She dropped her head into her hands, letting out a long breath, and steadied herself. Her joints ached, she was exhausted, there was a body out back that needed tending to, and her brother was undefended somewhere in the same forest that had spat said body out, but she could handle it. No need to worry the children, nor to think anything might have happened to Arthur, until she had proof. Probably he was fine. He had their father’s silver acorn and the rowan cross. Charlotte didn’t believe they’d protect him, but she didn’t quite not believe it, either, silly as that was.
She mopped off with a kitchen towel. Rain pounded against the window, but through it came a knock at the front door. Wearily, Charlotte went to answer.
It was Kitty Tierney, looking half drowned despite her bumbershoot. Charlotte’s sense of mastery over the situation faltered. She’d intended to inform the family; she had not expected the family to come to her, not realizing she had horrible news to bear them.
“Sorry to bother you, Mrs. Prentice,” Kitty shouted overthe downpour, “especially in light of Ma’s behavior the other day, but this rain has her gout acting up, and we was wondering if you might come to town and take a look.”
Charlotte steeled herself. “We’ve found Miss Brigid.”
Kitty whitened. “Where?”
Briefly, Charlotte explained. When she’d finished, Kitty was silent for several moments. A muscle worked in her jaw; she blinked too much. To Charlotte’s surprise, she said, sounding like she had a cold, “Law, Mrs. Prentice, you’re soaked through. Must be cold as anything. You get yourself some dry clothes and sit by the fire while I send for Pa.”
Charlotte objected, but Kitty fussed over her so that she was soon seated by the fire in a dry shirtwaist and skirt. Arthur’s fussing she could often ignore, if she wanted. He nudged and suggested, brought her a stool or gave her his arm without being asked, but if she insisted hard enough that she was fine, he’d back down. Kitty, however, had the advantage of a firmer personality combined with a sudden personal tragedy that made Charlotte more pliable than she was otherwise inclined to be.
Kitty strode down to the nearest inhabitance and paid its owners’ oldest son a dime to run to the Tierneys’ house and tell her father what had happened, then returned to wait out back by her sister’s body. Jonas enticed Sasha to stay in the kitchen with the promise of biscuits and a game. Despite Kitty’s insistence she remain in her chair, Charlotte put on her coat, took a bumbershoot from the stand by the front door, and went outside to wait with her.
By now, the moss and heather had stretched and grown until it had sewn itself into the ground. Brigid looked like she’d grown from the earth. The growth had crept halfway up her neck. Charlotte shivered, as much from that growth as the cold.
Her knees ached. She shifted from foot to foot, but the ache persisted.
Kitty’s jaw was tight. She dashed a palm across her eyes. She was so young, Charlotte thought. Brigid had been even younger: barely sixteen, dark haired and pink cheeked, a cheerful girl if prone to flights of fancy. Now she was dead, grown over with so much greenery she might’ve been a stone in a long-abandoned churchyard.
“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said.
Kitty shrugged, apparently trying, as was Seacliff’s way, to act as though grief was nothing. Her eyes were red rimmed.
“Ma’s been talking about her like she’s dead, figuring she run off with some boy or another like Mary.” Her voice cracked. “I wish she’d run off like Mary. I don’t care how ill a match it was, neither.”
By the time the Tierneys arrived—in a trap that got stuck in the mud partway up the hill and had to be freed by what looked like half of Seacliff’s population, who had followed despite the rain—only half of Brigid’s forehead and one dark-lashed eye were visible.
Mrs. Tierney wailed at the sight. Her remaining three daughters tried to convince her to wait in the trap, but she stumbled after her husband.
Her wails sounded like the cries of a banshee. Charlotte shivered, then clenched her fists until her nails dug into her palms. Silly to think such a thing. She was uneasy at the death, and the growth, and the proximity of the forest; that was all. The horse hitched to the trap pranced uneasily in its traces.
Determined to be useful, Charlotte opened the shed for Mr. Tierney. He hauled an armful of shovels and spades outside, but the villagers drew back.
“Well?” he said.
“Begging your pardon, Chuck,” one of the fishermen said gruffly, “but it’s bad luck to touch someone what’s been claimed by the wood. Best leave her here. She’ll put the devil in us.”
“Heaven’s sakes,” Charlotte said. “She’ll do no such thing. Dig her up this instant.”
She did not add,Doyou think I want a corpse in my backyard, but it was there at the edge of her mind. Brigid’s body felt like an omen.
Ridiculous,Charlotte kept telling herself. Undoubtedly a trick of the mind, the kind of thing she thought when her body gave way to pain and fatigue and a fog descended upon her brain until she lost all rationality.
Mr. Tierney leaned on a shovel. He was pink cheeked like his daughters but considerably shorter, worn and gray like the other men but less weatherbeaten because he owned the pub.
“We can’t well burn her in all this wet,” he said wearily. “Come on, lads, we’ll be done in a jiff.”
No one responded or moved any closer.
“Please,” Kitty said through gritted teeth, “we just want to bury her.”
Her mother started wailing again. Feeling Kitty and her father might get farther with the villagers if her mother were not there, Charlotte touched Mrs. Tierney’s shoulder.
“Come inside, Mrs. Tierney. You’ll catch your death out here. Kitty said—”
