A Wicked Way to Burn (23 page)

“From his neck pouch?”

The girl nodded.

“Did Sam tell you where he got the coin?”

Anne shook her head and pulled on a braid. “But he said if I didn’t tell, he would bring me a comb, the very next time he went to Boston. Like those.” She let go
of her hair to point again, then let her hand fall back to her side.

The combs—one of Aaron’s gifts. One of many. Slowly, Charlotte reached up and pulled them from her hair, hoping that several pins would continue to hold most of it where it sat. She looked at the combs seriously for a moment, and then handed them to young Anne, whose fingers were already outstretched near eyes wide with disbelief.

“I think these are just like the ones Sam would have brought you from Boston. But promise, if you take them, that the gold coin you saw will still be a secret, until I tell you otherwise. Will you promise?”

Anne bobbed her head vigorously.

“Good. Now I have to go … but you’ll have more visitors before very long—”

“Thank you!”

“You’re welcome … and you’re to tell Mr. Longfellow, when you see him, that you’re very fond of crowns, especially on silver. He’ll enjoy speaking with a little girl about coins, I think—and then you might have a piece of Spanish money to look at, at least for a little while. But you mustn’t tell
anyone
about the other coin—remember!”

“Sam says a lady wouldn’t want to talk about money, anyway. Sam says I’ll be a lady someday, too.” The child watched with a look of hope, lost in a world of imagining.

“With combs to spare,” Charlotte soon answered from the doorway, as she sent a farewell glance past the happy little girl, to the boy and his silent mother in the room beyond.

ALTHOUGH RAINDROPS STILL
wept from the black limbs of the trees, gusts no longer rattled the thinned woodland
borders as Charlotte walked home. The storm appeared to be over. She paused along the way to admire rainbow prisms within a thinning tangle of blackberry vines, while the gray clouds above made way for patches of blue, high and to the west. It was a day, as well as a season, for abrupt changes.

She left the Concord road and followed a path to a narrow wooden footbridge, crossed the river, and walked through field grass toward her own pasture. She was glad to have escaped meeting anyone when she hurried away. It was only when the path began to climb that she turned and saw three figures walking north along the main road she had just come from, making their way toward the Dudley home.

Charlotte squinted into the distance, trying to assist her imperfect eyes. One of the men she knew by height and gait to be Richard Longfellow. A second, with wig and winking gold buttons, was Edmund Montagu. The last, pumping behind the others, was Constable Bowers. It would be his duty to go along and examine the facts surrounding any surprising death. Not that she believed he would be likely to actually look for any problems—unless someone forced him to.

After the three men disappeared through the door that opened for them, Charlotte turned and resumed her lonely walk. In another moment, she had to brush back her hair as it began to fall down in front of her eyes in wisps and strands, then locks—and finally, in something like a cascade. She was taken aback to be so far from comb and mirror, but was amply compensated by the memory of Anne Dudley’s delighted face, and her small, open hands.

But this was no time for pleasant thoughts. Instead, she forced herself to concentrate on questions of a darker nature—of exactly what was so, and why. It had first seemed possible that Sam Dudley, out alone in that dark
morning of cold and wind, had stumbled and fallen. Had his brain been stunned by a quick meeting with a rock, death could have come even in those shallow waters. Charlotte wondered if she should have examined the scalp under the thick hair more closely. But it hadn’t seemed necessary, especially after she had seen the throat. Most would have said it was not her place to pry any further. After all, others would soon see what she had noticed. But the mention of gold again—that was a question almost heaven-sent, for her alone to consider.

Small Anne had described a highly unusual object, something rarely seen at the Dudleys’, or in any other house in Bracebridge. Assuming it was another Dutch gulden, wouldn’t logic dictate that it most likely came from the same source? Jonathan had received one coin, and was waiting to give it to Reverend Rowe. Bowers now had another, the one she supposed Jack Pennywort picked up on the Boston-Worcester road, and later gave to Peter Lynch—the same coin Lynch had pretended to pick up in Fortier’s room at the Blue Boar. Lynch turned the coin over to Bowers yesterday afternoon—but it was yesterday
morning
that Sam Dudley had apparently died.

She felt as if a chill tide were rising around her. Couldn’t the coin she believed came from Jack—the one Peter Lynch claimed was dropped by Gabriel Fortier—as easily have been taken from Sam’s body? But if that was true, how had Sam come by it originally? Had it been given to him by Duncan Middleton? If Sam had come upon the merchant sometime after he had “gone up in flames”—

It was barely possible. But—what if the miller had taken the coin from the boy, knowing Sam had it because
he
had given it to him, some time after he’d received it himself from Middleton, who then left the village? Her mind swiftly made a further leap. Could Peter Lynch have been the reason Duncan Middleton
came to Bracebridge in the first place? Edmund Montagu had already explained Middleton’s scheme to sell tainted rum. Wouldn’t the miller, who made frequent trips to Worcester and beyond, make a useful accomplice? Maybe the old man carried his gold to Bracebridge to pay for stores, as well as the miller’s future service. If so, Peter would have been the one who found the merchant a horse on which he might quietly leave the village. But why would Middleton want to make such a spectacle of himself, and disappear so
obviously
in the first place? That was still a question she couldn’t answer.

And just how far would Peter Lynch have gone to keep up the pretense of the merchant’s death, if Sam had stumbled onto the truth? Worse yet, the miller could have
truly
killed Middleton, to remove the merchant from the scheme Peter planned to carry on himself. What if
that
was what Sam had realized? Peter Lynch might have given one of the coins to Sam for his silence … knowing he could reclaim it soon—and end the boy’s life in the process!

She fought against the whirl of her thoughts, determined to calm her mind and methodically examine its quick conclusions. So far, these were all mere suspicions, without solid foundation. And surely, not all the gold in the world belonged to Duncan Middleton! What if Sam had gotten the coin somewhere else, and been envied by a friend who clumsily tried to take it from him? Or, he might actually have stumbled and fallen by accident, as his mother believed.

One never knew what fate held in store. That’s why, thought Charlotte as she continued on her way, all days had to be cherished, like precious jewels. Or gold coins—Dutch guldens that could mesmerize and enthrall even a small girl, let alone a hardened, twisted soul full of jealousy and greed, and capable of the worst crime imaginable!

It was an awful thing to ponder. To accuse the miller would be a most difficult thing. Yet her conscience told her that men and women were not put on earth only to enjoy goodness and innocence, nor should they refuse to see or hear the evil around them. And so she continued to screw her eyes into a fierce squint. But they were focused on the muddy ground now, rather than on higher things. And they saw very little that was uplifting along the winding trail that guided her feet.

SO DEEP WERE
her thoughts that Charlotte barely heard the first quick calls of a familiar voice, as it began to peal through the open air. Her concentration was finally shattered when she recognized it as the sound of the brass bell that hung over the meetinghouse. On the Sabbath, it rang out in a joyful manner. Occasionally, as on the evening before, it tolled more ponderously to announce the death of one who had belonged to the community. But now it rang with a clamoring that was nearer to its third purpose, that of summoning folk to a fire. Yet she could see no smoke coming from the village houses. Certainly no flames threatened from the wet forest, or the thoroughly dampened fields.

Still, someone rang the church bell with a great deal of determined energy. From both sides of the river, she saw people hurrying toward the meetinghouse at the edge of the Common, some arriving with buckets and tools in hand, others with their skirts and aprons and petticoats lifted out of the new mud as they looked around in puzzlement and alarm. Charlotte, too, hurried over the hillside’s slippery grass and down onto the Boston road. But before she could reach the meetinghouse, she saw several of the same people who had just gone in come back out again. Leading them was the unmistakable figure of Reverend Christian Rowe. So he
was back! Apparently, the preacher had summoned them all with the now-silent bell to his (and God’s) house.

And then the reverend began to run, leading his flock with an animated face framed by flashing white collar ends. His black coattails flew out behind him like witches’ weeds, while his white-stockinged legs twisted and bent like a spider’s, as he attempted to look around and move ahead at the same time. Where could they all be going? Charlotte saw the crowd cross the stone bridge over the river. There wasn’t much of anything on the other side, except for the tavern … and the grist mill!

Sure enough, they turned south on the road to Framingham. But instead of heading for the mill’s wide doors, her neighbors turned off and went around to one side, back to the millpond. And there they stopped, flapping and buzzing like a disturbed hive with something decidedly ominous in mind.

E
VERYONE IN THE
village knew the still reaches of the millpond that took its water from the river. Overhanging branches were reflected on its black face, ringed with pickerelweed, arrowhead, and water lilies. It was a fine spot to spend an hour in meditation, or to walk with a valued companion, or even to throw stones at the flat surface of the water in the hopes of rousing a frog. It was a sheltered, peaceful place loved by many—even by the Reverend Rowe, who might be seen following its encircling path while he searched for inspiration.

Perhaps that was what he’d been doing this morning, thought Charlotte as she caught up with the rest near the water’s edge. He might have been trying to shed the taint of Boston in this quiet haven. Had the reverend received a startling message from above, or been given divine commands, like Moses?

What the Reverend Rowe had to show for his early
morning walk was something far more down-to-earth, Mrs. Willett realized when she joined the gasping crowd. At its head, deep voices and weed-draped arms had joined to negotiate the removal of a sagging, dripping body.

There was little question how the miller had met his death. Peter Lynch’s face and forehead were horribly cleft in a gaping line that ran for nearly five inches, light pink and clean, its edges resembling the flesh of a large pike ready for the pan. Behind this peeped something else that would also be familiar to a frugal cook—something convoluted and gray.

All in all, it was a terrible sight. If the wound had not been so fascinating, thought Charlotte, who was by now encircled and supported by the crowd as it swayed collectively—if it had looked less awful, it would have been impossible not to gaze first and overlong at Peter Lynch’s eyes. For they, too, were ghastly—open, staring, bulging from white sockets. The eyes were surrounded by puffy folds of skin, some of which showed what looked like a reddish rash. Other parts had already helped to sustain the pond fish.

There was nothing to be done for Peter Lynch, except to lift him. As the corpse came up, a rush of dark water dropped onto the shoulders of several men, who turned their faces away. Then, getting firmer grips, they began to convey Peter toward the meetinghouse, where he would be lowered directly onto the coffin boards, to wait until a box could be made. These boards had held many other corpses in their day, in a dim alcove just off the unheated buildings entrance. But the miller would no longer care about the cold.