I’ll get Morgan. He’s just out back.”
The Spicers’ parlour had only two hard chairs in it, both drawn up to a scarred wooden table. Thaddeus took the seat nearest the window. He heard Sally call Morgan’s name, then she reappeared in the doorway. “He’ll be along in just a moment,” she said.
“So how did you come to be in Yorkville?” he asked. “I was surprised when my son said you were here.”
Sally sighed. “Poor Morgan. He could never get the hang of writing. He can read well enough, or at least by my standards he can, but he has a terrible time whenever he goes to put the words down on paper. It’s the one obstacle that’s kept him from being a real preacher. Whenever he’s applied for a trial, he’s been turned down because of it. He knows his Bible inside and out, but I guess that’s not enough.”
“I’m so sorry,” Thaddeus said. “I thought I’d done fairly well by him. I wish he’d let me know. I could have helped more.”
“You had your own troubles at the time,” Sally said, “and more since. Morgan tells me your good lady has passed on.”
“Yes, although we had some fine years, even at the end.”
“I’m glad for the good years and sorry for the loss,” she said. “Any road, we fetched up here just after the girls were born and Morgan thought it was time to settle for a bit. The job here came up and he writes well enough to keep the burial records. Most don’t like the work, you see, dealing with dead bodies all the time, so there wasn’t much competition, and the job came with the house as well.” She peered at Thaddeus anxiously. “He hasn’t given up, you know, on the preaching. This is just until we’re better situated, and then he’ll try again.”
“I know he will,” Thaddeus said. “If there’s one thing Morgan has, it’s persistence.”
“Here he is,” Sally said, turning to look as Morgan appeared in the doorway, a gaggle of children crowding in behind him. Thaddeus had to look carefully to see that there were, in fact, only four of them, and even then he had to take a second look to assure himself that he wasn’t seeing double. Judging by the way they were dressed, there were two girls and two boys, but they looked so much like each other that without the clue their clothing offered, any one of them might have been mistaken for any of the others. He judged them to be perhaps eight or nine years old — at the gangly stage — but the lankiness could well be another trait they had inherited from their mother along with carroty-red hair and an extraordinary number of freckles.
“Mr. Lewis! It’s so good to see you again.” Morgan entered the room, his hand out in greeting.
The years had in no way improved Morgan Spicer’s appearance, Thaddeus thought. He was still scrawny and unkempt-looking, with lank hair and a straggly beard, his clothing cheap and ill-fitting. As Thaddeus looked more closely, though, he realized that Morgan stood a little straighter perhaps, and had developed a grave and deliberate way of moving. He could well have cultivated this mien because he felt it was appropriate for a minister, but it would certainly be fitting for his current occupation as well. Although, Thaddeus supposed, an effort at solemnity would be largely wasted on the customary clientele of a Potter’s Field. At a Strangers’ Burying Ground, there would be few mourning relatives on hand to usher the dead into the earth.
“Pardon me for not rising,” Thaddeus said. “I’ve grown older since last I saw you.”
Spicer sat in the opposite chair and beamed. “Those were good days, weren’t they? When you and I rode together.”
Thaddeus nodded, although he by no means agreed with this statement. They had been hard days, the whole colony stirred into an uproar by rebellion and invasion, and all the while a murderer was stalking young women. He and Spicer tracked the villain down, but Thaddeus had been shaken to the core by the experience.
The mob of children had filed into the room in Morgan’s wake and now stood in a row against the wall, their collective gaze fixed on their father’s unexpected visitor.
“These are our children,” Sally said. “Ruth and Rebecca, Matthew and Mark. Children, this is Mr. Lewis, who is a very old friend of your father’s. Or I guess that’s a friend of long acquaintance, isn’t it? Not an old friend.”
“Either way is appropriate, I’m afraid,” Thaddeus said. “Are these quadruplets?” He found their unwavering stares slightly disconcerting.
Sally shook her head. “No, two sets of twins. The boys are a year older than the girls, but they’re at that age where the girls outgrow the boys. They all look the same right now, don’t they?
Thaddeus had to agree. The duplication was astonishing.
“You go off now and leave your father to talk with Mr. Lewis,” she said to them. “Go play outside.”
The expressions on the twins’ faces didn’t change as they obediently filed out of the room.
“They’ve been a chore in some ways,” Sally said, “coming as they did in batches. But now that they’re older, all they want to do is follow their father around. Now, would you have tea, Mr. Lewis?” When Thaddeus nodded, she disappeared again, presumably to the kitchen.
“I was surprised when Luke mentioned that he’d seen you,” Thaddeus said to Morgan.
“No more surprised than I was when I heard you were in the area as well. I mistook your son for you, when I saw him on the street, but he set me straight and promised to pass my message on. He’s the new doctor then? The one that’s taken over from Christie?”
“Not really taking over. Assisting would be a better word.”
Morgan nodded. “Christie’s a good doctor, but he’s a bit odd. He always acts like he’ll look after your ailment if you insist, but that he would really rather be somewhere else.”
“I think that’s why he took Luke on,” Thaddeus pointed out. “So he can be somewhere else. Whatever his reasons, his decision certainly aided our plans. Luke needed a position and I needed a place to stay occasionally. But tell me about you and Sally.”
“Sally’s a grand woman, for sure. We seem to produce children only in pairs, but she’s wonderful with them. It helps that we’re settled now. It’s better for all of us.”
“She mentioned that you still hope to find a congregation somewhere.”
Morgan glanced at the doorway before he replied in a low voice. “That’s what I pretend — to Sally if not to myself — but I don’t think that’s what I’m meant to do. You know, I used to think that it would be such a fine thing to be on the road, to ride to a different town every day. See new sights. Meet new people. It wasn’t so fine after I’d done it for awhile. To tell the truth, it got tiresome. And I like it here well enough. It seems almost as good, dealing with dead souls instead of the live ones. I take care of them. And after all, I already know all about gravestones, don’t I?”
Thaddeus recalled then that Spicer was once apprenticed to old Mr. Kemp, the gravestone maker in Demorestville, before he had taken it in his head to go off preaching. It would not be so dissimilar an occupation, he supposed.
“I’m just sorry that the job won’t last, that’s all,” Morgan said. “I may have to start looking for something else soon.”
“Why?
