A Curse Dark as Gold (43 page)

"Biddy Tom says there isn't anything wrong that rest won't mend," Randall said at last. I nodded, not so sure. My uncle had suffered injuries in the last twenty-four hours that would surely take more than rest to heal. He slept fitfully now, twisting the bedcovers in his torn fingers.

"He really does look so much like you," Randall said. I had seen it, too -- up in the mill in the shadow of the moon.

I told Randall everything, then. I wished to spare Uncle Wheeler something, so I sketched out his sad dark tale as briefly as I could, but left out nothing important. This family had been burdened by secrets for far too long.

Randall made no comment, passed no judgement; just sat and listened, nodding and holding my hand. He asked intelligent questions, some of which I had no answers for, others whose answers I shared in full, however reluctantly. I shouldn't have been surprised if, now he knew everything, he turned right around and walked away again. But he is Randall, and of course he didn't. Great courage, indeed. It had to do with more than breaking curses. It meant taking risks and giving your heart into the care of a stranger. Why must I nearly lose everything to learn that?

Rosie wouldn't stay with us, but she couldn't stay away, either. Through the long telling and the long hours of that endless night, she was in and out of Uncle Wheeler's room. Once she came to fetch William off to bed, once to bring us a tray of coffee and hash, once on an errand never fully explained. She never stayed long, never got closer to our uncle than a glance from the doorway. I could see she was troubled and bursting at the seams to know what had happened in the mill, but she could not bring herself to ask.
Randall finally slipped into a doze, his hand still on mine, and I sent him off to sleep in my old bedroom, with William. He wanted me to join them, but I wouldn't leave Uncle Wheeler. Rosie finally came in near dawn. Uncle Wheeler had not awakened. She sat on the edge of the bed and stared at him, silently.

"What happens now?" she said, at long last.

"I don't know," I said. I was so tired the room seemed darker, instead of lighter, and I leaned my head back against the wall. Rosie took a blanket from the heap on the bed and moved to drape it over me. I shook my head.

"I don't understand you!" she cried, flinging the blanket back down on our uncle. "After everything he did, you're treating him like a wounded war hero!"

I sighed. "Show some compassion, Rosie."

"Why? He never did."

I pulled her closer. Her hands were cold; she must be as weary as I. "I've seen what comes of an unwillingness to forgive, and I'll not pass that legacy on to William. And nor will you."

She glared at me, her face set hard, and then sank to the floor and laid her head in my lap. She sighed, and I twined my fingers into hers. I brushed her golden hair with my hand as she closed her eyes.

Uncle Wheeler finally awoke, sometime late the next day. No one was with him -- Randall and Rosie had finally persuaded me to sleep in a real bed, and I fear I overdid it a bit. When I rose late in the afternoon, I looked into the bedroom to find my uncle up and dressed, or partially so. He had donned a fresh shirt and the very plainest trousers I'd ever seen him wear; the shirt was open down the front and he wore no cravat, no wig. It was hard to see this man as
our
Uncle Wheeler. But I could see, at last, my Mam's brother.

I let myself in but did not sit down. He did not speak to me. There was a tray of tea and rolls beside the bed, so someone else had been first to talk to him. I wondered who.

He was packing, and I watched him fold his beautiful things and lay them slowly in his trunks. There was the spring-green damask frock coat, the silver waistcoat, the purple shoes. Was it possible I could miss them?

"I'll clear out straightaway," he said -- and it was like his old voice, and unlike it. "I'll get a room at Drover's until the stage comes through at the end of the week."

"You don't have to do that," I said, and he almost smiled.

"We both know that's not true."

"Where will you go?"

The thin shoulders shrugged -- the briefest gesture. I could not tell if that meant he would not tell me, or if he did not know himself. I stepped in closer and -- I do not know if I meant to put out my hand toward him or not, but I did not get the chance.

"Please, just go," he said, and turned away from me.

I hesitated in the doorway. "He's gone. It's truly over now."

I could not see the expression on his face. "It's never over," he said, so softly I almost could not hear him. As I said, some things should not be borne in public. I shut the door behind me.
True to his word, he left us that afternoon. Randall drove him over in the trap, and painful as it was to watch, our growing household all turned out for their departure.

"Good riddance," Rosie said as they pulled away. I think she might have spit on the ground behind him, if Harte hadn't been there. I shook my head.

"Rosie, we're family."

"He's not our family. Not the way he treated us." The trap rolled down the road. No one turned back. I took Rosie by the hand.

"We're
his
family."

We took another day to repair the damage to Stirwaters, but save for a scattering of bobbins in the spinning room and a crack in the fulling stock headframe, the mill was in remarkably good shape. The broken floorboards had mended themselves, seamlessly, overnight; we could no longer feel each breath of wind through the walls. I held William to my shoulder and watched as Rosie and Randall hefted the attic window back into place; it fitted snugly in its frame and gave Rosie no trouble -- no screws popped loose, no panes of glass cracked inexplicably.

Was it the breaking of the curse that did it? Was John Simple's ill will no longer fighting with the protective spirit of Robin, who had given his life to the building of the mill, and stayed many long years hence, watching over us all, speaking to us in the mill's voice of creaking floors and crashing water? Which happenings were Simple's doing, I wondered, and which Robin's? And which were truly no more than bad luck? I should never know for certain.

Except once.

Stirwaters had one last surprise for us. In the commotion, my father's desk had slid a foot or more off its accustomed spot, and as Randall went to push it back into place, he found a thick envelope stuck between the floorboards. It was addressed to Barr & Courtland, Solicitors, Harrowgate. I knew the untidy script immediately, and my hand shook as I opened it.

Inside were pages cut from Father's atlas -- schemata, diagrams, and a patent application for a new sort of loom, powered -- oh, mercy! -- by steam.
They have a loom here that runs by itself-- they say it's a wonder!

"Father made something that worked?" Rosie said, prying the pages from my hand. "But what --"

"He was suing them," I said, reading the letter that accompanied it all. It was dated the day before he died. "Pinchfields -- for stealing his invention. That must have been what he needed the money for -- your money, Randall, from the bank. These diagrams are dated -- it says here that they can prove he had the idea a year before Pinchfields built their looms -- no, before they built the
factory.
Mercy -- do you know what this means? That whole factory is built up around Father's machines."

Randall was studying the papers over my shoulder. "I should say it means a great deal more than that," he said. "If it's true -- and it looks to be; this looks like pretty clear proof of their theft -- you Millers would be entitled to share in Pinchfields' profits for all this time, and they'd have to pay you for the use of those looms. And that, I daresay, could be quite a tidy sum indeed."
"Now what," Rosie said, a grin overtaking her face, "would we ever do with that kind of money?"

"I can think of one thing." I thought I heard the mill's voice sigh, ever so slightly, followed by the churning of the waterwheel. A bigger wheel, a deeper pit... we could make Stirwaters competitive again. And perhaps, just perhaps, right one more wrong in the process, return something that had been taken, so long ago.

There was one last thing to be done. Everyone else wanted to wait 'til spring, but I insisted, and before the week was out we had assembled in the cross-ways -- Randall, me and Rosie, Harte on his crutches (he'd let us down the first time, he said; he'd not miss again), Biddy Tom, and William; as well as Shearing's vicar and two strong Haymarket lads. We did not make it more public than that, although Randall had to put it before the magistrates in Haymarket. They were quick enough to agree once he showed them the broadside. A haunted crossroads is all very entertaining -- until you find an actual body buried there.

It took hours, and to their credit, they had only my word to go on. Eventually the spades in the cold earth struck something unyielding -- and then again, and again. As the vicar read Scripture over the diggers, and Biddy Tom traced a great chalk circle round us all, the men gingerly lifted the bones from the earth and laid them in their new coffin. Some shreds of clothing were found, too -- remains of a shirt, what may once have been leather bracers. I clutched William tight and fought back tears.
We laid John Simple to rest in the Shearing churchyard, a few plots down from my father, under a cold November drizzle. A dark cloud hung overhead, and I held fast to my sister with one arm, my husband and son with the other, as a flash of sunlight fought to break free. A warm wind rolled off the river, like a soft voice bidding us farewell, and I knew that the end had come at last.

The End

Author's Note
This
is a work of fantasy, and Charlotte's village is not based on any real place. Her world, however,
is
strongly influenced by the real woolen industries of Britain and America during the early years of the Industrial Revolution (for our purposes, the late 1700s). While serving my own need for a completely imaginary setting, I have tried to be true to the history and society in as many ways as possible, and hope that a real woolworker of the era would not find it too unfamiliar.

That said, I have departed from history where it was necessary for the story I wished to tell -- most notably in my use of a machine called the "spinning jack." This is a real machine, and the men who operated them really were called jackspinners. But they were not in common use until the 1820s, and I have no proof that any were ever water-powered. There certainly
were
water-powered spinning machines during Charlotte's day, but no other had a name so delightfully apt. I was fortunate enough to get a firsthand glimpse of the processes of wool production -- including the spinning jacks -- at Watkins Woolen Mill State Park in Lawson, Missouri, a later-period, steam-run operation that has been beautifully preserved and is open to the public.
Another major departure was making Stirwaters's weavers female. In truth, weaving was one of the most important careers available to men of the era, and many period weavers made quite a good living at it. However, this fact of reality broke faith with a longtime association of women with textile work that stretches back to the Fates of Greek mythology and gives the story of "Rumpelstiltskin" its backbone. Women would return to dominate the profession with the advent of cheap cotton production in the 1800s, when operating a power loom became unskilled labor.

The folklore and folk magic illustrated here are also based in tradition. Corn dollies, hex signs, and other charms all existed, though they were not necessarily used quite as I have presented them. I am deeply indebted to Katherine Briggs, Christina Hole, and Jacqueline Simpson and Stephen Roud for their work in English folk tradition, and urge anyone interested in pursuing the subject to look them up. I have only scratched the surface here, and the depths are astoundingly rich.

The story of Rumpelstiltskin is what folklorists call a "Name of the Helper" tale, in which a character must defeat a mysterious helper by discovering his True Name (or Secret Name or Hidden Name). Germany's "Rumpelstiltskin" is certainly the most familiar of these, having been collected by the Grimm brothers in the nineteenth century, but the motif occurs in at least fifteen versions worldwide, including the English "Tom-Tit-Tot" and the Scottish "Whuppity Stoorie," in which, like Rumpelstiltskin, the title characters assist the heroines with their spinning. My work with the fairy tale elements of this novel has been greatly informed by the discussion and scholarship at Heidi Anne Heiner's marvelous Web site, the SurLaLune Fairy Tale Pages (
www.surlalunefairytales.com
), which should be a frequent stop for any fairy tale enthusiast.

I have always found "Rumpelstiltskin" to be a troubling tale, probably because it violates my sense of justice. The greedy father and merciless king go unpunished, and the miller's daughter betrays the only character who tried to help her. The anti-Semitic overtones of the Grimm version are also deeply disturbing to me -- and should be to any modern audience -- and I have tried to steer well clear of them.

Other readers disagree with a sympathetic view of Rumpelstiltskin. Folklorist Veronica Schanoes writes, "Some deals can't and shouldn't be enforced, and those deals include ones made under duress and those that involve taking a mother's child away from her." In other words, Rumpelstiltskin gets what he deserves.