No Rest for the Dove by Margaret Miles Page A

the man being tended. Might she be asking herself if he would do for one of her daughters? For if she had not already heard … but there was something else here … something curious in the sly way she looked between Lahte and Rowe, and then at Charlotte—
    He swiveled abruptly to regard the minister. In Rowe’s face, at least, he saw nothing to confirm a new and monstrous suspicion. The man’s interest appeared to be held by pieces of pewter and silver arrayed upon the sideboard. Clearly, his thoughts went in another direction.
Or did they …?
    “If there are mosquitoes in your bedroom,” said Charlotte, “you might ask for frames to be put into the windows. You remember, Richard, making Diana the gauze screens last summer, after a June bug came in one night?”
    “Yes, yes—all too well!” Longfellow again saw his sister running through the hall in her nightgown, clawing at her hair. At least this softened the revolting thought of Reverend Rowe courting his neighbor.
    “But I still can’t see why I wasn’t bitten even once last evening,” he continued, seeking further consolation in scientific observation. “North of the bridge where the river slows, down in the marsh grass, one might expect to be bothered. But you wouldn’t have been wandering there?”
    “Even in Italy,” Lahte assured him, “and especially in Rome, we are careful of the
mal aria
, the bad air that hangs over such places on warm nights. Also, I am sure I would find the odor most offensive.”
    “Presumably. While I recommend the benefits of night air in general—unlike some who would have us suffocated by bed curtains—we mustn’t forget that even the ancients feared miasmas that float over water. Especially water that stands or meanders. Do you know, I once stood on the actual Maeander, having gone down to Phrygia from Constantinople to have a look at the land of old Midas—”
    “Most edifying, I’m sure,” said Reverend Rowe abruptly, “but as our most influential selectman, what will you do about our thief?”
    “What
can
I do, Reverend? At the moment, I have duties beyond pilfered boots and buttons. I will admit this affair worries me, and if you discover anything more, I hope you will let me know. But now, perhaps, we should all go about our business.”
    “If you would care to stay, Signor Lahte, you would be welcome,” Charlotte suggested—causing her neighbor to regret the telling of a small lie regarding his own level of occupation.
    “I would be delighted,” said the musico. His long fingers rolled down his sleeves. “I believe, madamina, that you must be a sorceress. I am cured! And I would gladly learn more of your spells.”
    Blushing again under the reverend’s sharp eye, Charlotte felt she would enjoy learning something more of Signor Lahte’s world, as well—clearly a strange one in which poverty and cruelty might join to create rare beauty, though with a melancholy proviso.
    IN THE HOUR that followed the departure of Longfellow and Reverend Rowe, Gian Carlo Lahte first explored Mrs. Willett’s kitchen, and then wandered her barnyard, acquaintinghimself with fowl, flora, tools, and utensils, inside and out. The spotted hens under the white oak seemed to give him particular pleasure as he threw them scraps, and it occurred to Charlotte that this worldly man might almost be revisiting his simple boyhood. Pleased by the thought, she turned from the window and again took up a knife, this time to cut into a mass of curd lying in a vat that waited in a water bath by the fire. Crushed rennet, from the stomach of a calf that had provided Easter’s dinner, had already done its work, curdling milk from last evening mixed with more gathered that morning.
    She cut the curd into small squares, then began the long process of turning the warm pieces gently with her hands, feeling for the mass to lose its moisture. In the meantime, she considered Hannah’s choice to work in the yard, even when Signor Lahte came