Whiskers in the Dark

by Rita Mae Brown

  Ralston resented Jeddie’s authority. Both young men took orders from Barker O, famed throughout Virginia for his uncanny ability to drive horses. No one looked as splendid as Barker O, in full regalia, the reins between his fingers, driving the exquisite Cloverfields coach. DoRe, who drove coaches for Maureen Selisse Holloway, ran Barker O a close second. The two men enjoyed a healthy competition, truly liked each other.

  DoRe, a widower, had been quietly courting Bettina, a widow and Cloverfields gifted cook, for the last year. He’d find ways to slip away from Big Rawly. Maureen, difficult as she could be, pretended she knew nothing about the courtship for she needed DoRe. Jeffrey, her younger second husband, built expensive, beautiful coaches, brass lanterns beside the side doors, subtle pinstripes on the coach itself as well as the wheels, color coordinated with the coach body. Maureen had built a large workshop for Jeffrey. She overcame her aversion to trades because he was gorgeous, kind, and did what she told him. Also, his business was thriving and that did bring in money, not that she needed it. DoRe would drive those coaches for the prospective buyer or for the person who ordered the vehicle, taking the time to sit next to whoever their coachman was and give him pointers about the abilities of the coach.

  Barker O heard the young men cussing each other, walking into the fancy blooded-horse stable just in time to see Jeddie throw a pail of water in Ralston’s face. Fists flew. Barker O crossed his arms over his massive chest.

  Let them settle it, he thought, even though he was tiring of Ralston’s insubordination and sudden awakening to the delights of women, delights Ralston longed to sample.

  Ralston made a fool out of himself daily, chasing every girl on Cloverfields and asking embarrassing questions about good-looking slave girls on other estates. So far not one young woman anywhere gave him a tumble, even though he wasn’t bad-looking.

  Jeddie, whose shoulder had been broken in a horse race, couldn’t swing as hard as he would have liked on that left side, but his right was good. Ralston ducked low, grabbed Jeddie by the legs, and brought him down. The two rolled around in the aisle.

  “Neither of you will ever make a penny as fighters.” Barker O finally spoke.

  Both jumped up. Ralston pointed at Jeddie. “He started it.”

  “The hell I did. He’s not to touch Reynaldo’s tack or Crown Prince’s. I saw him pick it up.”

  Ralston opened his mouth, but before anything came out, Barker O rumbled, “Go on out to the north hayfield. Check the horses and unhitch them, take them down to the creek for water and a bit of shade.”

  “Percy can do that.” Ralston pouted. “He’s got the energy now that Bumbee left him again.”

  “Do what I tell you, Ralston. You, too, Jeddie. I’ll beat your ass until you bleed.”

  They shut up, left the barn, trudging to the north hayfield, neither one speaking to the other.

  Barker O watched them as Catherine came into the stable from the other end. She’d just left her husband, who had mentioned it was his commanding officer’s thirtieth birthday. John admired Lafayette tremendously. As he rarely discussed the war, Catherine had lingered at the breakfast table.

  “Another disputation? I could hear it walking down from Father’s house.”

  “Chalk and cheese, those two.” Barker O smiled at the Mistress. They were both horse people, which created a bond that could occasionally subvert the restraints of slavery. Also, Barker O’s abilities brought luster to Cloverfields stable, and the horses were Catherine’s domain.

  “Barker O, I’ve looked at the cut hay, went over to the fields this morning. Good hay. With luck, we’ll put up enough to get us through the winter. Our first cutting and then the second were outstanding. I thought this year would be so-so, but it’s been such a wonderful year.”

  “Yes, Miss Catherine, it has.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about our oats.”

  “Good. Everything’s good.”

  “Well, it is, but I’d like you to go with John”—she mentioned her husband—“to Yancy Grant’s. Father has promised to buy all his oats. We don’t really need them, but Yancy has fallen on hard times.”

  “Not all his fault,” the large man quietly replied.

  “Maureen.” She thought a moment. “Obviously she never read the Bible. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ ”

  Barker O nodded. “Her husband bears no grudge.”

  Jeffrey Holloway and Yancy Grant had engaged in an ill-advised duel after Yancy said some foolish things while drunk at a large party at Cloverfields. Everyone assumed Yancy would put a hole in Jeffrey, who was a cabinetmaker originally, not a countryman like Yancy. Turned out Jeffrey shot up Yancy’s knee and Yancy grazed Jeffrey’s arm. Then, once healed, the men made up. Maureen, however, sued Yancy, drove him nearly to the poorhouse with legal bills, then magnanimously dropped her suit. She even allowed Yancy on her place to visit her husband, to check her horses.

  “Today?”

  “No. You two can go over tomorrow. Take two wagons. He’ll have everything in barrels. I expect you’ll know how much is to be done once you get there. I hope we have enough room to store it all.”

  “I’ll make room.” Barker O looked out to see how far the two had gotten, just in time to see Ralston push Jeddie. “That boy needs a good whipping.”

  Catherine followed his gaze. “He’s the type, Barker O, will only make him worse. To add to his list of misdeeds, he tried to kiss Serena and even pulled down the front of her dress.”

  “Great day.” Barker O shook his head. “Her husband will kill him.”

  “Bettina prevailed upon Serena to forgive him and John and Charles had some kind of a talk with him about women. It should have been Ralston’s own father.”

  “I haven’t seen Hodge sober for three years.”

  “Nor have I, but he gets his work done.” She smiled at the big fellow. “Never ends, does it?”

  He laughed. “No, Miss Catherine. My momma used to say, ‘People are no better than they have to be.’ ”

  “She said a lot else as well.”

  They both laughed, for Barker O’s mother, elderly when Catherine was a child, said exactly what she thought when she thought it. They gave Momma a wide berth. Catherine wondered if one of the reasons Barker O turned out to be a quiet, thoughtful man was he never got a word in edgewise.

  “I’d better go on to the north field to check up on those boys.” Barker O shook his head.

  “If they made it in one piece.”

  8

  April 14, 2018

  Saturday

  “Blastoff Beagles.” Harry laughed at Arlene Billeaud, Master of Beagles. “How did you come up with that name?”

  “Oh, I was dating a man who worked for NASA. Nearly married him, but that rocket never landed.” She laughed. “By that time, I’d named my pack Blastoff Beagles.”

  Harry laughed, too. “No one will forget the name.”

  Harry and Arlene, dragged down by heavy mud on their boots, had been checking creek crossings as the others worked on more repairs at Aldie. Tucker and Pirate, also muddy, walked along. The cats, back on barn duty, were sure to be insufferable once Harry and Susan, who was with the kennel work party, returned.

  “You no longer smoke? I remember when I first met you, you did.”

  Arlene, mid-fifties and in great shape, shook her head no. “The terrible truth is I miss it. Calmed me and I loved the taste. But I’d had enough friends die of lung cancer by the time I turned fifty. Granted, all were older, from that generation that smoked and drank sociably. Still.”

  “Know what you mean. I never smoked myself, but Mom and Dad did, as well as their friends. No one thought a thing about it. Tobacco certainly helped build our state.”

  “Imagine Aldie in the old days. People hunting with puffs of smoke trailing them.” Arlene laughed
.

  Harry, right foot sinking deep into mud on the far side of a creek, the bank less stable than she had thought, picked her foot up with a sucking sound. “Dammit.”

  “The fundraiser draws ever closer. I sure hope this dries out. The one good thing is the moisture—even if there’s more hard rain, it should help scent.”

  “Moisture is one thing. Snow another.” Harry sighed.

  “Ain’t it the truth.” Arlene also got a bit stuck, so Harry, now on firm ground, grabbed her hand and pulled her out.

  “Thanks.” Arlene looked down at her mud-covered work boot. “When I was in the Army I remember a saying, really stuck with me. ‘If you’re in trouble, it doesn’t matter what color the hand is that reaches in to pull you out.’ Makes it all so simple, doesn’t it?”

  “Does. Which brings me back to tobacco. I remember the big warehouses down by the James. I was in grade school, but we’d go down. Walking along those piles of cured tobacco was a white man with a black man at his shoulder. Those men knew tobacco. The white man was the big boss, the black man, maybe he didn’t have a title but he was number two and had a lot of respect. All gone. All that knowledge gone and those men have no one to pass it along to. I guess what I’m coming back to is wherever you are, whatever time in which you live, you work it out the best you can.”

  “I certainly did.” Arlene walked alongside Harry as they headed to check the last creek crossing. “I can’t say women were welcomed in the Army, but they had to take us. We stepped up to the plate. That shut up a lot of naysayers.”

  “My father used to say, ‘Do your job and shut up. Your work will speak for you.’ ”

  “Smart man.” Arlene walked without a hitch, her artificial leg so much better than those of the past. She paused. “Today Abraham Lincoln was shot at the theater and Alexander II escaped an attempted assassination in 1879.”

  “They finally got him, didn’t they?”

  Arlene nodded. “Why is it they always kill the person who is trying to help move things forward? What happened? Russia swung so hard after that, shutting down growing liberties and creating a secret police that would kill you as soon as look at you. Assassination never works. Look at Julius Caesar.”

  “One genius followed by another.” Harry tested the bank where the water was reduced to a tiny little trickle. “How often did that happen in history?”

  “Rarely, but sometimes genius is close. Or great change. I guess I’m thinking of Henry VIII, who caused more suffering than any king before or since, but his daughter made good on all of it and here we are in Virginia, named for the Virgin Queen.”

  “Did you learn that much on the job?” Harry smiled.

  “Oh, I’m not that studious, but I was surrounded by bright people, knew history. I had a friend in the Agency, Paula Devlin, I swear she knew everything.” The attractive woman smiled. “What do you think?”

  Harry pressed down harder with her right toe. “Fortunately, this piddling stream we can jump over. If it were wider and everyone clambering over, the damn bank would just give way and then people would have to wade across. I hate getting my feet wet, don’t you?”

  “Worse in the cold and now I only have one.” Arlene shrugged. “Well. Let’s make a loop. Get down on the southernmost path and walk back. I don’t think anything has come down since we’ve been here. The snow was three inches, not much wind. It’s the wind that does the damage when there’s been a lot of rain or snow.”

  “Sure does. How did you become interested in beagling?”

  A big smile crossed Arlene’s face. “I come from Michigan. No beagle or basset packs there. When I was accepted to the University of Kentucky, my roommate hunted with, as it was then called, Fincastle. So I went out with her and really liked it. Then when I was in the Army for five years I was stationed in England. Hunted with every beagle pack I could. Then with the Agency I was based in Washington and I discovered the Fouts, Orange County, hunted with them, and I’d drive up to Apple Grove Beagles in Unionville, Pennsylvania.” She stopped a moment. “What I loved about Middleburg-Orange Beagles is that I had to bring a child to be admitted. I borrowed everyone’s children I could think of and the parents were usually quite happy for me to take them and wear them out. I always thought the Fouts were so smart to do that, to allow the young up front.”

  They both laughed, finally reached the southern footpath, the dogs at their heels. As they approached a rise, the two dogs stopped. The ghost beagle, on the rise, watched them. As the humans passed, the fifteen-inch fellow fell in with Tucker and Pirate. He remained silent but kept up.

  A long, low mound, mostly covered with bracken and some trees, hove up on their right.

  “Isn’t that where some of the limbs are supposed to be buried?” Harry inquired.

  “So they say.”

  “God knows how many people are buried in this place.”

  Exactly.

  9

  April 15, 2018

  Sunday

  The second day at Aldie saw the Virginians and the Marylanders lopping off hanging branches and clearing the few large trees remaining on trails. A small work party focused on the kennels. When they built a new roof for the badly damaged kennel, they discovered two other kennels needing repair. It took four of them to cut up and pull out the large tree limb that pierced the roof.

  Everyone kept at it. The trials would be April 27 to 29.

  The ground, soggy, clung to work boots, making every step heavy. Apart from the kennel crew, two work parties moved through the grounds. The weather, still cool, would numb fingers if one pulled off gloves. Wisely, everyone wore layers.

  The cats, patrolling the barn, kept out of the slight wind, plus they had those luxurious fur coats. Still, Pewter would occasionally curl up in scattered straw while Mrs. Murphy hunted for mice.

  “There’s a chill.” The gray cat draped her tail over her nose.

  “If you’d hunt mice, you’d stay warmer.” The tiger cat crouched by a mousehole, mouse not budging.

  “I killed so many mice last week, there can’t be many left.” Pewter noticed an old cobweb, dead flies still imprisoned therein.

  “There are enough left. The mule will be stabled here. No point in the mice eating her grain.”

  “If she would chew properly, like cats, she wouldn’t spill much grain.”

  “Of course, you’re right”—Mrs. Murphy uttered those golden words—“but horses and mules can’t help the way their teeth are made. They grind down sideways on grains and grasses. We tear and chew.”

  “Quite right.” Pewter was startled when a chickadee flew into the barn, perching overhead on a rafter.

  “Whatcha doin’?” the little bird asked.

  “Looking at you.” Pewter narrowed her eyes to appear fearsome.

  Didn’t work.

  Mrs. Murphy looked up at the black-capped, white-throated bird, asking, “Do the owls ever come in here? They’re good hunters.”

  “Not so much anymore. There are so many fancy barns in the area, lots of mice, leftover sandwiches, stuff like that. They’re spoiled now. The owls don’t want an old barn. Has to be new. And I suppose the new ones are better built, so their high nests are toastier.”

  “You live here? At the Institute?” Mrs. Murphy gave up on the mouse, and the minute she walked away, tiny black whiskers appeared at the mousehole.

  Just checking. The mouse stayed put.

  “I do. My wife and I have lived here for years. No eggs yet. The weather has been too strange, but once all this passes we’ll raise our babies. We do a lot of good, you know. Chickadees eat bugs and larvae.”

  “Do you live in the barn?” Pewter decided to be social, even if this was a bird.

  “No, we have a tidy and tight bird box. Some of the beaglers and basset people put out bird boxes. We used to live in a tree but then we g
ot into an argument with nuthatches who said it was really their home. Wasn’t, of course, but as luck would have it, the humans had just put out bird boxes. So the nuthatches can sit in the tree and listen to everyone talk, watch other birds hang upside down from branches. It’s uncivilized, I tell you.”

  The little fellow, a born gossip, chirped away, and Mrs. Murphy found herself liking him. “Mr. Chickadee.”

  “Bud.”

  “Nice to meet you, Bud. I’m Mrs. Murphy and this is Pewter. Tell me, have you ever seen the ghost beagle?”

  “Ruffy. Yes. He walks about but he’s not very talkative. Nice enough.”

  “He told us he was here because of his friend,” Mrs. Murphy replied.

  “That’s what he’s told me, but nothing else. I get the feeling that whatever happened isn’t over. Ruffy has a mission.”

  While the cats and chickadee talked about everything and anything, Harry, Susan, Arlene, Jason, and Mary Reed all struggled with a large tree blocking a narrow trail. This was not visible from the wider walking trails and riding trails, but if the beagles did find a scent, heading in this direction, it would take the humans too much time to find their way around the obstacle, as woods surrounded the trail. The judges would be stymied. Worse, the pack would possibly get so far ahead, the whippers-in couldn’t manage them, and the judges wouldn’t be able to see the work of the hounds.

  Arlene sawed off limbs so Jason, Harry, and Susan could cut up the trunk. Mary Reed studied the upturned roots, quite large, protruding and taking up a lot of space.

  “How can we cut the roots with all the mud?” Mary asked.

  “Can’t,” Harry responded.

  “So?” The Master of Bassets peered at the mess.

  “We have to cut just above the roots.” Jason took charge of the problem. “We can roll away the pieces of trunk we’ve cut into smaller sections. But to pull away the roots, we’ll need a tractor and chains. And then, where do we drag it?”