A Curse Dark as Gold

  I must admit, I was less scornful of such beliefs than I had once been.

  One afternoon as spring hinted toward summer, I worked late in the office, tidying up some figures in the account books. At last, satisfied but weary, I rose from the desk and bent all over to work the stiffness out of my spine. As I stepped out into the empty spinning room, I glanced toward the wall with the hex sign and started, my heart in my throat.

  A figure stood in the shadows there, shoulders hunched. It took me a moment to realize it was Bill Penny, who I’d not seen in months. He had changed over the winter, shrunken and aged; he seemed half the size he’d been at his daughter’s funeral. His clothes hung on him like sacking, and there was a huge, unmended tear in the sleeve of his coat. It looked as though he’d been sleeping in it, but the eyes he turned to me were sober ones.

  “You pulled all the water out,” he said, twisting his hat in trembling fingers. “I saw you.”

  “What? Oh, the wheelpit. Of course—we had to. For the new wheel.”

  “Did you see him? He comes here, sometimes, you know.”

  “Who’s that?” It had been a long afternoon and my feet hurt. I was looking forward to propping them up on the petitpoint footstool in the parlor at the Grange while Colly rubbed my swollen ankles with peppermint oil. I was not attending him as closely as I ought.

  “Did you know my Annie?”

  I shook my head. “No, Mr. Penny, I didn’t.” I had seen her, of course—it was hard to mistake the Penny children—but they kept to themselves, and I had no occasion to meet the girl.

  “She were such a pretty’un,” he said—which was patently untrue, but hardly a thought you’d begrudge a mourning father. “She had such pretty brown eyes, like two ripe chestnuts. An’ she carried her dolly wi’ her everywhere.”

  I nodded. “I saw it—at the funeral.” I had hardly meant to make that admission, but I could not retract it now.

  Bill’s eyes burst open and he broke into a laugh that made me reconsider his sobriety. “Ye saw that, did ye, miss? I tricked her, I did! She’ll stay down if she got her dolly, won’t she?”

  The bleary eyes were beseeching. “Of course she will,” I said, not at all certain what I was promising.

  “But you’ll tell me, won’t you? If you see her? You’ll tell Bill Penny if his Annie-girl comes round here.”

  “Comes here! Why should she come here?”

  Bill nodded solemnly, conspiratorially. “Because this is where all the ghosts come.”

  I went cold.

  “You know, miss—they’re all around ye. The young lad, and th’ angry one, and the master that was—”

  I held my hands tight at my sides. “My father?”

  A creak on the staircase nearly undid me. I looked up to see Harte framed there, his expression uncharacteristically dark.

  “Is there some trouble here, Mistress?” he asked, glaring at poor befuddled Bill.

  “Of course not, Harte. Please find Mr. Penny some task where he can be useful.” I uncoiled my fingers and gave them a stretch. Harte gave me a long, appraising look before nodding.

  “As you wish. Come along, then, Penny.” He caught him by the arm and was none too gentle steering him from the room. The last words I heard were “come back when you’ve cleaned yourself up.”

  Harte returned a few minutes later, during which time I’d moved to the office, but had not managed to rouse myself from the fog I’d caught from Mr. Penny. What had he meant? Was I now to believe we were not only cursed, but haunted as well?

  Harte let himself into the office. “They’ve all gone home now, Mistress,” he said. “And if you don’t mind, I’ll be locking the place up and heading back to my rooms.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Thank you, Harte.”

  He lingered in the doorway a moment longer, and then came all the way in and sat down on the corner of my desk. He lifted the iron ingot, hefted it, and then set it down again. “Look, Mistress,” he said. “Don’t think I’m forgetting who’s master here, but I don’t like this.”

  I frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I know you’re trying to be charitable, and that’s well and good, but that Penny’s a bad sort. Your Mrs. Baker and my own mam were sisters, as y’know, and Maire Stokes—Mrs. Penny that was—grew up right nearby them. They’d tell tales about those folk as would make your hair curl, ma’am. Peas in a pod, that Maire and her husband. I think they’d make the Eagans look like the saints themselves.” He grinned, but I could tell it was only to pacify me. He saw nothing amusing in his words. “Can you tell me what he said that had you so shook up?”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “Ah, Mistress—I saw that look on your face from clear ‘cross the spinning room. Like you’d seen a ghost. Now, I don’t know what you and Miss Rosie have been up to here at all hours lately, and it’s none of my business, at that—but when a man in your employ frightens you, I think I’m fair within my rights to speak out against it. Is he threatening you with something?”

  “Threatening me?” Something made me want to tell Harte the truth. About everything—come clean there and then. I didn’t dare, of course, but I did own what Bill Penny had said. “He says he sees ghosts here.”

  Harte’s face was grim. “I’m sure he does. With his taste for drink, he probably has all kind of dread visions. And having buried three children? It can’t be easy to stand in his shoes, Mistress, I’ll give him that much. But it don’t change what I’ve said. I’ll stand by whatever you decide, of course. I’m just askin’ you to think twice how badly we really need another hand round here.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I could not bring myself to discharge Bill, sound as Harte’s advice was. Part of it was charity: How could I pour salt in that poor man’s wounds? But the measure was my own selfish curiosity. If Bill Penny truly saw ghosts—and I told myself I did not believe it; Harte was right and they were naught but drink-phantoms—but if he did see them, I half wished to be close by when they appeared. I could scarcely explain this even to myself. My world was like a glass tipped on its side, reason flowing out and…something else flowing in. Could Bill’s ghosts somehow make sense of all the strangeness that I had witnessed these last months?

  And there was another reason. The master that was…Was my father in that congregation? Did he still linger, guiding my hand? I voiced the thought to Rosie, and she crowed with laughter.

  “Aye! And we want him guiding your hand, so fine a job he did of things when he was alive.” She shook her head. “You’re wasting your money and your sympathy on that Bill, Charlotte. He’s a shiftless old sack, drunk or sober, and you’ll never get the work out of him you’re paying for.”

  Not that it was costing any sort of fortune. I only paid Bill for days he worked, and in the months that followed, those were fewer and fewer. Neither did I pay much mind to gossip that placed Bill Penny with the Eagans almost as often as he could be found at Drover’s. And it was all for naught—for in all the long hot months that followed, I never saw so much as a queer shadow near him.

  The cold bright spring dissolved into a damp, oppressive summer, of a heavy overhanging sky that would neither rain nor clear, but life at Stirwaters settled into an unusually smooth rhythm. Our next shipment to Porter & Byrd was building up in the woolshed; they had this season put in special requests for particular cuts and weaves of cloth. Stirwaters Blues were making their name, it seemed, farther afield than any Miller had previously dreamed. It even seemed possible that we might make our last payment to Uplands Mercantile with a bit of a cushion to spare.

  One afternoon I was surprised to find Bill shambling about my office, mumbling to himself, his trembling fingers shifting over the bookshelves, the desk.

  “What are you doing in here?” I said, sharper than I intended. “Go home. Have something to eat.”

  “I haven’t seen her,” he said mournfully. “She never comes home, and I thought she might come here, where the boy
is.”

  “Annie’s not here,” I said gently. “She died last summer, remember? Bill—maybe you oughtn’t be here. This place isn’t good for you…”

  “I thought she could see me, now that I’m here all the time. But I got confused—and then I took my knife and did it just like he said—”

  “You what?”

  He shook his head, urgent for me to understand. “I cut up them bales, right, what were all in bad colors? He said it frightened them, that they couldn’t come anymore if it were there. And I said maybe we could just move it, but he said it weren’t good enough.”

  I stared at him in dawning horror. “Mr. Penny, did you cut all that cloth?”

  “Oh, aye—he told me to.”

  “Who?” My voice was stricken, shrill.

  Penny pulled back like I’d slapped him. “The master. He gave me a present if I did it.”

  I barely heard that last part; all I saw was the millyard in moonlight, swirling thick with scraps of cloth like dust motes. I grabbed for Bill, shaking him by the shoulders. “What did you do? What did you do?”

  “Mistress!” That was Harte, crossing the room in long strides to pull us apart. “What in the world’s going on here?”

  “He—he slashed the cloth,” I said breathlessly. I had no idea why I was so upset—was it that Bill had done it, that ghosts had told him to…or that I’d erred so in my judgement of him? Harte gripped my shoulder tightly until I was calm again. Bill had broken down sobbing, like a frightened child. “Mr. Penny,” I said loudly. “You must go home, and you must never come back here. Do you understand me? Do you understand?”

  Harte shook him until he met my eyes. “You’re sacking me?” Bill said, and he suddenly sounded completely lucid.

  “Yes, Bill,” I said, as the millwheel crashed and roared.

  I woke in the night when a pain stabbed through my breast. I shot up in bed with a gasp, fearing for the baby. But it was no more than a moment before I realized I felt no physical pain. Panting as if from a nightmare, I clutched at the sheets and stared into the darkness. A second pang gripped my heart, and I knew something was wrong. I shook Randall awake.

  “Something’s the matter at Stirwaters!”

  He frowned sleepily. “It’s the middle of the night. You were dreaming. Go back to sleep.”

  “No—I felt…” I trailed off. What had I felt? Fear, and pain—and a cry for help. “I must go.” I clambered out of bed, shrugged myself into my dressing gown, and fled for the dining room. I shoved apart the drapes and pressed my face to the glass, straining through the darkness toward the millpond.

  Which was orange.

  Like a glowing ember in the night, the water shone back a flickering nightmare—bright with flames, the mill buildings behind shrouded in a mist of smoke.

  “Dear God—what’s that?” Randall stumbled into the room.

  “Stirwaters is burning! I must get down there!” Heedlessly, I ran for the front doors, and flung them open onto Rosie, clattering up the brick walk on Nathan Smith’s ancient pony. They skidded to a halt just feet from the steps.

  “The woolshed’s afire!”

  I ran out to meet her, Randall following on my heels. “What of the mill?”

  “Nay, it’s not caught. Randall—can you help? We need all the hands we can get.”

  “Of course,” Randall said, pulling his boots on even as he ran.

  I stared at the both of them helplessly. “I’m coming with you!”

  “You are not!” Rosie said. “Phinny can only carry two.” She reached down and squeezed my shoulder, and I smelled the smoke from her nightgown sleeve. “Truly, Charlotte—you’ll be no help.”

  “Don’t argue,” Randall said, kissing my forehead. “For once sit tight, won’t you?”

  I nodded in despair, but of course I didn’t mean to obey. It might take all night to carry me down the hill, but I was not going to sit safe and sound half a mile away. I delayed only long enough to don shoes and pull a frock and cloak over my nightdress before following Rosie and Randall into darkness.

  I made myself take care, on the rocky road in the depths of midnight, but the same sharp cry that had wakened me urged me onward. I heard it like a voice in a dream—through the bones of my breast it resonated, silent and insistent, a distant, desperate plea. Say what you will: I say it was Stirwaters.

  Calling its keeper.

  As I descended the hill, the night sky before me lit up like sunset and storm together. I heard the roar of thunder before I understood it was the voice of the fire—a terrifying whoosh and howl that drowned out everything else. The baby woke and kicked me hard, just as the mill’s voice cried, Go, go!

  The scene at Stirwaters was chaos. Lit up like midday, the hands scurrying about the yard like bees at their hive, bustling everywhere with a strange, single-minded confusion as the flames leaped like windblown banners from the roof and windows. Somehow I kept myself from scrambling across the fence to join the battle. I might not have, if the baby hadn’t stirred within me like a flutter of panic. I stood just outside the yard fence and hugged myself tight, and the fire burned on and on.

  I saw Rosie and Randall in the bucket brigade, passing dyevats down the ranks to the pond and back. I searched for Harte but did not see him. Dear God—where was he? What of Pilot? I stared at the flames pouring out his window and knew nothing could have survived inside.

  A crash brought the roof down in a shower of sparks, and everyone scattered.

  The woolshed was a loss. I heard a voice barking orders, but could not make out the words. The men shifted their concentration to protecting Stirwaters and the Millhouse, but watching, I knew—I knew that Stirwaters would not burn. Something outside any of us kept it safe. Would it not have crumbled to dust long ago else?

  The building stood in silhouette against the burning sky, a blackened face with eyes afire. A blast of heat knocked me back a few steps, and I gasped. It was like the furnace at Pinchfields—black and hungry, the impossible pink sunrise of fire swathed in clouds of smoke and sparks. It seemed to swell toward me, looming, warning.

  The next thing I knew, I was sitting on the earth, in a rivulet of hot water streaming down the shale. Dazed, I could not think how I had gotten there, but strong arms were round my shoulders, easing me upward.

  “Easy there, Mistress,” said a wonderful, familiar voice in my ear. I whirled in his arms.

  “Harte!” I was on my feet, my arms flung around his neck. “Oh, thank God. Thank God.” Frantically I searched his face and shoulders with my hands—for burns, for sparks, for proof of life. He laughed and let me.

  “Ah, it’s all right then, Miss Charlotte. Here, easy now. You shouldn’t be out here, but I’m sure it’s no good tellin’ you that.”

  “How did you get out?”

  He shook his head. “I weren’t in. Pilot woke me, sure she had some urgent mission off by the river. It were a fine night, so I took to follow her for once. She disappeared into the wood, and I couldn’t find her. By the time I gave her up and turned back, the smoke was halfway up the southwest corner.”

  “How did it start?” I held tight to Harte’s arms, unwilling to admit my legs were still trembling.

  Harte frowned. In the flickering light his face was in and out of shadow, shiny and red and smudged with soot. “We might know more in the morning.”

  “If there’s anything left by then,” I said.

  “Ah, the lads are trusty,” he said. “If there’s a way to save this old place, they’ll do it for you. Look, I ought to lend a hand. Since I know you won’t leave, will you at least sit down?”

  I shook my head—or I nodded. With one last squeeze to my shoulders, Harte left me, to go back into the living, livid fire.

  They were all helping. Someone had propped a ladder against the Millhouse, and sturdy fellows hauled water up to douse the roof. It was slate, but underneath was timber—and being slate hadn’t saved the woolshed. A trench had been dug in the shale surrounding
the house, and beaters staffed the mill, ready to stamp out any sparks that hit close by. In glimpses among the ruddy light I recognized millhands and villagers alike, all working frantically to protect the mill.

  Except me.

  And the cry in my heart was as loud as ever.

  “Oh, mercy help us,” I breathed into the night air, unable to do more.

  I saw a sudden, bright flash—quicker and sharper than the flames—followed promptly by a clap of thunder so loud it knocked my heart into my throat. And like that, the glooming, lowering clouds broke open at last. Fat, beautiful droplets spattered the shale, and a cheer went up from the crowd.

  Afterward folk told that it was like no rain Shearing had ever seen. At first it merely struck the fire and splattered into steam, but eventually the heavens gained the upper hand. Rain poured down, heavy and heavier, like a curtain of water being drawn across the Valley. In seconds I was soaked through to my skin, shivering with gooseflesh. I kept wiping my sodden hair from my forehead with the back of my hand, but it only fell back again, wetter than ever. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream. The voice within me crowed with triumph; I mourned for everything we had nearly lost.

  From somewhere in the wet distance I heard Rosie calling. She emerged from the night, breathless and shouting. “They’ve got the fire out at the shed, but the roof’s gone, and it looks like the loft might have collapsed as well. The stock—” She shook her head. Wool won’t burn, but it will scald, stink, shrink, warp, and run. Half a season’s work lay beneath tons of rubble and water, moldering as we spoke. “Do you think we’ll save anything?”