The Caged Graves (11 page)

 

Nate stayed later than he meant to, and it pleased her to think she'd made him lose track of time. True, if it hadn't rained all day, he might have left sooner. But she was happy that they'd enjoyed each other's company. She had no desire to pit herself against his farm for his affection; she was rather afraid she'd lose.

“You like him?” her father asked after Nate had left.

“Yes, of course,” she replied without thinking, and then was relieved to realize it was true.

“You don't have to marry him, Verity.” Ransloe Boone waved his hand. “Ring or no ring—promise or no promise. I gave him permission to write to you, but I was surprised you agreed to the marriage before you met him.”

Verity nodded, embarrassed. She'd been caught up in the romance of the moment when Nate had made his proposal, and that regrettable volume of poetry had pushed her over the edge. Still, Nathaniel McClure was the sort of solid and dependable young man any girl ought to desire for a husband. “
You
think he's a good choice. And you'd like to have him as your partner.”

“Not a good reason to marry him,” her father replied. “Your mother wouldn't like to think I pushed you into marriage just to make
my
life easier.”

“I'm content with the match,” she assured him.

He nodded slowly, but as he left the room to retire for the night, he muttered, “Rather see you happy than content.”

Verity remained downstairs only long enough to see all the candles and lamps put out, then followed him upstairs. When she entered her bedroom, a gust of wind almost snatched the door from her hand. There was just time enough to see her window wide open, the curtains billowing and snapping, before the candle in her hand went out.

She rushed to the window and threw down the sash. Immediately, the curtains fell back into place.

Who had left the window open? Beulah? But why would the housekeeper open a window on a night like this?

Feeling her way in the darkness, she found a matchbox on her dressing table and relit the candle. Then she surveyed the room with dismay. The rain had drenched the bedclothes, and the floor was strewn with white and pink petals that must have blown in through the window. She bent and scooped up a handful of sodden, sweet-smelling flowers. What a horrible mess!

She didn't want to disturb Beulah, who would probably assume Verity had left the window open herself. She stripped the wet coverlet off the bed and mopped up the puddles on the floor. It was only after she finally sat down at her dressing table that she discovered her mother's diary lying there, apparently blown open by the wind. Worried that the pages might have been damaged, she moved the candle closer.

 

Nov 10 – Asenath has it bad too.

Nov 12 – Feeling no better today. Very tired of being so sick.

Nov 14 – Asenath pins her hopes on Miss Piper's remedies.

 

For a moment, seeing the diary unharmed, she felt nothing but relief. Then the significance of the dates sank in.

Her mother had died on November 15.

With a trembling hand, she turned the page to read the last thing her mother had ever written:

 

Pains so bad I fear I will lose the baby

Watering like dog

 

Verity clapped the diary closed.

 

In the morning Verity was just as perplexed as she had been the night before. She knew she'd left the window closed and her mother's diary in the trunk.

She picked up the diary again. Up to this point, she'd read it only in small spurts. As hungry as she was to learn more about her mother, it was painful to read.

On October 24, 1852, Sarah Ann Boone had written:

 

I want to name all my children after virtues. Ransloe agrees but says please choose Patience this time, because Verity does not have any.

 

Verity smiled; she hadn't known her father had a sense of humor.

A few days later, her mother had written:

 

We have decided on Patience for a girl and Clement for a boy.

 

The words caught at Verity's heart, and for a moment she imagined what it might have been like to grow up in this house with a brother or sister of her own.

She found other things to smile at besides her father's joke, such as an unexpected mention of Nate.

 

Fanny brought her boy down today, and we let the children play together while we finished the quilt for Asenath. He is as smart as a whip, but Verity was shy with him.

 

Verity read through these passages and then shut the notebook. She knew the diary came to an abrupt and unforeseen stop in the middle of November 1852, and she was reluctant to face it again.

 

An hour or so later, Verity walked down to the church to inspect the plantings at the two graves. She found them bedraggled but living and fortified their positions, slapping the wet earth back into place around them. Then she picked up her basket and walked down the road and into the woods—beyond the place where the road turned and headed toward the Clayton house. She could hear the running water of the Susquehanna River and knew that as long as she continued downhill, she was heading in the right direction. Returning to where she started would only be a matter of walking back uphill.

She examined every vine and likely sapling, looking for just what her aunt had described. She found many dry stalks the right diameter that snapped when she bent them and many green shafts too thin to do her any good.

Verity continued downhill, beyond sight of the road, toward the sound of water. The vegetation grew thicker, and she picked her way past pricker bushes and shiny leaves she suspected might be poison ivy. Yesterday's rain had left everything wet, and soon she felt dampness leaking through her shoes. She'd worn old clothing, knowing she'd be on her knees in the cemetery and wandering through the woods afterward, but she didn't like the feel of water squishing around her toes.

She heard the Susquehanna River gurgling in the distance. Just ahead she could see still water covered with so much green scum that it looked as if someone had thrown a rug over it. A foul odor wafted off the surface, and Verity turned to walk beside the swamp without approaching any closer.

There were more promising vines tangled amid the trees here, thick and ropy and pliable. Verity removed a knife from her basket and sawed through a few of them, finding them green and moist inside. It took some effort to sever them, and then she had to unwind each from its stranglehold on other plants and coil it into her basket. By the time the basket was filled, she was dripping with perspiration.

Wiping her face with her sleeve, Verity wondered how far it was to the river. She would've liked a drink of water before trudging back uphill. But as near as she could tell, the bog lay between her and the river, and trying to walk around it would take her even farther from home. Reluctantly, she decided to wait until she reached the church to quench her thirst; there was a pump adjacent to the cemetery. Picking up the heavy basket, she turned back the way she'd come.

It seemed there were more brambles than ever, and her wet skirt dragged against her legs. Verity panted, sweat rolling down her face as she mounted the hill. The air was heavy and still, and the stench of the bog rose in invisible waves around her, mixed with a sweeter, familiar scent. Eventually she realized it was coming from the shrubs with the pink and white flowers—the same flowers that had blown in through her window the night before.

Verity broke off a branch of flowers and raised it to her face. The scent reminded her of honeysuckle, and indeed, some of the flowers contained a full drop of nectar. She licked her lips.

Suddenly, from behind her came the crash of breaking underbrush. Verity whirled, but the figure rushing out from behind the trees crossed the distance between them before she could react. The man—dressed in ragged clothes, with dark hair and dark skin—was upon her in an instant, gripping her arm and yanking her out of the shrubbery. Letting the branch fall, Verity stared up in horror at his savage face—the high cheekbones, the scar that deformed one of his eyes, his angry expression. He opened his mouth, but she didn't wait to hear what vile things he might say. She screamed mightily and walloped his head with the basket.

He released her, recoiling. She shoved the whole basket of vines into his face and took off running. Down the incline. Away from him. Back toward the bog.

Running downhill felt almost like falling, and only terror kept her on her feet. She glanced back once, catching a glimpse of movement behind her, and after that she concentrated on dodging low branches and avoiding boulders. She knew she was headed away from safety, but she couldn't put any distance between her and the man—the Indian—if she tried to run up the steep hill. Losing herself in the shrubbery was the best she could hope for.

A vine just like the ones she'd been collecting proved to be her undoing. Her foot caught on a ropy tendril that snaked across the ground between two trees. The loop of vine snagged her ankle, and her leg was wrenched out from under her as the rest of her body plummeted forward. She hit the ground and kept sliding, unable to stop herself from tumbling, the slope dropping away from her.

Verity landed in a heap at the bottom of a small cleft, where a trickling stream had worn away the earth between two massive trees. Feeling the ache of several bruises and a greater, sharper pain in her ankle, she rolled over to look upward, where she now heard loud tramping and the breaking of twigs underfoot. She scuttled backward on her bottom, but there was nowhere for her to go. As the shrubbery parted above her, she did the only thing left for her to do: she screamed bloody murder.

The young man who looked down at her from the top of the cleft threw both his hands out in a gesture of innocent intent. “Whoa! Easy there!” Then he blinked and stared at her in disbelief. “Miss Boone?”

Verity could hardly believe her eyes. “Dr. Jones?” she said incredulously. Then, with relief, she repeated “Dr. Jones!” and burst into tears.

Hadley Jones jumped down into the cleft. He was dressed in work clothes, an old torn hunting jacket, and a wide-brimmed felt hat, but he was not the person who'd assaulted her. She could still picture the dark, angry features of the Indian who'd loomed over her so menacingly.

“What happened to you?” Jones asked. “Did you fall?”

“I was running!” she gasped. “There was a man . . . chasing me . . .”

“Chasing you?” He looked up in alarm, scanning the area around them.

“An Indian!” she exclaimed. “He leaped out of the woods and grabbed me! I hit him with my basket and ran—and then I tripped and fell.” Jones helped her up, and she winced when pain shot through her ankle.

Jones craned his neck to look out of the cleft. “Chased you?” he asked again. She nodded.

He tightened his arm around her waist, and she threw her own arm over his shoulder for support, easing her injured foot off the ground. “Let's get you out of here,” he said, surveying her with worried eyes. “What in the world are you doing in the Shades of Death?”

“THIS IS the Shades of Death?” Verity gasped.

“It's just a name,” Jones said in a soothing voice. “Nothing to be afraid of. I don't know why they call it that instead of, say, the Sunny Swamp of Happiness.”

She laughed without much humor, grabbing hold of exposed tree roots as Jones maneuvered her into position to be lifted out of the hole. This was a dark, miserable, foul-smelling place, and she hoped never to venture here again—but he was right. It was just a swamp. The person who'd accosted her had been a living man, not some specter lingering here from the Revolutionary War. “I was collecting vines for a wreath,” she said. “And now I've lost my basket.”

He lifted her out of the cleft, clambered up himself, and helped her limp to a seat on a boulder. “Shall I go look for it?”

“No! Please don't leave me alone!”

He smiled, kneeling down beside her. “I won't leave you,” he promised. “Now, with your permission, I'll examine your foot.”

Verity nodded, feeling her heart race as he carefully lifted her sodden skirt and took her foot in his hands. Adeptly, he unlaced her shoe and slipped it off. To distract herself while his gentle fingers probed at her ankle, she asked, “What are
you
doing out here?”

He shrugged off a canvas haversack he'd been wearing over his shoulder, then removed his hat and laid it on top. “I was gathering some plants,” he murmured, bending over her foot again. “Roots and herbs. That apothecary at Dyers doesn't always have a fresh supply, and sometimes I just like to know where my remedies are coming from. Does this hurt?” He rotated her foot carefully, supporting her leg with one hand under the calf.

“Yes, it does,” she said between gritted teeth.

“It's not broken, though. Just a sprain.”

“How can you tell?”

He looked up, his blue eyes twinkling. “If it were broken, you wouldn't be telling me it hurt in complete sentences, or even in words.” He slipped her shoe on again but left it unlaced, pulling out the tongue so it fitted as loosely as possible. “Now,” he said, putting his hat back on his head and slinging the haversack over his shoulder, “I'm going to carry you out of here.”

“Oh!” She blinked, startled, and glanced up at the steep wooded slope.

“You can't walk on it, and certainly not up that hill.”

He was right, of course. Verity stared at him, embarrassed. “I'm sorry.”

The young man grinned. “I don't mind.”