And maybe it was a bit for Ellie.
* * *
The ver’ first blow the king gave him,
Moss’ Groves, he struck no more. . . .
* * *
Life had risks. Old Nathan murmured his spells.
He was breathing hard when he stepped back, but he knew he’d been successful. Though the lines of congruence were invisible, they stretched their complex web among the objects on the table and across the forest to the house on the outskirts of Oak Hill. The lines were as real and stronger than the hard steel of a knife edge. The rest was up to Bully Ransden. . . .
Old Nathan began to chuckle.
Ellie stood beside him. She had moved back to the doorway when the murmur of the cunning man’s voice ceased, but she didn’t venture to speak.
Old Nathan grinned at her. “Reckon I’d take a swig uv yer popskull, now,” he said. His throat was dry as a summer cornfield.
“Hit’s done, thin?” the girl asked in a distant tone. She hefted a brown-glazed jug out from the corner by the bed and handed it to the cunning man, then turned again to toss another pine knot on the fire. The coffee pot, forgotten, still hung from the pivot bar.
Old Nathan pulled the stopper from the jug and swigged the whiskey. It was a harsh, artless run, though it had kick enough for two. Bully Ransden’s taste in liquor was similar to Madame Taliaferro’s taste in the men of these parts. . . .
“My part’s done,” the cunning man said. He shot the stopper home again. “Fer the rest, I reckon we’ll jest watch.”
He set the jug down against the wall. “Pick up the mirror,” he explained. “Thet’s what we’ll look in.”
Gingerly, Ellie raised the mirror from the table where it lay among the other paraphernalia. The frame and handle were curly maple finished with beeswax, locally fitted though of the highest craftsmanship. The bevel-edged four-inch glass was old and European in provenance. Lights glinted like jewels on its flawless surface.
Ellie gasped. The lights were not reflections from the cabin’s hearth. They shone through the curtained windows of Francine Taliaferro’s house.
“Won’t hurt ye,” Old Nathan said. “Hain’t airy thing in all this thet could hurt you.”
When he saw the sudden fear in her eyes, he added gruffly, “Not yer man neither. I done told ye thet!”
Ellie brought the mirror close to her face to get a better view of the miniature image. When she realized that she was blocking the cunning man’s view, she colored and held the glass out to him.
Old Nathan shook his head with a grim smile. “You watch,” he said. “I reckon ye earned thet from settin’ up alone the past while.”
Bully Ransden’s horse stood in the paddock beside the Taliaferro house. Madame Taliaferro’s black servant, now wearing loose garments instead of his livery, held the animal by a halter and curried it with smooth, flowing strokes.
“He’s singin’,” the woman said in wonder. She looked over at the cunning man. “I kin hear thet nigger a-singin’!”
“Reckon ye might,” Old Nathan agreed.
Ellie pressed her face close to the mirror’s surface again. Her expression hardened. Lamplight within the Chesson house threw bars of shadow across the curtains as a breeze caressed them.
“She’s laughin’,” Ellie whispered. “She’s laughin’, an’ she’s callin’ him on.”
“Hain’t nothin’ ye didn’t know about,” Old Nathan said. “Jest watch an’ wait.”
The cunning man’s face was as stark as the killer he had been; one time and another, in one fashion or other. It was a hard world, and he was not the man to smooth its corners away with lies.
The screams were so loud that the mule heard them outside and snorted in surprise. Francine Taliaferro’s voice cut the night like a glass-edged saw, but Bully Ransden’s tenor bellows were louder yet.
The servant dropped his curry comb and ran for the house. Before he reached it, the front door burst open. Bully Ransden lurched out onto the porch, pulling his breeches up with both hands.
The black tried to stop him or perhaps just failed to get out of the way in time. Ransden knocked the servant over the porch rail with a sideways swipe of one powerful arm.