Chapter 17

C HAPTER 17

Nature provides exceptions to every rule.

—Margaret Fuller

Marigold was quite determined not to become one of the girls who turned up dead. To leave as soon as she could—once she had learned what she needed to know about her mother. In the meantime, she would stay watchful and careful so she could not be taken unawares.

Hence, she installed her padlock before she set to work on her next project—an herb garden laid out with all the precision of an archaeological site, mapped out with the same stout twine, line levels, and plumb bobs she had packed for the Leivathos dig on Kefalonia—another place in ruins on a Greek, rather than a Massachusetts, island. But using her brass theodolite and surveying skills allayed some of her frustration at needing to remain at her present site.

"Rise and shine, Cleon." Marigold rattled her measuring chain against the cast-iron stove to waken the old man. "Rise and … well, shine as best you can under the circumstances. I have a job for you this morning."

While she would have preferred the help of any of her cousins, they had already scattered, each to their own way, to fend for themselves. That's just how it is at Hatchet Farm.

"Gone!" He bolted up from his habitual slumber on the kitchen table. "I gots work here." He rose and made as if to clear the table, which had already been cleared—by her.

"I have taken care of the dishes." The offending bowls were already soaking in a steaming caldron. "We'll come back later to scrub them when it's easier."

"I gotta clam today, to add to the chowder."

"The tide is still high, so your clams can wait to go into your never-ending pot." The chowder seemed to always be on a low boil. But something else in the kitchen was giving off an astringent smell, which didn't come from the hot stove but from the narrow hallway where Sophronia had disappeared last night. "What's back there?"

"Couldn't rightly say," Cleon answered. "That be Miz Sophronia's room, and ain't no one else allowed in."

Perhaps Sophronia was brewing up her own moonshine liquor that she didn't share with the rest of the house—maybe that would account for her air of placid disassociation.

But Marigold's knock on the door went unanswered—and she wouldn't allow herself to put her ear to the portal in front of the old man. "Come along, Cleon." She led the way to the chicken coop and its rotting pile of manure. "I'll get a shovel while you get the wheelbarrow."

"What fer?"

"For the garden, in which I will be planting fresh vegetables like green runner beans and peas, and carrots and beets," she explained. "Think of how savory your stews will be, Cleon, with good root vegetables and squashes. You'll have a bounty come midsummer."

"Ain't nothing ever growed on this rock," he fretted. "Barren, it is. Cursed, some say—"

"But not me. I don't believe in curses, Cleon. And neither should you."

"But I seen it with my own eyes," the old man swore. "The earth is as bare and barren as a witch's teat. The rain never comes. The seeds fall to the ground like the sulfurous drops from Satan's d—"

"Yes, thank you, Cleon," Marigold broke in. "I recall that delightful litany from our first meeting. And although I have never seen the devil's big brassy door knocker"—she tossed the astonished old fellow a playful wink—"I can see this chicken manure with my own eyes and certainly smell it with my own nose, which makes it far more real than any curse. The manure, mixed with some fallen leaf mulch from the woods, as well as some grit and seaweed from the shore, will help make fertile raised beds, which we are going to box up from windfallen logs that we are also going to gather from the woods."

"That's a powerful load of work."

"Yes, it is," she acknowledged. "For which you shall be paid handsomely." Though it occurred to her that she did not know a farm laborer's rate of pay. "What does your cousin Ellery pay you?"

"Don't pay me." Cleon hung his head. "Don't deserve nothing, he says."

"What do you mean, nothing?" Granted, the old fellow didn't do much, but work he did—and work no one else seemed prepared to do. "Everyone deserves to be paid a fair wage, Cleon."

"Not me." He shook his head like a dog. "On account'a I'll only go and waste it on demon liquor. Best not pay me anything but vittles."

"Ah." Marigold recalled Cleon's bout of barrel fever. "While I understand the moral dilemma of not encouraging alcoholic drink, it is highly unethical, not to mention entirely illegal, not to provide recompense for labor."

Cleon shook his head as if he could clear it. "Don't know as what re-com-pen is. But I knows times is hard. And I'm a sinner who don't deserve no cash money to waste on liquor."

"Your sins are your own business, but I shall pay you for your work—perhaps in a jar on the mantelpiece in the kitchen? You can ask Wilbert to help you keep track of it, if you are afraid of wasting it on liquor."

His befuddlement seemed to clear—slightly. "Well, all right then, Miss Girl."

"It will be all right," she assured him. "Because I will make it right."

It was a long day of toil, filling the squeaky wheelbarrow full of manure and hauling it across the yard, taking the mule cart into the woods to load it full of dirt and leaf mulch, returning to Hatchet Farm to unload, and then heading to North Cove for sand and seaweed to layer onto the three patches Marigold had set out with twine.

She kept one eye on the weather, because the gray wind off the water held a raw cold. But the rain never fell, although a different sort of chill did come over her now and again. At one point Marigold thought she might have seen a shadow disappear behind a tree, but having the old man as a working companion kept her far too busy redirecting his missteps and misdeeds to pursue it.

"Cleon, be careful! You've nearly knocked me into this burrow." Although on second look, it was not an animal's burrow but simply a large hole dug into the ground—the backfill was heaped nearby. Which reminded her of the eldest Hatchet's bizarre appearance with the spade yesterday morning. "I suppose Ellery Hatchet dug this hole?"

"Couldn't say," was Cleon's wary response.

"Naturally." But there were holes all about the woodland, scattered here and there. The illogic of both the holes themselves and Cleon's refusal to give any real answer to any question, along with a continuing sense of creeping unease, was enough to put Marigold on edge. It didn't help that Cleon was fey and skittish, muttering imprecations under his breath and mumbling that he hoped she knew what she was doing.

She did not. And the longer she went on, the less sure she got.

Because there it was again—that uneasy feeling, like a chill across the back of her neck. As if …

She whirled around, sure she could catch sight of—

Nothing. There was only old Cleon stepping into her way. "Don't know as why yer going to such trouble," he grumbled, "when the gulls and crows'll just peck up all the seeds first."

"The crows are not going to peck up the seeds, firstly, because I already have the plants in pots on my windowsill"—thanks to Bessie—"and secondly, because we're going to erect a scarecrow."

"I never!" Cleon all but threw his arms over his head, as if he were warding off a spell.

"Cleon, if you must insist upon being gawney and folktale-ish, you should know that scarecrows are meant to ward off bad luck." Marigold settled in for a practical explanation. "As well as to scare away the crows."

"No, no. Eerie they be," he insisted, shaking and scratching his head like a dog with a flea in its ear. "Cousin Ellery won't stand for any o' this—he'll say a scarecrow be a graven idol."

"Nonsense." Marigold was determined to put such foolishness from Cleon's head. And to keep the Hatchets from insinuating their way into her own—there was altogether too much eerie decay at Hatchet Farm as it was without adding any more. "The scarecrow is nothing more than a tool to protect the garden. A tool best employed by surprise—so we shall be moving the scarecrow's post and crosstree about the garden regularly, as well as changing the clothes." She had already started gathering garments too worn to be repaired from the washing. "All I require from you is a hat."

"A hat?"

"Yes, Cleon, a hat." No hats had come in the laundry. "Something old and especially tattered." Not that any of the clothing worn by the inhabitants of Hatchet Farm could be called anything but tattered on a good day. "Surely there is an old, broken-down straw hat cast about in some forgotten corner somewhere in that maze of a house?"

"Dunno," the old man quavered. "Usually feed anything straw to the mules."

Marigold kept herself from sighing only by the strictest discipline. "Just keep your eye open for a hat, will you? Or, if you could show whatever hats you might find to me before any feeding to the mules, I'd be obliged."

Cleon took that as his chance to scurry off in immediate search, so instead of instructing him on the repair of the chicken coop—she hadn't argued for that Norwich wire fencing for her own health—Marigold spent some small time with her penciled plan, better judging the layout of the beds with the fall of sunlight and thinking with fondness of her botany courses in college. And all of her courses. Imagining that she was standing in front of the ruins of Leivathos, judging the layout of her excavation grid squares, instead of languishing on a barren pile of rocks two miles off the Massachusetts shore.

But wishing her life was different would not solve her—or the Hatchets'—present dilemmas. She would stick to practical solutions, such as where it might be best to put root vegetables like carrots, parsnips, radishes, and beets, as they would require more mulch while still tender—

This time, the sudden chill was like the shock of a cold hand touching her face. Marigold instinctively whirled away. "Who's there?"

A swirl of dust behind the breezeway door evolved into the long fall of a gray wool skirt. "Cousin Sophronia?"

The woman reluctantly showed herself, the dark hem of her cloak and skirts damp with dew, as if she'd been about the woods or tide pools. "You've gone right out straight," she said in her strange, old-fashioned New England style of talking. "Looks like you scraped up half the foreshore."

"Enough for good, gritted soil," Marigold agreed, determined to foster some conversation between them, "to grow herbs of use in cookery."

"Which?" Sophronia's eyes grew eerily dark and overlarge. "Tell them to me."

Marigold tried not to let her cousin's stare unnerve her. "Chives will go here," she began.

"Usefulness," Sophronia muttered with an approving nod. "Why are you crying?"

"I'm not," Marigold assured her, though she surreptitiously put up a hand to check that her face was indeed not wet with tears. "Are you quite to rights, Cousin?"

"Hang them to dry on the rafters to repel evil spirits, chives." Sophronia motioned toward the kitchen with her dirt-gnarled hands. "Need an awful heap for this house."

"Certainly," Marigold answered. "Anything to help. I will also put in thyme, thereabouts,"—she pointed to the end of the bed—"which will be savory with eggs, since you seem to have a fairly steady supply of those."

"Courage." Sophronia's gaze became unfocused, as if she could see something other than plants growing from the soil.

"I don't think I'll need courage, Cousin Sophronia," Marigold soothed. "Just more mulch, for the sage and parsley, which will go there."

"Ward away misfortune." Sophronia muttered the words, as if she were invoking some strange incantation.

A more reasonable thought occurred. "Are you by any chance talking about the language of flowers?" Marigold asked. "The symbolic meanings of plants?"

"Ayuh," Sophronia confirmed. "Everything has meaning," she said a trifle vehemently. "Everything speaks to us, if only we will listen."

"That's a lovely thought." Marigold saw her opening. "I, for one, should very much like to listen and learn," she assured her cousin. "Especially as to what wrong was done to my mother and what I am to do about it?"

Sophronia instantly backed away. "It is too soon."

"How could it be too soon, Cousin?" Marigold reasoned. "When I've come all this way, by your invitation, to find out? How much longer am I expected to wait?"

"I've said what I've said and I'll say no more." Sophronia retreated toward the house, as if she would end the conversation.

Marigold was having none of it. "Then why did you write me about my rights and bring me all the way out here if you mean not to tell me?" she demanded. "Do you mean to be so intentionally perverse? Or cruel?"

"Poor girl. You've strength in you, I'll give you that." Sophronia looked at her with a sort of fearful pity before she cast another glance over the garden. "But you'll need rosemary. And rue."

"And what are they—rosemary and rue—meant to say to me that you will not?"

"Rosemary is for remembrance." Sophronia's voice lowered to a whisper. "And rue is—" She sighed so heavily that Marigold half expected her to collapse from the weight of her cares. "Rue is regret." Her eyes finally met Marigold's. "And virginity."

"Well then." Marigold was a modern New Woman, and it was time her cousin understood that. "That wouldn't be for me."

"Oh, no." Sophronia nodded, unperturbed. "Not everything is for you."

"Well, I seem to be the only one listening." Marigold drew herself up to her full middling height. "But if you will not teach me what I am meant to learn, I will find some other way. The past, dear cousin, as the poet Emily Dickinson warned, is not a package one can lay away."

But Sophronia was no pushover and could give as good as she got. She drew herself up. "Then I hope you have the courage for the unpacking." She cast one last glance at the garden. "You'll need a far larger patch of thyme for that."