Bell Weather (51 page)

“Aye,” Tom said.

Nicholas drooled and gibbered. In another half minute, he collapsed upon the floor.

Sleeping like a baby, Molly thought. She didn’t cry. Instead she used a handkerchief to clean his bloody face, wondered whether he had lied, and prayed that he had not.

*   *   *

Four hours later, Molly and Tom stood on the dock in the overcast, pewter-lit morning and watched the
Lady’s Way
spread her sails and cut across Grayport Harbor. She carried an unmarked crate deep within her hold, delivered and received shortly after dawn, and once she was safely in the open sea, certain members of the crew planned to discover a man packed inside, overlook the ropes that bound his feet and hands, and arrest him as a stowaway on their voyage to the prison colony of Exanica, which lay across the ocean to the distant south of Bruntland and always had a place for fresh criminal laborers. The captain knew Tom’s brother Winward—they had served together in the navy—and had asked few questions while agreeing to assist. He had been warned, nonetheless, to overestimate the prisoner.

The docks were crowded but subdued, owing to the bloodpox rumor from the night. Molly kept her hood up, fearing that one of the passing sailors or merchants might recognize her face from her Grayport days. She watched the
Lady’s Way
becoming smaller in the harbor till it looked like a toy she could carry in her palm.

Tom held her waist as if expecting her to fall. He wore his tricorne and had the bearing of a general who had ridden all night but couldn’t afford to rest. Molly held him, too, sensing it was he who needed the support.

“How are your arms?” Tom asked.

“They hurt. You look good in that hat. I fancy one myself.”

He smiled at the sea but seemed to be preoccupied. Molly couldn’t read him and was too fatigued to try.

Pitt approached them from the far end of the dockyard, where he had just stepped off a cutter from Scabbard Island. His authoritative swagger was belied by his shortness, and by the cavalier seamen who refused to clear a path. They made him step around or bumped him moving past, until at very long last he reached Tom and Molly with little more authority than a messenger boy.

He sniffed to stop a trickle, then again with more intention.

“Grigory is dead,” he said. “The caretaker left him unguarded while I interrogated the jolly boat sailors. He swears that nobody else came to the island, but how would he know? The bastard was hiding in his room, still afraid of pox.”

Tom removed his hat as if its weight had grown oppressive. “How did he die?”

“Someone cut his throat. The room was locked and there was no sign of struggle. He was lying on the floor like his neck just opened on its own.”

Pitt said it thickly with a marble-eyed stare, turning his gaze from Tom to Molly without seeming to recognize the difference. Molly held her neck and felt herself swallow. Was it odd to pity Grigory, a Maimer and a fiend, for failing in his mission to convey her overseas?

“Your brother…,” Pitt said, blinking in the wind.

Molly swung her arm, rigid as a weathervane, and pointed at the vessel far across the harbor.

“He’s nailed inside a crate,” Tom said.

They fell into grim silence, looking at the ship and huddled, all three with Molly in the middle, while the overcrowded dock made their worries more anonymous but left them more exposed, in the wake of Grigory’s death, to whatever secret forces had achieved his execution. Life went on around them, full of hidden threats. They watched the barrels being loaded, ropes being tied, a thousand machinations following their courses.

“How do we explain this?” Pitt eventually asked.

“We can’t tell the truth,” Tom said to Molly. “Your own brother, the leader of the Maimers, sent away without a trial—people will think the worst.”

“We have to tell them something,” Pitt said. “At the very least, we need to explain Lem’s murder.”

Molly dropped her hood and scruffed her matted hair.

“We blame Grigory for everything,” she said. “He was the one with murderers and thieves at his disposal. My well-respected brother, Jacob Smith, sent me away for safety while he worked against Grigory’s network in Grayport. Last spring, Grigory kidnapped me for advantage. I escaped by jumping into the flooded creek, and then I stayed in Root—and kept my past a secret—so Grigory wouldn’t find me. But he did. He came to Root when you and Tom stopped the Maimers. He murdered Lem and framed Tom to keep the two of you occupied while he tried to steal me off again. I fled to Grayport and hoped to find my brother for protection, but Grigory caught me on the road. You and Tom,” she said, “worked enough of it out in Root and followed me to Grayport, where you rescued me and had Grigory arrested. He killed himself in jail. My brother disappeared, probably murdered by Grigory’s supporters.”

It was a lie that might suffice, being very close to the truth, with no one to oppose it now that Grigory was dead.

“But people here thought you and Nicholas—you and
Jacob,
” Tom said, “were married.”

“We had enemies abroad and changed our identities to hide.”

“What did you really fake a marriage for?” Pitt asked.

“That’s my secret to keep. So is my daughter,” Molly said.

The eastern clouds began to fracture and the
Lady’s Way
passed through a clear band of sun. It lit the sails with splendor, giving the distant ship a gold-spangled light before it sank back to shadow, gone toward the sea, with Nicholas and everything he knew inside its hold.

“People will think your brother died fighting the Maimers,” Tom said. “If he ever makes it back, he’ll be a hero.”

“Makes it back!” Pitt said, scorching at the thought. His reputation—and the lie they meant to foist upon the town—depended on the fact that Nicholas was gone. “You said the two of you would handle— It’s the only reason I didn’t arrest the son of a bitch myself!”

“Not the only reason,” Tom said. “But no one comes back from Exanica anyway.”

The blood-drop potion might have killed him already. Benjamin had failed to tell Tom the proper dosage; they had decided they were better off emptying the bottle, guaranteeing that he slept as long as they required. Molly had seen him almost die of seasickness alone. She thought of how debilitated he had grown doing Mrs. Wickware’s chores; even if he reached the prison colony alive, it seemed impossible that he would survive a year, a month, a solitary week of hard physical labor.

The
Lady’s Way
dipped and vanished out of sight.

“He isn’t coming back,” she said, knowing he would come.

Chapter Thirty-Two

The Orange remained closed. Molly, Tom, and Pitt had returned the previous day to flabbergast Root with the tale of Grigory’s crimes and the final events in Grayport, then retreated to the quiet isolation of their homes, leaving the town to talk and wonder and embroider on its own. The trio had reemerged this morning for Lem’s burial, and afterward Molly walked Bess home to the tavern, guided her into their room, and closed the door behind them. They settled on a bed and Molly held her hand. It was a hand with bitten fingernails, a child’s smooth knuckles, and lifelong calluses below them on the palm.

Bess had heard the story same as everyone in Root. That her father had been murdered seemed to matter less than that he’d died while he and Bess remained bitterly at odds. Lem had gained the pitiable glow of many dead brutes and now his silence, so different from the bluster of his life, allowed the finer whispers of her memory to rise. Molly understood. She felt the same about her brother now that he was gone, and she remembered all the ways he once protected her from harm.

But the time had come for Bess to know the truth in all its ugliness, and Molly told her everything as clearly as she could—her childhood, her father, John Summer, and her baby. Nicholas and the Maimers. Nicholas and Lem. She rushed it out efficiently and tried to get it done before the pressure in her chest prevented her from speaking.

“I’m sorry,” Molly said. “It was him. I let him go. I couldn’t see him hanged, oh I’m sorry … Bess, I’m sorry.”

Bess had dug her fingers like talons into the mattress and had listened, rarely blinking, never once interrupting. Her astonishment at learning General Bell was Molly’s father had diminished when she learned that Nicholas had murdered Lem. They were sitting hip to hip and Molly hugged her from the side, if only to hide her own face and keep herself from rambling. Bess’s stomach grumbled softly and she didn’t hug back. The hearth fire hadn’t yet heated up the room and the warmth between their bodies grew thin.

“You’re bleeding,” Bess said.

Molly let go. Her left-arm bandage had begun to seep through. Bess unraveled it and scowled at the irritated skin. She dabbed the blood with a cloth and studied the deepest wounds, each of which Molly could remember having made, as if the memories she’d called upon were labeled on her arm.

Bess applied a tingly mint salve with her fingers, took a fresh strip of linen, and began to wrap the arm again.

“I’m sorry about your father,” Molly said. “Do you hate me?”

“No,” Bess said. “I’m sorry about your baby.”

She proceeded with the second wrap, and Molly let her do it, sensing that her friend’s insistent ministrations were as comforting to Bess as to her own throbbing arms. Sun filled the room and tricked the iciness away. The finished bandage spiraled neatly from her elbow to her wrist, and Bess secured it with a pin and pulled down the sleeve. She looked at Molly up close and kissed her on the lips. It was sisterly and sweet and pleasantly insouciant, raising shivers like the salve she’d applied to Molly’s wounds.

“You’re staying now for good?”

“Yes,” Molly said.

“Do you love him?”

Molly smiled.

“We’ll be family if you marry him.”

But something hadn’t been right about Tom since they returned. It was more than Lem’s burial and worry over Bess, more than the exertion of the last few days. Molly hadn’t found a chance to speak with him alone. She had spent the night with Bess, dreaming of ships and Grigory’s death and little Cora on her own, and she had woken up scared and hadn’t felt at home. Every minute was a footstep leading to the next but she had no clear sense of which direction they would go.

*   *   *

Tom stood with his back to the window in the Knoxes’ kitchen, taking the twilight draft directly into his spine. Abigail added an extra log to the fire, an uncharacteristic extravagance—she thought of deadfall as God’s good reminder of the grave—but one she willingly bestowed for the comfort of the guests. Benjamin sat at the table, genial and talkative but shiveringly frail. Molly sat beside him like a well-loved niece. Tom admired his friend’s acuity in sensing her discomfort. It would never have crossed Benjamin’s mind that Molly might blame herself for costing him a hand, but once he’d read it in her manner, he behaved with more fragility, allowing her to help him into his chair, cover his shoulders with a blanket, and remain by his side in heartfelt penance.

“It’s time to change your bandage,” Abigail said.

“May I help?” Molly asked, standing up and walking forward.

Abigail paused without at first replying. She went to a cabinet for an earthenware jar and fresh supplies, laid them on the table in front of Benjamin, and summoned Molly over to a basin near the window, where she washed Molly’s hands and scrubbed beneath her fingernails. Molly looked pleased, familiar with Benjamin’s fixity on cleanliness and seeming to believe, through the careful preparation, that Abigail was showing her a great deal of trust.

Benjamin removed his sullied bandage, which Abigail deposited into a boiling pot of water. It was an ugly wound. The flesh had shriveled since the cut and gradually retracted. Now the forearm bones protruded slightly from the muscles and would probably result, once the stump was fully healed, in noticeable bumps instead of the smoother, neater surface of a proper amputation.

Molly stood there, expressionless, long enough for Abigail to question her resolve, but then she sat and got to work as calmly as a surgeon.

Benjamin watched her over his glasses. He smiled reassuringly and said, “First a gentle cleansing. Dab lightly. Do not rub.”

Molly did as she was told and asked him, “Does it hurt?”

“I am reasonably dosed to tolerate the pain. Next the unguent,” Benjamin said, pointing with his chin toward the earthenware jar.

Molly applied the unguent and continued to follow instructions, next by covering the muscles and the bones with lint pledgets, then applying strips of linen that extended up his arm. She secured these with a winding roll and finally with a cap, like a baby’s knit hat, that was placed upon the stump for added warmth and padding.

Abigail nodded as she gathered the supplies.

“Thank you,” Benjamin said.

Molly smiled with relief.

“Can I talk to you alone?” Tom said to Benjamin.

Benjamin stood without assistance, his legs prepared to move before the question had been finished. He had expected this, it seemed, and he and Tom walked together into the hall toward the parlor, leaving Abigail and Molly uncomfortably alone.

“Her resilience continues to amaze me,” Benjamin said to Tom. “Attacked by a winterbear, slashed above the knee, pricked upon the arms several dozen times, nearly drowned, and then imprisoned—to say nothing of the frigid journey and emotional toll—and yet she still appears healthier than half the souls in Root. A quicksummer spirit,” he declared with satisfaction.

He crossed the book-lined parlor and sat in a rocking chair, resting his newly capped stump on a side table covered with sheet music.

“She has a talent for dressing wounds. I must consider an assistant given my impairment. Abby is adroit, as you know, but lacks the temperament of inquiry so vital to the medical pursuits. Do you suppose Molly would consider an education in basic surgery?”

“As long as she doesn’t practice on me,” Tom said.

He saw the jar with Benjamin’s hand displayed upon a shelf, the glass softly tinted by the dusk-light blues. The hand was horribly mundane—whitened by the spirits, perfectly intact, and vertically positioned in the semblance of a wave. The gulf between the jar and Benjamin’s wrist was too unnatural to dwell upon, so Tom focused on his friend’s weatherworn face and on the wisps of gray hair that rose above his ears.