The sensible thing to do would be to walk away.
With one quick movement Martha lifted the lid.
It was almost a relief to see that the box was empty; she could put this nonsensical crusade aside. Except that there was a single piece of paper at the bottom. She picked it up.
In Daniel’s hand, a single sentence written in ink as black as his heart: I know what you’re looking for.
Outrage and laughter and embarrassment vied for the upper hand while Martha sat there looking at the message Daniel had left for her. Then she heard a familiar voice calling.
“Martha!” Birdie yelled. “Where are you?” And then Hannah’s voice: “No need to shout, little sister.”
“Maybe she forgot we were coming,” Birdie said.
And she had. Martha had forgot completely about Hannah dropping by with her Chinese needles. She asked herself if she was mean enough to enjoy the discomfort the treatment would cause Daniel, and decided that she was not.
But he didn’t need to know that.
Daniel came in, sweat-drenched and bare-chested, to find two of his sisters sitting with Martha.
She looked to be in a fine mood, which might mean she hadn’t been up to the attic yet, or another possibility: She wasn’t looking at him because she was mad and didn’t want to show it.
It had been a calculated risk. The truth was, he liked Martha in a temper, because arguments led to lively discussions where she let her guard down. The note was supposed to make her just that mad and no madder.
That whole line of reasoning had required exactly as much time as Birdie needed to propel herself across the room like a spinning top.
“I knew you’d keep your word!”
“Your faith in me is much appreciated,” Daniel said dryly. He took a towel from the washstand and began to wipe himself down while Birdie held center stage.
“Can I explain it to you? Hannah, can I explain to him?”
“Go right ahead,” Hannah said, looking up from a thick stack of closely written papers.
Birdie held herself very straight and still, as though she were reciting in front of a class.
“The idea is, bad things get caught up in you and can’t find a way out. And these needles, they make holes—tiny little holes—for the bad to come out of. So you’ll feel better.”
“Like a lightning rod,” Daniel suggested, and she scowled at him.
“Not like a lightning rod. A lightning rod is there for the lightning to grab on to. A lightning rod fools the lightning into staying away from trees and people and houses. This has got nothing to do with grabbing on; it has to do with letting go. Helping the nerves let go. Isn’t that right, Hannah?”
“In the essentials.” Hannah had opened her bag on the table and was taking out bits and pieces and lining them up. To Birdie she said, “I will need water.”
Birdie shot outside and soon the sound of the pump working came to them. Daniel found himself standing there, unobserved, while Martha talked to Hannah about what she might need, whether the bed or the table or perhaps even the floor would be the best place for Daniel to stretch out.
Daniel took the opportunity to open the carved wooden box Hannah had brought with her. Some twenty needles on a bed of silky green velvet overlaid with white silk. Thin needles as long as a finger, with small ivory grips at one end. Tucked into the velvet that lined the inside top of the box was a folded piece of paper that turned out to be a diagram of the human body. The writing was in Arabic and English printed very small in a neat hand.
“Daniel?” Hannah called again, and he turned to her.
“As soon as Birdie gets here with the water—” she pulled a jar of soft soap from her bag, “we can all wash and begin.”
There was no arguing with Hannah when it came to washing before she treated someone. She and everyone else in the room would wash three times. Hands were then examined and if there was dirt beneath the fingernails or if the fingernails extended at all beyond the nailbed, that person would have to clip their nails and start again. She was unrelenting on this point, which she had learned from Hakim Ibrahim when she was very young.
Daniel had once asked her to explain the reasoning to him in more detail, which had resulted in a visit to the small building that had once been Richard Todd’s lab. Hannah had brought her microscope out into the daylight and then had him examine all sorts of things from pond water to spit until he conceded that yes, there were beings smaller than the human eye could perceive and yes, it made sense to be as free as possible from such things when she was trying to fix something.
People who came to her for help gave in to her demands soon enough and few even remarked about it anymore. Except for Jennet, who made a needlepoint banner to frame and hang in Hannah’s workroom: Evil resides beneath the fingernails.
In some things Hannah had no sense of humor, but she had smiled and allowed Jennet to hang the needlework.
The plain truth was, the citizens of Paradise had good reason to trust Hannah. If you listened to her and did as she told you to do, there was a pretty high chance that you’d eventually get up out of bed and go on about your business. But the respect she had in Paradise didn’t extend beyond its borders.
“Are you thinking of Nut Island?” Hannah asked, bringing him up out of his thoughts with a jerk.
“That was the last time you operated on me,” Daniel agreed.
“This isn’t an operation,” Hannah said. “But I hope it will do you some good anyway.” She turned to Martha.
“You are very quiet. Does the idea of this particular treatment bother you?”
Martha pursed her lips and Daniel had to resist the urge to laugh out loud. She was mad, all right.
Before Martha could answer Daniel said, “Just don’t let her get hold of those needles.”
“Oh?” Hannah raised an eyebrow, glancing back and forth between them. “I gather you’ve given your new wife reason to be angry.”
“Why do you jump to that conclusion?” Daniel said, vaguely affronted.
“Because she knows you,” Martha said.
Hannah said, “Martha, if you’d rather not stay—”
Martha gave a short laugh. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
50
When Birdie came along with Hannah on a call, she spent the whole walk home peppering her with questions. Why one kind of fever tea over another, how quickly a bone would knit, when a baby might be born, what Hannah heard when she put her ear to someone’s back, and what those sounds meant.
But today Birdie was lost in her thoughts. She was working herself up to ask a big question, and Hannah thought she knew what it was going to be. And then Birdie surprised her.
“Can we go home the long way?”
There was a question within the question that Hannah heard quite clearly.
“You want to see how the beaver are coming along?”
There was a line of beaver dams at the far end of Half Moon Lake, an arc that stretched more than three hundred feet and was as tall as a man in some places. All of that had been destroyed in the flood, and Birdie had been worried about the beaver as much as she worried about her neighbors. Despite the assurances of her father and brothers and uncles and cousins that the beaver would rebuild.
“Not the ones trapped in the dens,” she had said darkly.
Birdie was at the mercy of her imagination, as Hannah had been as a girl.
So they changed direction and started down the path that would end far from the village, where forest gave way to marsh and marsh to lake.
Hannah had work at home and this detour would cost them an hour or more, but she was glad to be in the forest where the heat—because it was unusually warm for May—gave way to cool shadows. The smells that rose with each footstep took her back to her childhood, when she had spent much of her time in these woods.
Birdie was still very quiet and her expression was grave.
“What is it?” Hannah asked. “Are you worried abo
ut Daniel?”
Birdie seemed surprised by the question. “No, not overmuch at any rate. Do you think the needles will do him any good?”
“I don’t know,” Hannah said. “The treatment has to be repeated many times before we’ll be able to tell.”
“It was kind of disappointing overall,” Birdie said.
“Oh, really?” Hannah tugged on the younger girl’s plait. “Bored, were you?”
“Not bored. But you hardly put those needles into him at all. Just the very tip. Not even a drop of blood.”
“You look distinctly put out,” Hannah said. “But it would have been a strange way to try to relieve him of pain, sticking a dozen two-inch-long needles into him.”
“But it would have distracted him for a while at least.”
Hannah laughed. “He wouldn’t sit still for that.”
“He would,” Birdie said. “If Martha asked him.” After a long moment Birdie said, “I’m glad they got married.”
“So am I.”
“They were fighting before we got there.”
Hannah stopped and Birdie turned to face her.
“What makes you think that? What did you think you heard when you were at the water pump?”
Birdie could produce a look of dry disbelief that exactly mirrored their father’s. “Nothing,” she said. “It wasn’t anything anybody said. It was the look on Martha’s face. Or maybe, that she wouldn’t look at him. You didn’t see that?”
Hannah thought for a moment. “I did. But it doesn’t mean that they’re fighting. Married people disagree.”
“You can say that again. Don’t laugh, you know it’s true,” Birdie said. “You and Ben get into arguments all the time.”
“And we get out of them again.”
“Yes,” Birdie said, her mouth twisting. “I know how you do that too.”
In her surprise Hannah gave a full laugh, but Birdie wasn’t at all put out.
She said, “Daniel likes getting Martha a little mad. He was thinking about it all the time you were putting those needles in.”
“Are you in the habit of reading Daniel’s mind?”
“Sometimes,” Birdie said quite seriously.
Hannah said, “Are you worried about Lily? You know she is doing very well. If we can keep her in bed, I think she will come through this pregnancy with a healthy baby.”
“Lots of women don’t,” Birdie said.
That was true, of course, and Hannah didn’t try to deny it. They had lost a mother and baby just months ago.
The path grew very steep and narrow, and so for the next part of the walk they were too busy staying on their feet to talk.
The woods gave way gradually until they were surrounded by speckled alder, silver maples, and elm. The ground got wetter and wetter underfoot and then they stood in the clear, on the edge of the swamp.
It should have been very familiar, but it was not. The storm had come down hard and the shoreline and water were littered with debris from the flood. Shattered trees piled together like a game of pickup sticks, boulders, and uprooted bushes.
“Look.” Birdie pointed to the remnants of a canoe hanging from a maple limb. “Gabriel’s.”
In spite of the damage, there was some comfort to be taken here in the certainty of another growing season. Human beings were the only ones who seemed to hold on to disaster. Birdie wondered why she hadn’t thought to come to the lake to watch the birds. It was her favorite thing about this time of year, to keep an eye out for mallards, white-winged scoters and all-black ones, teals and buffleheads and loons.
A black-winged duck was moving across the water with a dozen ducklings fanned out behind her. There would be nests tucked out of sight, but many of the birds they saw today would be gone very soon, continuing on their way north.
Hannah and Birdie went on, moving carefully over or around deadfall toward the sound of the beaver at work, great flat tails thumping the water. The debris and marsh stopped them just short of the point where the large stream that came off Hidden Wolf joined the lake.
The beaver were hard at work putting their world back together, though some of the younger ones seemed more interested in the large supply of food that had been deposited all around them. Hannah saw more than one lounging on its back in the water, nibbling the soft inner bark from a branch.
Birdie said, “Is Jennet well?”
The question startled Hannah so that she couldn’t find her voice for a moment.
“Yes,” she said finally. “I think she is. Why do you ask?”
The girl lifted both shoulders and let them drop.
“Something is worrying you. Tell me.”
Birdie looked at Hannah over her shoulder. “She just seems tired all the time. More tired than you were when you were going to have Simon.”
After a long minute in which Hannah thought very seriously about Jennet, Birdie said, “What’s that?”
“What?”
“That. I thought at first it was just a log, there on the end of the dam. But there’s something blue caught on it.” And then, her tone calm and even: “Sister, I think that’s a body.”
Elizabeth was in the trading post to see if there had been mail when the door flew open and her youngest came bounding in, red-faced and out of breath. Hannah was just behind her, looking serious.
“Ma!” Birdie flung her arms around Elizabeth’s waist.
“Is there something wrong with Daniel?” Her voice creaked and broke.
Birdie’s expression was almost comical. “Daniel? There’s nothing wrong with Daniel. But something awful—”
Almost of their own volition Elizabeth’s hands touched the girl’s head and back, searching for some hidden wound but finding only the rapid beat of her heart.
“A body,” Birdie said. “At the beaver dams.”
There were a lot of people close by, as was always the case when the post rider was expected. Even those who rarely got a letter wanted to know who had, and what news there might be. And now there was something much more interesting to tell at the dinner table.
The questions came from all over the room. Had Hannah seen the body too? Did she recognize it? Was it a local? How long had it been in the lake? Why hadn’t she brought it back with her?
Hannah looked at Elizabeth, who inclined her head toward the counter where Magistrate Bookman and Uz Brodie were standing. Brodie served as a kind of sheriff and a substitute for Bookman when he was away on business. “We couldn’t get very close,” Hannah told them. “You’ll need a canoe.”
Baldy O’Brien snorted. “And where would they get a canoe?”
Before the flood there were close to a dozen canoes on the lake; the only one to survive had been up at the Ames place waiting to have a hole in its side fixed.
“What about Runs-from-Bears?” asked Brodie. “He started on a new canoe the day after the flood.”
“Not finished yet,” Hannah said.
John Mayfair said, “There’s the raft. We took it out of the water once the bridge was done, but we never broke it up. It’s right out back.”
“Well, then,” said Bookman. “The raft will have to do.”
“I want to go back with them,” Birdie said. “There’s room on the raft. Please, Ma, can I go back with them?”
“Of course not,” Elizabeth said, her tone more severe than she had meant it to be.
Tobias Mayfair raised his voice to be heard above the noise. “Friends, has anybody gone missing over the last few days?”
The sudden silence lasted only as long as it took for people to take inventory of their family and neighbors.
“We’ll have to go around and ask,” Brodie said.
The crowd shifted and in that moment Elizabeth saw her grandson Adam and young Nicholas Wilde standing near the door. Nicholas looked intrigued but confused, while Adam seemed to be worried.
Birdie made straight for them, with Elizabeth and Hannah close behind.
Hannah crouched down a little so she co
uld look the boys in the eye.
“Is someone missing?”
“You had best speak up,” Birdie said to the boys, and Elizabeth put a hand on her shoulder and pressed. Birdie gave her an insulted look, but she held her tongue.
“You aren’t in any trouble,” Hannah was saying. “But we need to know if someone has gone missing.”
“Harper,” Adam said softly.
Nicholas looked at Adam with surprise. “Harper wouldn’t go away,” he said. “He just goes exploring sometimes. He’ll be back.”
“Harper?” Elizabeth asked.
“Harper Washington,” Birdie explained. “One of the servants the Fochts left behind.”
Hannah said, “When did you see him last?”
“I see him all the time,” Nicholas said. He was growing agitated.
“Early this morning,” Adam said.
“Nicholas,” Elizabeth said. “Does Harper like to swim?”
This time the boy’s face lit up. “He’s going to teach me,” Nicholas said. “He promised to teach me. But Ma says swimming is for fish, and I had best stay far away from the water.”
Lily was reading to Curiosity when Adam came to stand in the door. The older children had gone into the woods with Simon and Luke to haul timber, but Adam had stayed behind with Nicholas, who had been forbidden such outings by Lorena.
Lily held up her finger to ask him to wait, and finished the paragraph.
Curiosity turned then and saw him there. “Good God, Adam. What is wrong?”
“Where’s my ma?” Adam said.
“Taking a nap with the littlest three. Come on over here and talk to us.”
He hesitated for just a moment before he came into the room to stand between Curiosity’s chair and Lily’s divan. In Lily’s experience Adam was an even-tempered child, slow to anger and always willing to listen to reason. She had never seen him upset like this.
Curiosity was saying, “Come on, now, and tell us what’s wrong. Where’s Nicholas?”
The story came tumbling out at the mention of Nicholas’s name. Hannah and Birdie had come into the trading post to say there was a drowned body in the lake and it turned out that Harper Washington was missing, gone from the Red Dog since early morning, didn’t even come home for his dinner.