At the very bottom of the trunk, my fingers found the binding of a thick and heavy book. I removed the layers of clothes and trinkets and at last retrieved the book. I recognized the cover instantly. This was the big book Eva held on the tree branch in her magnificent portrait that hung in Uncle Brett’s morning room.
The Book of Beloved was stamped in gold lettering on the front. The weight of the book told me it was more than printed pages, and when I opened the cover, I inhaled sharply. The first page revealed a daguerreotype of an Indian in a buckskin shirt and headdress. His lower body was naked, his penis on display. “Running Wolf, full-blooded Choctaw Indian, without blemish, attentive to the needs of any woman” was written below the photo. And then the price. Two dollars for the night.
If there had been any doubt about the pirate and his profession, The Book of Beloved made the truth clear. Though I knew I should hurry, I flipped the next page to find a cowboy. The young man took a swaggering stance, but his eyes were completely dead. “Cowboy Pete, horse wrangler, small scar on shoulder, can ride hard and gentle any mare. Two dollars for the night.”
How many of these men had visited Eva while her husband was on the battlefield? And not only Eva, but many of the matrons of Mobile high society. The note I’d found included with the pirate’s photograph had puzzled me, but no longer. It had referenced a substitution for the evening—at no charge. And Eva’s endorsement of the pirate had been requested, something of value for the other ladies to know.
The Book of Beloved was a dirty secret Mobile society would want to keep hidden. At any cost. Possibly even the murder of a woman who may have threatened that secrecy. Eva Whitehead might never have been the victim of deserters, but of someone who meant to silence her. I understood now. She’d packed her trunk with the things she’d need to run with her child, to escape Caoin House and Mobile. She’d intended to take the book with her.
I flipped another page and stopped. My Confederate soldier stared up at me, dark eyes expressionless. His hair caught the flash of the camera’s powder. One hand rested on the hilt of his saber, and the other held his hat. He stood in his tunic and boots and nothing else. “Caleb the Rebel, scars on back and face, a champion on the field of love. Two-fifty a night.”
I sat back on the floor as if my joints had melted, dragging the book with me. Nothing I’d presumed was correct. This wasn’t Eli. This was Eva’s lover, no doubt the man who’d written her the stolen love letters.
Holding the book in my lap and the flashlight with one hand, I flipped through the pages. There were thirty-six men, all dressed as iconic figures from Roman gods to court jesters and even slaves. All half-nude with erect penises. All available—for a price—for an evening’s entertainment. The flesh trade had flourished in Mobile, but this was directed at lonely women, not the more typical brothel for men. Whores and mistresses, kept under the very noses of their wives, were an acceptable way for a man to exercise his carnal pleasures. Women had never been allowed such freedom.
As I flipped the pages, I wondered at the boldness of this book. The photographs were minor works of art, the men posed to display their assets. The exquisite costume detail told of time and attention taken to create the fantasy that must have lessened the matrons’ qualms about their activities.
Even the brief description of the men and their talents worked toward the high-society sensibility with wit and playfulness, a bit randy but conveyed with taste. The idea was rather genius. It wasn’t hard to imagine how the book had been passed from house to house. The women made their selections, let the proprietor know, and the male prostitutes would appear at their homes at the appointed hour. Very discreet.
I turned back to the picture of Caleb, doing my best not to stare at what was so artfully exposed.
“Why are you here at Caoin House?” I asked him. “Why you and not Eli?”
A cold breeze drifted through the attic, forcing me instantly to my feet. I clutched the book in my arms. She was here. I couldn’t see her, but I sensed her. My body reacted before my brain engaged. I put the book back in the trunk and piled the lingerie on top before I shut the lid. Moving slowly, I edged toward the stairs. Being trapped in the attic with Eva was more than I could handle.
I was ten feet from the door when it slammed shut. The sound reverberated in the room, and I wondered if it might wake Reginald from his unnatural sleep. Frozen on the spot, I forced my feet to move. The door might be shut, but I could open it and escape.
I focused the flashlight beam on the brass doorknob. I had only to step forward ten steps, grasp it, open the door, and ease down the stairs. Left foot, right foot. My concentration actually moved my feet. Tiny steps, but steps nonetheless. I reached out for the knob.
The bony arm of the child came from beneath a chest of drawers pushed against the wall beside my escape route. He tugged at the wide leg of my trousers with enough force to pull me off balance. I tried to right myself, but my feet caught in something, and I went down hard, knocking the wind from my lungs when I hit.
Gasping on the floor like a fish pulled from water, I had no idea if I was injured because the need for oxygen superseded everything else. When the bony arm of the little boy reached toward me, my survival instinct kicked in.
I scrabbled, crablike, ramming my body into a stack of wooden crates. The top one tumbled down, striking my shoulder on the way to the floor, where it exploded. The wooden cars of a toy train set, birds and turtles carved from cedar, and a McGuffey’s Eclectic Primer struck my body. I snatched up the book as I hurtled to my feet and grabbed the doorknob. The door flew open with such ease that I almost fell backward again, but I righted myself and rushed down the stairs so fast I could easily have broken my neck.
When I cleared the ballroom and stairs to the main floor, I paused to catch my breath. Footsteps echoed in the hallway as someone approached. I whirled to face Winona, who had a tray in her hand. Her expression registered shock at my appearance.
“Miss Raissa, are you okay?”
“Yes,” I said too quickly. “Yes, I think I am.”
“Mr. Reginald is moving about. I think he’ll awaken soon.”
“Really?” I was afraid to believe something good might happen.
Winona stepped around me. “I’m going to prepare some broth for him. It would be good if you were with him when he opened his eyes. He’ll likely be disoriented.”
“Of course. Thank you, Winona.”
“I’ll make some coffee for you,” she said. “I suspect you’ll not be sleeping tonight, so you might as well drink some. Steady your nerves.” She had begun to walk away when she paused. “Is there any word on Mr. Brett?”
“Carlton and Travis are searching with deputies and volunteers. They’ll find him, and he’ll be perfectly fine.” Repetition might make it come true.
“He’s a strong man, and he loves you and Miss Isabelle. Whoever has harmed him will come to a bad end. I feel it.” Winona’s look was fierce. “Mr. Brett won’t leave this life. He’ll come home to you.”
“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it. Winona kept her own counsel, but she was nobody’s fool.
I hurried to Reginald’s room to find my friend, his color much improved, stirring restlessly in the bed. The lump on his head had swollen even more, giving him a lopsided appearance, but I was glad to see color in his skin. His hand twitched on the coverlet, but there was no attempt to tap out Morse code. Did he even know the code? I’d have to ask when he regained his wits.
I took a seat in the chair beside the bed and realized I was still holding the primer. Out of habit I opened the cover. In a ragged scrawl, the words Property of Horace Whitehead centered the page. Then the date 1869.
But Eva and Eli hadn’t had a son. They’d had only Elise. And Eva had died in 1865 only weeks before the South conceded defeat.
Horace Whitehead. I knew the boy in the attic now. I’d assumed him to be the boy drowned in the swamp, but I’d been wrong. This was Eva’s blood. I had to find out
how he’d lived and died. The mortality rate for children in the 1800s was high, but Horace was a child left out of the Whitehead lineage. A bastard.
Eva had done a lot more than have an affair with the male prostitute. She’d conceived a child and passed it off as Eli’s. But what had happened to the boy? No one had spoken of him. There was no record of his birth or childhood that I’d read or heard referenced. Elise was always noted as an only child.
The thin arm in the attic. The attachment to the gruesome jigger. My gut tightened as my worst fears scampered about my brain. With the example of John Henry Marcum so fresh in my mind, I dreaded to ask what Eli Whitehead had done to a bastard child who took his name.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Raissa?”
I looked up to see Reginald staring at me. He seemed to lose focus, his eyes rolling loosely about and finally closing.
I dropped the book and grasped his hand. “Reginald, thank God you’re awake.” The dire warnings by the doctor had hidden deep in the recesses of my mind. If he didn’t wake, if his brain bled and filled the cavity, if the damage was internal . . . he could have so easily died.
He fidgeted in the bed and struggled to sit up.
“Don’t!” I tried to pin him to the bed, but he was strong. Even in his weakened state, he had more power than I did.
The bedroom door opened, and a strapping young man stepped into the room and gently held Reginald to the bed. “Stop fighting,” he said softly. “You’ll hurt yourself worse.” The young man’s diction had the hint of Europe or some exotic location I couldn’t pinpoint.
The sheer size of the young man must have registered with Reginald. He relaxed into the pillows.
“Who are you?” Reginald asked.
“I’m Framon, Winona’s son.”
I recalled Carlton’s mentioning something about Winona’s son being available to help, but no one had told me Framon was home from Paris. My old friend was a man now, an educated man wearing the latest fashion. And I was glad to see him. “Thank God you’re here,” I said as I grasped his hand.
“Mother told me what had happened. I’ll do whatever I can,” Framon said.
Introductions were polite, but I had urgent questions. “Reginald, what happened to Uncle Brett?” I didn’t want to upset my friend again, but I had to find out what, if anything, he knew.
“They took him.”
His words shook me to my very core. “Who?”
“Men. In white sheets. They jumped in front of the car. Brett swerved to avoid hitting two of them. The car went over.” He tried to sit up again, but Framon gently pressed him back to the pillows. Reginald closed his eyes. Sweat popped out on his brow. I used the cool cloth to remove it, forcing myself to halt the questions.
“Steady,” I whispered. “Be steady, Reginald. I need answers, but if you get upset, you won’t be able to help Uncle Brett.”
He nodded, and Framon relaxed his hold on Reginald’s shoulders.
“Tell me from the beginning. What happened at Bienville Square?” I wanted to squeeze the facts from him, but I had to be thorough and hear it all. Every detail might be important.
“Bienville Square was a scene from hell. It was awful. That poor young man, hanging like that from an oak, his face distorted . . .” He took a deep breath. “There was an argument. Brett started to climb a ladder to cut John Henry down to take the body to the Negro funeral parlor, and these men tried to stop him. They were angry. They said the body should hang as an example to other uppity coloreds, to show them their place.”
Beside me, I could feel the sudden tension in Framon’s body, but he remained completely quiet at the bedside.
“Carlton warned me the situation was explosive,” I said. “I saw Uncle Brett on the ladder, and you and Hubert fighting the riffraff away.”
“Carlton was to keep you away from that scene.” Reginald swallowed drily, and I held a spoon of water to his lips. He nodded. “The sound of the body hitting the ground is something I’ll never forget.”
My sympathies for John Henry had been pushed behind my worry for my uncle. “Did you recognize any of the men?”
“I don’t know Mobile, so I didn’t, but they knew Brett. They called him by name. And he did speak to one of them . . . Vernal. And there was a doctor, too. Not the one who came for the séance, but a different one. Brett called him Langdon or Langson or something.”
“Langford. Langford Oyles.” The coroner, like the sheriff, would have no real interest in finding the people responsible for John Henry’s death.
“That’s him.”
“What did he say?”
“He said something like the Airlie family thought they could run over people in town, but they couldn’t. Something about being rich didn’t mean anything in the long run, and that the family members should learn their place.”
That was directed at me. He’d not forgotten my demands to see the coroner’s report. “He’s not a pleasant man.”
“They ganged up like they were going to hurt Brett, but for some reason they didn’t.” He coughed and went into a spasm that scared me badly enough to signal Framon to help me pull Reginald to a sitting position.
My friend took another sip of water, and when he was settled again, I picked up my questioning.
“Did anyone follow you and Uncle Brett home?”
“No. We were the only car on the road. It was late. We were driving slowly, so they must have gotten ahead of us and set up the ambush. I think Brett took his time driving because he needed to let the events of the evening settle. He told me a lot, Raissa. He’s thinking of selling Caoin House, and based on what he explained, I can’t say I disagree. There are lovely homes in New Orleans or along the Florida Gulf Coast with ports and river systems. You and he could live anywhere and build a life. Isabelle would go wherever he asked.”
Thank God Isabelle hadn’t been in the car with the two men, and I now understood Uncle Brett’s reluctance to marry her. Still, the idea of selling Caoin House hit me hard. My uncle loved Caoin House, and it had become my home. But those were decisions to be made once Uncle Brett was safely home.
“What about the accident? The men stepped out of the brush on the side of the road—was there another car?”
“No.”
“They were wearing white robes?”
“And strange pointed hoods that covered their faces.” His eyes widened. “Brett hit the brakes and turned the wheel, intending to go onto the verge to miss running them down. The sand trapped the front wheels. The car bucked and flipped on its side. I was stunned and couldn’t move, but I heard them come up to the car. One of them kicked me hard, and when I didn’t react, they assumed I was unconscious or maybe dead. They came and pulled Brett from the car, and I heard them say something peculiar.”
“What?” My heart fluttered.
“War means fighting, and fighting means killing.”
Framon’s hand tightened on the foot of the bed until his knuckles whitened.
“I don’t understand.” The quote was familiar but only vaguely. The men who caused a wreck and took my uncle didn’t seem the type to be scholars.
“I tried to stop them from taking Brett, and they realized I wasn’t dead. One of them came up and struck me in the head with the butt of his rifle. I’ll remember his boots for the rest of my life.” Reginald touched the huge lump on his temple. “He meant to kill me, and I was helpless to defend myself.”
“They probably believed you were dead or so mortally wounded that you would never wake up. They could have shot you, but a gunshot might have alerted someone.”
“I thought I was dead.” Reginald wasn’t being humorous.
“They got what they wanted.” They had my uncle. Reginald was merely an inconvenience and not worth a bullet.
“Who’s behind this?” Reginald looked up as the door opened and Winona brought the broth, some toast, and a cup of coffee for me.
“I’ll find out. Things are not as we assumed here
.” I wanted desperately to tell him about The Book of Beloved I’d found and the secrets revealed, but the information was dangerous. Winona and Framon might be targeted if they knew, and I would not have that on my head. I would tell only Reginald and Uncle Brett. We were the inner circle. We would protect those who relied on us, and we would right the present and reveal the past.
While Winona assisted Reginald with the broth, I went to the library. What a luxury it was to have such a fine collection of books. The problem with finding the quote, though, was that I had no idea where to begin. It sounded vaguely military. I pulled down several historical military volumes, scanning as quickly as I could. My shoulders ached, and my eyes felt as if sandpaper had been rubbed across the corneas.
The library door opened, and Framon entered. He shut the door behind him. For the first time, I really looked at him. He was handsome, with golden skin with red tones, and the same strange green-gold eyes that Winona had. The boy I’d tagged after was still there.
“I know those words,” he said. “War means fighting, and fighting means killing.”
“What do they mean?”
“Before and after the Civil War, Indian children were stolen from the local tribes and sold as slaves. They may not have been called slaves, but that’s what they were. The tribes that hid in the Tensaw swamps lost dozens of children. Boys and girls. Night riders wearing white sheets would come into the settlement, herd the people into the center of the village, and pick the children they wanted.”
I couldn’t follow what his story had to do with a quote about war, but I didn’t interrupt.
“My grandfather told me the stories of how the night riders would repeat that quote as they made their selections, tearing children from the arms of their mothers and fathers. ‘War means fighting, and fighting means killing.’ It was a threat to the Indians to be quiet and not report the kidnappings. It meant the white men would come and kill us all.”
The Book of Beloved (Pluto's Snitch 1) Page 25
