No Rest for the Dove (7 page)

“Can anything be more delightful than the sound of a woman’s pleasure?” another new voice inquired sweetly.

Absorbed in their conversation, neither Longfellow nor Mrs. Willett had noticed when the music stopped. Now, each wondered how much of their discussion might have been overheard, as Gian Carlo Lahte continued.

“I have just encountered an enchanting aroma, walking across the grass.”

“A piece of chamomile lawn laid this spring,” Longfellow told him, adding an edification. “We use it to make a calming tea.”

“Of course. How often I have slept with the help of a little flower … but tonight, I am quite ready to retire all on my own. That is what I have come to tell you both.”

“Do you abandon your new mistress so soon, Gian Carlo?”

The musico sent an inquisitive look to Charlotte, who could not imagine his answer.

“Science,” Longfellow reminded him. “At least take a look through the ground glass,” he urged further. “It would seem quite rude to ignore her completely!”

“Ah, yes—extraordinary. Such an evening is made for gazing … at stars. Still, I must think of my throat. I have already tired myself too much today.”

Il Colombo reached for Mrs. Willett’s hand and held it briefly. Then he turned and walked toward the house, his shirt a ghostly splash of white which soon disappeared.

Before much longer, Charlotte, with Orpheus, began a journey back across the starlit yard, on a well-worn path that led to her kitchen door.

Longfellow and the cat continued to stare into the darkness, until the beast silently moved off to stalk its prey. Longfellow then sat alone, trying to name a new discontent. Something like a small, chewing rodent seemed to have crept into his own thoughts. There it grew louder, and stronger, as the night wore on.

Saturday, August 17

W
HILE FINISHING A
leisurely breakfast, Richard Longfellow watched sparrows drop from the leaves above to devour a scattering of crumbs on the flagstone of his piazza. Across the table, Gian Carlo Lahte poured the last of the coffee from a silver pot, and Cicero continued to absorb himself in the week’s
Boston Gazette
.

Shifting his attention, Longfellow surveyed Lahte’s new attire. Today his guest had put on a shirt of French cambric, thin enough for comfort even on what promised to be a sultry afternoon. And he had draped a sensible linen frock coat over the back of his chair. It would make him less noticeable in the village than the previous day’s scarlet affair. That was regrettable, but Longfellow supposed there would still be some sort of fireworks when Old
World and New converged—a thing that would be good for them all.

Yet a surprise of another sort already occupied Bracebridge that morning. At the moment, it was on its way up from the village, on the fluttering coattails of the Reverend Christian Rowe.

“Do I interrupt a meal of some kind?” the preacher offered in greeting. He pulled a pocket watch from his waistcoat; this was followed by a handkerchief, with which he mopped his brow.

“Signor Lahte,” Longfellow replied with mock concern, “has yet to learn that the running of a farm is a terrible struggle, which one must rise early to win. But what has brought you from your own unending toil in support of humanity, Reverend?”

“I have something to say to you which I believe you must find shocking—”

“Nothing
too
horrible, I hope—”

“In vain, I fear!
Someone
in our midst has turned to grave robbery!”

Longfellow sat up abruptly. “Just what valuables has this villain made off with?”

“A pair of boots, and some coat buttons.”

“Boots, and buttons. Taken from the unknown man in the cellar, I presume?”

“Of course!”

Longfellow looked off into the gray-green distance, his brain racing, though his face remained placid under the reverend’s close scrutiny. While they waited Cicero folded his paper, and Gian Carlo Lahte came around the granite table.

“The boots,” Longfellow finally answered, “I can understand. A man finding himself without a decent pair might take what he felt Providence had put into his path. However … buttons? Who would take
buttons
from a
dead man? I’ll admit I didn’t pay them much attention yesterday, but I’ll swear they weren’t gold; nor, I think, were they even gilt.”

“You did not include them in your likeness?” Rowe asked accusingly.

“I took only the head. But who would steal buttons, when he could have made off with the whole coat?”

“It was unclean,” returned the reverend, disgust written on his face.

“A military man,” said Cicero, “sometimes has his buttons removed, when he is disgraced.”

“True,” said Longfellow, “when they are regimental buttons. But our corpse wasn’t in uniform. And if this thing was done to make a point, how then could the same man, apparently moved by honor, have stooped to take the fellow’s boots?”

“It is a curious thing,” said Gian Carlo Lahte, finally. “But can such a thief be so remarkable in your countryside? In my own, one expects things left unattended to come and go. Especially among those who have little.”

Longfellow turned back to Reverend Rowe. “Considering the growing hardships in Boston, I had supposed lawlessness might increase there—”

“It is not a lack of wealth,
but too much of it
, that leads to strife and sin throughout the provinces,” Rowe interrupted. “
This
has caused many to turn away from the Almighty, and to forget their places. If He has increased our troubles, it is surely to bring men back to their senses by reminding them of the stealth of the Tempter! We must all continue to root the Devil out, wherever we find him—”

“Buttons,” Longfellow muttered. “What did the blessed things look like?”

“Someone else might remember,” Cicero reminded him.

“Caleb, do you mean?”

“I was thinking of Mrs. Willett.”

“Of course, she does have a woman’s eye for detail—though little care for the mode. Well … on the chance that it could be of some small importance,” Longfellow decided, “and, as we must all help the reverend root out Lucifer—let us all go and ask her!”

IN A MATTER
of minutes, Christian Rowe knocked on the back door of the house just up the hill. While they waited for an answer, Richard Longfellow nodded to Hannah Sloan, who sat boiling cheesecloth under the ancient white oak next to the barn. He noted with satisfaction that Hannah abandoned her stick and stood to get a better look at the gentleman she’d heard of, though as yet her full, red face showed little of her conclusions.

Mrs. Willett soon invited them into a kitchen fragrant with fresh pot herbs, recently hung to dry among the low rafters. “Have you received word from Dr. Warren?” she asked her neighbor, as the others looked around with interest.

“He sent a note saying he hopes to visit us this evening, after his appointments.”

“How much this resembles the place of my birth,” Lahte offered. “But in Tuscany, such houses are crowded, and loud with voices. This, I think, feels like a shrine.”

“Do you mean a
reliquary
, sir?” came an immediate cry from the reverend. “For bones of the saints, or some of Mary’s ubiquitous hairs? We have no need for such nonsense here in Massachusetts!”

“For a few more weeks at least,” Charlotte answered, ignoring Christian Rowe, “we’ll be less busy than usual.”

“And what is it you do today?” asked the musico.

“We’ll begin to dry shell beans. But I’ve set aside most
of the day for making cheeses. Tomorrow, Hannah and I plan to start preserving pears.”

“Only you live here, Mrs. Willett, with one servant? There is no man who helps you with these things?”

Undaunted, Reverend Rowe threw out a new reproof. “Some here suppose that a woman can decide her duties for herself, without the guidance of a husband. Yet on the Sabbath, women
must
be led by those of greater learning, so that they will think not on the flesh, but of their souls.”

“We do what is necessary, whenever what we can,” Charlotte said mildly. “As a widow, I have a right to choose my own occupations. But Hannah is hardly a servant,” she added, speaking toward the windows. “She exchanges her labor in return for a portion of what we produce together. Her family, you see, is well supplied with daughters awaiting their own marriages, and homes. Oh, but I do employ Hannah’s young Henry, who assists me morning and evening with the milking.”

“A skill I, too, learned as a boy,” Lahte replied proudly.

“Then would you like to see the dairy?”

“I would be delighted, madama!”

“A good start,” said Longfellow, “if you mean to try the country life, Lahte. After that, we might go after a hillside of rye grass—but I recall we’ve not come to discuss farming or housekeeping this morning, Mrs. Willett. We are here, instead, to ask for your help. We wish to inquire about buttons.”

“Buttons?”

“Is it possible for you to recall those worn by the man we saw in the reverend’s cellar?”

“Well, I did notice that they were rather large. Molded, I think, and uncovered metal. I supposed the tops were meant to look as if they had filigree on them, though I believe they were nothing so fine. They were the kind whose
two halves are made separately, then crimped together over a shank-eye; I’m sure you and Signor Lahte noticed that, too.”

“Hmmm.”

“But why are his buttons of interest today?”

“Because someone stole them from the corpse last night. Someone who took his boots as well.” Though Mrs. Willett made no answer, Longfellow guessed there might be something else she hesitated to ask.

For several minutes, in fact, Charlotte had watched as Gian Carlo Lahte became increasingly uncomfortable. By now, he rubbed the sleeves of his shirt restlessly, almost as if—

“I wonder, sir,” she asked him then, “if last night
you
were bothered by something?” Lahte moaned with surprising energy, and began to luxuriate in an orgy of scratching through his sleeves.

“I have been much bitten,” he said quite unnecessarily.

“I believe I can help.”

“You cannot refer to bedbugs?” asked Longfellow, his eyebrows lifting.

“Mosquitoes, I think,” Mrs. Willett reassured him.

“Odd. I wasn’t bothered last night, in bed or on the grass. But I suppose you’re new to this particular sort, Lahte, and so they find you more attractive than the rest of us.”

Charlotte recrossed the room, carrying a bottle of witch hazel and a piece of flannel. After Signor Lahte rolled up his sleeves she began to dab at several red bumps, hearing him sigh with relief as the cooling liquid had its expected effect.

“I would imagine,” Longfellow went on, “that you’ll soon get used to them, and they to you. At the moment, you’re a rare treat for most of our local creatures.”

“I have become deaf to the buzzing of many kinds of beings, both large and small,” said the musico, not unkindly.

Longfellow observed Hannah Sloan’s broad body lean in at the window, and saw that she, too, watched the man being tended. Might she be asking herself if he would do for one of her daughters? For if she had not already heard … but there was something else here … something curious in the sly way she looked between Lahte and Rowe, and then at Charlotte—