Master Tresk was tall and sallow. His cheeks drooped and his under-eyes were pouched, giving him the appearance of a melting candle. His thin, gray hair was tied at the nape in a pitiful little queue, and he hid his sparse pate under the stiff black hat of a council member.

My father had worn such a hat. There was not much governing to be done in the colonies, but Father had done a fair share of it. I glanced across the room to the writing desk upon which my father's hat still lay. Now it would gather dust. Perhaps Wylliam would wear it and take Father's place.

I sat in a wooden chair in the room where my father had died, not far from the stain on the floor. I looked at the stain, remembering the pool of blood and worse things that had made it.

I was so tired that my eyes were playing tricks; each time I blinked, the patterns on the rug and the mark of Father's blood seemed to change colors, or blur together, before settling back into their cruel reality.

"Tell me again, Miss Agnes, how he lay." Tresk had a slow, tired voice. I disliked him. I thought I should like him because he was here, inquiring into Father's death, but I disliked him very much for his slow, tired voice, his drooping, melted-wax cheeks and his tall, black hat.

I wished he would go away.

"He was face down on the floor, with his hand out, so," I said, demonstrating with a gesture.

"And your mother?"

"Standing behind. All over blood."

"How do you know it was your mother who did this, child?" I watched as his long, spotted fingers guided his quill across the parchment he had clipped to a board on his lap. Slowly, the feather trembled out a loop, and a dot, and a line.

I willed him to go faster. I willed him to go away. "She held the knife, and her hand was all covered in blood."

"You do not think it possible that any other person, perhaps a thief or an assassin, could have come into your home and done this, and that your mother found him there?"

I closed my eyes, taking a shaking breath. "No. Mother killed him. I remind you, sir, that she held the knife."

"Did she say anything to you?"

"She ..." I blinked, trailing off, and looked up. Behind Master Tresk, my brother Wylliam stood watching. Although I had never felt very close to my brothers, I had been comforted by his insistence to be present during the interrogation. He was fully a man now; he had a beard and an inheritance, and the cares to go with it all. He looked as tired as I felt. He nodded at me, rolling a hand in a gesture to indicate that I should go on.

I hesitated. "She said, 'Don't let anyone take you.'"

Master Tresk cocked his head. Even this, he did slowly. "What do you think she meant by that, child?"

I turned over my mother's real last words in my mind. My name is Lygeia ... Daughter. You are never Agnes. You are Halimeda ... Do not let any take it. Do not let any take you, my Halimeda.

I did not know what it meant, but something made me hold back the truth. "I think ... perhaps she worried for me. Worried what would happen, after ... after Father was gone, and she was gone, too."

"Odd, that a woman in a fit of passion such as would make her kill her husband and then herself would stop to consider such things. Did she say anything of your brothers?"

"No." I shook my head.

Wylliam spoke up. "Margaret was Father's second wife. I and my brother were not her blood-children. I cannot say she ever spared much affection for us."

Master Tresk wrote some more notes. I watched him, wondering how he could bear to be so slow, wondering when the tears would come. The shock had not permitted me to cry, and now, two days after I had witnessed my father's last breath, I had yet to shed a tear. From morning until night I could think of nothing but what I had seen and what Dannie had seen after, but perhaps the pain of it went beyond what mere tears could express.

"I think that will be all, my dear young lady. Please, if you would, send young Daniel in. I should like to speak with him about the events following your father's death." Tresk rose politely as I stood to leave, giving me a respectful nod.

I should have curtsied, but I didn't. Wylliam should have discreetly reminded me of my manners, but he didn't. I should have cried, but still, I didn't.

***

I listened at the door as Dannie told the story of what he had seen. He had shared it with me in private, but I wanted to be sure he had not kept anything from me to preserve my brittle heart.

He hadn't. Even the stumbling way he sought words that would not disgrace my mother's already irreparable memory was the same.

"And then, after you saw her dash past you, as you say, what happened?"

"Well, sir, I gave chase, thinking she was in some distress. And we ran a while, me all out of breath. There was nothing coming after—I thought a dog, maybe, but there wasn't anything. And then ..."

"Yes?" Master Tresk asked.

"... Then ... the lady ... uh. She removed her—her gown."

"Removed? She stopped there in the yard to disrobe?"

"No, sir. She—uh—she was running, you see. Still running. But I think perhaps she was ... well, I don't know how she managed, sir, being not—" He cleared his throat. "Not acquainted with all the fastenings. But, next thing I know, I'm running after her and her dress is all on the ground."

"And so she ran unclothed?"

"Well, sir, not at first ..."

And so on. I could almost see poor Dannie's blush as he stumbled through the story, the same way he'd stumbled through it with me. Master Tresk asked more questions. My mind floated away.

Dannie had come back from the cliffs white-faced and ill, carrying my mother's bloody, torn garments in his arms. He had waited there while the sun rose, trying to catch some glimpse of her body, but had seen nothing but the churning sea.

Perhaps around the same time, I had finally found enough feeling in my legs to drift like a ghost down the hall and knock quietly on my brother's door. I remember how numb I was, how calm, when Wylliam came to the door, still half asleep, with Yolenn in her night robe behind him.

"Father is dead," I had said.

Then the screams and the commotion had begun, and nothing stood still. They laid a sheet over Father. They found Dannie, standing numbly on the porch with Mother's clothes, and got the story out of him. They sent one of the field hands galloping to Annisport astride our fastest horse. I was completely forgotten in the turmoil.

Trying to push the memory from my mind, I went to sit on the porch. Some time after, Dannie, freed from Master Tresk's attentions, came to sit beside me.

The confusing kiss from the day before was, needless to say, far from my mind. We sat there side-by-side in the cold and held hands beneath a fold of my skirt, sharing pieces of our memories again and trying to make sense of it all.

He held me for a moment, but it didn't help.