by Lois Metzger
“The bones trust you,” my father would say. “And you should trust the bones.”
I do, Dad.
I do.
IN FOR A PENNY
by Elizabeth C. Bunce
If you come into the Red Drake Inn on a rainy night and ask for a table by the fire, don’t be surprised if they have one open. The Red Drake’s a big inn, and prosperous—probably the biggest on the Haymarket Road. But even on a crowded night, when the wind shrieks past the gables, and rain whips sideways ‘cross the moon, and the dogs are restless, the table by the fireplace is usually empty.
So when the hostess leads you there, sits you down, and asks you what’s your pleasure, and you run your hand across the worn wooden top, with all its glass rings and burn marks from hot plates, and your fingers come to the big deep gash in the wood—don’t be surprised if you feel a little chill or notice the regulars trying hard not to stare at you. And don’t be surprised about the silence that falls, or that it takes the serving girl a powerful long time to bring your food…. Because that’s the table where Lizzie Penny won her fight with a ghost.
Twelve-year-old Lizzie was a maid-of-all-work, helping out in the kitchen, and the public room, and the guest rooms—and Red Drake folk said she was steady and dependable, for all she was a Penny. That night, though, she wasn’t feeling quite so steady.
It was the end of winter, when things are trying to come back from the dead—a cold, hard, ugly, flat sort of day that slipped into evening far too early. Lizzie was out in the yard, rounding up the chickens and trying to shush out of her mind the fool story Jem had told her about “henny-haunts” that come after girls who steal their eggs. Everyone knew that if you scribed a big black circle round the henhouse, it kept the birds safe from haunts, and a big black dog in the yard kept them safe from foxes. Still, the fading light made the coop look all funny-like, and Lizzie was glad to empty her bowl of grain and head back into the warm, lamplit inn.
“Hsst! Lizzie-girl!”
She started, nearly dropping the bowl. Her brother, Jem, crouched in the shadows by the stable door. Jem was a typical, no-account Penny—lazy and shiftless, with no honest work behind or before him. Lizzie liked to hold her head up high and pretend she didn’t know him, but that was harder to do when it was your pa wavin’ at you from the side of the barn. With a sigh, she set the bowl down and went to see what they wanted.
What they wanted was to rob the Royal Mail, the big stagecoach coming through that night with all kinds of money and valuables aboard. Stages stopped at the Red Drake all the time, and her pa and brother were always trying to think of a way to “lighten their loads.” So far they hadn’t succeeded, and Lizzie just shrugged.
“Now, don’t you go all high-and-mighty on me, girl! Why do you think we got you this job here at the inn?” Pa leaned in close. “I’ve got a pretty trick up my sleeve tonight. Meet us here at midnight and be sure to leave the doors unlocked.”
Lizzie flinched from Pa’s hand on her arm. “But Seth will be sleeping on the hearth, and the Drakes’ room is right above the street. How will you get into the inn without them noticing?”
“I reckon Pa’s got it all planned out,” Jem said, his face cracking into a sneer. “Says them birds’ll sleep like babies while we just slip in and grab all the eggs we can carry, if you take my meaning.”
Lizzie was all too sure she did, and she couldn’t stop the thread of worry creeping up the back of her dress that evening as she went about her chores. Just a few weeks earlier, the Penny gang had had a close shave at the brewery, and one of the men had been caught and hanged—a man called Bert Lively, whom Lizzie had known all her life. She could remember Bert whittling by their fire, or teasing her for her curly hair. They said his body hung at the old crossroads a whole fortnight before somebody finally cut him down.
That night, when the fires in the common room burned down, and Seth the kitchen boy curled up on the hearth, Lizzie stood at her window, watching the moonlit roadway. The Royal Mail had rolled in late, blue and gold and glossy, looking very official. They said the driver carried a pair of ivory-handled pistols—she knew he carried a whip. Surely he could protect himself from highwaymen; how did Pa think he could pull off such a plan?
Pa and Jem and three other men showed up about a quarter ‘til midnight, jostling and snickering and trying hard to keep to the shadows, but making far too much noise about it. Her belly like a hunk of lead, Lizzie crept downstairs, slipping past Seth with his gentle snores, and swung the inn doors open to admit the thieves.
They came in, all riled up and nerves ajangle. Lizzie hung back in the shadows by the kitchen, hoping hard that somebody upstairs would hear the racket, come down, and scare everybody away.
“Quiet!” Pa’s voice, normally thin as wire, came down like a thunderclap. Lizzie jumped—so did Jem and the others, but they hushed. Seth stirred on the hearth, but that was all. Pa glared at everyone as he took a filthy feed sack from under his baggy coat.
“Look close, lads,” he said as he reached into the sack. “Our luck is changing—right here and now, tonight.” He drew out an odd, misshapen sort of thing—cold, gray, and wax-stiff. Lizzie drew in her breath. It was a man’s hand, which Pa upended on the tabletop close to the fireplace. The hand sat there, palm up, like it was waiting for somebody to give it something.
“Pa!” Her voice came unbidden, shrill and strained. In the flickering firelight, the hand seemed to twitch—but that couldn’t be. It was dead, dead and preserved, like the stuffed stag’s head above the fireplace.
Only not a bit like that at all.
She knew what it was, of course, for all she’d never seen one. It went by different names—hand of glory, five-finger light, hangman’s candle. The hand of a hanged thief, cut from his corpse by moonlight and made into a candlestick, was a sort of thieves’ good-luck charm—something the men joked and dreamed about: yearning tales of all they could steal, if they ever got hold of such a prize.
And now her pa had one.
“Pa …” Lizzie’s voice was low and warning, but Pa ignored her. Out of the sack he took a candle, low and fat and ill-formed. It looked like a normal candle, but Lizzie knew how candles were made—from an animal’s rendered fat—and felt the shiver overtake her.
Pa settled the candle in the hand’s palm and struck a match to light it.
All at once, the other lights in the room went out. With a whoosh! the fire in the grate went out, and the inn’s common room fell into darkness, except for the awful, wavering light of the candle held by the dead man’s hand.
Jem let out a shrill, cackling laugh that made the hairs on Lizzie’s arms stand on end. “Hush!” she said, waving him to silence. But Pa’s face broke into a slow grin as he watched the peaceful form of Seth the kitchen boy sound asleep on the cold hearth. Lizzie followed Pa’s gaze and stared.
“Nothing’ll wake him now, girl. Long as that candle burns, every soul in this house’ll sleep the sleep of the dead.” To prove it, Pa gave one of the benches a hard shove. It banged against the stone floor so loudly that Lizzie thought she’d come out of her skin. But after she held her breath a piece, nobody came running downstairs.
The men whooped and hollered their way round the common room, kicking benches and slamming down pitchers, until Pa yelled for silence. “The folk in here can’t hear us, lackwits, but the charm only works inside the inn. Last thing we need is for some busybody to come walking by and sound the alarm. Now let’s move. Tom, Dick, Sowerby—you lot check the pickings in the guest rooms. Jem and me’ll hit the stables. Lizzie-girl, you’re our lookout. Got it? Don’t let nobody through those doors, and mind any drafts on that candle flame.”
Off they went, creeping through the dark corners of the inn, bumbling and laughing through the blackness. Somehow it was eerier—all of them making so much noise, and not a bit caring that somebody might hear.
Lizzie hunched into her shawl and set up watch near the door, shut tight against the night. With t
he fire out, it was darker than dark in the common room, and every shadow that leaped and swayed made her heart jump. Outside, the night wind was building up, a shrill whistle twisting at the corners of the old inn, rattling the doors and shutters. The lights were on at the printer’s shop ‘cross the way, and she felt reassured knowing that some folk were awake and close by.
Behind her, the thing on the table sent up its weird flickering light, cold and blue and uncanny. She knew it would keep burning until one of the thieves put it out, and, until then, everyone in the house would stay fast asleep. Only the guilty could stay awake while it burned. Lizzie scowled—why should it count her among that rotten number? It didn’t seem rightly fair.
Vexed, she hopped off her bench, squared her shoulders, and walked straight over to the table. She and that thing would have a talking-to. After all, she was Lizzie Penny, inn girl at the Red Drake. She’d caught rats in the larder, dispatched hens with the big axe just outside the barn door, even chased an angry dog away from the yard. No daft charm from any ghost story would get the best of her.
The hand just lay there, a cold waxen lump, aglow in a light like Lizzie’d never seen. Candles were supposed to burn yellow and bright and friendly—cozy cheer against shadows and the things that lurked in them. She was about to blow ‘cross the flame and puff it out for good, when she heard the sound of footsteps.
She tensed. Of course, there were footsteps inside the inn, with all the men banging about upstairs—but these were distant and strange, almost more a feeling than a sound. Somebody outside, coming toward the inn? She scurried to the window, peered out, and saw a man shambling down the street, back by the milliner’s shop. The man wouldn’t hear them from outside, not with the wind howling so.
Then why had she heard him?
The man was already that much closer, down to the chandler’s and the stationer’s. That wasn’t right; how had he come so far, so fast?
Lizzie sucked in her breath. Hadn’t the lights been on at the hatmaker’s shop just a moment ago? Fine chance that they doused the light just when this fellow was walking past.
The sounds of the men upstairs seemed to fade away. She barely heard them, popping doors and stumbling over loose floorboards. But the man outside, with his too-quick-to-see footsteps, was closer now. Something was strange about him, one arm shoved into his coat pocket like that. Something familiar, too—did she know him? One of the regulars, come for a late-night pint?
Now that was odd—the lights at the printer’s going out, just then. Where was Pa? Surely it didn’t take so long to rustle through the stables.
The man paused at the door to the Red Drake. He banged on the wood, three slow knocks that rumbled through Lizzie’s bones.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Pa’s words came back: Don’t let nobody in. She crouched below the window frame so he wouldn’t see her if he looked in.
Thump.
Thump.
“Pa …” Her own voice, soft and uncertain. Where were they?
Thump.
Cold candlelight washed the room, and silence pressed in all around. Why couldn’t she hear the men upstairs?
A face peered in the window. She could make out his features a bit—why did he look so strange? Slowly, Lizzie rose from the floor, until she stood face-to-face with the man outside—and recognized him.
Bert Lively. The same Bert Lively who was dead and hanged, buried these three weeks in the boneyard. Lizzie stumbled backward against a table.
He didn’t seem to see her—just thumped again at the door, and then, when it didn’t open, came on in anyway.
Lizzie couldn’t move. Bert Lively had stepped through the heavy oak doors like they were made of mist, and now stood in the common room with Lizzie.
She thought she should scream, but her voice wouldn’t come.
Bert took no notice of her, just made his way across the common room, walking through tables and benches, like he knew what he’d come for and wouldn’t be denied. He cast a sly glance around the room, then reached across the bar to where Mistress Drake kept the strongbox. For a moment, Lizzie thought his sleeve was too long—and then she realized why.
Bert’s arm had no hand on it.
Lizzie squeaked—just a tiny bubble of fear, no bigger than a mouse rustle. Bert swung his pale head in her direction—and that was enough for Lizzie. She bolted out of that common room like the law was on her tail.
Her footsteps banged on the floor; she slammed doors open and shut—but nobody came running. “Pa! Pa! Jem!” she cried, flying across the cobbled inn yard, past the snug chicken coop and the sleeping watchdog, toward the barn. She hit the barn doors, tripping on the threshold and tangling her feet in the axe handle. Stumbling through the darkened barn, she hollered to wake the dead, but her voice met only silence.
And out there in the night with her was dead Bert Lively, up and walking around and wanting things he had no need for anymore.
Lizzie’s voice rose to a shriek, but not even the chickens stirred. And then she discovered why, when she tripped the second time—over the slumped, snoring form of Jem, propped against the blue side of the Royal Mail stagecoach, right beside Pa, who was fast asleep with his hand still on the coach door.
“Pa!” Lizzie screamed, shaking him, kicking at Jem’s shins—but neither stirred. “Pa!” The charm was supposed to work only on people who lived in the house—but somehow, something had gone wrong.
And the hand’s owner coming back to claim his share of the loot? That was plenty wrong, indeed.
Outside, the wind shrieked over the gables. With a chill, Lizzie wondered if the sound wasn’t the wind. She found herself slowly crossing the yard, trying to work out why things had taken such a strange turn. Maybe it was because Bert Lively was a thief himself and couldn’t resist one last job—even from beyond the grave. But then, why had the robbers fallen asleep, too?
Maybe Bert was after something more than just what was in the cash box.
When Lizzie returned to the common room, she discovered what that something was. Bert stood at the table trying to pry up the hand—his hand. But his ghostly arms kept passing right through it. The mad howling came from him every time he reached for the hand but came up short.
Lizzie stared, transfixed, until a cold thought wormed its way into her mind. What would happen if Bert got his hand back?
Lizzie didn’t want to find out.
She’d heard that you had to speak strongly to haunts, give ‘em what for. She took a deep breath. “Bert!” Her voice was sharp and nervous. “Bert, you’re dead. You won’t be needin’ that anymore. Get on back up to the boneyard.”
Her words sounded foolish, and Bert paid her no mind. Was he succeeding? His other hand seemed to catch somehow, in the flesh of the hand, as it passed through. Not like light or mist anymore, but like water.
“Bert, that ain’t yours no longer.” Lizzie crept closer. “Now leave off.”
Bert’s cries grew louder. He flailed uselessly at the hand and its candle on the table, still burning its eerie glow. Maybe if the light was out …?
Lizzie took three bold steps straight up to the thing and, dodging out of the way of Bert’s hazy arms, blew hard on the candle flame.
Nothing happened. The light didn’t go out. Again and again she blew, but the little blue flame wouldn’t die. Frantic now, she did as Bert did—grabbed at the hand on the table, wanting to fling the whole thing into the fire. But though her fingers grasped the cold, dead flesh, the candle wouldn’t budge. The hand was stuck fast to the table, as if bolted down.
She yanked hard at the hand again, and the whole table moved. A strangled cry filled the common room, and this time Lizzie wasn’t sure it came from Bert. She let go of the hand and stumbled back toward the hearth, nearly falling over the still-sleeping Seth. Bert tried again to grab hold of the hand—were the fingers holding the candle twitching?
Lizzie scrabbled to her feet. Skirts flying, she flung back ‘cross the inn yard an
d fetched the axe by the barn door. It was heavy in her hands, solid and comforting. She hauled it back to the common room, where Bert now had a grip on the hand. Trying to pull it up from the table, his stump curved round it, drawing it toward his chest.
“Bert Lively, I said get on back!” Lizzie heaved the axe upward and, throwing all her weight into it, brought it down hard on the table. It smashed clean through the hand, splitting it in two. One half flew straight into the fireplace, where the candle bounced into the embers. The other half skittered across the floor like a spider, running on little finger feet.
Bert lurched after his fleeing fingers, chasing them into a corner. Lizzie’s palms were sweaty, and the axe wouldn’t budge, caught solid in the wood tabletop.
Behind her, Lizzie heard something stir. The candle in the fireplace sputtered in a pool of melted tallow, its flame dancing into nothingness. Across the room, Bert still tried to catch his fingers. But with every wild grab, his form grew harder and harder to see. His shrieking wail was fading to a soft moan, until Lizzie couldn’t tell it apart from the wind.
“Bert …?” Lizzie crept closer, but poor Bert Lively was no more than a wisp of smoke, grasping at a lump of bones and wax on the floor. As she watched, he reached out his handless arm one last time—and faded into the night.
“Lizzie? What’s going on?” Seth sat up and rubbed his face, blinking at the axe still buried in the upturned table. “What happened?”
Lizzie stared round the common room. Except for the disarray of tables and benches scattered everywhere—and the heavy thumping of her heart—everything was normal. She could hear the inn coming back to life—odd bumps and muffled oaths as the sleeping thieves roused themselves. She took a deep breath. Stooping to right the table and free the axe, she shrugged.
“A rat” was all she said.
Long afterward, folk told the story of Lizzie and her ghost, and how she saved the Red Drake twice over that night—from haunts and thieves. It’s hard to say who told them the tale, though, since Lizzie wasn’t the sort to spread tales or spin a tall yarn.
