Having missed supper last night, I woke with a complaining belly and went out to gather eggs. They hadn’t been collected in several days, and I found nearly a dozen in the straw of the nest boxes. Then I made eggs-on-foam, which required whipping the whites and spreading them as a bed for the yolks before baking—a recipe I’d learned from Mrs. Moyle.
Once I’d eaten, I started onIn the Leavesagain, but after the last reading, I found I had no patience for it. The candle for “finding your way in the dark,” which I was certainly doing, and not very well, and the cross for “trouble on its way,” delivered as promised, and with a vengeance. I wasn’t sure what the point of the readings was if they onlytold you things you’d look back on the next day and say, “It all makes sense now.”
Yet by the time I’d boiled water and brewed the leaves, I found myself pouring my tea unstrained. Maybe eventually you got better at making sense of thingsbeforethey happened?
This time when I performed the little ritual, I didn’t have to look very hard—a large and clear circle appeared inside the rim to one side of the handle. Mrs. Rochester listed several meanings for circles but only one for a ring, which was how I had read the pattern when I first looked at it.
Marriage.And by the position in the cup, one that would come soon. Which would have to mean it was someone else’s marriage, but whose? Jack’s? I had always assumed he would marry one day, but to my knowledge he’d never even had a sweetheart. How could he, when he spent all his time at the mine or the tavern? Mrs. Moyle? That seemed more likely, yet I couldn’t believe she’d hide a courtship from me.
Sighing, I plunked the cup down and gathered up some stale scones, left from when Mrs. Moyle was here, to carry out to the hens. As I was crumbling them on the ground, I heard someone coming around the side of the cottage.
“Miss?”
Jeremy, the young poacher, appeared. He grinned and held up a fat rabbit. “Got one.”
I smiled. “So I see. You gave me a bit of a jump.”
He ducked his head. “Sorry, miss. Only you told me to come to the back door.”
“I did indeed. Sixpence, I think we agreed?”
He ducked again.
“I’ll be right back.”
I went inside for his coin, plucking it from an old chemist’s tin that I kept in a drawer in my worktable. Going back out, I said to him, “I agreed to buy this one from you, but I won’t buy another until theycatch whatever is attacking people on the heath. You boys have no business being out there until then, you hear?”
Looking down, he said, “Mr. Tregarrick—he already told us to keep off.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You spoke to him?”
“Aye.”
“Good.” I held back a smile. “Gave you a fright, did he?”
Now a shrug. “The other fellows maybe, on account of him creeping up on us, and those funny spectacles. But not me.”
I couldn’t keep the corners of my lips down, but luckily Jeremy was still staring at the ground. “I see. What did Mr. Tregarrick say to you?”
“That it was too dangerous, and if we didn’t clear off, he’d fetch the constable.” Finally he looked up. “But he said we could come back when it was safe.”
“That was very kind of him.” If memory served, Jeremy’s father was Abel Martin, who’d died about a year ago. I imagined the boy poached because his family needed the meat. “I tell you what—you take the sixpence, but keep the rabbit, since you won’t get one for a while. Then you bring me one when it’s safe again. All right?”
He gave me an eager nod. “Thank ’ee, miss.” Then he frowned. “Some folks are saying it’s Mr. Tregarrick going after people on the heath, but I don’t see how it could be.”
I studied him more closely. “Why do you say so?”
“Well, we hardly ever see him outside that black chapel of his. I suppose he could get up to murdering at night, when no one’s looking.” His eyes dipped to the bandage around my neck. “Do you think he is?”
“I don’t, Jeremy. Mr. Tregarrick is going to try to find whois, though. Have you ever seen anything strange out there? On the heath, or in that wood where you set your snares?”
“Nay, miss. But my granfer used to say some kind of devil lived there.”
“You didn’t let that frighten you, either?”
He reached up to touch his chest—acrosswas just visible between two buttons of his shirt. It looked like it had been made from a couple of small nails bound together with string. “Nay, miss.”
“Well, here you go.” I handed him the coin, and he slung the rabbit over his shoulder. “You mind Mr. Tregarrick and run on home, now.”
