A Curse Dark as Gold (24 page)

"That's how things work around here, isn't it?" I said bitterly. "It's capricious."

"Who's capricious?" Randall said, causing us both to start. He had wandered off, looking for evidence, and we had forgotten him.

Rosie and I exchanged a sharp glance. "Peg Eagan," I said, half at random, and added pointedly to Rosie, "Look,
whatever
happened, there was clearly some human agency involved. Go see if you can find out where the Eagans were tonight."

The news was all round the village by morning. The millhands, who had not quite stopped coming to work even with the millwheel broken, trailed in after sunrise, shocked and furious. Jack Townley was ready to form a lynch mob, and Mercy Fuller dug her hands through the scraps we'd collected, mewing over each in turn. "Ah, this one's the kersey Mrs. Hopewell were so proud of!" or "Not my black baize!"

And I? I floated around the millyard, like a ghost in true, unable to summon up the resolve to do -- whatever I must do to see Stirwaters past this. Randall found me, wandering helplessly through the shale, turning up bits of rock with my toe and collecting stray scraps we had missed.

"Charlotte, we must talk about this! You know the stock's a total loss."

I nodded, neatly stacking the scraps I had gathered. They were still damp and reeked of stale urine.
"But surely you were insured?"

I stared at him, wanting suddenly to laugh, hysterically. "Insured? Who can afford insurance?"

We had no stock. We had no wool to make more, no millwheel to drive the machines to make more, no time at all in which to consider the matter. Captain Worthy was coming at the turning of the month, and our payment was due to the bank a few weeks later. And now I had the banker suddenly too close for comfort, reminding me at every turn of the dire strait we were in. "I'll think of something," was all I could say, until my voice colored from despair to impatience.

The vandals were still unidentified. If the millhands had their suspects, no one spoke of them in my hearing, and our own efforts had come to naught.

"Mrs. Drover swore up and down that both Tansy and Peg were in the public room all night." Rosie kicked at the ground in frustration. "I still say they were involved -- somehow. I saw Tansy at Hale's yesterday, and she just grinned and did this --" Rosie made a gesture with her fingers, pantomiming scissors.

I drew back my lips in distaste. "That's just Tansy, being Eaganish."

"What about this Pinchfields?" Randall suggested. "You said they've threatened you -- maybe they sent a henchman down to rough you up a little. Has there been a stranger in the village recently?"

I gave a mirthless laugh. "If there was, he hides his business better than any person in the history of Shearing. No, maybe --" I faltered, frowning.

"What?" Rosie and Randall echoed one another, but I shook my head. I'd been about to say perhaps it was one of our own, but when I weighed them in my mind -- Jack Townley, the Lambs, Mr. Mordant... I couldn't bear the thought. For once, it was almost easier to believe in a curse.

Thus the days ticked away toward our deadlines, and I just sat in my office and stared out over the pond, as the rustles and sighs of the mill twined their way inside my head. If I had paid them any mind, I might have thought I was going mad. But the truth was, I was out of options. I could perhaps sell the scraps to be ground up for processing, though I would never get the value the whole cloth would have brought from Porter & Byrd. Randall tried to offer his help, but I would hear none of it.

"Look, I do wish you'd reconsider," he said, a week after the destruction of the cloth. We were eating lunch at the Grange, a hearty Bakehouse-prepared meal of bean soup and steaming brown bread. "You're running out of time, and we have the money, or we can get it. It just doesn't make sense for you to be so resistant."

I scowled over my bowl. "No. I'll not have you risking your fortune on Stirwaters, too."

"It's hardly a fortune," he said with a laugh. "Besides, it's our money now."

"Six hundred pounds
is
a fortune. And it's
your
money, and Stirwaters is my mill. It's my responsibility, and I'll not have it said that you're married to a --" Uncle Wheeler's words on my lips, I faltered, my quarrel with Rosie still too fresh in my mind.

"Married to a what?" he asked. "Charlotte, who said anything of the sort?" He reached across the table, but I pulled my hands back.

"I did not marry you for your money, and you did not marry me for my mill," I snapped. "Stop fussing -- I'll figure it out." I rose and began clearing the table with a vast clattering of dishes and silverware, until Randall threw up his hands and marched out into the yard, to pick up his hedge shears and hoe.

I bit my lip and watched him leave. Our honeymoon was drawing to a close. Soon he would be heading back to Harrowgate -- with or without our mortgage payment -- and I would be here, in Shearing, with the same problems I always had. The looming certainty of that was more than I could bear, suddenly, so I bundled myself up in my cloak and hat and wandered down the hill to Stirwaters.

To my surprise, my sister was in the finishing room. She had an odd air about her, distracted, faint -- as if she were waiting for something. She started when she saw me, and I couldn't tell if she was suddenly frightened, or relieved. She reached for me, but dropped her hands. "Charlotte, don't be angry."

I stared at her a moment. "What did you do?" But as I looked at her, her jaw set but a measure of fear in her wide blue eyes, I knew. Suddenly, I
knew,

I turned and pounded upstairs as fast as I could.

"Charlotte, wait --"

I turned back. Rosie was a few paces behind me. "I didn't --" She made a helpless gesture with her hands. "Truly, Charlotte, he just showed up."

He was there, in my office, sitting on the corner of my desk and leafing through Father's atlas. I stopped short in the doorway, struck with such relief that for a moment I could not breathe. Rosie caught me up and took my hand, and I managed to recover myself.
"Mr. Spinner," I said, straightening my bonnet, which I had not bothered to straighten these many days. "How pleasant to have you call again." I was aware how shrill and ridiculous my voice sounded -- but I could not care.

"Aye." Mr. Spinner nodded, his ruddy whiskers bobbing slightly. "I see you've come to some distress with your property since I was here last."

I nodded, foolish, eager.

"Bad luck, that. Need a hand, then, ladies?"

The wind howled round the mill and rattled all the glass in the casements. I felt a moment of clarity and reason, and seized upon it.

"Yes, Mr. Spinner, but --" I pitched my voice as calm as I could make it. "I'm afraid that we haven't any need for gold thread at present. Have you any other skills?"

Jack Spinner lowered my father's atlas to the desk. "Oh, and what are you wanting for, these days?"

"Cloth."

Spinner nodded approvingly. I forged on. "We have some damaged yardage. Is there anything you can do --"

"Something happen to some of that famous Stirwaters Blue? Well, I was a passable hand at the loom, in my day. I may be able to piece it back together for you." He paused and eyed me pointedly, his gaze travelling between my face and my bodice. "I hear you pay fair wages to your weavers, Mistress Miller."

I put a hand up -- and felt my fingers brush the enamel timepiece. Randall's gift. I hesitated.

Spinner saw. "Ah, well, if I can't help you, I can't help you. I'll just be on my way, then, I suppose."

"No, wait."
"Charlotte, no!" Rosie clutched my arm, but I was unpinning the watch.
It's only money.
I told myself I did not feel the prick of tears as I dropped the crimson bauble into Jack Spinner's outstretched hand, where it glittered with the gloss of blood.

"The loom is in the attic. Follow me. Rosie -- start fetching in what's left of the stock."

The ancient loom stood deep in shadow beneath the sloping eaves. Spinner brushed past me and made his shambling way toward the machine. The low sunlight seemed to follow him, until he stood with one hand raised toward the loom, all shadows swept from the corner. He eased himself onto the bench and gave a few passes with the shuttle, still in place after all these years.

"Ah," he said, in that queer, rusty voice, "Helen's loom. Good old machine, this one."

"I beg your pardon?" I drew forward, curious.

"But what's this, then? Someone's been tinkering, I see." He stooped low, giving a push to some lever beneath the body of the loom. A pulley carried the motion through the machine, and it shuddered. "Heh," Spinner laughed. "Look at that. I'll hardly have to do
any
work."

He beckoned for me to hand him something; I spied some old brown canvas under the window, and pressed a corner of it into his hand. At his touch, it began to unravel -- slowly, inevitably, as if it lost all memory of having ever been cloth. Spinner began to whistle, a lively tune that clashed with the howling wind outside.
"Now, Helen. Currer's wife, and mistress of Stirwaters in her day." He whistled a few more bars of his song; the threads of the canvas wound themselves onto the quill, until the shut-tie was full and ready to weave. Spinner gave the shuttle a tap with one hand. "Fine lady, she was. Mother of Simon, mother of Aaron. Good lads."

Helen -- Currer -- I shook my head. Mercy, what was he talking about:' Currer Miller was the second keeper of Stirwaters, more than eighty years ago.

"Oh, and we mustn't forget Hap, now ... such a shame what happened to him --"

"I'm sorry?" I said.

"Oh, no, you're not," Spinner said, a thread of darkness suddenly in his voice. "Not really. Those boys mean nothing to you."

My mouth was open to ask him to explain himself, but Rosie returned at that moment, dragging the pack bag of scraps behind her.

I spent the next half hour helping Rosie load the cloth into the attic. We quarrelled briefly -- we seemed to be quarrelling, briefly, more and more these days -- over who should stay in the mill overnight; I felt it my duty, but she pressed me to return to the Grange, and not leave Randall to wonder over an absence that should be impossible to explain.

"It's Uncle Wheeler's Friday card game," she said. "He won't be home before dawn, and by then he'll be in no state to wonder where
I
am."

Spinner promised us that the work would be completed by morning, and that no one would mark the strangeness of its origin. And perhaps he was right. Why should they? Who on Earth would guess that the cloth appeared by magic?

In the dark of that night I woke, shivering, for my husband had rolled over in the bed, taking the blankets with him. I lay there a long while, listening to Randall's breathing. Its rhythm could not soothe me, and I found myself fumbling for the little timepiece, and a candle to read it by -- but of course there was nothing, and I fell back onto my pillow, stricken. Eventually I rose and crept through the dark, unfamiliar hallways of my new home, to the great dining hall and its view of Stirwaters's millpond.

How different it seemed in the dead of night, from the cosy, candle-lit room where Randall and I had eaten hours earlier. Now the room was deep in shadow, the ancient furniture looming eerily in the darkness. The carvings on the fireplace, lit up by a shaft of moonlight through those enormous windows, seemed to leer at me, their twisted faun-faces reminding me sharply of Mr. Spinner. I drew back the curtains enough to look down on the pond, but the wheelhouse was not visible, and I could not see if any light still burned in the office. The Millhouse was dark as a grave.

Even my new dressing gown could not warm me against the chill seeping through the glass, and I found myself longing to slip back beside Randall, under the crewelwork hangings, and warm myself against him as he slept. The peace of that sleep was what I wanted more than anything, the ease with which he threw off the worries of the day with his boots and his waistcoat and, snoring softly, banished the troubles of the night.

"Charlotte." Randall's voice was a warm thread of air across the room, and his arms were around me before I could turn round. Softly, I let him drape the blanket around my shoulders, and laid my head against his chest.

"I looked everywhere for you," Randall said gently.

"Liar," I breathed. "You did not."

He brushed his lips against my neck. "No," he agreed. "I knew you'd be here." Here where the windows looked down on my mill, my sister, my home ... what had been my life up to now.

"Randall," I said, wrenching up the subject from where I knew -- even then -- it should lie buried. Especially then.

"Hmmm?" His voice came slowly; I think perhaps he had already begun to fall asleep again, there against me, wrapped together in the blanket I had made for him -- my Miller wedding gift.

"I gave the watch to -- to be pawned."

I felt him stiffen. The soft liquid flow of his body had gone; his arms around me tightened. "I wondered," he said quietly.