Death of a Dyer (11 page)

“You had beginners’ luck today,” said the fourth man. Rees caught a confused impression of breeches and a scarlet waistcoat before the dark-haired gentleman disappeared through the door.

Piggy Hansen shot Rees a curious glance but didn’t immediately recognize him and joined his companion outside on West Street.

Potter nodded at Rees, his expression self-conscious, and said to Sam, “Go home to your wife. You’ve got good news for a change.”

Rees, who simply could not credit his friend’s evident friendship with Sam Prentiss, stared at Potter in dismay. The lawyer grasped Sam’s arm and with a faint shrug of apology shepherded him out the door. Rees turned to look at Caldwell.

“I guess they couldn’t find a fourth,” Caldwell said. “Your friend Nate Bowditch usually made up that quartet.” He drained the remainder of his whiskey. “They didn’t play here, either. Although no one knew the exact location of their games, I’m guessing they played in your friend’s cottage.”

“Who was the gentleman in the scarlet waistcoat?” Rees asked. Nate with Piggy Hansen? What had happened to his old friend?

“You didn’t recognize him?” Caldwell smiled mockingly at his companion. “I suppose I do know more than you do. That was James Carleton.”

Rees stared at Caldwell incredulously, and then his eyes rose to the open door and the street outside. James Carleton? And Sam Prentiss? That was even more surprising than Carleton’s friendship with Nate. Rees decided he would ride to the Carleton mansion tomorrow and speak to James Carleton and also to his eldest daughter if possible.

*   *   *

With the end of church services, people crowded into the streets.
Oh no,
Rees thought, watching them pile into their buggies and wagons. Sure enough, when he entered the traffic, he found himself mired in a slow-moving stream of vehicles and so didn’t arrive home until almost dinnertime. When Bessie trotted up the drive, Rees saw an unfamiliar buggy parked by the porch. Company and someone who didn’t plan to stay long; their gray mare was still hitched to the wagon. Regarding the unfamiliar buggy with disfavor, for he was tired, hungry, and irritable, Rees quickly unharnessed Bessie and released her into the field before trudging into the house.

He found everyone seated in the front parlor. The last time he met company in this room, he’d ordered Sam and Caroline off the farm. Even now, that memory made him flinch.

The stolid farmer in his plain-cut black suit rose to his feet. “Mr. and Mrs. Bristol,” David said. Mr. Bristol had put aside his flat-brimmed hat, revealing a shock of graying hair. His sunburned face and neck betrayed long days spent in the fields.

“Will Rees.” He nodded at the plump matron sitting next to her husband. She smiled in return, her red hair and freckles and wide smile reminiscent of Mary Martha.

“Cake?” Lydia offered. “Coffee?” Rees shook his head. The litter of empty plates and cups upon the tea cart told Rees that the Bristols had been here for some time.

“Forgive me for arriving late,” Rees said, shooting his son an angry glare.

“They wished to meet you,” David said. “And Lydia, of course. And I thought you would want to meet Abigail.”

Directing another frown at his son, Rees inspected the wench sitting between her parents. A mere slip of a girl, and a pale shadow of her ebullient sister, Abigail sat quietly with her hands folded in her lap. Unlike her sister’s fiery mop, Abby’s hair was tow colored and straight, and still plaited into two skinny braids. A few freckles dusted her nose, but otherwise her skin was porcelain. A milk-and-water miss, Rees thought, with nothing interesting about her.

Mrs. Bristol’s anxious glance darted from Rees to Lydia and back again. “Abby speaks little,” Mrs. Bristol said.

“I am well used to silence and comfortable with it,” Lydia replied.

“I daresay you must be,” Mr. Bristol said, eyeing the linen square covering Lydia’s bright hair. His round blue eyes, so like Mary Martha’s, moved to Rees.

“How old is she?” Rees asked, eyeing the girl’s skinny arms.

“Rising thirteen” Mrs. Bristol said.

“Your housekeeper will find my daughter well versed in all the housewifely arts,” Mr. Bristol said, “and far stronger than she first appears.”

Rees glanced at the girl once again and surprised her as she threw a quick flashing glance at him. Although her eyes were gray, there was nothing plain or simple about the steely look she gave him. Rees eyed her more searchingly this time, noting the hard muscles in those skinny arms and the expressive mouth. Despite her quiet nature, she might very well hold her own in this opinionated family.

“What do you say?” he asked Lydia.

“Can she begin tomorrow?”

Rees and Mr. Bristol haggled over the wage, finally settling on a few pennies each day. She would arrive at six, but leave by three so as to be home in time to help her mother with supper and milking.

With handshakes all around, the Bristols prepared to depart. “Bye, Abby,” David said. “See you tomorrow.” Her smile illuminated her pale face, and when she looked at him, her eyes sparkled with excitement. Rees and Lydia exchanged worried looks.

“Still waters indeed,” he murmured.

As Lydia wheeled the tea cart out of the parlor, David leaned back in his chair with a smug grin. “I knew Lydia would like her,” he said.

Rees jumped to his feet and snatched his son out of his chair so fast, David gasped. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” Rees said. “No warning. I just walked into it.”

David gaped at him in astonishment. “When I saw Mr. Bristol at the market and suggested employing Abby, he said not without meeting you. I didn’t think you would mind—”

“This is still my farm,” Rees said through gritted teeth.

David flung his father’s hand from him. “It’s only mine, is it, when you’re gone? When you take off, then I can run the farm as I please? But I’m just a child when you return?”

Rees stared into his son’s angry face. “But you are a child,” he protested, shocked into calmness by David’s fury.

“Not anymore. I’ve been doing a man’s work for years. And this farm, you promised it to me.”

“Of course,” Rees began. “When I die—”

“Or do you intend to break your promise to me as you did to Mother?”

Rees examined the contorted face of his son. “I never broke a promise to your mother,” he said, his voice cracking. “Never.”

“Didn’t you swear you’d give up the road when she quickened with another child?”

“I did. And—”

“She was pregnant when she died of the illness you brought home with you. Why didn’t you stay home when you knew another child grew within her?”

Rees struggled to catch his breath. “I—I would have, when I’d earned enough money.”

“And Lydia, she followed you expecting marriage. You’ve broken that promise also.”

“I never promised her anything,” Rees cried. He stopped short, realizing Lydia was standing in the doorway listening to them.

She marched into the parlor, the red flush in her cheeks the only sign of her emotion. “This is a discussion that should end now,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Rees said to David. “Your mother understood; I need to travel for work. The money I make weaving helps support this farm.”

“Then why didn’t you take me with you?” David bellowed, tears streaming down his cheeks. Rees shrugged helplessly, aware that this quarrel had left the original shores and drifted far out to sea. “You could have taken me with you when Mother died.…”

“Come outside now,” Lydia said, drawing David away. The lad towered over her; she barely topped his shoulder, but right now he looked like a little boy. “I’ll help you milk.” Biting her lip, she put her hand on the boy’s elbow and urged him from the room.

Rees stared after them. He felt excluded from the connection forming between them—nay, not excluded but ostracized. His initial anger drained away, leaving him tired and very sad. He remembered David’s birth and infancy and the soft coppery hair that covered his little skull like down. When Rees had dragged his lips over the silky strands, the sweet fragrant scent of baby enveloped him. It was the happiest time of his life. But that little boy was gone and he’d missed all the growing. A man called David with Rees’s red hair and Dolly’s gray eyes stood in that boy’s place. “I’m sorry, David,” he cried after him. “I’m sorry.” But neither David nor Lydia turned around.

Chapter Eight

Rees climbed the stairs to the second floor and his loom, taking refuge from his regrets in the familiar tasks. Quickly attaching front and back beams, he inserted the comblike reed into its slot and arranged the heddles on the sheds. He took the chained warp off the board and tied it to the back beam. He began threading the heddles, calmed by the tedious and repetitive chore.

A soft tap upon the door startled him, returning him to an awareness of his surroundings. By the golden light streaming through the window, Rees guessed the time to be early afternoon. He was very hungry. He turned to see Lydia, standing outside.

“Dinner is on the table,” she said. “Or do you want a plate in here?”

For one brief second, Rees considered taking the coward’s way out, but he would have to face his son sometime. “I’ll come down,” he said, pushing the bench backwards. He shook out his stiff legs.

“Don’t be hard on David,” she said, watching him. “In some ways, he’s older than his years, but in others he’s still a boy.” A boy with an absent father. She didn’t say that, but Rees heard it all the same.

“I’m a factor, that’s what I do,” he said.

“You could choose to set up a shop here,” Lydia suggested. “In Dugard. But I know you won’t. You were born under the traveling foot quilt, and the road is in your blood.”

“Even the Shakers travel to sell their goods,” he said, knowing he sounded defensive. She nodded in acknowledgment. But Rees traveled much more. He knew it but didn’t think he could explain the attraction of leaving everything familiar behind and finding the new and different. After a while, the same recycled conversations, the same histories, the same people—no matter how loved—suffocated him.

“Don’t worry about your quarrel with David,” she said, turning to descend the stairs. “Sometimes a festering boil must be lanced to start the healing.”

“I expect this particular boil will require lancing several times,” he said dryly, following her into the hall.

She moved lightly down the steps. “And your investigation? How is that proceeding?”

“Not well,” he said. “Dr. Wrothman, who has the best reason for wanting Nate dead outside of Richard, apparently was miles away. Could he have hired someone, that’s the question. And Richard? Well, I still haven’t spoken to him. I know he was in the weaving house and something happened between him and Nate. But the situation is so much more complicated than it first appeared.”

Lydia nodded. “It always is, isn’t it?” Then she turned to look at him. “You aren’t persuaded of his guilt.”

“No, I’m not. Although everyone, including Augustus, assumes he is the killer. It just doesn’t feel right.”

“He did run,” Lydia pointed out.

“Yes. He’s scared. I’m sure of that. But several people at the Bowditch farm lied to me, or lied by omission, and as a consequence, I trust none of them.”

“I could help you with that,” Lydia said in a low voice.

Rees shook his head. “I want to speak to Richard and interpret his story myself.” And he must study the man Nate had become. The descriptions of him sounded like a different person from the boy Rees remembered. That boy hated slavery, but the man he’d become owned slaves and, in fact, had fathered a son with one of them. He’d become a card player and a gambler. And although always secretive, one might now describe him as reclusive. Why? Rees realized Lydia had turned to stare curiously at him. “What?”

“I asked what do you plan to do next?”

“Well, I hear Richard is courting Elizabeth Carleton, James Carleton’s daughter, and Nate wasn’t happy about it,” Rees said. Although he planned to speak to George Potter also as soon as he could, he didn’t feel comfortable confiding that to Lydia, since she knew him. “I don’t believe James Carleton knows of the connection between the children. Probably he wouldn’t approve either. I don’t know. James Carleton and Nate Bowditch became friendlier as men, but they were sworn enemies as boys. In any case, I plan to ride out to the Carleton estate tomorrow and talk to James. And to his daughter if possible.”

“How very
Romeo and Juliet,
” Lydia said.

“What do you mean?” Rees asked.

“It’s a play about two warring families and their children who fall in love anyway.”

“Ahh. Well, I don’t have the benefit of a classical education,” Rees said. “Did they kill their fathers?”

“No. Themselves. Suicide pact,” she clarified when Rees stared at her.

“Themselves? Although patricide is a terrible crime, it makes more sense to me than suicide.”

“My governess would be horrified to hear you,” Lydia said, preceding Rees down the stairs.

*   *   *

When Rees arrived at the Potter residence the following morning, he found the entire family still at breakfast. Sally hesitated to invite the unexpected visitor inside, but her father, rolling down his sleeves, joined her at the door. “Go back to the kitchen, Sally,” he said. “I’ll take Mr. Rees upstairs to my office.”

Neither one spoke as they climbed the stairs. Potter shut the door behind them and burst into speech. “It’s not what you think, Will.”

“Cards with Sam Prentiss?” Rees asked, glaring at his friend.

“I only played with the club once in a while and for small stakes; my wife would skin me alive otherwise.” Rees did not soften. “Nate usually made up the fourth. Although Sam was invited to join the club occasionally, this was my very first time playing opposite him.”

Rees considered this. “But Nate played often?”

“I believe so. Almost every week. He and James Carleton, Cornelius Hansen when he was in town, sometimes Reverend Sperling.”

“I wish you’d told me,” Rees said peevishly. “This explains some of the connection between Nate and James.”

“I believe their connection formed the root of this group, rather than otherwise,” Potter said. “I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t participate very often—they played for high stakes, and I knew you would disapprove. In some ways, you hark back to our Puritan ancestors.”