"Mom, for God's sake." Mark turned and glared at her. "You make it sound like I didn't clean up my room or something." He transferred his attention to Kathy, who stood close by him, watching him expectantly. "It's here, Kath. Down below. Must be in the floor somewhere."
He squatted, examining the bricks, and then looked accusingly at Josef. "You had this fixed. It's new mortar."
"Oh, God, give me patience," Josef said, to nobody in particular. "Forgive me, Mark. I had meant to have the bricks taken up and concrete poured, but someone convinced me that would be a sin against history. These bricks are of the Civil War period, I was told, so…"
He paused, forgetting his annoyance as he realized what he had just said. "Civil War… Do you suppose-"
Mark was already at the workbench, throwing hammers and screwdrivers aside, as he searched for what he wanted. He returned to the corner with a chisel and mallet. Kathy moved back out of range as chips of mortar began to fly.
Josef looked at Pat. She moved a little closer to him, and his arm tightened around her shoulders.
It took Mark almost an hour to remove a section of floor two feet square. He rejected Kathy's offer of help. No our else offered. Despite the damp coolness of the cellar, perspiration was pouring down his neck by the time he finished. He then uttered a word his mother had forbidden him to use in her presence.
"Watch your mouth, bud," she said.
"Sorry. I thought I'd find… But it's dirt. Packed, beaten earth."
"Ha," said Josef, leaning back.
"Well, but naturally," Kathy said. Squatting on her haunches, she leaned forward to inspect the site of Mark's labors. "She'd have to put something over it, to hide it, before she had the slaves lay the bricks."
"What are you talking about?" Pat asked.
The others ignored her.
"Hey, that's right," Mark said. "Kathy. Shovel."
"In the garage," said Josef. He slid to one side so that Kathy could pass him. Again he and Pat exchanged eloquent glances.
"We've got to watch the time," she whispered.
"Almost three hours yet. Don't worry, I'll keep track."
Kathy returned with the demanded implement and handed it to Mark. He began to dig. The earth was hard-packed, but it was damp and-as it turned out-only about eight inches thick. Pat and Josef, abandoning their pretense of disinterest, watched as Mark gradually uncovered a flat wooden surface. The rusted iron ring made its function clear.
"Trapdoor," Josef muttered. "I'll be damned."
But for a moment no one moved. Mark leaned picturesquely on his shovel, mopping his damp forehead with his sleeve; and Josef, too fascinated to resist any longer, came to his assistance. He tugged at the ring, his face reddening with effort.
"Stuck," he grunted. "We need a chisel, Mark. On the workbench."
Mark pried and Josef pulled. At first it seemed that they were making no progress. The hinges gave way all at once, sending Josef sprawling. A dark, square hole gaped. From it came a breath of air as stale as death itself.
Mark turned on the flashlight. Its beam showed sagging wooden steps descending into darkness.
"Wait," Josef said, as Mark turned preparatory to descending. "Those steps don't look very solid."
Mark put his foot on the top step and pressed. The whole structure collapsed in a shower of splinters.
"Termites," Mark said. "Or damp. The floor is only about six feet down. Here, hold the flashlight."
He handed it to Josef and lowered himself, disregarding his mother's groan of protest. Josef kept the flashlight steady. It illumined Mark's sweating face as he stared up, but showed nothing else.
"I'm standing on the floor," Mark said. "Come on down."
"At the risk of sounding like a coward, I'd like to be sure I can get up again," Josef said. "Wait till I get a stepladder."
He lowered it to Mark, who held it steady while first Pat and then Kathy went down. Pat had caught the fever. Forbidding as the dark hole appeared, she would have fought anyone who suggested she remain above. Josef was the last to descend. He brought the flashlight with him, and handed it to Mark. Not until then did Pat see the nature of the place into which they had descended.
The room had once been virtually airtight, every crack carefully sealed. It was so no longer. The insidious damp of Maryland soil had crumbled the mortar between the stones; water had seeped in and dried and seeped again, so that the lichen-stained walls bulged ominously in places. The damp had affected the objects in the room too. There was nothing left of the bed except a low, irregular platform, and even less remained of what had lain upon the bed. Its shape was due more to suggestion than to actual form; but enough was there to bring a suppressed cry from Kathy.
"It's okay," Mark said-but his own voice was not quite steady. "Could be worse."
He turned the flashlight beam full on the bed.
The rotted remains of a sheet or blanket covered the shape below, but things protruded here and I here:.1 rounded curve of skull, the end of a long bone-a femur, probably, Pat guessed.
"Human," she said softly.
"Oh, yes." Mark said, turning the light away from the pitiful remains. It illumined smaller piles of decay and stopped at one. There was little to distinguish this heap from the others-once pieces of furniture-but Mark stepped to it and fumbled in the debris for a few minutes before producing a handful of metal disks.
"Buttons," he said. "Stamped 'CSA.' He put his uniform on the chair before…"
"A Confederate soldier," Josef muttered. "Then this room was something like a priest's hole. The Trumbulls concealed fugitives-"
"And spies," Mark said. "You guys are really dense. Didn't you understand all those hints in Mary Jane's letters? She couldn't be explicit, not at the time she was writing, but her friend knew what she meant. This was one of the stations on the Confederate spy circuit. The location is perfect-isolated, only a few Billet from the river-"
"With the Bateses right next door?"
"There was a wall," Mark said. "Remember? The houses aren't that close. On a moonless night one man, creeping through the underbrush, wouldn't be seen or heard. The very fact that it was so close to the Bateses would disarm suspicion. People would think they wouldn't dare. But it was typical of the Turnbulls-that damn-your-eyes bravado."
"This man was no spy," Josef said. "He was in uniform. A fugitive from one of the nearby battles, perhaps. Wounded, hidden by the Turnbulls… Come on, Kathy, stop sniveling; it's only bones."
Kathy gulped and wiped her face with her fingers.
"She's got more sense than you have," Mark said in disgust. "You still don't get it, do you? Not just anybody's old bones. They're his."
"You don't mean-"
"Yes, I do mean. They're his. That's Peter Turnbull- what's left of him."
Ten
I
Prove it," Pat said. Then, as Mark took a step toward the rotted bed, she exclaimed, "No, don't… don't."
"I bet I could prove it," Mark said. "He was probably carrying identification. A watch, a locket with his dear old mother's hair… Or, speaking of hair, maybe some of his-"
"For God's sake, Mark." Even Josef was shaken by this callous speech. "You are without a doubt the most ghoulish-"
"What's ghoulish about this?" Mark demanded, in tones of honest surprise. "This is just leftovers, like old clothes. Compared to what we've seen lately, this is clean and normal."
"You have a point," Josef admitted. "And, since you have been right about everything else, I suppose you're right about this. Would you care to explain to us idiots why Peter Turnbull's bones are lying here, unburied and unconsecrated, in the cellar of his own home?"