The Safe-Keeper's Secret Read online

  “When is the baby due?” she asked.

  “We think within the next couple of weeks.”

  “And will your daughter keep it?”

  Janice shook her head. “There’s a woman in Thrush Hollow who’s lost three of her own babies. She’s already begged me to let her take my daughter’s. And Jillian is more than willing. I’ll send her to Thrush Hollow to have the baby when the time comes. She’s too young to be raising a child.”

  She’s too young for any of this, Fiona thought, but did not say it. “I’d like to meet your daughter, if I may.”

  Janice looked alarmed. “You won’t tell her I told you, will you? She’s a good girl. She knows it’s wrong. She doesn’t want anyone to know.”

  “I won’t tell her,” Fiona said. “I just want to see her. I might be able to give her some advice—on how to stop unwanted babies from coming in the future. She might be glad to know such things.”

  “Oh, indeed,” Janice said gratefully. “She asked me and asked me, but of course I didn’t know. Had five children myself, though only the two of them lived.”

  “Another daughter?” Fiona asked carefully.

  “No, no. My son. He’s young yet, but he’s a good boy.”

  They talked a while longer, and when Janice left, she seemed comforted and almost light-hearted, as if she had transferred a heavy weight into hands that were strong enough to hold it. Fiona, on the other hand, was burning up as if with fever; she felt that her skin was so hot she could ignite kindling with her touch. She went around back, where Allison was pulling up weeds, and drew a bucket of water from the well. And dumped it over her head.

  “Fiona! What—you—are you all right?” Allison cried, and came running over with her trowel in hand. “You look so flushed! Are you sick? Come in and I’ll make you some of that soothing tea.”

  Fiona just shook her head. Her rage was so bright that it distorted her vision; she could not see the garden or Allison’s face very clearly. “I don’t think tea will soothe me,” she said in a very polite voice.

  “Was it—did that woman tell you a secret?” Allison asked in a hesitant voice.

  For a moment, Fiona was tempted. Tempted to tell Allison, then tell Elminstra, then walk to town and knock on Lacey’s door, and repeat the story to everyone in the seamstress’s shop. For she didn’t know how you destroyed evil except by exposing it, and this, to her mind, was evil incarnate.

  But she was a Safe-Keeper. She had sat under the leaves of the kirrenberry tree and accepted a confidence. She would betray Janice and everyone else who had trusted her if she told this story now.

  “Are you going into town later today?” Fiona asked instead. “Earlier, you said you thought you might.”

  Allison nodded and pushed a lock of hair back from her eyes, leaving a streak of dirt across her forehead. “We’re low on flour, and there’s some mint to sell,” she said. “I thought I’d go in today or tomorrow.”

  “I’ve got to write a letter to Lowford,” Fiona said. “You can post it for me when you go.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Robert Bayliss, it turned out, was very happy to get Fiona’s letter, and he responded two days later. “Indeed, yes, I know of a position for a young woman who can cook and clean, and is very gentle with an invalid besides,” he wrote. “Our own housekeeper left this spring, and Victoria has tried so hard to do the ordinary chores, but you know how fragile she is. I had asked Angeline to be on the lookout for a nice young woman whom I could hire. I’m sure there must be some in Lowford, but I would be happy to give a chance to the unfortunate girl you mentioned. No doubt, as you say, it will be good for her to put some distance between herself and her young man. If they find they truly love each other, he will come look for her. And if they do not, she will do much better in a new place surrounded by fresh faces. Send her to me when she is well enough to travel.”

  That very afternoon, Janice’s daughter came to the Safe-Keeper’s cottage. She would have been as thin as her mother if her stomach had not been so big with the child, and her face was narrow and still. Though she smiled when Fiona answered the door, her expression remained watchful. Her pale brown eyes were filled with an unbearable sadness.

  “My mother said you wanted to see me?” she said in a polite, hesitant voice.

  “Come in, come in—my assistant has gone down the road to her grandmother’s, so you and I are the only ones here,” Fiona said. “Would you like some tea? Mint—I grow it myself.”

  “Tea would be fine, thank you, ma’am.”

  “Oh, no, I’m just Fiona,” Fiona said, pouring out two cups of tea. Ma’am! She was sixteen—no one called her that! “And your name is Jillian, is that right?”

  “Jillian, yes.”

  Fiona handed over one cup and sat down next to Jillian at the kitchen table. “You’ll think I’m very bold,” Fiona said, “but I’ve been wondering if I could meddle in your life a little bit.”

  Jillian sipped at her tea, and over the rim of her cup, her sad eyes were inquiring. “Ma’am? What do you mean?”

  “I ran into your mother the other day, and she mentioned that you were expecting a child, and I got the impression that—well—that you might not want to continue your relationship with the baby’s father,” Fiona said. It was as hard for her to appear artless as it was for her to throttle rage, but she had a greater incentive for this little act, and she rather thought she was pulling it off nicely. “And I happen to know a very nice couple in Lowford. Robert and Victoria. Robert runs a trading business where my brother works from time to time. Victoria is very sweet, but often ailing, and she cannot do her household chores. I had heard that they were looking for a housekeeper and someone who could also assist Victoria when she needed help bathing or dressing. And I thought—if you wanted to leave Tambleham and move someplace altogether new, I could arrange for you to get this job as housekeeper.”

  Jillian stared at her, and for a long, tense moment, Fiona thought she would refuse.

  “Oh, ma’am,” she said, her voice very low, “I would like that so much I can hardly tell you. But I don’t know—I’m not sure—”

  “It might be hard for your parents to give you up, I know, you being so young,” Fiona rattled on. “But I thought—since you’re going to Thrush Hollow to have the baby—my brother is working there this summer. And he could take you up to Lowford, no trouble at all. And introduce you to Robert and Victoria, and to my aunt Angeline as well, who lives very close. Your parents wouldn’t have to know of it until you were already settled.”

  Now some expression had come to Jillian’s face, hope and a corresponding deep fear, as if hope was an emotion she could not afford to indulge in. “Oh, if I could do that—” she breathed. “I would go anywhere. I’d do any work.”

  “Then I can write Robert and Victoria? Tell them you’ve accepted?”

  “Yes, but—are you sure? My father will be very angry—”

  “I think you’ll be safe in Robert’s house.”

  “And how will your brother know me? And what if he does not want to take me so far? I have no money to pay him—”

  Fiona waved a dismissive hand. “Reed goes to Lowford all the time! Angeline feeds him and Robert fusses over him. He won’t expect payment.”

  “And you—why would you be so kind to me?” Jillian whispered. “For I can pay you nothing either.”

  Fiona leaned forward and put her hand over the girl’s free hand, trembling where it lay on the table. “Because there are all kinds of trouble in the world, and most of them I can’t fix, but I saw a way to fix this predicament,” she said. “I can’t make the baby go away, and I can’t make your—make your young man go away, but I can help you move someplace that might be a little easier. And sometime, someday, you may see a young girl who needs your help, and you’ll find a way to give her aid. That’s the only payment I would think to ask.”

  “And I’ll do it,” Jillian said.

  Fiona sat back. “Now. We must
plan what you will need to take with you. When are you going to Thrush Hollow?”

  They plotted for the next hour, discussing how many of her clothes she could bring with her without making her parents suspicious, and what she might need to take from the house if she was never to return to it. It was an amazing thing, Fiona thought. The girl seemed to change and brighten as they sat there, grow sweeter and more buoyant with every scheme that they unfolded. It was only when Allison came through the front door and called out a greeting that they finally rose to their feet, satisfied with their plans.

  “I’ll write Reed tonight, and my aunt Angeline,” Fiona said. “You’ll see. Everything will go without a hitch.”

  And it did. A week later, Jillian was in Thrush Hollow, and two days after that, was delivered of a healthy, furious baby girl. Three days later, Reed drove her to Lowford and took her straight to the Bayliss house. Robert wrote Fiona once she’d been there a week to tell her how attached Victoria had grown to the young lady, how pleased they all were with her quiet, helpful presence in their house. Jillian wrote also, in a clear, painstaking hand, a letter that said merely “thank you thank you thank you thank you” until it filled nearly an entire sheet. At the end of it, she wrote, “I will do what you asked whenever I can.”

  Janice came back to the Safe-Keeper’s cottage when Jillian had been gone a month, this time with a trivial secret about a spasm of envy that had led her to deliberately tear a friend’s gown. When Fiona could contain her curiosity no longer, she asked casually, “Your daughter. Has she had her baby yet?”

  Janice nodded mournfully. “I suppose so. She went off to Thrush Hollow, like I told you she would, but she never came back. My husband went to look for her, but she was gone and no one knew where. I can’t say I’m sorry, because I think she’s probably someplace better, but I can’t imagine where she’d get to. She didn’t have two coins to rub together and no friends to help her. I just hope she’s not dead in a ditch somewhere. I suppose my husband might be eyeing the serving girls down at the tavern now, but I don’t mind that so much. I do miss Jillian, though.”

  And Fiona realized she had been successful in her entire strategy—she had rescued Jillian and left no traces behind. Janice did not suspect her; no one knew the truth. She had not compromised her role as Safe-Keeper and yet she had lived up to the higher ideals of human goodness. She was so pleased with herself she smiled at Janice with a great deal more kindness than the woman deserved.

  A few weeks later, she was to discover she had not been quite so careful as she believed. Thomas arrived in Tambleham and stopped for afternoon tea at the cottage. Allison came in to meet him and did not seem at all intimidated by his measuring eyes and blunt way of speaking.

  “Don’t be too nice to him,” Fiona warned her, cutting them all pieces of lemon cake. “He’ll say something hurtful the minute you relax your guard.”

  Allison laughed good-naturedly. “Oh, what will he tell me that I haven’t already heard? I’m too big, I’m too loud, I look like a cow. If you grow up with brothers, you don’t have too many illusions about yourself.”

  Thomas was watching her with a quizzical smile. “You’re cheerful and kind, and no one who knows you dislikes you,” he said. “You bring the rare gift of happiness with you everywhere you go.”

  Allison nearly choked on her tea. “I thought you said he would be mean to me!” she exclaimed to Fiona.

  Fiona stirred her own tea. “Maybe I’m the only one he’s ever mean to.”

  “No, usually I’m mean to everyone,” he said. “But I never say anything untrue.”

  “The truth is often unkind,” Fiona said.

  “But the truth is real,” he said. “That gives it great value.”

  Allison finished the last of her cake and stood up. “Well, I’m sure you two have a lot to talk over,” she said. “I’ll go work in the garden.”

  Thomas, smiling again, watched her go. “Not a bad choice at all if you’re going to have someone foisted on you,” he said.

  Fiona laughed. “How do you know I didn’t ask for her to be my companion?”

  “Elminstra told me. But she was right, of course. You can’t live here all alone with Reed.”

  “Since Reed is very rarely here, it is not really a concern.”

  “But villagers love to gossip. And you, my devious young Safe-Keeper, will have to be very, very careful not to give them food for discussion.”

  Fiona sipped her tea. “What can you possibly mean?”

  He pointed at her. “It was clever. I would not have pieced it together except for something that Reed let slip. But you have engineered some kind of salvation mission for a young girl named Jillian.”

  Fiona gave him a limpid look. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Thomas ticked off the points on his fingers. “A young girl from Tambleham delivers a child in Thrush Hollow. She takes a job in Lowford. You have arranged all this.”

  Fiona shrugged. “She needed a job. Robert needed a serving girl. I brought them together. I see nothing mysterious in that.”

  “It is clear she is running from someone or something quite odious in Tambleham. If I were to guess I would say she is escaping the attentions of a father or a brother or an uncle. And that you were told of these sins, and you could not bear them.”

  “But you don’t know this for truth,” she said.

  “But I don’t know this for truth,” he repeated. “I would not say the supposition aloud in the marketplace—or tell her parents where she has taken refuge.”

  “And no secrets have been betrayed, and I do not see what you’re making such a fuss about.”

  He smiled at her. It was the warm smile of a teacher who approves of a very clever student. “I told you once you would never be a Safe-Keeper,” he said.

  “And I told you you were wrong. I am a very good one.”

  “Your mother never would have done such a thing, you know,” he said. “She would have listened to the secret, and she would have kept it. That is all a Safe-Keeper is required to do.”

  Fiona poured more tea into her cup. “My mother could live with grief more gracefully than I can. But some of those sorrows weighed very heavily on her. I don’t think she would disapprove of what I have done.”

  “Oh, you’re graceful enough,” Thomas said. “But you’re far too passionate. Now that you have started, you will not be able to stop yourself from wanting to right grave wrongs. You do not want to keep secrets. You want to enact justice.”

  “I might be able to do both,” she said.

  He laughed. “What a crusader you would have been! You should have been the daughter of a Truth-Teller, not a Safe-Keeper.” He took a drink of tea. “Then again,” he added, “perhaps you are.”

  “Perhaps I am,” she said, “but not yours.”

  He tilted his head to one side. “So you know that secret, do you?”

  She nodded. “My mother told me before she died.”

  “And have you told your father?”

  “Not yet. I don’t know that I ever will.”

  “Did your mother forbid you to repeat it?”

  “No, but she said I would want to hold this knowledge for a while yet. And having thought about it a long time, I realize she is right.”

  “Do you know the name of Reed’s father as well?”

  She shook her head. “That she didn’t tell me.”

  “I wonder if Angeline knows. She was there that night, after all, and she took him from the traveler’s arms.”

  Fiona laughed. “If I had to guess, I would say that Angeline knows who my father is, but does not know Reed’s for certain.”

  Thomas smiled. “Well, your father may indeed be the greater mystery, but I would agree that Angeline can solve it. She and your mother were very close.”

  “And they shared many secrets,” Fiona agreed.

  “As you and Reed share all secrets.”

  “Except this one,” she replied.
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br />   Fiona was surprised at how much she enjoyed Thomas’s visit; he had always annoyed her before. But now it was like having a piece of her old life back, a memory of her mother. He reminded her of a prickly old uncle who could, when he chose, be extraordinarily benevolent. She could tell that he was pleased with her handling of Jillian’s situation, and this gave her a certain measure of pride. The only other person with whom she would be able to share all the details of the case would be Angeline who, like Thomas, had probably already guessed. Angeline might not approve, but it was good to know that Thomas did.

  Summermoon came, and Reed with it. Fiona and Reed and Allison walked down to the village for the fair, and Reed got free lemonade for them from Dirk’s tavern. There were jugglers and pipers and children running wildly through the streets, garlanded with flowers, and the whole festival was very merry. But Fiona preferred the dark, still, thoughtful time of Wintermoon, with its stark contrasts of frost and fire.

  “I’m going to Lowford in a few weeks,” Reed told her as he packed up to return to Thrush Hollow. “Robert needs me.”

  “What about the horses?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Big and dumb and more willful than you,” he said. “I was never as patient as I needed to be. The breeder told me I needed to learn to love them, but I—well, I never did. At least I understand Robert’s charts and boxes.”

  “And you’re bored.”

  He grinned. “And I’m bored. Time for a change.”

  “How long in Lowford this time?”

  “I don’t know. A few months. Robert won’t expect me any longer than that.”

  She stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. “I don’t care where you go or what you do,” she said, “as long as you’re back by Wintermoon.”

  He returned the kiss in kind. “Always,” he said. And he was gone.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The next few months followed a very similar pattern, except that Allison began courting. So sometimes she would bring company home for dinner, and sometimes she would be out late at night, but she was always back in the house, alone, by midnight. Ed was a shy and not very articulate young farmer who seemed to think Safe-Keepers were as wondrous as princesses, but Fiona thought he was a very good choice for Allison. He adored her, for one thing; he could not keep his eyes from following her when she walked or gestured. He was tall, for another, and big-boned, and she looked just the right size when she was standing beside him. And he seemed as gentle-hearted as she was, which would be the one thing Fiona would wish for her. So she made him welcome when he came to the house, and hoped that true love would triumph.