I was puzzled, and it must have shown. “Let us speak no more of it, then. How shall we explain to the ministers the death of Goody Carnegie?”
Jacob walked to the window and opened the shutter. “We’ll lay her in that hollow below her own yard, by her child. Found dead. Buried. We’ll ask them to come pray for her but I doubt any will. Town’ll be relieved. I am, too. It is no good to have much exchange with one taken to fairies and there’s naught to be gained by too much truth.”
“And where are those men? Did you bury them? What if someone finds them?”
Eadan-Cullah said, “Someone will find them, to be sure. I put them in a field, the three propped as if they died there. Built a fire between their feet and put it out. Set out their packs for a nice supper. Put a dagger in the first man’s hands and an old axe in that sea captain’s. Wasn’t one I use, just something I found in a river. It will look as if a terrible fight took place between the men, the one still owning his head being the winner, though he bled to death with MacAlister’s gold chain in his hand. Found that in a river, too. Someone will find them and sort it all out and be quite happy to report that is exactly what happened, though he will not remember seeing a gold chain. He’ll be paid well for his honest testimony.”
I rubbed my hands together in clean water. “You mean someone who finds the dead men will steal it? And you set it there as a trap to keep him quiet? Who would steal from the dead?”
Jacob only smiled.
“You have a low opinion of mankind, sir.”
“Well earned. There’s more to our tale. I stole the Scottish Stone. Even the knave who has it now, on these shores, would not admit to that. The wight claims to be a Templar and he’s hidden it in a glade on a long island to the south. Now we have opened our confidence to you. Can we expect your word that our secret will be safe in your hands?”
“My pa was a Jacobite and a Mason. My ma was a Radclyffe and a Jacobite. I worry for the disposition of my soul, the way my talent for telling only part of the truth has flourished under practice. You have nothing to fear, sir. I have carried secrets my life through.” I knew as good as daylight that they, too, held my life and repute in their hands, for they could easily denounce me through the countryside as a wench who had bedded the two, and I would be from then on as outcast as any leper.
I prepared us a meal, my mind busily stirring the previous conversation. Cullah and Jacob sat by the fire in silence until I called them. Though they had built the chimney up from the bottom level, at one end, a second wall made a safe place, with its own exit to the rafters overhead, from whence a person in need could make their way to the outside, and a cunning little stairway that looked for all the world like one of the beams. I stood at the top of it and looked down. Every step had its wee niche. I could escape to the outside, just as Pa and Ma had made in the wall of Patience’s room.
Cullah had created furnishings I never expected, two items referred to in this area as settles, which, when placed before the fire had the effect of collecting the warmth and keeping it by the persons sitting there. They needed cushions, which I would have to make later. There was a table, two small stools which might have several uses, and a cupboard built into the wall by the chimney. He raised a cloth to show me another. A chest, carved all about the four legs and front, with my name cut into the top, decorated with two geese or hens, some bird I dared not guess for fear of hurting Cullah’s feelings.
“It is lovely,” I said.
“Miss Talbot, you are the blithest maid I have ever known.” His voice was lower, silken, and gentle. “I would that you kept it for a marriage chest.”
“Well, then. It would make a fine one. I have no marriage in mind, but I suppose someday that will come. I will take it with me to Jamaica.”
A parade of emotions traveled his face then, and at last he turned away, speaking to the fireplace. “We cannot keep living here. Our work is finished, though I’m glad we waited this day.”
“Lady Spencer was generous. It is a nice house,” I said with my eyes on Jacob.
He looked forlorn. “If you leave it, now we have built it, what will become of it then, lass? We cannot own it. I have it that Goody Carnegie left the whole of it to you.”
“I cannot keep this house and land. It is not mine. I have a home in Jamaica.”