“Get it out, get it out!” Rebecca howled, before letting loose a series of grunts.
Out?
I paused, terrified to conjure what was happening to her, before clarity dawned on me.
The baby.
Rebecca was in labor.
I glanced around the parlor, now unsure of what I ought to do. I was the last person Rebecca would want barging into her confinement room, but I couldn’t leave her to do this alone.
I was spared having to make a choice as Letitia bustled out of the room, her arms full of bloodied linens. She dropped them as she spotted me.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. Her eyes fell to the hatchet, darkening. “I’ll scream. Simon is in the other room. Even if you reach me first, you’d never overpower him.”
My face flushed. I was horrified that she thought so little of me. “I’d never…I wouldn’t…I heard Rebecca and wanted to help.”
“I think your family has done far more than their share of helping her.”
A wave of uneasiness swept over me, and my feet itched to flee. “You know?”
“Anyone with half a brain could figure it out.”
I glanced toward the back room, wondering who else was in the house. “Does Simon?”
She sniffed. “Of course not. My boy may be many things, but gifted with an ounce of sense is not one of them….Have you come to kill it?”
“It?”
She looked at me as if I was impossibly slow. “The baby. I assume your brother sent you to cover up any evidence of their…congress.”
My mouth fell open with horrified surprise. “I’d never!”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I heard her cries—”
“There are a lot of people crying in the world right now. Go bother them instead.”
Rebecca’s screams grew higher in pitch, lengthening until I thought they’d never end, until they’d drown the world in their agony, driving everyone who heard them to madness.
But then, silence.
Until another cry sounded.
Softer.
Smaller.
And then, a laugh of delight.
“She’s perfect!” Rebecca exclaimed weakly.
She.
A girl.
Samuel had a daughter.
“Just perfect,” Rebecca repeated. “Look at her, Simon. She’s just…”
“Blond,” he finished. “She’s blond.”
The baby began fussing as heavy footsteps paced the room.
“Why is she blond?” Simon asked, confusion making him louder, looser, a cornered animal set to strike. “I’ve seen that shade before….Where have I seen it?”
The bedroom door swung open, and I darted from the parlor before he could see me and piece everything together. I was across the yard before he emerged from the confinement room, and I ducked behind the little fence separating the parsonage from absolute chaos.
A thundering boom echoed through the hazy landscape. Another explosion? Or something even worse?
A trio of voices sounded from around the corner, arguing over one another. I pressed myself to the fence, praying the shadows would cover me.
“Who’s that?” one asked, spotting me.
Rough hands grabbed at my arms, hauling me to my feet before I could flee.
“Isn’t that one of the Downing girls?” Matthias Dodson nudged my chin, tilting me toward him for inspection. “I thought the lot of you were at the church, waiting on the parson.”
Despite the perilous edge I was on, hope kindled within me. “Sadie and Merry are at the church?”
Calvin Buhrman wiped a hand over his runny eyes. They were red-rimmed, irritated by the smoke, and nearly swollen shut. “Don’t even know why we need to go through this charade. We all know they did it.”
“My sisters did nothing!” I protested. “Neither did Samuel. You have to release them! Matthias, please!” I pawed desperately at him, clutching at his cloak sleeve. My heart sank as I saw the scarlet Rules embroidered along its edge. He was dressed for Judgment.
“We follow the Rules, now and always,” Matthias said, raising an eyebrow at the tavern owner.
“Where’s Leland? We can’t carry this out without Leland,” Amos McCleary said, swaying unsteadily against his walking stick. It was gummy with drying blood, and I noticed a fine spray of droplets marring the Elder’s face, turning his tufts of white hair to rust. The blood wasn’t his.
“I heard him with Winthrop Mullins a few streets over,” I said, hoping my information would grant me a bit of mercy. “They were arguing….Then there was gunfire.”
Amos puckered his lips, as grim as an undertaker. “We have to assume him dead, then. There’s no time for speculation.” He glanced to Calvin. “Should we appoint Buhrman to take his place?”
Matthias frowned. “That’s not how things are done.”
“We’re past the point of doing things properly,” Amos said. “Look around. There won’t be a town left to save if we don’t act quickly.”
“I accept,” Calvin said, jumping on the opportunity.
“Now, just a minute—”
“No time!” Amos cried, his eyes shining, bright and mad. “I said no time!”
He raised his cane, and brought it down on Matthias, clocking him over the head. Matthias released his grip on me and clutched his bloodied forehead.
“What the devil was that for, old man?”
“I should have done that an age ago. Don’t think I don’t know all about the secret meetings you and Leland held this winter, plotting and planning behind my back. You wanted to edge me out. Usurp my position on the council.”
Matthias snorted, gurgling blood. “You were sick.”
“That’s no excuse!”
“The whole town couldn’t stop to watch you die!”
“I’m not dying now, am I?” Amos struck him again. The carved Founder Tree smashed into Matthias’s face, caving in half his jaw.
Matthias staggered back. The heft of his cloak and the nightmarish haze of the smoke made him appear larger than he was, strange and misshapen, making me recall the drawings in Ephraim’s journals, Minotaurs and horned apes that walked upright through pine barrens, leathery wings on their backs.