“I will not be treated like this!”
“And what exactly do you plan to do about it?” Philemon asked, grabbing at the rope and tussling him about.
Matthias stepped forward, stealing the paper from Leland. With a strong, commanding voice, he read the rest of the accusation.
“Shortly after these threats were made, fields outside the Downings’ farm were found ablaze, the fire purposefully set. Sarah Downing and her unborn child were gravely injured.” He paused, fixing his steely gaze on Cyrus. “You, sir, stand accused of arson and attempted murder.”
Cyrus’s mouth fell open. “I—what?”
Matthias folded the paper and pocketed it in the deep shadows of his cheerless cloak. “I don’t need to remind you that the punishment for disturbing our security and peace is quite high.”
“Just one minute—” Cyrus started, struggling to his feet. “I certainly didn’t mean for Sarah to be hurt.”
“So you did set the fire?” Joseph asked, leaping onto the words Cyrus had left unsaid.
“Of course not! I only meant—”
“We heard you last night,” someone near the back of the room said. “Berating and cursing the Downings. The whole tavern heard it.”
“If you knew the story—the whole story—you’d understand,” Cyrus hollered. “You’d even join in!”
“Tell us, then!” the voice cried out.
Others joined in, shouting for details.
Cyrus looked around the room, his eyes searching the crowd. They lit upon someone in the back and lingered. He popped his jaw to the side, deep in thought.
I knew without looking that it was Rebecca. I braced myself for the ugliness to come. To save himself, he’d expose her secret—Sam’s secret—and the crowd’s anger would shift. It wouldn’t take much to set off a blaze, just a little spark of indignation, and the whole town would be in an uproar. It would be her ruining.
Sweat trickled into his eyes, and Cyrus blinked heavily, but his focus stayed unwaveringly on his daughter. After a moment, he shook his head.
“I wasn’t anywhere near those fields,” he said, and I dared to let out the breath I’d been holding. Was he truly going to keep silent about Rebecca and the baby?
“I’m not a friend of the Downings, it’s true, but I’d never go after another man’s land.” Cyrus let out a derisive sniff. “Hell, I wouldn’t step foot on that property if it held the bridge to Heaven and I heard the angels of the Rapture blowing their horns.”
Sam stepped forward, balling a fist. “You barged into our yard, on the day of my sister’s birthday, swinging punches.”
“In retaliation for—”
“Retaliation?” Samuel grabbed my wrist, pulling me alongside him. He fumbled at my cuff, snapping off buttons in his haste to expose the series of purple fingerprints bruised into the soft flesh of my arm. “What has my sister ever done to you?”
The room, which had fallen into a hush at the volleyed accusations, now broke into outraged chaos. Several men pushed their way to the front of the Gathering House, apparently ready to come to my defense with violence of their own.
Jonas Marjanovic, a young man who’d been a grade ahead of me in school—and hopelessly sweet on me, Sam had teased—reached the front first and slugged his meaty fist into the side of Cyrus’s jaw. For the second time in less than a day, teeth flew out of his quavering lips, knocked free by the blow.
Everyone gasped, mania sobering as the very tangible evidence of their anger landed at the feet of the Elders.
After a moment of stunned silence, Cyrus spat blood into Joseph Abernathy’s face, and whatever bit of decorum the room had momentarily mustered evaporated.
“Untie these ropes at once and let me defend myself! This isn’t a fair fight!”
“Neither is picking on a young lady half your size,” Jonas said, getting in a second strike to Cyrus’s gut before his brother pulled him away.
“You’ve got to stop,” the younger Marjanovic said, unable to keep his grasp on Jonas. “He’s headed for the Gallows anyway. He’s not worth the split knuckles.”
The Gallows.
I stilled at its mention.
It was a small stage erected in the center of Amity Falls—nothing more than a wooden platform, really—and though it had only ever been used once before, its presence was a daily reminder to us to keep our eyes on God, the good of the Falls, and the Rules.
Decades ago, a skirmish had erupted between two neighbors over property lines. It would have gone on for years as petty bickering, trotted out at church picnics and harvests, had it not been for the vein of gold discovered running right alongside the boundary. Sensible men would have mined it together and split the profits equally, but Cotton Danforth and Elazar Downing had been anything but sensible.
They fought endlessly over that stake of gold pebbles. The first Elders ruled in favor of my great-grandfather, giving the Downings the land on which the vein lay. That night Cotton Danforth snuck into his neighbor’s farmhouse, a gleaming scythe at his side. Finding him deep in sleep, Cotton whacked off both of Elazar’s hands. Ellerie, my great-grandmother and namesake, woke covered in her husband’s blood, and later recounted to the Elders that Cotton had danced a mad jig about the room, rejoicing that his nemesis was no longer capable of collecting the gold himself. She said he wasn’t even aware that Elazar was already dead.
As quick as a wink, the Gallows were built and Cotton Danforth was sent out as its first victim. The Elders declared that the Gallows remain as a grave warning to deter others who’d seek to harm their fellow men.
“What did you say?” Cyrus asked, noticeably cowed.
“You stand accused of attempted murder,” Matthias Dodson said, voice booming as he attempted to bring order to the room. “Where else would you end up?”
“You can’t be serious,” Parson Briard scoffed. The crowd shifted, leaving a clear path between him and the Elders.
“You’ve no say in the matter, Clemency,” Amos said, a touch of warning in his voice.
“I should think I do. I should think we all do. A man’s life hangs in the balance. Who are you to cast judgment upon him?”
“We’ve been charged with the power to—”
“Power,” the parson sneered. “And what of mercy? What of grace?”
Matthias Dodson shook his head. “Why don’t you write a sermon on it and leave us to our work.”
“I will not!”