by Cameron Judd
She grew even more tense. “How can you ask that? You don’t trust me?”
“Of course I do. It’s just that I can tell you’re not happy, not your usual self. I’m concerned about you.”
“For God’s sake, Japheth, nothing is wrong! Nothing! Can you not take your own wife at her word?” She rose and stormed off into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.
Japheth sat up late that night, brooding by the fireside. He drank three glasses of wine, which did not make him feel better. He had less doubt than ever that something bad had happened while he was in New Orleans, and was determined to find out what it was. Yet he dreaded finding out—dreaded the domestic struggle with Celinda that he would have to endure to obtain it, dreaded the knowledge itself. Whatever it was must be very bad, considering Celinda’s state these days.
At last he rose and went into the bedroom. Celinda had retired much earlier, and lay beneath the covers, her back toward him. He undressed and slipped on a long nightshirt, then crawled into bed beside her. He could tell from her breathing that she was not asleep.
“Celinda, I’m sorry I upset you. I didn’t mean to.”
In the darkness she turned toward him and put her arm across his chest. “Japheth, do you love me?”
“You know I do.”
“Do you love me so much that you could never stop loving me, no matter what?”
“Yes, Celinda, yes. No matter what.”
“You’ll stand by me, no matter what the situation?”
“Of course I will. I’ll always stand by you. You are my wife. I love you more than the world itself.”
“I love you, too, Japheth.”
“Celinda, please … tell me what has you troubled.”
She paused, seemingly thinking, and he felt a combination of hope and dread. But in the end she shook her head and said, “There is nothing to tell.”
“There is! There must be.”
“No, Japheth.”
He was tired, worried, and her mysterious manner suddenly became too exasperating to bear. “Celinda, I demand that you tell me what is wrong!”
“Japheth, don’t shout at me!”
“Celinda, there is something troubling you, and you’re holding it back from me! I’ll shout if I must!”
In the next room Beulahland began to cry. “See now?’ Celinda said. “You’ve woken Beulah.” She rose and left the room, her white nightgown a ghostly receding image in the darkness.
When she returned, Japheth lay with his eyes closed. She crawled into her place beside him, staying well away from him, her back turned. He opened his eyes and looked out into the darkness, filled with worry and wondering what could have happened that was so bad as to change Celinda this much, and how he could ever convince her to tell him what it was.
CHAPTER 41
Japheth’s work the next day went forward in a haze of distraction. He could think of nothing but Celinda, who had been distant and cool that morning at breakfast. Today he neglected to return home for his midday meal, opting to eat in a nearby café instead. The afternoon hours dragged by slowly and miserably, and he left the office filled with frustration at a day largely wasted, and with dread of having to return to a house filled with tension and mystery.
A cool breeze was blowing down Japheth’s shirt collar and tugging at his tall hat. As he rounded a corner a particularly strong gust yanked the hat from his head and dropped it into a puddle. Muttering beneath his breath, Japheth bent over, retrieved the hat, and was brushing off the water when he lifted his eyes and saw an old, bent woman in ragged clothing standing across the street, looking at him. The intensity of her stare showed clearly that this was no chance meeting of eyes. The woman was watching him.
Japheth frowned, wondering what her interest in him was. He turned and walked on, carrying his hat, and glanced back once. She was still watching him. He stopped, stepped out onto the street and advanced toward her. She turned and moved back into an alley. By the time Japheth reached the end of the alley, she was gone.
It was mildly disturbing. Who was that old woman? Was she in need of legal help but too bashful to approach him? Her ragged condition had indicated poverty; probably she was some denizen of Natchez-under-the-Hill.
Japheth reached his home, and soon the old woman was forgotten as all the now-familiar tensions in his domestic scene reasserted themselves. Celinda was as distracted and nervous as ever. It took all of Japheth’s will to restrain himself from asking her again what was wrong.
The next morning he returned to the office determined to enjoy a more satisfying day’s work than he had yesterday. He threw himself into his work, accomplished much, and left the office in a contented state of mind. As he grew closer to home, apprehension began to be reborn, but he took a willful grip on his feelings and reminded himself that Celinda’s worries might amount to very little if he knew what they were, and she herself might, like him, have just had a mood-brightening day.
He rounded the same corner where he had lost his hat the day before when he saw the old woman again. She stood in the same place and was staring at him as before. His good humor died like a flame in water, and he felt chilled.
For a couple of seconds he actually had the impulse to run. There was something frightening in the look of the old woman. But of course he could not run; the only strange old creatures an attorney was expected to fear sat on judicial benches in courtrooms.
He made as if to go on, then turned abruptly and headed across the street straight at her. This time she did not run, though he did detect what seemed to be a flicker of fear in her expression. That pleased him; she had roused fear in him, and he was glad to know he had the ability to rouse the same in her.
“You, ma’am!” he called. “Is there something I can do for you?”
The old woman licked her lips and cocked her head in a birdlike way. “She hurt him,” she said. “She hurt him with a knife.”
Japheth thought he understood. Some woman had hurt this woman’s husband, son, or friend with a knife, and she wanted legal aid in dealing with it. He felt quite relieved.
“I see. Of whom are you speaking?”
“My boy. She cut my boy. I found him bleeding on the floor, and he like to have died.”
“I see. Who cut him?”
“Your wife.”
He blinked, frowned. Surely he had misheard. “What?”
“You know what I’m speaking to you of,” she said. “Your wife. She come to me and the boy’s very home, and cut him with a knife. She stuck him, for no reason at all.”
Japheth grew red. “Ma’am, I don’t know who you are, but that is a scandalous lie, and I advise you to watch your tongue.”
“My boy says he’s going to tell. Tell all that devil-woman did to him. That’ll fix her!”
“Ma’am, you are clearly a fool. That’s babble you speak.”
“No, no, I’m not a fool. Neither is my boy. It’s your wife who’s the fool. She hurt him and thinks it won’t cost her nothing. But it will. And you, too.”
“Hag! Are you threatening me?”
“No threat. Just a warning. But there’s something you can do to stop him from telling. You can give him money. He sent me to tell you that.”
“I don’t know your boy, and all you say is preposterous. I’ll give no money to anyone.”
“Then he’ll tell. And they’ll come put your wife in jail.”
Japheth was trembling. A fear was arising. As absurd as this woman’s words sounded, he couldn’t forget Celinda’s change of demeanor. Something had happened while he was gone … but a stabbing? It seemed absurd.
“Ma’am, I don’t know who you are, but I’m telling you here and now that you’d best leave me and my family alone. I’ll not abide anyone, for any reason, attempting extortion on me! I’m an attorney, ma’am! You think for a moment that—”
She turned and began walking away, her head lifted proudly. “You’ll pay!” she called back. “You and that wife of yours, you’ll
pay! Nobody hurts my Timothy!”
Japheth felt panic and a simultaneous shame that such a crazy old woman was capable of rousing such a level of fear. Through his mind flickered an image of himself going after the hag, hauling her off behind a building, and beating her until she begged for release and promised not to show her face in his presence again.
Of course such was a mere fantasy he did not allow to keep residence in his mind for more than a moment. He would beat no one, particularly not a woman—but maybe he should follow her, at least, and find out where she lived and who this Timothy she had mentioned was.…
Timothy! It came to him at once that Timothy was the name of the man who had told Clardy Tyler that his brother was jailed in New Orleans, the very man who had evaded the captors who had jailed Willie Jones and chased Thias Tyler into Lake Pontchartrain. And had not Clardy told him that Timothy, surname unknown, lived with an elderly woman in an upstairs room in Natchez-under-the-Hill, hiding out there in some deranged fear of soldiers? What was the old woman’s name? Sullivan. Now he remembered. Clardy had called her Beatrice Sullivan, and said she was a sad, dim-witted old creature still awaiting the return of a husband who had abandoned her on the riverfront years before.
It was an astonishing realization and an unexpected connection between two situations. Japheth didn’t know what to make of it. He hesitated, torn between chasing after the old woman and going home to his wife. He opted for the latter. If the old woman and her Timothy fellow lived in Natchez-under-the-Hill, he could find them later. His main worry now was the safety of Celinda. What if Timothy had been watching Celinda, as the old woman had been watching him? Japheth wondered. Might that explain why Celinda kept peering out windows, as if looking for someone?
He headed toward his house on the run, dodging pedestrians and cutting between riders and wheeled traffic on the street, taking the shortest route possible back to his house.
Celinda had strengthened and shored up her will for days on end until she believed nothing could break through it to reach her sheltered secret. But when Japheth revealed to her what had happened on the street only minutes before, her will shattered like fragile glass. Celinda confessed it all, laying it out from the start, struggling to speak when she felt like sobbing.
“Japheth, I’ve told you about Queen, who helped me so much. But I’ve never told you that Queen had a sister here in Natchez, named Beatrice Sullivan. It was her she was coming to see.”
“That old woman today … she is Queen Fine’s sister?”
Celinda’s voice trembled. “Yes. And Japheth, you know how I have always cherished Queen’s memory, because of all the protection she gave me. When I first was safe here in Natchez, I intended to find Beatrice Sullivan and do kind things for her, because of Queen doing such kind things for me. But I never had the courage to seek her out … until when you mentioned her name before you left for New Orleans. It reminded me of all that I had intended to do but hadn’t. I felt guilty, like I had failed Queen by not seeing to the welfare of her sister. So when you were gone, I took Beulahland to the Mulhaneys’ and went down to the riverfront. I found out where Beatrice Sullivan lived, and went there, but she was not home. Timothy was. Japheth, he got me into the room. He closed the door behind me and tried to …” She couldn’t get out the words.
“God! Oh, God!” Japheth whispered, and an expression unlike any Celinda had ever seen him display came across his face. “Celinda, he didn’t succeed, did he? Tell me he didn’t!”
“No, Japheth, he didn’t. But he might have if I hadn’t found a knife. I got it in my hand, he ran at me … The next thing I knew, he was stabbed. I didn’t try to do it. It just happened. Then he fell down and I knew he was dead.”
“Obviously he wasn’t,” Japheth said. “He’s apparently alive and well enough to try to extort money from us through that old hag and harlot he lives with.” He had been seated, but now he stood, pacing rapidly about, rubbing the back of his neck. “Damn him!” he bellowed. “To think any man would lay a hand on my wife … damn him! I’ll kill the foul whoreson! I’ll slash his throat to the backbone with my own knife!”
Celinda was unaccustomed to seeing her husband act and speak this way. Japheth was generally a calm man, an upstanding citizen, a devoted churchman. She had never heard him even swear before … but never before had he been faced with the realization that his wife had very nearly been violated by a very loathsome man.
Celinda said, “Japheth, don’t talk that way. You know you mustn’t.”
“I can’t help it, Celinda. My God, is it not a husband’s duty to protect his wife from such abuse?”
“It frightens me, Japheth. I’m afraid you might do something you’ll regret.”
“It’s my duty to protect you.”
“Japheth, I protected myself. I’m capable of doing it, and I did.”
“Protected yourself … but in the process, you’ve roused a scoundrel to blackmail us.”
“My intentions were good. All I went there to do was to help a sad old woman whose sister had been good to me.”
“That ‘sad old woman’ is an extortionist, in league with a dim-witted, would-be rapist.”
“I know I was wrong to go there, Japheth. But all of us make mistakes.”
“Yes, but this time you made a big one, my dear. That mistake could have cost you your honor, or your life.”
“I know. That’s why I didn’t tell you about it. I knew your feelings would be strong.”
He closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger, like a man with a severe headache. “Celinda, why did you not think you could tell me? Did you think I would overreact?”
“You have overreacted, Japheth. You’ve threatened to kill a man.”
Japheth shook his head. “I won’t kill him. It won’t be necessary. By heaven, I can deal with this maggot short of becoming a murderer! He put his hand into the wrong pot when he deigned to trifle with Japheth Deerfield!”
“Japheth, what do you intend to do?”
“I’m going to go put the fear of God and the court into that scoundrel, that’s what! The fool! Does some half-wit who sits locked away in his room in some morbid fear of soldiers, some piece of human refuse who dares lay his hands on a decent woman, believe he can practice extortion on an officer of the court and member of the bar?”
“Japheth, if you don’t pay him, what will he do? He’ll go to the court himself and claim that I stabbed him without reason.”
“No, that he won’t do. I’m not an attorney worthy of the name if I can’t gain the advantage over such a bit of flotsam as this Timothy.”
“Japheth, I don’t want what happened to me known! I don’t want people looking at me and saying, ‘There goes poor old Celinda Deerfield, who was touched and squeezed and fondled by the foulest man you could imagine when she went wandering through Natchez-under-the-Hill.’ I couldn’t abide that, Japheth. I couldn’t stand it.”
He grasped her by the shoulders and looked into her face. “You shall not have to, my dear. I pledge that to you. No matter what it takes, I’ll ensure that nothing that makes you ashamed will ever see light of day.” He wrapped his arms around her and pushed his face into her hair. “Oh, Celinda, I wish you had told me all this from the beginning!”
“I believed he was dead. I believed I would be blamed, and there would be no way I could prove my innocence.”
“Well, now we know he isn’t dead. Now we can deal with him, and by the eternal, deal with him I will. Don’t worry, Celinda. All will be well. I promise you that.”
Japheth understood the risk in what he was doing. One could never predict with certainty how various individuals would act under pressure, and where there was not certainty, there was, potentially, danger. He stood before the warped, unpainted wooden door of Beatrice Sullivan and Timothy, drew in a quick breath, sent up a mental prayer, and rapped very sharply. He had been careful to climb the stairs silently, so that his knock would startle the occ
upants. And when he talked, he intended to talk a little more rapidly and loudly than normal. When he looked at them, his gaze would have more than the usual intensity. He had come late at night, hoping to find them tired, and he was dressed in his best, blackest, most authoritative clothing. He intended to gain a mental advantage over these two from the outset and not let go of it.
He heard movement inside the room. Someone was at the other side of the door.
“Who’s there?” It was Beatrice Sullivan’s voice.
“Japheth Deerfield. Open the door.”
He heard whispered conversation. “You got no soldiers with you?”
“No soldiers. Not yet.”
He couldn’t suppress a private smile as he heard even more intense whispering inside. Not yet. A lot of hidden significance in that last word. Timothy wouldn’t have missed it.
He rapped again, more loudly. “Open this door!” he said. “I require admittance!”
More whispering, and then the door opened. Beatrice Sullivan’s wide but withered face looked back at him. Beyond her, he saw Timothy standing in the back of the room, beside a small table on which lay a battered old flintlock pistol.
“Thank you,” Japheth said curtly. He pushed on in before the door was fully open, making Mrs. Sullivan stumble backward. Japheth kept his eyes locked on Timothy’s pale face and advanced straight toward him so quickly that before Timothy could even react, the pistol was no longer on the table but in Japheth’s hand.
“I believe I’ll keep this while I’m here,” he said, sticking the pistol under his belt. “Just a precaution, you know.”
“That’s my pistol! Give it to me! And why the hell have you come here?”
“Didn’t you want to see me, Timothy? Wasn’t it your idea that I come bring you money so that you’ll leave me and my wife in peace? Otherwise, I gather, you’ll go to the law and complain that she stabbed you? By the way, how are you healing up?” He reached over and yanked up Timothy’s loose shirt, exposing a pinkish, scabbed, but obviously healing puncture. Timothy pulled back, jerking down the shirt.
