Chapter 34

C HAPTER 34

The best way to cheer yourself up is to cheer somebody else up.

—Mark Twain

Marigold awoke with a start some hours after dawn, stiff and uncomfortable after falling asleep on the floor, disoriented by fitful dreams in which Minnie Mallory's red skirts had swirled around Marigold's feet, dragging her down into the icy water.

How strange to dream of someone she had never met.

But the first thing she did—carefully, with her pistol firmly in her grip—was try her door, which inched open freely at her tentative push.

Cleon was in the hallway, retrieving Aunt Alva's sparse breakfast tray. "Morning, Miss Girl." He was his usual shuffling self. "Yer down late." He took a second look at her. "You all to rights?"

"Yes, I thank you, Cleon." She hid the gun behind her back and smoothed her tangled braid to repair something of her appearance. "But I had a most uncomfortable night. What went on here?"

"Went on?" The old man was the very picture of wide-eyed bewilderment.

"You didn't hear all the commotion?"

"Didn't hear nothing," he swore. "Though the house, she makes odd moans and groans in the night, cursin' us in the darkness, you know."

"So I've heard." Marigold expressed her skepticism through sarcasm but did not waste any more time debating Cleon, who seemed to have the intellectual capacity of a pet goldfish—all gulping vacancy. He must be as deaf as a goldfish as well to have heard nothing.

"Marigold?" Daisy came down the hallway in a rush. "Why are you not dressed? You promised to help me with the valises. Aren't you coming to see me off?"

"Yes, of course. I'll only be a minute."

Marigold took, in fact, about five minutes to dress herself suitably in a well-tailored ensemble of chocolaty linen that made her feel jaunty and smart and not as if she had spent the night fighting her worst imaginings. And the jacket had a sufficiently deep pocket within which to stow her revolver without ruining the line of the suit. There was no excuse for looking less than one's best, even while one was armed.

She retrieved her bicycle from the barn, which already had Daisy's valises strapped to the back. "Well, you've been busy. Could you not get back to sleep either?"

Daisy shot her a quick look as she strode toward the path. "Well, I'm less all-overish now that the moment is finally here. I want to get away before the air turns—it's a weather breeder today, for sure."

It was, in fact, a clear, cloudless day with no wind—but in New England perfect conditions were mistrusted as the harbinger of a particularly mean storm. Daisy was understandably on edge.

"Did all that commotion last night keep you up too?"

"What commotion? I didn't hear nothing," Daisy vowed.

"Anything," Marigold corrected automatically. "Are you sure?"

"Why are you eyeing me all slantandicular?" Daisy reverted to her vernacular, something Marigold felt she did when she was uncomfortable. "What do you think you heard?"

There was something … probing about her question. Or was there? "I heard a commotion," was all Marigold could say. "Some sort of disturbance."

"Did you go see what it was?" Daisy asked.

"No," Marigold admitted.

"Then it can't have been particular interesting if you didn't."

"Particularly," Marigold corrected again. "I couldn't investigate the sound—my door was locked."

"Oh, sure," Daisy said nonsensically. "Mine, too, on the regular. Come on, I'm allafire with the need to get away." She darted ahead, past the path to North Cove. "I can't wait to get away for good."

"Where are you going?"

"I've got a little pinnace hidden up near the rocks—that ledge across from Taddy's place? Sev hid his sailing canoe on the southwest side, but Tad and I decided to put mine nearer the ledge so's I have some independence and be able to come see him."

Such a lot of hidden watercraft scattered about the island. Every day, it seemed, new secrets were revealed—the exception being the one secret that had brought Marigold to Great Misery in the first place.

"Daisy, do you think there's room for my bicycle in your pinnace?" Marigold felt the need to escape as keenly as her cousin, albeit for different reasons. Too many questions—as well as unspoken threats—remained unasked and unanswered. She wanted the calming exertion of a bicycle ride to get fresh air into her lungs and calm her racing thoughts. She might ride to the Ryersons' estate to talk with Isabella—although Isabella was likely to be deeply engrossed in planning Daisy's wedding ensemble, a topic that could interest Marigold only as an aesthetic exercise. Instead, she might visit the library, where she might research the potential messages of Sophronia's wildflowers. Or perhaps she might visit Cab instead, at Bessie's, to try to make sense of the strange events of the night.

"Surely." Daisy was all agreement. "We'll have to snug up, but we can make room for your machine."

"Thank you."

The lovely sweep of the short sail was exactly what Marigold wanted—the physical sensation of wind and wave helped quiet and focus her thoughts. With her Hatchet relatives finally sorted out, she could turn to the still-disturbing problem of what had really happened to Minnie. And those as-yet-unnamed other girls .

The bracing bicycle ride that followed bolstered her nerve. It seemed as if it were no time before Marigold was coasting comfortably through the town, plying her bell with a mixture of purpose and delight—she was going to ask the questions that needed answering—especially when she pedaled up to the library to see another women's bicycle leaning neatly against the lamppost in front of the library.

"Dare I hope that new machine is yours?" she asked Amelia Morgan, who came to the door to greet her.

"Isn't it marvelous?" The quiet librarian was bouncing up and down on her toes with suppressed excitement. "First the dance, and now this!" Amelia could hardly contain all her delight. "I borrowed tools and I read the assembly instructions twice, but I would appreciate it greatly if you could take a look before I take it for any ride longer than a few blocks."

"It would be my pleasure." Marigold stripped off her gloves to test the tautness of the various nuts, especially the top head lug and the steering lock. "May I ask how long have you lived in Pride's Crossing? I only ask because I recall the other girls talking about their families and going to school here, while you live with a landlady."

"Almost two years now. I came east directly after finishing my degree at Mount Holyoke, near where I come from. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, nothing of import." Marigold waved her hand to signify that she was just trying to sort through her thoughts. "Did you come because you were offered a job at the library, or did you find the job after you came?"

"Oh, I was hired right out of college by Mr. Coolidge, our head librarian, who was hired by Mr. George Endicott, who had read of Mr. Andrew Carnegie's library patronage in Pennsylvania and fancied that Pride's Crossing needed a library to become a place of import, where summer folks from Boston would entertain themselves and the locals could educate themselves and their families. With the library and the theater, Pride's Crossing is becoming quite the sought-after destination."

Hardly , Marigold thought, but then she chided herself for being so uncharitable—good logic had no room for snobbery. What would Cab say if he were to hear her speaking so?

Marigold focused her logical mind away from Cab. "Would you have come, do you think, if you had visited in advance and known what Pride's Crossing was really like?"

"Of course," Amelia answered immediately. "Professional librarian positions are not so thick on the ground that I could afford to pass the offer up, even when it meant moving away from my family."

"I understand the professional implications, but what about all the things we talked about at the Ladies' Cycling Club—all the dangers to young, unmarried women? Like Minnie?"

Amelia took a long moment before she spoke carefully. "I suppose it's just as you said—human nature is much the same no matter where you are. You know, there was a river at home in South Hadley too—the Connecticut River—where young women every so often drowned. I just keep sure to stay well away from the water."

The water being a metaphor for any number of things dangerous to young women. "Well, your machine appears to be in very fine shape. Perhaps we can take a short ride together after the library closes for the evening?"

"That would be wonderful. Are you staying that long today?"

"Yes. I have a number of things I should like to research, starting with information on the folktale language of flowers."

Amelia nodded. "I believe we have at least one title on the topic."

Marigold followed her inside, and in no time at all, she was ensconced in the reading room, making a quick sketch of the delicate frond that had lately graced her jam jar.

"That looks like a maidenhair fern," Amelia commented as she brought Marigold two well-illustrated titles. "They grow wild in the low woodlands around town."

"That must be it." Marigold flipped open the first book, scanning the f 's. "Here! And they mean … secret bond of love? And if you are fascinated by a woman, it is a good gift to present her with?"

"Did someone give you a fern? Mr. Cox?"

Marigold was determined to keep all thoughts—and questions—about Cab under strict regulation. "No, my cousin Sophronia, who is conversant in the language of flowers, left the frond in a little vase in my room, along with a sprig of rosemary."

"Now, rosemary is for remembrance—even I know that. But …" Amelia sat next to Marigold to scan through the entry. "This reference says in folklore, the maidenhair fern is seen as a symbol of protection."

"So, the protection of a secret bond of love? Along with remembrance?" Was Marigold the one who was supposed to remember? Or was the message not about Marigold, as Sophronia had warned, but about someone else's secret love?

The baffling question of Seviah's parentage loomed large.

"What about bird's-foot trefoil?" That was the plant that Sophronia had mentioned when goading Ellery Hatchet the day he had tried to ruin the garden. Which reminded her of the tall pink flower Cleon had planted for her—but which she couldn't remember seeing since then. How curious.

Amelia had scanned through the index to find the entry. " Lotus corniculatus is the taxonomic name of bird's foot trefoil. And the symbolic meanings is—" She looked up, startled. "Retribution. And revenge."

"Revenge?" Marigold pulled the book over to look at the illustration of the innocuously pretty little yellow flowers and tried to remember Sophronia's exact words. Had she advised Marigold to enact revenge, or to prevent Ellery from doing so?

"Why would someone want revenge on you?" Amelia was even more dumbfounded than Marigold, not having been witness to the antagonism between the inhabitants of Hatchet Farm.

But whatever revenge was to be exacted was a moot point now that Ellery was gone. And Marigold planned to be long gone too, back to Boston, before the old rattletrap ever made his way back to Great Misery. If only she could get through Sophronia's bizarre reluctance to tell her about the past—

"I hope you don't mind my asking," Amelia asked tentatively. "But I heard—perhaps it's just a rumor, but I did wonder—that the senior Mr. Hatchet has left Great Misery Island and taken up with an itinerant preacher."

News certainly traveled fast—too fast for Pride's Crossing to qualify as a place where "folks kept to themselves."

"It is true that my cousin's husband has joined a religious tent revival circuit," Marigold said, mostly to gauge Amelia's reaction—which was very clear relief. "Would Ellery Hatchet have made it upon your list of men to avoid?"

"Well, I've never met him," Amelia hedged, because she was trying to be polite. "But he does have a reputation as quite a strange and unforgiving man, always carrying on about hellfire and damnation."

"Yes. Quite so." But it seemed unlikely that Ellery's fiery preaching had anything to do with the "great and godless wrong" done to Marigold's mother, though it might have many things to do with other, present-day antagonisms.

"If I may, I should like to learn more about the history of Great Misery Island. And other islands like it along the coast," Marigold added to deflect her particular interest in why George Endicott might feel so proprietary about the island.

"I'll bring a few local histories, shall I?" Amelia suggested.

Marigold spent the rest of the afternoon searching and sorting through the local annals, all of which repeatedly featured the Endicotts as well as their Peabody and Crowninshield relations, looking for some reference to the ownership of Great Misery Island. But apart from a tale about the name of the island—a shipbuilding Peabody ancestor, who had gone out to the island to cut timber, was shipwrecked by a winter storm for three days of the greatest misery—there was no hint of why George Endicott should spend so many years and what had to be a small fortune in legal fees for a mostly barren piece of rock set an inconvenient distance out to sea. A rock that seemed to impose both misery and poverty upon its inhabitants in equal measure.

What was it about Great Misery that drew such contention?

"You 'bout ready to be done?"

It was Wilbert, standing at the end of the reading room table, wringing his hat between his hands. "I come to fetch you back," he said. "Saw you'd gone over with Daisy this morning and thought you'd need to get home."

"How thoughtful, Wilbert," was all she could think to say, even as some strange, unspecified instinct tried to find a reason to stay.

Wilbert nodded and shuffled a step or two backward. "I'll wait outside." And before she could introduce him to Amelia, he did just that.

And there was nothing else for Marigold to logically do but make her goodbyes. "Good afternoon, Amelia. I'll see you next time." And hope against the strange uneasiness that settled upon her, like a raw mist off the Atlantic, that there would be a next time.