played his jigs with sadness and his ballads with élan, and Bess had all but borne his children in a fortnight of pining.
“You’ve missed your chance,” Molly said. “I’m taking him myself.”
“You wouldn’t!” Bess whispered.
“I’ll tell him that I’m musical and ask for private lessons.”
Bess twisted Molly’s arm, pleasurably hard, where the Maimer’s cut had healed but hadn’t stopped itching. Molly laughed and drew the looks of merry-minded patrons. Lucas kept fiddling “Tom Scarlett,” Bess’s favorite.
“Oh, you’re right,” Bess said. “I’ve waited too long. Except he’s only ever here with everybody watching.”
“Forget what people think.”
“You’re one to talk.”
Increasingly of late, Bess was peppering conversations with hints of irritation—or injury—so that Molly didn’t trust her with her own many secrets. No one believed in her amnesia anymore, but her capture of a Maimer had improved her reputation, and although it was widely assumed that her past was in some way disreputable, she was generally seen as a victim of circumstance rather than a menace.
Lucas finished his song and paused to wipe his face. Benjamin approached him with a thick roll of papers.
Molly filled a tankard from the cider tap, handed it to Bess, and pulled her startled friend before objections could be made. They squished through the crowd to Benjamin and Lucas. Bess tried to escape but Molly wouldn’t let her.
Benjamin attempted—not for the first time—to convince Lucas to play a piece from his own dear collection of music. The fiddler listened as politely as Benjamin persuaded, but he finally insisted that he lacked sufficient skill.
“I could tutor you,” Benjamin said. “I am certain you could learn to scrape a passable sonata. Perhaps not one of Hark’s, but there are many by Gorelli. You could practice the Folia.”
“You think too well of me, Dr. Knox,” Lucas said and smiled, noticing Bess despite her effort to retreat behind Molly.
Benjamin raised his sheets to try again when Molly said, “We won’t have music at all if he collapses from the heat.”
She twirled behind Bess and pushed her forward with the cider.
“Thankee, Bess,” Lucas said, and took it with a wink.
Bess hiccupped through a laugh and nearly died: he knew her name.
“May I speak with you, Doctor?” Molly said. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but it’s a matter of terrible urgency.”
Benjamin turned professional at once, allowing himself to be dragged to the kitchen, where Nabby faced the hearth fire, sharpening a knife. Her withered face flickered like a warning of perdition. Molly explained why she had led Benjamin away, and he looked from the kitchen to the taproom, where Lucas held his fiddle up so Bess could pluck the strings.
“Infatuation,” Benjamin said. “One of the few common pains for which the cure, if one existed, would be ardently rejected.”
Nabby whisked her blade across a whetstone and said, “There’s wickedness in love.”
“Bite your tongue,” Molly said.
Nabby went to a table strewn with vegetables and organs. “Ask the child,” she continued, speaking of the tavern ghost. “She knew a touch of love and took it to her doom.”
“Is she here?” Molly asked.
Nabby pointed with her blade toward the middle of the hearth, where the drippings from a chicken crackled in the flames.
“Will she tell me her name tonight?” Molly asked.
“She’ll tell you when she trusts you.”
Molly scrutinized the hearthstones, uncertain of where to look; Benjamin, more intrigued by living beings who would speak to empty air, adjusted his glasses and focused on the women.
He said to Molly, “You perceive her with your senses?”
“Like a fragrance,” Molly said, and yet it wasn’t quite a scent but rather a fleeting saturation. It reminded her of things she had honestly forgotten in the hours of delirium that followed giving birth: her hand upon a heartbeat, a tugging at her breast. She couldn’t ascertain if the memories were real. Had she kissed her own baby on the head before she lost her?
Molly believed the ghost would know, and she longed for other answers, but Nabby said the child still considered her a stranger. If only there were a way to win the spirit’s trust. But now was not the time—she needed to hold herself together—so she went to the kitchen door again and looked across the taproom. The noisy hurly-burly of the drinkers perked her up.
“Can you describe the ghostly fragrance?” Benjamin asked her from behind.
“Lem,” Molly said.
“Lemuel Carver, did you say? Like the odor of corruption, or a stench of perspiration?”
“No, he’s here,” Molly answered, pulling Benjamin toward her. “He’s staggering drunk. There, he’s coming in the door.”