Must the Maiden Die Read Online Free PDF Page B

a
wedding."
    "Emma has a great deal on her mind," Glynis
said evasively, although this, as far as it went, was true. "I
assume, Bronwen, that you're staying with me at the
boarding-house?"
    "Yes, after I find Professor Lowe a room.
I'll take him to Carr's Hotel—it can't be full of wedding guests
yet, can it?" Not waiting for an answer, she turned to start back
across the grass, saying, "I'll see him to Carr's, then I'll come
to the house."
    With much of the crowd slowly and
reluctantly dispersing, Glynis accompanied Bronwen toward where
the balloon was being covered with tarpaulins by Professor Lowe and
the deputies. The heap of pale silk looked as insignificant as a
melting snowdrift.
    "By the way," Glynis asked her niece
casually, "how was everyone in Rochester?"
    "Rochester?"
    If Glynis hadn't been watching for it, she
would have missed the blank look that flashed across Bronwen's
face. Her niece recovered with, "Oh, you mean Rochester!"
    "Yes, Rochester. The place where you grew
up. Where your family lives. Where you said you would be visiting
before coming here."
    "Aunt Glynis, I couldn't get home. It just
didn't work out. Besides, the family will be here in just a few
days for the wedding," she said quickly, as if this explained her
sidestepping.
    While she hadn't quite out-and-out lied,
she'd come very close to it. Since they had nearly reached the
others, however, Glynis did not press her. Instead, she
commented, "We don't have gas here to reinflate the balloon.
Professor Lowe knows that, doesn't he?"
    Bronwen gazed studiously at the grass. "I
expect he does by now."
    "You didn't tell him that before you
landed?" Glynis stopped to stare at her niece.
    "I may have mentioned it."
    When Glynis sighed heavily, Bronwen went on,
"Look, Aunt Glyn, I absolutely had to get here. Otherwise you'd
never have spoken to me again."
    "I suppose that's possible."
    "Well, there you are. And Professor Lowe is
a genius. He'll think of something!"

3
     
    Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?
behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.
    —Book of Lamentations
     
    The girl slowly lifted her head. When she
had first wakened, it had been to the harsh caw of unseen birds
and the smell of marshland, for she found herself lying on a small
mound of earth tufted with grass. Now she could see that a short
distance beyond her the grass sloped downward to meet an expanse of
water, desolate and murky except for a few silver glints from a sun
dipping low in the sky. The air bore a dankness that felt on her
skin like laundry pulled from tubs of lukewarm water.
    How long she had been there she did not
know. She held a hazy recollection of a loft in the carriage house,
a horse rearing, and the sensation of falling. Only that; nothing
more.
    When she tried to pull herself upright, her
head throbbed and her left arm hurt her, and when she looked at it
she saw a wound, as if somehow the top layers of skin had been torn
apart. She fell back on the grass and lay there until the pain
eased. A black snake undulated past, gliding silently into the
water, and she heard overhead the cries of wild geese and the trill
of smaller birds. From closer by came the murmur of water lapping
at stalks of reeds and cattails.
    Moving carefully to favor the arm, the girl
tried again to pull herself upright, but now the weight of her wet
cloak held her down. A few pieces of straw clung to the black wool
as she raised herself to a kneeling position. When she saw the
stark gray stumps of dead trees jutting from the water, she
wondered if, before she had been thrown from the horse, she had
somehow reached the edge of the vast Montezuma Marsh. She couldn't
seem to remember why she would be there.
    She looked down at her hands, shaking as if
they were birch leaves, and saw splotches on them that looked like
smears of dried blood. And then it came; an image of wavering water
and a prone body and the long handle of a knife, and above the body
she saw the