And I remembered suddenly the early days of our marriage, his gentleness and care, as if he’d known how sudden was the shift from student to lover and meant to help ease me through it. I felt a surge of tenderness. I leaned to kiss the top of his head, and he took the opportunity to pull me back with him onto the bed, and then he was kissing me gently and sweetly, undressing me with slow deliberation, so I felt how precious I was to him, how much he loved me, and I felt guilty again for doubting him, for allowing Daniel’s words to have any heft at all.
The next day, I woke to overcast but no rain. At breakfast, Junius said, “It looks like a good day to go to Toke’s Point.”
Lord Tom looked up from his coffee. “Toke’s Point?”
Junius nodded. “There’s a burial cave there. We heard about it from that settler over near Stony Point. He found a basket there that matches the one the mummy was in.”
Lord Tom’s expression went very still. “I know of the place.”
In surprise, I said, “You know it?”
“It has been a story for many years.”
Junius fingered his cornbread. “More than a story, I think. This man had been there.”
“It’s no good to go near any memalose illahee.”
“Of course not,” Junius said dryly. “Would that the weather was as predictable as your dire warnings. But it’s the best clue we’ve got to her origin. And if there are bodies there, perhaps we can find a connection. If they were sacrificed as well—”
“Sacrificed?” Lord Tom frowned.
“Leonie discovered how the mummy died. She was strangled.”
Lord Tom’s gaze turned to me, intent enough that I squirmed. I expected him to say something about how he’d known already, or how long it had taken me to tell Junius, but he was quiet. The talk turned to our preparations for the journey, but I could not help but notice how discomfited Lord Tom seemed, how restless. When he went to the back door to go out to the lean-to, I followed him, pausing just behind him on the narrow porch before his door. “What is it, tot?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”
He hesitated, his hand on the door latch. “Do not go to this cave, okustee.”
“Because of the spirits? Or is there some better reason?”
“Why not because I have asked you not to?”
“I can’t stay away,” I said insistently. “The basket this settler had—it was the same pattern. And she wants me to find the answers, tot, I can feel it. In my dreams, she—”
“In your dleams?” Lord Tom’s glance went to the bracelet, and self-consciously I moved my wrist behind a fold of my skirt to hide it. He sighed. “Leave the mummy alone. Let her rest.”
“I can’t.”
“Will you like what you discover, I wonder?” he asked.
“What does that mean?”
He shrugged and twisted the latch. The door to his tiny room swung open, revealing the bed built into the opposite wall, the tangled Hudson Bay blankets, a lamp whose chimney needed cleaning. “You know the stories. Curiosity makes more trouble. Think of Italapas.”
“Italapas’s curiosity transformed the world. And Junius will go to the cave whether I do or not.”
“Yes. But you are the one I promised to keep safe.”
“I’m no longer a child. I think Papa cannot have meant you to watch over me forever.”
Lord Tom’s smile was small and soft. “It is never over, okustee.”
He slipped into his room, closing the door gently but firmly, closing me out, and I was suddenly fearful. I did not like to go against Lord Tom’s wishes. He had been the one who protected me from the dangers of this world—the tricky sloughs and riptides, marshes that tangled one’s feet and threatened always to pull one under, spirits and their lies...
But Lord Tom’s spirits were only stories, and I could ignore them now, because I felt her there too, urging me forward, and I felt her pleas and her urgency and I knew there was no question: I would go to Toke’s Point because I had to, because science said there was a singular truth waiting to be found, an indisputable answer, and I knew I was the one meant to find it.
Toke’s Point was about five miles away by water, near the mouth of Shoalwater Bay, on the northern shore of the mainland. The worst of the journey would be when we’d almost reached it, when the bay was no longer protected by the long finger of land that shielded it from the open ocean. The water was gray beneath the heavy overcast, and choppy. Though there was no rain, the air was wet, the sails slack and heavy. Our way was slow, mostly tacking, and before we’d been out an hour, I was freezing. Even the birds seemed huddled into themselves against the cold. I tucked my hands into my armpits and felt the tension between Junius and his son, the way Junius focused on sailing the plunger as if he’d never done it before, Daniel’s studious quiet. He hardly looked at his father, but glanced at me now and again as if I were some mystery he was trying to puzzle out, reminding me uncomfortably of yesterday in the barn. I remembered Stony Point, too, and what he’d offered me, and I didn’t trust him. So I avoided Daniel’s gaze and ignored my curiosity about him that had not faded but only grown.
We were about halfway across, drowning in silence, when I could not bear it another moment. I said to Daniel, meaning to lure Junius into conversation as well, “Have you been working at the newspaper long?”
He gave me a look that said he knew what I was doing, and then he glanced away with a wry smile that reminded me of his father. “No.”
“Is it a good job?”
“Better than some.”
“Not as hard as working oysters, I imagine.”
Again, that smile, along with a shrug. “Not as lucrative either.”
I searched for another question.
Junius said, “Not much of a talker are you? Not like your mother.”
“I never saw that in her,” Daniel said, staring out into the gray. “She was always too tired. Worked out, I guess. By the time I was old enough to help, I think she’d lost the habit.”
We fell back into silence. I caught Junius’s gaze, and he raised his brow and shrugged. I narrowed my eyes at him, and finally he cleared his throat and said, “This girl you’re planning to marry.”
Daniel turned his gaze almost idly to his father. “What about her?”
“Tell me something about her. What’s her name? Is she pretty? Where did you meet her?”
“Why do you care?”
“She’ll be the mother of my grandchildren, won’t she?”
Daniel laughed, short and derisive, and then he glanced at me and went sober and thoughtful. “Eleanor. Her name’s Eleanor. I met her at a missionary rally.”
“You have a religious bent?” Junius sounded as surprised as I was.
Daniel shook his head. “I was on my way somewhere else and got caught up in it.”
“So she’s of a religious bent.”
“Her father’s a missionary working in Chinatown. She helps him.”
“Ah. Charitable works. She sounds a paragon.”
“I couldn’t like a paragon,” Daniel said. “But you’d find no reason to complain of her.”
“What did your mother think of her?”
“She liked her well enough. She wished us to be married last year, but...”
“But what?”
Daniel said stiffly, “Eleanor’s father preferred us to wait.”
“He doesn’t approve?”
“His hopes for the future mirror mine.”
“Ah.” Junius nodded and glanced up at the sail. “Don’t have enough money to support his daughter, do you?”
Daniel looked away.
“Well, no man values what he comes by easily,” Junius said.
“You’re a shining example of that yourself,” Daniel said, glancing at me, and I knew he spoke of how easily Junius had gained me, the way my father had handed me and the land over the way one might hand over a watch or an heirloom. The thought surprised me—such a thing had never occurred to me before.
> The wind picked up; the plunger sped ahead, its bow slapping against the choppy water. Junius was distracted adjusting the sail and our course. Soon, Toke’s Point came into view.
The tide was in, revealing only a strip of sand that gave way eventually to a stony beach leading right up to woods of spruce, alder, and hemlock, smoke rising from the chimneys of the one or two houses settled in the trees. We came ashore, each of us grabbing a bag of provisions and extra clothing and things for camping overnight. I knew Bill McInery lived nearby, and we could stay the night at his place without trouble, but Junius intended to hike to the cave if we could, and spend the night there, skeletons or no, and I knew already I would not be able to talk him out of it. Perhaps the skeletons Sanderson had seen were already gone, but I didn’t want that either, because it would mean the cave would be scraped clean of anything useful.
Junius pulled the rough map Sanderson had given us from his pocket and stared at it for a moment, glancing down the shore. I followed his gaze until I saw the two large rocks on the beach—the ones Sanderson had referred to.
“There,” Junius said. He glanced at the sky. With the wind had come heavier and darker clouds, and it didn’t look as if the weather would hold for much longer. “If we’re lucky we can make it before the rain.”
He led us into the woods, the undergrowth of ferns and vines and salal tangling about our feet, making the way hard. Whatever path Sanderson had blazed was long gone; the only one was that which led to the McInery house on the right.
“Perhaps someone who lives here knows of it,” Daniel suggested.
Junius shook his head. “If they know of it, it’s too late. If they don’t, I don’t want word getting out.”
He led us deeper, past bare huckleberry bushes and redcaps, salal and salmonberry. We had to force our way through, climbing over nurse logs heavy with ferns and thick with moss. I was in the middle, Daniel following behind, cursing softly beneath his breath when a branch whipped his face. We had not gone far before the rain we’d hoped to avoid began. I could hear it more than feel it; we were sheltered by the bare, dense branches of maple and alder and the feathered ones of hemlock and cedar and fir, but the undergrowth was wet already from yesterday, and we were soaked through before we’d gone half a mile.
The woods were deep and barely touched by civilization, though I smelled smoke caught by the rain, forced to hover low in the upper reaches of the trees. The bag of provisions I carried grew heavier, and my hands and feet were so cold I couldn’t feel them. My skirt caught on every vine and shrub I passed, and I was weary of yanking it free.
I’d lost track of how long we’d been hiking when Junius stopped so suddenly I nearly barreled into him. He jerked his head to the right. “There it is, I think.”
I saw a huge moss-covered maple, a heavily flagged cedar, a boulder dripping water and moss. Salal and ferns were everywhere.
Behind me, Daniel said wearily, “Where? I don’t see anything.”
Junius strode through the underbrush toward the boulder and Daniel and I followed. Junius put his hand on the rock, which was taller than he was, and stepped around, and I saw it wasn’t a boulder at all but a rocky outcropping, the entrance hidden by angles—a rock face jutting before it, a narrow split that widened into an entrance.
Junius disappeared inside. I waited a moment, until I heard his, “Yes, this is it,” before I bent to follow him through. There was not much of an entrance, a few feet, sandstone walls wet with water, and then they were suddenly dry. My boot scraped something that scattered—perhaps the remains of a fire—and then the cave opened before me. I felt the space, and heard the size of it in the hollow sounds of our breathing and rustling. But I could see nothing. The daylight, bruised as it was with clouds and rain, did not penetrate far. It was so dark I could not see Junius at all.
Nor could Daniel see me. He bumped right into me, stumbling, so I grabbed him to steady him.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I can’t see a damn thing.”
I heard Junius rustling about in his bag, the strike of a match against the stone wall, and then a light flickered, sputtering as he held it to one of the candles we’d brought, which caught and took hold, and the cave came into dim view, a faint glow surrounding us, swallowed by the dark shadows at the edges. The floor was packed dirt, the ceiling perhaps six feet high—just tall enough for Junius to stand straight.
“Well, let’s take a look around, shall we?” he said, the strange hollowness of his voice flattening and bouncing against stone walls. Junius reached into his bag for another candle and lit it, handing it to me, and then another to Daniel, and now we had three times the light and yet it was barely brighter, as if the cave itself soaked up the light and our breath, which seemed to pulse against the walls.
“It feels like a tomb,” Daniel said.
“It is a tomb,” Junius said. He stepped in a circle, holding the candle out, measuring the depth of the cave. The candlelight played on the walls, which looked water-carved, smooth and cupped in some places, pocked with deeply burrowed holes. It was probably about fifteen feet square, with no other entrances or tunnels that I could see, and no other trace of something living, not spiderwebs or snakes. But then, when Junius turned again, I saw it: the light dashing over a foot, the remains of a shoe woven of reeds, the creaminess of bone.
I gasped. Junius stopped, obviously seeing what I did. He stepped toward it, kneeling, lowering the light, and there they were, the skeletons Evan Sanderson had talked of, three of them, flat on their backs, arms crossed over their chests, the remains of funereal finery—one or two beads scattered in the dirt around them, a hat woven of cedar bark chewed away by rodents, the broken shards of pottery. Other bones too—animal. Deer, perhaps, or elk. But no other baskets or knives. Whatever else here of value had already been taken. Only the skeletons remained. I felt a stab of disappointment, and horror too, that we were intruding, that sense of something sacred that told me to go, to leave them in peace, and I couldn’t help shuddering when Junius knelt beside them, running his hands over them as if they were nothing more than cracked pottery, gently lifting, sending his candlelight over them, hollow eye sockets and holes for noses, jaws that held only a few teeth.
“Indian, probably,” Junius said. “But not sugarloaf skulls, so I doubt they’re Chinook. I’ll have to measure them to know for certain. Look at the pottery, Lea—tell me what you think.”
I hesitated, but then I went to the nearest pile of pottery shards, squatting to turn over a piece that had been painted. They were all too fragmented to see much of a design. I turned over another piece, and another, and then I began to see where they had once been a single piece, and I fitted the edges together until I had a few inches of border—all geometric, not the broad form lines of the Indian design I knew. It was very similar to that on the basket that had held the mummy and the one in my dream. Still...there was something not right about it. I saw the design and felt...nothing. Nothing more than what one might normally feel scrabbling through funereal remains. The basket, my dreams, her...it all felt so far away, not present. I knew this was not her place, that these were not her people.
My certainty took me aback. It was so strong I could not dispute it, and I knew this was a waste of time, that we would find nothing of her here. But what nonsense was this? Facts, I told myself. You need facts. But the words wouldn’t stay in my head; I felt as if everything I’d known and been taught was slipping away, and fiercely I grabbed and held on, gripping tight. What kind of a scientist are you?
“Well?” Junius asked.
“Similar to the basket,” I said. “But...”
He shifted to look over my shoulder. “It’s very like.”
“You think she came from here?” Daniel asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
Junius looked at me in surprise. “No? Why not? That design is more than similar. And these skeletons don’t have sloped skulls—neither does she.”
“I just don’
t think they’re related,” I said quietly.
“What reason have you to say that?”
“I don’t know. I just...it’s an...instinct.” I winced even as I said it.
“Instinct.” Everything Junius thought about that was in his sigh.
“Is there anything of value?” Daniel asked.
“Only the skeletons,” Junius told him.
I said nothing to that. I’d known already that we would take them back with us. I’d only hoped there would be something else here too, something either to dissuade him from taking the bodies or to provide some clue to her origin. But there was neither, and I rose, tilting my head back, stretching a little so the light from my candle wavered and spun across the ceiling, touching upon a deep black mark—
I frowned, bringing the candle higher, bringing into the light the mark—not a straight line but one that curved unnaturally, down and around, forming a back, a leg, an antler—
“What’s that?” Daniel asked.
I brought the candle higher, motioning for him to add his light to it, which he did, and then I saw that it was a painting, brief lines, little embellishment, but it was clearly an elk, and beside it something else—another elk and then something that looked like a bear, but very large and...different. A cave bear.
Suddenly Junius was beside us, breathing into my ear. “Drawings. Will you look at that? Sweetheart, I think we’ve hit the mother lode.”
CHAPTER 11
“THE MOTHER LODE?” Daniel asked, his voice sharpening. “What do you mean?”
Junius ignored him. “Sanderson said nothing about these.”
“Perhaps he didn’t see them,” I said. “We almost didn’t.”
Daniel asked, “You mean...drawings like this aren’t usual?”
“No,” I told him. “These are the first I’ve seen, though I’ve heard of others.”
“Lea—this is proof that the mummy’s ancient. Her people did this, and they were no Indians.” Junius’s voice was keen with excitement.
“We can’t know that,” I said cautiously—and I wasn’t certain why I felt the need to say it, except that I was suddenly irritated at the way he leaped to conclusions. “There’s nothing here to connect with her.”
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