A Curse Dark as Gold (3 page)

"What are you looking at?" Rosie asked, coming round my shoulder and peering up at the mill.

"Why haven't those missing slates on the roof been replaced? And this decking --" I kicked at the rotted boards. "It's falling apart; someone is bound to put a foot through that and break an ankle."

"Someone?" Rosie said, eyebrow cocked.

"Very well. I don't want the first impression Mam's brother has of us to be that we're an utter ruin. She'd be ashamed of what's become of Stirwaters."

Rosie was smiling. "I think it's a fine idea. Let's round up the troops."

As the millhands drifted in, we tried to recruit help patching holes, sealing cracks, scrubbing moss and lichen, whitewashing, limewashing, and painting. My suggestions met a mixture of sullen, earthward gazes and the odd snicker.

"What is it?" I demanded. "If it's about the extra work, I'll pay overtime."

Amid the feet-shuffling and muttering, Jack Townley spoke up. "Mistress, do you really think you're the first one to try to fix the old place up?" He shook his head. "It's always the same, then, ain't it? New miller comes in and puts a few patches on, tidies up the workrooms, buys a new machine. But it don't take. Why do you think your da' turned into such a tinker? Because this mill don't
want
to be fixed up."

"The mill doesn't want to be fixed? You can't be serious." But the faces of my workers, grim and set, told a different story.

"Nay, Mistress. We all know you don't want to hear it, and aye, we'll do our best by you and put paint or nails where you like 'em, but you wait -- in the end, it won't make a spit of difference."

"What nonsense. Harte --" I turned to him.

"Ma'am, all I know is I can't get that number three jack to work. If it's not rust, and it's not mechanical..." He shrugged. "Ask Rosie what she thinks."

Rosie shook her kerchiefed head. "I've seen repairs take as often as not in this old place. You just have to appreciate its ... spirit."

I nodded, satisfied, and glanced over my assembled workers again, but missed a face in my count. "Where's Bill Penny?"
Somebody snickered. "Mayhap he's been taken by fairies."

"You mean spirits? Dead drunk at Mrs. Drover's, I'll wager." I shook my head. Why hadn't I listened to my father? He never would hire a Penny, called the lot of them lazy drunk and unreliable. "If anyone sees Mr. Penny, be certain to mention that I will dock him a day's pay for every hour he misses this week." Not that I would -- but just then I was sore tempted.

"Nay, Mistress --" I looked over. Young Paddy Eagan, a serious lad who'd quietly worked his way up from runner boy to apprentice spinner, was shaking his head, dark eyes wide and urgent. "Annie Penny -- they're our neighbors, the Pennys -- says she hasn't seen her da' in three days. Took off into the hills one day and just disappeared."

"Well, he wasn't taken by fairies," I said. "That's absurd."

"It's spring, though, ma'am -- April first, it was, and a Friday at that -- that's when they're like to snatch you."

"April first? All Fools' Day? God help us." More likely Bill Penny had "took off" into the hills to escape the wool-washing, or the roof-thatching -- or Mrs. Penny. But it did little good to say as much. For all our practicality, Gold Valley folk are stubbornly superstitious, happy to blame the least little oddity on the Fair Folk or the Old Ones. Everyone has their corn dollies, their kitchen imps, their blue doorsteps and windowsills. Any outsider driving through the village would think it quaint country fashion -- all that blue at the front of houses -- but in truth it's a warding: meant to keep fairies and spirits where they belong, up in the hills and away from decent folk. I had never paid any of it much mind.
I tipped my hat back and regarded everyone. "Is there anything else we need to blame on spooks and goblins? Good. If we're quite finished, I believe we all have work to do. And if you put so much as a
speck
of blue paint on those doors, Jack Townley, I swear to God I will sack you so fast you'll be in Trawney before you realize you're out of a job!"

I went to bed that night weary but satisfied from a hard day spent scraping moss from limestone. Repairs progressed slowly -- Stirwaters folk might drag their feet and grumble, but their work was loyal and true. I felt sure we would at least
look
a little more sound when our uncle arrived.

We had shuffled our bedrooms in anticipation of his visit, and I was now in Father's room (neither Rosie nor I had been ready to have a stranger -- even an uncle -- sleeping in his bed). Half undressed, I sank onto the edge of the old iron bedstead and looked round me. This room, with its worn counterpane and faded red paper on the walls, had always seemed warm and comforting when Father was alive. Without him, it was merely dark and shabby. Low bookshelves sat into the walls by the fireplace, their books untouched, unread, coated with a layer of soot and shadows.

I bent low and retrieved one, blowing the dust from its spine as I heaved it up onto the bed. In the flickering candlelight, the drawings inside seemed to come alive. Before he inherited Stirwaters, my father had trained to become a mapmaker, and over the years he'd compiled an atlas of maps and drawings he'd made of the Gold Valley. How I had loved this book as a child! I had spent hours folding out the long pages across my lap, tracing the lines of rivers or the curving ornamental script. Here was a map of Shearing, showing Stirwaters at center, with the bakehouse next door and the smithy across the road, our names marked out in tiny precise letters that bore little resemblance to my father's usual untidy hand. Here a view of Stirwaters, the building cut open to reveal the movement of gears inside. One of my favorites was a map of the land surrounding Haymarket, where Mam and our uncle had grown up.

The land, heavily wooded according to the dark swirls etched onto the page, spread out into the hills before smoothing out to green farmland. Lakes like blots of ink dotted the hillside, each with a haunting, beautiful name. I had wondered over each strange site in turn, trying to picture the occasions that had given rise to Gallowstock, Simple Cross, or Bone Weir.

I looked at it now, following the twisting roadway from Haymarket west toward Shearing, imagining the path that had brought Mam and Father together, and the road that now led our uncle here. Back again to Shearing, where Rosie and I were held fast -- tonight the cutaway Stirwaters seemed oddly foretelling: block after block chipped out of the mill, leaving only a windblown ruin clinging to its foundation.

A scratch at my door pulled me from my musings. The door creaked open, and there was Rosie in her nightdress, candle stub held aloft. "I'm too tired to sleep," she said, cupping her hand to puff out the flame. "I'm sure I won't be able to walk tomorrow, after being up and down that ladder all day. Is that Father's old atlas s?"

Her hand reached out to touch the inky Crosshatch of Stirwaters's millwheel. We climbed into bed together, as we had more and more often these last weeks, and Rosie took the album, turning to a pen-and-ink rendering of a spinning jack, each belt, gear, and spindle given the same meticulous detail, all the way down the long carriage.

As she turned the pages, something fluttered to the counterpane. I picked it up -- a dried sprig of some herb or tree; hemlock, perhaps. I twisted it before my lips, breathing in its dusty perfume. On one page, Father had done a study of all the old local superstitions: sketches of the charms and symbols used to bring luck or ward off evil, notes on various customs still observed. There was a list of things one mustn't do on Friday -- frightfully comprehensive, from getting haircuts to getting married; a hex symbol like a mystical compass rose, rubbed in with a smear of purple; one of the twisted straw effigies known as corn dollies. That was just like Father. He had spent one entire summer trying to learn the knack to tying the straw, only to abandon it when another passion seized him in the fall.

One entire summer during which he'd let the millworks fall into disrepair, the weavers fend for themselves, and the bills all go unpaid.

Not native to Shearing, Father had been fascinated with the traditions of the Gold Valley. When Mam was alive, she had scorned them, but gently, with humor; after her death, it was almost a mania with him. He became convinced that all the mill's troubles -- from sheep that gave poor fleeces to workers who showed up late -- were to blame on the legendary Stirwaters Curse.
The Stirwaters Curse.
I had grown up hearing those words every time something went the least bit awry. True, we Millers did tend to more than our share of bad luck -- from the very first Miller of Shearing, old Harlan, who had built Stirwaters and this house. But down through the years of market collapses and roof collapses -- which could happen to anybody -- one dark thread bound the Millers apart from ordinary ill luck: No Miller had ever raised a son who lived to inherit Stirwaters. The mill had been handed down along a crazy zigzag path from brother to cousin to nephew ... to daughter. Stirwaters could only be inherited by Millers, and Rosie and I were the only ones left.

It was all foolishness, so far as I could tell. There wasn't anything to be done and no blame to lay for bad wool; and a little more diligent management would clear up the rest of our problems. And as for the sons ... tragic coincidence, nothing more.

But Father would have none of that; it was easier to believe in some nefarious supernatural force that meant us ill, than it was to buckle down and do the work. He had even spent a hundred pounds one year for a so-called cunning man to "lay" the curse -- one hundred pounds that could have bought a newer spinning machine or paid our Cloth Exchange license for twenty years. Or made sure Rosie and I had shoes that fit and dinner on the table every night.

With Rosie lost in Father's atlas, I leaned my head against the bedframe and closed my eyes, telling myself it was not disloyal to hope that my uncle -- even now hastening down those winding paths -- might bring good things to this family.

Sunday afternoon we heard the crunch of wheels on the shale drive and ran upstairs to peer out the garret window in the landing.

"Is that him? Oh, that can't be him!"
"No," I said finally, staring at the man in the carriage and thinking of the violet ink and perfumed paper of his letter. "I think it must be."

The carriage pulled right up below us, so close we could see the gleam of gold thread in the passenger's coat as he gestured to the coachman. Now, don't believe that Shearing -- for all our country ways -- is a village devoid of any sense of propriety or fashion; we are not. But our mode has certainly never tended toward embroidered waistcoats at midday or such elaborately powdered hair. This --
this
was our Uncle Wheeler?

The gentleman sprang down from the carriage, and I caught a flash of violet stockings and large, terribly shiny shoe buckles. He brushed something invisible from his tapestry sleeves and picked his way across the shale to our doorstep.

Rosie pulled herself away from me and hurried down the stairs.

"Wait," I called. "I think we should change our clothes." We had worn nothing special for this first meeting with our kinsman, just our everyday dress from life at the mill -- plain, serviceable, and old.

Rosie gave me a look. "Good," she said. "I'll just put on the blue silk I wore to meet the king, and what will you wear?"

In the end we went as we were, though I was tucking strands of my hair into place as Rosie opened the front door. Our caller drew back, one slender hand at his cravat, and regarded us with ... what? What did that look say? I squeezed tight against Rosie and twisted another strand of hair back behind my ear.
"Uncle . ., Mr.... Wheeler?" I said at last, and the gentleman in my threshold swept the ostrich-feather hat from his head and bowed low.

"Ellison Wheeler at your service, my dears." He stepped inside, and Rosie and I took a quick step backward, out of the range of that hat. "Dear Charlotte," Uncle Wheeler said, holding his arms wide. "You are the very picture of your father. I'd have known you for James's child anywhere."

I smiled, surprised. No one ever said so; was it true?

"And Rosellen, such a beauty! Have you broken many a young man's heart?"

"Not lately, sir." Rosie's voice sounded flat, but she did have the grace to curtsey.

"Here now, have your girl bring in my trunks, and we'll just get to know one another." He removed his gloves -- kid-skin white as snow, with hands beneath nearly as pure -- and strode into the parlor.

Dismayed, I twined my fingers in my apron strings behind my back. "I'm afraid there isn't anyone," I finally said. "Won't the coachman bring them?"

He spun to face me. "No servants? Oh, my poor dears. No wonder everything looks the way it does. We must take care of that, first thing. But certainly, Rosellen, fetch the coachman. I have some little trinkets in there for you both, so don't let him drop them."

I took a deep awkward breath. "Rosie and I are both so glad you've come to visit. Won't you please sit down? I'll fetch us some tea." That was Gold Valley strategy: When all else fails, bring in the food.

I got Uncle Wheeler seated on the faded sofa with the warmed-over coffee and dry cakes and, my courage failing me, went to help Rosie with the trunks. After dragging two big portmanteaux and a hat case up to my bedroom, we divided forces. Rosie retreated to the kitchen to fix the supper she'd been planning for days, and I returned to our uncle.