Текст книги "An echo in the bone"
Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon
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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 75 страниц)
He wondered idly whether he might be able to sneak into the junior officers’ quarters and pound Chinless to a pulp before vanishing into the wilderness like a red Indian. Need he wear a disguise? Not if he waited ’til after dark, he decided. Ned might suspect, but couldn’t prove anything if he couldn’t see William’s face. Was it cowardly to attack Ned in his sleep, though? Well, that was all right; he’d douse Chinless with the contents of his chamber pot to wake him up before setting in.
A tern swept by within inches of his head, startling him out of these enjoyable cogitations. His movement in turn startled the bird, which let out an indignant shriek at finding him not edible after all and sailed off over the water. He scooped up a pinecone and flung it at the bird, missing by a mile, but not caring. He’d send a note to Richardson this very evening, saying yes. The thought of it made his heart beat faster, and a sense of exhilaration filled him, buoyant as the tern’s drift upon the air.
He rubbed sand off his fingers onto his breeches, then stiffened, seeing movement on the water. A sloop was tacking to and fro, just offshore. Then he relaxed, recognizing it—that villain Rogers.
“And what are you after, I should like to know?” he muttered. He stepped out onto the sandy edge of the shore and stood amid the marram grass, fists on his hips, letting his uniform be seen—just in case Rogers had somehow missed the sight of William’s men strung all down the shore, reddish dots crawling over the sandy dunes like bedbugs. If Rogers had heard about the smuggler’s cache, too, William meant to make sure Rogers knew that William’s soldiers had rights over it.
Robert Rogers was a shady character who’d come slinking into New York a few months before and somehow wangled a major’s commission from General Howe and a sloop from his brother, the admiral. Said he was an Indian fighter, and was fond of dressing up as an Indian himself. Effective, though: he’d recruited men enough to form ten companies of nattily uniformed rangers, but Rogers continued to prowl the coastline in his sloop with a small company of men as disreputable-looking as he was, looking for recruits, spies, smugglers, and—William was convinced—anything that wasn’t nailed down.
The sloop came in a little closer, and he saw Rogers on deck: a dark-skinned man in his late forties, seamed and battered-looking, with an evil cast to his brow. He spotted William, though, and waved genially. William raised a civil hand in reply; if his men found anything, he might need Rogers to carry the booty back to the New York side—accompanied by a guard to keep it from disappearing en route.
There were a lot of stories about Rogers—some plainly put about by Rogers himself. But so far as William knew, the man’s chief qualification was that he had at one point attempted to pay his respects to General Washington, who not only declined to receive him but had him slung unceremoniously out of the Continentals’ camp and refused further entry. William considered this evidence of good judgment on the part of the Virginian.
Now what? The sloop had dropped her sails, and was putting out a small boat. It was Rogers, rowing over on his own. William’s wariness was roused at once. Still, he waded in and grabbed the gunwale, helping Rogers to drag the boat up onto the sand.
“Well met, Lieutenant!” Rogers grinned at him, gap-toothed but self-confident. William saluted him briefly and formally.
“Major.”
“Your fellows looking for a cache of French wine, by chance?”
Damn, he’d already found it!
“We had word of smuggling activities taking place in this vicinity,” William said stiffly. “We are investigating.”
“’Course you are,” Rogers agreed amiably. “Save you a bit of time? Try up the other way …” He turned, lifting his chin toward a cluster of dilapidated fishing shacks a quarter mile in the distance. “It’s—”
“We did,” William interrupted.
“It’s buried in the sand behind the shacks,” Rogers finished, ignoring the interruption.
“Much obliged, Major,” William said, with as much cordiality as he could manage.
“Saw two fellows a-burying it last evening,” Rogers explained. “But I don’t think they’ve come back for it yet.”
“You’re keeping an eye on this stretch of shore, I see,” William observed. “Anything in particular you’re looking for? Sir,” he added.
Rogers smiled.
“Since you mention it, sir, I am. There’s a fellow walking round asking questions of a damnable inquisitive sort, and I should very much like to talk to him. If might be as you or your men should spot the man … ?”
“Certainly, sir. Do you know his name, or his appearance?”
“Both, as it happens,” Rogers replied promptly. “Tall fellow, with scars upon his face from a gunpowder explosion. You’d know him if you saw him. A rebel, from a rebel family in Connecticut—Hale is his name.”
William experienced a sharp jolt to the midsection.
“Oh, you have seen him?” Rogers spoke mildly, but his dark eyes had sharpened. William felt a stab of annoyance that his face should be so readable, but inclined his head.
“He passed the customs point yesterday. Very voluble fellow,” he added, trying to recall the details of the man. He’d noticed the scars: faded welts that mottled the man’s cheeks and forehead. “Nervous; he was sweating and his voice shook—the private who stopped him thought he had tobacco or something else concealed, and made him turn out his pockets, but he hadn’t any contraband.” William closed his eyes, frowning in the effort of recall. “He had papers…. I saw them.” He’d seen them, all right, but had not had the chance to examine them himself, as he’d been concerned with a merchant bringing in a cartload of cheeses, bound—he said—for the British commissary. By the time he’d done with that, the man had been waved on.
“The man who spoke with him …” Rogers was peering down the shore toward the desultory searchers in the distance. “Which is he?”
“A private soldier named Hudson. I’ll call him for you if you like,” William offered. “But I doubt he can tell you much about the papers; he can’t read.”
Rogers looked vexed at this, but nodded for William to call Hudson anyway. Thus summoned, Hudson verified William’s account of the matter, but could recall nothing regarding the papers, save that one of the sheets had had some numbers written upon it. “And a drawing, I think,” he added. “Didn’t notice what it was, though, sir, I’m afraid.”
“Numbers, eh? Good, good,” Rogers said, all but rubbing his hands together. “And did he say whence he was bound?”
“To visit a friend, sir, as lived near Flushing.” Hudson was respectful, but looked curiously at the ranger; Rogers was barefoot and dressed in a pair of ratty linen breeches with a short waistcoat made of muskrat fur. “I didn’t ask the friend’s name, sir. Didn’t know as it might be important.”
“Oh, I doubt it is, Private. Doubt the friend exists at all.” Rogers chuckled, seeming delighted at the news. He stared into the hazy distance, eyes narrowed as though he might distinguish the spy among the dunes, and nodded slowly in satisfaction.
“Very good,” he said softly, as though to himself, and was turning to go when William stopped him with a word.
“My thanks for the information regarding the smuggler’s cache, sir.” Perkins had overseen the digging whilst William and Rogers were interviewing Hudson, and was now chivying a small group of soldiers along, several sand-caked casks rolling bumpily down the dunes before them. One of the casks hit a hard spot in the sand, bounced into the air, and landed hard, rolling off at a crazy angle, pursued with whoops by the soldiers.
William flinched slightly, seeing this. If the wine survived its rescue, it wouldn’t be drinkable for a fortnight. Not that that was likely to stop anyone trying.
“I should like to request permission to bring the seized contraband aboard your sloop for transport,” he said formally to Rogers. “I will accompany and deliver it myself, of course.”
“Oh, of course.” Rogers seemed amused, but nodded agreement. He scratched his nose, considering something. “We shan’t be sailing back until tomorrow—d’you want to come along of us tonight? You might be of help, as you’ve actually seen the fellow we’re after.”
William’s heart leapt with excitement. Miss Beulah’s stew paled in comparison with the prospect of hunting a dangerous spy. And being in at the capture could do nothing but good to his reputation, even if the major share of the credit was Rogers’s.
“I should be more than pleased to assist you in any way, sir!”
Rogers grinned, then eyed him up and down.
“Good. But you can’t go spy-catching like that, Lieutenant. Come aboard, and we’ll fit you out proper.”
WILLIAM PROVED TO BE six inches taller than the tallest of Rogers’s crew, and thus ended up awkwardly attired in a flapping shirt of rough linen—the tails left out by necessity, to disguise the fact that the top buttons of his flies were left undone—and canvas breeches that threatened to emasculate him should he make any sudden moves. These could not be buckled, of course, and William elected to emulate Rogers and go barefoot, rather than suffer the indignity of striped stockings that left his knees and four inches of hairy shin exposed between stocking-top and breeches.
The sloop had sailed to Flushing, where Rogers, William, and four men disembarked. Rogers maintained an informal recruiting office here, in the back room of a merchant’s shop in the high road of the village. He vanished into this establishment momentarily, returning with the satisfactory news that Hale had not been seen in Flushing and was likely therefore stopping at one of the two taverns to be found at Elmsford, two or three miles from the village.
The men accordingly walked in that direction, dividing for the sake of caution into smaller groups, so that William found himself walking with Rogers, a ragged shawl slung round his shoulders against the evening chill. He had not shaved, of course, and fancied that he looked a proper companion for the ranger, who had added a slouch hat with a dried flying fish stuck through the brim to his costume.
“Do we pose as oystermen, or carters, perhaps?” William asked. Roger grunted in brief amusement and shook his head.
“You’d not pass for either, should anyone hear you talk. Nay, lad, keep your mouth shut, save to put something in it. The boys and I ’ull manage the business. All you need do is nod, if you spot Hale.”
The wind had come onshore and blew the scent of cold marshes toward them, spiced with a distant hint of chimney smoke. No habitation was yet in sight, and the fading landscape was desolate around them. The cold, sandy dirt of the road was soothing to his bare feet, though, and he did not find the bleakness of their surroundings depressing in the least; he was too eager at thought of what lay ahead.
Rogers was silent for the most part, pacing with his head down against the cold breeze. After a bit, though, he said casually, “I carried Captain Richardson over from New York. And back.”
William thought momentarily of saying, “Captain Richardson?” in tones of polite ignorance, but realized in time that this wouldn’t do.
“Did you?” he said instead, and kept his own silence. Rogers laughed.
“Fly cove, aren’t you? Perhaps he’s right, then, choosing you.”
“He told you that he had chosen me for … something?”
“Good lad. Never give anything away for free—but sometimes it pays to oil the wheels a bit. Nay, Richardson’s a downy bird—he said not a word about you. But I know who he is, and what he does. And I know where I left him. He wasn’t calling upon the Culpers, I’ll warrant that.”
William made an indeterminate sound of interest in his throat. Plainly, Rogers meant to say something. Let him say, then.
“How old are you, lad?”
“Nineteen,” William said, with an edge. “Why?”
Rogers shrugged, his outline little more than a shadow among many in the gathering dusk.
“Old enough to risk your neck on purpose, then. But you might want to think twice before saying yes to whatever Richardson’s suggesting to you.”
“Assuming that he did indeed suggest something—again, why?”
Rogers touched his back, urging him forward.
“You’re about to see that for yourself, lad. Come on.”
THE WARM SMOKY LIGHT of the tavern and the smell of food embraced William. He had not been really conscious of cold, dark, or hunger, his mind intent on the adventure at hand. Now, though, he drew a long, lingering breath, filled with the scent of fresh bread and roast chicken, and felt like an insensible corpse, newly roused from the grave and restored to full life upon the day of Resurrection.
The next breath stopped dead in his throat, though, and his heart gave a tremendous squeeze that sent a surge of blood through his body. Rogers, next to him, made a low warning hum in his throat, and glanced casually round the room as he led the way to a table.
The man, the spy, was sitting near the fire, eating chicken and chatting with a couple of farmers. Most of the men in the tavern had glanced at the door when the newcomers appeared—more than one of them blinked at William—but the spy was so absorbed in his food and conversation that he didn’t even look up.
William had taken little notice of the man when first seen, but would have known him again at once. He was not so tall as William himself, but several inches more than the average, and striking in appearance, with flax-blond hair and a high forehead, this displaying the flash-mark scars of the gunpowder accident Rogers had mentioned. He had a round, broad-brimmed hat, which lay on the table beside his plate, and wore an unremarkable plain brown suit.
Not in uniform … William swallowed heavily, not entirely in respect of his hunger and the smell of food.
Rogers sat down at the next table, motioning William to a stool across from him, and raised his brows in question. William nodded silently, but didn’t look again in Hale’s direction.
The landlord brought them food and beer, and William devoted himself to eating, glad that he was not required to join in conversation. Hale himself was relaxed and voluble, telling his companions that he was a Dutch schoolmaster from New York.
“Conditions there are so unsettled, though,” he said, shaking his head, “that the majority of my students have gone—fled with their families to relatives in Connecticut or New Jersey. I might suppose similar—or perhaps worse—conditions obtain here?”
One of the men at his table merely grunted, but the other blew out his lips with a derisive sound.
“You might say so. Goddam lobsterbacks seize everything as hasn’t been buried. Tory, Whig, or rebel, makes no goddam difference to those greedy bastards. Speak a word of protest, and you’re like to be struck over the head or dragged off to the goddam stockade, so as to make it easier for ’em. Why, one hulking brute stopped me at the customs point last week, and took my whole load of apple cider and the goddam wagon to boot! He—”
William choked on a bite of bread, but didn’t dare cough. Christ, he hadn’t recognized the man—the man’s back was to him—but he recalled the apple cider well enough. Hulking brute?
He reached for his beer and gulped, trying to dislodge the chunk of bread; it didn’t work and he coughed silently, feeling his face go purple and seeing Rogers frowning at him in consternation. He gestured feebly at the cider farmer, struck himself in the chest, and, rising, made his way out of the room as quietly as possible. His disguise, excellent as it was, would in no way conceal his essential hulkingness, and if the man were to recognize him as a British soldier, bang went the whole enterprise.
He managed not to breathe until he was safely outside, where he coughed until he thought the bottom of his stomach might force its way out of his mouth. At last he stopped, though, and leaned against the side of the tavern, taking long, gasping breaths. He wished he’d had the presence of mind to bring some beer with him, instead of the chicken leg he held.
The last of Rogers’s men had come along the road, and with a baffled glance at William, went inside. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and, straightening up, crept round the side of the building until he reached a window.
The new arrivals were taking up their own spot, near to Hale’s table. Standing carefully to one side to save being spotted, he saw that Rogers had now insinuated himself into conversation with Hale and the two farmers, and appeared to be telling them a joke. The apple-cider fellow hooted and pounded the table at the end; Hale made an attempt at a grin, but looked frankly shocked; the jest must have been indelicate.
Rogers leaned back, casually including the whole table with the sweep of a hand, and said something that had them nodding and murmuring agreement. Then he leaned forward, intent, to ask Hale something.
William could catch only snatches of the conversation, above the general noise of the tavern and the whistling of the cold wind past his ears. So far as he could gather, Rogers was professing to be a rebel, his own men nodding agreement from their table, gathering closer to form a secretive knot of conversation about Hale. Hale looked intent, excited, and very earnest. He might easily have been a schoolmaster, William thought—though Rogers had said he was a captain in the Continental army. William shook his head; Hale didn’t look any sort of a soldier.
At the same time, he hardly looked the part of a spy, either. He was noticeable, with his fair good looks, his flash-scarred face, his … height.
William felt a small, cold lump in the pit of his stomach. Christ. Was that what Rogers had meant? Saying that there was something William should be warned of, with regard to Captain Richardson’s errands, and that he would see for himself, tonight?
William was quite accustomed both to his own height and to people’s automatic responses to it; he quite liked being looked up to. But on his first errand for Captain Richardson, it had never struck him for a moment that folk might recall him on account of it—or that they could describe him with the greatest of ease. Hulking brute was no compliment, but it was unmistakable.
With a sense of incredulity, he heard Hale not only reveal his own name and the fact that he held rebel sympathies, but also confide that he was making observations regarding the strength of the British presence—this followed by an earnest inquiry as to whether the fellows he spoke with might have noticed any redcoated soldiers in the vicinity?
William was so shocked by this recklessness that he put his eye to the edge of the window frame, in time to see Rogers glance round the room in exaggerated caution before leaning in confidentially, tapping Hale upon the forearm, and saying, “Why, now, sir, I have, indeed I have, but you must be more wary of what you say in a public place. Why, anyone at all might hear you!”
“Pshaw,” said Hale, laughing. “I am among friends here. Have we not all just drunk to General Washington and to the King’s confusion?” Sobering, but still eager, he pushed his hat aside and waved to the landlord for more beer. “Come, have another, sir, and tell me what you have seen.”
William had a sudden overwhelming impulse to shout, “Shut your mouth, you ninnyhammer!” or to throw something at Hale through the window. But it was far too late, even could he actually have done it. The chicken leg he had been eating was still in his hand; noticing, he tossed it away. His stomach was knotted, and there was a taste of sick at the back of his throat, though his blood still boiled with excitement.
Hale was making still more damaging admissions, to the admiring encouragements and patriotic shouts of Rogers’s men, all of whom were playing out their parts admirably, he had to admit. How long would Rogers let it go on? Would they take him here, in the tavern? Probably not—some others of those present were doubtless rebel sympathizers, who might be moved to intervene on Hale’s behalf, did Rogers go to arrest him in their midst.
Rogers appeared in no hurry. Nearly half an hour of tedious raillery followed, Rogers giving what appeared to be small admissions, Hale making much larger ones in return, his slab-sided cheeks glowing with beer and excitement over the information he was gaining. William’s legs, feet, hands, and face were numb, and his shoulders ached with tension. A crunching sound nearby distracted him from his close attendance on the scene within, and he glanced down, suddenly aware of a penetrating aroma that had somehow insinuated itself without his cognizance.
“Christ!” He jerked back, nearly putting his elbow through the window, and fell into the wall of the tavern with a heavy thump. The skunk, disturbed in its enjoyment of the discarded chicken leg, instantly elevated its tail, the white stripe making the movement clearly visible. William froze.
“What was that?” someone said inside, and he heard the scrape of a bench being pushed back. Holding his breath, he edged one foot to the side, only to be frozen in place again by a faint thumping noise and the quivering of the white stripe. Damn, the thing was stamping its feet. An indication of imminent attack, he’d been told—and told by people whose sorry condition made it apparent that they spoke from experience.
Feet were coming toward the door, someone coming to investigate. Christ, if they found him eavesdropping outside … He gritted his teeth, nerving himself to what duty told him must be a self-sacrificial lunge out of sight—but if he did, what then? He could not rejoin Rogers and the others, reeking of skunk. But if—
The opening of the door put paid to all speculations. William lunged for the corner of the building by simple reflex. The skunk also acted by reflex—but, startled by the opening of the door, apparently adjusted its aim in consequence. William tripped over a branch and sprawled at full length into a heap of discarded rubbish, hearing a full-throated shriek behind him as the night was made hideous.
William coughed, choked, and tried to stop breathing long enough to get out of range. He gasped from necessity, though, and his lungs were filled with a substance that went so far beyond the concept of smell as to require a completely new sensory description. Gagging and spluttering, eyes burning and watering from the assault, he stumbled into the darkness on the other side of the road, from which vantage point he witnessed the skunk making off in a huff and the skunk’s victim collapsed in a heap on the tavern’s step, making noises of extreme distress.
William hoped it wasn’t Hale. Beyond the practical difficulties involved in arresting and transporting a man who had suffered such an assault, simple humanity compelled one to think that hanging the victim would be adding insult to injury.
It wasn’t Hale. He saw the flaxen hair shining in the torchlight among the heads that were thrust out in inquiry, only to be drawn hastily back again.
Voices reached him, discussing how best to proceed. Vinegar, it was agreed, was needed, and in quantity. The victim had by now sufficiently recovered himself as to crawl off into the weeds, from which the sounds of violent retching proceeded. This, added to the mephitis still tainting the atmosphere, caused a number of other gentlemen to vomit, as well, and William felt his own gorge rise, but controlled it by vicious nose-pinching.
He was nearly chilled through, though thankfully aired out, by the time the victim’s friends saw him off—driving him like a cow along the road, as no one would touch him—and the tavern emptied, no one having further appetite for either food or drink in such an atmosphere. He could hear the landlord cursing to himself as he leaned out to take down the torch that burned beside the hanging sign and plunge it, sizzling, into the rain barrel.
Hale bade a general good night, his educated voice distinctive in the dark, and set off along the road toward Flushing, where doubtless he meant to seek a bed. Rogers—William knew him by the fur waistcoat, identifiable even by starlight—lingered near the road, silently collecting his men about him as the crowd departed. Only when everyone was out of sight did William venture to join them.
“Yes?” Rogers said, seeing him. “All present, then. Let’s go.” And they moved off, a silent pack coursing down the road, intent upon the track of their unknowing prey.
THEY SAW THE FLAMES from the water. The city was burning, mostly the district near the East River, but the wind was up, and the fire was spreading. There was much excited speculation among Rogers’s men; had rebel sympathizers fired the city?
“Just as likely drunken soldiers,” Rogers said, his voice grimly dispassionate. William felt queasy, seeing the red glow in the sky. The prisoner was silent.
They found General Howe—eventually—in his headquarters at Beekman House outside the city, red-eyed from smoke, lack of sleep, and a rage that was buried bone-deep. It stayed buried, though, for the moment. He summoned Rogers and the prisoner into the library where he had his office, and—after one brief, astonished look at William’s attire—sent him to his bed.
Fortnum was in the attic, watching the city burn from the window. There was nothing to be done about it. William came to stand beside him. He felt strangely empty, somehow unreal. Chilled, though the floor was warm under his bare feet.
An occasional fountain of sparks shot up now and then, as the flames struck something particularly flammable, but from such a distance there was really little to be seen but the bloody glow against the sky.
“They’ll blame us, you know,” Fortnum said after a bit.
THE AIR WAS STILL THICK with smoke at noon the next day.
He couldn’t take his eyes off Hale’s hands. They had clenched involuntarily as a private soldier tied them, though he had put them behind his back with no protest. Now his fingers were clasped tight together, so hard that the knuckles had gone white.
Surely the flesh protested, William thought, even if the mind had resigned itself. His own flesh was protesting simply being here, his skin twitching like a horse plagued by flies, his bowels cramping and loosening in horrid sympathy—they said a hanged man’s bowels gave way; would Hale’s? Blood washed through his face at the thought, and he looked at the ground.
Voices made him look up again. Captain Moore had just asked Hale whether he wished to make any remarks. Hale nodded; evidently he had been prepared for this.
William felt that he should himself have been prepared by now; Hale had spent the last two hours in Captain Moore’s tent, writing notes to be delivered to his family, while the men assembled for the hasty execution shifted their weight from foot to foot, waiting. He wasn’t prepared at all.
Why was it different? He’d seen men die, some horribly. But this preliminary courtesy, this formality, this … obscene civility, all conducted with the certain knowledge of imminent and shameful death. Deliberation. The awful deliberation, that was it.
“At last!” Clarewell muttered in his ear. “Bloody get on with it; I’m starving.”
A young black man named Billy Richmond, a private soldier whom William knew casually, was sent up the ladder to tie the rope to the tree. He came down now, nodding to the officer.
Now Hale was mounting the ladder, the sergeant major steadying him. The noose was round his neck, a thick rope, new-looking. Didn’t they say new ropes stretched? But it was a high ladder …
William was sweating like a pig, though the day was mild. He mustn’t close his eyes or look away. Not with Clarewell watching.
He tightened the muscles of his throat and concentrated again on Hale’s hands. The fingers were twisting, helplessly, though the man’s face was calm. They were leaving faint damp marks on the skirt of his coat.
A grunt of effort and a grating noise; the ladder was pulled away, and there was a startled whoof! from Hale as he dropped. Whether it was the newness of the rope or something else, his neck did not break cleanly.
He’d refused the hood, and so the spectators were obliged to watch his face for the quarter of an hour it took him to die. William stifled a horrific urge to laugh from pure nerves, seeing the pale blue eyes bulge to bursting point, the tongue thrust out. So surprised. He looked so surprised.
There was only a small group of men assembled for the execution. He saw Richardson a little way away, watching with a look of remote abstraction. As though aware of his glance, Richardson looked sharply up at him. William looked away.
THE MINISTER’S CAT
Lallybroch
October 1980
SHE WAS UP EARLY, before the children, though she knew this was foolish—whatever Roger had gone to Oxford for, it would take him a good four or five hours to drive there, and the same back. Even if he had left at dawn—and he might not be able to, if he hadn’t arrived in time to do whatever it was the day before—he couldn’t be home before midday at the earliest. But she’d slept restlessly, dreaming one of those monotonous and inescapably unpleasant dreams, this one featuring the sight and sound of the tide coming in, lapping wave by lapping wave by lapping … and wakened at first light feeling dizzy and unwell.
It had occurred to her for one nightmare instant that she might be pregnant—but she’d sat up abruptly in bed, and the world had settled at once into place around her. None of that sense of having shoved one foot through the looking glass that early pregnancy entails. She set one foot cautiously out of bed, and the world—and her stomach—stayed steady. Good, then.
Still, the feeling of unease—whether from the dream, Roger’s absence, or the specter of pregnancy—stayed with her, and she went about the daily business of the household with a distracted mind.
She was sorting socks toward midday when she became aware that things were quiet. Quiet in a way that made the hair rise on the back of her neck.
“Jem?” she called. “Mandy?”
Total silence. She stepped out of the laundry, listening for the usual thumps, bangings, and screeches from above, but there was not the slightest sound of trampling feet, toppling blocks, or the high-pitched voices of sibling warfare.
