Amos shifted his weight from one foot to the other, eyeing the letter, his mistress, and the floor by his boots. Then, with a sigh that filled the room with shadows, he reached down and took it up, stuffing it snugly inside his shirt.
“I won’t do this for jes’ anyone, y’know, Missus.”
“I know that, Amos, and I’m grateful. I only wish I could show it more than I have.”
“Don’ matter, Missus. I knows what you sayin’. It be all right if I take the roan?”
“If she’s settled after the ride into town, yes. No carriage, though. It’ll attract too much attention.”
Amos grinned and pulled at the skin on the back of his hand. “Don’t worry ’bout me ’tracting ’tention,” he said. “Ain’t no moon tonight. Ain’t no one gonna see old Amos spooking by.”
Cass laughed, wanting to weep, took his hand in both of hers, and squeezed it tightly. When he had gone, she stared for nearly an hour at the single lamp’s light, wondering, hoping, wishing that she had second sight, the ability to see into the future so she could learn, now, what would happen to her life.
She rose and decided to look in on David. It would do her no good to go downstairs and await word from the searchers; she would only find her temper much shortened, her patience gone, and the result would be the upsetting of everyone else who waited with her.
But before she reached David’s door, she heard a faint muttering in the hall below. A low wail of grief. She would not move. She would let them come to her. She was tired of racing into the arms of calamity. Rachel found her a moment later. The girl was weeping.
“What?” Cass asked. “Come on, girl, tell me and get it over.”
“Mrs. Vessler,” the girl said, “they was … Simon and Abraham, they was down by the river and they found the horse. She … she lyin’ there, Mrs. Roe. Simon bringin’ her back now. She dead, Mrs. Roe. Oh Lawd help us, she dead!”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Melody stood forlornly by the stove, watching a massive pot of boiling dark soup. It was fitting, somehow, she thought sadly. Ever since the night Simon had ridden into the backyard carrying Mrs. Vessler’s body, the whole place seemed be draped in unrelenting gloom. Mrs. Roe had not cried when they had buried her friend in the newly-made cemetery beyond the servants’ quarters, and she had not cried when it became clear Alice Jordan was not going to come back. Instead, she had become hard-eyed, stern-jawed, moving about the house and the fields with a determination that kept everyone out of her way. Rachel said she had lost her soul, but Melody wasn’t sure about that. There were still those beautiful flashes of kindness now and again that endeared the Missus to her, the touch on the shoulder, the muttered compliment on the work she was doing; nevertheless, there were no smiles. She was a soul, the girl thought, that was somehow trying to live without a heart.
She wiped a finger under her nose and made a desultory stir of the soup with a large wooden spoon.
If anyone didn’t have a soul, she had decided, it was poor Mrs. Vessler’s widower. She looked around quickly at the thought, a swift wash of guilt making her feel as though the walls and ceiling had suddenly sprung eyes. But it was true. Ever since Judah had ruined Mr. Vessler’s leg, ever since his wife had come home with her neck broken and smelling of sour wine, he had turned almost overnight into an old man. He stayed in his bed and demanded constant watching. He complained about the food that was brought up to him on a tray, he complained about the fresh bedding every morning and the change of clothes every other afternoon. Nothing suited him. Nothing pleased him, and the bellowing he did when his leg bothered him filled the house with a rage that made her cringe and search for a corner to hide in. Rachel said he was going to lose the leg, that every time she changed the bandages she could see the swelling spreading up toward his waist and down toward his feet. Bleeding him didn’t seem to do any good, nor did the incisions the doctor made that let out streams of yellowed pus.
Had she been as good a Christian as Amos exhorted her to be during Sunday dawn services, she probably would find some compassion for his pain. But obviously she wasn’t as faithful as she’d once believed, because all she could do some nights when he demanded attention, demanded relief, was wish that the leg was gone and done with, or that he himself was out of the house and away from the Missus.
Troubles, she thought sadly; this here house has got way more than its share.
Footsteps on the back stoop made her jump closer to the stove, lift the spoon and make an elaborate show of stirring as Rachel grunted in with two pails of water. She glared at the soup, at Melody, then carried the pails to the barrel by the dry sink and dumped them. She straightened, pressed her hands to her back, and groaned.
“I tell you, girl,” she said, “they ain’t gonna have to take this here place come next month. They ain’t gonna need all them fancy papers an’ things what the Missus talked about. We’s all gonna be dead by then, for sure. My Lawd, my back is killin’ me!”
Melody kept her silence, knowing that she dared not say a word when Rachel was complaining about her aches and pains. It was bad enough that all the men had to go armed into the fields now to keep the hill raiders from tearing up the tobacco; not one of them could be spared to help with the chores, so it was she and Rachel who fed the animals, cleaned the stables and the house, cooked the food, and looked after the Missus. They scarcely stopped moving from sunup to sunset, and even in her sleep Melody could not stop thinking about scrubbing and plucking and planting and dusting. It was driving her crazy. And Rachel didn’t need to hear it.
Suddenly Rachel cocked her head toward the corridor that led to the front, frowned, lifted a hand, and Melody tensed. “Someone comin’,” she said. “Mel, would you see to it this time? I don’ think I could move my shadow right now.”
Grateful to get out of the kitchen, Melody quickly wiped her hands on her apron and hurried down the hall and into the foyer. She waited then, impatiently, as she heard the sound of a large horse come to a halt in front of the porch, heard the saddle creaking as its rider dismounted.
A man, she thought when footsteps struck the wood. She wiped her hands down her front, straightened the scarf she had tied around her head, and opened the door immediately at the first knock.
“Sir?” she said, and stepped back with a start.
The man was tall, as tall as anyone she had ever seen except perhaps Judah. His hair was long and black, his face darkened by the sun and creased like beaten leather. His clothes, too, were black and tight-fitting, from the open-throated shirt to the trousers tucked into highly polished boots. His smile was friendly, but it only served to make more stark, more forbidding, the scar that ran in a jagged line from the corner of his right eye to the center of his right ear.
“Is your mistress at home, girl?” he said, a large-brimmed black hat held lightly in his hands.
Melody shook her head dumbly, her voice suddenly fled into a dry, rasping throat. Once the scar had registered, she’d noticed that his eyes were of a cold blue so pale they were almost colorless.
“When do you expect her, child?”
“She done … she be …” and she waved vaguely behind her.
The man nodded. “I see. She’s in the fields, is that what you’re trying to say, child?”
She nodded quickly.
“Well,” he said, and slowly fingered his chin. “Well.”
“You wants I should fetch her?” she said.
“No. No, that’s all right, child. But are you all right enough to give her a message for me?”‘
“What you mean, all right?” she answered, recovering. “I be fine. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with me, man.”
The man grinned and slipped his hat back onto his head. And with the movement, Melody saw what had been hidden before; around his waist was a wide, tooled gun belt, and in the twin holsters strapped to his thighs were bone-handled revolvers of a kind she had never seen.
“Are you listenin’ to me, child?”
“I listenin’,” she
said sullenly, “but I ain’t no chile.”
“That may be,” he said good-naturedly. “That jus’ may be, little woman. But you listen good, you hear me? You get everything right and everything will be right for you.”
Melody did not need to ask what he meant. The smile was still there, but the humor had vanished. What was left was a parody of gentleness, a mockery of his earlier courtesy. His voice had dropped into a soft Virginia purr, a purr that was notched around the edges with a lacing of sharp teeth.
“You tell your mistress that an old friend dropped by to see her. Tell her that I’ve been away for a while, but that I’m back. Tell her, little girl, that I remember very clearly the last time we met, and that another old friend of hers and I have decided that it’s about time we renew our acquaintance. You might say I’m a little bit wiser than I was, trying to do things on my own when I should have had … partners. Well, I got those partners now, you tell her, and we’ll be back fairly soon so we can talk over old times. Just the way we used to. You be sure to tell her exactly that, little woman—just the way we used to. You got all that? You think you can remember all that when you see your mistress?”
Melody, trying vainly not to shudder, nodded.
The man grinned and reached out to touch her cheek, withdrawing his hand when she stepped back. He vaulted from the top porch step into his saddle. It was a show, a mime to impress her, and he laughed as he grazed his spurs against the black stallion’s flanks and raced down the lane, vanishing into the afternoon’s fast-growing shadows.
A moment later, Rachel came up behind her, staring at the cloud of dust that spiraled into the air and hid the rider as though he’d never existed.
“Who that?” she asked.
“I don’ know,” Melody said, “but I think someone done jus’ walked over my grave.”
Cass barely managed to maintain her composure when, after she had returned to the house for supper, Melody cornered her in the stable and told her what had happened that afternoon She listened attentively, thanked Melody with an instantly suspicious, exaggerated nonchalance and waited for the girl to leave her before she allowed herself even to begin to think.
She felt both dread and excitement. Dread, because she knew who the man was and why he had come—Vern Lambert, returned to take up the challenge she had given him four years earlier when she and Eric had vanquished him and had fled into the storm that had blown her into a new and unsettled life. Excitement because this was the first substantial proof that her plan—the plan no one but herself knew about—was beginning to work. Word had spread. Riverrun was back on its feet and, though reeling, it was showing signs of becoming as strong as ever—strong because of the work of a single Northern woman who had seemingly come out of nowhere. Lambert had heard of it, and there must have been no doubt in his mind as to who that woman was.
Just the way we used to … He had returned to Meridine, sized up the situation, and had located Hawkins to offer him his services. She imagined he had convinced Hawkins on the basis of his knowledge of the plantation, and the fact that he, too, had a score to settle with the strong-willed woman who had once bested him. She could imagine Geoffrey’s slowly growing smile that released the breath of his madness; and she could imagine, too, Forrester thinking that at least he was not alone on her list of victories, no matter how temporary either of them thought they would be.
As she walked slowly back to the house, she found herself smiling for the first time in a month. Her blood raced through her limbs and gave them life; her thoughts broke through the cloud of self-defeat that had once made her believe with a dark and brooding fatalism that she was cursed, and had cursed everyone who came in contact with her. No more. That was over now. The skirmishes of the past were as nothing at this moment. Chet’s death, the destruction of the crops, the debts, and the snide remarks of her creditors had abruptly been relegated to the status of a prologue.
For months, when she had dreamed of this moment, thought of it while she worked and haggled and tore her flesh, she had feared she would panic. She had been afraid that when she was forced to stand up in the face of enemy fire, she would bolt and run and hide in the cellar until the storm had passed and she could creep away to try again somewhere else. It had all been nothing more than bravado, she’d thought when she was alone in her bed trying to rekindle the rage that had driven her for years, nothing more than a facade of bravery propped up by the notion that it would never happen, and thus there was no harm in giving vent to her anger at those who were essentially harmless against her.
But it was not bravado, or false strength, or courage born of distance and time. Her spider’s web had caught the dew, had sparkled in the early morning’s light, and had lured thereby the prey, and the battle.
You know, of course, that you’re entirely crazy, she said to herself as she marched into the kitchen and told Rachel to fetch all the hands into the front room immediately; you’re overreacting and you’re going to destroy yourself.
She shook her head and strode into the corridor, leaving behind her the faintly puzzled stares of Rachel and Melody. No, she was no more crazy, no more insane than her father had been when those rebels had ridden into the front yard of their Gettysburg homestead.
“But we’re not done, Father!”
“Damn, but you’re right. Just like your mother. At least we won’t hand them the place on a platter, will we?”
And they hadn’t, and she wouldn’t—not as long as she could stand with a rifle, as she did when the hands, led by Amos, slipped into the front room. She was before the fireplace, its flames crackling high into the chimney despite the heat of September’s night. Posted at her side was a rifle, and in her left hand she held a long-bladed knife that caught the fire and shot it around the room in sun-bright bursts. The men looked at each other cautiously, not daring to meet her steady, solemn gaze, sensing that she was about to ask of them something she’d never done before, something that was far more important than patrolling the grounds.
She knew they were frightened, and puzzled, and when she cleared her throat to begin she nearly laughed when several of them jumped and looked quickly back over their shoulders.
They were an even dozen, not counting the women. A baker’s dozen, she told herself, when she saw herself with them.
“There’s going to be a fight tonight,” she said without preamble. “A hell of a fight. I’m sure by this time Amos has told you most of what he knows about what’s going on around here, and who’s doing it, and why. Well, Captain Hawkins has himself a new man, a man named Lambert. He used to be the overseer here, and I used to know him. It doesn’t matter how,” she said, lifting her voice when they began to stir. “It doesn’t make any difference. But I know him, and I know what he wants. He wants me dead, and he wants Riverrun. He thought, when I knew him, that he owned it then, and I’m sure that he still believes this place is his no matter whose name is on the papers. He’s going to make sure, dead sure, that we do not meet our October deadline.”
“No he won’t,” Simon muttered from his place at the rear of the group. “He ain’t gonna do nothin’.”
“Yes, he will,” Cass said. “Or at least he’s going to try damned hard. You don’t know him; I do. He’s going to do something, but we’re going to make sure he doesn’t finish it. There’s only one thing, and it’s very important—I’m asking you to take on something I’ve no right to ask—there’s going to be a lot of bloodshed, and some of us maybe are going to die. I can ask you to fight for me, but I can’t ask you to die. You’ve got to make up your own minds, and make them up now. Lambert will be back before midnight, I’m sure of it, and he knows I’m not about to turn this place over to him just like that.
“If you want, you can go to the fields. They won’t bother you there. It’s the house they want, and me. And I wouldn’t blame you a bit if—”
“Missus,” Amos said, wiping his hands nervously on his trousers, “this is all right and pretty, this here talk you’
re givin’ us. But I told you that day I done rode over to Burford with that letter, if I ain’t here, I in a ditch somewhere and nothin’ changed from Father Abraham’s time. These boys here ain’t that young, Missus—they remembers. Believe me, Missus, they remembers.”
“You’re crazy,” David said. He was sitting up in his bed, a sheet to his waist, his naked chest bone-thin and gleaming with perspiration. His festering leg was bound tightly, twice the size of the other, and it lay on top of the sheet as he absently passed a feather fan over it to drive away the flies, the gnats, and the other night visitors. His eyes were sunken deeply into his skull, his cheeks mere shadows, and the hair that had once been delightfully soft with his youth and his vigor had become like straw and was shot through with gray.
Doc Garner had told her two days before that the leg was going to have to come off, that they’d waited much too long and only listened to his wailing instead of their reason. As it was, he’d said, the poison was already seeping through his system.
“Call me what you want,” she said, “you know this is what I’ve been waiting for, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anyone talk me out of it.”
“You’re damned already,” he said sourly. “You aren’t a natural woman, Cassandra, and you’re damned already. Melissa should have stopped you a long time ago but she’s too soft; she doesn’t understand these things. Like the other day. I was telling her about the new case Cavendish dumped on me, this man wanting to ship a passel of hogs overland—overland, mind you—to St. Louis, and I’m the one that has to take care of the … take care of—”
She stood for a minute longer, listening to him babble, wishing that the next day were already here with Doc Garner and his equipment so they could get it done and bring the old David back. But this was now, this was today. She only nodded several times and slipped out into the hall, knowing that he would never realize she was gone.
“Missus, why don’t you send Simon or someone in for the sheriff? Mister Garvey, he can stop ’em, can’t he?”
Riverrun Page 32
