Mending Horses (4 page)

“The fella.”

“Oh. You seen him yourself?”

“I couldn't get in. The whole town must have been crammed into Chester's parlor and yard. By the time I got there, a snake couldn't have slipped in the door.”

“So where's this foreign murderer from?” Jonathan gathered up bridle and harness, then gave them to Billy to store in the back of the wagon.

“Seems he worked for some fella up in Massachusetts. Killed the whole family—slit their throats while they were in their beds, stole their goods and took off. Some say he—” Eldad cast a glance toward Billy and lowered his voice. “Some say he assaulted the mother and daughters before he—” Eldad ran his thumb across his throat.

“Funny I ain't heard nothing about it. You know how folks love talking murder with a peddler.” Jonathan gestured for Billy to take Phizzy out to a little pen next to the barn. The men leaned
on the fence and watched the gelding shake himself all over, then crumple into the grass with a contented sigh. In a moment, all four enormous hooves were waving in the air as the horse erased the harness marks and sweat stains in the grass.

Eldad slipped a pair of segars out of his breast pocket and lit one for himself and one for Jonathan. “He had a valise full of banknotes and forged papers, they say.”

Jonathan puffed thoughtfully on his segar. “What's to become of him?”

“He's down to Chester Ainesworth's right now, until Chester can sort the truth out. He's locked up for safekeeping in that shed that Chester has tacked onto his barn. Chester and the J.P. said there wasn't anything to base a charge on, but folks were getting so ugly, Chester didn't dare let him go.”

Jonathan shook his head. “Chester Ainesworth,” he murmured. “Never struck me as sharp enough to make a constable.”

“He's not so dull as some think. He sent Jake Fairley's apprentice off to Farmington to get the truth.” Eldad chuckled. “On Jake's horse, yet.”

“Well, there's a good afternoon's work done, eh, Jacob?” The bench scraped raggedly against the tavern floor as Ezra Stokes sat down across from the blacksmith.

“You call that done?” Jacob drained his glass and banged it on the table. He nodded at the tavern-keeper for a refill.

Abner came around the bar with a fresh bottle of rum. Jacob hoped somebody besides Abner was keeping track of the bottles. He was sure he wasn't drinking nearly as fast as the others hunkered along the two corner tables, and he was damned if he'd see Abner spread the cost evenly all the way 'round.

Come to think of it, somebody should have been treating
him
. Hadn't he been sharp enough to spy out the foreigner for what he really was? Hadn't he sounded the alarm? And hadn't he stayed, alone and unarmed but for his hammer and tongs, keeping the murderer distracted until help arrived? Who knew how many lives he'd saved?

But Chester Ainesworth would bungle it all with his dimwitted caution. “The man's too big a fool to be constable,” Jacob said. He wrapped a meaty fist around his glass and took a long swallow, letting the rum's hot spiciness flood his veins and clear his head.

“Ainesworth?” Tom Shelby said. “He's only doing his job, I s'pose.” Shelby's eyes looked dull and confused, like an ox who'd been told to gee and haw at the same time.

Strange, Jacob thought, how drink made some men duller and other men more lively. As for himself, a good dose of rum made everything come sharper. “Chester's too busy fussing about warrants and papers to remember that his job is to keep us safe.” A dozen men's heads bobbed up and down over their glasses in agreement.

Shelby shrugged. “The fellow's locked up. We should be safe enough.”

Jacob hawked and spat on the floor. “Chester's shed wouldn't hold a goose. That killer will be out and slitting our throats while Chester's waiting for his ‘inquiry' to come back.” What galled even more was Jacob would be without an apprentice or a horse for the better part of the week. Jacob still wasn't sure how the constable had wheedled him into it. Now Walter and Jacob's horse were off on a fool's errand, and not one word said about who was to pay for the use of Jacob's apprentice and gelding. Nor had there been any mention of a reward for the man who'd identified and cornered the murderer.

“We can set a guard on him,” Shelby said. The nods followed up and down the bench.

“And who's to guard the guard to keep his throat from being cut?” Jacob loosened his cravat. Suddenly, the blasted thing seemed to be choking him. Damnation, the room was getting hot. Where was that bottle? Empty. He waved Abner over for another.

“What the hell do we need a constable for, if we got to be guarding his prisoners for him?” Ezra responded with a sarcastic sneer.

“Well, boys,” Jacob said, “if Chester can't do his job, we'll just have to do it for him.”

“You still have your fiddle, don't you, Jonny?” Sophie asked. All through the afternoon, she'd been looking forward to two things: an evening of Jonny's music, and a chance to interrogate Jonny about the boy he'd brought with him.

“I figured we wouldn't get a meal free and clear out of you.” Jonny nudged his companion. “Billy, go fetch—” The boy disappeared before Jonny could finish his sentence.

Sophie hooked her arm around her cousin's elbow and led him into the parlor. “Now, cousin,” she began, her voice treacle-sweet. “Who is that boy, and where did you find him?”

“Why, the angels sent him.” Jonny patted Sophie's cheek. “A gift from heaven.”

Eldad struck a lucifer and lit a candle. “An outcast from the other place is more like it.”

“You wouldn't say that if you'd heard him sing,” Jonny said as the boy reappeared in the doorway, holding Jonny's fiddle case.

Sophie settled herself on the sofa while Jonny rosined his bow and tuned the fiddle. She always marveled at where, between chin and shoulder, Jonny found a spot to place the instrument. Even as a boy he hadn't had much neck to speak of, and even less chin. The ratio of neck to chin to jowls hadn't improved as he'd reached adulthood. But somehow the fiddle found a place to nestle while Jonny plucked the strings, then gently massaged them with the bow, transforming their discordant squeal to a contented hum. After tuning, he conferred with the boy, who stood to attention just clear of Jonny's elbow. “A song of Ireland,” Jonny announced.

Sophie didn't know a soul who could make a fiddle laugh or
sing or weep the way Jonny could. He could make a tune crawl inside her, familiar as her own heartbeat. Tonight Jonny's fiddle whispered like the wind behind a ship's sails. Even though the boy's words were gibberish to Sophie, they painted a picture in her head of a mist-shrouded island full of green meadows, jewel-bright flowers, and golden-fruited trees. She tasted the sweetness of the fruit, smelled the perfumed air, and her heart ached because something in the boy's song told her the place was as lost as Paradise.

Foolish woman
, she told herself.
It's only a song
. But she couldn't pull herself away from it. As the last notes faded, she fumbled in her pocket for her handkerchief and dabbed discreetly at her eyes, hoping Eldad wouldn't notice.

Her husband coughed and blew his nose. “A bit smoky in here, isn't it, dear?” he said gently. “Better trim those candles.” He rose quickly and turned away from her.

Jonny and the boy struck up a livelier tune next, full of trills and runs. It was the first time Sophie truly understood what it meant to sing like a bird. She'd heard other singers who could embroider a song more elaborately, but this boy sang as if he'd been hatched with the song inside him. If the first song had been shrouded in mist and melancholy, this one was all joy and light, driving the shadows from the darkest corners of the heart.

Daniel opened his eyes. It was no different from having them closed, except that with them shut, the darkness was something he made himself, and naught to be fearing. With his eyes open, the darkness was a separate entity surrounding him, stifling him. He shook himself like a horse shaking off flies.

He wasn't a child anymore, to fear being shut up in the dark. But sure, he'd acted like a child this afternoon, paralyzed and tongue-tied with fear. Like an idiot child, he'd collapsed and let himself be led away and locked up, unable to say a word in his own defense. He'd not even thought of the peddler, the very man he'd come to Chauncey to find. The peddler was surely clever
enough to help Daniel prove his innocence, providing the man could be found. The constable had seemed willing to listen, if Daniel had but the wit to speak. In the morning, he'd keep his wits about him. He'd tell the constable his story and ask him about the peddler. Until then, there was naught to do but sleep, or at least try to.

He curled up in a corner of the shed and tried to retreat to the secret place he'd created inside himself, where all was quiet and green and safe. In his secret place, Ma and Da and Michael were alive and waiting for him. There, he could ride Ivy forever. But the secret place was harder to summon when it was close and dark. Instead, all the dark places of his life would spring at him, and Ma and Da and Michael and Ivy were forever gone.

The ship's berth was like the box they'd put Grand-da in when they put him in the ground. Dark and damp, but without the clean smell of earth. The ship's motion set his stomach jumping. He cried because he didn't like being sick to his stomach. Mama was sick, too, retching into a bucket
.

It was all wrong. Mama was supposed to take care of him when he was sick. She wasn't meant to be sick herself. Water—she kept asking for water. There was water somewhere on the boat, but where? The old lady in the next berth would know. He crept to the edge of his berth and reached into the next one. The old lady's arm was stiff and cold
.

A light began to glow next to him, as if someone had kindled a fire in the old lady's berth. Only the fire was the weird, cold, silvery-blue of moonlight, not the mellow gold of flame. Instead of a narrow box, the old lady's berth went on and on and on. Instead of an old lady, there was a young man with blond hair and staring blue eyes. The wrist under Daniel's hand was no longer bony and fragile, but strong and muscular
.

“Silas?” Daniel whispered. But Silas shouldn't have been on the boat. Daniel's younger dream-self hadn't met him yet
.

Next to Silas was another man: Lyman. Then a woman, three girls, a baby. Beyond them more girls, boys, men, women, so that the row of bodies stretched into infinity
.

Silas sat up, his head wobbling on his neck like a broken doll's. A gash ran across his throat, the blood seeping down his shirt front. One by one, the men, women, and children beyond him began to sit, exposing a row of torn throats and empty, staring eyes. One by one, each figure touched a finger to its bloody throat, then pointed the dripping finger at Daniel
.

Daniel tried to release Silas's wrist, but his hand stuck fast
.

“I never! I swear, I never!” Daniel gasped. He ran a hand across his own throat. He'd already removed his cravat and unbuttoned his collar, but the choking feeling wouldn't go away. His other hand closed around something smooth and hard.
Idiot
. It was only an ear of maize, probably left behind from last year's grinding. He ran his thumb along the bead-hard kernels and forced the nightmares away to the corners of the shed, where they hovered and waited.

He twisted both hands around the ear of corn and tried to breathe evenly. Hadn't Ma warned him that wishing someone ill would only come back to him? He couldn't deny he'd wished Lyman and his wife dead. No matter how he'd tried to smother his curses, eventually the black moods would win out, and he'd damn Mr. and Mrs. Lyman in his heart, fancy all the ways he wished them hurt, wished them killed. Now he had his wish, and it turned his stomach.

But he'd no quarrel with Silas. Nor with the children. Even without closing his eyes he could see them, throats laid open like hogs at butchering time. No, he'd never wanted that.

He rubbed his face. It was so damned hot in here. God, he was suffocating, as if somebody had put a blanket over his face.

The door rattled. Daniel flung himself toward the back of the shed, heart racing. He couldn't shake his conviction he was to blame for the Lymans' deaths, as sure as if he'd slaughtered them himself. And now the constable had come to make him answer for it.

He shook his head. It was more than likely the constable had
come to take him to the privy so he wouldn't foul the shed. He calmed himself by recalling his hopes for the peddler's aid and the constable's fairness. He began to shape the words to tell the constable his story.

The door rattled again, and the bolt clicked free. Daniel turned toward the sound. He saw the lantern for only a moment before they knocked him to the floor.