A Season of Whispers Read online

  Very little was clear to her: the short tunnel and, at the other end, a globe of lamplight illuminating a stage bereft of Lyman or any other player. As her perspective of the room was incomplete, Minerva reasoned they stood just out of view.

  And yet from her vantage, she could now hear the second voice.

  “May I remind you of the bargain the two of us struck.”

  Something about the pronunciation of those whispered words, so deep and heavy winded—almost hissed—sucked the breath from Minerva’s lungs.

  “I’ve already done so much for you. You don’t even understand what you’re asking,” said Lyman. “Do you want more food? Another hog—”

  “No more food. That would be tedious.”

  Mr. Sutton’s John Tyler. Here was a conundrum solved—true to Sutton’s suspicions, the animal had been stolen and butchered. But in the solution lay a thousand more dubieties.

  Minerva heard a sound like muffled thrashing. “I can’t do anything like this.”

  The other voice did not respond. In the silence, Minerva felt every grain of earth beneath her feet grinding like millstones, ready to betray her.

  “I confess, it gladdened me a little to hear what he said. Your appetite is so unchained, an abundance of your kind would be a plague upon the earth.” Lyman’s tone held a controlled spite. “I wonder, what did you eat before I came to Bonaventure? How did you survive?”

  “We supped upon the venery of the greenwood.”

  Lyman grunted in dismissal. “There haven’t been deer or animals in these woods for years—deserts have more life than this farm. No, you hunted the local game into oblivion long ago, or at least anything large enough to sustain you.”

  No reply.

  “I’ll ask again: What did you eat before I arrived? The farm sat uninhabited for decades. I can guess what Garrick did. But what of the years in-between?”

  There was a long sigh. “We supped upon each other.” Almost ashamed. “Maid swallowed gammer, strong compeers supped weak compeers. We separated, each to herself. Until the end.”

  “And you are the last.”

  “We are the strong.”

  Nothing about the sibilant voice metamorphosed except its diction. As a draft horse pulls a plow and then a cart without altering its gait, the voice’s cadence and pronunciation were unaltered. Only its grammar regressed, its vocabulary suddenly becoming almost Biblical, like a fire-and-brimstone preacher who, having read too much scripture, adopted the King James eloquence for his own sermons.

  “So why not leave here and go where you can hunt? Why do you stay?”

  The other voice didn’t answer immediately. “We came hither to sup. For many twelvemonth the supping was good. ‘Struth, but we delved too many tunnels. Too many crumbled. The bowlders shifted and hereupon we were insnared.”

  Lyman said, “So why leave now? Is it because —”

  “We are your compeer. No scaramouch we are. Mr. Doyle and Mr. Myerson, you remember. May I remind you of the bargain.”

  “What do you think I can do against them? You’re asking for me to defend you when —”

  Suddenly a breeze blew down the tunnel onto Minerva’s face, the air sulfurous and rotten. Lyman swore and an instant later the entire basement shook under Minerva’s feet as if the ceiling dropped onto the floor.

  “You now own a full share in our enterprise.” Louder and clearer, the voice much closer than before, its diction once again changing, reversing from the ancient to the modern. “If you don’t, we’re going to have to hurt I’m Minerva.”

  Minerva jammed her hand into her pocket, squeezing the medallion in an effort to constrict the panic within her; and yet some small sound escaped her throat, some infant shriek strangled in its crib.

  “I agree!” Lyman’s voice rose almost hysterically. “I will do as you demand—just, please. I beg of you. Please.”

  In the other cellar, something scraped and flailed, then withdrew. A long moment of silence stretched over the basement as if the two speakers considered each other. In those seconds Minerva became convinced she had been overheard—the pounding of her heart and blood would alert a deaf man.

  “You’re leaving?” said Lyman, cooler now. “How am I supposed to help like this? Who will free me?”

  There was long snarl, a grumbled note of threat. “Who will free me.” The words repeated but the emphasis altered.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  No answer came. A scrabbling noise recessed into silence.

  The window of her eavesdropping was closing, Minerva knew, the sash nearly at the sill. Now was the moment to retreat softly toward the stairs and up and out of the house—and yet iron weighed her limbs and each foot was shod in lead. The lamplight in the other room flickered upon the brick.

  Yet no one approached. She heard more of the soft thrashing, then panting breath.

  Minerva crept glacial inches into the shadows beyond the tunnel mouth, stopping to listen. When she heard silence, she continued, and by slow measures passed through the tunnel. Like a mouse nosing from its hole, she peeked around the corner into the dome-shaped room.

  She saw the open mouth of the cistern and the lamp beside it, its oil burning low. And beside that lay Tom Lyman, alone and unaccompanied by any other speaker, staring straight back at her, his hands and ankles bound with rope.

  THREE

  After breakfast David Grosvenor, scarf wound tight about his throat, passed through the kitchen on his way to the door. He kissed his wife on the cheek as she bent over the stove, beginning her long day’s labor of canning the green beans from the garden. Retta and Nancy wiped and sorted the empty jars on the tabletop. From the cellar emerged little Tilly, running yesterday’s jars to the shelves below, where she arranged them like chessmen beneath the bags of carrots and onions hanging from nails in the floor joists.

  “Mind you don’t bump your head,” he said to her.

  The young woman laughed. “I’ve a few inches to spare,” she said, waving to the empty space above her.

  Outside, Kit stacked firewood from the hand cart along the back wall of the house. “Morning, David!”

  David breathed deep on the stoop. “A good morning to you, Kit. What a fine day.”

  “I reckon it will be warmer this afternoon, with no rain.”

  “I reckon you’re right.” Grosvenor hopped down the short flight and left him to his stacking.

  As he passed the barn, he waved to Bart and Ned, busy at replacing a few boards rotted at the bottom. Brushes and a bucket of paint beside them spelled out the course of their day. Over by the chicken coop, he offered another wave to Flossie as she scattered dried corn among an audience of impatient hens. She smiled and would’ve returned the greeting had her hands not been full.

  In the field along the road, Mal and Virgil and Lena mowed with their scythes, binding the cut grass into sheaves. “Hello, David,” they called as he walked.

  “Hello, hello!”

  Farther, Presley and a handful of men worked clearing a patch of never-used soil, digging at stumps or piling rocks into a second cart. Bessie chewed thoughtfully nearby, waiting to be hitched to a stump sufficiently exposed to daylight. Come spring, Bonaventure would have that much more land to till.

  “Good morning!” Waves all around.

  On the edge of the woods, Abe and Judah each had their hands on a crosscut saw, bucking a fallen timber into eighteen-inch lengths. Nearby lay a splitter and a mound of quartered logs.

  “I just saw Kit,” said Grosvenor to them. “He should be along shortly to refill his cart.”

  “Tell him not to hurry,” said Judah as he wiped a handkerchief across his face.

  Grosvenor chuckled and nodded before plunging into the trees.

  Within the half-hour, David Grosvenor clambered over a boulder field, the heat of the exercise canceling the coldness of the morning. Already his fingers, numb from the long walk through the
woods, warmed with blood as he grabbed and gripped his way across. It was the most barren corner of his farm, that place, the rocks of every size pushed into one wide mound by ice and by time. As always, it was as lifeless and silent as a mausoleum.

  His earlier mood of camaraderie deserted him. Unlike previous visits, dread shadowed this morning’s arrival to the field, echoing its utter bleakness. He recalled Emerson: Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. Grosvenor’s very first exploratory hike to the place had been driven by simple curiosity, by a desire to learn more about the property. There had been subtle hints in some of the property’s papers obtained during the acquisition—suggestions about a graveyard, or the fact that the death of Sed Garrick had never been confirmed by anyone outside the family. That emotion of mystery had been transmuted to wonder and awe by what he’d discovered among the rocks and boulders; and subsequently he always returned with excited anticipation, the same feeling experienced when reading a book he couldn’t set down. For two years he had read the book, learning, ruminating, applying what wisdom he gleaned to Bonaventure and its success—or at least toward keeping it from total failure. Today he reached the back cover.

  For the moment he satisfied himself with not breaking a leg or twisting an ankle as he hopped and scrabbled over the rocks to the field’s epicenter, where the terrain flattened into a kind of tabletop dotted by puddles of rainwater. Its centerpiece was a low cairn of smaller stones some seven or eight feet long. Grosvenor, after catching his breath, began to remove these smaller stones from the pile one at a time, placing them neatly aside. After the work of some minutes, cold sunlight fell upon the face of a granite statue buried beneath the stones.

  Michelangelo would have envied the craftsmanship of the effigy, each hair of the beard and brow distinguished in stone, the lifelike wrinkles carved beside the nose and the corners of the mouth. Yet he might also have questioned the artist’s choice of model, for the statue was not handsome; its face was overly oblong, and a sense of cruelty seemed etched into the wrinkles and hollow cheeks.

  As Grosvenor placed the last stone beside the grave, he clapped the dust off his hands and inhaled the frosted air. “What a glorious morning to be alive,” he said loudly.

  The statue’s eyes snapped open.

  “Enjoy the dawn, Goodman Garrick,” said Grosvenor, “for I’m afraid it’s your last.”

  Like arrowheads the statue’s blue eyes pierced the man standing over it. The lips trembled but refused to separate, as if sealed by glue. Then by slow solvency they parted and a voice like grinding gravel spoke.

  “As I am betrayed, so too shall thou be betrayed.”

  “Perhaps,” said Grosvenor. He sat down on the seat of stones he had manufactured from the cairn. Grosvenor had never hinted at duplicity, had never suggested the thing he was about to do to Garrick; and yet Garrick’s shrewd reading of Grosvenor’s intent didn’t surprise him. He and Garrick had never minced words—Sed Garrick, nearly calcified, could hardly spare the effort. Neither had they ever apologized for the things they’d done. Or, in Grosvenor’s case, would do.

  “I ask you, though,” said Grosvenor, “is this existence so precious to you? I see myself as doing you a favor.”

  “Altruism is foreign to thy soul,” said the statue with glacial patience. “Thou destroyest me to prevent anyone else from finding me as thou didst. To silence me.”

  “There’s some truth in that. Yet ultimately, I act for Bonaventure’s success, which is itself an altruistic act. What I have built will be remembered as a lighthouse in the sea of a dark age.”

  “Whatever thou hast constructed is for thy vanity alone. This trifle of thine will fail and in failing, be forgotten.”

  “I disagree. The gold your pet has brought me from underground was real enough. It has sustained Bonaventure this long—and will continue to, long after the beast has died.”

  “Only a fool would believe its serpent’s mouth, but what care have I? Through it I will be revenged.”

  “I don’t have to believe it,” said a stern Grosvenor. “I didn’t believe it at first. I shall give thee what thou most craves, it said. Gold in New England! Whoever heard of such a thing? But then I remembered stories of gold found in Litchfield County and sometimes panned in the rivers. It makes a kind of sense. The whole of Connecticut is like this,” he waved his hands at the rocks around them, “with merely a plaster coat of topsoil above. If only something could dive beneath the stone, like a whale plunging into the abyss to pluck some treasure from the sea bottom.”

  Garrick was silent, as was his natural state.

  “Do not forget it still needs me. If it expects to get what it wants then it will have to trust me. “Grosvenor regarded Garrick, still half buried in his crude sepulcher. “Mine is a simple transaction, quid pro quo. Your fault lay in asking the impossible. I shall give thee what thou most craves. And you answered, immortality.” He shook his head.

  “Thou thinkst thou understand it better than I do?” Garrick asked. “It delights in its own cleverness. To it there is no difference between boring through earth or boring through a man’s mind. When thou art smote like its tunnels at daybreak, it will take pride at its work.”

  Grosvenor chuckled. “You are nothing if not persistent in your estimation of it. It’s a dumb animal, nothing more. As a hound retrieves a pheasant from the brush, so has it retrieved my reward from deep below. Just as it retrieved the carbuncles that made you what you are today, I might add. But enough.” Grosvenor stood. “I will miss our little debates. There is nothing left you can teach me and yet there’s much harm you could still do, so we must bid farewell. My apprenticeship is concluded.” He bent to pick up one of the larger stones he had been squatting upon.

  “And the lives of those thee imperil? Thou thinkst nothing of them?”

  “Why should I when the lives of those already devoured fail to bother me? They fulfill a greater intention—the realization of Bonaventure. No one among those living in the new house will ever bother to mourn those who died erecting its foundation.” Grosvenor hefted the rock in his hands. “It’s a little rich for you to counsel regret considering your own actions.”

  Something like a groan escaped Garrick’s barely parted lips. “Perchance immortality has granted me time for it,” he said softly.

  “Well,” said Grosvenor, “your time’s run out.”

  With a roar he slammed the stone down on Garrick’s skull, shattering both, but looking at the pieces afterward Grosvenor couldn’t determine which was which.

  •••

  As Grosvenor and Isaac Rose turned the corner of the stone house, Lyman’s hammer paused in mid-swing, hesitating over the head of a six-penny. His eyes studied Rose with a mix of alarm and suspicion, for the other man’s expression contained little of the rugged good nature that had enamored Minerva. Lyman’s voice, meanwhile, was silent, his lips otherwise preoccupied in pinching several nails between them.

  “Ah, there you are,” said Grosvenor. “Mr. Lyman, pleased to meet Mr. Rose.”

  “This is him, huh?” Rose asked Grosvenor.

  “Yes,” said Grosvenor, “I’m afraid so.”

  Lyman pulled the nails from his mouth. “What—”

  Rose socked Lyman fast in the left eye. Lyman sprawled to the ground.

  Lyman rolled on the ground a moment, holding his face and cursing.

  “Listen to the yap on him,” said Rose. “I’ve long believed swearing is a sign of weak character. Here’s proof.”

  Grosvenor watched in disgust and distaste, as if Lyman’s injury was a contagion. “Was that really necessary? You said nothing of violence.”

  “I do apologize,” said Rose, “but I must remind you that my business associates are missing and I believe Caleb here has some knowledge of it.”

  Rose leaned down and grabbed Lyman by the shirt collar, pulling him to his feet, then shoved him against the wall. “Where are Misters Myerson and Doyle? Tell me,
you little wood rat.”

  Lyman held his empty palms up, squinting at Rose through his one good eye. “It’s all right, don’t hit me. You want the money—I’ll give you the money. It’s in the basement.”

  “I don’t want just the money,” said Rose. “Where are the other two? There’s no way a scrubby runt like you could’ve squared off against them.”

  “I’ll show you. The money is in the basement. Let’s all go to the basement.”

  “He may have buried it down there,” said Grosvenor. “I scoured the house not long after his arrival but couldn’t find it.”

  Lyman glared at him but Grosvenor only shrugged. “A thief has no right to complain about burglary.”

  Rose half-carried, half-pushed Lyman ahead of him, his forearm wrapped against Lyman’s throat, into the house and down the stairs and through the tunnel to the cistern room. All the while Rose’s attention stayed sharp for tricks or booby traps or hidden weapons. Grosvenor shuffled behind, carrying a pair of lamps.

  Lyman pointed toward the open cistern. “It’s in there,” he said, “hanging from the top rung.”

  Rose, after confirming the room was empty of weapons or escape routes, threw Lyman to the dirt floor. He cautiously leaned over the side of the pit.

  “Well, I’ll be. There’s a bag hanging here.” Rose grabbed the rope and began pulling it up hand over hand.

  The ends of Rose’s hair danced. Softly at first and then with growing intensity, a breeze blew up the cistern and through the room. Rose stopped his reeling and stood frozen, almost mesmerized. Something far off rumbled, growing louder.

  Grosvenor dropped the lanterns and grabbed Rose by the shoulder. “Get back.”

  With a sound like splitting timber, a great pale monstrosity lunged over the edge of the cistern, its snapping jaws seizing the empty space where Rose had been a second before. It landed on the basement floor, half in and half out of the hole, swinging its reptilian maw like a scythe.

  With a high-pitched shriek, Rose drew a caplock pistol from his coat, but Grosvenor grasped his wrist and pushed it toward the ceiling while waving his other hand in front of the beast’s snout.