The Caged Graves

by Dianne K. Salerni

  She heard the Susquehanna River gurgling in the distance. Just ahead she could see still water covered with so much green scum that it looked as if someone had thrown a rug over it. A foul odor wafted off the surface, and Verity turned to walk beside the swamp without approaching any closer.

  There were more promising vines tangled amid the trees here, thick and ropy and pliable. Verity removed a knife from her basket and sawed through a few of them, finding them green and moist inside. It took some effort to sever them, and then she had to unwind each from its stranglehold on other plants and coil it into her basket. By the time the basket was filled, she was dripping with perspiration.

  Wiping her face with her sleeve, Verity wondered how far it was to the river. She would’ve liked a drink of water before trudging back uphill. But as near as she could tell, the bog lay between her and the river, and trying to walk around it would take her even farther from home. Reluctantly, she decided to wait until she reached the church to quench her thirst; there was a pump adjacent to the cemetery. Picking up the heavy basket, she turned back the way she’d come.

  It seemed there were more brambles than ever, and her wet skirt dragged against her legs. Verity panted, sweat rolling down her face as she mounted the hill. The air was heavy and still, and the stench of the bog rose in invisible waves around her, mixed with a sweeter, familiar scent. Eventually she realized it was coming from the shrubs with the pink and white flowers—the same flowers that had blown in through her window the night before.

  Verity broke off a branch of flowers and raised it to her face. The scent reminded her of honeysuckle, and indeed, some of the flowers contained a full drop of nectar. She licked her lips.

  Suddenly, from behind her came the crash of breaking underbrush. Verity whirled, but the figure rushing out from behind the trees crossed the distance between them before she could react. The man—dressed in ragged clothes, with dark hair and dark skin—was upon her in an instant, gripping her arm and yanking her out of the shrubbery. Letting the branch fall, Verity stared up in horror at his savage face—the high cheekbones, the scar that deformed one of his eyes, his angry expression. He opened his mouth, but she didn’t wait to hear what vile things he might say. She screamed mightily and walloped his head with the basket.

  He released her, recoiling. She shoved the whole basket of vines into his face and took off running. Down the incline. Away from him. Back toward the bog.

  Running downhill felt almost like falling, and only terror kept her on her feet. She glanced back once, catching a glimpse of movement behind her, and after that she concentrated on dodging low branches and avoiding boulders. She knew she was headed away from safety, but she couldn’t put any distance between her and the man—the Indian—if she tried to run up the steep hill. Losing herself in the shrubbery was the best she could hope for.

  A vine just like the ones she’d been collecting proved to be her undoing. Her foot caught on a ropy tendril that snaked across the ground between two trees. The loop of vine snagged her ankle, and her leg was wrenched out from under her as the rest of her body plummeted forward. She hit the ground and kept sliding, unable to stop herself from tumbling, the slope dropping away from her.

  Verity landed in a heap at the bottom of a small cleft, where a trickling stream had worn away the earth between two massive trees. Feeling the ache of several bruises and a greater, sharper pain in her ankle, she rolled over to look upward, where she now heard loud tramping and the breaking of twigs underfoot. She scuttled backward on her bottom, but there was nowhere for her to go. As the shrubbery parted above her, she did the only thing left for her to do: she screamed bloody murder.

  The young man who looked down at her from the top of the cleft threw both his hands out in a gesture of innocent intent. “Whoa! Easy there!” Then he blinked and stared at her in disbelief. “Miss Boone?”

  Verity could hardly believe her eyes. “Dr. Jones?” she said incredulously. Then, with relief, she repeated “Dr. Jones!” and burst into tears.

  Hadley Jones jumped down into the cleft. He was dressed in work clothes, an old torn hunting jacket, and a wide-brimmed felt hat, but he was not the person who’d assaulted her. She could still picture the dark, angry features of the Indian who’d loomed over her so menacingly.

  “What happened to you?” Jones asked. “Did you fall?”

  “I was running!” she gasped. “There was a man . . . chasing me . . .”

  “Chasing you?” He looked up in alarm, scanning the area around them.

  “An Indian!” she exclaimed. “He leaped out of the woods and grabbed me! I hit him with my basket and ran—and then I tripped and fell.” Jones helped her up, and she winced when pain shot through her ankle.

  Jones craned his neck to look out of the cleft. “Chased you?” he asked again. She nodded.

  He tightened his arm around her waist, and she threw her own arm over his shoulder for support, easing her injured foot off the ground. “Let’s get you out of here,” he said, surveying her with worried eyes. “What in the world are you doing in the Shades of Death?”

  Thirteen

  “THIS IS the Shades of Death?” Verity gasped.

  “It’s just a name,” Jones said in a soothing voice. “Nothing to be afraid of. I don’t know why they call it that instead of, say, the Sunny Swamp of Happiness.”

  She laughed without much humor, grabbing hold of exposed tree roots as Jones maneuvered her into position to be lifted out of the hole. This was a dark, miserable, foul-smelling place, and she hoped never to venture here again—but he was right. It was just a swamp. The person who’d accosted her had been a living man, not some specter lingering here from the Revolutionary War. “I was collecting vines for a wreath,” she said. “And now I’ve lost my basket.”

  He lifted her out of the cleft, clambered up himself, and helped her limp to a seat on a boulder. “Shall I go look for it?”

  “No! Please don’t leave me alone!”

  He smiled, kneeling down beside her. “I won’t leave you,” he promised. “Now, with your permission, I’ll examine your foot.”

  Verity nodded, feeling her heart race as he carefully lifted her sodden skirt and took her foot in his hands. Adeptly, he unlaced her shoe and slipped it off. To distract herself while his gentle fingers probed at her ankle, she asked, “What are you doing out here?”

  He shrugged off a canvas haversack he’d been wearing over his shoulder, then removed his hat and laid it on top. “I was gathering some plants,” he murmured, bending over her foot again. “Roots and herbs. That apothecary at Dyers doesn’t always have a fresh supply, and sometimes I just like to know where my remedies are coming from. Does this hurt?” He rotated her foot carefully, supporting her leg with one hand under the calf.

  “Yes, it does,” she said between gritted teeth.

  “It’s not broken, though. Just a sprain.”

  “How can you tell?”

  He looked up, his blue eyes twinkling. “If it were broken, you wouldn’t be telling me it hurt in complete sentences, or even in words.” He slipped her shoe on again but left it unlaced, pulling out the tongue so it fitted as loosely as possible. “Now,” he said, putting his hat back on his head and slinging the haversack over his shoulder, “I’m going to carry you out of here.”

  “Oh!” She blinked, startled, and glanced up at the steep wooded slope.

  “You can’t walk on it, and certainly not up that hill.”

  He was right, of course. Verity stared at him, embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”

  The young man grinned. “I don’t mind.”

  She could see quite plainly that he didn’t. He bent over her, and, uncertainly, she put her arms around his neck. He slipped one hand under her knees and the other around her back and hefted her into his arms.

  Hadley Jones was not as tall or as broad-shouldered as Nate, but she could feel the strength of his arms as he tested her weight and shifted her so that she was cradled against his chest. Th
en he started up the hill without another word.

  Verity had never been so close to a man in her life. Jones was overwarm and sweaty, but so was she, and somehow it wasn’t unpleasant. She could feel his heart beating and hear his increasingly labored breaths as he climbed the hill. Her head was so close to his that she kept bumping his hat. The third time she almost knocked it off, he said, “Just take it and shove it into my haversack.”

  She removed his hat, leaned over his shoulder, and reached down until she could grab the strap of the bag and pull it closer. As she fumbled the bag open and folded the hat inside, her upper body was entirely pressed against his. By the time she let go of the sack, her heart was beating as fast as his—for no good reason at all.

  When they finally reached the road, he set her down on a fallen log and bent over, his hands on his knees. “Let me catch my breath,” he gasped. She nodded guiltily. He grinned and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “It’s not you, of course. It was the climb. You weigh less than a feather.”

  Verity smiled wryly. Catching a whiff of sweet fragrance, she looked up and saw another of those flowering shrubs above her, the petals nearly dripping in nectar. She plucked a bunch of flowers and brought it down to her lips.

  “Miss Boone! Don’t!” Hadley Jones snatched the flowers out of her hand. “That’s mountain laurel!”

  She was taken aback. “It smelled like honeysuckle.”

  “Well, it’s not. It’s poisonous.” A look of alarm passed over his face. “Did you eat any of this nectar earlier?”

  She shook her head. “No, I didn’t. I—” She gasped in understanding and stared up at the doctor. “I was about to—right before that man jumped out of the woods and grabbed my arm.”

  “Right before—” Jones made a sound of exasperation and looked out at the swampland below them. “He grabbed your arm and stopped you from eating it.”

  “Yes,” she said in a small voice.

  “And you—”

  “Hit him on the head with my basket and ran away,” she finished glumly.

  Her companion gave a short bark of laughter. “This isn’t the eighteenth century, Miss Boone, and the Indians here don’t make war on the white settlers anymore. You just met one of the Pooles,” he said. “They hunt and fish in these woods. You probably scared him half to death.”

  “It was mutual.” Verity cringed with embarrassment. Yes, the man had startled her, but she’d run screaming from the sight of him like a half-witted female in one of those dime novels Polly Gaines liked so much. Verity had taken offense when her uncle belittled the Pooles, but she’d behaved no better today. She hung her head in shame.

  Hadley Jones looked at the flowers in his hand and then shook them in her face. “You can’t eat things when you don’t know what they are. Didn’t anybody teach you that?” She glared at him, but she knew he was right. “It would have made you very sick at best,” he went on, flinging the flowers to the ground. “At worst—well, that doesn’t bear thinking about.”

  Suddenly he sat down beside her and took her hand.

  And although she knew it was imprudent, she let him. Her hands were trembling with reaction, and his grip was strong and comforting.

  After a long moment of silence, Jones uncurled his fingers and looked down at her ring, as Nate had. Then he looked up at her, and she winced at the beseeching expression in his eyes.

  “You’re really going through with this . . . business arrangement?” he asked.

  “It’s not business,” she whispered.

  “I think it is. It’s a land deal.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. “That’s an unkind thing to say.”

  He frowned. “Seeing this ring on your finger makes me feel unkind, Verity.”

  “Don’t,” she murmured. How had they come to the point of first names? She barely knew him. Why was she sitting here, letting him hold her hand?

  She couldn’t take her eyes from his face—the light spattering of freckles across his nose, his fair blue eyes. “I don’t want you to do it,” he said.

  “It’s none of your business.” She pulled her hand free.

  “All right. As your doctor, I don’t think you should do it.”

  “You’re not my doctor.”

  “Huh,” he grunted. “If you’re going to live in Catawissa, then I will be your doctor. Trust me, you don’t want Dr. Robbins.” He raised his hands in the air and made them tremble.

  “Palsy?” asked Verity.

  “That’s right,” he agreed. “The kind you get from drinking whisky before noon.” He stood up. “Let’s get you home.”

  When he reached for her, she leaned away, shaking her head. “I don’t think you should carry me anymore.”

  “I won’t say anything else personal. I promise.”

  Verity kept her hands on the log and her face turned away. “The minister’s house is just a little way up the road. Can’t you please go and bring help back?”

  “I’d have to leave you alone.”

  “You said it yourself—my ‘Indian attacker’ was just some fisherman trying to save an empty-headed city girl from poisoning herself.” She refused to meet his eyes, staring steadfastly at the road. “I’m perfectly safe. Humiliated, but safe.”

  He stood there a moment, but she would not look up at him. Finally he opened his haversack, removed his hat, slapped it against his knee to reshape it, then put it on his head and started up the road.

  Reverend White immediately brought his horse and carriage to her aid. Within half an hour she was sitting in the Whites’ parlor with her foot propped up and a glass of iced tea in her hand, glaring at Hadley Jones, who’d just asked her to remove her stocking.

  “Your ankle is swelling,” he said, sipping his own iced tea and regarding her with professional detachment.

  “It’s all right, dear,” said Mrs. White, setting down a bowl of water chilled with chips of ice. “Our apprentice is shaping up to be an excellent physician.”

  Explaining why she didn’t want to bare her ankle for him would have been embarrassing. The men turned their backs, and she reluctantly freed her stocking from her garter and rolled it down. Mrs. White and Hadley Jones together bathed her ankle in cold water, while Verity sat back in her chair and pretended she didn’t know when it was his hands on her bare skin.

  Meanwhile, Reverend White fretted. “You can’t wander around in the Shades, Miss Boone,” he said. “That place has claimed many lives over the centuries. It’s not a safe place for a young lady to gather flowers, if that’s what you were doing.”

  “Were you lost, my dear?” asked his wife.

  “No. I was gathering plants—for grave wreaths.” Verity turned her gaze on the minister. “Reverend White, have you given any thought to my request?”

  He mumbled something inaudible and refused to meet her eyes. “What request?” Mrs. White asked, looking back and forth between them.

  Perhaps the wife would be more decisive than the husband. “I want the cemetery wall moved to enclose the graves outside,” Verity said. Mrs. White’s eyebrows shot up, and she turned to look at her husband.

  Jones wrapped a cool cloth around Verity’s ankle. “Are we talking about the two caged graves?”

  “Oh, we don’t like to call them cages,” whispered Mrs. White.

  “No one’s ever been able to tell me what purpose they serve,” Jones went on.

  The minister and his wife shared another glance.

  “Protection against grave robbers,” Verity said.

  Mrs. White gave a little gasp, and the minister murmured in alarm, shoving his hands into his pockets. Jones looked up and met Verity’s eyes for the first time since he’d spoken his mind by the side of the road. “Are you serious?” he asked. “What—were they buried with the family jewels?”

  “We’re talking about my mother and my aunt,” Verity said tersely. “And getting them a proper, dignified burial.”

  Mrs. White wrung another cloth over the bowl and av
oided meeting Verity’s eyes. “Miss Boone, you don’t want to stir up old trouble. Everyone’s accustomed to those graves where they are, and trying to make changes will only resurrect the old stories.”

  “What stories?” Verity demanded.

  “Nothing you want to hear, my dear.”

  Verity didn’t like being told what she did or did not want. “Perhaps I do.”

  “Trust me; you don’t.” The minister’s wife handed Jones the fresh cloth and leaned forward to whisper to Verity: “There was talk of witchcraft and other, nastier things. Best to let sleeping dogs lie. I’m sure you can make a very happy future with Nathaniel McClure, if you’ll just leave well enough alone.”

  Hadley Jones slapped a discarded cloth into the bowl, splashing water everywhere and letting Verity know exactly what he thought of that future. But her mind was elsewhere.

  Well enough did not describe the manner in which her mother had been buried, and she did not intend to leave it alone.

  Fourteen

  VERITY’S BASKET turned up outside the kitchen door the next morning. It had been refilled with the vines that had spilled out when she threw it, although her knife was missing.

  “Do you know anything about this, Beulah?” she asked.

  “No, miss.” The housekeeper seemed almost cheerful now that Verity’s mobility had been reduced, along with her ability to wreak havoc in the kitchen.

  “I have reason to believe it might be one of your relatives who returned it.”

  Beulah’s eyebrows rose. “You mean a Poole?” She went back to washing dishes. “I have a lot of kin,” she said. “And I don’t know what they’re all up to at any given time—any more than you do.”

  With a shrug, Verity put the mystery of the basket aside. There were more worrisome things on her mind: the caged graves, the treasure, stories of witchcraft and nastier things—although what could be nastier than witchcraft she had no idea.