Poison to Purge Melancholy (36 page)

“What of Mrs. Carson, sir?” Mr. Dunbar asked. “Has she awakened?”

Dr. Riddick lifted the plate of boiled potatoes, eating with his fingers, speaking around the morsels in his mouth. “One eye has opened thrice, and a corner of her mouth, as if she would speak, though no sound comes forth. She has a touch of palsy upon the right side of her face which I find worrisome.” The doctor took a fistful of bread from the loaf and set it upon the plate. “You see, though Mrs. Carson’s heart beat through her ordeal, her lungs ceased for quite a time. Many who survive this state do not live long after. We shall watch close tonight and the next several days.” He spooned the entire serving of stewed apples atop the potatoes, then preceded to add samples of all the other foods to his plate. “As I’ve told Mistress Carson, her mother is a strong woman and I believe her chances excellent. Yet, though she lives, the possibility remains that she may never fully recover. Losses of movement and speech are not uncommon. Some regain these losses in time. Some do not.”

“I shall nurse her, sir,” I vowed, handing him the bowl of stew, “as long as she needs me and as best I’m able.”

“I know you shall, mistress.” Dr. Riddick, balancing plate upon bowl, took up a spoon. I poured small beer into a tankard for him and, hands full, he returned to Mother’s bedside.

“Riddick speaks true, mistress,” Mr. Dunbar said. “Your mother is strong.”

“She does not appear so at the moment, sir. Her limbs lie still, as if—” The word “dead” almost parted my lips, but I could not say it, nor speak of Mother further. Instead I moved to the chair that held Mr. Dunbar’s shirt and breeches, placing my hands upon linen and wool. “Your clothes are still wet, sir.”

“They shall dry overnight. I hope. Mr. Brennan’s spare shirt is tight and my soldiering trousers are no longer fit for public view.” After a hesitation, he said, “Yet, perhaps they’d dry with greater dispatch should you give the fire new life—by adding these?” He offered the papers in his hand. “Sam and Jim did not see them. I told them that your mother met with an accident while trying to save your brother, who’d fallen in the marsh. No one need know if you destroy these.”

“You—you would have me burn my father’s letters, sir?”

“You knew of this tin box? Of what it held?” His tone accused, yet he kept his voice low, so the doctor would not hear.

I had no spirit to fight him. “I knew of the hiding place before Father left for war. When he’d gone, Mother would sometimes go to the shop late, when no one was about. I would hear her slip out and see a hooded lantern from my window. When the army came to Virginia, she frequented the spot each time she received one of Father’s letters. Curiosity made me inspect the cache. I—I do not read well, sir. I did not understand—”

“You know what these letters imply, though, and thus did not want your mother to give them to me.”

“Yes, sir. You said you thought Mr. Brennan a spy—” I blushed, admitting, “I stood in the hall and listened to your dinner talk with Mother.”

“Go on, lass.”

“As those letters say, Mr. Brennan did not spy upon the Virginia assemblies. Mother did. Or, at least, upon the couriers and clerks who stayed with us before the capitol moved.”

“She wrote down what she learned and placed it in the cache, is that it? Then someone would come to retrieve the intelligence?”

“’Twas always gone within a day.”

“Moreover, your father—” Mr. Dunbar let go a sigh, his eyes once more upon the missives in his hands. “I held Thomas Carson in highest regard. A fair, honest, God-fearing man.”

“He was all those things, sir. But he was not a patriot.”

“To think I suspected Underwood of that betrayal. ’Twas not the captain but your father who issued us false commands in battle. As he says here”—Mr. Dunbar tapped the letters with the back of his free hand—“Underwood gave no orders of his own, passing on those from above, letting his subordinates decide how to best accomplish the Commander’s aims. Your father was never caught, for Underwood could not admit to his own failing. And Sergeant Lynch, also a traitor and trusted by Underwood, helped to hide the subterfuge. What did your father include with his letters that your mother left for Tory couriers? News of troop movements and strength?”

“Yes, when the war came to Virginia. Sometimes, those last months after Father visited, when I had the chance, I took the dispatches myself before their retrieval.”

Mr. Dunbar’s eyebrows rose in surprise and a sudden smile lit his face. “Did you? A brave girl you are. You may have saved all our skins.”

“Not brave, sir, nor patriot, nor even loyalist like my parents. To save Father’s skin was my only thought, for I was sure he’d die were the British to waylay our troops. Yet I could not prevent his death after all.”

He came a step closer. “If you listened to our talk, you know your father was poisoned. Or did you know before this?”

I could not lie to him, so did not reply at all. In my manner though, he had his answer.

“You did know. Or suspected?”

“I knew, but not ’til after.”

“Was I correct? John Brennan done the murder?”

I nodded. “You guessed right that he thought to gain our property by marrying Mother. He’d found out about her spying, and thought to force her to the altar that way, to keep him silent.”

“Brennan was accomplished at blackmail. When he discovered your mother’s treachery, he must have learned of Sergeant Lynch as well. The alms he collected at Underwood’s door need not have come from the captain, but from Lynch himself. ’Twas why the sergeant shot him, I’ll wager.”

Mr. Dunbar came out of his musing to explain, “When Sam came in, he had news: the constable sent word to Richmond that Lynch should be arrested on sight. You see, Underwood, on showing off his rifles to his houseguests today, noticed that one had been discharged and not cleaned. Upon bullying all his servants, one old slave confessed that, from the kitchen, she’d seen Lynch leave through the house’s rear door, gun in hand, then return after shots were fired. Why she didn’t speak sooner—”

“She was afraid of Mr. Lynch, of course, and of the captain, who for all she knew might have sent his footman outside with the rifle. So until her master asked—”

Mr. Dunbar saw my reasoning and agreed. “And as far as Brennan’s blackmail went, well, your mother did
not
meet him at the altar. To make his plan work, her husband had to die, yet once Brennan had done murder, your mother could employ blackmail of her own. Is that it, mistress? The last two years they had eyed each other like caged lions, each knowing the other’s knowledge would bring hanging, until your mother could stand it no more and sent Brennan mad with quicksilver.”

“Mother could not stand it, sir, because you came and she decided she would marry again.”

Naught but the crackling of the fire could be heard the next moments. When Mr. Dunbar spoke anew, his voice had grown gentler. “I presumed that Brennan poisoned your father at your mother’s bidding, because Thomas had discovered her betrayal. Yet here”—he waved the letters in his hand—“I find husband and wife in league together. But I cannot see Brennan killing Thomas on his own. ’Twas too much a risk and John Brennan too much a coward. And, as I said, I believe your mother procured the root. Mistress, do you know why your father was killed?”

“I—I shall speak no more of the matter, sir.”

He came nearer still, his voice a whisper, pleading. “Please, mistress, I’ve labored two years for the truth. I must know. I promise you, no word shall go beyond this room. Brennan is dead, and your mother—” His eye strayed to the doorway. “I would not see her hanged even if she lives. I—I believe God doled out His own justice this day.”

I was moved by his speech, yet— “Are you in earnest, sir, about burning those letters?”

He turned to the hearth and flung them upon the fire. We both watched as the papers were consumed, he retrieving any scrap that strayed from the flames, until all was ash.

I spoke at last. “When Father came home on leave that last time—seeing the capitol and much commerce gone from Williamsburg, and his shop ruined by the floods—he decided he would take his business elsewhere. Not Richmond, where a tinsmith would be one among many, but to the Shenandoah Valley or the Kentucky wilderness, where his craft would be needed. As soon as the war was over, he vowed, we would move west.”

“I heard him speak of the wish,” Mr. Dunbar commented. “So when Thomas furloughed out, your mother stood to lose this house, and what little proximity to gentry she still had.”

“I heard her say she would never raise her children in a rude cabin, surrounded by savage Indians.”

Mr. Dunbar reasoned out the rest. “She waited two months, likely praying that the war would take Thomas and save her home. When word of the surrender came, she could wait no longer, not knowing when he’d be furloughed. If her husband died here, she’d be suspect. Or worse, her children might be. For I believe, mistress, that all was done to protect you and young Tom.”

My tears could not be held back then. “And what came of it? Tom and I orphaned. What protection is that?”

“Your Mother will live, mistress—”

“Even if she does, even if she recovers after a time, I must in the meanwhile run this house myself. And if she is never whole again—” The prospect frightened me so, I could not put words to my emotion.

“You shall not be alone.” Mr. Dunbar seemed at a loss by my weeping and sought to assure me. “I shall help, mistress.”

“I do not even know who you are, sir!” I shouted, ruing my outburst at once. We both glanced at the door, yet no one stirred in Mother’s room.

He faced the fire once more, stirring embers with iron. “True, I am not Edward Dunbar’s son, yet of those in Mr. Ivey’s employ, he alone was as a father to me. He taught me to fiddle, though he did not approve when I worked out the chanteys I learned on the docks of Norfolk.” A faint smile rose at the memory. “I was a lad of ten, with a brother of twelve, when we two were indentured to Mr. Ivey for our passage from England. Seven years each was the agreement, but Mr. Ivey was a cruel master and after only two years, my brother ran off. Indeed, I helped him do it.”

Mr. Dunbar looked for my reaction thus far. I think he was encouraged that my tears had ceased. He leaned his shoulder against the hearth brick. “Mr. Ivey decided, and a magistrate agreed, that I should make up the five years owed him, raising my term to twelve years. I put in my first seven—likely I’d have done the rest, to protect my brother—however, when the rebellion broke out, Mr. Ivey decided to sail for England and take his house servants with him. Having no desire to find myself back where I’d begun, I ran off to join the army. I did not know if Mr. Ivey’s agents would search for me, or if, when he sold off his property, any of his slaves and indentures were included. Regardless, I am not by law a free man, mistress. I cannot tell you my true name, for I would not have you need lie should Mr. Tyler or another like him return in search of me.”

“Is it Michael?” I blurted out.

Taken aback by my bluntness, he warily shook his head.

I could not hide my disappointment. “’Twas your brother’s name, then, and you are Habakkuk. You were wise, sir, to change it to Benjamin. I like that much more.”

“Ben was the name my brother called me, so I knew I could answer to it—but, mistress, how do you know—?”

“Mr. Tyler left these.” I undid the ribbon gathering my left sleeve and brought out two papers folded many times.

When he took them in hand, even before he’d fully unfolded them, he knew what they were. “Our indentures! Both mine and Michael’s. But how—”

“Mr. Tyler said I should make particular mention of a scar he bore beneath one ear.”

“Evans!” To me, he explained, “A comrade in servitude. He must have shaved his beard, else I’d have recognized him at Underwood’s table last night.”

“Best stoke the fire, Mr. Dunbar,” I bid, pointing to the papers in his hand, “so you shall be dry indeed this night.”

A smile lit his whole face. Tearing the indentures lengthwise, he fed the blaze once more. “I owe you much, mistress Polly. I said I’d help and I will. I can split wood, scrub floors, go to market, perhaps effect some repairs about your house. At Mr. Ivey’s I was taught to clerk and I keep books quite well. Indeed, I hope to earn my bread among the new gentry doing just that. Which reminds me—where is my purse?” Setting the fire iron aside, he sought out his coat. “This very day, I shall begin paying my room and board.”

He reached into a pocket, whereupon his expression changed to dismay and his hand brought forth not coin, but a white orb, soft and sodden. “Soap,” he mumbled. “I’d bought as a gift, a small token for Christmas.”

“For Mother?”

“No, mistress, for you.” He seemed at once shy. “I thought you should enjoy it more than a few pence in your box.”

He’d bought me a gift—’twas the only thought my mind could dwell on at first. Then I took in the sight of him, standing there with the slippery mass in his palm, and could not help but smile. “I can still enjoy it, sir.” From the table, I took an empty plate and held it out to him.

As he set the soap upon the tin, he said, “I shall not wish you a Happy Christmas, mistress, for it has not been so, and I fear the New Year may bring more sorrow. Instead, I wish you comfort.”

“And I to you, Mr.—” A notion came to me. “Have you searched for your brother, sir?”