Blood Ties (4 page)

Phillip's better half rose, hands on her ample hips.
"Is the drowned boy Roger Gilbert's youngest?"

"Hearsay only," the minister replied. "No positive
identification of the deceased has-"

"It's the Gilbert boy," Emma told the woman.

Murmurs rippled through the church, and Abbie
was certain she heard the gray-haired woman behind
her say something about a curse.

Matthew tried again to regain control of his audience. "Mere speculation. We need to focus on the purpose of this gathering. As most of you already know,
Thomas Sherwood, a life-long resident of Tawes, died
without a will, and a great nephew, Robert Mellmore of Baltimore is his next of kin. This Mr. Mellmore has
accepted an option on the property by the Onicox Realty Group, which wants to build a marina and condos
on our island."

"Mainlanders!"

"Please, please. We'd like to keep this short tonight.
Nothing is definite yet. There's a question about
whether or not Thomas Sherwood owned the land."

"You just said a sale is pending," Phillip reminded
him.

Emma got to her feet. "Forest McCready got a judge
to hold everything until the title is straightened out.
He thinks Sherwood's father was just a tenant farmer."

"For sixty years?"

Laughter erupted from the back of the church.

"Who paid the taxes on the land?"

Heads turned. The soft question brought the gathering to silence. The speaker, lean and graying, with
rough features that could have been chiseled of red
oak, stood as straight as a Roman column. Not much
Indian blood in him, if any, Abbie thought, but he carried himself with the innate dignity of most of the
tribal elders she'd known.

"Will Tawes, the famous artist," her mother whispered. "Bailey's great-uncle."

"Good question, Will," Matthew said. "I don't know,
but I'm sure Forest McCready could tell us. They may
have been paid from the island trust."

Abbie glanced at her watch. She knew she should
have passed on the town meeting. If it dragged on,
she'd just get up and leave. Her mother could deal
with the locals.

Emma interrupted the minister. "Excuse me,
Matthew, but I promised our experts that they
wouldn't get bogged down in island politics. We don't
want to drive them off before they do what they came here to do. It was bad enough that Dr. Knight had to
find young Gilbert's body, but we can't help that."

"He's gone to a better place," Phillip's wife intoned.

"Mary Love, will you take your own good advice
and hold your tongue long enough for Matthew to
say his piece so we can all get home tonight?" Emma
remarked.

Snickers erupted into genuine mirth. A waterman
near the door shouted, "The boy shouldn't have dug
in that marsh in the first place."

Mary Love glared at Emma. "And who on this island's got a bigger mouth than you?"

Emma laughed. "Not many, I expect." She waited
until the titters had settled and then continued. "So,
as I see it, this realty company may or may not have
bought a good-sized chunk of Tawes. Tom Sherwood
should have sold the property to one of us, or left a
proper will. Shame on him. And if any of you are in
the same fix, shame on you." She glanced at Abbie and
her mother. "For a few hundred years, no property on
Tawes has passed to a mainlander."

"Except for Bailey," a freckle-faced woman called.

"Is she an outsider?" Emma said loudly. "She's a
Tawes."

"'Nuff said," Phillip agreed.

"All right. That's been our custom-law, if you want
to put name to it-for three hundred years. Ours to
ours. But Tom broke that code and left the island
open to attack by these mainland pirates. If we don't
stop them, we'll look like the western shore of the bay,
all high-rise apartments, highways, and shopping centers. Now this Onicox Realty is a real threat to our way
of life."

"Shoot 'em!" an octogenarian shouted. "It's what
my granddaddy did to the Yankees!"

"None of that talk," Emma scolded. "There'll be no shooting of anybody-unless I'm forced to set
some of you back a few pegs." She paused for effect.
"Matthew?"

"Absolutely," the minister agreed. "We on Tawes are
law-abiding people, and we don't condone violence."

A woman chuckled. "Not much."

"Not unless we're pushed," a man added.

"All right," Emma continued. "Now bite your
tongues if you want to get out of here before midnight." The crowd quieted. "Like I've been saying all
week, Matthew and Bailey Tawes called in Dr. Knight,
who is a genuine archaeologist and an expert in American Indian stuff, to see if the Indian burial ground
should be protected. If it is a genuine historic site,
maybe the State of Maryland will forbid the sale, and
things can stay the way they are."

"Thank you, Emma. Well put. That's about it. Dr.
Knight has agreed to help us. We're glad to see so
many of you here in support of protecting Tawes, and
I'll call another meeting as soon as we have more information. Good night and God bless. Thank you all
for coming, and I hope to see this many at Sundaymorning service."

Abbie attempted to escape by a side door, but
Emma blocked her exit.

"Don't rush off yet. Matthew's got something in the
office he wants you to see. Something. . ." She shook
her head. "It won't take long." She motioned to
Matthew and lowered her voice. "Cut the jabbering
short and show Karen and Abbie what your father
gave you."

"Yes, yes. I did want to do that. Give me five minutes
to see my congregation out." Matthew flashed his minister's smile.

Slowly the assemblage began to file out.

"Emma!" A thin, childish voice came from the rear of the church. A tiny woman in a yellow striped dress
and a white Mother Hubbard apron waved her cane.

"That's my mother," Emma said. "Maude Ellen McCready Parks. Everyone but me calls her Aunt Birdy."

"Hold your horses, girl," Mrs. Parks called to Emma.
"I want to meet Bailey's friends."

Abbie watched as Mrs. Parks felt her way to the aisle
and then used her cane to walk to the front of the
church. As she drew closer, Abbie saw that the elderly
woman's eyes were cloudy with thick cataracts. "Pleased
to meet you." Mrs. Parks extended a tiny hand.

Abbie clasped it, surprised to find how strong the
thin little woman's grip was. "Mrs. Parks, I'm Abbie
Night Horse."

"Of course you are, child." Aunt Birdy tilted her
head as if listening to something no one else heard.
"You're one of the first people, aren't you?" she asked
in her sweet, reedy voice. Slipping her cane over the
edge of the pew back, she patted Abbie's wrist. "Can I
touch your face, honey?"

Abbie's favorite grandmother had been blind, so she
understood that it was the old woman's way of seeing.
Abbie cradled the bony hand and lifted it to her cheek.

"Eyes and hair black as a crow's wing," Emma murmured. "She favors her mother. Beautiful, too."

"Don't need you to tell me that, girl," Mrs. Parks retorted.

Her fingertips were warm and light as thistle down.

"I'm Karen Knight, Abbie's mother," Karen said.
"I'm pleased to meet you. And thank you for allowing
Abbie to put her helicopter in your pasture."

"Pshaw, cows don't care. I wouldn't mind havin' a
ride in the contraption, though. Never did get any
higher than the attic of my farmhouse."

Abbie smiled and stepped back. Aunt Birdy turned
toward Karen and then stopped and gripped Abbie's hand again. "There's something dark hoverin' over
you, dear. You take care, you hear?" She shook her
head. "Emma?"

"Yes, Mama?"

"Didn't you warn these ladies about that marsh? It's
a bad place, always was. Spirits walk there, not good
ones neither. The ghost of an Injun medicine man.
Evil pagan he was, and evil he still is. The old-time people say his own kind were scared of him. Wicked, godless creature." She tilted her head as though she was
peering up into Abbie's face. "Some folks don't believe in haunts, but you do."

Abbie's mouth went dry. "No, I-"

"No need to feel shame, child. Old-time folks believed, and the first people believe. There's lots of
things in this world that some don't see, but they're
real just the same."

"Now, Mama, don't go scaring these ladies with your
ghost talk."

The old woman turned on Emma and shook her
cane. "Listen at you. How many times have I heard you
talk about that swamp? It's a bad place," she repeated.

"Dr. Knight, Miss Horse." Matthew hurried toward
them. "If you'll excuse us, Aunt Birdy. We have some
business in the office. Ladies, if you'd follow me."

"Don't forget," the old woman warned. "There's
danger in the marsh. And something evil in that burial
ground."

Uneasiness prickled Abbie's skin as she followed
Matthew Catlin out of the sanctuary. Superstitious
nonsense. It was foolish to let an old woman's fancies
make her uneasy.

"I'm anxious to see what you mentioned earlier in
your correspondence," her mother said. "And it's Abbie Night Horse, not Abbie Horse."

It was clear to Abbie that her mother was amused by the minister's mistake. Mom might have changed her
name to Knight with a K after she and Dad had split
and before receiving her doctorate-she'd believed
her modified name would help her blend more easily
with mainstream academe-but Anati was still Indian,
blood and bone. And, despite the adversarial relationship between her parents, Abbie suspected they still
loved each other.

A door off the sanctuary led to a hall and small office. Matthew switched on a light, beckoned them in,
and closed and locked the door. "My father came to
believe that the Irish reached North America a thousand years before the Viking voyages to the New
World, and I'm convinced he was right. He was positive that he had proof there was contact with the
Chesapeake natives, and that at least one early Irishman was buried on Tawes."

Abbie smiled. She'd heard the theory, but it was
nothing more than speculation, like tales of the lost
Atlantis and Welsh expeditions to the Great Lakes
country.

"Father was certain that the things I'm about to
show you were Irish Bronze Age," Matthew said. "I
don't know whether they are or not, but I know they
are genuine and very old." He unlocked a desk
drawer, removed a worn leather case, and opened it.
"See for yourself, Dr. Knight."

Abbie stared.

Two objects nestled against a stained green lining: a
decorative bronze pin, more than six inches long and
as thick as her middle finger, and a collar of bright,
twisted metal. Too surprised to speak, Abbie looked
into the minister's smiling face.

"You're positive they were dug at the site?" Her
mother's eyes sparked with excitement. "You dug
them yourself?"

Matthew frowned. "No. My father purchased them
more than forty years ago from a Paul Millington. He
had a farm near the burial ground. He was hunting a
lost muskrat trap, and he found the pieces in the
marsh after a storm washed out one side of the hill.

"They are Irish Bronze Age, aren't they?"

Abbie couldn't hold back a sigh of disappointment
at Matthew's account of how the items were found. If
her mother had excavated the pit or made the discovery herself ... if the soil around the pieces had been
below the plow line and undisturbed, then there was a
possibility that such an unlikely theory as to their origin might be fact. She reached out to touch the torque,
but her mother caught her hand and shook her head.

Feeling her cheeks grow hot, Abbie averted her
eyes. She knew better than to touch, but temptation
had overridden years of education in the proper handling of artifacts.

"Do you have gloves?" her mother asked Matthew.

He produced a pair of thin plastic gloves packaged
for medical use. "I may be a country cleric," he said,
"but I'm not totally ignorant of how artifacts should be
handled."

"I never supposed you were." Karen pulled on the
gloves and carefully picked up the pin, inspecting the
intricate pattern of geometric swirls. Abbie was certain
her mother could guess the weight of the object within
grams.

Matthew peered over the rims of his glasses. "They
are genuine?"

Excitement made her mother speak with unnaturally precise diction. "I'd need to have it authenticated, but this pin does appear Bronze Age to me."
She nibbled at her lower lip. "Actually, Reverend
Catlin, the question isn't what they are, but how they got
here."

His face fell. "I can assure you that if my father said
he purchased the torque and the cloak pin from-"

"You misunderstand," Abbie interjected. "My
mother's credentials are impeccable, but if she were to
present these pieces as proof of early Irish contact,
she'd be the laughingstock of her university."

"Not that I wouldn't try to make a case for it if I had
more proof," Karen said. "But what's to say that the
jewelry wasn't carried here by some settler three hundred years ago?"

"I don't understand." Matthew removed his glasses
and scratched his head. "My father's reputation-"

"Scientifically," Karen said, "the discovery of something so far-fetched has to be documented by an expert."

"But I assumed you were-"

"My mother is an expert on Native American prehistory, not Irish Bronze Age," Abbie said.

"Celtic," lie said.

"Not necessarily Celtic," Karen corrected. "Actually,
many of the finest Bronze Age discoveries predate the
Celtic migration."

Matthew grew animated. "That doesn't mean there
couldn't be other artifacts as fine as these, perhaps
even more wondrous."

"And I'm willing to sink test pits to see what we can
find," Karen replied. "But I can make no guarantees.
This is worse than hunting for the proverbial needle
in a haystack. It's searching for Irish mist in a Chesapeake fog."

Matthew replaced his glasses. "My father kept a
journal. We might find an entry that confirmed the
purchase."