by Dana Cameron
As for describing what we were doing, the guides usually hit the mark pretty well. Fee did throw out a couple of clunkers about what we could expect to find: furniture, clothes, meals still intact on plates. After I tried to correct her a couple of times between tours, she eventually just didn’t bother anymore. I did tell the crew to put aside a marked bag containing the “artifact du jour,” so that the guides could show the visitors without interrupting us.
Taking all the guides’ narratives together, it wouldn’t be such a bad picture of life on the site; one at a time, though, they left me with the idea that people were all leaving the site with a skewed idea of the history of the house. I’d heard worse, though, and was pleased that this was a place where the guides really took an interest in the past as something more than an amusement park.
Apparently Daniel thought so too. He was leaning over the sawhorse, taking us all in. “Wonderful what uses the past is put to, isn’t it Emma?”
“I suppose so.” But I got the impression that he was being sarcastic. “You don’t think people should learn from the past?”
“Oh, I do, I do indeed. It’s just that everyone who works at the house seems to enshrine history, and never learn from it. I say you learn from your mistakes, and then forge on ahead. Chuck the rest of it and move on with life.”
“Pretty funny sentiments, for someone on the Historical Society board, don’t you think, Daniel?”
“Not at all. It’s the perfect place for a little shakeup, to insert the thin end of the wedge. If I had my way, there’d be a whole lot less of Fee’s way of thinking, or Perry’s for that matter, and a whole lot more of Ted’s. Use history to teach people about how to get along with each other, not as a monument to one family.”
“I liked what Ted said too, but he didn’t seem to mind including a discussion of the Chandlers along with the rest of it. It is their house, after all.”
“Well, never doubt that Ted does everything to a very specific end. He thinks of himself as an agent provocateur, a political creature.”
“Like you?”
Daniel laughed. “Ah, he’ll never be the schemer I am. Take care, Emma.”
“See you Daniel.” I checked my watch. “That’s lunch, guys.”
I was glad to imagine that things were back to normal by this time. It was a busy day, for everyone, with record numbers showing up to the house, and the foundation now fully exposed. The puzzle there was that it was clearly not the brick foundation to a house, as I’d thought there must be, but seemed to be a much less substantial structure. The uneven surface that we were uncovering also puzzled me; we were obviously still above the charred remains, and those were incorporated into some of the holes, making mottled fill. All I could tell was that it was done by human agency.
It was while we were eating that I noticed something unusual. I was keeping an eye on everyone, trying to gauge how their morale was, when I noticed that Bucky wasn’t at all engaged with the banter as she had been the day before. She was sitting next to me, peering intently at one of the brightly colored flowers at the border between the beds and the lawn where we were eating. It soon became apparent that she wasn’t so interested in the flower itself, but its occupant, a fat bee that was gathering pollen with workmanlike diligence. My sister’s stillness was what made me remark the scene; it wasn’t the laziness that she was so fond of, it was a focused tranquility that separated her from the outside world. Even when she raised her hand, it was almost meditative, and as I watched she slowly, with infinite gentleness, stroked the soft hairs on the bee’s back. Before I turned away to answer Rob’s question about our strategy for that afternoon, I saw her examine the yellow grains of pollen on her finger with the same deliberateness. I was glad for the interruption, reluctant that anyone else should see her or break the moment for her.
“Well, I think that after lunch, we’ll take some photos of what we’ve got exposed so far and then move Meg and Bucky over to start the next set of units. You ready for the big time, Bucks? A unit of your own?”
“Sure, no problem.” The words were flat; the magic of the moment with the bee was gone.
“Okay, good. Meg’ll be there if you have any questions and she’s the one to watch for a good example.”
“I think I can get a good start today.”
We looked at the map and considered the tree line that marked the edge of the Chandler House property and the now-empty Mather House. The units would go there to see if we could pick up anything that might have marked the boundary, or possibly identify any outbuildings associated with the landing. “Find me something good,” I finished.
“What do you want, as long as I’m taking orders?” Meg asked.
“Another foundation would be good, but make it early. Pre-Chandler European, if you want.”
Meg pretended to write down a lunch order. “Pile of old rocks, hold the elites.”
“I’ll be back around in a bit to see what you’re up to.”
I tucked the map into my notebook and we walked back to the main part of the dig, where quite a crowd had gathered. They were staring at the now-exposed brick foundation, too small for a house structure, too large and too close to the main part of the house for a shed. There was a nearly three-foot break in the line of bricks, which looked as though a doorway belonged there. There were still those irregular pits, spaced around the edge of the features and throughout the interior of the brick perimeter.
“Emma, can we get any shots from the upstairs windows?” Rob asked. “An overhead shot might give us a little better picture of what’s going on here.”
I looked up, shading my eyes. “I checked with Fee, and the two windows that we could use are blocked by pieces of furniture. I’ll try to talk her into it, but they are covered with things, and it would be a production to try and move them. It’s worth the effort though, you’re right.”
It took us a good forty-five minutes of fiddling with the photographic work but I knew it would be worth it in the end, once we had the foundation recorded. I just knew that with a little work on the microstratigraphic level, we’d be able to say something interesting about what was going on here directly after the fire.
Bray Chandler wandered by the site right after we finished. Characteristically, after a grunted “hello,” he stood and stared without a word, not asking questions, not offering insights. Remembering the discussion about Nicholas Chandler, I told Bray about what I’d seen in the records at the library.
“So I think that if you went back to England, to poke around the collections there, you’d be able to clear it up for sure. But it doesn’t look like Nicholas was Margaret’s son to me. It might be a family of Chandlers unrelated to Margaret and Matthew, but I doubt that.”
He was quiet for a long time, and maybe I’d had him figured wrong; he was just taking things in, considering them. His next words were a surprise to me, though. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
I laughed. “I won’t be taking out an ad in the paper, if that’s what you mean, but, yes, it will go into my report.”
But whatever thought I had that he was teasing me was incorrect. “You can’t possibly publish that! There’s…there’s no earthly reason to!”
I could feel the smile leaving my face as I realized he was far from being intrigued or amused. “Except for the fact that it’s what I’m able to say at this moment is the truth. It’s part of my work and I’m professionally obliged to publish it.”
The garden gnome began to get agitated. “It’s a detail…that’s all, a minor, unsubstantiated detail that can’t possibly make one scrap of difference to anyone.”
It certainly seems to be more than a scrap of difference to you, I thought. “Right, so why get so upset about it?”
“It…it would upset my mother,” he said. “She…she shouldn’t like to think there had been any…irregularity in the family history.”
I almost laughed again, that was so weak. “I’m sure that it wouldn’t bother her. I mean,
this was nearly three hundred years ago. Most people in the older generations are tickled to find that there’s some juicy colonial scandal in their past; it’s just fun to tell about and it doesn’t hurt anyone—”
“It could hurt me,” he muttered.
“—and we don’t even know that there is a scandal. I’ll keep researching and you never know. It might be a bureaucratic error, it might be a former marriage of Matthew’s that I don’t know about yet—”
“There was no former marriage; it doesn’t appear in any genealogy I’ve ever seen.”
“—or it might be a cousin who was adopted into the family. There are plenty of perfectly ordinary reasons for it to be there.”
“But there may not be. Perhaps your professional obligations might keep you from printing things you can’t verify.”
“Are you kidding me? Theory accounts for ninety percent of our published material.” But another attempt on my part to add levity to the situation was a little like trying to put out a fire with kerosene.
“You’re not taking this seriously. You have no idea of the ramifications of this.”
I sighed. “Then tell me.”
All he said was, “It’s personal. Deeply personal. And it will do a lot of harm.”
“Well, if you tell me how….”
“This is really none of your business and I advise you to keep your nose out of it.”
Bray stomped off toward the house, just as Ted came around the corner.
“He’s in danger of breaking his contract with his wife,” Ted whispered, as if that would explain everything. It was abundantly clear that he’d been listening in to my discussion with Bray. I admit that made my answer snappish.
“Contract? What could anything that happened three centuries ago have anything to do with—?”
“They have an agreement. She has the money, he has the name. A name that opens a lot of doors around here, and that is very handy to her business. She’s one of them venture capitalists. She funds his whatdoyoucallit, lifestyle, and he makes her a part of the family.”
“That sounds a little clinical to me. I mean, you don’t have to get married to do that.”
“It’s handy to be married, sometimes,” he said cryptically. “The other part of the agreement is that he keeps his nose clean, and that is where he’s been having a little trouble lately. Can’t keep away from the ladies. And if any scandal should reach the ears of Mrs. Bradley Chandler…”
“He would lose his meal ticket. And here I am providing him with another reason, however slight, to worry about that.” It was a matter of one scandal, however remote and insignificant, reminding him of his own peccadilloes.
“There you are. I mean, he could take a little more care. It’s almost as though he wants to get caught.”
“He probably regrets his decision now, I bet.”
Ted shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. He’s not that complicated a person; he’s probably just trying to have his cake and eat it too.”
“Thanks, Ted.”
I mulled that over as I went to take advantage of one of the principal amenities of the Chandler House dig: the indoor toilet. I had to admit that, as a site, the Chandler House did provide some pretty spectacular perks. For one thing, there was no poison ivy and little to worry about in the way of ticks; the lawns and grounds were always kept carefully manicured, thanks to the good offices of Jerry and company, for the visitors. The view of the water was superb and the gardens around us in the back of the house made for some first-rate lunchtime lounging, although we were always careful to keep our sloppy selves a bit off the beaten path. But having a clean indoor bathroom at our disposal really made a nice change of pace.
The toilet was, however, an afterthought in the old house, wedged in under the staircase in the hallway and next to Aden’s office. You had to be something of a contortionist to use it, and it wasn’t made any easier by the fact that I was as usual festooned with various tools stuck on and in my belt and crammed into my pockets. Still, it was with a good deal of satisfaction that, when I washed my hands prior to peeing—a habit borne of many years working near poison ivy—there was actually some genuine dirt on them. This meant that I’d actually spent some time messing around with the stratigraphy, my nose in the dirt, and that meant today was a good day.
I was just sticking my trowel back into my belt when I heard Aden’s voice right behind me. I jumped, but then realized as I bumped my head that there was barely room in the bathroom for me, and that his voice was being carried along by one of the air ducts.
“—pretty sure we would have seen the money by this time, after our last little conversation, Fee.”
“Aden, I don’t know what the problem is. I can’t understand—”
“But I think I do understand, Fee. We both know, don’t we, that you’ve been short of cash lately? Times are difficult and you told me yourself that your investments went the way of the dodo. You’ve had to dip into capital, as we say, haven’t you? Only there isn’t so much of that either, is there? This job means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”
I could barely make out Fee’s voice. “You know it does.”
“It would be difficult for an aging…person…such as yourself to find another job, especially in this economy, wouldn’t it?”
The strain in Fee’s voice was audible through the ducts. “Aden, what do you want from me? You know I didn’t take it and you’ve already—”
“You know what I want. I want my money back.”
“It’s not your money, Aden.”
“But you know, I’ve come to think of it that way. You’re the one with the books, you find out where the money could have gone. By, shall we say, Friday? Yes, I think so. I think that would do nicely.”
Fee said something that I couldn’t make out. Aden laughed.
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d have known that word, Fee. But I’m sorry to say, it’s not the first time that it’s been applied to me. Friday then. Or we start going through official channels.”
I was about to duck out of the bathroom when I heard his door slam. Fee was hurrying back to her office. I waited another moment before I quietly let myself out of the bathroom and sidled past Fee’s closed door.
I was still looking behind me, making sure that no one had noticed my too-hasty exit from the building, when I bumped into something. Ted was standing right behind me. I gasped.
He took my arm and quickly led me back around toward the front of the house, away from where the students were working on the units, away from where we had collided, which was right under Aden’s window.
“That was quite an earful, now, wasn’t it?” His eagerness made me queasy.
“I…I wasn’t—”
“I know. But maybe you should. There’s a lot you don’t know about what’s going on around here, and maybe you should know.”
I smoothed out a wrinkle in my sleeve, putting as much as my feeling about intentional eavesdroppers into my reply as I could manage. “I’m sure it’s nothing to do with me.”
“Sure, but wouldn’t you rather know why you went for an unexpected swim yesterday?”
I eyed him distrustfully. “And just what do you know about that?”
“Only that it happened. Anything else, well, they’re just my theories. If you want to hear them, and it might be good for you to do so, come have a beer with me after work and I’ll fill you in. It will only take a minute. I’ll tell you about some of the history the Historical Society doesn’t trot out for the public.”
Chapter 10
“I’LL SEE,”WAS ALL I COULD MANAGE. I WANTED TO get back to work, away from these people who, for some reason, were so eager to reveal each other’s habits to me.
Ted was trying not to look eager at my halfhearted response. “If you’re interested, I’ll be by my car about five.” He left.
I scurried back to the site, trying to gather my thoughts. I gnawed on a pen cap, which didn’t do much to quiet my pounding heart, and neither did
what I saw next. Perry Taylor was walking along the lawn with Daniel Voeller, deep in conversation. Whatever it was must have been fairly intense, because at one point, Daniel paused and looked around before he began talking again, low and close to Perry. I wondered whether Perry was aware of how tightly her fingers were wrapped in the fabric of her skirt. They parted, neither looking entirely satisfied.
Daniel walked toward the house, and I jumped a little when our eyes met. I acted as if I had been staring into the distance and then waved at him as if only recognizing him now. I could feel my cheeks warm, and it had nothing to do with the sun; both of us knew that I had seen him and Perry.
“Meeting with Aden,” he said as he walked past me to the house.
“Have fun,” I said, and then asked Meg a quick and unnecessary question about her progress, just to give me some cover. It was then that I decided I would go see Ted after work.
Meg and I had been able to finish marking out the new units and taking the sod, when Bucky was free to start up. Meg described what she was seeing so far—no intrusion of the twentieth-century features below the surface, and the apparent lack, so far, of anything but late-eighteenth-century materials.
“Meg, would you come with me? I want to have a look at the insurance map. Buckwheat, why don’t you finish up the paperwork?”
There was no response from my sister; she was already hunched over her clipboard, closing out her notes on the first part of the site she’d worked on. She was taking to the habits of fieldwork as if she hadn’t just started learning about it three days ago.
Meg and I walked out a bit, toward the fence that marked the edge of the site near the cliff. “I just want to make sure you know this isn’t a baby-sitting job. I want you to get a quick look at this area, and I know you can juggle that and keep an eye on Bucky, if she needs it.”
