwaters -- they had to dam the river. When the water wasn't running past --
that's
the only time a curse could be laid down. Biddy Tom told us, remember? And that's when someone drowned here -- it must be the same person."

She came in a few steps and pried the volume from my hands. "That's some trick," she said, "cursing somebody with your lungs full of the Stowe."

"I thought you believed all this!"

"Well, when
you
say it, I've got to admit it starts to sound a little cockeyed."

I sighed and leaned against the desk, one hand pressed to my skirts. Rosie came to me and put an arm round my waist.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "You're not yourself lately." And wasn't that the truth.

Harte and Rosie's work proved true: In place at last, the new wheel functioned beautifully. As it turned easily in the water, so turned the seasons, and before we knew it wool market days were upon us again. After a year, I should have felt more confident, strolling into the woolshed to face the woolmen, but I didn't. I bought less wool than last year and paid more for it. I wasn't pushing my luck.

"Wouldn't it make more sense to buy
more
wool, and have a cushion?" Rosie protested; but I disagreed: Better to prepare for the worst by having less to risk.

I wanted to check this theory against my husband's expertise, but Randall was absent more often these days. I knew he was working hard at the bank, in anticipation of our baby's birth, so he could be here with me more afterward -- but I was torn. I wanted him here with me, and yet I didn't. I couldn't look at him without seeing him flail and struggle under the rushing water of the millstream. And so I helped him pack, and loaded him onto the carriage or the stage, and said nothing.

With the new wheel up, and the spring wool tucked away in the woolshed, the season got off to a robust start. Porter & Byrd had renewed their confidence in us, sending us a modest commission cheque and placing another hefty order. Halfheartedly, I submitted an application for reinstatement at Worm Hill, but it no longer seemed necessary to pin our fortunes on the Harrowgate market. Mrs. Parmenter sent a cordial letter offering to buy more gold thread, should we find ourselves in possession of more of the same. Hastily, I shoved that note to the back of a desk drawer.

The millhands seemed happy to be back at work, as well. Now that hands were no longer idle, tongues were likewise busy once again. And the chief subject of examination that cold bright spring? The Miller progeny.

I hadn't expected to keep it a secret long; Shearing
gossip is like another tributary of the Stowe, after all. But I was unprepared for how swiftly I became the subject of rapt attention and unbidden advice. I smiled thinly and bore it, feeling like the prize heifer at a stock show.

"She's carrying high, like her mam," said Mrs. Drover, weeks before anything of the sort was remotely perceptible. "That means a girl."

"Aye," concurred Mrs. Hale. "Make sure you drink a lot of milk, now, lassie; and stay clear from too many flowers. You don't want the wee lass to grow up wandersome."

"Why is everyone so convinced it's a girl?" Randall asked, amused, one bright afternoon as we rode home together from fetching the post and restocking the larder. Mrs. Post had just, with utter seriousness, advised a preparation of mole's feet and spearmint, hung round the neck. I hunched down inside my cloak, not wanting to answer him. Spoken aloud, the notion would sound preposterous, but I knew the truth of it. Millers had no luck with boys; better to hope from the start the baby would be female.

"They're probably right," Randall continued. "After all, in seven tries, our mothers only managed to produce one boy. One in seven odds -- fairly good in favor of our little foal being a filly!" He reached over to pat me on the belly.

"Two in eight," I whispered, flinching away.

"What?"

I said it a little louder. "I had a brother once: Thomas. He lived a week. That's when my mother died."

Randall slowed the carriage and turned to me. "My God, Charlotte, why didn't you ever tell me?" He put one strong arm round my shoulders and squeezed tight. "Did Mrs. Tom say there was any cause for concern?"
Hadn't she? But I shook my head.

He tipped my chin toward his face and kissed my forehead. "There. You're young and strong; there's nothing to be afraid of."

I laid my cheek against his chest, straining to hear his heartbeat through his coat, but all I heard was the groan and creak of the old millwheel, spilling Millers down into the raging river one by one.

Things were little better at the mill. As if Stirwaters were determined that I should get no work at all done this year, the millhands would not let me near my spinning jack, citing old Gold Valley superstitions that the babe would grow up to be hanged! Woolwashing, dyeing, and fulling were likewise out. So was standing for too long, climbing too many stairs, or working too near a window. I lost track of which of these precautions were for my protection -- and which for theirs. Never mind that pregnant workers had made their way through Stirwaters for generations; this was a Miller baby, and no one would take any chances.

I must admit, I was less scornful of such beliefs than I had once been.

One afternoon as spring hinted toward summer, I worked late in the office, tidying up some figures in the account books. At last, satisfied but weary, I rose from the desk and bent all over to work the stiffness out of my spine. As I stepped out into the empty spinning room, I glanced toward the wall with the hex sign and started, my heart in my throat.

A figure stood in the shadows there, shoulders hunched. It took me a moment to realize it was Bill Penny, who I'd not seen in months. He had changed over the winter, shrunken and aged; he seemed half the size he'd been at his daughter's funeral. His clothes hung on him like sacking, and there was a huge, unmended tear in the sleeve of his coat. It looked as though he'd been sleeping in it, but the eyes he turned to me were sober ones.

"You pulled all the water out," he said, twisting his hat in trembling fingers. "I saw you."

"What? Oh, the wheelpit. Of course -- we had to. For the new wheel."

"Did you see him? He comes here, sometimes, you know."

"Who's that?" It had been a long afternoon and my feet hurt. I was looking forward to propping them up on the petit-point footstool in the parlor at the Grange while Colly rubbed my swollen ankles with peppermint oil. I was not attending him as closely as I ought.

"Did you know my Annie?"

I shook my head. "No, Mr. Penny, I didn't." I had seen her, of course -- it was hard to mistake the Penny children -- but they kept to themselves, and I had no occasion to meet the girl.

"She were such a pretty un," he said -- which was patently untrue, but hardly a thought you'd begrudge a mourning father. "She had such pretty brown eyes, like two ripe chestnuts. An' she carried her dolly wi' her everywhere."

I nodded. "I saw it -- at the funeral." I had hardly meant to make that admission, but I could not retract it now.

Bill's eyes burst open and he broke into a laugh that made me reconsider his sobriety. "Ye saw that, did ye, miss?
I tricked her, I did! She'll stay down if she got her dolly, won't she?"

The bleary eyes were beseeching. "Of course she will," I said, not at all certain what I was promising.

"But you'll tell me, won't you? If you see her? You'll tell Bill Penny if his Annie-girl comes round here."

"Comes here! Why should she come here?"

Bill nodded solemnly, conspiratorially. "Because this is where all the ghosts come."

I went cold.

"You know, miss -- they're all around ye. The young lad, and th' angry one, and the master that was --"

I held my hands tight at my sides. "My father?"

A creak on the staircase nearly undid me. I looked up to see Harte framed there, his expression uncharacteristically dark.

"Is there some trouble here, Mistress?" he asked, glaring at poor befuddled Bill.

"Of course not, Harte. Please find Mr. Penny some task where he can be useful." I uncoiled my fingers and gave them a stretch. Harte gave me a long, appraising look before nodding.

"As you wish. Come along, then, Penny." He caught him by the arm and was none too gentle steering him from the room. The last words I heard were "come back when you've cleaned yourself up."

Harte returned a few minutes later, during which time I'd moved to the office, but had not managed to rouse myself from the fog I'd caught from Mr. Penny. What had he meant? Was I now to believe we were not only cursed, but haunted as well?
Harte let himself into the office. "They've all gone home now, Mistress," he said. "And if you don't mind, I'll be locking the place up and heading back to my rooms."

"Of course," I said. "Thank you, Harte."

He lingered in the doorway a moment longer, and then came all the way in and sat down on the corner of my desk. He lifted the iron ingot, hefted it, and then set it down again. "Look, Mistress," he said. "Don't think I'm forgetting who's master here, but I don't like this."

I frowned. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"I know you're trying to be charitable, and that's well and good, but that Penny's a bad sort. Your Mrs. Baker and my own mam were sisters, as y'know, and Maire Stokes -- Mrs. Penny that was -- grew up right nearby them. They'd tell tales about those folk as would make your hair curl, ma'am. Peas in a pod, that Maire and her husband. I think they'd make the Eagans look like the saints themselves." He grinned, but I could tell it was only to pacify me. He saw nothing amusing in his words. "Can you tell me what he said that had you so shook up?"

I frowned. "What?"

"Ah, Mistress -- I saw that look on your face from clear 'cross the spinning room. Like you'd seen a ghost. Now, I don't know what you and Miss Rosie have been up to here at all hours lately, and it's none of my business, at that -- but when a man in your employ frightens you, I think I'm fair within my rights to speak out against it. Is he threatening you with something?"