Riverrun

by Andrews, Felicia

  “You should go into town more often these days, Cass,” he said.

  “Why? That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose.” He reached for a chicken leg and gestured vaguely with it before taking a large bite. “Trouble is I’m not a woman. I can’t smile to get what I want.”

  Cass glanced at the closed kitchen door, but said nothing. She knew what was going on between the young lawyer and Alice Jordan, but for the moment she could do nothing about it. Now, more than ever, she needed Judah’s strong right arm to keep his people in line, to keep them from running. And Judah was so smitten by Alice’s dark beauty that it was almost comical to watch him follow her around whenever he had a moment, and Alice didn’t chase him away. Soon, though, she told herself as she reached for the wine; soon, dear girl, before Missy wakes up and sees, and starts screaming.

  “Henshaw won’t take kind for kind anymore,” David said, snapping her back to the room and the candles. “Cash only. Same with a couple of others.”

  “What?”

  “Jennings—the new banker, remember?—he’s making noises about the loans. Nothing much, but he’s making noises.”

  Cass slammed a palm on the table, and David jumped, spilling his wine. “What the hell’s wrong with those people all of a sudden? They know my credit’s good, damn it! Didn’t I make the first payments on time? And they didn’t expect to see a penny until next year. My God! My God! We haven’t even been here twelve months, and look what I’ve done with this place. Look at the work I gave those simpleminded ingrates. Who do you think paid for that slimy Craymore’s new front porch, for God’s sake? Who do you—”

  “Hey,” David said, his tone sharp. “It’s me you’re talking to, y’know, not Judah. Keep your voice down.”

  Cass drew in a deep breath and held it, expelled the air slowly and pushed back her chair, propping the heels of her boots on the tables near corner. “It must be something in the air. Maybe it’s bile or consumption or something.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” David said as he plucked a snuff box from his trousers pocket and took out a pinch, laying it on the side of his hand, and sniffed it. He waited, and grinned when he didn’t sneeze. “There’s nothing to worry about, I said. But I thought you should know there are rumblings in town. Just noise, nothing more. They see how well you’re doing, Cass, and they realize now how much more they could have gotten out of you had they only known.”

  “It’s going to be harder, then,” she guessed.

  David shrugged. “A little. But Amos begins the second corn tomorrow, and if we don’t end the summer with a storm, the tobac will see us through the winter. It’s a good crop. Not great, but good enough. You know, Cass,” he said, leaning on the table with his elbows, “you really should ride into Richmond sometime soon. I hear England’s going into tobacco in a big way, probably next year. It wouldn’t hurt to make a few contacts.”

  Cass only blinked, a signal that she’d heard the argument too many times before and still wasn’t convinced to take the exporting risk. Not yet. One storm at sea, and their whole future would end up at the bottom of the ocean. As it was, the marketplace was skittish enough, what with Congress unable to decide for any length of time what was going to happen to the secessionist states: one faction wanted aid to put the South back on her feet again, and another wanted to keep her on her knees, while President Johnson was busily vetoing every bill that came into his office and Congress kept turning around and overriding the vetoes. She was positive there had to be a better way to run things, but as long as the postwar hysteria kept itself huddled around Washington it didn’t look as though another method was about to be tried.

  “I’m going to check on the kitchen,” David said, rising.

  “Don’t bother,” Cass said, and her steady gaze, edged in iron, put him back into his chair. “Alice can handle things by herself.”

  “There’s been food missing,” he muttered halfheartedly.

  “David, why don’t you go upstairs and see your wife instead.”

  Electric tension filled the room abruptly, and David’s face clouded over. “She’s not … feeling well.”

  “Nonsense! She’d be on her feet in a minute if you’d only give her some attention. What’s the matter, David, do you think I’m blind?”

  “Attention?” he said, grabbing for the wine and refilling his glass. “She wants more than attention—she wants every damned minute of my life! I can’t be with her a second before she starts her infernal whining and we end up almost throwing things at each other.”

  Lord, David, how can you be so stupid? she thought. What’s happened to you? What’s happened to the young man who was so smitten with me he would do anything, even give up a career in the West to follow me here? My God, look at yourself! Your hair doesn’t shine anymore, your eyes have lost their color—you look like you’ve been drinking for a hundred years. David, for God’s sake!

  “She wants to go back to Philadelphia, Cass.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Damn it,” he hissed, “why don’t you let me lead my own life?”

  “Because,” she said as calmly as she could, “anything that affects the people who live in this house affects the future of Riverrun. And I’ll be damned, David Vessler, if I’m going to let your rutting a black woman ruin what we’ve done here.” She thought, then, that he was going to strike her. His hand rose over his head, trembling, until he lowered it slowly to his side.

  “It is not my fault,” he said, “that you choose to sleep in an empty bed with a goddamned ghost!” And before she could reply, he strode angrily from the room, was out the front door, and the echo of its slamming filled the house like a cannon shot.

  She looked down at her hands. They were gripping the table so tightly the edge was cutting into her fingers. She felt no pain, releasing the grip only when she was able to banish the blurring from her vision. Then she was on her feet and moving into the center hall. She stood there silently for several minutes, listening to the night sounds of the house settling in for bed. A faint cloud of singing drifted in from the back: Chet’s funeral. Mournful now, and later, when the last shovelful of dirt had been thrown onto the grave, Joyous. There would be little work done tomorrow—Timothy’s still would be drained of its last potent, clear drop. She uttered a small prayer for Chet’s soul, and a damnation for the condition that permitted its taking, then climbed the stairs to her room. Not the largest room, not the suite she should have had as Riverrun’s mistress, but the room in which she had first awakened when Eric had found her nearly dead by the river. It was where Sara had fed her and kept up her spirits, where Eric had sat on the edge of the bed and told her his life and joined her to him. The room from which she could see her gardens.

  It was quiet, dark except for a single candle flickering weakly on the bed stand by her pillow. She had a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a vanity bench, an empty bookcase, and in a far corner a mirror framed in walnut, a mirror as tall as she. She stood in front of it and put a hand to her hair. It felt like straw, straggled about her face and neck like twisted bits of blackened string. Her skin was smudged with dirt that fierce scrubbing only diminished, but did not erase, and it seemed coarse, sand like to the touch, matching perfectly the deepest green eyes that refused to shine like the candle they reflected.

  Trembling, she unbuttoned her shirt and trousers, yanked off her boots and stockings, in a frenzy born of fear tore away the rough, binding undershirt and truncated plain pants. She took up the candle and set it on the floor at the foot of the mirror.

  What curves there had been were angles now. She cupped her breasts—they seemed smaller—lay her fingers to her stomach and winced at the muscles, hard and ridged. She could touch the bones at her hips without pressing, and her legs were maps of tiny scratches that seldom had a chance to heal before they were reopened.

  Fingers and toes seemed more like talons.

  She kicked viciously at the candle
and it sputtered out, leaving her in darkness to grope for the bed and lay back on the covers, her hands flat at her sides. In bed with a ghost. It isn’t true, she thought. I’m not saving myself for anyone. I’m too tired when I come to bed, too bone-damned-weary to do anything but sleep. I don’t even dream, I don’t have time.

  An image: David and Alice, white and black entwined and coated with the perspiration of their coupling, grunting, smiling, clawing, climbing …

  She rolled over quickly and buried her face in her pillow, and for the first time in months she fell asleep weeping.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Cass paced the length of her room nervously. David was right; she shouldn’t have tried something like this. Some might consider it a gauntlet thrown at their feet by an upstart Northerner determined to prove she was better than a Virginian; others would take the opportunity to gawk, to pry, and to laugh behind fans at the simple fare provided by a woman who obviously had no notion of what Southern hierarchy demanded. A few had refused outright, though the refusals had been couched in double-talk courtesy. He was right, she should have waited.

  Tapping a forefinger against her chin, she stopped in front of the mirror and checked her gown for the seventh, eighth, hundredth time. It was a faint and teasing gold interlaced with green ribbon—shoulders bare to catch the light, short sleeves puffed like morning clouds, the bodice edged with a soft mint veil that attracted the eye to the rise of her breasts. The skirts were varicolored, stiff and hooped, and it had taken her several minutes before she could walk without tripping, wondering how in hell women stood for this foolish discomfort. Her hair, after two days deciding, had been curled under tightly, banged, and pressed to her temples in a loose feathery spiral. She opened her white fan and hid all but her eyes, miming the coquette, then lifted her gaze to the ceiling. God, she thought, what the hell am I doing?

  The idea had come when the first tobacco had been cured and bound and wagoned down to the docks. Judah and his people had held an impromptu celebration, and Melissa, watching wistfully from the back door, had said: “Lord, Cass, aren’t they having fun? It’s a shame we can’t join them.”

  A moment later Cass and David had joined them—to Melissa’s chagrin—but the idea stuck with Cass for several days, and she had ordered the ball. That was when David first began his objections, and the more Melissa fought him the more stubborn he became until Cass told them both that the matter was decided. They would celebrate their first year with an anniversary ball.

  There was a knock on the door. She closed the fan with a snap and turned just as Alice slipped in. Behind her Cass could hear the first faint strains of the orchestra’s tuning.

  “Lord,” the black woman said, “you’d think they ain’t never been to a party before.” Her face gleamed with perspiration; her white-and-black dress was already stained by her exertions. But she was grinning, and rubbing her palms together as though she’d found a horde of gold.

  “Do any of them look unhappy?”

  “Lord’s sake,” Alice laughed, “get hold of your nerves! There’s enough food and drink down there—Why, they wouldn’t even know you was gone if you didn’t show up. Damn, but you’d think someone just told them Black Sherman had died.”

  Cass tried to smile, could not, spun back to the mirror and fussed at her hair. It was silly, she knew, behaving this way. She’d been to balls before, to parties, had mingled with crowds and danced with strange men—but during none of those times had she been facing a test. It was one thing to appear in Meridine as though summoned by a warlock, to take possession of a plantation that no one wanted and revamp and revitalize it in less than a year; that was something anyone could have done who had the patience, and the longing, and a thick enough skin to ignore the detractors. But it was another thing entirely to throw the place open for your creditors’ inspection, actually invite them into your home and make yourself a target. All the food in the world, all the wine and the rum and the gin and the music weren’t going to stop them from staring at the Yankee who had staged her own invasion.

  Alice clucked and shook her head, knelt on the floor and fussed with a hanging hem. Cass watched her in the mirror.

  “Alice, I—I wish you could be out there.”

  Alice shrugged as if unconcerned. “Makes no difference to me. I got plenty of work. Damn Judah makin’ a pest of himself in the kitchen.”

  “You be sure they all get some of the dinner before it’s all gone.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s already done.”

  “And Alice—if David comes back there, throw him out.”

  There was no hesitation at all as the black woman reset a pin she’d pulled from her own dress, but Cass saw the slight stiffening of her spine before she rose. They stared at each other, then; no smiles, no frowns. She wished now she hadn’t mentioned it, but the words had come unbidden and there was nothing she could do to take them back.

  Someone rapped on the door.

  Alice nodded once, swept around the bed to answer, and young Rachel, her hair in braids and face glowing excitedly, rushed in.

  “Mrs. Roe,” she said, clapping her hands. “Mrs. Roe, you ain’t never gone guess who jes’ come in.”

  Cass laughed quickly. “The way things are going today, it’s probably President Johnson hiding from his cabinet.”

  The girl frowned and looked to Alice. “I don’ know no Johnson, but Mr. Oliver he come in with his missus and you should see what he done to his whiskers!” She grabbed at a braid and tugged. “Jes’ like mine!”

  “My God,” she said, “that’s all I need—a dandy for a mayor.” She glanced one more time at her reflection, sighed and adjusted the sleeves of her gown. Then she took a deep breath, brushed a hand down over her chest to her waist and hurried out. Alice said nothing. The door closed quietly.

  Calm, my dear, she cautioned herself as she moved to the head of the staircase. They’re only people. They don’t bite at all.

  David was waiting for her halfway down the stairs, and she smiled broadly at him. He was wearing Northern velvet of a deep, shimmering green that set off his blazing white shirt and tight black trousers to his well-proportioned advantage. His ebony hair was brushed straight back from his forehead, so deep-black it almost glowed blue; and his matching eyes had a gleam that seemed to wink playfully at her. When he lifted his hand to take hers, she felt strength, saw the confidence in his gaze. You look beautiful, he mouthed silently, with a grin, set her hand on his arm, and led her slowly down.

  The dining room on the left was already filled with guests, the front room and its adjoining dance floor exploding with laughter and the rising buzz of voices. Judah, despite Alice’s complaints, was standing at the front entrance, looking comically uncomfortable in the black livery she had had Alice make for him. Amos, too, hovered nearby in similar garb, but since his task was merely to take what coats and shawls, cloaks and capes there were, he was frequently gone from the hall and thus spared the sharp-eyed scrutiny of many of the women.

  “I think I’m going to faint,” Cass whispered as they reached the floor.

  “Don’t you dare,” David said. “I admit that I was probably wrong, but you’re definitely not going to leave me alone with all of them.”

  “Melissa?”

  He nodded his head toward the dining room. “Captured half the young men already. You know, Cass, I think this makes up for everything now. It’s just what she needed.”

  She would have answered with a warning just for him, but at that moment Graham Oliver and his wife strolled out of the opposite room and presented themselves. Oliver was huge, massive from shoulder to waist, and his beard—as Rachel had described—had been set into a series of gray-tinged red braids that flopped onto his chest. His wife, though a head shorter than he, was just as large, and she immediately latched onto David’s free arm.

  “My dear Mrs. Roe,” she said, her voice extraordinarily high, “you can’t imagine how pleased we all are to see Riverrun so blessedl
y alive again. Why, it’s just been ages, hasn’t it, Ollie, since anyone’s been out here. Not since … why, not since that foreigner was here, just before the troubles.”

  “Mr. Martingale,” Cassandra said dryly.

  “Oh, was that his name?”

  Cass smiled bravely and allowed herself to be taken into the room by the mayor. Immediately, she was surrounded, not by people, but by faces. Grinning, laughing, smirking, leering, sweating, whispering, shouting. A glass was pressed into her hand. She drank. The glass was replaced. The small orchestra played “Dixie,” and she fought back the expectant stares with a smile and a laugh while under her breath she hummed what she knew of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” David, who had somehow managed to stay at her back, vanished with Mrs. Oliver and Cass was beset by many of the wives she had not met before. They were polite, some were friendly, though all of them poked gingerly into the corners of her life. A few she satisfied with a few small lies, the rest she dazzled with the progress she had made.

  By the end of the first hour, she was exhausted and retreated to the kitchen for a ladle of cold water.

  By the end of the second, there was no one left to meet and she was left alone to wander, to pick her company and the stories they told.

  The windows were opened and October was let in but exuberance was high and the temperature climbed. More and more, now, couples and groups drifted out to the porch and to the new extension that swept around the side opposite the gardens; and in the garden itself there were lovers and married people, and a few desperate gentlemen who sought honeysuckle and roses for the women they’d met. A carriage arrived, a carriage left. Judah, circumspect, carried a judge to a back room to sleep off his wine. The moon rose, full bright and golden. The wind rose, hinting of winter. The orchestra—seven black men with magic fiddle-bows—eased in the witching hour with a medley of waltzes that escaped from the house to whisper among the leaves.