A Curse Dark as Gold

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  “No, I have not. Come back on Wednesday.”

  She shrugged. “Mum wanted me to tell you that she’ll be askin’ more for each piece.”

  “What?”

  “Your piece rate’s too low. Her sister in Burlingham makes three pound a week, and you best keep pace or you’ll lose your best weavers.”

  I leaned back slowly into my chair, torn between disbelief and anger. The piece rate for weavers was set by established tradition and overseen by the Wool Guild, and Peg Eagan had no call to try and raise it for herself. Three pounds! That raised the price of the cloth she wove to nearly its market value. Even if I could afford such a rate, I’d be a fool to pay it. I’d never get it back—not on plains and packing cloths.

  Tansy watched me smugly, letting her words sink in. It was a hard matter—Paddy had taken a goodly share of their family income, and if I cut off mother and daughter as well…It was no small thing to send a family into ruin. But if Mrs. Eagan wouldn’t see reason, what could I do?

  “Well, Miss Eagan, I’ll be sure to let your mother know if something comes up for that rate.”

  Tansy’s smile faded as she took my meaning. She tucked Paddy’s wages into her bodice and glared. “You’ll be sorry. Just you wait. Me mum’ll have words to say about this!”

  “Give my regards to your brother,” I said. “There will always be a place for him at Stirwaters.”

  Tansy slammed the door so hard a bit of plaster fell off the lintel.

  For the next several days, Stirwaters attentions were divided among carding and spinning and the fixing of broken steps…and gossip about my uncle. It was just as well; I’d grown heartily sick of hearing about falling signs and our visit from Biddy Tom. Who was this strange gentleman, folk wanted to know. Was he to be the new master? Despite my own misgivings, I did my best to assure them that he wasn’t. There had been no further mention of selling the mill, but each morning at breakfast our uncle made polite inquiry about the state of our affairs, and every night at dinner, gentle commentary on the state of our health and dress. True to his word, he even engaged a serving maid for the Millhouse: Rachel Baker, who donned a white cap and apron and took to calling Rosie and me “Miss,” as if she hadn’t known us all her life.

  I was determined to look on this development as a sign that Uncle Wheeler intended life to continue in this vein. He knew how Mam and Father had loved it here; surely he could see that staying was the best thing for Rosie and me, as well. Indeed, I often saw him standing in the millyard, gazing at the mill buildings and the river as if drinking in the view, and I believed that he felt Stirwaters working its way into his bones, as well.

  Reassured, I turned my full attentions to Stirwaters. If Rachel and Uncle Wheeler could polish up the Millhouse, surely I could do the same for the mill. The repairs I had asked for continued apace; we had managed to unstick the yardside doors and rebuild the back steps, and if the windows were still broken, at least now they all had solid casements. We had not yet replaced the fallen sign, however, and repeated efforts to rehang it ended in failure.

  “I can’t explain it, Mistress,” Harte said, scratching his head with his hammer. “There’s no earthly reason the bolts won’t take, but every time I get up there, the stone just crumbles away.”

  “It’s dry rot,” I said. “The place is riddled with it.”

  Harte gave me a long, even look, but finally nodded. “I’ll get some paint, then, Mistress.”

  At the end of the week, I found Mr. Mordant in the yard, mixing up a big batch of whitewash under a fine sky.

  “Bad day for dyeing,” he said when I stopped by, indicating the weather with a nod of his head.

  “How’s that, then?” I asked. “Is it too cold?”

  Mr. Mordant broke into wild, braying laughter. “Nay, missie! Friday!”

  I closed my eyes. Friday. Of course. Still, since he had the whitewash, there was one particular project I was eager to take on myself. I hauled bucket and brushes up to the spinning room, which was badly in need of attention. Most of the walls were exterior and stone, but a few were plaster, and I doubted they’d had fresh paint in generations—certainly not the back wall, where someone, long ago, had put a hex sign. The wall was worn and sun-faded, the image dim with age. Its original colors and swirling designs were hard to make out, especially where the plaster had chipped away. It dated back farther than anyone at Stirwaters could remember, and I doubted anyone took much notice of the thing, or could remember why it had been painted there in the first place.

  Picturing the wall fresh and gleaming white, I applied brush to plaster with relish. As I painted, I imagined replacing the superstitious symbol with a painting of Stirwaters’s coat of arms, the gold millwheel on a green shield, crowned by a ram. Harte could do a splendid job emblazoning our arms there. I stepped back to appraise my work—and promptly kicked over the pail of whitewash.

  Cursing, I scrambled to catch the spill, mopping up my sodden boot and utterly ruining my skirt in the process. I ran for rags and water, leaving white footprints everywhere, and was on my knees scrubbing frantically when I heard a sound like crows behind me.

  Mr. Mordant was bent over the righted pail, laughing coarsely. “Told you, missie. What did I say, then?”

  “Friday,” I snapped. “Fine, Friday. Here, help me get this up.”

  When we had the floor as clean as possible, only faint white streaks seeped into the grain of the floorboards to betray my clumsiness, Mr. Mordant helped me gather up the rags and bucket. As he eased himself off the floor, supplies in hand, he stopped cold, staring at the wall.

  “Ah, lassie,” he said quietly. “Ill done, I think. ‘Twere ill done, indeed.”

  I gripped my bundle tighter. “What are you talking about?”

  Mr. Mordant gave a long sigh. “That mark’s been up there all these years, and ain’t nobody painted over it before. Never wonder why? Did you not think, then, that whatever that thing were warding against, it’s still out there?”

  I could not get the dire look in Mr. Mordant’s eyes out of my mind. I kept telling myself he was nothing but a queer old man having a jest, but it was no good. The workmen’s insistence that Stirwaters did not want to be repaired did little to ease my mind. New blocks set into place worked loose by the following morning, a crack patched here sprang up again a few inches away. And every time I passed the newly white wall, I thought I saw the old colors of the hex sign—a shadowy, faint impression, but certainly more than imagination. It’s the whitewash, I told myself. It always took several coats.

  But it didn’t. No sooner than a second—and then a third and fourth—coat of paint had gone up over the hex sign, the colors seeped through again.

  Rosie watched me, altogether too silent for my taste.

  “What?” I finally said at the end of the fourth coat, sweaty and exasperated.

  “I just think maybe you ought to leave it alone,” she said. “You heard what Mr. Mordant said.”

  “That’s ridiculous. There’s no—” I stopped, hearing Harte’s voice echo in my mind.

  Rosie must have heard it, too. “No earthly reason you can’t paint that wall?”

  I was too hot to feel the chill. I mopped my forehead with my paint-speckled apron.

  “Fine!” I said at last, addressing the wall directly. “I give up! You win. I’ll even send Harte up to repaint the fool thing.”

  Bold against the fresh white background, the newly painted hex sign looked like a great watchful eye gazing over the mill.

  Finally, we reached a state where we could call the repairs more or less complete. The mill was cleaner, certainly, enjoying a fresher, brighter aspect and fewer cracks and crumbles. Patches were put on thin spots in the floor, and if their corners popped up occasionally, we just tapped them down firm again. Harte never did manage to rehang the sign, but stirwaters woollen mill was now spelled out in glorious barn red on grey, lichen-free limestone.

  “Shall I stop now, then?” Harte called down
from the ladder. “Or do you want the rest?”

  Rosie and I watched from below. “What do you think?” Rosie asked, her hand on the black collie’s head. “It looks a bit bare, just that—but the rest of it’s not really true, then, is it?”

  “‘Miller and Sons, Shearing,’ just as it’s always been,” I said. “We did not go to all this work not to see the name Miller on this mill.”

  Chapter Four

  Somehow life slipped into its usual spring rhythm. We spun and carded and dyed our new wool, and sent it out into the village to be woven, and we brought it back again, ready to be finished and bound up for sale. And then we did it all again. We were spared falling signs and overturned dyevats for a few weeks, and if anyone whispered of curses or spirits, they did not do so in my hearing. Rosie and I, too, became accustomed to Uncle Wheeler’s presence in our home. Meals were more lavish, certainly; if we weren’t careful, we should outgrow all our clothes. And even if we were made all too aware of our rustic manners and coarse country ways, surely it was worth it, to have a full larder to come home to every day.

  One bright day in May, despite having awakened to one of Rachel’s luxurious breakfasts, I had descended into a perfectly foul mood by afternoon. Mr. Weaver was training me to take over for Paddy Eagan at the spinning jack, and I’d spent hours winding and rewinding the spindles for the long machine—all two hundred sixty of them—until I had the knack of the quick light twist that sent the thread reeling up the bobbins. And the headache and sore wrists to prove it. Running the jack was skilled labor that took years to master, and there was no way I was going to pick it up, not in one springtime of lessons squeezed between my other labors.

  “Now, lass—are you with me? You’ve got to go slower on the backward pass, or you’ll break the—aye, as I was saying. Here, now, stop the whole thing.” Without so much as a sigh, steady old Tory shifted the gear into neutral and sent me down inside the assembly to fetch the ends of the broken threads.

  “Ah, Mistress,” Tory said when I emerged, “why don’t ye take a break? You’ve done better than anyone could expect.”

  And you’ll be glad to be rid of me, no doubt, I thought. “Very well,” I said, “but I’ll be back.”

  “Ah know ye will,” Tory said softly, turning back to his spindles. “You wouldn’t be a Miller if you weren’t.”

  I scowled my way down the narrow steps and into the airless finishing room, where I was met by Lonnie Clayborn, who came swinging round the corner, breathless.

  “Mistress—there’s a gen’leman skulking about like, out in the yard.” He gestured clumsily with a hand still thickly swaddled in a filthy bandage.

  “Do you mean my uncle?”

  Lonnie shook his head. “Nay—some city feller. Like them what was at Market Days.”

  The Pinchfields man? I stormed out of the mill and into the yard, where a young gentleman in a cassimere suit had hypnotized Pilot into a belly-up puddle of lolling tongue, drooping feet, and swishing feathered tail.

  “I thought I had made myself perfectly clear,” I announced to his black felt hat. “We are not some flystruck carcass for the picking!”

  The man slowly raised himself up from the shale drive and brushed at the dust on his trousers. “I—I’m a little confused,” he said. “I’m looking for Stirwaters, and I seem to have found that, but—”

  “Aye, and we’re still not for sale!”

  He doffed his hat, shoved a hand through his long sandy hair, and replaced the hat once more. “No, still confused,” he said cheerfully. “I was hoping to speak to whoever had taken charge of the estate. I’ve come from Uplands Mercantile, in Harrowgate.”

  I felt my face turn absolutely scarlet. “Oh, Lord—you’re Mr. Woodstone! I have your letter—” I scrabbled through my apron pockets and found it. It had come some days before, and I’d been meaning to answer it, but work kept getting in the way…some nonsense about a bank, and—“Here, I’m so sorry. I thought you were—well, never mind. I’m Miss Miller,” I added, somewhat belatedly.

  “You? But I was expecting children—you know, little girls in pinafores and pudding caps?” He laughed. “Here, let’s start over, shall we? Randall Woodstone, at your service. Miss Miller, if you could tell me where I might find whoever’s responsible for the mill’s affairs now.”

  I peered up at him through the visor of my hand. He was a sizeable fellow—not that tall—but he wore his clothes well, particularly that black jacket. I judged him to be a few years older than myself. “You seem to have found her.”

  The banker looked taken aback. I was getting used to that expression. “But how old are you? That is—surely you have some sort of guardian, or an agent, at least?”

  I gave the little smile I’d been practicing for such occasions. I hoped it made me look serene and competent. Rosie said it made me look half ill. “No, indeed, sir. Now if we’ve quite established that, shall we get on with whatever business has brought you to my mill?”

  “Right. Miss Miller, I’m afraid it’s about your loan. With the unfortunate passing of Mr. Miller—your father—and the mill’s subsequent lack of stable leadership…I’m afraid that the bank has decided to call in Stirwaters’s mortgage.”

  “Our what?” I squeaked. That was too large a matter for even Father to forget to mention. The millwheel sounded, suddenly, very loud. “Mr. Woodstone, there must be some mistake. I am not aware of any such debt on the mill. Please, may I see the papers?”

  Mr. Woodstone handed them over. I glanced through the sheets of neatly lettered vellum, but could not seem to make sense of them. The only thing that was clear—altogether too clear—was the name James Miller, in great implacable script right at the top of the first page. And on the last page, the scrawling illegible streak of ink that was my father’s signature.

  “Oh, mercy.”

  “Miss Miller—here, why don’t you sit down?” Mr. Woodstone steered me over to the millrace and plopped me down gently on the stone wall. “I understand this must be quite a shock—”

  “But I don’t understand. When did he take this out? It says—but this was only a year ago. Where did the money go?” A sudden sickening thought struck me. “How much did he borrow?” I scrabbled through the pages.

  A great warm hand reached in and gently pried my fingers from the mortgage papers. “Two thousand pounds,” Mr. Woodstone said quietly. “Around nineteen hundred now. Not that I’m sure that’s much comfort.”

  I choked out a blunt laugh. “Not a lot, no. What does that mean, call it in?”

  Mr. Woodstone’s expression was very serious. He had a kind face, even beneath all this bad news. “Miss Miller, I was sent here to collect the full amount.”

  “Two thousand pounds?” He may well have asked for two million—or two hundred. I didn’t have it. Mr. Woodstone nodded. “Or?”

  “Or we foreclose. I’m dreadfully sorry—”

  I sat there on the mossy stone of the millrace, dimly aware that somewhere Mr. Woodstone was still speaking. I fanned the mortgage papers and beat them before my face. I had never fainted, but this would be the moment for it. It was here, then: the End I had felt looming at the funeral—here in the form of a kind-faced young banker from Harrowgate. The water trickled by below us, a faint whisper and splash in the afternoon sun; but I heard it as the blood of Stirwaters draining away.

  “But you can’t,” I said suddenly, before I was aware that I was planning to say anything. “Don’t you understand—Stirwaters is the heart of this village. Twenty-two people work at this mill, and we supply income to dozens of farmers in the Valley and beyond. How can you foreclose?”

  Mr. Woodstone regarded me with eyes the color of the Stowe. “Miss Miller, I know it sounds heartless—but that isn’t the bank’s concern.”

  “Then make it your concern,” I said desperately. “Please—come inside. Meet Eben Fuller, and Mr. Mordant, and Harte—and my sister. See some of the people who will be affected if you force Stirwaters to close. Does yo
ur bank find it profitable to send an entire village into ruin?”

  “Miss Miller—” I do not know what Mr. Woodstone might have said next, for at that moment the church bell rang the evening hour, and the old mill doors creaked open, spilling the millhands into the yard. I rose hastily, suddenly fearful that I might be seen with this banker and—and what? Be thought party to some illicit assignation?

  Mr. Woodstone, all etiquette, rose with me. He watched the millhands pass us by, frowning slightly.

  I saw my advantage and went for it. “Mr. Woodstone, please. Isn’t there any way to convince the bank to—to let us have more time? My father only passed away a month ago; there must be some provision for such an event. It’s the height of the wool season, and Stirwaters’s stock goes to market soon. Surely we can make some kind of arrangement.”

  As we stood there by the water, my Stirwaters family strayed past: plump red-faced Janet Lamb, cheerfully berating her son Ian; old Tory Weaver, who had evidently given up waiting for me, shuffling his stooped way across the shale yard; Jack Townley—always met at the gates by pretty Mrs. Townley and a handful of small, perpetually dusty boys. Ruth saw me, and gave a wave.

  “Very well, Miss Miller,” he finally said. “I could at least spare the time to let you make your case. I was instructed to take an inventory of your assets; but I see that we’re losing the daylight, and perhaps tomorrow would be a better time to have a look at the mill?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Woodstone,” I said, and did not quite let out all my breath until that sleek cassimere coat was halfway to Drover’s inn.

  Back inside Stirwaters, I found Rosie midway up a ladder, fitting a gear with Harte. I caught her eye and beckoned angrily. She slid down and met me in the office. “What happened to you? Mr. Weaver said you disappeared an hour ago—”

  “Did you know Father took out a mortgage on the mill?”