Tom settled by the hearth, cozy with his pipe and savoring the best but often saddest part of the night, when all he had to do was sit and smoke alone. The last remaining patrons, seven rowdy craftsmen traveling to Grayport, had finished a late-night meal and finally settled down. Someone knocked. Tom tensed, rising quickly from his chair. Very few riders braved the road after dark, and the early-rising citizens were mostly early sleepers. Tom and Bess exchanged a look: the knock was likely trouble.
He walked to the door, expecting Sheriff Pitt or another poor soul missing a limb—which of the two he dreaded more, he almost couldn’t say—and asked who it was before unfastening the lock.
“It’s Benjamin,” he heard, muffled through the door.
Tom opened to his friend’s worry-worn face. Benjamin had run—he was strongly out of breath—and hadn’t changed his clothes since the midmorning storm. He was caked with dried mud and even his hands looked dirty: extraordinary, given the doctor’s mania for cleanliness.
“Is Molly here?” he asked.
“Why would she be here?”
“I couldn’t think of any other place she would have gone.”
“She ran off again?” Tom said. “Someone needs to hang a bell on that girl.”
Bess joined them at the door. “Molly would have come to me before she went to Tom.”
She had sniped all day, every chance she got. Earlier in the evening, Tom had almost dropped a firkin of beer and Ichabod had rushed to grab the other end. “Don’t try to help,” Bess had said. “You’ll be ostracized.” Tom had not responded to his cousin’s many barbs, but there were jabs and pricks aplenty in his inner conversations. His parents had rarely tossed anyone out of the tavern, and now he had thrown out the sheriff, his uncle, and Molly in the last month alone. His father would have tossed all three. Not his mother. Tom hardened at the thought of which of them he’d mirrored.
“I shouldn’t have scolded her,” he said to Bess. “I didn’t think she’d vanish.”
“It was Abby,” Benjamin said, his face a blend of pique and conjugal embarrassment. “She was holding Molly’s feet to the fire—metaphorically, of course—although our treatment of her here assuredly contributed.”
Benjamin’s use of “our” was obviously tact.
Ichabod bumbled downstairs from his room, wearing a nightcap and shift but also his boots and breeches, having gotten into bed, it seemed, and gotten back up. He must have heard the knock and looked out the window; something outside had roused him into action.
“What?” Tom said.
Someone took the ferry, Ichabod signed.
“Who? When was this?”
Ichabod shrugged.
“Ruddy hell,” Tom said.
Bess clasped her hands. “Oh, she can’t be on the road!”
Benjamin’s complexion was a blank side of paper with his thoughts, all ascramble, being scratched inside his head. Tom closed his eyes, partly from annoyance, partly to imagine Molly entering the woods. He crossed the room and went to the closet for his rifle and his cartridge bag. The patrons quit talking and regarded him intently.
“Nothing to worry yourself about,” he said. “A woman ran away.”
One of the guests, a grimy tinker, said, “Zounds! She must be dangerous.”
They laughed and drank and talked about their girlfriends and wives, making several awful puns on pistols, cocks, and ramrods.
Ichabod ran down to the river to fetch the ferry. Tom loaded a second gun for Benjamin, who hurried out back to saddle a pair of horses, and turned toward the guests. “Bess’ll show you to your beds whenever you’re ready. You’re welcome to stay down here until I’m back.”
The table wished him luck with his runaway skirt, turning boisterous again and speaking of Bess and beds.
Tom said to Bess, “If they’re trouble, call for Nabby.”
“I can handle them,” she said, tough and supple as a switch. “Bring her back.”
“That I will.”
“I might forgive you if she’s safe.”
Bess kissed him on the cheek very hard. It hurt his gums.
He crossed the taproom into the kitchen and said to Nabby, “Keep an eye on things.”
Nabby, unfazed at his leaving with a rifle, sat spinning wool with the Book of Light beside her. She had never been known to read it but considered it a talisman, and she could quote John Lumen and the prophets word for word. Now she said above the treadle creak, “We’re running out of firewood.”
“I’m off to find Molly,” Tom said. “She left the Knoxes. Took the ferry on her own and crossed the river into the woods.”
“Then careful of the devil’s shroud and anybody crooked.”
He walked out back to meet Benjamin at the barn. The starlight was clear despite the humid warmth. His back felt firmer with the rifle at his shoulder, and the stables smelled alive, full of strong, shuffling horses. Benjamin chose a reliable gray, young but hard to spook, and Tom mounted Bones, who sensed his master’s mood and copied it at once, growing dignified but lusty, steady but electric. They cantered around the Orange, down the road toward the river.
Ichabod had rowed a small boat to the opposite shore and was already back with the stolen ferry. None of them spoke as they led the horses onto the raft and started off. Benjamin checked his pistol. Ichabod poled, walking firmly fore and aft, and Tom loaded his rifle without taking his eyes off the dark forest road.
“She said she had a brother,” Benjamin told him as they crossed. “She said that he was dead.”
“Does Abigail know?”
“Abby drew the splinter. She had picked for quite a while, opening the wound. Molly shouted it and fled in violent agitation. Abigail is utterly beside herself with guilt.”
Tom withheld his doubt of Abigail’s remorse. Benjamin apparently perceived this and sniffed.
“Pitt’ll find out,” Tom said. “Sure as sin.”
“First things first,” Benjamin replied.
His patience and diminutive stature were deceptive. Tom had known Benjamin to ride many leagues without rest, hike valleys and hills during blizzards, and brave the perils of night, storm, fire, and contagion when he needed to. The doctor wouldn’t quit until he found his missing patient. Tom considered him a brother, like his brother out at sea. How had Molly lost her own? He wondered what secrets could be dangerous enough to drive her into the godforsaken forest after dark.
They reached the bank and disembarked, and once they had led their horses to the road and mounted up, Tom said to Ichabod, “Stay until we’re back. Keep your eyes and ears sharp, and don’t go chasing after will-o’-wisps.”
Ichabod stood like a sentry on the dock. For reasons unknown, he never used a gun, but Tom had seen him knock down apples with the ferry pole. Surely he could knock an unfriendly head.
Tom and Benjamin started slowly, entering the woods as if entering a tomb. They listened hard for hoofbeats or voices in the depths. Bones was sensitive to every faint crackle, snap, and smell. He swiveled his ears and flared his nostrils but was otherwise calm, and he avoided tree limbs and pitfalls without Tom’s guidance as they quickened to a trot with Benjamin behind. The quicker they went, the sooner they would catch her on the road, but Tom was worried they would pass her; she was liable to hide from riders. Worse, she might be trampled if they came upon her suddenly.
Devil’s shroud was everywhere tonight as Nabby had warned, blinding them at intervals and frightening the horses. Benjamin had a long-abiding passion for the mists—some theories he had tested, others he had not—but he made no mention of them now. On they rode.
Bones raised his head and slowed the pace unbidden. The horses stopped together, side by side, and blocked the road. They heard a rider coming fast, dead ahead and not yet visible in the dark. Fifty yards away, Tom guessed, maybe closer. He aimed his rifle up the road and Benjamin cocked his pistol. Bones splayed his forelegs and braced for what was coming.
“Stop!” Tom yelled.
His rifle barrel shook. He hadn’t shot a man in years—three to be exact—and took a long, deep breath before he tightened on the trigger. When the rider didn’t slow, he aimed for the shoulder.
“Wait!” Benjamin said, lowering his gun.
The horse stopped fast, the rider’s hair fluffed forward.
“Help!” Molly said.
Tom was off Bones the second he saw the figure clinging to the horse, or rather dangling by his arm. The man staggered up, badly tangled in his cloak and wearing a mask that had slipped halfway down his face. It covered his mouth instead of his eyes, and he was too dazed and furious to notice Tom and Benjamin. He lunged at Molly’s leg and Molly kicked him off. Tom bopped him on the head with the rifle and he turned, groaning when the muzzle touched him on the chest.
When Molly climbed down, the Maimer’s arm jerked toward her. Tom backed up and almost pulled the trigger.
“We’re tied together,” Molly said.
Benjamin went to her side, used a knife to free her wrists, and pulled her into a hug. Tom gathered up the rope still fastened to the Maimer, ordered him to turn, and bound his arms behind his back. One of the arms was limp: a shoulder out of joint. Tom tied it extra tight.
Molly managed to appear both vulnerable and strong, wary of the Maimer—and possibly of Tom—but upright and facing them and seemingly unharmed. She crossed her arms with confidence, or hugged herself with fear.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“We came for you,” Tom said. He frowned in agitation, not only because of the Maimer and the mystery of his capture, but also because of the flustering relief he wanted to hide—relief that Molly was safe, after his fear of having lost her.
Tom pulled the Maimer to Bones and tethered him to the saddle. He pulled the mask fully off and scrutinized the face, unfamiliar with its narrow eyes and long crooked nose.
“Try to run,” Tom said, “I’ll shoot your leg and drag you.”
“There were two,” Molly said, surprising Tom anew. “The other one’s a long way back without a horse.”
He considered going after the man, and yet as impressive as it was that Molly alone had bested two, there were usually four or five. They couldn’t risk being ambushed.
“We’re leaving,” he decided, climbing onto Bones.
Molly sat on the Maimer’s horse and Benjamin rode beside her. The Maimer limped along under Tom’s pointed rifle. Their pace was nerve-rackingly slow, especially in the devil’s shroud where anyone could jump them. Tom frequently interrupted Molly’s tale of the attack—amazing as it was—to listen for pursuers.
When they finally emerged from the woods, Ichabod charged them with the pole as if to lance them. He recognized his friends and lowered the weapon with a smile. Then he saw the Maimer, raised the pole again, and froze; Nabby had filled his head with tales and superstitions, and she had convinced Ichabod, along with others in the town, that the Maimers weren’t men but demons from beyond. Even Tom kept reminding himself the man was only a thief, not the vaporizing terror he had known by reputation.
Ichabod retreated and busied himself at the dock. He tied Benjamin’s and Molly’s horses to the anchor-line support and led Bones onto the ferry, feeding him an apple. Tom secured the Maimer to the side rail of the raft, waited for Benjamin to take over guarding him, and guided Molly off the dock. The chivalry was needless—she had, after all, taken the raft alone—but served as an apology for driving her away.
She clung to Tom’s arm when they started across to Root, seeming smaller than before despite her unexpected coup. She relaxed him, which was risky when he needed to be watchful, and concerned him, which was foolish since he had her safe and sound. She smelled of candlefruit but also like a child who’d been crying. A group of townspeople stood on the opposite bank of the river, talking amongst themselves and holding lanterns in the dark. He would never hear the end of it—the two of them again.
The Maimer looked at Molly with a curious expression. Hostile, yes, but loaded with an undercover meaning, not quite intimate but close enough to question it. Tom turned his face down, pretending not to watch her. She was staring at the Maimer with the same mysterious glow. Molly noticed Tom’s attention, blinked, and turned away, but not before he sensed the link between them: recognition.
They reached the crowded dock. Twenty-odd citizens, presumably roused by Abigail, had come to the river with guns and lights, ready to assist. They’d probably gone to the tavern, learned that Tom and Benjamin had already left, and stood at the bank debating how to proceed without the ferry.
Sheriff Pitt stepped forward. “What in hell’s going on?”
Tom addressed the crowd. “Molly caught a Maimer. Broke a second Maimer’s nose.”
Greater shock would not have been felt if Tom had popped his head off, held it up alive, and sung a verse of “Green Leaves.” Everybody hushed. They looked from Molly to the Maimer with open mouths, squinty eyes, or stupefied mixtures of the two, and only Pitt recovered his wits quickly enough to board the ferry, pistol in hand, and point it at the prisoner’s chest as Tom led him off. Once the lanterns showed the villain was an ordinary man, the crowd found its courage and began to swarm around, following them to the Orange with Pitt at the head, Molly and Benjamin arm in arm, and the Maimer being scrutinized and pushed along the way.
Ichabod returned with one of the men to get the horses they had left on the opposite bank, while another of the group guided Bones to the stables. Tom looked at Molly and considered her escape again. Why had she been bound instead of maimed like the others? Why had the Maimer failed to shoot her when she stole the horse and fled? He watched her so long, dwelling on her shifting eyes and marvelous tousled hair, that he allowed Sheriff Pitt to enter the tavern as if he owned it.
“Bring him into the taproom,” he called back to Tom.
Bess had opened the door and promptly stepped aside, and she seemed more surprised by Tom following orders than she was about the horde surging inward with a prisoner. When Molly passed by, Bess pulled her to her side. The Orange’s guests had stayed awake and looked rewarded by the spectacle. They stood and sloshed their drinks, tipsy but engaged, while some of the townspeople strong-armed the Maimer into a chair.
The taproom could easily accommodate the crowd but they clustered up tight and made it claustrophobic. Tom and Pitt shouldered through and backed them all away. Benjamin and Bess seated Molly near the bar. They gave her a cup of cider, which she drank two-handed, emptying the tankard with a long, hearty draft. Tom tied the Maimer to the chair. He turned to the group and raised his hand, silencing the chatter. Then he told them what had happened, just as Molly had recounted. By the time he finished talking, every eye was on her.
“She’s a pistol!”
“Give her a medal.”
“Well done, you plucky girl.”
“Call her Miss, you fucking boor.”
“We ought to make her sheriff,” someone shouted from the back.
The last, cutting through, slashed Pitt’s façade. Tom focused on the Maimer, so as not to crack a smile. Baiting Pitt wouldn’t help tonight—he knew the greater danger.
Pitt was baited all the same. He told Molly, “It was a ripe piece of luck. They might have cut you into ribbons. You were foolish to run off, risking other people’s lives.”
Molly didn’t answer, didn’t duck or look abashed. The crowd was on her side and, after everything she’d suffered, being lectured by the sheriff was a small thing to bear.
“Leave her be,” Bess said, and everyone agreed.
Pitt flushed and turned his furious attention to the Maimer, asking questions that the whole bristling crowd wanted answers to. What was his name? Who were his companions? Where were the others hiding? The Maimer stared ahead without a ripple of acknowledgment. The crowd grew impatient and began pressing in, and Tom and Pitt were shoved together, touching boots with the prisoner.
“You took a man’s tongue and even he said more” came a voice from the back.
“We should start trimming pieces till he talks,” said another.
That caused a ripple. The Maimer had been lulled by the bland interrogation; now he looked at Tom and Pitt with wide, veiny eyes, seeking reassurance from the safety of the law. There was a tumult in the crowd as someone raised a knife, which was passed hand to hand until it came to Tom’s side, jabbing forward so dramatically the Maimer flinched away.
“Chop a finger!”
“Take an ear!”
“He wouldn’t hear the questions.”
“’Course he would, you dolt. He’d still have the hole.”
Tom and Pitt reached together for the outthrust knife. Pitt got it first and Tom grabbed his wrist. They traded urgent looks and Tom let him have it.
“Back up,” they said together, surprising the crowd with unity. The people did as they were told and cleared a wider space, softening the crush and leaving Tom, Pitt, and the Maimer in a spotlit gap.
“He’s a butcher and a rogue!” someone said.
“He’s got it coming!”
Reasons came forth—frightened children, ruined travel, body parts and property the bastard had to pay for—and when the circle tightened up again and words would not suffice, Tom unslung his rifle and said, “No one’s cutting him up.”
A farmer at the front, named Hooker, grabbed the gun. They stood together, face-to-face, hands upon the rifle. Tom saw the fury and the fear in Hooker’s eyes and so he head-butted him, knocking a bit of sense—or stupefaction—into the farmer’s big skull. He took the gun back and stiffened, daring anyone else to try. Hooker rubbed his head, angry but embarrassed.
“Tavern’s closed,” Tom said. “Everybody out. We’ll lock him upstairs and do it lawful come morning.”
Tom’s fearless reputation from the war, coupled with his temper, gave the order more power than the crowd’s indignation. They respected him and dreaded being banished from the tavern, and when Pitt backed him up and said, “You heard him, off you go,” the disappointed crowd grumbled to the door.
Even the travelers stood to go, carrying their drinks.
“Not you,” Tom said.
They sat and looked chastened.
Once the townspeople left, Tom locked the door and returned to the taproom, where he walked around Pitt without acknowledging their teamwork. He felt profoundly self-conscious after countering the mob, as if by opening his mouth he’d opened himself to judgment.
Molly and Bess sat in the corner holding hands, warm and sisterly. The Maimer slumped forward in the chair, not blinking. His face was moist and grimy, he was trembling at the knees, and his dislocated shoulder sagged pitiably low.
Tom said to Benjamin, “You need to check his wounds?”
“Breaks and bruises,” Benjamin said. “He’ll survive until the morning.”
It was a cross-grained answer from a doctor sworn to heal, betraying his resentment of a man who lived to injure.
“Get up,” Tom said to the Maimer.
He made the prisoner stand without untying him from the chair, forcing him to stoop with the angle of the seat back. They crossed the taproom and started up the stairs with Pitt behind them. Criminals were commonly held in the tavern, and the Orange had a room well suited to the purpose: small and unfurnished, holding nothing but a corncob mattress, with window bars and a heavy, lockable door. They led the Maimer into the room and kept him fastened to the chair.
After Tom had shut the door and left him in the dark, Pitt said, “You’re sure that lock is strong enough?”
“My knots are,” Tom said.
He had misgivings about the prisoner altogether, truth be told, and when Ichabod returned from ferrying the horses, Tom sent him upstairs to guard the room. Back downstairs, he told the travelers, “Go to bed,” and they immediately complied. Nabby emerged from the kitchen, having spent the whole time spinning out flax, and started dousing lights until the shadows spread to dimness. The hearth light pulsed, a minor flame with ticking embers. Benjamin, Pitt, and Bess stood at the bar and grew obscure. Molly alone faced the fire and was soft gold-orange.
Tom stepped beside her and she seemed to hold her breath. “I’m sorry I treated you hard this morning. You’re welcome to stay the night if Benjamin agrees,” he said, ostensibly to free her from the wiry hooks of Abigail, primarily to keep her under his own watchful eye.
“It might be for the best,” Benjamin decided.
“Thank you,” Molly said and subtly clasped her hands, showing fear as much as gratitude. She seemed to feel Tom’s doubts.
Bess crossed the room and hugged Tom around the arms. “I love you, coz,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek, and there were suddenly too many skirts and too much snug affection, given the hardness of the problems he had welcomed into his home.
“Be back at dawn,” he said to Pitt, “before the town comes to get him. Bring as many trusty men as you can find to keep the peace.”
The hearth log collapsed and the fire died down. The room’s red glow was like a second, deeper sunset, heralding a night more dangerous and dark. Pitt’s scarlet coat turned the shade of old blood. Instead of growing surly at the summary dismissal, the sheriff nodded his head, puffed his chest military-style, and strode toward the door with dignified exhaustion. Tom saw him out and resecured the door while Bess took the last empty dishes to the kitchen.
Molly and Nabby examined each other in wary, intimate silence, as if the oldest woman in Root were actually a witch, viewing the newest woman in Root as either a rival or a pupil.
“The child ghost distrusts you,” Nabby finally said, “but shouldn’t harm you in your sleep, so long as you behave.”
With that, she went to her own small room off the kitchen.
Benjamin spoke to Molly, too privately for Tom to overhear, presumably to offer an apology for Abigail. He hugged her once more, crossed the room, and said to Tom, “Keep an eye on her tonight.”
“I mean to,” he said. “I could use you here tomorrow.”
“I’ll be here at first light,” Benjamin assured him, straightening his glasses and appearing, as he did so, to straighten out his thoughts. “Tom,” he said discreetly. “The Maimer will be judged by a town predecided. Either silence or confession will secure his noose. When he hangs, all he knows and hasn’t spoken hangs with him. If we hope to learn enough to thwart more attacks, you must convince him to divulge whatever secrets he is keeping.”
“How?” Tom said.
“Abigail would counsel him to think upon his soul. He may consider it at night, when fear of hell is more enfleshed.”
Tom thought it futile but refrained from contradicting him. He shook his friend’s hand, walked him out, and locked the front door one last time. Bess took Molly to the privy out back, and once the women had said good night and gone to Bess’s room upstairs, Tom relieved himself in the garden and thought of the Maimer tied to the chair.
“Let him piss himself,” he thought, lacing up and going in.
After confirming that every door and window was secure, he stirred down the hearth and carried a candle and a pistol upstairs, where Ichabod was still keeping guard at the prisoner’s door.
“Go on to bed,” Tom said. “I need you vital in the morning.”
Ichabod retired and Tom remained a minute on his own, hearing nothing from the Maimer but occasional creaks and moans. He went to his own room down the hall and listened to the tavern, waiting for an unfamiliar shifting in the timbers, and it was now the hectic day hit him full bore. He wobbled at the knees, and yawned until his vision blurred, and longed to get in bed but didn’t dare—not tonight.
He occupied himself by reconsidering what had happened, word by word and detail by detail, and he had been musing for a while, half sleeping on his feet, when he sensed a subtle change in the character of the silence. Judging by the candle, half an hour had elapsed. He thought he heard a sound. What it was he couldn’t say.
He opened the door and checked the empty hall, then crept toward the prisoner’s room, pistol in hand and traversing the dark by memory, avoiding the one warped floorboard that squeaked against the joists. The crack at the base of the prisoner’s door flickered from within. He paused and heard the S’s of a rush of whispered words.
He didn’t bother with the key. The lock was disengaged—he could feel it—so he raised the gun and held his breath and opened the door abruptly.
A candle on the floor showed the Maimer in his chair. Molly held the knife that Pitt had left behind. She removed it from the Maimer’s throat and dropped it in surprise. It wasn’t the gun she seemed to fear, or even Tom’s reaction, but the loss of what had brought her there—the loss of some advantage.
She had been crying but contained herself and backed toward the corner. The Maimer wasn’t cut. He smiled in relief, but his eyes looked frightened and his cheek flesh twitched. The door had moved the candle flame; shadows grew and shifted. Molly’s face seemed to pulse, her tears lightly glistened, and her wide-open eyes had their own clear fire.
Tom stepped toward her, kicking the candle in distraction and grabbing her arm in the dark. Molly pulled away. He didn’t want a struggle with the Maimer right beside them so he backed toward the door and said, “Downstairs. Now.”
Once he had her out of the room, he locked the door a second time—lot of ruddy good the first time had done—and led her down the stairs as quietly as he could. Molly stepped on every loose board along the way, including the third-to-last step with its low, mournful groan.
He sat her at a table in the middle of the taproom. Nabby’s door opened in the shadows off the kitchen.
“Only me,” Tom said.
Nabby mumbled and retreated.
He stirred the embers in the hearth, lit a taper, and ignited a whale-oil lantern hanging from a rafter. The light was pure and gentle, like a touch of summer dawn. Molly watched the flame, distant but alert, her illuminated face seeming younger in the glow but older in expression. She was difficult to read.
He put a kettle in the hearth and ground smoak behind the bar. The nuts were tough to pulverize and Tom muscled in, using so much force he almost bent the grinder’s handle. It was a violent sound but yielded fluffy powder in the box, which he spooned into cups and stirred with boiling water. Molly didn’t move when he set a cup before her, and he stood a minute longer, looking down at her and breathing in the aromatic steam.
Then he sat and held her hand, both gentle and direct. She was hot beneath his palm.
“Drink,” he said.
He squeezed her hand. She sighed and took a sip.
It might have been Elkinaki firewater, to judge by her wince. That was everyone’s reaction to a first taste of smoak—its bitter-rich, cinnamony, burnt-black flavor—but he’d bet a silver plate she would crave it ever after. Molly put it down and looked considerably sharper. Her breath intermingled with the fragrance of the smoak and made a spice so potent that his skin began to tingle.
“You’re good at picking locks,” he said.
“I learned it growing up.”
“With other people’s locks?”
“No, at home,” Molly said.
Tom released her hand and drank his smoak, leaning back.
“Tell me about that.”
“Not now.”
“You want to reconsider,” Tom said. “Because I know it ain’t your memory that’s keeping you from talking. I already think the worst, and I don’t want to. I truly don’t.”
The lantern just behind him threw his shadow on her bosom, darkening the leaf-print pattern of her gown.
“You know him,” Tom said.
“I’ve seen him before.”
“He’s seen you, too.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
Molly tremored when she spoke but looked defensively resolved, like a person loath to fight finally putting up her fists. “In Grayport,” she said.
“You lived there?”
She nodded.
“With your brother,” Tom said.
Molly gripped her cup. Her eyes shone brightly, not as if to cry but rather as if her feelings had been heated, like an oil. Tom leaned against the table. They were close, knee to knee.
“You’re trying to decide if you should trust me,” Tom said. “Here’s how it is. You haven’t got a choice. Keeping secrets anymore ain’t a God-given right.”
Molly clamped her lips and didn’t speak for half a minute. Then her shoulders drooped, her face collapsed, and out the story came.