The Curse at Rose Hill

by Camille Oster

  Chapter 27

  The swelling in Percy's ankle didn't go down, so the next time the doctor came, a splint was made and his ankle was heavily wrapped in bandages that he would have to keep on for months. Mostly, he stayed in his room, as he planned until a pair of crutches were delivered. There weren't that many on the island, so they had to be borrowed from another family.

  The continuous drawn look on Mrs. Thornton's face showed she was less than happy, but she fussed over Percy throughout the day. Emmeline had been engaged to read to him rather than Mrs. Thornton and she was pleased to make herself useful. Percy wasn't taking being bedbound well, hating being stuck in his room, largely unable to move. Emmeline felt sorry for him. It would be a long convalescence now that it seemed his ankle was broken.

  She also heard no more from Lord Cresswell and in a sense, she was glad, because she didn't know how to order the riotous emotions inside her. One minute, she was ecstatic, the next, she was distraught. Underlying it all was the feeling that his purported affection for her was too good to be true. The whole thing made her feel anxious, because she could never escape the worry that he was using her in some ways. How, she couldn't exactly tell. It wasn't as if he had asked her to do anything that would confirm Mrs. Thornton's accusations that he was working against them, but there could always be a plan she couldn't see.

  Twisting her fingers together, she paced up and down the hallway, waiting for dinner to be called. Until the crutches arrived, Percy needed assistance to get himself to the dining room, which he still insisted on doing even as Mrs. Thornton pleaded he take his supper in his room. Emmeline suspected that at the end of the night, Percy felt he'd had enough of his room and suffered the pain just for the company and a change of scenery.

  The peal of the small silver bell called them to the dining room. Crutches delivered, Emmeline had learned not to try to help Percy as it annoyed him. Being disabled was a great affront, it seemed. She heard him hobbling and he soon appeared out of his room, groaning with every excruciating step.

  "I understand the pain will lessen each day," Emmeline said, trying to sound encouraging.

  "Unless it sets wrong. Then the pain goes on endlessly."

  "Doctor Markman seems very competent."

  "He is, I suppose."

  Mrs. Thornton arrived, trying to smile graciously. "Where has the day gone?" she said lightly.

  Joseph served a pork roast, which was absolutely delicious. Percy was hungry and ate well. Silence reigned over the table, though, and they all ate lost in their own thoughts, no sounds other than the scratch of silver on bone china.

  "Shall we have a drink in the parlor?" Percy suggested. "Before I retreat to my prison."

  Mrs. Thornton gave him a pitying look. Then she frowned again. "I think when you are stronger, we need to talk about what we are going to do."

  "It is all in hand, mother," Percy said as if annoyed.

  "It isn't in hand," Mrs. Thornton exclaimed. "It isn't in hand, at all."

  "I will simply speak to Governor Harris when I am more mobile, request a mariner or two to come help guard us and root out the culprit."

  "Mariners cannot combat a curse," Mrs. Thornton stated. "Swords and pistols cannot smite a curse."

  "You're being ridiculous, mother. There is no curse. There is some kind of agent meaning me harm. That's all. Simple as that."

  "Lord Cresswell. Have you forgotten the way he bullied poor Andrew Dickenson? And whatever happened to him? No one has seen him since."

  "He simply left. Andrew Dickenson was certainly no prize to have around, was he?"

  "I don't understand why you defend the man. He's beyond the pale."

  Joseph cleared his throat, standing by the window, looking out into the darkness. "There is something occurring in the fields, Mr. Percy."

  "What, Joseph? You know I can't get up."

  Both Emmeline and Mrs. Thornton rose from their chairs and walked over to see. There were lights all over the fields—torches, moving slowly. More than two dozen.

  "What are they doing, Joseph?" Mrs. Thornton demanded. "Why aren't they in their beds?"

  "They are searching, I think."

  "For what?"

  "I don't know."

  "Why can't they search in the morning when we can see them?" Although Emmeline doubted that would make her more comfortable. Anything the slaves did other than work made her extremely uncomfortable. "Close the shutters, Joseph," Mrs. Thornton said tightly and returned to her seat.

  "Excuse me, miss," Joseph said and proceeded to close the shutters when she moved out of the way.

  What were they searching for? It was obviously too important to wait until morning. A lost child, maybe. Children did have a habit of getting lost. At least there were no floods threatening anyone this evening. But the sense of dread in her gut told her she secretly wondered if it was something worse. It seemed to be the trajectory here—every time something happened, it got worse.

  After an uncomfortable drink in the parlor, where Mrs. Thornton tried to carry on conversation as if nothing was going on outside, she dismissed herself and returned to her room. It was horrible to admit it, but Emmeline felt more comfortable being alone with Percy now that he wasn't so mobile.

  Percy's injured leg was elevated and he sat with a glass of port. "Perhaps we should go see what's going on." Emmeline wondered if Percy was more worried about what was going on outside then he let on when his mother was present.

  With a groan, he rose from his chair and Emmeline helped him prop himself up with the crutch. They slowly moved to the door. "At times like these, you wish you had a much smaller house," he said.

  "Hopefully, it will get a bit easier for you to move around each day."

  "My leg stopping to throb would be a great relief."

  Emmeline opened the door and they were greeted with the sight of the searchers congregating at one part of the field.

  "I guess they found what they were looking for," Percy said darkly.

  It seemed that way. They were all gathered. The feeling of dread surged in Emmeline's gut. She just knew this was bad—maybe even worse than anything that had happened so far. Pressing her fingers to her lips, Emmeline watched the scene in the distance, the torches looking like fireflies in the darkness.

  Out of the fields, Joseph emerged.

  "What has happened, Joseph?" Percy asked.

  "They found a boy. Stabbed."

  Emmeline gasped. The news shook her very thoughts. Stabbed. How could that be? And a boy, a child.

  "Who?" Percy asked.

  "The stable boy," Joseph said, disappearing into the house.

  The lights in the distance were moving again, filtering through the fields the way they had come. It was too dark to see anything.

  Bringing his pouch of tobacco out of his pocket, Percy awkwardly rolled a cigarette while balancing on his crutch.

  "They will blame me for this," Percy said after a while. "They will think it is retaliation for me falling off my horse."

  "No, how can they? You have a broken leg. You haven't left the house since you returned. You couldn't even chase down a tortoise in your condition, much less chase down a boy and stab him while hobbling on your crutches."

  Percy lit the cigarette and drew in the smoke, exhaling loudly. "These people are superstitious, just like my mother. Means and opportunity are often divorced from deeds in the minds of people around here."

  "A curse to stab someone?" Emmeline said incredulously. "This was done by a person. Someone who is trying to shift blame to you."

  "Yes," Percy agreed.

  "You don't think Lord Cresswell would do something like this, do you?"

  To Emmeline's disappointment, Percy only shrugged. "Over the years, men change. Diseases of the mind set in. I haven't seen any evidence of it with my own eyes, but Cresswell has always had contentious relationships with people on this island. Never quite comfortable in his own skin."

  "That doesn't necessarily mean a cam
paign of sabotage and murder against his neighbor." Emmeline felt like she needed to defend him, to ensure panicked assumptions weren't taken for fact. It was important that they dealt with facts. "Do you think he wants your land?"

  Percy snorted. "I don't think he even wants his own land."

  The torches moved closer and accusing faces floated by the edge of the cane field. They didn't come close, but they made their accusation known. They blamed Percy for this. One of them even hissed.

  Chapter 28

  Mrs. Thornton had been hysterical until Joseph urged enough laudanum down her throat to make her sleep. In fact, Emmeline slept badly herself. Thoughts kept racing through her head, and it was hard not to let Mrs. Thornton's unrestrained terror get to her. She couldn't help listening for a mob coming toward the house—coming to retaliate against Percy in their belief that he was responsible for the death of the boy.

  Percy had not done this. He hadn't left the house, could hardly walk. Surely, that could not be argued. According to Mrs. Thornton, the curse had struck again, aimed to harm them through a new means.

  What sleep Emmeline had managed hadn't left her all that rested. Her head ached and her mind felt dull as she rose in the morning. Sun streamed in through the windows, so paradoxical to the events of the night before and all that preyed on her mind. A young boy had been murdered; it was horrific. It felt as though the ways of the world were coming apart. This was insanity.

  In a way, she wished she could simply stay in bed and ignore it all, but it wasn't in her character to shirk what needed to be done. It wasn't as if she would have any peace anyway. It was better to know what was going on than to remain in ignorance. So she dressed and made her way into the dining room for breakfast. No one else was there and she ate alone in complete silence. Joseph served as he always did.

  "Mrs. Thornton isn't rising and Mr. Percy is eating in his room," Joseph said, almost apologetically.

  “What is happening with the funeral? For the boy," she asked after a while.

  "It is happening shortly. Old Mr. Thornton would normally see to such things," Joseph said as he gently rearranged the flowers in the vase. There was a reason why he said that, Emmeline thought. He obviously felt that someone from the family should be there. Perhaps because there was real tension now that needed to be quelled.

  "Percy did not kill this boy," Emmeline stated.

  "I know that, but grief makes tempers run high."

  "I suppose this is an opportunity for the family to say how sorry they are. Problem is that Percy is too injured to go, and Mrs. Thornton… Well, I'm not sure she would make things better."

  "Perhaps you should go," Joseph suggested. It was a little more than a suggestion, rather an urging.

  "I suppose you are right," she said, feeling uncomfortable about the whole idea. But if this had to be done, then it had to be done. Nerves spread throughout her body, but she refused to relent to them. This had to be done. The family needed to be represented and there was no one else to do it, even if she wasn't technically family. Joseph obviously felt it was necessary. Would this be dangerous to her? Anger had to be running high. It was a funeral, though, and even at the height of passion, respect was owed at funerals. "Is it safe?"

  "Yes, miss."

  That was some assurance. Saying that, Emmeline always felt Joseph thought things he didn't mention, but she didn't think he would purposefully put her in danger.

  She found herself nodding. She would go to this funeral and represent the family. It fell to her to hopefully soothe suspicions. Divisions would be the wrong word, because there had never been unity. Unity was categorically unlikely when there was ownership involved. With a sigh, Emmeline wondered at the position she found herself in.

  There was no rush with the breakfast, so she took her time, in part to kill some time until she had to go. Eating seemed a good way to distract from her nervousness. When it grew close, she decided to walk to Percy's room to tell him that she was going to the funeral and to see if there was anything he wished for her to say.

  Reaching to knock on the door, she paused when she heard voices. Mrs. Thornton was in the room. Her steps creaked on the floorboards.

  "This is their excuse," she said. "They'll turn on us for this."

  "Mother."

  "And she. I brought her here to break the curse, and she has only made it worse."

  Emmeline couldn't believe what she was hearing. 'She' could only refer to her. No one else had been brought here. Why would she be here to break a curse? How could she be used to break a curse? What did she have that would be relevant? Her chastity? This was ludicrous. The woman's madness obviously ran deeper than Emmeline had realized.

  "You're being ridiculous, mother. There is no curse." Percy mirrored her own thoughts.

  "And Lord Cresswell is trying to corrupt her. Have you seen the way he stares at her? Those foul, horrible eyes of his. Always watching her."

  "She's a beautiful woman."

  Emmeline blushed even as no one was there to see her.

  "She was supposed to put everything right."

  At this point, Emmeline decided not to bother informing Percy. Whatever madness was unfolding on the other side of that door, she wanted no part of it. There were definitely things going on that she wasn't aware of. It seemed she hadn't been brought here to serve as a companion, at all. The unhinged mind of Mrs. Thornton had brought her here to break a curse. How exactly was she supposed to break this curse?

  And Lord Cresswell. What purpose did he serve in this insanity? It was obvious he featured in some fundamental way.

  "There are devils all around us. She is one, too. I thought her innocent, but she is not."

  "Mother, please," Percy said with exasperation.

  Since arriving here, the world had turned on its head. It would be tempting to dismiss this all as insanity, but this dead boy, he wasn't some figment of a mad woman's imagination. Surely, it couldn't be Mrs. Thornton going around and murdering as part of her delusion?

  With quiet steps, Emmeline walked back the way she'd come. Part of her felt as though she should simply continue walking, down the road and onto Plymouth, away from this lunacy. In her mind, that extended to Lord Cresswell, who was in some way part of all this. Even he had said they were all cursed. Maybe insanity was simply part of the Caribbean. The heat, or something in the environment, affected people's minds. Hers was certainly uneasy since the moment she had arrived here, and had worsened since.

  But she had agreed to go to this funeral, and it went against the grain to not follow through with her promise to Joseph. In fact, Joseph was waiting out on the veranda for her.

  With a ragged breath, she started to walk down the stairs and Joseph led her in the direction of the sugar mill, where she had never been. She knew the slave cottages were in that direction. They walked in silence down a well-worn path.

  "Someone killed this boy," she finally said, breaking the silence.

  "Yes," Joseph said.

  "A curse does not stab a boy."

  "A curse could work on the mind of the culprit."

  It was the most direct statement Joseph had said that he actually believed in curses.

  "More likely, it is someone who means harm to the Thorntons. Everything that has happened has tried to create harm to the Thornton's, and this boy's death certainly does. I suppose the suggestion is that this boy was deemed responsible for cutting the girth on Percy's saddle." For some reason, it felt important that Joseph had a similar understanding, but she wasn't sure he did. "Percy could not have harmed this boy." Unfortunately, she wasn't now sure that Mrs. Thornton wasn't capable, being enslaved by her madness.

  They walked past the bare wooden cottages that sat in neat rows. More the size of sheds than cottages. Emmeline had never seen them before. A few women and children were milling around on the small porches. They still looked thin to her, so she wasn't sure whether the food provided had been improved. For Percy's sake, she hoped it was something he'd tende
d to.

  Continuing on, Joseph led her to a graveyard, where wooden markers showed each grave. A grave was still being dug and a coffin in rough wood lay on the ground.

  Emmeline felt their eyes on her as she walked amongst them. No one spoke, but it wasn't hard to pick out the distraught mother, supported by a group of women. Emmeline's heart clenched in sympathy for the woman. Whoever was responsible for this was a monster. Something had to be done. She just didn't know what. Percy's plan to bring some mariners was a start, she supposed. Perhaps these men could find the culprit and bring them to justice. If all these deaths were the responsibility of this one person, they needed to be found and dealt with.

  She felt like a curiosity standing there, not quite welcome, but not chased away either. There was no priest. As she recalled, the priest that served them had been expelled and not replaced.

  "Here," Joseph said, handing her a bible. "Perhaps you can read."

  "Of course," she said, realizing that she might be the only person here who could read. It felt deeply unfair that these people had been left without a priest, unable to conduct their funerals properly. With a lump in her throat, she opened the bible and started reading from Psalm forty-six. It seemed suitable for a time like this.

  Chapter 29

  "Mr. Thornton could not have done this," Emmeline said when the eulogy was finished. "He can't even walk."

  Hard stares considered her. Perhaps it wasn't a good idea bringing this up, but she felt she needed to say it.

  "He walked fine enough the day he got injured," a man with a deep voice said. She couldn't make out who it was, but it didn't matter. Emmeline was sure his sentiment wasn’t unique.