“Take it,” William replied with a wave of his hand. “Take everything I own, Matthew. Just return my family to me safely.”
Matthew lowered the warming pan and gazed around the small room. “Speaking of your family, where is little George?” he asked.
“Mary Halsey next door has taken the baby,” William replied unhappily. “He needed a nurse. And I could not bear to look upon him, to see his innocent face and know that he would grow up without ever knowing his mother or sister.”
A loud sob escaped William’s throat. He wiped tears from his eyes. “I will get you your payment, Matthew,” he said in a voice trembling with emotion. “Then will you speak to Benjamin tonight?”
Matthew nodded solemnly. “Your family will be released tomorrow at sunset. Your troubled heart may rest easy, William.”
His head still spinning, William eagerly made his way to the back of the house, where his life savings were hidden. As he pulled the heavy cloth bag up from under a loose floorboard, he felt as if his heart were about to burst.
Martha will be home tomorrow night!
Susannah will be home too!
We will all be so happy again. What rejoicing we will do!
He hoisted the bag to the front room and sat down at the table to count it out. William Fier, carrying the brass warming pan in one hand, made his way to the table and peered over William’s shoulder at the large coins.
“Eighty pounds,” William said finally, shoving the pile of coins toward Matthew. “I am left with two copper shillings. But I am a rich man!”
“Yes, you are,” Matthew agreed, his face completely expressionless. As he leaned forward to collect the coins, the pendant he wore around his neck fell in front of William’s eyes.
It was so unusual that William couldn’t help but comment on it. “What an interesting amulet you wear, Matthew,” he remarked.
Matthew stood up and fingered the amulet, as if seeing it for the first time.
The silver disk sparkled with blue jewels. The jewels were grasped by a silver three-toed claw. Matthew twirled the disk in his fingers. On the back three Latin words were inscribed.
William struggled to read the words: “Dominatio per malum.
“Quite unusual,” William said. “What do the words mean?”
Matthew tucked the amulet back inside his doublet. “Just an old saying,” he replied with a shrug. “The amulet was given to me by my grandmother before I left our village. I wear it only as a reminder of that wonderful old woman and of my previous life, a life of poverty and struggle.”
William raised his eyes to Matthew’s, studying his face in the dim firelight. “I have heard such a claw referred to as a demon’s claw,” he told his visitor. “It is said to have powers.”
For a brief moment Matthew’s mouth remained open in surprise. When he regained his composure, he said, “I know nothing about powers or demon’s claws. Nor should you, William Goode.”
“No, of course not,” William said quickly, lowering his eyes.
Matthew Fier collected the remaining coins. Then, carrying the brass warming pan, he made his way to the door, his cloak sweeping behind him. He lowered his hat onto his head and turned to gaze back at William.
William hadn’t risen from the table. His entire body was trembling. Trembling with joy. With eagerness. With relief. “My family—” he managed to say.
“I will make sure of everything,” Matthew Fier promised. Then, pulling his heavy cloak closer about him, he opened the door and disappeared into the night.
Chapter 9
The next evening William Goode hurried across the commons toward the prison. A small flock of sheep interrupted their grazing to raise their heads and mutter their surprise in his direction.
The sun spread rose-colored waves across the evening sky as it lowered itself behind the trees. A pale half moon was already visible, just poking over the shingled roof of Benjamin Pier’s two-story house.
The day had gone by in a haze for William. Mary Halsey had brought him his midday meal, but it had gone untouched. He had intended to mend the fence around his wife’s small kitchen garden but hadn’t the strength.
Time had stood still, and William Goode frozen with it.
Only when the sun had begun to sink and evening approached had William sprung to life. Now he moved quickly past squawking chickens and a lowing herd of scrawny cows, eager to be reunited with his beloved family.
Eager to hug them, to touch them. Eager to share the warm tears that would flow, the happy tears that would wash away the terror, erase all of the nightmares. Eager to bring Martha and Susannah home.
As the low, gray prison building came into view, William’s heart began to pound. So much joy! So much relief! Panting loudly with excitement, he slowed his pace. Then he stopped to catch his breath.
A yapping hound ran across his path. William looked up to see a crowd in front of the prison entrance.
They’ve come to share my joy, he realized.
Their faces were hidden from him, hidden by dark hats and hoods. But he knew they were his neighbors, his friends, grateful for the reversal of the unjust verdict, grateful for the Goodes’ change of fortune.
As he approached them his knees felt weak, his legs trembly. He forced himself to take a deep breath and hold it. He could hear their murmuring voices as they huddled near the prison doorway.
This is the happiest day of my life, he thought.
And then the door swung open. An officer appeared.
Another officer stepped out in front of the murmuring crowd.
Susannah came next, her head lowered as she walked through the doorway. Martha Goode followed close behind, her shadow blue against the hard gray ground.
“Susannah! Martha!” William called, pushing eagerly through the crowd of well-wishers.
They both raised their eyes and searched for him.
“Here I am! Martha! Over here! Susannah!” William called happily. He stepped to the front of the group of onlookers, breathing hard, his face red, his vision already blurred by happy tears.
“Martha! Susannah!”
He watched for them to be released.
But to his surprise, their hands were tied behind their backs.
William gasped as one of the officers turned and shoved Martha from behind, pushing her hard, causing her to stumble forward.
“Martha!” William cried.
She saw him finally and called out to him, a mournful expression on her face.
“Do not worry!” he called. “They are releasing you now!”
“Father!” Susannah cried shrilly, her face also twisted in anguish. “Help us, Father!”
“Do not worry—” William started. But his voice caught in his throat as he saw the officers force his wife and daughter toward the low mounds of straw.
“Father—!” Susannah pleaded.
“William! William! Help us!” Martha cried.
“Wait!” William shouted.
Someone tried to restrain him. “It is all in the hands of the Maker,” he heard someone mutter. “Let us pray for their souls.”
“No!” William screamed. He pulled away, jerked himself free, and began running toward them. “Stop! Stop!”
To William’s horror, Susannah and Martha had already been marched to the straw piles and were being tied to tall wooden stakes.
“Nooooo!” William’s scream of protest raged in the evening air like the howl of a desperate animal.
His vision blurred by angry tears, he burst forward, howling his rage, a frantic wail of protest. He stopped short when he saw Benjamin Fier at the edge of the crowd, overseeing the proceedings, hands on the sides of his long black cloak, his face hidden in the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat.
“Benjamin—!” William screamed, grabbing the magistrate from behind by the shoulders. “Benjamin—you must stop this now! Free them! Your brother promised me—!”
With a desperate sigh William spun him around by the shoulders … a
nd gazed into an unexpected face.
“Giles!” William croaked, his voice a shocked whisper. “Giles Roberts!”
“William, please let go of me,” the deputy magistrate said softly.
“Giles? But … but …” William stammered breathlessly, too astonished to think clearly.
Susannah and Martha were now tightly secured to the stakes. The two officers were moving forward with lighted torches.
“Stop them, Giles!” William demanded. “Stop them at once. Where is Benjamin? Where is Benjamin Fier? I must speak to him before … before …”
Giles Roberts took a step back, freeing himself from William’s grip.
“William, have you not heard?” he asked, staring into William’s tear-filled eyes. “Benjamin and his brother, Matthew, fled the village before dawn this morning.”
Chapter 10
“Fled the village?” William cried frantically, staring over Giles Roberts’s shoulder to the straw piles where his wife and daughter were twisting in terror against the wooden stakes that held them.
“Before dawn,” Giles repeated solemnly.
“But I paid Matthew—!” William cried. “I paid him to—”
“The Fiers robbed us,” Giles told him. “They emptied the storehouse. They left us no food for winter. They took everything. Everything.”
“I—I don’t understand!” William cried, feeling the ground tilt and whirl beneath him. He shut his eyes, tried to steady himself.
“They loaded all their belongings onto wagons,” Giles told him. “And they disappeared with all of our supplies.”
“But didn’t they speak to you before they left?” William demanded, desperately clutching at Giles. “Didn’t Benjamin tell you? Didn’t Matthew tell you?”
“They didn’t speak to me, William,” Giles replied softly. And then he added firmly, “Please let go of me.”
“But the sentence against my wife and daughter was to be reversed! They are to be freed, Giles! Benjamin should have told you. He should have—”
“He told me nothing,” Giles said. The deputy magistrate’s features grew hard. “The sentence must be carried out.”
There was no use struggling, Susannah realized.
Her hands were tightly bound. She could not free herself from the stake. It poked uncomfortably into her back. Her wrists throbbed against the tight cords. Her shoulders ached.
She raised her eyes to the sky. The sun had lowered itself behind the trees, the trees she had loved to walk among. The piney sweet-smelling trees that had brought her so much joy. The trees where she and Edward had hidden during their brief secret meetings, during her brief happiness.
Lowering her eyes, she thought she saw Edward.
He stood at the edge of the crowd, staring back at her.
At first Susannah saw hurt in his eyes. Pain.
But as she gazed at him, his face appeared to harden before her eyes, until it became a mask of cold hatred.
She cried out—and realized it wasn’t him.
It wasn’t Edward.
The boy didn’t look at all like Edward.
Two circles of yellow light approached from out of the grayness.
Two torches.
“Mother—” Susannah cried. “Mother, will it hurt?”
Tears streamed down Martha Goode’s swollen cheeks. She turned her face from her daughter, struggling to stifle her sobs.
“Will it hurt, Mother? Tell me, Mother—will it hurt?”
Chapter 11
William Goode pressed his hands against the sides of his face. But the anguished screams of his wife and daughter invaded his ears.
I’ll hear their screams forever.
Eyes closed, he could still picture their bodies twisting on the flaming stakes, still see their melting faces, their fiery hair.
He had tried to run to them.
But the two officers had held him back, pushing him to the ground, holding him on his knees as the choking black smoke fogged the sky and the howls of agony rose higher than the flames.
Martha. Susannah.
My family …
William was still on his knees when the fire had been doused and the silent crowd had departed. He hadn’t noticed that he was alone now.
Alone with his grief.
Alone with the stench of the smoke in his nostrils.
Alone with the screams of his wife and daughter ringing in his ears.
They burned so brightly, he thought, sobbing.
They burned as bright as stars.
The ground beneath him was puddled with his tears.
He raised his eyes to the night sky, the color of coal, pierced with pale white stars.
I know you’re both up there, William thought, climbing unsteadily to his feet.
I know you are both up there, bright as stars.
He uttered one last, wrenching sob. Then his grief quickly gave way to his fury.
He strode home through the silent, deserted commons, his eyes held straight ahead. The fire faded in his mind, faded to dark, shifting images, pictures of Benjamin and Matthew Fier.
His fury grew with every step.
Betrayed.
They betrayed me and stole my life.
“William?” A voice startled him at his front door. It took him a while to erase the hated images of the Fier brothers and focus on the dark figure in his doorway.
“Mary Halsey!” he whispered.
She held the baby up to him, wrapped tightly in a wool blanket. “Take the baby, William. Take George.” “No.” William raised his hands as if to fend the baby off.
“He is your only family now,” Mary Halsey insisted, thrusting the baby forward. “Take him. Hold him, William. He will help you get over your grief.”
“No,” William repeated. “Not now, Mary Halsey. There is something I must do first.”
He startled her by pushing past her and entering his house, closing the door hard behind him.
The house was dark, nearly as dark as William’s thoughts. The fire had long since burned out.
William moved quickly through the darkness to the back of the house. He pulled open the door that led to his special room, the tiny, secret room behind the wall, where even Susannah and Martha had never gone.
The room where the black candles were always lighted.
He stepped into the flickering orange light and pulled the door closed behind him.
Whispering the ancient words of the purification ritual, William removed the scarlet hooded robe from its hiding place beneath a stack of wooden boxes and pulled it around him.
William could feel the power of the robe even before he lowered the hood over his head.
Bowing his head three times, William gazed around the circle of candlelight. Then he dropped to his knees on the dirt floor and began to chant the ancient words he knew so well.
My wife and daughter were innocent, William thought bitterly as he chanted.
They were innocent.
But I am not.
They had no knowledge of these dark arts.
But I have practiced them well.
Whispering the ancient dark curses, he began to scratch signs of evil in the dirt floor. He was breathing hard now, his heart pounding in his chest.
Under the satiny scarlet hood he glared, unblinking, at the ancient symbols he was scratching in the dirt. A grim smile formed on his trembling lips.
Innocence died today, William Goode thought as he summoned the spirits of evil he had summoned so many times before.
Innocence died today. But my hatred will live for generations.
The Fiers shall not escape me.
Wherever they flee, I will be there.
My family ’s screams shall become the Fiers’ tortured screams.
The fire that burned today will not be quenched—until revenge is mine, and the Fiers burn forever in the fire of my curse!
Village of Shadyside 1900
“That’s how it began. That’s how it all began more t
han two hundred years ago,” Nora Goode said.
Staring into the yellow candle glow, she set down her pen. Her slender hand ached from writing.
How long have I been here? she wondered, allowing her eyes to trail down the melting wax on the side of the candle.
How long have I been seated at this narrow table, writing the story of my ancestors?
The candle flickered, reminding her of the fire. Once again she saw the burning mansion. Once again she heard the anguished screams of her loved ones trapped inside the blaze.
How did I escape? Nora wondered, staring intently into the flame.
I don’t remember.
How did I get here?
Someone brought me here. Someone found me. Someone found me on the lawn, staring into the fire, watching the mansion burn.
Someone helped me away from there and brought me to this room.
And now I must write it all down. I must tell the whole story. I must explain about the two families and the curse that has followed us through the decades.
Nora picked up the pen. With a trembling hand she straightened up the stack of papers on the small table.
She leaned toward the smooth yellow candle flame.
I must finish the story before the night is ended, she thought.
So little time.
Susannah and Martha Goode burned in 1692. Now my story picks up eighteen years later.
Benjamin and Matthew Fier are once again successful farmers. Matthew’s wife, Constance, has given him a daughter, Mary.
Benjamin’s son, Edward, is a grown man. He never married Anne Ward, but he has married Rebecca, a woman from a nearby village. They have a son named Ezra.
So much to tell. So much to tell …
Taking a deep breath, Nora bent over the table. A few seconds later her pen scratched against the paper as she resumed her dark tale.
PART TWO
Western Pennsylvania Frontier 1710