A Curse Dark as Gold (31 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two
I fled
the Millhouse then, as close to tears as I'd been since Father died. I didn't want to believe it. Father's letter -- it had been in his hand, his blotchy, inky script; his grief-stricken voice rising up from so many years ago.
Motherless babes now. I can't believe she's gone -- and the boy.
How could that be false?

How could I have been taken in?

Rosie and Harte were still huddled in the millyard, and they watched me anxiously as I lurched toward Stirwaters.

"Charlotte --" My sister reached for my arm, but I shook her off. "Where are you going?"

"Where do you think?"

Up in the office, I searched like a mad thing. Where was it? I flipped through the atlas and could not find the page. The gears in the spinning room rattled and shook as if some phantom wind tore through them. At last I remembered -- that page had come loose after our first encounter, and I'd tucked it away. But it was not in the drawer where I was sure I had left it, so I pulled the contents of the desk out willy-nilly, strewing papers and pen nibs everywhere. Finally, one of the drawers stuck, so I knelt and reached back inside. There! I found it jammed behind the drawer.
I twisted it free, and yanked my hand back with a hiss when I caught my skin on a sharp corner. I stuck my bleeding knuckle into my mouth and gently withdrew the paper with my other hand. Smoothing out the creases, I read aloud the words of Father's spell to summon aid.

Nothing happened. I read it again.

"Bluh --" It came out as a croak. I swallowed, my mouth dry, and started over. "Blood and bone, I summon thee. Hearth and home, I summon thee. Earth and sky, I summon thee." Something rustled in the corner of the office. I glanced up, but there was nothing. "From far and nigh, come now to me. Blood to bone, I summon thee ..."

Over and over I read the spell, with the same result each time. I found a lump of chalk in the desk and scrawled a hasty circle round myself on the floor. I cast aside the glass from a lamp, to serve as a candle. I emptied a packet of mandrake root from the dyeshed into the circle.
Blood to bone, I summon thee....

I spent all night in Stirwaters -- pacing, waiting. I sat in the office for as long as I could be still. I climbed the stairs to the attic twenty times or more. I came outside and circled the building. I went
anywhere
I thought he might be. I stood by the wall with the hex sign for an hour, then knelt there, then sat, then lay down on my side with my head on my elbow, and at last fell asleep. I awoke sometime before dawn, horribly stiff. And alone.

Someone had been there -- some time in the night someone had covered me with a length of plaid blanket cloth, tucked some folds beneath my head. Was it Harte or Rosie? I knew not, but it was a measure of our desperation that whoever it was had not awakened me, but left me to my vigil.
By half past seven in the morning, the guards had arrived: Two burly men with the look of tavern-brawlers set themselves up at Stirwaters's yardside doors. Another walked the yard, and one much gentler gaoler arrived to confine Rosie and me to the Millhouse. Rachel and Harte were not permitted to enter; they waved sadly from the very edge of the Baker property. We saw no sign of Uncle Wheeler. The millhands crowded round the fence and millrace, their anxious murmurs turning to shouts both angry and supportive. One of the guards produced a musket, and Rosie grabbed my arm and gasped, but the crowd dispersed at last.

And he did not come.

Around noon, Harte finally talked his way through, with Jack Townley at his side. Townley doffed his hat -- which I had not once in all the years of our acquaintance seen him do -- and gave me a kind nod.

"We've -- some of the lads and me, and some of the women as well, too -- we've put together what we could." He held out a feed sack, hanging heavy from his meaty fist. "My Ruthie had some extra tucked away, and old Fuller sold that knife what Drover's been after him to sell, and ... Anyways, Stirwaters is our home, too, Mistress." He thrust the bag at me, pouring its contents at my feet. "We've got together near a hundred pound there, believe it or not."

I felt lost somewhere between laughter and tears, and he was very red in the face. Rosie came to our rescue.

"Townley, you're a bloody fool. This won't buy back the machines, let alone the whole mill." She put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. "But you're a good man. And I'll lay out any man who says otherwise." Still furiously red, Townley took his leave, waving to us as he crossed the yard.
Rosie and Harte knelt to collect the coins. "We'll find a way to get this back to everyone,'' Harte said. "After -- whenever."

Afternoon descended, and he did not come.

Had I truly managed to cast him off, with the burning of the woolshed? Had he taken me at my word, and I could not now count on him swooping to our rescue? Oh, blasted Miller pride! I had played my very last card, and I had lost.

As the evening wore down, I fell back to the Millhouse steps and watched in a sort of numb trance. The brokers -- Harrier and Price -- had thrown open the mill doors, and I heard the crunch of wagonwheels on the roadway as a gaily painted chaise rolled into the yard. The door sprang open, and Arthur Darling climbed out, huffing and grunting. The Pinchfields overseer plopped to the ground like a blot of black ink, and strutted round the yard as though his inheritance had just come due, the wool buyer close at his heels. I tucked myself tighter behind the tangle of ivy so they would not see me, as Darling's covetous gaze crawled up the Millhouse walls.

I watched and waited, expecting other carriages to come, other bidders -- but when Darling reached the mill, Mr. Harrier shook his hand firmly, and said in a voice that carried across the yard, "Good. If you gentlemen are ready, let's get this started."

I stared into the fading light, sick with understanding. There were to be no other bidders; this was a private auction, arranged for the benefit of one buyer only. I fished the rumpled atlas page from my pocket, my heart like a stone in my breast.

I mouthed the lines, heard their haunting rhythm echo in my mind. Why hadn't it worked?

"You realize, of course, that particular spell requires
actual
blood from the one you're conjuring."

He was just there -- as always, standing a mere arm's reach away from me. Spinner tipped that horrible old hat to me and consulted his pocket watch. My watch.

"You came, didn't you?"

With a flick of his hand, the page flew from my grip and fluttered to the shale.

"I am here because you have need of my unique services, Mistress Miller, not for a scrap of doggerel by some overblown scholar who fancied himself a cunning man!"

I twined my stinging fingers together. "What do you want?"

A twisted smile crossed his lined face. "You summoned me, remember?"

"As payment! To save my mill -- again." I had to force the words over my lips.

The smile grew in earnest. "Ah. You won't want to pay what I'm asking this time."

"Try me."

He stepped closer, close enough I should feel the heat from his breath on my flesh, but there was nothing. "What would you pay me?"

I held my place, much as I wanted to fall back a step. "Anything."

"Are you sure about that?"

I could see the lines in his face -- the thin red veins in his eyes, the pores from which his whiskers sprang. He smelt of -- of earth, of rotting leaves and mushrooms. "Anything. Anything you want."

He eased off a little, but the dead-earth smell still lingered. "I suggest you give that some thought, there, Mistress Miller."

"Thought!" I cried. "They're ready to auction Stirwaters off at this moment. How much time do you think I have?"

"Ah, I just meant -- before you go pledging your heart's treasures to someone like me, you decide if it's what you really want."

"I have no choice." My voice was smaller than I liked.

Spinner eyed me gravely. "There's always a choice."

My gaze travelled across the darkening millyard, to where the men gathered in Stirwaters. Among the auctioneers and the men from Pinchfields I caught a glimpse of shadowed lilac and felt something hot creep into my throat.

"Let my uncle win? Is that the choice?"

"That's one choice, aye."

I swallowed hard. "Never."

Something crossed Spinner's craggy face -- a smile, perhaps. "You Millers and your pride. It will ever be your downfall."

"I do not pay you to counsel me."

"Ha. Perhaps you should. You could learn well from what I know. You're fixing to spend an unimaginable sum --"

I waved him to silence. I did not think I could sustain this conversation much longer. "Just go and do -- whatever you do. The terms are these: You will use whatever means necessary to prevent the sale of Stirwaters to Arth -- to
anyone
in that room, and I will pay you a fee to be determined at your discretion later."

Spinner regarded me a moment longer, from eyes whose depths I could not fathom. "All right, missie, I'll be bringin' you the bill of sale, then."

Whistling, he turned on his heel and shambled across the yard. As he stepped he swung his left hand in a curious arc -- and I watched as a pearl-handled cane appeared in his fist, a feathered hat formed itself on his head. By the time he reached the yard doors to Stirwaters, he was the very picture of a gentleman.

I sank to my knees in a sea of crumpled flannel and pressed my hands into the sharp shale of the yard, as if bites from the stones could remind me who I was.

Rosie joined me then, coming down the Millhouse steps to ease me to my feet. She stooped for the atlas page, still lying in the shale, and there was understanding in her eyes. "I can't stand this," she said. "I'll go mad if I stay here one minute longer."

"Where will you go?"

She shrugged. "Drover's. Harte's there -- and most of the hands, too, I should think. Will you come with us?"

"How can I?"

She laid a hand on my arm, and one of us was trembling. "We couldn't watch him before," she reminded me. "What if it won't work if you're there?"

I agreed to go as far as the Millhouse stoop, where I sank hard against the stone steps. I sat there for what couldn't have been more than a quarter hour, straining to hear anything beyond the low, ordinary creaks and rustles, the splash of water over the wheel. Pilot wandered over after a few minutes, settling herself at my feet with a bedraggled sigh. I trailed my fingers in her ruff, counted the bats wheeling overhead, counted the beats of my heart banging in my throat. Once she whimpered; I had twisted her fur so tightly it had hurt her.

At last Spinner emerged, calmly shaking the hands of everyone present. He stood like a bright, hazy spot in the circle of the other men, who drifted about like sheep who've lost their shepherd. I watched Mr. Harrier hand over my keys, but slowly, as if he were not quite certain what had just happened. A flash of lavender betrayed my uncle, slinking out the opposite doors. I expected to see him livid, red with fury as he'd been when I announced my engagement -- but his expression was something entirely different, something altogether new. Uncle Wheeler's face was absolutely as white as his hair, his green eyes wide with -- shock? Recognition?

My uncle
knew
Jack Spinner. And he feared him.

I had no time to digest that -- for in a moment Spinner was upon me, the ring of keys in his outstretched hand, a document in the other.

I reached out, thanks forming reluctantly on my lips, but he would not release them,

"You'll pay?" he said, and the tone in his voice was odd, uncertain.

"I said I would." I was still watching Uncle Wheeler, who seemed frozen in place scant yards from us. "Whatever I ask?"

"I said I would. A Miller doesn't go back on her bargains."
I thought for a moment I saw him hesitate -- but before I could be certain, Arthur Darling and his henchman bustled up to me, competing degrees of nastiness in their expressions.

"What is the meaning of this? What do you think you're playing, missie?" Mr. Darling grunted, as if it required that much effort to force the words past his too-tight cravat.

"Why, Mr. Darling, I don't know what you mean," I said, and though I sounded very blithe, it was all a sham. My legs were ready to buckle, and I felt terribly like a dead horse that's been left too long in the sun, "But I would venture to guess that you've been outbid."

"You think you're awfully clever, don't you?" The wool buyer's thin lip twisted. "But you haven't heard the last from --"

"No," I said, and he froze, his sharp jaw hanging open. "I think we have heard the last from Pinchfields, don't you, Mr. Spinner? You see, gentlemen, it seems I no longer own this mill. And unless Mr. Spinner is entertaining offers -- are you entertaining offers, Mr. Spinner?"

"No, no, I don't believe I am," he said. "In fact, I have some ideas of my own I'd like to see through."