Love Me, Marietta

by Jennifer Wilde

  I forced the memories of Jeremy Bond out of my mind. He was a stranger I had encountered on the streets of New Orleans, a jaunty rogue I had seen through at once. Fate had thrown us together briefly, under unusual circumstances, and I would never see him again. I turned away from the gray stone wall and started across the grassy knoll, and as I did so I saw a bright flash of blue among the trees. Em cleared the trees and hurried toward me, her blue skirt flapping in the breeze.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you!” she cried.

  She caught up with me and placed a hand over her heart, breathing rapidly, chestnut locks spilling over her shoulders in a bouncy tangle.

  “I left early,” I told her. “I wanted some fresh air.”

  Em sighed heavily. “I slept late. I needed to after last night. Cleeve is insatiable, luv, and he has the strength of a stallion.”

  “You really are taking quite a chance, Em.”

  “I know, luv, but I have my reasons. He’s a surly, silent brute, true, but I figured I could get him to talk, figured he might say something that would be worthwhile. Well, last night he did. Let’s walk this way.”

  She took hold of my arm and turned me around, and we started walking toward the west end of the island, away from the stockade. I was puzzled, but before I could question her she continued in an excited voice.

  “Cleeve told me a very interesting story, luv. He said the pirates used to row over to the mainland and hide in the bushes and wait for an Indian woman to come along. They’d jump out and pounce on her and bring her back to the island for some fun on the beach. They did it several times—that’s why the Indians attacked that time, the pirates were abducting their women and raping them.”

  “I knew that, Em.”

  “After the attack, Red Nick forbade his men to row over to the mainland and molest the Indian women, but that didn’t stop them. Cleeve and some of the others continued to sneak over now and again. Not more than six months ago a group of them rowed over one night and caught one of the women and brought her back to the island. They gagged her so that she couldn’t make any noise, then raped her and killed her.”

  “Was Cleeve with them?” I asked.

  Em shook her head. “Lucky for him he wasn’t,” she said. “They buried her body and hid the boat and returned to town. A couple of days later her body was discovered—they buried her on the beach and the waves washed the sand away. Red Nick was furious!”

  Em paused, trying to control her excitement. We had left the grassy knoll now and were walking through the woods, sunlight sifting through the limbs overhead to make bright patterns on the shadowy ground. Tall ferns and plants with large, heart-shaped dark green leaves grew under the trees, and there were clusters of dark purple and red flowers as well. Thick strands of ivy covered many of the trees, heavy, vinelike strands dangling down from the limbs.

  “He discovered the names of the culprits,” Em continued, “and he had all five of them flogged, a hundred lashes each. One of the men died. Red Nick made his point, and now none of the men would dare venture over to the mainland with mischief in mind.”

  “I fail to see why you find the story so exciting, Em.”

  “Think, luv,” she replied.

  “What could it possibly have to do with us?”

  “Think,” she repeated.

  I hesitated, frowning, and then it dawned on me. “The boat,” I said.

  “Exactly! They kept it hidden, luv, and chances are it’s still there! I questioned Cleeve thoroughly, had to be real careful about it, had to pretend I wasn’t really interested, merely making idle conversation. I kept stroking his back and wiggling under him and sighing blissfully—I should have gone on the stage, luv. Tiny rocks were bruising my backside and leaves were tickling my feet and legs and Cleeve must weigh a ton, all solid muscle.”

  “Are you sure he didn’t suspect anything?”

  “I told you I was careful. I asked him about the trips to the mainland, told him it was very brave and daring, said he must have been scared. He said no, he wasn’t scared at all, not an Indian alive scared him. I said I didn’t mean he might be scared of the Indians, I meant he must have been scared Red Nick would find out, might find the boat and figure out what they were doing.”

  “And?”

  “He said there wasn’t much chance of that, said there were huge rocks on the west end of the island, all covered over with ivy, with a network of small caves behind them. They hid the boat in one of the caves, he told me. I said oh, that was clever, and he said yeah, the cave kept it dry and it was near the water and they could pull it out easy and row across, and I said we’re wasting time with all this talk, luv, let’s have some more action. He started plowing away again, kept at it half the night. I could hardly walk when I got up this morning.”

  “Do you think he’ll remember the conversation?” I asked.

  “He’s not going to remember anything we said, luv. He’s not overly bright to begin with, and he’s convinced the only reason I keep meeting him is because I can’t resist his gorgeous body. I must say,” she added thoughtfully, “he certainly knows what to do with it.”

  “You’re dreadful, Em,” I teased.

  “A girl learns to appreciate certain skills,” she replied, very matter-of-fact. “If she’s going to have to use her body to barter with, she might as well get a little fun out of it. I got the information I wanted, luv, that’s the important thing. The rest was a kind of bonus!”

  She smiled, cheerfully amoral, engagingly frank. Em was the bravest girl I had ever known, bright, bold, indomitable, and I admired her without reservation. If her attitude toward things of the flesh was casual and considerably less than saintly, she had a sunny disposition and an innate goodness of heart that would have been exemplary to the most pious of souls. She walked beside me now with a light step, keeping an eye out for snakes, convinced the island was infested with them.

  “I really don’t see what good a small boat would do us,” I said. “Once we rowed across to the mainland, we’d be in an even worse situation. The Indians—”

  “Who says we have to row to the mainland?” she interrupted.

  “We certainly can’t row out to sea.”

  “But we can row along the coast, luv, avoiding the mainland until we are many, many miles away, well past Indian territory, then we can land and take our chances.”

  “It’s an extremely daring plan, Em.”

  “It happens to be the only one we have at the moment.”

  “That’s quite true,” I said.

  “We can steal provisions—food, water, guns—and carry them to the boat on the sly until we have enough for our journey. Then we can slip out of the stockade at night, and by the time they discover we’re gone we can be several miles up the coast.”

  “They’d be certain to come after us.”

  “They’ll assume we’ve crossed over to the mainland—I’ll drop hints that I don’t believe in the Indians and ask Michael carefully obvious questions about that settlement thirty miles inland Red Nick’s men sometimes trek to. Is that a snake!”

  “It’s only a branch, Em,” I said.

  “Gave me quite a turn! Anyway, when we’re gone he’ll remember my questions, and they’ll send a party to the mainland and spend a couple of days looking for us and, more than likely, assume we’ve been eaten up by cannibals. We can make it, luv.”

  It was, of course, a wild and utterly foolhardy plan, but Em’s enthusiasm was infectious, and I began to think it just might work. There were big questions. How were we going to get the provisions, and, once we got them, how were we going to get them to the boat? We couldn’t just walk through the gates carrying containers of water and bags of oranges and boxes of dried beef, nor could we saunter past Cleeve and his men with guns and ammunition. Em seemed to read my mind.

  “We’ll find a way to get food and water and things,” she said, “and we’ll find a way to get them to the boat. I’ve already got a couple of ideas, luv.�
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  “I suppose it could work.”

  “It will,” she assured me.

  “First we’ve got to find the boat, if, indeed, there is one.”

  “There is, luv. I just know it!”

  Her hazel eyes were full of determination as we continued to move through the thick forest, avoiding the dangling strands of ivy, stepping over logs and rocks. After a while the trees seemed to thin out, far more sunlight streaming through the limbs, and the ground was much rockier. Em caught her skirt on a branch, muttered a curse, pulled it free. A bird cawed loudly, causing her to jump.

  “I’m really not a woodsy person,” she admitted.

  “Nor am I.”

  “At least you’ve had experience, luv, all those weeks you spent trekking down the Natchez Trace with that chap Jeff you told me about. How are you at rowing a boat?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never done it.”

  “Neither have I, but I’m sure it’s easy enough once you get the knack. I imagine we can muster through.”

  The trees ended up ahead. We could see sky and water through the trunks. Moving under the last limbs, we found ourselves on a high bluff, enormous, ivy-covered rocks tumbling down in a sprawling cascade to the beach below. The ivy was a dark, waxy green, clinging in leafy clusters to the dark gray rocks mottled with rust and umber streaks. Some of the rocks were as large as houses, some much smaller, precariously piled together as though dumped by a capricious giant. The wind was quite strong at this end of the island, causing the ivy to rattle noisily, causing our skirts to whip about our legs.

  “The caves would be down below,” Em said. “Guess we’ll have to get down there somehow.”

  “It shouldn’t be difficult,” I observed.

  “Not for a mountain goat!”

  I smiled and, leaving her standing there with a dubious expression on her face, stepped onto the nearest rock, caught hold of a thick strand of ivy and carefully lowered myself onto the rock jutting out beneath it. The wind seemed to blow even harder, tearing at my hair, tossing it across my face as I sought another foothold. My foot slipped. I clung to the ivy, hoping it wouldn’t be torn from its roots. Em screamed. I hesitated a moment and then, still holding the ivy with one hand, reached down to remove my shoes, first the left and then the right. I tossed them down to the beach and continued my descent with much greater ease, lowering myself into a crevice, edging around a great, ivy-hung hump, stepping down onto a broad, rocky ledge that glittered with mica in the sunlight.

  As I continued to climb down, I remembered that other descent, much more hazardous than this, when I had climbed down the cliff behind the inn in Natchez, attempting to escape from Jeff Rawlins. That seemed such a long time ago, another lifetime. I blotted the memory out of my mind and concentrated on finding another foothold, halfway down now. The rocks were much larger here, easier to move over, although the drop from rock to rock was much steeper, sometimes as much as ten or fifteen feet. It would have been difficult indeed if I hadn’t been able to hold onto the thick strands of ivy, using them as though they were ropes. It was with considerable relief that I lowered myself down the last rock and stepped onto the sand.

  Em dropped down beside me a few moments later, looking shaken but extremely pleased with herself.

  “I’ll tell you one thing right now, luv, we’re going to find another way to get back up!”

  “It wasn’t so bad.”

  “Wasn’t so bad my ass! Where are my shoes? Oh, there they are over there. I was afraid I might have hurled them into the water. You scooted down nimbly as could be, luv, like you’ve been climbing down rocks all your life. I don’t mind tellin’ you I was scared spitless.”

  “Now all we have to do is find the cave,” I said.

  “Cleeve said it was behind the ivy, and said you couldn’t see it. Let me just get my shoes on, and we’ll find it in no time.”

  After we had retrieved our shoes and put them back on, we began to part the strands of ivy, looking for crevices. We found one cave almost immediately, but it was filled with cobwebs and much too small, hardly more than a hollow, certainly not large enough for a boat. The second cave was wide and low, so low we had to crawl. We crawled for perhaps thirty feet, Em grumbling all the while, before we reached solid rock and could go no farther. I had to smile at Em’s expression as we crawled back out into the sunlight and stood up. Her spirit of adventure had been sorely tested. She brushed her skirt and wiped a cobweb from her cheek, a stubborn frown creasing her brow.

  “I’m not giving up!” she vowed. “It’s got to be here somewhere.”

  It was, but it took us another half hour to find it. The ivy hung down in thick, green-black strands like a waterfall, parting easily. A large tunnel led into the side of the bluff, sloping upward. I draped the ivy back so that light would stream in, but even so it was extremely dim inside, the walls damp and clammy, the sand under our feet deep and slippery, difficult to walk on. Large cobwebs waved from the ceiling. Em eyed them apprehensively. The tunnel veered to the right, widened even more, and we stepped into a large cave. The boat sat in the sand against one of the rocky walls, a coil of heavy rope beside it, the rope they had undoubtedly used to pull the boat out to the water. A pair of sturdy oars rested against the hull.

  Em and I were silent, staring at it for several long moments. The sight of it should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t. The reality was somehow disturbing. It was all very well to chatter about a bold escape by rowboat, but now that we actually had the means to do so, it became deadly serious. I felt a curious apprehension, and I could tell that. Em did, too. Her expression was grave, her manner unusually subdued.

  “We’ve got to do it, Marietta,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “It’s going to take guts.”

  “We have no alternative, Em.”

  “I thought I’d feel much more elated. I don’t feel elated at all. I feel—nervous, jittery, don’t know why.”

  Em sighed and stepped over to the boat. I followed her, and we examined it thoroughly in the dim light. It was ten feet long and five feet wide, built of hard wood that showed no signs of decay. The sides were high, and there were two wooden slats to sit on, one between the two brass rings that the oars fit into, one farther back. There was plenty of room for the three of us and the provisions we would need. Em kicked the hull.

  “It’s solid,” she declared.

  I picked up one of the oars, and although it was by no means light, it wasn’t nearly as heavy as I had expected it to be. Setting it back down, I uncoiled the rope and tied the end to the hook in front of the boat, and when I pulled on the rope the boat slid easily over the sand. I let go of the rope and brushed a wave from my cheek.

  “I think we can manage it easily enough,” I said.

  “Of course we can.”

  “We’d better get back now, Em. Cleeve will be suspicious if we’re gone much longer.”

  Em nodded, and we left the cave, draping the ivy carefully back over the entrance. We were both silent, lost in thought. I agreed with Em that climbing back up the rocks would be far too hazardous, and we walked quietly along the beach, looking for another way up. After a quarter of a mile or so, the rocks gave way to a steep slope, and we discovered a narrow path that twisted up to the top, the path the pirates must have used. A few minutes later we were walking through the forest again, rays of sunlight slanting through the limbs overhead to make dancing patterns on the ground, strands of ivy hanging down in thick loops.

  Cleeve and two other men were standing in front of the great oak doors as we neared the stockade. From the distance I could see that their expressions were extremely grim, and I knew immediately that they had been on the verge of coming to look for us. That disturbed me, but Em waved merrily and told me there was nothing to fear.

  “I’ll take care of Cleeve,” she assured me. “I’ll make up some story to explain why we were gone so long, and if he’s still suspicious I’ll sneak him into the shr
ubberies for a midmorning tumble. That should do it.”

  “You mustn’t take any unnecessary risks, Em.”

  “Both of us are going to be taking some pretty big risks during the next few days, luv. We’ve got to figure out a way to steal food and guns and ammunition and smuggle them out. It’s going to be risky as hell.”

  Em flashed a teasing smile as we neared the men. “Meet me in the garden this afternoon,” she said under her breath. “We’ve got an awful lot of planning to do.”

  Fifteen

  The house was very quiet, so quiet I could hear birds chirping in the gardens out back. Burke, Lyon’s chief servant, had gone down to the town to join his cronies in one of the canteens, and the other servants were either out or taking an afternoon siesta. It was a perfect opportunity, everything clear, but I was still nervous as I left the small sitting room on the second floor and started down the hall to the staircase. It was very warm, and all the windows were open. The house was full of sunlight, rooms bright and airy, but there was a sinister atmosphere nevertheless.

  I had the feeling that unseen eyes were watching every move I made, and although I told myself that was preposterous, the feeling remained. Nervous and apprehensive, I moved down the curving staircase and across the wide hallway. My footsteps seemed to ring much too loudly on the gleaming golden brown parquet. I paused, listening. The birds chirped. Draperies rustled quietly as a warm breeze blew in through the open windows. No one was about. I hesitated a moment longer and then moved slowly and cautiously down the narrow back hall leading to the kitchen and servants’ quarters, expecting Burke to step out and confront me at any moment.