Chapter 10 #2
A little wariness crept into my chest as I glanced at the bow that Voss had slung over one shoulder. “Did you learn about all this from your book collection?” I asked.
He tossed me a brief smile over his shoulder.
“They are endlessly fascinating. One I was reading a few months ago detailed an entire family of underworld gods and their duties. Each one was responsible for a different kind of death. Death by plague. Death by natural catastrophe. By famine, murder, accident. By heartbreak, even.”
“Heartbreak? Oh, I’ve seen that in the hospital. A wife died, and her husband just couldn’t go on without her. No explanation for his death, only that he was devastated and lost the will to live.”
He shook his head. “Tragedy. The will to live is our deepest human urge. For the gods to take that away? Monstrous.”
“Maybe the desire to love is a deeper human urge than the will to live,” I said as he slowed to allow me to walk at his side. “My teacher, Sister Helen—she’s the nun who runs the nursing program? Anyway, she always says that loneliness is a silent killer.”
He chuckled softly. “Sounds as if your holy sister doesn’t know what excruciating torture it is to endure another person’s company for so long that you start fantasizing about ways to make sure their death is painful.”
I looked askance at him. “You aren’t that much older than me, sir. I can’t believe you’ve had to endure such a thing.”
Voss shrugged lightly with one shoulder. “I’ve seen a lot during my time on this Earth. Enough to know that I’d rather spend my time with the one person who understands and respects my own wishes—me.”
“A bachelor’s life for you, is it?” I guessed that Hoffmann had been right when he’d said the master would never marry.
I was thankful Bethany wasn’t around to hear that news, or it might have broken her ghostly heart.
“My mammy said marriage was nothing but a sham to force women into a life of drudgery and captivity.”
He laughed heartily. “Oh, I like this mother of yours. That must be where you get your grit, girl.”
No. I’d gotten my “grit” after suffering through her death. But that pain was mine and mine alone. I wouldn’t share it with a stranger.
We passed the atrium that divided my quarters from the master’s suite. The walking path forked here, and Voss gestured toward the lane on the right. “This way, Nurse Molly…”
My breath billowed like smoke in the early-morning light as I climbed the new path, catching myself on a leaf-bare bush when I stumbled. In the distance, I spotted the dogs in the fog near a large oak tree upon a hill.
Everything was still and quiet but the sound of our boots crunching orange and brown leaves. I glanced back at the house’s dark windows, wondering if Bethany was still inside, somewhere. Wondering if the boy from the basement was too.
“We should see the herd soon,” Voss said with his gaze focused ahead, where golden trees and several outbuildings dotted the landscape between the manor house and the Hudson River.
I spotted muddy ruts on the ground leading from the front drive to the red barn.
The barn was situated so that it made an L shape with another nearby outbuilding—a grand carriage house with a pair of massive doors in the front for horses and coaches to enter.
I imagined there were haylofts inside and bays for the horses.
“Is that where the coachman works? We weren’t introduced when I arrived. ”
“The coachman, yes…” Voss glanced at my face briefly, smiled to himself, and glanced back at the outbuildings. “He resides in the carriage house. Don’t look so shocked, Nurse Molly. He is quite comfortable there.”
Really? I couldn’t understand how anyone could be more comfortable there than inside an enormous luxury manor. But maybe there was a small apartment or room inside the carriage house that was insulated for winter.
Besides, I’d been living above stables back in the city, so who was I to judge?
We continued hiking past the red barn and the carriage house, trudging through dry underbrush to take a shortcut.
The fog was thicker out here, making the world around us look as if it were built on a moving cloud.
Every once in a while, I’d catch the dark shapes of his hunting dogs trotting through the tall, dry grass.
Voss’s head cocked; then he pointed toward a grazing field. “There my beauties are, Nurse Molly. What do you think of them?”
A herd of five long-haired goats stood in the mist, brown and shaggy, with lyre-shaped horns jutting from their heads.
“Never seen a goat with such long hair,” I murmured. “Like small buffaloes.”
“Dutch landraces,” he informed me with pride in his voice. “I was worried they wouldn’t survive the journey, but they were troopers. Would you like to pet one?”
I… wouldn’t. Not really. But he was so excited, so eager to show them off. So I followed him toward a low stone wall, where he removed a miniature bell from his hunting jacket. Then he raised his arm and rang the bell.
Every single goat turned their head in our direction; then they walked toward us.
“Whoa,” I mumbled as the shaggy beasts approached en masse, fog covering their legs. They were nearly as big as horses! “So well trained.”
Master Voss set down his bow and quiver.
He leaned over the wall, one hand stretched out to the herd’s leader, the only goat of a different color, snow white with black spots covering its eyes like a mask.
Voss murmured a long string of words in a foreign language to the animal, as if it were a treasured child or a lover.
The big goat dipped its head and allowed Voss to pet it.
“This is my sweet boy, Abbo,” he told me. “I pulled him out of his mother, fed him by hand, and brought him over here to the New World. He has given me a freedom that is unmatched. We’ve seen the world together, haven’t we, boy?”
“A freedom? What freedom would that be, sir?” Back in school, one of my classmates had loved making jokes about perverted, lonely country folk doing unspeakable things with their farm animals. Surely Voss didn’t mean that.
He tilted his head toward me wearing a look of dark delight on his face. “You’d truly like to know, wouldn’t you?”
I nodded.
“Marvelous,” he murmured. “Oh, how I’d love to share it with you. And I will, soon. Patience, curious girl. Patience. There is much to be learned on an estate such as this.”
His words were an enticement, almost romantic. I was struck by how different his attitude was from the doctors in our hospital, who, when asked for more information, would often just tell me, “Don’t worry about it.” Or to keep my mind on the work I’d been given.
But despite the seductive nature of his promise, I didn’t really like being around his goat herd.
They smelled awful, and I hated the way they looked at me, with their slit-shaped pupils.
Even Voss’s hunting dogs wanted nothing to do with the goats, and instead were patrolling far outside the grazing field.
But while the master cooed at his smelly pets, rattling off names that I didn’t care about knowing, I glanced around the foggy landscape until I spotted a line of stone obelisks at the eastern end of the grazing area.
Ah! There it is… My pulse raced. The obelisks looked like pointed teeth sticking out of the earth, with the first rays of morning sun shining behind them. Crypt Boy’s words danced inside my head.
Don’t cross the aegis.
Why? What would happen if I did?
I could only spot a handful of the stone monuments from where we were, but when I squinted in the morning light, I spied something else.
Just beyond the line of obelisks, a male figure stood motionless in the fog.
I’m unsure why my mind jumped to the boy in the basement, maybe because this person was tall and thin too. But when I squinted, I knew it was someone else entirely. This person wore a tall top hat and a gentleman’s greatcoat with a detachable cape around the shoulders.
“Sir?” I said to Voss, who was checking one of the goat’s ears. “Were you expecting a visitor?”
Voss stood to full height and looked toward the man in the top hat, muttering a curse under his breath. Without hesitation, he snatched up his bow from where it stood against the stone wall, nocked an arrow, and shot at the man.
I let out a gasp as shock washed over me. But my worry that I was about to see someone die vanished when the arrow disappeared in the fog.
The man in the top hat didn’t move.
Voss, now furious, readied another arrow on his bowstring.
“Sir—!”
He let the arrow fly, but I quickly lost sight of that one too. The man in the top hat still didn’t move. Too far for the arrow to fly, I supposed. Or maybe Voss wasn’t the expert marksman that his sister supposedly had been. Either way, he was enraged by the man in the top hat.
“Who on earth is that, sir?” I asked.
“Someone who thinks he can steal what’s mine!” Voss shouted angrily toward the man, his big voice scaring away some of the goats, who were unnerved by the outburst.
Regardless, it seemed to do the trick. The man in the fog took off his hat to give us a little bow. Then he turned around and retreated from the grazing pasture, his dark figure swallowed by the fog.
“Who was that? You know him?” I asked again.
“No one. We’ve known each other for years and years. You might say that our families are very old enemies.”
My nervousness gave way to curiosity. “What’s the root of your quarrel?”
Voss anxiously tapped his bow against the side of his leg. “One might say that he’s nothing but a dirty poacher.”
Really? Huh. Guess I never imagined a poacher wearing a top hat and fine gentleman’s clothing. “He’s trying to steal your goats?”
“Something like that,” Voss mumbled, staring menacingly at the distant spot where the man had stood.
“Is he another landowner in the area?”
“His identity doesn’t matter. But if you ever see him again, I must be notified immediately.”
“Is he dangerous, sir?”
“That doesn’t begin to describe him.” Voss turned away from the obelisk stones and pinned me with a sharp look. “I mean it, girl. If you see him again, run back inside.”
“Um, okay, but…”
He shook his head. “I pride myself on keeping this estate secure, so you’ll never have to worry about him getting too close to the house. But do not tempt him into trying. Stay far, far away from that man and don’t go near the stone border out there. Do you understand?”
I nodded vigorously. “Stay away from the”—I paused, heart fluttering nervously—“the aegis, you mean?” Then I held my breath, waiting to see how he’d react to that word.
“Yes,” the master murmured lazily. He wasn’t paying attention to me. His eyes were fixed on the spot where the man in the top hat had been, and where his two beastly hounds were now busy sniffing.
Huh. No reaction. Had he not heard me use the word that Crypt Boy had used? Maybe this wasn’t the test I’d thought it would be. Maybe this sort of aegis was commonplace on a wealthy estate like this. What did I know?
You know that the boy in the basement warned you away from this border.
Was this the reason why?
The presence of this… poacher?
Fingers of fog clung to the stone obelisks. The goats returned to their grazing, unfazed by the intruder and their own master’s arrows.
“Let’s head back toward the manor,” Voss said before pausing to cough into his hand. “If you ever find yourself out here alone, it’s best you don’t stray any further into the herd’s grazing land. Just… don’t go past the carriage house, all right, Nurse Molly?”
Another rule. Another forbidden thing on the property.
At the rate things were going, I eventually wouldn’t be able to leave my room.