“My dear girl, what are you doing?”
With clenched teeth Elizabeth ran down a spider escaping under the fold of the bedspread before she turned.
“Killing spiders!” she said fiercely to the old lady standing in the door. With the back of one hand she pushed her damp hair out of her eyes. “Spiders that someone put in my bed!”
The old lady clutched the door frame, the gaze of her faded brown eyes going to the glass jar nestled between the pillows of the bed. “Spiders?” she echoed.
Then with an effort she seemed to collect herself, though as she came into the room she leaned heavily on the ebony cane in her hand. She reached for the corner of the mattress, tugging at the sheets, but at her action, Callie, who had slipped into the room behind Grand’mere, took the bedclothes from her hand and silently began to strip the bed, folding the corners toward the center to hold any live insects.
“I must get someone up here to sweep down the rails of the bed—” the old lady said to herself vaguely. “No—that will not do, it will be all over the house in a trice.” Without appearing to realize she was speaking aloud she stared hard at Callie. “Give me the jar.”
When she complied, Grand’mere tucked the jar under her arm and turned to Elizabeth. “I would offer you another room, but there is none. There are only eight bedrooms above stairs, counting the little one off the nursery that Denise is occupying. Perhaps if you and your woman inspected this one thoroughly you would feel comfortable enough to sleep here?”
“I—suppose so,” Elizabeth answered, unable to keep her reluctance from her voice.
Grand’mere hesitated. “You may have my bed and I shall sleep in here then.”
But Elizabeth had not missed the hesitation or the older woman’s reluctance to enter the room.
“Oh no. You must not think of it. I—I am persuaded that once we have looked it over carefully, I will be able to sleep easily.”
“You are sure?”
“Quite sure.”
Elizabeth wanted to smile at this polite exchange but did not. Looking down, she saw that her hands were still trembling.
Together she and Callie swept the bed railings, brushed the canopy and shook out the mosquito netting and bed hangings. They beat the mattress and dusted it, and remade the bed with fresh linen smelling of vetiver and a clean bedspread of heavy crochet work. When they were through, Elizabeth was calmer, and so exhausted that she felt she could have slept on the floor.
After blowing out the candle, she lay staring up into the darkness of the canopy, imagining she felt things crawling on her arms and her face. She was fairly certain in her mind that the bed was free of spiders, but she was unable to relax.
Who would do such a thing to her? Had Denise been angry enough at being ousted from her room to take that sort of revenge? But if she had, would she have had time to catch the spiders? No, not unless she had expected to be ousted and had thought to give Elizabeth a disgust of the room so she would refuse to stay in it. But the black widow might have bitten her. Surely Denise, no matter how piqued over the loss of the room, would not go that far?
But who would?
She awoke slowly, coming out of the heavy sleep of exhaustion to find Callie standing beside her bed with a small coffee cup on a tray.
“Here’s your eye-opener, Mis’ Elizabeth. The old lady said tell you breakfast’ll be ready in thirty minutes, but you don’t have to get up, if you don’t want to. I can send one of the boys in the hall to tell the cook to send it up.”
Elizabeth’s eyes were grainy and sore and her arms and legs felt weighted. She would have liked to stay in bed, but the inclination to linger was banished as the thought of the spiders slipped into her mind.
“I’ll get up,” she said, sitting up and carefully taking the coffee cup onto her lap. Then she froze.
“Callie!”
The Negro woman swung around, her dark eyes large in her round face.
“You called me Elizabeth, Callie. Ellen, Miss Ellen. You must remember.”
Callie caught her lip between her teeth and looked over her shoulder into the next room. She sighed with relief. “I’m sorry, I truly am. But you so different from your sister.”
“Nonsense. We had the same coloring.”
“Yes’m. But Mis’ Ellen’s eyes was soft and not so green and her hair was lighter, most nearly blonde ‘stead of being dark ginger. And she was kinda helpless and didn’t know how to go about things.”
Elizabeth put one hand to her eyes. “Yes, I know what you mean, but you must try to remember. You must!”
“Yes’m, you can count on me. I won’t forget again, especially when there’s anybody around.”
“It doesn’t matter whether anyone is around or not, Callie. You can never tell when someone may be listening. They don’t want us here, you and I. One of them put those spiders in this bed last night.”
“Yes’m, I know that, and mean and spiteful is what I call it. We gonna stay on here with such goings-on?”
“We must, Callie. This is where Joseph belongs. A part of it is his. He can have so much here, and I can give him nothing.”
“You could leave him here.”
Elizabeth smiled at her. They had been through so much together. She knew Callie did not mean what she said; she would be the last to want to leave Joseph. The suggestion was Callie’s way of helping Elizabeth to clarify her thinking.
“With these strangers?” Elizabeth asked, shaking her head. “No, I could never do that.”
When Callie had gone, Elizabeth sat sipping her coffee. If she was different from Ellen, it was not too surprising. When they had trekked from Mississippi to Texas by ox train, Ellen had been sixteen. In Mississippi Ellen had been a belle; her card had always been filled at the balls. The front veranda of their home had been filled with her suitors in the evenings, and she had already received two proposals of marriage. She had hated the thought of leaving their Mississippi plantation to begin again. She had never been able to understand that the land was worked out, that it could no longer support their way of life. Their mother had died of malaria while they were crossing the swamps of Louisiana. Ellen had been ill with it too, and she had never fully recovered.
Elizabeth had been only thirteen, too young to be included in the social merriment, the balls, the soirées, and the house parties. She had taken after her father. She had loved riding along the wagon train, and she had felt some of the same longing for the ever-receding frontier that had driven him. Being young and strong, she had adapted to the new way of life. She had learned to manage the household, direct the slaves, and see to their health and welfare. She had gone to school at the Spanish mission, riding there and back with a Negro groom trailing behind her, until she was sixteen. At that time she had taken over the house, tactfully easing her sister aside, in spite of Ellen’s weak and half-hearted efforts.
She had known things were not going well, even before the outbreak of the revolt they were calling the war for Texas Independence. Her father’s heart had never been in the struggle to establish a new plantation, especially since he blamed his wife’s death on the move and on himself. The privations of the war, her father’s contributions to the cause, and the unsettled state of the economy had finished the new plantation, but Elizabeth did not find this out until his death a month after the war ended.
By that time Ellen was a widow expecting a child. There was nothing they could do but stay on at the house and hope that their creditors would not ask them to leave until after the baby was born.
It had been a terrible time, a time of incessant worry and harassment. Ellen, listless and uncaring after Felix’s death, was never truly well. Her morning sickness, extreme in any case, never abated. It left her thin and debilitated. Food was scarce. Elizabeth worked the garden all that long summer, trying to save their small board of money and to make it last through the fall and winter, when fresh vegetables would not be available. Their livestock, even their saddle horses, were taken aw
ay, leaving them stranded. Then one day a slave trader had come. He had lined up their slaves, most of whom had been with the family all their lives, and marched them away in a coffle. It was after he had gone, and after the dust raised by the shuffling feet had settled, that Elizabeth found Callie hiding in the root cellar. Callie was pregnant, and she had known that the long walk would almost surely bring on a miscarriage.
Elizabeth brought her into the house and hid her, but apparently Callie was never missed from the coffle. It was one of the few times that Elizabeth found something to be grateful for in the war. No one expected an accurate accounting of slaves in those confused times.
Then came the months of waiting. Callie’s baby had been born dead, possibly from the lack of a doctor’s care. On a cold and windy December day two weeks later, Elizabeth had helped Callie to deliver Joseph. It had been a long labor and a difficult one. At the last Ellen had been too weak to help. Her mind had wandered, it had appeared that she imagined herself to be living in that brief spring month when she had first met Felix Delacroix. He had ridden into their homestead for a nights hospitality on his way to join Sam Houston, but then he had stayed to marry her.
Memories washed over Elizabeth as she got out of bed and began to dress, fumbling awkwardly at the buttons at the back of her dress. The memory of blood, so much blood, covering her hands, soaking into the towels and sheets, and draining away her sister’s life with it. The memory of fear, and the terrible helplessness, the cold hate for the people who had left them without a way to summon help. And the grave, difficult to dig in the hard, cold earth, so lonely out there where it was exposed to the bitter, sweeping wind.
The buttons done, she turned to the mirror and brushed her hair, twisting it into its usual smooth coil at the nape of her neck. She adjusted the collar of her dress of black fustian and pinned to the neck the mourning brooch Ellen had made from a lock of Felix’s hair. Black was not one of her favorite colors, but it was not unbecoming. She wore it gladly, not for Felix, but for her father and for Ellen. To her the color of mourning had become a kind of symbol of what she had been through, and of what was still to be done. She would fight them and their prejudices and pride. Never again did she intend to be as defenseless as she had been in the past year. No, they would not frighten her away with a handful of spiders.
Before leaving the room she checked the door opening into the hall. There was a lock on it but no sign of a key. Making a mental note to ask Grand’mere for the key, she passed into the other room.
Joseph lay in Callie’s lap, cooing and gurgling as the nurse talked to him. Elizabeth leaned over him also, and as she played with him she really saw him as Felix’s son for the first time. The blue eyes of the newborn had turned to a brown so dark it was almost black, and the new hair that fuzzed his head was the color of his eyes. He was a stolid baby. He seldom cried unless he was hungry or uncomfortable. It was as if he could sense that all was not quite right with his world.
“Have you eaten, Callie?”
“Oh, yes ma’am. Long ago. The old lady has gone down already. She said you was not to hurry, but I expect maybe you better not keep everybody waiting, don’t you think?” Elizabeth sighed and straightened as she agreed. Squaring her shoulders with an unconscious gesture of challenge, she crossed the room and went out the door.
It was a cloudy day, and though the double doors at the end of the hall stood open to the morning, the wide overhanging galleries on three sides of the house filled the inside with a strange twilight. As Elizabeth stepped into the hall a figure, indistinct in the dimness, jumped back.
It was a moment before her eyes adjusted, and then she saw a girl, her pale face and her gray dress with black braid trim merging into the shadows.
“Did I startle you? I didn’t mean to,” Elizabeth said, smiling.
“No—yes. I don’t know. Are you the lady with the baby?” Nerves caused the girl to swallow convulsively, and she ducked her head so that the long brown plait hanging over her shoulder fell forward.
“Yes, I am,” Elizabeth answered, an extra firmness in her voice.
“I—I heard it crying last night. Was it sick?”
“Oh, no. Just hungry, I expect.”
“Are you sure? If it was sick it might die, babies do, sometimes.” There was an odd note in the soft voice that made Elizabeth stare at the girl a moment.
“No, he is perfectly fine. Would you like to see him?”
A smile touched the narrow face. She took an eager step forward, but as the sound of a door closing came to them her smile fled, her eyes grew large and then she turned and ran back down the hall. She entered the door on the right at the far end of the hall, and the sound of the door slamming sent echoes through the house.
A frown of puzzlement on her face, Elizabeth stared after the girl. Then, as she watched, she saw Bernard leave the room across the hall from the one that the girl had entered. He stepped up to the opposite door, knocked and went in. If he had noticed Elizabeth standing there, he gave no sign.
For breakfast there was a choice of ham, bacon, or steak, eggs fried, scrambled, poached, or boiled and fresh baked biscuits and rolls. There was also conserve, fig, pear, or peach, and fresh strawberries from the plantation garden. Elizabeth, feeling a little light-headed at such plenty, made her choice and sat down. Grand’mere was already seated. They made polite conversation about the baby, the morning, and how they had slept, but the older woman’s eyes had a shuttered look and she did not mention the episode of the spiders again.
Darcourt lounged into the room, and an uneasy silence fell. He wore a bottle green frock coat with a black armband, a black cravat which, together with a black and green patterned waistcoat, nearly hid his white shirt, and nankeen riding breeches tucked into glassily polished boots.
He gave Elizabeth a bow and a lazy grin as they were introduced, but though there was a gleam of interest in his eyes, there was such a small amount of surprise that she could only suppose that he already knew about her. He greeted her appropriately and turned to the sideboard to fill his plate. Then Bernard entered with Celestine on his arm.
Celestine, dressed in a late mourning dress of lavender silk with an amethyst pin on a black ribbon at her throat, curtsied prettily to Grand’mere, dimpled at Darcourt, and was graciousness itself to Elizabeth. But since such extreme graciousness implied a certain amount of condescension, Elizabeth’s smile in return was small.
“You have come out of black!” Darcourt exclaimed, setting his plate on the table. “The sun may shine again!”
Celestine frowned with downcast eyes at such levity, and at such notice being paid to her change into colors. But Elizabeth saw her peek complacently at the hem of her dress in the small mirror set into the lower half of the sideboard.
“Are we pretending not to notice?” Darcourt raised his brows, obviously in high spirits. “Frankly I am more than tired of seeing nothing but crows. It seems to me the main occupation in this house is attending to death and mourning. I miss Felix as much as any, but he would not have liked this perpetual gloom, you know. I have never understood why we must all be plunged into black draperies for three years at the demise of every relative. Why, I know women who have not been out of the black for more than a year or two in all their lives!”
“Really, Darcourt. I can’t think your remarks are in the best of taste. If I didn’t know better I would think you had been at the spirit cabinet already,” Grand’mere said.
“What you hear is relief that I am no longer the only member of this family not dressed like a specter of gloom.”
“And so you have said countless times. You will not mind, I hope, if I point out to you that it still lacks a few days being a year since Felix passed away. But you cannot change convention to suit yourself, however much you may want to. Women of our station will continue to wear the willow in spite of you.”
“I don’t doubt it, poor things. No doubt before long the death of the family cat will be enough to plunge eve
rything into black!”
As Darcourt touched a knuckle to his mustache there was such a gleam in his eye that it crossed Elizabeth’s mind that he was baiting the old lady. Grand’mere apparently suspected it also, for she turned away and somewhat stiffly complimented Celestine on her toilette.
“If—if you don’t like it, Grand’mere, I would be most happy to go and change again. I would not want to do anything to displease you,” Celestine said in a low voice, glancing up at the stern face of the old lady through her eyelashes.
“No, no. You must do just as you like. Felix was not a close connection, merely a fourth cousin, I believe. You have behaved with the greatest propriety in wearing black for so long,” Grand’mere replied, unbending.
Celestine thanked her softly, smiling a little as she kept her eyes on her plate.
Darcourt turned to Bernard, inviting him to go riding. Bernard refused but there followed a vigorous discussion of the merits of the various saddle horses in the stable. Elizabeth listened with interest until Darcourt noticed the light in her eyes.
“Are you a rider?” he asked.
She very nearly answered in the affirmative, hoping she would be invited to ride some of the magnificent sounding horses in the stables, but she remembered in time that Ellen had not been a rider. Ellen had never liked getting dirty and overheated, even before her bout with malaria, and then she had been advised to stay out of the sun. Quickly Elizabeth shook her head, summoning a deprecating smile.
“Too bad. I had hoped for company,” Darcourt said, and then forgot her. But she found Bernard watching her, a tiny frown between his eyes.
As the morning advanced the cloud cover burned away and the sun came out bright and golden. Drawn by its dazzling light and the fresh scent of spring from the new green growth, Elizabeth wandered out onto the front gallery and stood with her back against a pillar. The soaring height of the pillar and the upper gallery hanging high above her head made her feel small and insignificant. A part of her doubted that she would ever feel that she belonged to such grandeur, that it was comfortable and ordinary.
Dark Masquerade Page 3
