Yet a surprise of another sort already occupied Bracebridge that morning. At the moment, it was on its way up from the village, on the fluttering coattails of the Reverend Christian Rowe.
“Do I interrupt a meal of some kind?” the preacher offered in greeting. He pulled a pocket watch from his waistcoat; this was followed by a handkerchief, with which he mopped his brow.
“Signor Lahte,” Longfellow replied with mock concern, “has yet to learn that the running of a farm is a terrible struggle, which one must rise early to win. But what has brought you from your own unending toil in support of humanity, Reverend?”
“I have something to say to you which I believe you must find shocking—”
“Nothing too horrible, I hope—”
“In vain, I fear! Someone in our midst has turned to grave robbery!”
Longfellow sat up abruptly. “Just what valuables has this villain made off with?”
“A pair of boots, and some coat buttons.”
“Boots, and buttons. Taken from the unknown man in the cellar, I presume?”
“Of course!”
Longfellow looked off into the gray-green distance, his brain racing, though his face remained placid under the reverend’s close scrutiny. While they waited Cicero folded his paper, and Gian Carlo Lahte came around the granite table.
“The boots,” Longfellow finally answered, “I can understand. A man finding himself without a decent pair might take what he felt Providence had put into his path. However … buttons? Who would take buttons from a dead man? I’ll admit I didn’t pay them much attention yesterday, but I’ll swear they weren’t gold; nor, I think, were they even gilt.”
“You did not include them in your likeness?” Rowe asked accusingly.
“I took only the head. But who would steal buttons, when he could have made off with the whole coat?”
“It was unclean,” returned the reverend, disgust written on his face.
“A military man,” said Cicero, “sometimes has his buttons removed, when he is disgraced.”
“True,” said Longfellow, “when they are regimental buttons. But our corpse wasn’t in uniform. And if this thing was done to make a point, how then could the same man, apparently moved by honor, have stooped to take the fellow’s boots?”
“It is a curious thing,” said Gian Carlo Lahte, finally. “But can such a thief be so remarkable in your countryside? In my own, one expects things left unattended to come and go. Especially among those who have little.”
Longfellow turned back to Reverend Rowe. “Considering the growing hardships in Boston, I had supposed lawlessness might increase there—”
“It is not a lack of wealth, but too much of it, that leads to strife and sin throughout the provinces,” Rowe interrupted. “This has caused many to turn away from the Almighty, and to forget their places. If He has increased our troubles, it is surely to bring men back to their senses by reminding them of the stealth of the Tempter! We must all continue to root the Devil out, wherever we find him—”
“Buttons,” Longfellow muttered. “What did the blessed things look like?”
“Someone else might remember,” Cicero reminded him.
“Caleb, do you mean?”
“I was thinking of Mrs. Willett.”
“Of course, she does have a woman’s eye for detail—though little care for the mode. Well … on the chance that it could be of some small importance,” Longfellow decided, “and, as we must all help the reverend root out Lucifer—let us all go and ask her!”
IN A MATTER of minutes, Christian Rowe knocked on the back door of the house just up the hill. While they waited for an answer, Richard Longfellow nodded to Hannah Sloan, who sat boiling cheesecloth under the ancient white oak next to the barn. He noted with satisfaction that Hannah abandoned her stick and stood to get a better look at the gentleman she’d heard of, though as yet her full, red face showed little of her conclusions.
Mrs. Willett soon invited them into a kitchen fragrant with fresh pot herbs, recently hung to dry among the low rafters. “Have you received word from Dr. Warren?” she asked her neighbor, as the others looked around with interest.
“He sent a note saying he hopes to visit us this evening, after his appointments.”
“How much this resembles the place of my birth,” Lahte offered. “But in Tuscany, such houses are crowded, and loud with voices. This, I think, feels like a shrine.”
“Do you mean a reliquary, sir?” came an immediate cry from the reverend. “For bones of the saints, or some of Mary’s ubiquitous hairs? We have no need for such nonsense here in Massachusetts!”
“For a few more weeks at least,” Charlotte answered, ignoring Christian Rowe, “we’ll be less busy than usual.”
“And what is it you do today?” asked the musico.
“We’ll begin to dry shell beans. But I’ve set aside most of the day for making cheeses. Tomorrow, Hannah and I plan to start preserving pears.”
“Only you live here, Mrs. Willett, with one servant? There is no man who helps you with these things?”
Undaunted, Reverend Rowe threw out a new reproof. “Some here suppose that a woman can decide her duties for herself, without the guidance of a husband. Yet on the Sabbath, women must be led by those of greater learning, so that they will think not on the flesh, but of their souls.”
“We do what is necessary, whenever what we can,” Charlotte said mildly. “As a widow, I have a right to choose my own occupations. But Hannah is hardly a servant,” she added, speaking toward the windows. “She exchanges her labor in return for a portion of what we produce together. Her family, you see, is well supplied with daughters awaiting their own marriages, and homes. Oh, but I do employ Hannah’s young Henry, who assists me morning and evening with the milking.”
“A skill I, too, learned as a boy,” Lahte replied proudly.
“Then would you like to see the dairy?”
“I would be delighted, madama!”
“A good start,” said Longfellow, “if you mean to try the country life, Lahte. After that, we might go after a hillside of rye grass—but I recall we’ve not come to discuss farming or housekeeping this morning, Mrs. Willett. We are here, instead, to ask for your help. We wish to inquire about buttons.”
“Buttons?”
“Is it possible for you to recall those worn by the man we saw in the reverend’s cellar?”
“Well, I did notice that they were rather large. Molded, I think, and uncovered metal. I supposed the tops were meant to look as if they had filigree on them, though I believe they were nothing so fine. They were the kind whose two halves are made separately, then crimped together over a shank-eye; I’m sure you and Signor Lahte noticed that, too.”
“Hmmm.”
“But why are his buttons of interest today?”
“Because someone stole them from the corpse last night. Someone who took his boots as well.” Though Mrs. Willett made no answer, Longfellow guessed there might be something else she hesitated to ask.
For several minutes, in fact, Charlotte had watched as Gian Carlo Lahte became increasingly uncomfortable. By now, he rubbed the sleeves of his shirt restlessly, almost as if—
“I wonder, sir,” she asked him then, “if last night you were bothered by something?” Lahte moaned with surprising energy, and began to luxuriate in an orgy of scratching through his sleeves.
“I have been much bitten,” he said quite unnecessarily.
“I believe I can help.”
“You cannot refer to bedbugs?” asked Longfellow, his eyebrows lifting.
“Mosquitoes, I think,” Mrs. Willett reassured him.
“Odd. I wasn’t bothered last night, in bed or on the grass. But I suppose you’re new to this particular sort, Lahte, and so they find you more attractive than the rest of us.”
Charlotte recrossed the room, carrying a bottle of witch hazel and a piece of flannel. After Signor Lahte rolled up his sleeves she began to dab at several red bumps,
hearing him sigh with relief as the cooling liquid had its expected effect.
“I would imagine,” Longfellow went on, “that you’ll soon get used to them, and they to you. At the moment, you’re a rare treat for most of our local creatures.”
“I have become deaf to the buzzing of many kinds of beings, both large and small,” said the musico, not unkindly.
Longfellow observed Hannah Sloan’s broad body lean in at the window, and saw that she, too, watched the man being tended. Might she be asking herself if he would do for one of her daughters? For if she had not already heard … but there was something else here … something curious in the sly way she looked between Lahte and Rowe, and then at Charlotte—
He swiveled abruptly to regard the minister. In Rowe’s face, at least, he saw nothing to confirm a new and monstrous suspicion. The man’s interest appeared to be held by pieces of pewter and silver arrayed upon the sideboard. Clearly, his thoughts went in another direction. Or did they …?
“If there are mosquitoes in your bedroom,” said Charlotte, “you might ask for frames to be put into the windows. You remember, Richard, making Diana the gauze screens last summer, after a June bug came in one night?”
“Yes, yes—all too well!” Longfellow again saw his sister running through the hall in her nightgown, clawing at her hair. At least this softened the revolting thought of Reverend Rowe courting his neighbor.
“But I still can’t see why I wasn’t bitten even once last evening,” he continued, seeking further consolation in scientific observation. “North of the bridge where the river slows, down in the marsh grass, one might expect to be bothered. But you wouldn’t have been wandering there?”
“Even in Italy,” Lahte assured him, “and especially in Rome, we are careful of the mal aria, the bad air that hangs over such places on warm nights. Also, I am sure I would find the odor most offensive.”
“Presumably. While I recommend the benefits of night air in general—unlike some who would have us suffocated by bed curtains—we mustn’t forget that even the ancients feared miasmas that float over water. Especially water that stands or meanders. Do you know, I once stood on the actual Maeander, having gone down to Phrygia from Constantinople to have a look at the land of old Midas—”
“Most edifying, I’m sure,” said Reverend Rowe abruptly, “but as our most influential selectman, what will you do about our thief?”
“What can I do, Reverend? At the moment, I have duties beyond pilfered boots and buttons. I will admit this affair worries me, and if you discover anything more, I hope you will let me know. But now, perhaps, we should all go about our business.”
“If you would care to stay, Signor Lahte, you would be welcome,” Charlotte suggested—causing her neighbor to regret the telling of a small lie regarding his own level of occupation.
“I would be delighted,” said the musico. His long fingers rolled down his sleeves. “I believe, madamina, that you must be a sorceress. I am cured! And I would gladly learn more of your spells.”
Blushing again under the reverend’s sharp eye, Charlotte felt she would enjoy learning something more of Signor Lahte’s world, as well—clearly a strange one in which poverty and cruelty might join to create rare beauty, though with a melancholy proviso.
IN THE HOUR that followed the departure of Longfellow and Reverend Rowe, Gian Carlo Lahte first explored Mrs. Willett’s kitchen, and then wandered her barnyard, acquainting himself with fowl, flora, tools, and utensils, inside and out. The spotted hens under the white oak seemed to give him particular pleasure as he threw them scraps, and it occurred to Charlotte that this worldly man might almost be revisiting his simple boyhood. Pleased by the thought, she turned from the window and again took up a knife, this time to cut into a mass of curd lying in a vat that waited in a water bath by the fire. Crushed rennet, from the stomach of a calf that had provided Easter’s dinner, had already done its work, curdling milk from last evening mixed with more gathered that morning.
She cut the curd into small squares, then began the long process of turning the warm pieces gently with her hands, feeling for the mass to lose its moisture. In the meantime, she considered Hannah’s choice to work in the yard, even when Signor Lahte came inside to watch her own efforts.
“What is to be done now?” he asked from a low stool, as Charlotte continued to stir.
“In a few minutes I’ll ask you to pour more kettle water into the bath, to heat it further. Once it comes to the proper temperature, it has to be kept there for about an hour. Then we’ll remove the whey. You might help by lifting and pouring out what’s in the vat—just onto the cheesecloth I’ve stretched over that bowl, there—so the curds can drain. After another half-hour it can go onto the boards, where I’ll knead in the salt. Then it all must be pressed into the molds, which I’ve lined with more cloth.”
“And your work will be done?”
“Then, we put weights on the top of the molds. In another hour, more weight, and in three hours time the cheese should be almost dry. I’ll rub each one with salt, and take them all down to the cellar to ripen. They’ll be turned every so often for two months, at least, before the first comes to table.”
“How I adore the patience of women! The liquid—this whey—you will make it into ricotta?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what that is … but the family in Mr. Longfellow’s piggery finds whey very enjoyable, and beneficial.”
“Your country is indeed a rich one.”
“Have you helped to make ricotta before?” she asked, after her hand went briefly to a few twists of cider-colored hair that had begun, as usual, to fall.
“I remember only that the liquid was made sour and eaten in my father’s house—the rest, he sold to be made into fine cheeses for others. But I did not make ricotta myself. As a young boy, my chores were outside. Then, like the cheeses, I was sold to a conservatorio in Parma. There I sometimes visited the kitchen to help, and to find something more to eat. But for long hours each day I only studied, and sang. Now I think I will surprise you. Even as a boy I was called Il Colombo, but not for my fine voice; as you know, the dove sings less well than many other birds. No—you see, one feast day, some of us were allowed to eat many piccioni—doves, as you say—after a special mass sung at one of the great churches. From that time, I longed to be rich so that I might keep such doves myself. I also hoped to learn the tricks of the bird-catcher—the fowler—by following him into the forest outside the city; in that way I should always have the little roasted songbirds, the ortolans, to eat. I see I do surprise you! But though I was hungry for such things, I was also glad to have more bread to eat than many others, whose voices did not show the promise of my own.”
Something made her want to turn away from this picture of a boy hungry for birds, as he himself was taught to sing—but Charlotte found her curiosity too strong. Instead, she asked a daring question.
“I suppose we can never truly understand the ways of Rome here, but didn’t your clergy—your priests—didn’t they forbid what was done?”
“Sì,” he answered simply.
“But then …?”
“At the conservatorio, everyone prayed I would be taken to serve Il Papa one day, paid for with good money. Of course this was to be for the glory of God! Yet it is said to be against God’s law, to do what is done to so many. The cardinals even say it is enough to condemn such a dottore to the inferno—but, they also hope we will sing for them like the angels. It is for this reason the Holy Father allows, and pays, and looks the other way. Life, you see, is never without sin, even in Roma.”
“But you did not go to Rome?”
“I grew too charming,” Lahti admitted with a laugh. “When my voice was ready, my teachers were offered more by the theaters than by the cardinals. In Italy, you know, young men often play the parts of women in the operas; and of course, no women are allowed in the choirs of the Church—this is the order of the Pope. In the theater, it can be unpleasant, even dangerous, f
or a woman to walk the stage. My own experience has taught me to have sympathy for these brave ladies—indeed, for you all! Especially as I, too, have known the bite of a corset with stays around my chest, and the trouble of painting my face. Perhaps,” he ventured with a smile, “I know these things better than you, madamina?”
Charlotte pressed on, soothed by her companion’s comforting voice, despite the unusual subjects they pursued. “And the Duke? How did you go from Italy to Germany?”
“When the Duke heard me in a theater in Milano, he bought my service for two years, so that I might go and sing in his chapel. To him I was able to sell myself, for I had already earned enough to pay the conservatorio for my training. That, for me, was the beginning of freedom. But madamina, may I ask something of you?”
Charlotte looked to her hands as she replied. “If you like. But I haven’t much of interest to tell.”
“I have heard from our friend Longfellow of your husband. He was what is called in England a Quaker, I believe. But there are no other Quakers here?”
“My husband was a Friend—that is what they most often call one another. And he was raised in Philadelphia, where there are many. Here in Massachusetts, I’m afraid Friends are not entirely welcome, but my own parents taught me to value what comes from within, as they do … as well as what the world can teach us.”
“And, of course, what your good reverend has to say?”
A soft laugh was Charlotte’s answer. “I was not raised in Aaron’s faith,” she added on an impulse, “but I did feel somehow that we were one, from the first.” She was unused to hearing herself speak intimately of her husband; it was especially odd to reveal her feelings to someone who was little more than a stranger! But she had quickly found herself drawn to Gian Carlo Lahte in a way that, if not exactly as it had been with Aaron, was not entirely different.
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