xi. In which the children find a corpse #2
“Sorry to bother you, Mrs. Prentice,” Kitty shouted over the downpour, “especially in light of Ma’s behavior the other day, but this rain has her gout acting up, and we was wondering if you might come to town and take a look.”
Charlotte steeled herself. “We’ve found Miss Brigid.”
Kitty whitened. “Where?”
Briefly, Charlotte explained. When she’d finished, Kitty was silent for several moments. A muscle worked in her jaw; she blinked
too much. To Charlotte’s surprise, she said, sounding like she had a cold, “Law, Mrs. Prentice, you’re soaked through. Must
be cold as anything. You get yourself some dry clothes and sit by the fire while I send for Pa.”
Charlotte objected, but Kitty fussed over her so that she was soon seated by the fire in a dry shirtwaist and skirt. Arthur’s
fussing she could often ignore, if she wanted. He nudged and suggested, brought her a stool or gave her his arm without being
asked, but if she insisted hard enough that she was fine, he’d back down. Kitty, however, had the advantage of a firmer personality
combined with a sudden personal tragedy that made Charlotte more pliable than she was otherwise inclined to be.
Kitty strode down to the nearest inhabitance and paid its owners’ oldest son a dime to run to the Tierneys’ house and tell
her father what had happened, then returned to wait out back by her sister’s body. Jonas enticed Sasha to stay in the kitchen
with the promise of biscuits and a game. Despite Kitty’s insistence she remain in her chair, Charlotte put on her coat, took
a bumbershoot from the stand by the front door, and went outside to wait with her.
By now, the moss and heather had stretched and grown until it had sewn itself into the ground. Brigid looked like she’d grown
from the earth. The growth had crept halfway up her neck. Charlotte shivered, as much from that growth as the cold.
Her knees ached. She shifted from foot to foot, but the ache persisted.
Kitty’s jaw was tight. She dashed a palm across her eyes.
She was so young, Charlotte thought. Brigid had been even younger: barely sixteen, dark haired and pink cheeked, a cheerful girl if prone to flights of fancy.
Now she was dead, grown over with so much greenery she might’ve been a stone in a long-abandoned churchyard.
“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said.
Kitty shrugged, apparently trying, as was Seacliff’s way, to act as though grief was nothing. Her eyes were red rimmed.
“Ma’s been talking about her like she’s dead, figuring she run off with some boy or another like Mary.” Her voice cracked.
“I wish she’d run off like Mary. I don’t care how ill a match it was, neither.”
By the time the Tierneys arrived—in a trap that got stuck in the mud partway up the hill and had to be freed by what looked
like half of Seacliff’s population, who had followed despite the rain—only half of Brigid’s forehead and one dark-lashed eye
were visible.
Mrs. Tierney wailed at the sight. Her remaining three daughters tried to convince her to wait in the trap, but she stumbled
after her husband.
Her wails sounded like the cries of a banshee. Charlotte shivered, then clenched her fists until her nails dug into her palms.
Silly to think such a thing. She was uneasy at the death, and the growth, and the proximity of the forest; that was all. The
horse hitched to the trap pranced uneasily in its traces.
Determined to be useful, Charlotte opened the shed for Mr. Tierney. He hauled an armful of shovels and spades outside, but
the villagers drew back.
“Well?” he said.
“Begging your pardon, Chuck,” one of the fishermen said gruffly, “but it’s bad luck to touch someone what’s been claimed by
the wood. Best leave her here. She’ll put the devil in us.”
“Heaven’s sakes,” Charlotte said. “She’ll do no such thing. Dig her up this instant.”
She did not add, Do you think I want a corpse in my backyard, but it was there at the edge of her mind. Brigid’s body felt like an omen.
Ridiculous, Charlotte kept telling herself. Undoubtedly a trick of the mind, the kind of thing she thought when her body gave way to pain
and fatigue and a fog descended upon her brain until she lost all rationality.
Mr. Tierney leaned on a shovel. He was pink cheeked like his daughters but considerably shorter, worn and gray like the other
men but less weatherbeaten because he owned the pub.
“We can’t well burn her in all this wet,” he said wearily. “Come on, lads, we’ll be done in a jiff.”
No one responded or moved any closer.
“Please,” Kitty said through gritted teeth, “we just want to bury her.”
Her mother started wailing again. Feeling Kitty and her father might get farther with the villagers if her mother were not
there, Charlotte touched Mrs. Tierney’s shoulder.
“Come inside, Mrs. Tierney. You’ll catch your death out here. Kitty said—”
“I may as well,” the old woman croaked. “One daughter dead, another quite as good as, what with her no-good husband who’ll
surely ruin her—”
Charlotte sighed. With Brigid dead on the ground before her, Mrs. Tierney found breath to bemoan Mary’s elopement to Glenwhistle.
Perhaps that tragedy was easier to face.
“Kitty said your gout’s been acting up,” Charlotte continued, as if Mrs. Tierney hadn’t interrupted. “Standing in the rain
will make it worse. Let’s have a spot of tea, shall we?”
To her relief, Mrs. Tierney nodded. The howling wind blew rain sideways under Charlotte’s bumbershoot, not that it mattered
since they were both soaked anyway.
A sudden scream behind them. Charlotte twisted around so fast she slipped in the wet grass, but Mrs. Tierney kept hold of her. Clutching each other, they gazed toward the forest, where Kitty and Mr. Tierney had convinced the villagers to dig Brigid free.
The Tierneys’ horse squealed and kicked, trying to free itself from the trap. Mr. Tierney snatched its bridle, whispering
soothing things to it. The villagers backed away as another scream sounded. Kitty snatched a shovel off the ground and brandished
it before her, whiter than ever.
A horse burst through the trees, a burly palomino creature wearing nothing but a bridle. It screamed a third time, its eyes
wild. Claw marks raked across its haunches.
“See there!” a cannery worker said. “A devil upon us already, and we ain’t hardly touched her yet!”
Charlotte staggered toward the creature, her heart in her throat. The horse tossed its head but stood quivering and silent
when she caught hold of its bridle. Stamped in the cheekpiece were the initials TL for Theodore Livingston, Agnes’s deceased husband. It was one of Agnes’s carriage horses. The same gelding that had disappeared
into the shadows of the forest not two days ago, harnessed to Agnes’s cart, with Arthur taking the lines cheerfully. Arthur
could not get to Port Lorne without it.
“Mrs. Prentice?” Kitty gripped her elbow. “What’s wrong?”
“Arthur,” Charlotte gasped, and the rain and chill and ache caught up with her. She collapsed, her legs jellylike.
“Mrs. Prentice!” Kitty looked over her shoulder. “Someone help me get her inside.”
Someone gripped Charlotte’s arms, someone took her bumbershoot, someone steered her into the cottage. Jonas ran to put water
on for tea. Sasha wanted to know what had happened, but Charlotte could only sit in her armchair, soaked and shivering, wondering
how to tell the children their uncle was in trouble.