Chapter 23: Water Rites

 

By the time I saw the Toths safely settled back at their house, I was beginning to ache all over. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. The sight of Everett captured by ignorant, misguided men would haunt me, and his mother’s admonishment rang true. If I wanted to squash poisonous talk about a hex, I needed to do something cleverer than throw punches at grieving villagers. Instead of returning to my cottage in the cemetery, I stayed with Juno on the road back to Maida House. “I’ll sleep upstairs tonight in the manor.”

Juno was shivering. She folded her arms within her damp cloak and gave me a curious glance. “I thought you were afraid to enter the master bedchamber.”

“I am,” I said calmly. “My brother hanged himself there. My mother found him, and I cut him down. But I’m not leaving here tonight so it will have to do.” I held her eyes until she looked away. “Earlier tonight, I thought you had left me to rescue Everett on my own. I’m sorry I thought that, even for a moment, and I’m sorry for…a lot of other terrible things I once believed you capable of.”

“Be specific, please.”

“You’re going to make me say it?”

“Absolutely.”

“All right. I deserve that.” I inhaled and straightened my shoulders. “I’m sorry I entertained suspicions that you might have been involved in the deaths of infants.”

“Human sacrifice, Ben. That’s what you mean by involved.”

“I never said that! You used that phrase. And I know for certain you are a heretic with terrifying, witchlike powers of persuasion, so my concerns weren’t entirely—”

“Best quit before you dig your own grave.”

I blew out a sigh. “Indeed. Do you forgive me?”

“Yes, because I think a significant corner of your heart never believed the worst of me. It was only your brain that doubted.” She was serene and smug.

“Thank you for that.”

“What are we going to do about Mrs. Toth’s doubters? Roberts won’t be the only one. How do we smooth these suspicions once and for all?” she asked.

“I’m not certain. Let me think.”

The house was dark as we walked up the drive. Sarah must have gone to bed after the ceremony in Maida Green. Had she noticed our absence? Once within, I bolted the front door. Juno gave me a tired smile. Without another word, she passed through the foyer and entered the library. The big doors slid shut, leaving only damp footprints to mark her passing.

From the kitchen, I collected an armload of split logs. Then I ascended the grand staircase. At the second-story landing, I paused at the inset linen cupboard. My oil lantern was guttering, so I grabbed an entire stack of folded blankets and hastened away.

Despite my stout pretense for Juno, the master bedchamber for me was little better than a nightmare. I stood outside the tightly shut door and squeezed my eyes closed. A quaver passed over my skin like the hide of a horse and settled in my hands. That evening, Joe’s last evening, I remembered in snatches. I’d been home for a break between university terms, but also because I knew things were going poorly. Surely Joe had picked that night as his last because he couldn’t handle the pain any longer, but also because I was there. If I had stayed away, would he have carried on?

Mother’s lady’s maid, one of the last servants to be let go, had fetched me from my room in tears. I found my mother lying across Joe’s doorway in a motionless heap. Upon opening Joe’s chamber door, I had seen…No. My memory fractured, and my mind shied away from it.

I dropped the pile of linens from my shaking grip and lowered the lantern beside them. Could I make the room my own? It was the master chamber, after all, and mine by rights. Or would it always be Joe’s room and the place of his most desolate moments? I had wanted Juno’s unique perspective on the problem, but she needed to sleep.

The kitchen felt like mine. And the dining room…I had stood at the head of the long table and showed Juno how to brace the door closed. The hot house was mine from the moment I laid flat on the tile floor and stared up at the ceiling. The library was mine…no, ours. The library was all of ours. The study was mine, overlaid with the warmth of Everett. The attic with its stage and leather chairs was only mine and Juno’s.

In sudden inspiration, I turned and traced my steps back to the kitchen. There the banked fire provided dim light. It took me a few minutes to collect beeswax candles, a rag, and a tin of lemony furniture polish. I pried the lid open and sniffed it cautiously—it was the same stuff Juno had used on the bannister and the walnut desk. Then I returned upstairs.

Thus, armed with a housekeeper’s implements, I was able to face Joe’s door better fortified. I turned the handle and pushed through the entrance.

Disused hinges squawked in protest. The air inside was stale but dry, and thankfully it retained no odors of previous life or decay. A huge, canopied bed was positioned on one wall. The style of the room was a faux-medieval mix that suited me not at all. Carved wood panels were well crafted but darkened the room more than plain plaster would have. A fireplace with a granite surround was twice as big as was needed to heat the space.

And worst of all, thick beams overhead, like smaller versions of cathedral buttresses, arched against the ceiling. I suspected they served no structural purpose, only stylistic. Some Hood ancestor owed a debt to good taste. Joe had used one sturdy beam for his last act.

I kept my eyes away from the ceiling. First, I peeled off my wet overcoat, boots, jacket, waistcoat, and trousers and slopped them all into a damp pile. Then, wearing only my shirt and drawers, I knelt to lay a fire. The little pile of logs looked comically undersized in the cavernous fireplace, but it provided some light. The cheery crackle competed with the water pattering against the windowpanes.

The bed did not appeal. I was tired but restless, and I wanted something to accomplish. I stuck a handful of candles into the plain taper holders I found on the mantel and on the bedside tables and lit them all. If anyone—Roberts, Colney, Greeley—dared to approach Maida House before dawn, they would see from the glowing windows that someone was awake. Then I took the rag and tin of greasy polish to the casement and began rubbing at the frame. The wood had been battered by weather and neglect. The glass looked clean enough, given the rain that still sheeted down the panes.

I let myself fall into the rhythm of the work. Rag, oil, rub. It was simple and clean. After finishing the window frames, I started on the paneling. The bright citrus smell kept me alert, and I moved a candlestick along with me to show the gleam of newly polished oak. I cleaned until my arms and back sang with pleasant exertion and my head was nearly empty of thought. No thoughts of the Colneys’ baby, the other lost infants, Greeley, or Juno. No thoughts of my mother’s cheerful humming or my brother’s death.

A tap on the door startled me. I jumped to my feet, knocked over the candlestick, dumping hot wax onto the floor and snuffing the flame, then cursed. I don’t know if it was the thud or the invective, but Juno let herself in. She stood in the doorway, one hand clasping her dressing gown tight around her neck.

“Are you all right?” she asked breathlessly. “What was that noise? What are you doing?”

“You’re exhausted,” I reminded her. I crossed to the fire and plucked up a twig to relight the candle. “Go back to sleep.”

She came a few steps forward and shut the door instead. “I am tired, but I didn’t like to think of you battling your ghosts alone up here. Why does it smell like—are you cleaning?” She released her grip on her dressing down, and the neckline gaped open to reveal the chemise underneath and a silvery wedge of skin.

I shrugged. “Cleaning is its own ceremony, isn’t it? Quite sure I learned that from you. I want to…”

What do I want? It felt too small and too large to explain. How does anyone hold up their corner of the world? What strength is passed down to you, and which must you build? Opere et Omissione.

“You want to sweat until it’s yours, just like the cemetery,” Juno offered when I failed to continue. “You want to earn it. I know you.”

“Yes.” She may have meant it metaphorically, but her words made me realize I was sweating and half-dressed. Between that and the earlier drenching that had left my hair lank and wild, I was unfit for company. “If you’ll excuse me, it’s very late.”

“Is your ceremony completed, then?” she asked, tipping her head. She looked around the room as if checking for cobwebs. “You really must sweep before you polish, you know, otherwise the dust just sticks to your shiny surfaces. Did you speak any words of gratitude or forgiveness?”

“Juno, please. I am just reclaiming this room, not auditioning for membership in your coven.”

“I should hope not,” she murmured, a witchy glint of mischief entering her dark eyes. “Your wardrobe is entirely unsuitable.” She stepped in front of the fireplace, and the glow lit the outlines of her limbs through her dressing gown.

I groaned and threw down my rag. I had no defenses against her when she turned her charm on me. “Stay over there,” I said and leveled a hopeless finger. “I’m filthy and in desperate need of a bath.”

“Nonsense. You are only bearing well-earned traces of rainwater and lemon.”

“And mud and perspiration.”

She smiled. “You shall never convince me that you are repellent, but I accede to the larger point. What if I sit here before the fire and stay out of your way?”

Without waiting for permission, she crossed to the pile of blankets I’d scavenged earlier and scooped them up. I watched in bemusement as she heaped a few on the floor in front of the fire to make a little nest. One larger wool blanket she wrapped around herself from shoulders to ankles. She sank to the ground, looking like an owlet with her eyes peering out.

I shook my head and chuckled. “Fine, stay there. You’ll be asleep in two minutes.”

“That’s the idea,” she agreed. She settled back into her improvised nest. “Perhaps three.”

I retrieved my cloth and resumed cleaning. I scraped up the spilled, hardened wax. I must have proved very dull entertainment, for Juno stayed alert no more than five minutes. Later I stripped off my ruined shirt and used it to wipe the floorboards. Juno had rolled to face the dying embers.

“I am grateful for my family and for a dry place to sleep,” I murmured under my breath. My knees ached as I clambered along the planks. My right shoulder joint popped every time I swiped. “I am grateful for my inheritance. My parents did nothing that requires my forgiveness, but I grant it freely.” Sweat from my hair dripped onto the dark wood, and I turned the fabric to wipe it away. “I am grateful for the chance to become the master of Maida House.”

A sleepy mumble came from the other side of the room. “You’ve been doing it for eight years.” Juno’s voice was muffled. I turned to look. Her eyes were still closed.

“Pardon me?”

“Joe only had the job for two years, Ben. You’ve been the master of this house for eight already. You are just revising your strategy.”

“It’s not the strategy that’s changed,” I said softly. Juno’s eyes fluttered open to meet mine. “It’s me.”