Ashes of the Earth (20 page)

Hadrian
glanced at the ridge above them. The little clapboard chapel wasn't
William's main church. It was a shrine of solace built below Suicide
Ridge. "Please tell me it was not about a trip to collect toys
on the other side."

His
companion's face tightened. "I'm sorry?"

Hadrian
gestured to a bench. "Have a seat, Father," he said, then
gazed out over the water as William settled onto the bench. With a
sigh he began to explain how ghosts had been giving gifts to the
young.

The
monk stared unseeing at his garden as he considered Hadrian's words.
"Who would do such a thing, who would treat eternal souls as
playthings?"

"Sarah
is stronger than that."

William
slowly nodded his agreement. "She asked for you, Hadrian, said
she'd been trying to find you. When I said I didn't know where you
were she sat on the bench as though going to wait for you. She sat
there and sang under her breath, just staring out over the water.
After an hour she finally decided that I would do, and started
speaking." The monk absently plucked a dried flower stem and
twisted it between his hands. "But I still don't know exactly
why she came. She has a restless spirit, that one, but there is
something more going on, more than the emotional squalls of an
adolescent girl. She said her father is wrong to hoard the past as if
it was just another of his antiques. When I asked her what she meant
she said he pretended that life always had been easy and cheerful for
them. He tells the girls about the splendid festival meals their
mother loved to prepare for them before she died. But Sarah remembers
long winters of being always hungry. Once she found her mother
chewing on acorns in order to save bread for her daughters. Buchanan
got furious, told her not to tell such lies in front of her little
sister.

"Then
she pulled out more magazine ads—more than a dozen, all with
photos of homes and families playing. She had drawn circles around
things."

"What
things?"

"Random
objects. Porcelain. A glass fish. A brass table lamp. A grandfather
clock."

"Salvage.
All things she has seen before in this world."

"A
grandfather clock?" William asked in surprise.

"There's
one in their house. The governor's mansion." Hadrian paced along
the perimeter of the garden, touching each of the statutes on the
posts as he passed. Their heads were shiny from being stroked by
mourners. "I remember before, when you had just a garden and
some log benches, up higher on the ridge."

The
monk nodded. "We could see the lake better from there."

"And
more of the land on the other side of the ridge."

"What
do you mean?"

"I
don't know." Hadrian began working on a pair of marble doves. "I
remember an article in the paper when this chapel was dedicated. The
building itself was paid for by the Dutchman."

"Van
Wyck is a supporter of our flock. With his help the merchants' guild
funded the construction. There's a plaque by the door."

Hadrian
stepped to the door, reading the wooden plaque with the carved
expression of gratitude to the guild, looking inside at the half-dozen benches and simple altar adorned with candlesticks and more
gravestone carvings. More than once he had calmed himself in the
little sanctuary. Over the altar hung a simple wooden cross and a
long slab of wood that William had inscribed with elegant letters,
what a piece of work
is
man,
it said,
how
noble in reason, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how
like a god.

He
sensed William at his shoulder. "Did they tell you to build down
here?"

"The
old site wasn't suitable for building. Van Wyck sent a contractor who
selected this one, even purchased the land from the Council."

Hadrian
turned to face the monk. "Van Wyck is dead," he said
abruptly.

William
closed his eyes, pressing a hand over the little wooden cross that
hung on his chest. "May he find eternal peace. I had heard he'd
been ill recently."

"He
died months ago. He was tortured, then murdered."

The
monk squeezed his cross tightly. "Surely you are mistaken. He
sends money for our support. He still sends the little statues."

"But
they actually come from the guild."

Worry
creased William's round countenance. "Yes," he confirmed,
"they come from the guild."

Hadrian
ran his fingers over a lamb. "Salvage," he said. "It's
all about smuggling." He explained what he knew about Van Wyck's
death and the use of his signet ring to manipulate the governor.

William
lowered himself onto a bench again. When he finally spoke it was in a
whisper, as if he did not want the lamb to hear. "You mean his
murderers paid for my chapel. But why?"

"They
must have an interest in the ridge above. An interest in steering
attention away from it, an interest in keeping the suicides coming.
No one goes any higher but those suicides. Their families come to
mourn but they don't go beyond your chapel, not as high as your old
shrine." Hadrian kept his eyes on the ground as he explained the
map secreted in the mill. "The same people are responsible. They
want the ridge to be haunted, a no-man's land."

It
was a long time before the monk spoke. "I have a theory about
the ending of civilization," he said quietly. "First you
hit a few buttons and millions of strangers die. Then you start
cheating at cards and forgetting your mother's birthday. Before you
know it you're teaching children to commit suicide."

Something
new rose in William's eyes when he looked up, a glint of anger.
"Christ's bones! They've been using me as another puppet, using
the children!" He rose and gestured up the ridge, then set off
at a determined pace. Hadrian watched him for a moment, then
followed.

Half
an hour later they stood at the little clearing, now overgrown with
weeds, that had held the former shrine. Hadrian paced along its
perimeter, glancing uncomfortably at the forested slope behind him
that had been the site of so many suicides. He mentally cataloged the
landscape below. The edge of the town, with its shops and residences.
The cemetery, where Jonah's fresh grave was a brown slash in the
scythed grass. The fishery. The ravine, over which towered the
gnarled old signal tree.

"What
am I missing?" Hadrian asked. "What else did you see from
here?" Then he corrected himself. "Whom did you see?"
Perhaps it was not so much a place he sought as the unexplained
movement of people. "If I were a smuggler," he added, "why
would I worry about this view?"

"A
smuggler can secretly cross the border in any number of places,"
William replied. "But here it makes no sense." He gestured
to the deep chasm that defined the border of the colony below the
ridge. "There is no crossing possible over the ravine. I have
heard of a bridge being started, but it's at the south end of the
ridge."

"But
if you were moving goods in and out of boats, this place gives you a
bird's-eye view. It has to be movement from the docks they worry
about."

"But
the new chapel overlooks the road from the docks to town,"
William pointed out.

"Not
the road from the docks to the shipyard," Hadrian said. "Not
the road to the icehouse." He walked to the western edge of the
clearing, where the ledge dropped away in a nearly vertical cliff.
Far below them, out of sight, was the entrance to the cavern used for
storage of the ice blocks cut from the lake in the winter. A
well-worn dirt track ran into it. He gestured to a faint line of
shadow that ran from the trace and disappeared into a grove of trees.

"There
was another cavern tested first for storage of the ice," William
explained. "They abandoned it because the access to it was too
dangerous, a track along the ravine's edge where wagons could easily
slip and fall. They found the one below and just widened its entrance
instead."

"Show
me what they abandoned."

William,
who often patrolled the ridge for suicides, was more familiar with it
than anyone Hadrian knew. The monk silently led him through a
labyrinth of winding deer trails, over the crest, and then down a
steep slope thick with stunted laurels and evergreens.

Hadrian's
companion offered not a gasp of surprise when they reached a
well-groomed roadbed, but rather the growl of an angry animal. The
passage to the cavern may have been abandoned once but it had later
been completed, creating a roadbed wide enough for a wagon. Hadrian
took a few steps toward the lake and saw how the secret road rose out
of the trees near a sharp hairpin curve around a tall outcropping
that concealed the remainder of the path. The entire pathway was
hidden, both by the outcropping and the steep, nearly vertical slope
above. Anyone at the top would assume there was nothing but the
ravine below. The only ones who could see it would be exiles looking
from across the ravine. He turned and followed the road until it
terminated a quarter mile later at a set of heavy timbered doors.

The
double doors were closed with a wooden bar and a lock set in iron
staples. He picked up a rock with a sharp edge and began pounding one
of the staples. After a minute William raised another, heavier rock,
slamming the staple with alternate blows. When the soft metal finally
gave way they pushed away the lock, lifted the timber bar, and swung
the doors open.

The
chamber inside was packed with goods for as far as they could see. A
battered armchair stood at one side of the entry, opposite the
stuffed head of a moose suspended from one of the beams that
supported the door frame. Tables were stacked with clothing,
candlesticks, paintings, lamps, kitchen utensils, and hundreds of
other items. Along the wall under the moose was a long workbench. At
its near end was one of the crude stamping machines used to forge
customs seals. At the other was a hand-powered grinding stone. Beside
it were three swords, one of which had been cut down to the size of a
knife. Hadrian's hand trembled as he lifted the blade. "One of
these," he declared, "was used by Jonah's killers."

He
wasn't sure Father William heard him. The monk stared numbly at the
smugglers' trove, then slowly backed out of the cavern. As he
retreated down the road Hadrian wandered along the tables, pausing
over a table of mint-condition toys, most still in their original
packages. The ghosts were subverting the children with such
treasures. The next table was stacked high with small wooden boxes
such as he'd seen in the kitchen of the smugglers' apartment. They
were filled with the melange of spices that had been the black
market's premier product for years, a composite of whatever a salvage
party might find and the powder used to dilute them. The men
signaling at the cliff above town had smelled of spice. Emily had
said the fishermen who had watched Jamie before his murder had
smelled of cloves and cinnamon. Jansen had had powder on his fingers
when he had been killed.

Hadrian
searched in vain for weapons or more ammunition, then moved back to
the table of new toys and began stacking them in his arms. Carrying
them to the ravine, he tossed them over the side. It took him five
trips to clear the table.

When
he was done he collapsed into the overstuffed chair by the door,
feeling weak. He had been so blind, they had all been so blind,
obsessing over politics while organized crime was extending its
tentacles into the colony. He extracted Jonah's worry stone and began
rubbing it, staring into the mocking eyes of the moose.

Finally
he rose, shut the doors, and secured them with the bar, then slowly
made his way over the ridge. When he first glimpsed the little chapel
from above, William was moving frantically in and out of the doorway,
carrying armloads of objects outside. As he reached the ledge just
above it, the building exploded into flame. William stood with one of
the stone cherubs cradled in his arms as if comforting it, watching
his precious chapel burn. What a piece of work was man.

Hadrian
paused at
the
top of the hill that adjoined the fishery compound. The sprawling
complex of stone, wood, and salvaged metal sheets had quickly become
the colony's industrial anchor after Jonah had perfected the steam
engines that enabled the fleet to reach farther, with larger loads,
than the older sailing vessels. Production of fish for food had been
the priority, but soon processes were developed for fish oil to fuel
lamps, fish meal to fertilize crops, and half a dozen other products
like sturgeon-skin purses and Angel Polish, the shimmering cosmetic
cream that was all the rage among the growing number of women with
uneven skin pigments.