A Curse Dark as Gold

  What came out first was mostly tattered ruins, shreds of worthless packing. I let it spill to the floor without a second glance, scrabbling deep in the hole I’d made. At last my fingers found whole papers—a stack here, a scrap there. I pulled the first one out and knelt into the lamplight to read it.

  Hours later, moonlight had turned to morning, and I was still crouched beside the ruined wall, surrounded by a sea of papers. There in the dim light, I had pieced together a grim impression of Stirwaters’s early days. Out of all the tattered remnants of our past, a picture emerged: of Harlan Miller, ambitious, ruthless, driven and driving. His stamp was all over the mill, in the blueprint and footprint, the engineering of the dam, raceways, pond, and powertrain. His wife, five daughters, and son Josiah seemed an afterthought.

  An old map of the Valley, before there was a Shearing village, showed the undammed Stowe tumbling free through a golden landscape. Notations in red—Harlan Miller’s hand; I knew it well by then—had scratched out the spot where he would build his mill: a circle, a sketch, initials. One word did the map bear: SIMPLE, in block capitals spaced wide across the Miller land. I shook my head sadly; nothing would be simple about Stirwaters.

  Another stack of papers, once bound together with a ribbon that fell to bits when I went to untie it, revealed itself to be an age-old journal in an unknown hand. Most was illegible—the pages stuck together and crumbled when I separated them; age and mildew had obscured the writing, none-too-readable to begin with. Here and there I found a phrase I could make out: building continues slowly; money owed, Miller impatient for something-something Wheel. I spent hours carefully peeling those pages apart and trying to understand them; here was the account of the building of Stirwaters, from some anonymous workman perhaps? One of my ancestors? But the more I read, the less clear the journal became. Words leapt out: fighting, delay, boy, rain, hanging, Wheeler, and, close to the end and most ominous: drown’d in Pit.

  I felt as if I’d plunged into the icy millpond myself. Who was drowned? But nothing else on that page was legible, the writer made no more mention of any such incident, and the journal ended a few pages later. One page looked promising, but in my haste I pulled too forcefully, and it scattered to the floor, hopelessly lost. The back of the old book was blank; the author had abandoned his account—but stuck inside the mildewed binding was a fragile scrap of broadside, bearing a brief newspaper account on one side, a recipe for slug repellant on the other. I’d have tossed it aside with the other miscellany, but for five bold words marching across the page: WITCHCRAFT IN THE GOLD VALLEY, blazed the headline.

  A late instance in this neighborhood has shewn that the primitive and wicked practise of witchcraft still lingers in the rural places, near for instance to the town of Haymarket, where Friday last was arrested a man for the same. The unhappy incident arose when one Mr. M—, of Shearing, made claim against a townsfellow, that the latter had endeavored to act against him in a manner not befitting a godly man, namely that he had schemed against his health and prosperity and likewise those of his family, by means of foul Poison, graven Images, and curses—

  Curses! I read and reread the account, trying to make sense of it. Mr. M—Harlan Miller? Involved in a witch hunt? Such an act seemed almost too far-fetched to credit, coming from my kinsman, and yet wasn’t the evidence of his superstition all around me? A burst of night wind howled around the mill and hit the windows with a shudder I felt in my very bones. “I know,” I whispered back. “You’re trying to tell me something. But what?”

  Knowing I still did not have the full story, I reached again into the wall. Deep in a stack of receipts and correspondence regarding the construction, I found part of a letter, torn at the fold:

  …did not take you for a squeamish man. I know you feel pity for that sorry fellow, but forget that dirty business at the crossroads and put your mind back to work. I am not a patient man, and I expect to see a profit from my investment by year’s end. If the mill is not up and running by then, do not doubt I will have my money from this enterprise, one way or another.

  I pray God delivers your son from this terrible illness.

  I remain your partner in this affair,

  Malton Wheeler

  I traced my fingers along the name of Wheeler, scribed there among the records of the building of Stirwaters. I should have felt surprised, but I did not. It seemed the Wheelers had contributed more than just the millwheel; our very foundations were built upon Wheeler money as well as Miller will. Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that Uncle Wheeler had come here, and it had taken a reunion of the two Stirwaters founding families to stir up all the old ghosts of this mill.

  But something in that letter did chill me. What was the “dirty business” Malton alluded to? What had Harlan Miller and Malton Wheeler done—what was the secret so dark it had to be boarded up into a wall, guarded by a hex symbol? I laid the broadside and the letter side by side in the lamplight, trying to trace the threads that wove them together.

  I tapped my fingers along the torn edge of the broadside. I could not imagine accusations of witchcraft were often resolved happily. Dark dealings in Miller past, Biddy Tom had said: Anger, pain…

  Violent death.

  “Oh, mercy,” I breathed aloud. “What did you two do?”

  I fell back on my heels, as the threads twisted tighter and tighter together, binding us all in a web of violence and revenge. Was there blood—innocent blood—on Miller hands? If we were cursed, then surely we deserved it. And perhaps doubly so—for were Rosie and William and I not just Millers, but Wheelers as well?

  Something still troubled me. I found myself peering back into the wall, as if it would yield up more dark secrets, but I had fair emptied it. If there was a death on Harlan Miller’s conscience—something that had happened far from here, in Haymarket—who, then, had drowned in the wheelpit? Why show me a vision of Randall drowning? And why had our curse taken the form it did: that no Miller would ever raise a son to inherit after him?

  I pray God delivers your son…

  Suddenly, the distance between me and William was too much. I left the crumbled plaster, the hammer, and the scraps there on the spinning-room floor, gathered up my evidence, and fled back to the Grange. Randall was standing at the top of the stairs when I got home. The look he gave me was almost as terrible as anything I’d read that night. I swallowed hard, watched my husband, and—as always, waited for him to speak first. His eyes were shadowed, his hair a straggled mess where his hand must have passed through it over and over.

  “I spent the night packing—I’m supposed to be in Harrowgate later this week, but I need know if you want me to come back again.”

  I stared at him. What was he saying?

  “Are—are you leaving?” It was somehow the only thing I could get out.

  He nodded wearily. I had never seen him so exhausted. “Where did you go, Charlotte? What were you doing, running about in the middle of the night? What’s that all over your clothes, or are you even going to tell me?” There was no expression in his voice—he knew already that this was another secret I would not divulge. I wanted to run to him, throw my arms around him, weep on his shoulder and beg for his help. But what would that do but bind him tighter to a cursed family and their inevitable doom? I could not take the chance. Randall was a good man. He did not deserve to be tainted forever by the hand of Miller luck.

  Randall left us later that morning, and I don’t think we exchanged another word. I watched him drag his valise down the hill to the village, felt myself crumble away, stone by stone, and knew that Stirwaters was taking away another man I loved.

  Randall’s departure raised a few eyebrows in the village, and I did not even try to explain it. Occasionally Rosie would mumble something about the busy season for banking, but the sympathetic clucks William and I received told me that Shearing gossip, as usual, had gotten the better of the Millers. Randall wrote, at first—painful, hesitant letters asking after William, Rosie, me…but my ans
wers grew less frequent, lest I give away something that should have him bolting back to Shearing—until at last his stopped, as well. Thus autumn waned toward winter, with none of last year’s hope and promise.

  One of those dreary mornings I sat in my office, my back to the ruined wall, listening to the roar of water below my feet. I had done the right thing. I had done the right thing. I turned the words over and over in my mind, but the water drowned them out, every time.

  Rosie was with us, bent over William, cooing and tickling him. Even my son’s laughter, the latest in a list of infant miracles his father would never witness, could not cheer me.

  The door swung open, and the very world stopped turning.

  Jack Spinner was back.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Rosie and I both fell utterly silent. I stood and straightened my skirts, put out a hand to steady William’s basket. An autumn wind I’d not noticed before howled outside.

  “Good day, Mr. Spinner,” I said, trying to keep the tremor from my voice.

  He tipped his battered hat to me, bowed low to Rosie. I could feel the tension off her, like a frightened horse.

  “You girls didn’t forget I was coming, now, did you?”

  “No, of course not,” I said, coming round the desk. “Would you—” I had to swallow; my mouth had gone very dry. “Would you care for some tea?”

  Spinner looked round the office. The wind shrieked through the cracks in the floor and straight up my skirts. “No, no,” he said slowly. “I think I’ll just take what I came for, thank you.”

  “And what is that, then? Have you decided?”

  Spinner took a step closer to me. I seemed to have trouble fixing him in my vision—I had had him for a much taller man, once.

  “What was the offer, again?”

  “Anything,” I said, the word a faint croak. I tried again. “Whatever you want.”

  “Your wedding ring?” He said it so quickly I barely heard him. My heart jumped, but I slipped the ring from my finger and laid it on the desk. I thought I heard Rosie whimper. Spinner reached for it, barely brushing it with his fingers.

  “What about your father’s drawings?”

  The cold wind had wrapped round my chest. “Yes.” I pushed the atlas toward him, telling myself I did not feel the pang.

  Spinner turned his eyes on William. “His christening blanket?”

  Rosie cried out. “What could you possibly want—”

  I laid a hand on her arm. I nodded. He could list them all, every treasure of my heart, and it would be worth it. My son’s blanket, to keep my husband out of prison? My father’s album, to save twenty jobs? I bit my lip and stood firm. “Take it all. Whatever you want. That was the bargain.”

  “Good.” Spinner did not look at me—his eyes were still on William. Slowly, as slowly as snow melting, his hand reached toward the basket, the blanket, the baby. “I’ll take your son.”

  “What?” Rosie shrieked—but I was numb with silence. I could not move or speak; the chill wind had cut off my voice from my heart. All I could think was, I cut the scissors down from his bed, I swept up the circle of ash…

  In the silence, the mill’s voice was very loud—the thumping belts, the hissing machinery, the throbbing of the stocks. From somewhere very distant came a low, urgent rush. The water crashed off the millwheel, tumbling endlessly into the pit. I thought I heard screaming—and I knew it for generations of Millers who had faced this very moment.

  “Charlotte, for the love of God, do something!” Rosie and Spinner were locked in a preposterous struggle over William’s basket, like something from a puppet show.

  “Put him down.”

  “What?” They echoed one another.

  “Put him down. You cannot have him; that was not our bargain.”

  Spinner hesitated, and Rosie yanked the basket from his grip.

  “No—it was. Anything I ask—you said so. You wouldn’t break your word as a Miller now, would you?”

  “Of course not, but you can’t expect—”

  “Can’t I? I can give up my time, my energies, my money… all for the service of the Millers and Stirwaters, but I can’t expect fair payment in return? Use him up, he won’t care—he’s no Miller, after all! What does it matter how I am abused, as long as the Millers have prospered?”

  Rosie gave a strangled cry, and I felt my grip on the situation slip away. He was mad—terrible, powerful, and beyond reason. “You can’t take him—he’s so new; I barely know him yet.” I was aware how I sounded, but I could not help myself. “Please—choose something else. Anything.”

  “Charlotte…” Rosie’s voice had warning all through it, but I was past caring.

  “Please. Anything else.”

  Spinner regarded me with—what? Pity? Loathing? I could not see him clearly enough to make out his expression. Something was wrong with my hearing, too—I could only hear the shrill, mournful wailing of the wind.

  “You have only two things I want,” Spinner said. “I didn’t think it fair to take them both.”

  “Fair?” Rosie burst out.

  I shook my head, confused, as he blurred before my eyes. “What other thing?”

  “The mill.”

  There—like a kick to the stomach, I felt that. The mill gasped in all its breath at once, the air rushing in through every crack and broken windowpane. I wanted to grab my son and scream, “Take it, take it, take it!” But the words would not shape themselves, would not venture past my lips. I had a vision—like the glimpse I’d once caught of Randall falling into the pit—of what Stirwaters would suffer if Jack Spinner got his hands on it.

  I saw the stones crumble, one by one, into the river, the rotting wood give way and spill the floors and all the machines into the icy water. I saw slates shuck off the roof, plaster dissolve, the millwheel splinter…all the ruin of the ages, in a breath, if Spinner touched it.

  Something was squeezing me tightly—like a too-firm hug, or stays grown too small. I stared at Spinner, and as if the millwheel had finally completed its last great turning, I understood. All this time—all these years—all the Millers have known my work. The accidents, the mysterious mishaps, the bad luck. The lost sons.

  “You did this to us,” I whispered, scarcely aware I was speaking. There was no hope now; the Stirwaters Curse had come to claim one final victim. And I had called it down upon myself. Upon William.

  William! Like a bowstring releasing, I could breathe again, and I stared, bewildered, at my child. I wanted to give it all up for him, cast the mill behind me, flee to Harrowgate or Eamside—or Atlantis!—but I couldn’t. Stirwaters still held me too tightly.

  “Your mill or your baby, Mistress. Make up your mind.”

  “I—I need time—to—” I faltered. To do what, exactly? I held out my hand. “Please, consider what you’re asking me.”

  “Nay! You consider it. All your fine talk of Miller honor, of keeping your bargains. Well, this is your reckoning. Pay up.”

  I shook my head, as Rosie whimpered. “I will! I mean to, only the price—” I held myself together by sheer force of will alone. “It’s more than I was expecting. You must give me time to decide.”

  Spinner hesitated, looking from me to William. I saw him lift a tentative hand in the baby’s direction, as Rosie held fast to the basket and glared at him. At last he nodded. “I understand. You’ve treated me fairly. I’ll do the same for you. I’ll give you three days. At midnight Sunday, I’ll be here, awaiting your decision. Miss Rosie, Miss Miller—good day.” And like that—as if he had never been there—he was gone.

  I slumped to the floor.

  “Charlotte!” Rosie flung herself to my side. “Charlotte!”

  I reached for her hand; she squeezed me tightly, her eyes wide with terror.

  “What are we going to do?” she whispered.

  Father’s atlas teetered off the edge of the desk, and fell to the floor with a sound that shook us both. Rosie grabbed my arms, and for one hysterica
l moment I thought she might start laughing.

  Instead, we pulled each other upright, and I lifted William from his basket and laid him gently against my shoulder. Impossibly, he had fallen asleep. I patted his little backside and felt the warmth of his breath against my neck. I longed to do nothing more than clutch him to my breast and breathe in the sweet baby smell of him…but that would not save us. I must use the days I had bought us wisely.

  “Oh, it’s bent,” Rosie said mournfully, showing me Father’s atlas. It had landed on its edge, crushing one corner and popping the binding loose. As she tried to mend it, it fell open to the drawing of the spinning jack. Wincing, I looked away, but a draft from the doorway swept in and fluttered the pages. They came to rest at the map of the Gold Valley. Rosie and I stared at each other, and then at the map.

  Suddenly, like the walls of the mill reinforcing themselves brick by brick, everything began to fall into place. I slammed the album shut and shoved it at my sister.

  “Here, take this.” I swept to the shelves and wrangled out the pressboard box containing Stirwaters’s journals and the papers I’d torn from the wall. I pushed it into Rosie’s arms, gathered up William’s basket, and threw my shawl round my shoulders.

  “Where are we going?” Rosie asked.

  “We’re paying a visit to Biddy Tom.”

  By some miracle, Mrs. Tom was in, and answered my first set of demanding knocks. She eyed us with some surprise, but swung the friendship door open to admit us.

  “I have three days to break the curse on Stirwaters,” I said, and Rosie held out the carton of documents. “Here’s everything I know.”

  Mrs. Tom fixed us tea with honey and listened attentively to our tale—all our dealings with Jack Spinner, stretching back to last summer’s first meeting. She came as close to ruffled as I’d ever seen her, holding William very tightly and rocking faster and faster in the old ladderback rocker. I sat at her feet and spread the journals and letters all round me on the floor. At Stirwaters, for a moment, I thought I could glimpse the answer, but in Mrs. Tom’s cosy parlor at dusk, I could not seem to catch hold of it again.