Chapter 6: Rite of the Infants

 

At Maida Green, I was surprised to see Everett bent over a shovel. He was so intent upon his task, he didn’t notice my return.

“I thought I gave you the day to yourself,” I called out.

He straightened. His face was drawn and serious. Only then did I realize he was digging in the infants’ corner, right beside the little grave I had dug only a few days prior. The lingering buoyancy from my visit with Juno fell flat. The first part of the row memorialized a half-dozen infants brought up from London over the past few years. The last three graves were all for babies who were born and died in our village.

“I had to come back,” he said. “Where have you been? The vicar sent word that another infant grave is needed for tomorrow morning. The messenger boy came to me when he couldn’t find you.”

“Another infant,” I repeated, ignoring Everett’s complaints about my absence. Then, although I already knew the answer, “From London?”

“No. Not from London.” His voice was low.

It was too many. Far too many—but how does one draw such a conclusion? Was there any acceptable number? The passing of two newborns in a few months could be a coincidence in a village our size, but four was excessive. My mother had been shocked at the third death. “Here, hand me that spade. I can do it.”

“It’s nearly done now.”

I well knew how terribly quick it was to dig an infant grave. “Thank you for handling it.” I stood and watched while he squared up the corners neatly.

“It’s not good, Ben.”

“I know.”

Everett dropped the shovel, and we gazed down at the little row of graves. Pfeiffer, Roberts, Horvath, were the surnames carved into stone. Three families tied together by life in our village and by the final resting place of their children. And now, a fourth family would be joining them.

“People are worried.”

Something in his tone was strange. It wasn’t just sadness, but also…fear. “What have you heard, Everett? Did you know the family of this infant?”

He gave me a brief smile. “You always called me Toth, before.”

“Say what’s on your mind before I start calling you stubborn.”

“Strong words from the man who began speaking his mind about twelve hours ago. It’s just that I don’t like to be head of the only dark-skinned family in the vicinity when pale-skinned babies start dropping like mayflies in July. People will be looking for someone to blame.”

My stomach tightened. “Who’s blaming you? Or your mother?”

“Nobody, yet. A woman crossed the street at the sight of Lucy and me last week. That’s how these things start.”

“Babies die. They’re fragile, they get sick.” I was defensive, struggling to push his words away.

“No adults are sick, nor has the village lost any older children. Just these babes. It’s made some people suspicious, looking for a reason. I can’t describe the feeling exactly, but when you’ve spent a lifetime balancing on the margins of civil society, you develop a sense for the undercurrents. Nobody wants to be the first to say murder, but it’s there.”

“Surely it’s been a run of bad luck. Tell me if anybody looks at you sideways, all right?”

“I just told you, they already have. And what are you offering to do, Ben Hood?” he asked, flinging out one long arm to take in the parklike grounds around us. “Stand before a mob? Raise your gardening shears on my behalf? I have a mother and a sister to look after. It’s no joke to me.”

I had not sensed the dangerous undercurrent that Everett had, but I believed him. His fear was enough for me. “It’s not a joke to me either, Everett. We’ll stand together if needed. You know me.”

The weight of Maida House behind me seemed to press against my back. There were parts of me that Everett did not know at all. I wished I could do something to smooth the worry from his brow.

“Sure, right,” he said on a long exhale. “I know you’d stand with me in a fight. But I’d prefer to think the waters around here would never rise to such a boil. If only there was a way to understand what was happening—if indeed anything is happening. Nobody says anything outright. But I could never go knocking on doors, asking rude questions. My family would be run out of town.”

He was right. I would be better able to protect the Toths from vicious rumors if I had facts with which to counter them. And if there was something connecting the deaths of those infants, maybe I could even put a stop to it and save a few young lives. Perhaps a lurking illness could be traced. My mother might even be willing to help.

“Mine wouldn’t,” I said.

“Wouldn’t what?”

“My family would not be run out of town. I’ll ask around and see if there’s anything odd to be uncovered. Any pattern, or if anyone else has been sick.”

He frowned. “You’re proposing to ask a lot of strangers about the recent deaths of their children? You’re no magistrate. You hate speaking to people.”

“But I like having you around to do all the worst jobs in the cemetery,” I said in an attempt to lighten his expression. “If a seething mob comes for you, it would be very inconvenient for me.”

Everett wasn’t laughing. “You’ll be lucky to have doors slammed in your face. I suspect you’ll get a fist to the nose first, and you’ll probably deserve it.”

“I can be polite.”

“It’s not about politeness, Ben. It’s about grief. You’ve been there yourself. When my father passed, I was angry every day for three months. And my mother was in no shape to answer prodding inquiries.”

“I won’t—I’ll tread lightly. Everett, you needn’t worry about me.” I set a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “You just worry about that maple tree in the third alley and whether Lucy’s flirting at school. I’ll check into these deaths and make sure nobody is leaping to any wrong conclusions. I promise you.”

He gave me a short nod, his dark eyes unreadable, then turned. I watched him trudge away, thinking again that Everett’s sense of responsibility often put mine to shame. We worked shrouded in silence for the remainder of the day.

By the time I locked the gates at dusk, Juno had not made an appearance. Perhaps she was delayed from her errand, or she’d changed her mind. Regardless, my mood was a great deal more somber than it had been in her conservatory. I didn’t feel like sparring with her or rousing myself to meet her challenging nature, so I retired to my cottage with only a tinge of regret.

* * *

Late that evening, I lay in bed listening to the rhythmic patter of rain on the roof. The noise was soothing, but my restless mind turned over and over from Juno to the four deceased children and Everett’s worries. And would the rain cause Farmer Miller’s field to flood again? I flopped onto my stomach and dropped an arm to sweep my knuckles over the cool, dusty floorboards. Shoved far beneath my bedframe, somewhere I hadn’t looked or cleaned recently, were Joseph’s old logbooks from the farm. Such as they were. He had never kept very accurate records, and things trailed off entirely in the weeks leading up to his death. Surely, I could do better than that. I could do no worse. In the morning I would check the Maida Green records for the details on the four infants.

Then a dim light bobbed past my window, out on the path, and I shot up like a dog called to heel. Someone was inside the cemetery—someone alive besides me. I jammed my feet into my boots without socks and snatched up my long flannel night wrapper—but the rain beat against the roof in a sudden gust. The heavy fabric would become instantly sodden and tangling. I thrust it aside, then unlatched my door and raced outside bare-chested and wild, my shoes loose and my drawers low on my hips.

The light was almost out of sight around a curve in the path, and I hurried along through puddles. Cold rain pelted my skin. The flame, as I drew nearer, flickered from an oil lantern encased in glass.

The person who carried it was tall, draped in a waxed-canvas cloak with rabbit-fur trim. Dark waves of hair straggled out from under a sturdy hat. Juno.

My hands clenched, fingers slick and cold. She’d lied to me. She had said she didn’t break into Maida Green, and yet the gates were locked. I have an errand that brings me to your burial ground tonight, she’d said.

I ducked off the path and crept forward from among the headstones. She had come for some reason, and I wanted to watch her while unobserved myself. Why tell me she was coming if only to then steal inside? If she believed I would not mind the intrusion, she had overestimated the extent of the recent connection between us. Her lies and sneaking smothered any intimacy I may have briefly considered.

Then, to my growing alarm, I understood her destination. Juno stopped in the infants’ corner. She shed her cloak and hat, baring her pale face and arms to the rain, and the lantern she balanced on top of a headstone. She faced the row of memorials. The last grave was open and empty, the one Everett had dug, and the one before it was still fresh.

I waited, tense and crouched behind a stone, to see what she intended. Perhaps another plant would be stolen, and the only other witness was Maida House. Even the moon and stars were hidden by the rainstorm. I dashed my hair from my eyes with the back of one wrist.

Juno clasped her hands before herself and tilted her face up to the sky. I could not make out her muffled words. Then she spread her arms and fingers wide, embracing the row of infant tombstones. I was reminded of our makeshift ceremony for the Viburnum tinus.

She bent and rummaged in her sack for a moment, and when she arose, she held a glass canning jar, such as would be used for jams or pickling. The bottom inch held something dark and liquid. Was it wine? Juno pried open the lid, and I thought for a moment that she would drink.

But instead, as I watched in increasing dread, she extended her arm. Graceful as a ballerina, she tilted the jar and poured a trickle of its contents onto the earth. Onto the first grave. The grass border between plots. Then the second. She stepped once, twice, the liquid falling in a thin stream and mixing with the rain.

My mind froze when she crossed before the oil lantern. The anointing substance was lit by the flame in a brief flash, just long enough for me to identify a color. Red. Not like deep ruby wine. Blood red.

I could watch in silence no longer. The ceremony took on an evil cast, and all my previous experiences with Juno Stephens darkened in my memory. The reverence offered to inanimate objects, the whisky she’d called a ‘potion,’ her ‘spell’ for my stammer. Even the herbs and grasses she grew hidden inside her home. It had all been a quirk, an eccentricity until she poured blood over the graves of infants. It was unholy. A wicked sacrilege.

Being holy is only paying attention.

“No!” I roared out my denial and burst from my hiding place. “Cease this desecration, witch!”

She startled, whirled. The bloody vessel dropped from her wet hands. “Ben!” she gasped. “What are you—”

“What are you?” I yelled. My anger was a clawing, coiling beast in my chest. “What foul deed is this? How dare you disturb the peace of these innocents?”

She stepped towards me, palms up and outstretched. “You must understand that—”

“I understand perfectly that you practice some dark art, but you won’t do it on this holy ground. Is it a coincidence that you emerged from the seclusion of mourning in the same month our village lost four babes?”

“Is that what you think?” Juno recoiled. A thick lock clung to her cheek. “Yes, of course, it is! Ben, please, you must listen.”

I stopped my ears to her plea, lest she enchant me again. Even so, my traitorous eyes strayed to her heaving chest, where the wet fabric of her dress hid little. I, too, was half-naked and dripping.

“No, you must listen to me,” I said. “You bring more harm than you can understand. You may feel invincible in your dark ways, but Everett Toth and his family could pay the price for fears stirred in the village. I will not let that happen.”

She seemed to shrink in on herself. “I helped you to free your voice, but I see that you cannot hear,” she said softly.

“Get out. Now.”

Juno retrieved her cloak and hat. As she passed by me, I folded my arms, shielding my chest and belly on instinct. She stopped and laid a hand on my forearm, turning her face up. I held my expression in stony stillness.

“Ben,” she whispered. “I had hoped you might understand. I thought we were alike.”

“We are nothing alike,” I growled. “Go, before I decide to haul you to the church for judgment.”

“The church cannot judge me.”

“God can, and He will.”

Juno retracted her hand from my arm. “God doesn’t exist, Benjamin. I checked. I have lifted my face to the sun and moon and scoured my soul in search of a deity. I now know, and you would know if you really paid attention, that the heavens answer our cries only with silence. No one is judging us but ourselves. As you have shown, that is more than harsh enough.”

I recoiled from her blatant heresy. “Get. Out.”

She lowered her eyes, nodded once, and walked away. I followed a few paces behind to track her egress. Had she scaled the front gate? Was there a breach in the wall?

But at the gate, Juno reached into her cloak again and extracted a heavy brass key. It was my gate key. The sight of it sent a sharp, shameful brand through my heart. I had been in her house, she had put her hands on me. I had thought—arrogant fool—she was attracted to me. In truth, she only wanted to steal my key to gain access for her wicked ceremonies. It burned my eyes and turned my stomach. “You are full of lies,” I hissed.

The gates of Maida Green closed with the clamor of a cell door slamming. She was the heathen witch, yet I was the one locked inside with only the dead and my mortification for company.

“Goodbye,” she said and tossed the key back through the iron bars.