Rainbow Hammock

by Becky Lee Weyrich

  Lilah slept most of the way to Savannah. The dawn looked like a black pearl when they arrived, fierce clouds scudding low on the horizon. Kingdom led her quickly to the stable, and the little room off of it where he had a cot and a stove.

  “Miss Lilah, I still don’t approve of this.”

  “Everything will be fine, Kingdom. You just let me know if Mr. Denegal comes in.”

  Kingdom left her in his room to go and do his early morning chores. The pungent odors of the stable made Lilah feel odd. She suffered a continuing queasiness, but shrugged it off as an aftereffect of the boat ride.

  “Yassir, I’s got your horse ready.” Lilah heard Kingdom’s words through the door. Her heart gave a sudden, loud thump. She got up and wandered into the next room.

  Steele glanced up and looked at her for several moments. She cast her eyes down, submissively. Did he recognize her?

  “This your wife, Kingdom?” Steele asked.

  He mumbled what passed for an affirmative reply.

  “You’re a fine looking woman,” he said directly to Lilah, frowning. “But what happened to Rhea?”

  “Died,” Lilah answered quickly. “I’s Lydia, sir.”

  “Going to have a baby soon, too, just like my wife,” Steele commented, smiling.

  Lilah felt her throat tighten. Scenes flashed through her mind of Steele’s strong arms closed around her. They were in the pond. They were in the hunting lodge. No! He couldn’t have married! She’d thought—she’d planned to tell him about Brandon and his Cuban wife. They’d have a second chance.

  “Oh!” She gave a startled cry as pain twisted through her.

  She looked up and read the concern in Steele’s smoky eyes. He reached out a supportive arm. The feel of his fingers on her darkened flesh sent a thrill through her to mix with the pain.

  “Kingdom, I think you’d better run for the midwife. I’ll stay here with your wife till you get back.”

  Kingdom turned his saucerlike eyes from Lilah to Steele and back to Lilah.

  “Kingdom’s gonna birth my baby,” Lilah cried out between pains.

  “I can’t do that, Miss—uh, I mean, Lydia!”

  She fixed a pleading gaze on him. “You can, too, Kingdom. You seen a birthin’ before!”

  “You two are crazy!” Steele said. “I’m going for a midwife.”

  Lilah lay on Kingdom’s cot, miserable. How stupid she’d been! And what would she do now? She couldn’t let a midwife tend her. She pushed hard, trying to force the baby to come. All she did was tire herself.

  “Kingdom!” she yelled.

  He hurried to her, perspiration standing out of his face like great worry beads. “Yes, Miss Lilah?”

  “Does that door have a lock?”

  “Yassum.”

  “Then leave me here and lock it behind you. Don’t let anyone in here—not the midwife, and especially not Mr. Denegal. Do you hear me?”

  “But, Miss Lilah, what if somethin’ happens? You can’t birth that baby your own self !”

  “I can because I have to! I’ve put us both in this position. It’ll be your neck if a midwife comes in here and finds out I’m not black!” Her voice was urgent. “Now, tell them you’ve taken me to my mother—that there’s no need for a midwife. Anything! Just get rid of them fast, Kingdom!” Lilah bit her lip to hold back a scream.

  Voices came from the next room. Lilah could hear Steele Denegal arguing with Kingdom, but he stood firm against the white man After what seemed an eternity, the stable grew quiet. Lilah relaxed and let nature take its course.

  Several hours later, Lilah lay with her daughter in her arms. While little Ruth nursed, Lilah plotted. She’d go directly to the old cabin when she got back to Rainbow Hammock. She would explain that she’d gone into labor and decided to have her child where she had been born. Rhea would back her up, and say that she’d helped with the delivery.

  Lilah closed her eyes at last and breathed a sigh of relief. She offered up a silent prayer of thanks that the birth had been an easy one. Then she slept.

  Chapter 23

  The tide of war had turned by early December of 1861. Word reached Rainbow Hammock that planters in Charleston were burning their rice and cotton crops to keep the goods out of Union hands. The invaders had taken Hilton Head, Phillips Island, and Beaufort, South Carolina. Even closer to home, U.S. Marines put ashore at Tybee Island, blocking the sea approach to Savannah. Kingdom brought news from the frantic city that preparations were being made by these troops to bombard Fort Pulaski at the mouth of the Savannah River. Fear gripped island residents all along the coast.

  Although the inhabitants of Rainbow Hammock had begun rationing such items as coffee, sugar, and salt, they would have to tighten their belts further.

  Lilah had all but taken over the operation of the plantation. Every morning she met with the failing Ames Patrick to receive his orders, then handed her own out to the dwindling number of slaves. Force couldn’t keep them on the island any longer. Many ran off to join the approaching Union troops. But those loyal to Lilah and the Patricks stayed with their “family.”

  Two days before Christmas, Lilah slipped into Ames’s darkened room. She waited for the master of Fortune’s Fancy to surface from sleep after she spoke his name.

  “Elizabeth, is that you?” he asked in a thin voice.

  “No, it’s Lilah. We have to talk.”

  “Lilah?” He sounded confused. “What are you doing here? You should be in the schoolroom with Jeremy and Amalee, child. Go on to your classes.”

  “Ames,” Lilah said evenly, “Jeremy is gone. Remember? You sent him away. And Amalee’s in Savannah.”

  “Savannah,” he parroted.

  “She’ll be here for Christmas. You’ll see her then,” she sighed. Should she tell him that his daughter was a widow now? He probably wouldn’t realize what she was talking about anyway.

  “Ames, don’t try to talk. Just listen to me. The Union navy is off the coast. We have to bum our cotton.”

  “No!” He half rose off his pillows. “Oscar’s getting a good price for that crop from England!”

  Lilah sighed wearily. “The war, Ames. There’s no way to get it to England. And we can’t let the Yankees have it.”

  Having done her duty, she rushed out of the room and gave the order. Torches were set to the warehouses near the dock. Soon the island disappeared under a pall of thick, black smoke. Lilah sat in her room, watching from the window, feeling ill. How much longer would it go on?

  “Mama!” Scottie wailed from the hallway.

  Lilah forced herself to go to him. He sat in the middle of the floor, crying his heart out.

  She picked him up. “What is it, love?” she soothed.

  “Mammy Zalou say the Yankees are coming, and they gonna eat me up!” he whimpered.

  “Nonsense, Scottie!” She made a mental note to give old Zalou a good tongue-lashing for frightening the boy. The slave and Elizabeth Patrick both seemed to be losing their grip on reality. “Do you know what’s coming? Really? Christmas! Let’s go out tomorrow and find a tree. We’ll trim it with little white candles and swamp holly and pretties. Would you like that?”

  “And will I get a present?” he asked, his eyes wide with excitement.

  “Of course, dear. We’ll all get presents.”

  But their Christmas present wasn’t what any of them might have hoped. Amalee, pale and thin, arrived from Savannah the next day She showed off her dark-haired daughter, Henrietta, with much pride, but said little about Henri. He’d died, not in battle, but in a fight with a fellow officer over possession of a contraband wench.

  “Lilah, it’s been ghastly!” Amalee exclaimed over a small glass of sherry. “The booming all day in Savannah. Why, you’d think the noise alone would make the buildings fall! I can’t tell you how good it is to be home again!”

  “We hear it, too, Amalee. Every day.”

  “Oh, I just can’t
stand it,” Amalee sobbed. “How’s a defenseless widow supposed to keep body and soul together?”

  “Amalee, I’m glad you’re here,” Lilah said, taking a firm hand with her. “I can use your help. Ames is sinking fast, and your mother’s past giving any aid. She just sits in the parlor all day, staring out the window. The house servants are getting out of hand. I’m sure you can help in that area.”

  “Help supervise the servants, you mean? Why, of course. I’ve had much more experience at that than you,” Amalee answered haughtily.

  “No. That’s not what I mean, Amalee. We have three people on our hands who need waiting on. Granny’s been poorly of late too. Maum Tassie and Dora do all they can. And, of course, Rhea is always dependable. But Zalou has turned senile. She can’t do anything right anymore. And now with you and Henrietta here it means three small children to be watched over. You’ll have to do your chores around the house the same as I do.”

  “You must be joking!” Amalee trilled. “What do you think we have servants for? If the household staff can’t manage, bring in the field hands.”

  “There aren’t many left, Amalee.”

  “Well, you’ll have to make do, won’t you?” Amalee got up and flounced toward the door. “I’m going up to my room now to lie down. Have someone call me when supper’s ready.”

  Lilah glared at Amalee’s back.

  One day seemed to blend with the next through the rest of December, January, and the first half of February. Kingdom came to the island more often than before. With everyone preoccupied by the war, Sim Grady’s death had been all but forgotten.

  On Sunday, February 23, 1862, he brought a newspaper from Savannah. The alarming headlines read: “UNION PREPARING TO BOMB PULASKI—LEE WANTS TO DESTROY ‘INDEFENSIBLE BRUNSWICK.’”

  “The talk’s all over Savannah, Miss Lilah. They says General Lee is orderin’ folks off of Saint Simons and Jekyll Island. He pullin’ the troops out, too, and bringin’ them to Savannah to fight General McClellan, if need be. Don’t you reckon we ought to get off Rainbow Hammock?”

  Lilah shook her head wearily. “What could the Yankees want from us, Kingdom, even if they come here? I’ve already had Tee-Bo and Blue bury the silverware and run the livestock into the swamp. The Yankees aren’t beasts. They won’t bum the house down around sick people, children, and defenseless women.”

  “Tha’s exactly what they been doin’. Miss Lilah! Or so I hear tell.”

  “We have nowhere to go if we leave, Kingdom. What’s the use?” Lilah sighed hopelessly.

  The bell at Rainbow Landing clanged in the night. Lilah and Kingdom jumped up from the stairs, where they’d been sitting and talking.

  “Who in the world could that be?” Lilah wondered aloud. “Why, it’s past midnight!”

  “I’ll go see, Miss Lilah.”

  “I’m coming too. The cold air might clear my head.”

  In the darkness they could only make out a group of people huddled in an overcrowded boat. Lilah held one of the dueling pistols concealed in the folds of her skirt. She would shoot if she had to.

  “Hallo!” a strange voice called out. “Anybody there?”

  “What you want?” Kingdom growled.

  “Don’t want nothin’, mister, but to warn you. We left Saint Simons a few hours ago. The lighthouse has been blowed up to keep the Yankees from getting hold of it. Hear tell them Huns is turning loose a bunch of nigger troops on the islands. Best keep your women hid!”

  Lilah felt Kingdom bristle beside her.

  “Thank you,” she called out.

  “We’ll be goin’ now. Good luck to you.”

  “The same to you,” Lilah returned.

  They stood in silence for several minutes. Lilah thought she had felt the war before, but now it appeared in all its horrible ferocity, like a monster rearing its ugly head out of a placid sea. She shivered and pulled her shawl more closely about her.

  “Kingdom, I want you to leave for Savannah right now!”

  “But, Miss Lilah, I can’t leave you all here with nothin’ but a bunch of scairt field hands to watch over you. They’ll head for the swamp the first sign of trouble.”

  “That’s exactly why you have to go, Kingdom. We don’t know how much time we have before the Yankees get here. You have to go to the mainland and let someone know what our situation is. Maybe they’ll send some troops out to help.” She laid a trembling hand on his arm. “Please, Kingdom. There’s no time to argue.”

  He clasped her hand. “Yes, Miss Lilah. I be back soon as I can.”

  Lilah went straight back to the house and roused Maum Tassie from her cot in the little room behind the kitchen.

  “Go through everything in the pantry,” Lilah ordered. “Put all the canned goods, staples, dried fruit in this basket. Leave only about a two-day supply on the shelves. That way, if the Yankees come, there’ll be enough so they won’t get suspicious. I’ll have Blue hide the rest.”

  “The Yankees?” Maum Tassie cried. “Oh, Miss Lilah! What we gonna do?”

  “Exactly what I told you to do, and as quickly as possible!”

  Lilah spent the hours before dawn seeing to their supplies. When the last ham and sausage links had been taken down from the smokehouse and secreted near the bog in the swamp, she headed for her final stop.

  She’d never been inside the octagonal house by the beach. Although she’d seen Rainbow and Fancy from afar, she was about to speak to them for the first time in her life.

  Rainbow answered her knock, and stood there gazing at her with a slightly defiant look. “Well? What you want?”

  “Rainbow, the Yankees are headed this way. I need to see what food and liquor you have here so we can hide some of it.”

  A sleepy Fancy came into the room. “Who’s that, Rainbow?”

  “Miss Lilah,” the older woman called over her shoulder. “She claims the Yankees is comin’.”

  “Shucks! Yankees or rebs, they all takes their pants off one leg at a time! Men’s men!”

  Fancy had given Lilah the opening she’d hoped for. “Do you mean you wouldn’t mind … that they could come here for…?”

  “For what?” Rainbow eyed Lilah suspiciously. “Can’t be for whiskey. You done took all we got.” Then a slow light dawned in her black eyes. “Oh, you tryin’ to say you gonna invite them Yankees here to save them lily-white ladies up to the big house? Well, ain’t that somethin’, Fancy?” Rainbow gave a great laugh.

  “It’s only that you two know how to handle this sort of thing… to occupy men…” Lilah stammered.

  “Send ’em ahead!” Fancy chirped. “Since Master Ames been sick, we ain’t had no company. A man’d feel damn good about now!”

  Lilah left Ames Patrick’s two sporting women with a feeling of relief. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about that!

  Back at the house, all was chaos, and Amalee took her place in the eye of the storm.

  “Lilah, my God! Where have you been?” she shrieked. “What are we going to do? Yankees! Here on Rainbow Hammock! I could just die!”

  “Nobody’s going to die, Amalee,” Lilah replied, ignoring the other woman’s histrionics. “You and Meranda see to the children. Take them all to the nursery and stay with them.”

  “I’m going to dress Scottie like a little girl,” Amalee wailed. “Surely, they won’t hurt him then.” She clung to her nephew, who sobbed aloud, infected by Amalee’s hysteria.

  Lilah stayed alone downstairs, sipping a brandy, one of the dueling pistols across her lap. Her nerves wound tight, then recoiled upon themselves. Where could Kingdom be? He’d had enough time to get to Savannah and back. She glanced at the tall case clock—twelve afternoon.

  “Stay calm!” she told herself.

  But when the knock came at the front door, she jumped up from the chair, dropping the gun, which discharged. Screams echoed through the quiet house, and the shot, heard outside, prompted the Union officer to break the
door in. He charged with ten black soldiers to the library where Lilah stood, frozen with fear.

  “You the lady of the house?” the red-bearded captain growled.

  Lilah nodded.

  “Who else is here?”

  “Some sick people, children, a few servants,” she answered, her voice trembling.

  “All right, men. Search the house!” He waved a thick arm, indicating the entire area. “And you,” he pointed to Lilah, “sit! I’ll take this here little toy pistol before you kill somebody.”

  Lilah sat as ordered, and squirmed uncomfortably under the burly captain’s gaze. He helped himself to the brandy, never taking his ice-blue eyes from Lilah.

  Upstairs and down, doors banged, children cried, and women screamed. Occasionally, there was the sound of shattering glass, a coarse curse, or raucous laughter.

  “What do you want here?” Lilah finally forced herself to ask. “We don’t have much food, but you’re welcome to what we have, if you’ll only take it and leave.”

  The captain laughed. “Generous of you, ma’am, but me and my men sort of like it here. We may stay for a while. You be nice to us and maybe we won’t bum down this fine house.” He struck a match and lit a cigar, then held it to the drape until the heavy fabric caught. Lilah leaped up and beat the blaze out with her bare hands.

  The captain laughed at his fine joke. “Now look what you’ve done, missy. Your hands’ll be blistering. I better put some salve on them.”

  He caught her about the waist and pulled her down on his lap. Taking a tin of sticky ointment from his pocket, he smeared it over Lilah’s palms. She tried to get up, but he held her fast.

  “You’re a right tempting armful, missy. It’s been a while since I held a real lady this close. Saint Simons was a big disappointment to me. A bunch of niggers was all that was left there. Course, my boys had a fine time passing the gals around!”

  He grabbed her closer and enveloped her lips in his. She clawed at his face, but he only laughed, and twisted her arm hurtfully behind her. She gasped in pain as he jerked her wrist. Then he was biting her neck, her breasts—ripping the fabric of her gown with his teeth to bare more of her flesh to his lips.