“You’re not a woman, you’re a man,” her aunt had despaired. “Aaron, you must get her away from that horrid farm before it’s too late.”
“And you are a snob,” her father had retorted, still holding the belt in his trembling hand. “The city has made you soft, Aggie. At least Cassandra will know what living is like before you lure her away from me.”
Cass shook her head suddenly, and the vision faded. The force of the river kept her close to the carriage body, and there was a moment’s temptation to yield to its constant pressure, to the comforting coolness that soothed her aching flesh. The water roared and whispered, flowed and waved, and there seemed more silk than danger in its firm caress. She felt her hands relaxing their grip on the frame, her legs drifting inexorably beneath the vehicle, but when a slow grinding rose from the meeting of rock and wood, she snapped herself back and voiced one bitter curse to banish her weakness. Quickly, then, before the hypnotic sensation could return and overcome her, she tore with one hand at the tatters of her dress until she was able to kick it free. Her underskirts were next, and after a struggle, her shoes. Then she worked her way cautiously to the back of the carriage, lifted her eyes once to the stars, and pushed herself, naked, into the darkness.
Immediately, the river took hold of her, spun her clear of her prison and whirled her downstream. After a few seconds’ frantic thrashing, she managed to gain a measure of control over her swimming and began her struggle toward the shore. Her arms soon ached, and her lungs seemed ready to burst from her gasping and the icy water she could not help but swallow. She beat at the powerful current doggedly, a distant part of her mind amazed at the reserve of strength she had been able to call upon when it was needed. The near bank was little more than a looming black wall of trees and shrubs, but she pushed and strained with mindless determination. Several times she encountered great, black shadows of boulders that, had she slammed against them, would have crushed her as easily as a hand crushes a dry leaf. But those she could not avoid through veering, she met head on, drawing her legs up, letting her feet absorb the impact and instantly pushing her off again with little more reaction than a sudden skip of her heartbeat.
She was closer to the shore now, and her feet scraped over the pebbled bottom, but were swept away before she had time to attempt to dig in her heels. Her strength faltered, but her resolve persisted, and she tried several times to reach out for the tree limbs that stretched over the water. Twice she managed to close her fingers, nearly frozen stiff, around a branch, and both times they slid from the slime-covered bark as if it were air.
Then, over the voice of the river, she heard the final, prolonged ripping of violated wood, and when she chanced a frantic look back over her shoulder, she saw the massive cabin of the carriage spinning free of its stone captor like a child’s top. It crunched against another almost immediately afterward, swerved, and bore directly down on her like a silvered black spectre.
Without a moment’s hesitation, she redoubled her efforts and threw herself nearly full out of the water to one side as the carriage charged past her, narrowly missing her feet. It rushed on for several more yards, bobbed and spun maniacally, then struck a boulder of tremendous size and seemed to explode, to disintegrate into planks and splinters, and vanish as though it had never been.
The fearful distraction, however, nearly proved Cass’s undoing. She realized with a shock that she was heading directly for a rock of similar size. Frenziedly she beat at the water, using its own flow to guide her to one side; but she relaxed too soon, her left leg dragged, and it smashed against the stone with a force that ripped a scream from her throat. Instantly, water rushed into her mouth, her eyes glazed, and her head disappeared beneath the surface.
There was nothing in her world but water and pain. Her lungs fairly screamed for the sharp night air. She wanted to give up, to end the pain, but the resolve she had clung to so desperately worked her legs and arms and she struggled back to the surface, thrusting herself into the air, gulping to fill her lungs. A smaller rock glanced off her shoulder, spun her to her back. She twisted back around, blinked water from her eyes and saw directly ahead the skeleton form of a dangling dead branch. There was no time to consider; the white water beyond was louder, heavier, and she knew without seeing that she would soon reach a falls. She stretched, kicking herself waist-high from the river, and with her right hand grabbed and held the thick, gray wood. The current dragged her on, but her grip was firm, and though the branch was pulled with her momentarily, she was almost immediately yanked to a halt.
From one branch to another, then, she pulled herself toward shore. Her injured leg dragged uselessly behind her, each movement of her body sending lances of crimson agony up through her hip and spine. Twice she nearly lost consciousness, fought, and eventually realized she had made good progress into a broad section of shallows.
Crawling now, she tripped and stumbled forward like a bird with a broken wing. Though the pebbles on the bottom had been worn smooth by the passing river, they somehow contrived to tear at her skin, to bruise her as though she were being struck by clubs. She fell facedown, then raised herself back to her hands. The cold numbed her, and there was only her leg, and the mindless crawling that drew from her lips a constant stream of sobs, of moans, of unintelligible pleading.
Finally, when she knew there was no more she could do, she reached a tall, sloping bank covered with moist weeds and moss. She stopped, hung her head, then rolled over onto her back. From the waist down she was still immersed in water, but it was too soft, too comforting, and her arms had already used the last of their strength.
She fainted, then, and awoke a few minutes later to cough up water and gag until she thought she would bring up her stomach.
Again there was darkness.
Again she opened her eyes.
Move, she told her limbs, but they would not obey her. So she lay there, the moss and weeds a pillow for her head. She stared at the icy points of stars above her, felt the night wind dance about her face and breasts. Cramps caused her to groan, and a rhythmic throbbing in her injured leg made her suspect it was broken, if not shattered. She knew she had to move herself soon into the protection of the trees above and behind her. To lie as she was would surely mean her death before sunrise. Yet there was little she could do to make her body respond to her commands. Her arms lay limp across her stomach, her good leg might as well have been broken, too, for all the good it seemed to do her. She was cold. She was hungry. There was not even enough strength left for her to lift her head. A few minutes, she told herself finally; just a few minutes more and I’ll get up. But in seconds the world went dark, and even the cold of the river faded into nothing.
Chapter Five
There was a bewildering confusion of faces swirling rapidly around her. Sickly pale, deathlike, moldering. Bloodied, bandaged, mauled and mangled. Faces glaring with eyes of fire, faces damning with lips of ice. A woman screaming, a man weeping, a child begging for its cries to be heard. Geoffrey Hawkins appeared, with two shining pennies set over his eyes; Aaron Bowsmith, with a hole in his forehead that let out a wailing. Rafe. Gregory. Ella, cleansed of living.
Cass groaned and begged, and the swirling slowed, the faces drifted back into the darkness that spawned them, only to be replaced by a gray-looking valley split in two by a still, ebony river. And in the river stood a man, an evil leer twisting his lips to expose yellowed fangs. He was naked, covered with soot from some deep, hellish fire. The water began flowing and he moved through the sluggish current toward her. Suddenly his hands lifted and reached out to touch her, to maul her breasts, gouge her thighs, to tear the hair from her head strand by strand, and through some demonic power, turn each strand into a green-fire torch that seared her flesh to crackling cinders. She backed away, shaking her head, her hands in front of her protectively, her mouth open to scream for help though no sounds escaped her. It was the river instead doing her shouting, the river and the man and the roar of the fire.
She stumbled backward, grabbing frantically for branches, shrubs, anything at all to sustain her balance. And in falling, she landed hard on her back as the man stepped out of the water and stood grinning between her legs.
Yankee bitch! his swollen lips mouthed. You ain’t got away from me and Bobbie yet!
He dropped toward her, and she screamed, and finally sat up.
The faces were gone. The river was gone. And so was the terrifying image of Josh and his vengeance.
Perspiration drenched her face, ran freely between her breasts and down the length of her spine. With one trembling hand she grabbed at a piece of cloth and mopped her brow and cheeks… She stopped suddenly and looked down at what she held in her hand.
It was a corner of a sheet, slightly stained from a great deal of use, yet through its roughness she felt traces of a once-elegant softness…She looked up, and the room she found herself in swooped in and out of focus, so that she sank quietly back to the thick down pillows beneath her head. The mattress upon which she lay was also quite soft, almost too soft, she thought, after her time in the carriage. But she stroked it lovingly, gratefully, for the moment not caring where she was as long as there was comfort for her mind and her wounds.
And once the nightmare had faded completely, and the reality of her bed became too great to ignore, she slowly took stock of herself, rejoicing that she was still alive. Battered, bruised—she winced at the purple and black and ugly yellow contusions—but not aching as much as she thought she would be. Then she remembered the rock in the river, and she tossed back the light blanket and stared at her left leg. It was wrapped completely from ankle to thigh; so thick was the wrapping material that it could have been a splint. It did not take her long to realize that the bandaging was made of torn strips of green-and-brown drapery, whatever design it might once have had now lost in the twisting. Gingerly she tried to move the leg, to test the extent of the injury to it. Prodding with her fingers produced nothing, but when she attempted to swing it over the side of the bed a gout of fire drove up from her calf and lay her back, gasping. Her eyes widened, her mouth opened, yet she was able to keep herself from screaming until a practiced series of deep, shuddering breaths eased the tension in her muscles and calmed her enough to think clearly.
If the limb was not broken, and she now suspected it was not, then it had received a banging that had surely done damage to bone and muscle.
When she had wiped the tears from the unexpected pain from her eyes, she studied the room. It was large, fully as large as the entire first floor of her father’s house. Evidently it had once been a well-appointed boudoir for an aristocratic lady. The walls were painted a soft, soothing cream, and there were hints of gold in the intricate swirls that marked the junctures and corners of the walls, ceiling, and flooring. A half-dozen rectangular faded patches indicated the places where portraits or mirrors had once hung, and the panels in the door on her right were dark and in sore need of polishing. Indeed, she noted as she looked around her, nothing in the room seemed to be quite completely clean. The walls and doors, the dark drapes of the windows on the left, all were covered with a film of gray dust; even the laced canopy of her bed had faded from a cool, pale green to some indeterminate color. Was she in a deserted mansion, then? Was she alone? She reached down and touched her leg thoughtfully. She knew she was strong, stronger by far than the average young girl who stayed cooped up in a city, or even a small town, but could she have crawled from the riverbank to find this place, her mind saving her sanity by blanking out all sensation until she was safe? She shook her head at the foolish notion. That was impossible. Even had she been able to endure the agony of her injured leg as she moved through the woods to the house, up the stairs and into this bed—granting all that, through some major miracle—she could not have managed to wrap her own leg, not in the way that it had been done. Nor, she thought as she looked down at herself, could she have gotten into this beautiful nightdress, flimsy, warm, clinging to her skin like doubly thick velvet.
Then … who had brought her here?
A twinge of fear brought her hand to her chest. Josh? Cal? Had one of them escaped the ambush of … how many days ago? Had one of them backtracked and discovered her, helpless by the river? She looked wildly about the room, searching for some sort of weapon, when suddenly she laughed and brought herself calm. That, at least, was out of the question. Certainly, after what she had done, they would not be so gentle as to bathe her and dress her; she seriously doubted that, since they were probably on home ground, they would even have bothered with her once they’d discovered she was gone. Revenge was not out of the question, but this room and this nightdress could hardly constitute revenge.
The same question again, then: who?
She knotted the light blanket that covered her legs in her hands, struggling for some answers, making her head spin with dozens of dreamlike possibilities. Then she froze as she heard a light thump against the door. Quickly, she pulled the coverlet to her chest, staring at the latch as it turned in jerks and the door finally swung slowly inward. She closed her eyes, then opened them carefully, knowing there was nothing she could do but watch and wait.
An old, bone-thin black woman edged into the room bearing a heavy porcelain tray in her calloused, gnarled hands. The laughter that bubbled in Cass’s throat nearly caused her to gag. The woman wore a sparkling white apron over a calico dress, and a cheerful red bandanna was wound tightly around her head. In her left ear she wore a thick gold band, and on her gleaming brown face a broad and welcome smile.
“Well, child,” she said, bustling over to the bed and resting the tray on the mattress next to Cass’s leg. “Well! I thought I heard them bedsprings workin’.
“‘Bout time you done woke up, y’know. I was beginnin’ to think mebbe you was dead after all.”
A sudden flood of questions and exclamations flooded Cass’s mind and blocked her tongue, and she could only return the smile weakly. Her mouth watered as she smelled the hot aroma of the food that had been set before her. The black woman nodded once, sharply, and with one hand massaging her hip she moved to the window and flung back the drapes. Instantly, golden sunlight exploded into the room and Cass blinked and lifted a hand to shade her eyes. The woman pushed and the windows swung outward, permitting a light, cool breeze to set dancing the motes of dust that hung lazily in the air.
“Y’know,” the woman said as she shuffled to the second window, farthest from the bed, “you slep’ so much, we was wonderin’ if you was ever gone wake yourse’f up. You gots a bad chill from that water, too. You had a fever that was hard to do away wif, that’s for sure.” She stopped, then, a frail and graying figure spotlighted by a sunbeam. “You gots a name, child?”
Cass gnawed at her lower lip, her eyes moving constantly to the food just out of reach. The old woman made her way to the foot of the bed, still smiling.
“Come on, now, child, I ain’t gonna bite you.” She parted her lips, and Cass saw that she was toothless, her gums black. “Come on, now, what’s your name?”
“Cass,” she said finally, her smile renewed. “Cassandra Bowsmith.”
“Man alive,” the black woman muttered. “Jes’ what I need, ’nother foreigner.”
Cass frowned her puzzlement and the woman laughed, tossing her head back to bounce her delight off the high, slightly vaulted ceiling. “I ’pologize,” she said, “but you don’t know how funny that there is. Mister Eric, see, he’s a foreigner, too.”
“Mister Eric?”
The woman tugged at her earring and cocked her head like an aged bird: “You kin call me Sara if you want. Ev’body does. Don’t know what my rightful name is for real. Mister Eric, he decided on Sara ’cause it’s from the Bible and she was a good woman, so he tells me.”
“Sara,” Cass said, as though testing the name, and finding it good. She tried to sit up, then, but a wave of nausea and dizziness dropped her suddenly back onto her pillows. Immediately, Sara hurried to her side and perched
on the mattress, mopping her brow with a soft cloth and pushing the tray up to her waist.
“Too much excitement,” she muttered as she lifted tarnished silver lids off three large plates. “I tol’ that man a thousand times—Well, no matter,” she said. “You better, and that’s what counts.” She lifted the coverlet and checked the wrappings of Cass’s leg, nodding as she did so, her thick, dark lips pursed in silent whistling. When she had done, after perfunctorily tucking in one loose corner, she picked up a spoon and held it to Cass’s mouth. Cass thought to object, then quickly decided against it. Though she thought herself quite able to take care of her own meals, she could see no profit in antagonizing such an obviously valuable woman. Besides, she decided as she swallowed the first sip of a wonderfully warm broth, this being waited on isn’t all that hard to take.
“Yep, thought you was dead,” Sara said as she deftly kept Cass’s mouth filled so she had no chance to reply. “Mister Eric, he comes back wif you hisse’f in the buckboard. Martin—of course, that was ’fore he run off, ’bout two, t’ree days ago—Martin, he helped the Mister bring you up here. Ain’t nobody been here in a long, long time. Y’know, you was so cold, child, I had to lis’en a mighty long time afore I heard you breathin’. Your leg was swollen—how come you had no clothes on, child?—and they was blood all over the place. Lord A’mighty, what in heaven’s name happened to you, child? Why is you so far from home?”
Cass tried to answer, choked on a piece of meat from the soup, and began to laugh, softly at first, and then uncontrollably. It was relief, the sudden recognition of sweet and glorious relief that nearly threw her into hysterics. Sara watched her patiently, and she choked again, covered her mouth, and gestured at her throat and at the bowl. At last, Sara handed her a glass of water and she drank deeply, slowly, until the spasms passed and she could talk without bursting into laughter again.
Riverrun Page 6
