The Caged Graves (19 page)

She'd slept the entire day, waking to a dark room and nearly panicking because she couldn't sit up. After a fierce struggle, she'd broken free of the bed sheets, which had been pulled tightly across her and tucked beneath the mattress. When she'd trusted her trembling legs to carry her, she'd gone downstairs, meeting her father as he came in.

“I've never been able to live down my youth,” Ransloe Boone said. “And your mother's memory is besmirched because of it.”

“Did you ever find anything?” Verity asked bluntly, picking her bread apart without eating it. “Why did you even want it?”

“I was a fool, and God punished me for coveting it.” He hunched his shoulders, meeting his daughter's eyes for only a second before dropping his gaze again. “No, we never found anything, but I was wasting my time by the river looking for it when your mother took sick. I only got back here in time to send you out of the house and sit by her side while she slipped away.”

“Do you think if you'd been here, she wouldn't have gotten ill?”

He stared at the table. “Doesn't matter. I should have been here. And now, fifteen years later, they're
still
disturbing her because of me.”

“You should have told me,” Verity chastised him gently.

“I didn't want you to know. The last thing in the world I wanted was for you to see your mother's grave opened by thieves.”

“Father—”

“You were happy in Worcester, living with a good family. Maryett would have found you a husband in the city. You needn't have come back here and learned about this shame.”

“Is that why you sent me away?”

He looked up again, and this time he didn't flinch. “Maryett convinced me it was the right thing to do. She said you'd have a family to grow up with if she took you back to Worcester.” He shrugged uneasily. “I thought you'd be happier with brothers and sisters. I let you go, and I didn't visit much because I didn't want to confuse you. It was hard . . . watching you with Maryett and the other children. You hardly knew who I was.”

Verity blinked back tears. His last visit to Worcester had been right before he went to war. He knew he might die, and he wanted to see his daughter one last time. Of course, he hadn't told her so. She hadn't even known he was called up into the army until after he was gone.

She reached across the table and grasped his hand. “I'm here now, Father, and I won't leave you again. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.”

IN THE morning Verity woke with an unpleasant thickness in her mouth and a lingering headache, but she was thinking clearly. When she saw her mother's final diary open on her dressing table, she walked over and looked down on it without surprise.

November tenth through November fourteenth. The very same page as before. But who had left it open this time? Aunt Clara? Hattie and Carrie? Or Asenath?

Nate's sisters hadn't really been at the house last night, and Asenath was dead.

When she went downstairs, Beulah looked her over shrewdly. “Do you want breakfast, Miss Verity?”

“Tea,” she replied. “With only
tea
in it.”

“It wasn't me that did it.”

“I didn't think it was.” Verity sat down at the kitchen table and watched the housekeeper for a few long, silent moments. “Do your people believe in ghosts, Beulah?”

“My people?” grunted Beulah, putting the pot on to boil without even looking back. “You mean the French or the Dutch?”

Verity looked down, embarrassed by her question and considering how she might rephrase it.

Beulah brought her a cup. Then she set a plate of sliced bread down, as well as a crock of butter. Suddenly Verity realized how hungry she was and reached for them with both hands.

“The Mohawk people believe in spirits.” Beulah crossed her arms and watched Verity devour a slice of buttered bread. “Spirits of the earth and spirits of our ancestors. If you look closely enough, you see their signs and know the path to follow.”

The water came to a boil, and Beulah filled the teapot and carried it over to Verity's cup. “None of my people would have sent anyone to your mother's grave,” she said. Verity winced, remembering her aunt's callous accusation. “We don't desecrate the ground of our ancestors—and besides, that gold is cursed by betrayal and blood. We don't want it.”

 

Later, Verity sat on the front stoop, holding Nate's hand and assuring him that she was, essentially, unharmed. She didn't tell him about the sinister dreams that had left her shaken and filled with foreboding.

“I don't care if she
is
the daughter of an apothecary,” Nate grumbled, watching Verity's kitten attack the laces on his work boots. “That was uncalled for.”

Privately Verity agreed, but aloud she said, “Some people always think they know what's best for you.”

“The grave's repaired. Even your flowers have been replanted.” Nate shook his foot playfully, trying to dislodge Lucky from his shoe, but when he looked up, his face was grim. “I don't think your plan to rebuild the cemetery wall is going to be enough. We should have the casket disinterred and moved inside the church grounds—publicly, so everyone can see for themselves there's nothing there that shouldn't be.”

“Do you think so?” His use of the word
we
irritated her. They weren't married yet; it wasn't his mother, nor his decision. “Shall we open the casket, too, and let anyone who wants feel around inside, just to make sure?”

He flinched, but her point had hit home.

“The only way to put down a lie is to discover the truth,” Verity said. “It's a shame no one's found that wretched treasure. You don't think my uncle really does have it, do you? He seems well off for money, but I never see him do a lick of work.”

“He prefers other ways of making money.” Nate grimaced. “He gambles, Verity. Quite a bit—in town, in Wilkes-Barre, in Philadelphia, anywhere there's dice and cards. I'm sorry to have to tell you.”

She sighed. “I'm not surprised, really. He doesn't seem . . .”

“Sensible.” Nate looked out across Verity's front yard, toward the Thomas lands. “His wife's the one who manages the property and all the men working on it. If it weren't for her, that farm would probably be in ruins. And it's a fine piece of land.”

A sharp pain shot through Verity's heart. She was tired of hearing how much Nate admired property. “It's a wonder no one suggested you marry Liza Thomas,” she said tartly.

“Don't laugh,” Nate replied, reaching down to scratch the kitten behind the ears. “That probably would have been my mother's next plan.” And then he did laugh, but she did not.

 

Truth trumped lies.

Verity believed this without question. The gold was not in her mother's grave, so if it existed, it must be somewhere else. She was not equipped to find it, but there were other lies for her to expose—such as the idea that her mother had died of a sickness born of some curse on the Clayton family.

   Rebecca Clayton had been the first person to die of this illness, which eventually took three more Claytons and, three months later, Asenath and Sarah Ann. And Rebecca's body had been stolen from its grave. Why? Had the strangeness of her death attracted the interest of someone who wanted to know the cause?

Verity would have liked to know the cause herself.

And then she realized she knew somebody who might be able to discover that very thing . . . if she dared ask him.

 

Calling on him in this manner was not a nice thing to do. But the need to know burned inside her. If Hadley Jones could provide her with a plausible explanation for the deaths, Verity could eliminate half the legend behind the caged graves.

She sat alone on a straight-backed chair in Dr. Robbins's waiting room, relieved that the senior physician was absent from the house. Knowing how he'd treated his apprentice, she had no desire to meet him again.

It was Hadley Jones she heard in the examining room—him and another man—and the consultation didn't seem to be going well. Although she couldn't make out the words, the patient spoke in a harsh and accusing voice, while Jones's calmer tones suggested an intent to reason with him.

The door opened abruptly, exposing her to their final exchange. “If you don't do as I've instructed you, you'll end up with blood poisoning—or, at best, I'll have to take more of it off!” Jones said.

“All the same to you,” growled the patient, a man in his early twenties with a thin, sickly build and unclean reddish-blond hair. “What's one more limb lopped off, here or there?”

Verity lowered her head as the men emerged but watched them from the corner of her eye. The patient shuffled into the anteroom, and his gaze raked over her with hostility. Hadley Jones reached inside his coat pocket. “Mr. Harwood,” he said. “About your payment.”

“Are you joking?” The patient turned on his heel angrily.

But Jones was taking cash out of his pocket. “Your change,” he said, holding out a wad of folded bills.

Harwood accepted it with his left hand, and Verity, watching through her lashes, saw that his right arm was amputated just below the elbow, the exposed stump raw and swollen. She cast her gaze at the floor again, unable to shake off the impression that the doctor had just paid the patient.

Harwood made his departure, and when Verity raised her eyes, Hadley Jones nodded with a polite but reserved smile. “Miss Boone, how can I help you?”

Verity rose, clutching an embroidered bag in her hand. “I was hoping you could diagnose an illness for me. Not my own,” she added hastily.

“Your father?” When he took a step toward her, she saw that the bruise on his cheek had turned purple.

“No—it's no one you know.”

He surveyed her with inquisitive eyes, then gestured toward the open door of the examining room. “Shall we—?”

“
Here
would be fine.” Verity indicated his desk in the waiting room, and he moved her chair, placing it opposite his own. He kept a respectful distance, and she knew she'd made her message clear.

Once they were seated, Verity opened her bag and pulled out her mother's notebooks. Slips of paper marked the pertinent pages. Jones sat in silence as she found the passages she wanted. “Severe pains in the stomach and gut . . . a slow heartbeat . . . watering from the eyes, nose, and mouth . . . stupor and death. Do you have any idea what illness could cause these symptoms?”

She looked up to find him gazing at her with bewilderment. “Whose illness are we talking about?” he asked.

“My deceased aunt—Asenath Thomas.”

Jones frowned and ran a hand through his ginger curls. “You're asking me to diagnose the illness of someone who died twenty years ago?”

“Fifteen years.”

   “Well,
that
makes all the difference.” He smiled wryly and held out his hand. “May I?” She handed the diary across the desk, and he read the entries. “It says she recovered.”

“But three months later she died after suffering the same symptoms. And so did my mother.” When he glanced up at her, she added, “Other people died of the same thing that August—four members of the Clayton family.”

Jones flipped to the pages Verity had marked with paper slips and read through them. Verity opened her mother's last diary to the final page and laid it on the desk too. He leaned over to look, and his expression became grim as he saw the final, scrawled words. “Miss Boone, why are you pursuing this?”

“I want to know why my mother died.”

“What good can come of knowing the name of the sickness?” Jones raised his eyes to hers. “I foresee nothing but heartache in this for you—even if I can identify the illness for you.”

“I need to know the truth,” Verity countered.

“You're not thinking this has anything to do with what happened at the cemetery?”

“I do think so. I'll pay you for your time.”

He smiled sadly. “I don't want your money.”

“Nevertheless, I will pay you.”

Jones sat back in his chair and looked across the desk at her. She faced him, keenly aware of his concern, his interest—yet determined to keep this conversation professional. After a moment, he broke their gaze and cast his eyes over the two open notebooks. “You've marked the pages you want me to look at,” he said, “but I'll have to read more. You might've missed things you didn't realize were symptoms. Are you comfortable with that? I promise I won't pry into your personal, private matters.”

“I was two years old,” she said. “My personal matters were not that private.”

He grinned. “I'll do what I can to lay the matter to rest for you, Miss Boone. Please realize the chance is slim, but if I can help you, I will.”

Hadley Jones pushed back his chair, and Verity stood up. He rose to his feet and offered his hand across the desk. With some hesitation, she took it. His fingers closed around hers, warm and strong. She could not deny she was affected by his touch, but she said the only thing she could. “Thank you.”

“Anything—for you.”

VERITY HAD treated Clara Thomas coolly since the day of the laudanum-laced tea, and when her aunt invited her to help decorate graves in the cemetery for the Fourth of July, she almost declined. But anything happening at the cemetery was of interest to her, and if she wanted changes made, it would behoove her to stay involved.

Finding Mrs. Eggars there did not make for a promising start to the day. The hatchet-faced woman was adorning her own family graves with flowers and flags when Verity arrived with her aunt and cousin. “She never lifts a hand to do anyone else's,” Liza grumbled under her breath. While Aunt Clara and Liza carried their heavy baskets of red, white, and blue bunting into the graveyard proper, Verity veered left outside the cemetery gate and walked around the wall to her mother's grave.