Poison to Purge Melancholy (26 page)

Horse dunked his bread in his gravy. “Foot said Marcy played matchmaker. Set you and him up.”

“She did?” Irene’s wide eyes widened impossibly further as she sipped her wine. “She never told me that.”

Miss Maggie, meanwhile, was staring through the pantry to the kitchen. She leaned forward, then back, as if to get a better angle. “Gladys, I believe someone’s at your back door. Could’ve sworn I saw a shadow.”

Evelyn nearly tipped over his chair as he dashed out. Miss Maggie followed him, and Glad stood, watching after them from the pantry doorway. I couldn’t hear Evelyn and Miss Maggie after they passed into the kitchen and once more, I marveled at the house’s weird acoustics.

Miss Maggie returned after a moment, carrying a small piece of paper. “Not the back door. The window across from it. I should have known—the sun’s coming in on the west side, which is why I saw a shadow. Anyway, someone jammed this under the wood on one of the panes, on the outside facing in.”

As she held it up, I exclaimed, “Another card! The Queen of Spades this time.”

Evelyn came in, out of breath, his face grim.

“Did you see who left it?” I asked.

He looked at Glad, blinking nervously. “Just someone playing a prank—a child, that’s all.” He reached for the wine decanter. “While I’m up, more wine anyone?”

We settled back down to finish dinner, everyone’s nerves frayed, with the possible exception of Horse, who helped himself to thirds on everything. I asked Glad a few questions about colonial Christmas foods, which she answered eagerly. Evelyn and Miss Maggie joined in, providing a comparison of traditional English fare (roast beef and mince pie) versus traditional Virginia fare (ham and apples). At Miss Maggie’s urging, I gave them a rundown of traditional Italian menus and Sachi, traditional Japanese.

We at last pushed away from the table and filed back toward the parlor. Hugh headed for the stairs, but I grabbed his hand. “Hey, I want to talk to you.”

“First let me check on Foot, okay?”

“Take your time,” Miss Maggie told him. “I need Pat for a little while. And Hugh, send Acey down. Tell her we’ll be in her room. Sachiko included.”

“Will do.” He squeezed my hand before letting go, then took the steps two at a time.

Since I didn’t feel like puking, I knew I’d find Beth Ann at my side. Sure enough. Sachi was right behind her. Horse was already in the parlor, but Irene was still in the hall, chewing her bottom lip as she gazed up the stairs after Hugh, so I couldn’t ask Miss Maggie what she had in mind.

“Come on,” she urged, herding us along the hall to the back room. “Time’s a-wasting.”

With the afternoon waning and the remaining sunlight coming in the opposite side of the house, this room seemed downright gloomy. I switched on the vanity lamp. The sofabed, I noticed, hadn’t been made—just the sheets yanked up over the pillows and the quilt straightened.

We waited for Acey, who came in a few seconds later, looking wide awake and not at all in need of a rest. I wondered what she’d been up to while we were snarfing down course two.

Miss Maggie shut the door and waved toward the bed. “Have a seat, all of you. I want to explain to Sachi why this house is making her sick.”

With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I plopped down near the pillow end, next to Beth Ann.

“Sick?” Acey echoed, turning to her friend as they sat side by side at the bottom. “How sick?”

“Not in any way you could cure,” Miss Maggie said. “Pat and Sachi have been experiencing the symptoms of heavy metal poisoning we talked about at dinner, but theirs are ghost-induced.”

Acey opened her mouth, then seemed to change her mind.

Miss Maggie described my symptoms, telling how they go away in the newer part of the house, and whenever I touch a Lee.

“That’s why you were all over Hugh last night,” Acey said. “I didn’t figure you for the clingy type.”

I nodded. “I don’t seem to have to touch Beth Ann like I do Hugh. I only have to be beside her, with no one in between.”

“Women are better healers,” Acey quipped. “You say this ghost doesn’t bother anyone with Lee blood? Or do I mean Carson blood? What about Cherry and Irene? I’ll bet good money Cherry didn’t go upstairs because she was feeling sick. She just wanted to snoop. And I don’t think Irene’s felt ill since she got here—hard to say, though, with that dumb blonde act of hers.”

“I have a theory.” Miss Maggie paused for dramatic effect. She learned that teaching thirteen-year-olds. “I asked Evelyn about his assistant. The man’s African-American.”

“Like Zela,” I exclaimed, then told Acey, Sachi, and Beth Ann who Zela was.

“That student I mentioned at dinner,” Acey said. “He was black, too. And Sachi’s Japanese-American. So we have a bigoted ghost?”

“A ghost reflecting the beliefs of the age,” Miss Maggie said. “Remember, most blacks living in Williamsburg in the 1700s were slaves. Free blacks wouldn’t have been treated better. And probably no one in this household had ever seen an Asian.”

Acey nudged her chin towards me. “What about Pat? Your ghost has something against Italians?”

“Possibly.” Miss Maggie gave me a once over. “Possibly something else altogether. I’ll get to that in a minute.”

I shook my head at her—a silent plea for her not to tell Acey about my Other World run-ins.

“I might have seen this ghost,” Acey said. “If she’s a teenager with scoliosis. Curvature of the spine.”

“Aunt Acey,” Beth Ann cried, “you saw Polly? Me, too.”

Acey raised her eyebrows. “So she
wasn’t
a figment of that brown ale I had as a nightcap? I saw her, all right. Right after I turned out the light and got into bed last night. She was standing in the doorway there—I could just see her in the moonlight coming down the hall. Which is why I thought it was a hallucination. I knew I’d closed the door. Her name’s Polly?”

“Polly Carson,” Miss Maggie explained. “Elizabeth’s daughter. Was she doing anything?”

“She glanced down the hall, then back at me. Twice.” Acey wrinkled up her nose as she tried to remember. “It was like she wanted to tell me something was happening, or someone was coming. The whole thing lasted all of three seconds, if that. Then she was gone, and I diagnosed her as a hypnagogic dream, brought on by stress. Or Evelyn’s oyster pie.”

“I didn’t have the pie or the ale,” Beth Ann pointed out. “We both saw her, Aunt Acey.”

“Okay, we saw her.” Acey pulled her legs up onto the bed and crossed them. “If I remember what Ma’s told me, Polly didn’t die until she was something like sixty. Why would she haunt this house as a teenager? And why is she making people sick?”

“She isn’t,” Miss Maggie said. “John Brennan is. The other ghost.” She told who he was, how he died, and what she suspected about his poisoning.

“Wow. Two ghosts.” Acey turned to Sachi. “We never had this much fun in Ma’s other house. Well, if we want Brennan to leave you guys alone, we need to avenge his murder. How hard can that be? We’ll hire a medium, have a seance, and ask Brennan who killed him. Then we impose the death penalty, which should be easy, since the culprit’s already dead.”

“Don’t make fun, Aunt Acey. Just ’cause you don’t believe in ghosts—”

“I do, Squirt. At least, I’m open to the possibility. I believe in a lot more things in heaven and earth than my brothers ever will. But what can we do about it? Nothing I learned in med school prepared me to treat a poisoning-slash-shooting victim who’s been dead more than two centuries.”

Beth Ann frowned, then looked at me. “You can do something, can’t you, Pat?”

“Like what?” Acey asked.

I was at a loss for words. Miss Maggie replied for me. “Pat has some special skills in this area. But I won’t say anything more. It’s up to her.”

“Please?” Beth Ann said. “Before he makes you and Sachi seriously ill?”

I scanned the faces around me—concerned, curious, genuinely pleading. This last got me in the gut. Saying no to Beth Ann when she looked like that wasn’t an option. “Okay, I’ll try.” To Acey, I said, “You can’t tell Hugh about this.”

“He’d freak,” Beth Ann assured her aunt.

Acey crossed her heart, holding up her hand. “He won’t hear a word from me. What are you going to do?”

“Beth Ann, give me your hands,” I said.

“Aunt Acey, too. She might help.”

“She might at that.” I held out my left hand to Acey. “Make a circle with me and Beth Ann.”

“Wait,” Miss Maggie said to me. “I told Acey all this for a reason—so you’d have a doctor present if you decided to try another trance. I want Acey’s hands free, in case you need help.”

“You’re sneaky, Miss Maggie.”

I let go, but Acey merely switched her grip from my hand to my wrist, saying, “I can maintain contact and monitor your pulse at the same time. Trance, huh? Sachi, get my bag. Over on the floor there. Let me take Pat’s vitals before she starts.”

So I had my temperature, pulse, and blood pressure taken. Ninety-seven-point-four, seventy-nine, and one-thirty-five-over-seventy-two, respectively.

“A tad high,” Acey commented. “Nervous?”

“Antsy,” I replied. “Let’s get this over with before Hugh comes looking for me.”

We made our little circle and I closed my eyes.

Almost immediately I smelled wood smoke and the aromas of cooking food. I felt warmth on my face, cold air on the back of my neck, and something thin and heavy in my hands. The visuals formed more slowly, but when all was clear, I found myself before the dining room hearth, using my apron as a potholder to lift a cast iron kettle, about two gallons in size, filled with some kind of stew. Setting the pot beside me, I turned back to the tall trivet that had supported it, with the intention of stoking the fire beneath.

“O blessed Season! lov’d by Saints and Sinners,
For long Devotions, or for longer Dinners.”

—from
Poor Richard’s Almanac
, December 1739

December 25, 1783—Home

’Twas Mother’s custom after
devotions to linger in the church vestibule, greeting reverend, gentry, and the wealthier merchants. “My mother did the same,” she once told me, “and thus made a good marriage for me. So shall I for you and Thomas.” She felt, however, that children were best not present at such exchanges, and so my brother and I were always sent home ahead of her, to see to our chores.

Mother had planned an elaborate Christmas feast—twenty receipts to each course. Yet, with our small table and but one large serving platter, the bounty of each offering would be compromised. No matter, for only Mr. Dunbar was expected to partake with us. I feared more that our receipts should lack in other respects. We could afford little meat: three pigeons, a rasher of bacon, a leg of mutton—rather old and fatty—and a squirrel Tom had killed in our yard yesterday morn. All else needed to be fashioned from flour, sugar, suet, turnips, onions, potatoes, apples, and some few eggs.

I set to work at the hearth. From the squirrel, Mother had made a pottage, which was simmering over glowing embers and needed only to have the fire stoked beneath it, as did the pudding. Yet, when I reached for fuel, I found but two quarter logs beside the hearth.

“Tom, did you bring in wood this morning?”

He did not pause as he dragged a sack of potatoes to the table. “I did indeed. Four quarters.”

“Four? Only four?”

“None of the rooms upstairs required more firewood and Mr. Brennan no longer has need of it. Mother brought three logs down from his room and set them there at hearthside. Two and a half, anyway. One was part burned.”

“They’re not there now.”

“One of the lodgers must have carried them to his room.” Tom made no move to find out, but settled himself at the table with a paring knife.

“Well, we haven’t enough wood for dinner,” I said. “You should have known we’d need more today. Go bring some in. At least another six.”

He shook his head. “Mother told me to skin these potatoes and I mean to have half of them done when she walks through the door.”

“So that you might get permission to go out with Mr. Walker on the eve of New Year, I suppose.”

Tom smiled but did not move from his post. I might have mentioned that a shortage of firewood would earn Mother’s anger as easily as a shortage of pared potatoes, but to save time, I went out to the woodpile myself.

Upon my return from church, I’d removed my gown and donned my apron, so to keep my best clothes from soiling. Now the wind on my arms made me shiver, and thus I ran from door to woodpile, cursing my brother when I found no split logs.

“Mistress, you shall catch your death on such a day.” Mr. Dunbar was at the very end of the yard, beside the pile on which we discarded our ash, meat bones, and rubbish.

The unheralded sight of him made me first speechless, then as I noticed the half-burned log in his hand, curious. “Sir? Did you take that from the dining room hearth?”

“No, mistress.” He came across the yard to the chopping stump. “I found it buried ’neath the ashes and garbage, as you can see from my appearance.” The arms of his coat were indeed the worse for ash. He set the log upon the block and removed his outer garment, shaking and brushing it clean, then draped the coat about my shoulders. I no longer felt cold, but not for use of the raiment.