Czanek shivered, knowing he might have to fight. Jihome, too, considered the grim possibility. The footsteps drew closer to the graves they"d just unearthed, and if indeed it was any of Conner"s rogues come to put upon them, Ji-home and Czanek both knew they didn"t stand much of a chance.

The moon backlit the encroaching figure; Czanek couldn"t see its face but he could see something weighing in the shape"s hand, possibly a weapon.

Czanek"s heart began to slam in his chest.

"Ah, brethren," floated the familiar voice. "Hard work solicits grand rewards." And then came a chuckle.

Czanek collapsed in relief, while Jihome gasped, wiping fear"s sweat from his brow. "Great ha"olam, Gaon! I and Czanek was nearly affrighted to death! We thought you was surely one of Conner"s cutthroats."

The Gaon"s chuckle fluttered deeper. "Soon, men, by the grace of our most divine melech, that swamp rat Conner and his rabble of sc.u.m will be no more." Then the chuckle faded. "Hear me, faithful servants, when I say to you, yehiyeh tov."

"Amen," the other men whispered.

The Gaon"s boots scuffed lightly when he neared the opened graves. Approval sparkled in his eyes, which first found the man, but then held longer on the woman"s corpse.

"A lissome harlot, I see, quite fetching. Have you men of scripture not made recompense?"

Czanek and Jihome looked at each other, but finally it was Jihome who spoke up, "Great rabbi, we haven"t, for I feared it would be against our laws."

The Gaon held some silence during another step that brought his face finally into the full moonlight. The face, lined by wisdom and grace, looked displeased, and his voice fell still darker. "Stalwart men that you are, you"ve failed to perceive your lessons. An eye for an eye, brothers, and an evil for an evil. You"ll need to think harder during prayers."

"Yes, Gaon!" Jihome and Czanek shot back.

"When our own Sheila Harav, surely the fairest and most innocent of Lowensport"s girls, died of the grippe last autumn"-the Gaon"s hand clenched into a fist-"it was Conner and his treacherous sc.u.m who dug her up not a full night in the grave and ravaged her lifeless body for mere sport, was it not?"

"It was, Gaon!"

"So now..." The Gaon pointed down, with wrath in his glare. "Lift that b.i.t.c.h"s corpse up from her grave and place her evil body on the soil..."

Czanek"s former fear transposed at once to excitation. He nearly giggled when he hauled the dead woman out of the box.

"...so that we may have our way of recompense with her sullied loins, as demanded by our redeemer, our shepherd, our melech, through the grace of the Eleventh Sefriot..."

And so the recompense ensued, beginning with the Gaon himself, then Jihome, then Czanek.

When they were finished, the Gaon smiled as a father might at children who made him proud. Then he used his boots to push the dead woman back into the hole.

"Your toil deserves such a prize, and now your toil is nearly over. Here. Take the bread." At last he unwrapped the parcel he"d brought, producing two loaves of fresh bread. He gave a loaf to each man.

But neither ate the bread.

"As is written, brothers, the offering must be sanctified. You know what to do."

Czanek placed his loaf into the coffin with the woman"s corpse; Jihome placed his in the man"s.

"Devout servants, both of you," the Gaon bid. "May the melech bless us all."

"Amen."

Czanek and Jihome took up their shovels, and began to heave the dirt back into the graves.

The Gaon walked away in the dark. "We shall regather here after the next sunset and dig this soiled b.i.t.c.h up, so that the melech"s will shall be served."

II.

The Present "Well if that isn"t the d.a.m.nedest thing," Seth said.

"A steamboat," Judy giggled next to him.

"In the ground."

After Hovis"s bizarre announcement at the house, he, Judy, and Mr. Croter had followed him to the site. The irrigation team had already shut down for the day, but now they"d been replaced by an excavation crew from the state. It hadn"t taken long for them to uncover what looked to be the boat"s wheel house and, more distantly, the corroded struts of a sizable paddle wheel.

Seth shook his head. "Our first day at the new house and, wham, guess what? There"s a steamboat on my land. Why on earth would somebody bury a friggin" steamboat?"

"It was probably nature that buried the steamboat, Seth," Judy said. "I"ll bet the boat sunk."

"How could it sink? The river"s almost a mile south," Croter, the Realtor, asked.

"Actually, Mr. Kohn"s friend is right," Hovis came back. "The river"s not here now, but it used to be."

Seth gaped at him.

Judy piped up with one of her typical displays of across-the-board knowledge. "Riverboats sunk a dime a dozen in the 1800s, either due to poor construction or misuse. The captains got paid extra for getting to their destinations as fast as possible. The boilers could explode, or they could melt from stoking the furnaces too hot. Something like four thousand people died in steamboat sinkings in the 1800s."

Seth frowned. "How do you know so much about steamboats?"

"I used to date a history prof. He had a thing for the steamboat era in America." She laughed. "Unfortunately I didn"t have a thing for him. Dumped him after the second date."

"Good," Seth said. "Now I"m not jealous. But that still doesn"t explain why this boat is buried on my land."

"An earthquake or a flood is my guess," Judy said. "Flash floods and avalanches have frequently been known to reroute rivers."

"Right again," Hovis informed. "According to the state authorities I talked to earlier, there was an earthquake here, in August 1880. This boat may have sunk simply from that, or perhaps it sunk previously from some other reason. If we can find the name of the boat, we"d know a lot more."

Seth rubbed his face, still confused. "But this is dry land! Are you telling me this used to be a river?"

"That"s exactly what I"m telling you, Mr. Kohn." He unfolded a small map of the area, then directed with a finger. "You can see here that the Brewer River runs fairly straight from the Chesapeake Bay to well past Lowensport."

Croter looked closer. "Almost a perfectly straight line."

"Yes, but from the end of the ice age up until August 1880-" Hovis made an S-shape over the river with his finger-"it was shaped like that. The earthquake redirected the river"s flow. Meanwhile, the boat sunk as the water drained in this turn of the S, and probably was upheaved by silt during the tremor. Either that, or the riverbeds folded up on it." Hovis shrugged, and even smiled at the oddity. "I"d never heard of such a thing, but the experts tell me it happened more than a few times in smaller rivers like the Brewer."

"It is a pretty bizarre circ.u.mstance," Croter said.

The clatter of tools and chugging of motors rose. They all gazed back at the excavators. Smaller power-hoes carefully scooped up earth, revealing more of the ship"s body. The wheel house looked amazingly intact for such an event, and even some of the gla.s.s in the portholes remained unbroken.

"I wonder how deep it goes," Seth ventured.

"Steamboats had very shallow hulls," Judy offered, "but they were usually double-storied abovedeck. What we"re looking at now is the boat"s c.o.c.kpit, and behind it are probably crew quarters and maybe a small galley."

Seth considered the information, then realized a second level had yet to be uncovered. "Then what"s below that?"

"The cargo house. That"s what all these boats were used for, Seth-to haul goods from one place to another." Judy pointed behind her. "And between that paddle wheel and the cargo house would be the boiler and furnace."

Hauling goods, Seth thought. "Then this thing might still contain the cargo it was hauling when it sunk."

"It"s a good bet, Mr. Kohn," Croter said. "And judging from its position, it was probably making a delivery to Lowensport."

Hovis agreed. "There"s never been another river port east of here."

"Interesting," Seth muttered.

"And what"s even more interesting-for you, I mean-is that anything of value on this boat is legally yours, unless the heirs to the property itself can be traced." Hovis seemed doubtful. "I wouldn"t worry about that."

Judy grabbed his arm with exaggerated excitement. "Long-lost reasure!"

Seth laughed. "There"s probably nothing on this heap besides a bunch of mummified corn bushels and sacks of flour that are hard as cement."

"Maybe, maybe not," Croter said. "You"ll have to wait and see."

"If there are ser viceable antiques, jewelry, or even doc.u.ments on this boat, you may have hit the jackpot," Hovis added.

Seth didn"t even pause to think about it. "I already hit the jackpot in my career"-he put his arm around Judy-"and with my girlfriend. I don"t really care what"s on the boat." He took one more look at the excavated wheel-house. "But it is interesting."

"We"ll keep you informed, though," Hovis said, and suddenly one of the workmen interrupted him.

"Hey, Mr. Hovis! Looks like we found the name of the boat."

They all walked to the other side of the digging, where the port side of the wheel house had been dug down nearly to its floor. The worker was wiping at the sheen of old, dried silt that browned the sideboards above several more intact portholes.

Hundred-plus-year-old letters could faintly be seen. WEGENER, it read.

The oddity of an old riverboat buried on his land scarcely affected Seth. If anything, the discovery came as an annoying distraction. Aside from pictures Croter had previously emailed him, Seth hadn"t seen the inside of his new house yet. Croter had taken them back up to show them in.

"It"s an interesting idea you had, Mr. Kohn," the Realtor said, looking for the keys in his pocket, "maintaining the genuine appearance of the exterior while completely modernizing the inside."

"I just can"t wait to see it," Judy said, but she still seemed dumbstruck by the dark, rough-surfaced outer walls. "You can tell how st.u.r.dy it is just by looking at it."

"St.u.r.dy isn"t the word," Croter said. "The exterior"s made of larch rafters, a very dense wood. A superior insulator, and highly resistant to termites and deterioration." He finally found the key, but wrapped a knuckle on the wall beside the front door. "All these switchgra.s.s fields around us were once a considerable woodland. Larch and oak, but mainly larch. The man who built this house, Gavriel Lowen, made a fortune from those woodlands."

"The lumber industry?" Seth speculated.

"No, actually he built a sawmill and became the area"s leading supplier of railroad ties. Larch is the best wood for that-they still use it today. He and his people were immigrants from Czechoslovakia, and they weren"t content to be charcoalers like the local populace. He simply identified an industrial need and he did it. He became a ty-c.o.o.n in his day. Making railroad ties."

"Gavriel Lowen," Judy repeated the name.

"He built the entire town of Lowensport several miles west of here, and he built this house for himself and his family." Croter knocked on the wood again. "This is a mortise house, by the way. No nails in the outer frame at all."

"No nails?" Seth questioned. "Then how did-"

Judy answered. "Instead of nailing the framework and rafters together, they"d hand-drill holes into every joist, and then hammer wooden pegs into them. The pegs were from green wood, so when they dried out, they swelled. It essentially welded all the joists together."

Croter nodded. "They don"t make houses like this anymore. In fact, the Lowen House is the only house of its kind in the area, and one of the oldest surviving single dwellings in the county. There are several streets of row-houses in Lowensport itself, all built the same way."

The Lowen House, Seth thought. It"s my house now, but I guess the Lowen House is what it"ll always be called. "I don"t understand how I got the property so reasonably. I would"ve thought that a house like this would be of great value to a historical society or something."

"You"d think so," Croter agreed, "but I suppose in this day and age, people don"t much care about their history anymore." He was about to open the front door but then caught himself and stepped aside. "Ladies first, of course."

"Seth, you have the honors," Judy said. "It"s your house."

"It"s our house and like the man said, ladies first."

Smiling, Judy touched the k.n.o.b, but something above it her caught her eye. "What"s ...that?"

Seth noted the sullen knocker mounted in the heavy door"s center stile, a queer oval of tarnished bronze depicting a morose half-formed face. Just two eyes, no mouth or nose, no other features. Must"ve been there since the house was built. "It"s the ugliest door knocker I"ve ever seen," he announced. "First thing we buy when we go to Home Depot is a new one."

Judy didn"t even get both feet in before she went slack in awe. The foyer opened to a long living room and several open side rooms, all of which were appointed in a toned down art deco style, similar to the condo in Tampa. Soft, neutral tones made the room spill out into the others, fringed with more vibrant trim. A ma.s.sive sectional couch wrapped around an equally ma.s.sive plasma television.

"Oh, Seth, this is so cool!" Judy reveled.

"Very neutral and low-key." Seth chuckled. "Like our personalities."

"It"s just like our old place. And the dichotomy of style is so clever."

Seth was thrilled she liked the appointment, but..."Dichotomy of style?"

"Yes! The modernism of the interior disguised by the nineteenth century look on the outside!"

"I...hadn"t thought of that," he admitted.

Judy"s approval followed her throughout the first floor: the cute breakfast nook that would capitalize on natural morning light from another set of lancet windows, a mod-dish kitchen with every new convenience, and a library fitted with neat bookshelves of chrome wire framework and black panels. "Plenty of room there for all your textbooks," Seth noted. "And we each have offices upstairs." Sprawling through the entire first floor was a sea-foam green carpet, save for the exotic kitchen floored by black and white checkerboard tile. Boxes of their personal effects had been left neatly stacked by the movers.

"I love it!" Judy squealed, then quickly hugged and kissed him.

"The contractors went to great pains to turn your instructions into reality, Mr. Kohn," Croter said. "This truly is a unique house. There"s nothing else like it in the county, I can tell you that."

"Check out the upstairs, honey," Seth told Judy. "Mr. Croter and I have some paperwork to go over, then I"ll be right up."

Judy traipsed excitedly up the double-landing stairs. Signing the final doc.u.ments only took a few minutes. "And if you ever decide to refinish the bas.e.m.e.nt," Croter reminded, "just call me, and I"ll get some men right on it."

"The bas.e.m.e.nt-wow, I forgot we even had one."

"It"s just an old-fashioned fruit cellar-rafter walls, dirt floor. In the old days, though, that was the closest they had to a refrigerator."

Seth nodded through little interest. Even though he had the money now, why waste it on that? "Where"s this mill you mentioned? Is it nearby?"

"Oh, yes. Gavriel Lowen"s original sawmill is located just off the town square in Lowensport, right on the river. Believe it or not, this house used to be near the river, too-"