Chapter
Three

Normally, Will Harvey enjoyed a good long walk, no matter how far and no matter what the weather. But when he’d received word earlier in the day that his aunt had sent for him, that something horrible had befallen his uncle, Will had borrowed one of the horses from the stables at Porthampton Abbey, riding hell-for-leather until he’d arrived at the little croft his uncle had tended for as long as Will could remember.

He’d dismounted to a scene of chaos. His aunt stood over the corpse of his uncle, still screaming—his aunt, not the corpse. There were villagers as well, too many to count, nor could he remember now who all had been there so he could name them in his mind. It had taken some doing, but eventually, he’d managed to piece together the story.

His uncle had gone out early, as was his habit, to do a bit of farming. But when late-morning teatime came and went, and he had not yet returned, Will’s aunt had gone out looking for him.

She’d found him not far from the humble cottage, his body mauled by some animal, his heart ripped out. Her screams had been loud enough to draw the closest neighbors, and word had spread from there.

Everyone was adamant: his uncle had been dead. There was no possible earthly way he could have survived that gaping hole in his chest.

Will had been sent for, but it was a long walk to Porthampton Abbey on foot, and once there, it had taken the messenger some time to have Will located so he could deliver his sad message.

After the messenger had departed to find Will, some of the neighbors stayed behind with Will’s aunt, at least until the hysterics had passed. But then they’d returned to their own homes, their own farms. Because, bad as they felt for Jessamine Harvey, there was ever the work, always more work to be done. From dawn until bedtime, it was the life of the farmer.

It was after everyone had gone that Will’s aunt had heard a noise and, turning, saw a man—no, a monster, she’d said—standing in the open doorway. When he lurched her way in a menacing fashion, she didn’t think twice before grabbing the shotgun and shooting him several times in the head. It was only when she was sure he was dead that her mind cleared and, recognizing the clothes she’d seen just that morning, knew it to be her husband.

If anything, she screamed louder this time.

The villagers came again, which was where things stood when Will arrived.

Everyone believed her. As crazy as her story sounded, everyone believed her.

They’d all seen Ezra Harvey dead, over there—they knew it to be true—and now he was dead in quite a different way, over here.

More than one villager clasped hands to breast and prayed.

How was such a thing possible?

A dead man walking.

But then one of the villagers thought to run to get Dr. Zebulon Webb—chiefly, the doctor to the Clarkes; secondarily, the doctor to the village—and when he arrived, he offered a different interpretation.

“Jessamine,” he said, “grief, as I know too well, can take many forms.”

The widow tried to interrupt, but even as he spoke gently, he would not let her.

“And your grief,” Dr. Webb went on, “has taken the form of a hysterical hallucination.”

“I know what I saw,” she insisted.

“But what you have described is simply not medically possible.”

“Explain this to me, then: If there is blood on the grass over yon, where he died, then how did the body get here?”

“Why, that is easy. In your hysterical grief, no doubt wishing your husband still alive, you dragged the body here yourself. As for the rest of what happened afterward? More hysterical grief. I am deeply sorry for your loss.”

But not so sorry that he didn’t excuse himself five minutes later to go home and change for a dinner engagement up at the abbey.

Not long afterward, the neighbors had dispersed. For a grieving neighbor, they no doubt would have stayed a bit longer. But for a neighbor whom the doctor described as hysterical? A word that sounded too alarmingly close to “insane” to their minds? Nobody wanted to remain too close to that. They’d been drawn along for a time by the madness, but now their minds had been cleared by the doctor’s reassurances—the doctor was, after all, a man of science, wasn’t he?—and it was time for them to go. As has been said, there was always the work.

Now, as for the past several hours, it was only Will and his aunt.

As night had fallen, he’d lit the lamps for her and as many candles as he could find—it didn’t feel as though the sad home could possibly be made too bright now.

Then he’d sat in a chair next to hers before the fire he’d made in the small fireplace. And as he sat, he tried not to think about his uncle, or what remained of him, lying under a sheet upon the table in the kitchen, legs extending over the edge. It would be the next day before a hole could be dug in the churchyard to bury the body, and they’d not wanted to leave him outside where the animals might get at him. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say: get at him further, Will thought, a laugh almost escaping. How could he think to laugh, even if it was only almost, at a time like this? With his uncle, whom he had loved, the only father he’d ever known, dead and in such a horrible fashion? It occurred to him then that he just might be near hysteria himself, and not the hysteria of mirth but of madness brought on by grief.

But he couldn’t let any of that show. There was Aunt Jess to think about, to take care of.

Outside, when there had still been other people crowded around, Will had not had the opportunity to view his uncle closely. But when he’d carried him the few steps from the doorway to the kitchen table and laid him down there, he’d finally had the opportunity. He dearly wished now that he hadn’t taken it.

He would not look again.

He wondered if his aunt was feeling the same near-hysteria he was at the thought of his uncle lying there, how he looked under the sheet.

Will stole a glance at his aunt. She was not yet forty, and while she had always appeared older than her years, tonight she looked twenty years older. He would have liked to comfort her, to offer some small sympathy in the form of an embrace, but her ramrod posture told him that, just now, such a gesture would not be welcome.

It had been so long since either had uttered a word that it came as something of a surprise when his aunt said, “You believe me, don’t you?”

His instinct was to open his mouth and immediately reassure her—he could do at least that much for her, couldn’t he?—but then it occurred to him that what she would want, far more than any reassurance, would be the truth.

Fifteen years ago, when he was but two years old, both of Will’s parents had been taken by the influenza. With no other relatives able or willing to take on a child, he’d been taken in by his aunt and uncle, who’d never had any children of their own.

He didn’t remember a thing about his own parents. But he knew everything about his uncle and aunt. His uncle had taught him the value of a hard day’s work—to Will’s mind, no man had ever worked harder than his uncle. His aunt had taught him the value of the truth—no woman had ever been more honest than she.

Perhaps he’d waited too long to answer, because his aunt spoke once more, this time on a topic wholly unrelated.

Perhaps, after all, she did not want to hear his answer if it would not be in her favor.

“Won’t they be mad up at the house,” she said with a gesture of her chin, as though the house might be just a few feet away instead of the distance it was, “that you never came back today?”

“They won’t be,” he said, “and if they are, it is of little matter.”

“Little matter? And what would your uncle say if he could hear you now? We’re talking about your job, boy.”

“And it is a job that I am extraordinarily good at. There are other grooms and stable boys at Porthampton Abbey, but even the master of the house has said: none are better, even if he never seems able to remember my name. So they will hold my job for me today. If you need me tomorrow, they will hold it then, too. However long I need, that long will they wait for me.”

“You seem too sure of yourself, Will. Perhaps too proud, too.”

And yet he could see, from the first glimmer of joy he’d seen in her eye on this most wretched of days, that she was proud of him, too.

He thought about everything this woman had been to him—she and his uncle both—and how steady she had always been, no matter what the world and life threw her way.

She had always been honest.

She had never been the slightest bit insane.

There were still so many questions, and yet…

“I find that I do not want to believe you,” he began carefully, determined to make sure that each word rang true. “I do not want to believe you, because the tale you tell is so…fantastical, I don’t wonder that others doubt its truth. And yet I further find that, based on everything I have ever known about you, no matter how impossible what you claim happened might seem, I cannot but believe that the impossible must be—somehow—possible.”

She stared at him long and hard then, as though looking to see if he were only speaking so to humor her. Whatever she saw must have satisfied her, however, for at last her body lost its ramrod posture as she near collapsed with visible relief. No matter what else had happened that day, clearly the very worst was the sensation that no one believed her. And even if everyone else went on disbelieving her, perhaps even that would be all right so long as she still had Will and his belief.

“Thank you,” she breathed.

And when he moved closer, she did permit him to embrace her.

Tears came then. Not like the hysterical ones earlier in the day; these were tears of pure sadness, and Will’s eyes, at last, dampened, too.

“There’s one more thing I need to ask of you,” she said.

“Anything, Auntie.”

“That…” She inclined her head toward the kitchen. “That… I cannot wait until tomorrow and the churchyard. I cannot think with it there. That… In the end, I swear, that was no longer him.”

“Hush now,” Will said. “It is all right.” He took one of her work-worn hands in one of his, patting the back of it with his other. “Then we shall burn it.”