Prudence had to fight back a smile as she suddenly understood what had really brought the Bennett girls to her bedside today. It was the thought of losing Eleanor’s beautiful trousseau when it was nearly within their grasp. So close.
She looked at the tall, sallow Aurora Lee and the shorter, scrawny Maggie Jane. Eleanor had been of medium height, with the prized hourglass figure that stylish society women achieved through corsets laced so tightly they were unable to take a deep breath or walk more than a few mincing steps without feeling faint.
“I’m not sure all of the items in Eleanor’s trousseau are suitable for charitable donation,” Prudence said, frowning in as good an imitation of consternation as she could manage.
“We could certainly make those choices,” Aurora Lee assured her.
Prudence didn’t doubt for a moment that as soon as the Dickson yacht sailed northward the Bennett women would be altering Eleanor’s beautiful gowns to fit themselves. One or two of the plainer dresses and perhaps a few pairs of gloves and shoes might make it to a charity, but that would be purely for form’s sake. Aurora Lee and Maggie Jane were plainly hungry for what the consequences of the war had denied them.
“I wonder if you would like to glance through some of dear Eleanor’s things,” Prudence suggested. “I’m afraid there are a great many gowns and accessories. There may be more than you imagine, perhaps too much for you to take on by yourselves.”
Aurora Lee’s eyes shone with anticipation. “I wouldn’t want you to overexert yourself, Prudence. If you’ll summon a maid, I’m sure she’ll be able to guide us.”
“I wouldn’t think of it.” Prudence got slowly to her feet, smiling courageously. “I’m feeling a good deal stronger today.” In truth, she was chomping at the bit to be out of her room, but Geoffrey had been stubbornly resistant to her demands that she no longer be treated like an invalid.
Eleanor’s dressing room was a wonderland of color and delicate, expensive fabrics. Gowns were arranged by the time of day during which they were to be worn, from informal and almost comfortable morning wear to the boned silk bodices and draped skirts for dinner and dancing. Labeled boxes containing matching shoes, gloves, reticules, and hats were stacked conveniently close to the dresses they complemented. Eleanor’s delicate lingerie and lace-trimmed handkerchiefs lay in neatly folded, lavender-scented piles in her dresser drawers.
The Bennett sisters said hardly a word as Prudence guided them through Eleanor’s trousseau. They were clearly stunned by the sumptuous richness that not even their wildest imaginings had been able to envision.
Excusing herself to rest for a moment in the restorative air of the veranda, Prudence left them alone to marvel and coo over what would soon be theirs, wanting them to be so blinded by greed that they would readily answer any question she chose to ask. And not even wonder at the impolite intrusiveness of what she wanted to know.
“I hesitate to suggest it,” Prudence said when they had settled themselves in her room again, “and I certainly don’t mean to be offensive. Oh, dear, I’m not sure you’ll take this in the spirit it’s meant to be offered.” She lowered her eyes and picked worriedly at the shawl in which she’d wrapped herself.
“Please go on,” Aurora Lee urged into the prolonged silence. “Nothing you could possibly say would give offense, dear Prudence.”
“I was going to propose that before you make the arrangements to donate Eleanor’s things to a worthy charity, you might want to select one or two articles to keep for yourselves. To remember her by.”
“One or two each?” Maggie Jane asked.
Aurora Lee frowned and made a swatting motion in her sister’s direction as if to shoo off a pesky fly.
“Certainly, each,” Prudence confirmed. “Perhaps a handkerchief or a bottle of scent.”
Maggie Jane’s eager face collapsed into disappointment. She’d clearly begun to doubt the success of the plan Aurora Lee had insisted they could accomplish.
“We may indeed,” Aurora Lee put in quickly. “But not today. I think that’s something I would like to give a good deal of thought to.”
“Just one or two?” Maggie Jane whispered, looking toward the door leading to the corridor and the riches in Eleanor’s bedroom.
“I was so sorry that your Aunt Jessa died in the tragic way she did,” Prudence said, abruptly changing the subject.
Maggie Jane’s perplexed face swiveled back from contemplation of Yankee dresses and bonnets.
Aurora Lee frowned. She’d never heard of anyone offering condolences on the passing of a slave. Ex-slave. It was so outlandish an idea that she was at a loss for words.
“Bradford Island must have been a very different world when you were children,” Prudence tried again. “Before the war.”
“We had just celebrated my first birthday when Georgia seceded from the Union and joined the Confederate States of America,” Aurora Lee said. “Maggie Jane wasn’t even born yet.”
That would make her twenty-nine years old, Prudence calculated. The eldest Bennett daughter clearly considered the Confederacy a legitimate country, not the conspiracy of unlawful, rebellious states that northerners had believed it to be.
“It must have been a blow when your father decided to sell the island.” Prudence threw all caution to the wind. She wasn’t getting anywhere by being oblique.
Maggie Jane nodded her head vigorously and seemed about to say something when Aurora Lee plucked at her sister’s sleeve, unceremoniously hauling her to her feet.
“We’ll take our leave now, Prudence,” she said. “But do be sure to inform Mrs. Dickson of our offer. I’m sure she’ll be more than relieved to be able to pass that burden along to someone else.”
“It’s no trouble at all, really,” Maggie Jane stammered.
They were out the door in a whirl of mended skirts.
Prudence didn’t have all of the answers she’d sought, but she had confirmed at least three speculations about the Bennett family—their war had never ended, they still considered themselves the rightful owners of the island, and they were sorely in need of the money that Teddy’s marriage to Eleanor would have brought them.
It wasn’t much, but it was at least a beginning.
CHAPTER 14
If anyone knew who had gone missing, it would be Preacher Solomon. Geoffrey had a feeling he didn’t just preach the gospel to the members of his church. When they had nowhere else to go for help, people of color went to Jesus. More than one pastor had sheltered runaways and sped them on their way when the danger of immediate recapture was past.
There was a second fresh grave in the burial ground, each one marked with a wooden cross. Geoffrey spotted them before he rode into the clearing, not surprised to find that Aunt Jessa no longer slept alone. He reined in his horse, dismounted, and walked the few remaining steps to where the freshly turned and mounded earth had been covered over with seashells.
Preacher Solomon emerged from the trees. “I heard you comin’,” he said. “Horse makes a heap of noise thrashin’ through the woods.”
Geoffrey had made a deliberately loud approach along the track that wasn’t quite a road. He’d wanted Preacher Solomon and whoever else might be at the church to know someone was on the way. Not hiding his arrival, not trying to sneak up or ambush anyone. Shotguns had a way of going off when trigger fingers got nervous. Even white men could get hurt when there weren’t any witnesses.
Hat in hand, Preacher Solomon waited by the new grave as if he knew why Geoffrey had come.
“Fishin’ boat pulled him out of the sound just before he was about to float out to sea,” he said, motioning toward the cross that bore the name JONAH. “He weren’t dead when he hit the water. Heaved hisself over a log and hung on. But he was shot bad. Didn’t last more than a couple of hours after we got him ashore.”
“Did he recover consciousness?” Geoffrey asked.
“Not so’s you could make sense of what he said. Mumbled, more like it. He was out of his head, Mr.
Hunter. No telling how long he was in the water.”
Geoffrey and Prudence had seen the shooting on Tuesday evening while there was still enough light in the sky to make out Jonah’s silhouette standing up in his boat. Today was Thursday.
“This time of year the tides can sweep through the sound like a freight train,” Preacher Solomon said. “You get trapped in the channel and the next thing you know you’re out in the ocean caught in a riptide. It was already full dark when he got found.”
“What was he doing out on the water that time of night?” Geoffrey asked, wanting to give Preacher Solomon a chance to tell the story his way.
“Don’t know why Jonah was out there, but the man who found him was having a bad turn with his nets. Ripped to shreds on a couple of crab cages that wasn’t marked with floats like they supposed to be. That’s why he was so late comin’ back to shore. He stayed put until he got the net unsnagged and hauled aboard for mendin’. Said he nearly missed Jonah entirely. Thought at first it was just a log he was seein’.” Preacher Solomon shook his head. “Didn’t find no boat overturned. And Jonah didn’t have family on the mainland. No reason for him to be leavin’ the island.”
“Was anyone asking about him in the last few days?”
“Folks been stayin’ close to home since what happened to Miss Jessa. Nobody goin’ nowhere.”
“No strangers hiding out or crossing over?”
Preacher Solomon thought for a moment. “Leastways not that I heard tell of. Nobody since the sheriff and the coroner come for Miss Dickson.”
Geoffrey smiled. He’d guessed right. The old man knew the comings and goings of the white islanders as well as what his own people were doing. He never even had to leave his church. The information came to him from the women working in the big house and the men tending the fields and stables. The Bennett family had no secrets. It was just a matter of finding someone who was willing to divulge them. Brave enough to break the code of silence and risk the consequences.
“I heard tell Queen Lula was called in over to Seapoint,” Preacher Solomon said. “Not that I cotton to the idea that Miss Dickson’s friend was bit by a coral snake. No, sir. Not even Queen Lula could bring her back from something that bad.”
“It was a coral snake, all right,” Geoffrey said. “But it didn’t get its fangs into her. Just a few drops of venom on the skin.”
“Well, that’s all right then. Lessen you got you a cut or a scratch, that snake juice gonna make you sick but it ain’t gonna kill you.”
“I’ll tell Miss MacKenzie you were asking about her,” Geoffrey said, turning away from the graves.
Preacher Solomon hadn’t mentioned Queen Lula by accident. He wasn’t the kind of man to chinwag, but he had nothing against steering someone in the direction he thought they should take.
Queen Lula it was.
* * *
She was waiting for him.
Sitting in the shade of the porch that ran across the front of her one-room shack, Queen Lula was a bright beacon of color in the cool dimness of the live oaks. She held a large black cat on her lap, one hand caressing its back in slow, rhythmic strokes.
Geoffrey thought that whatever else she was, this refugee from New Orleans was as much an entertainer as any of the voodoo practitioners in the city she’d left behind. Just catching a glimpse of the black cat, instantly identifiable by true believers as her familiar, was enough to strike fear into the hearts of those who came seeking the power of her dark juju. There had been one like her on his family’s plantation back in North Carolina all those years ago. He remembered his father telling the overseer to keep an eye on her but otherwise let her be. Superstition, he’d believed, could be almost as powerful a deterrent to rebellion as the whip.
As when approaching Preacher Solomon’s church, Geoffrey hadn’t troubled to muffle his approach. It was best that Queen Lula know he had nothing to hide, that he meant no harm. He’d paid her well for the concoction with which she’d neutralized the snake venom. When Prudence had fretfully picked at the amulet on her wrist and spoken of cutting it off, he’d taken the scissors out of her hand and talked her out of it. He didn’t exactly believe in Queen Lula’s powers, but he’d learned over the years that it was best to take no chances with the inexplicable.
She handed him a clay cup; he hesitated before drinking from it.
“Ain’t nothin’ but well water,” she said, chuckling at his disinclination to trust her. “Nobody done crossed my palm to put a spell on you. Don’t know as I’d be inclined to accept it even if they did. Some folks got a spirit what don’t take kindly to spells. I figure you may be one of ’em.”
“I’ve never heard that before,” Geoffrey said, setting the cup down on the porch step. There was only one chair for sitting, fully occupied by Queen Lula and her cat. He stood, the reins of his horse held loosely in one hand.
“They be those cain’t be touched by a spell. Cain’t be hexed. They walk through this world protected from the power of good or evil, don’t make much difference which. Carve out they own path.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” he said, smiling his most charming grin at her. Voodoo priestess or not, she was still a woman.
She smiled back at him, enjoying the byplay. In New Orleans, white men and women of color were more open with each other than they could be in any other part of the South. As long as the woman didn’t cross any of the invisible lines that kept her in her place.
Queen Lula took from her dress pocket a small doll fashioned out of seagrass.
“Who is that?” Geoffrey asked.
“Ain’t nobody yet. Not till I say the words. Pass it through the smoke. Mark it with the blood.”
“I heard tell you and Aunt Jessa were friends.”
“Miss Jessa a good woman. Didn’t deserve what they done to her.”
The whites on the island might have called her Aunt, but to Queen Lula the title was one of the reminders of slavery, one of the soft manacles owners used to conceal the iron with which they ruled even those who might genuinely love a master’s child. He’d been away for a long time, but Geoffrey understood the difference and the correction.
“I didn’t know her when she was alive,” he said.
“Miss Prudence did. Miss Jessa tole me ’bout meeting up with her over Miss Eleanor’s body. That was a sad day.”
“Is Miss Prudence one of those who can’t be hexed?”
Queen Lula shook her head. “That’s why Miss Jessa give her the amulet. She knowed bad juju was coming Miss Prudence’s way. Felt it in her bones. But there wasn’t time to do no more than what she did. And it might not be enough.” She fingered the faceless, naked doll woven of dried seagrass.
“Do you know why Aunt Jessa was killed? And Jonah?” Geoffrey asked. He stood motionless, slowing down his breathing so Queen Lula could read him. Whatever mental probes she sent out should meet with no opposition.
“Keep ’em from talking.”
“Talking about what? What did they know that someone was afraid one of them would bring out into the open?”
“Best you let it go. It’s too late now to do any good. All the evil already been done. Onliest one you got to protect is Miss Prudence. Take her back where she belong. She don’t know nothing, but mebbe somebody don’t believe that. Mebbe somebody think she been told something she got no business knowing.”
“She won’t go anywhere until she finds out how Miss Eleanor died. Miss Prudence is stubborn that way.”
“Miss Eleanor drowned in the swamp. That’s all Miss Prudence ever gonna know.”
“That’s not enough. She doesn’t believe it was an accident, and she won’t give up until she’s proved it.”
“She that kind of woman?”
Geoffrey nodded. Smiled, because he knew what kind of woman Queen Lula meant. “Yes, she is that kind of woman.”
“Ain’t no changin’ her?”
“Not in this life.”
“You be sure she wear
Miss Jessa’s protection. Don’t never let her take it off. I ain’t sayin’ it’ll save her, but there’s no sense takin’ any chances.”
And that was all Queen Lula would say. She carried herself and her cat inside the shack. Closed the door softly but firmly.
Geoffrey heard a wooden bar slide into place. He hadn’t expected Queen Lula to be afraid enough to take that kind of precaution. But she was.
He wondered what or who made her anxious in the night.
* * *
It wasn’t that Aurora Lee and Maggie Jane were eager to tell Lawrence and their father about the windfall coming their way. They weren’t. There was always the possibility that the stern Confederate officer who lost money the way some people let water trickle through their fingers would forbid them from acquiring Eleanor’s trousseau. Would find some obscure prideful reason to deny them what he could no longer provide.
But it was also useless to think they could conceal anything from him. Especially a treasure that would arrive in trunks and boxes smelling of dried lavender sachets. Once they’d altered some of Eleanor’s gowns they thought he would be proud enough of their appearance to allow his newly fashionable daughters to keep them. But that would take time. The important thing was to head off any explosion of anger that brought with it a prohibition he would never rescind. Once Elijah Bennett made his feelings public, there was no changing them. He’d said many a time that only the weakest of men shilly-shallied over a decision.
They didn’t know why Lawrence was interested in the goings-on at Seapoint now that Eleanor was dead and there would be no alliance between the two families, but he was. Teddy’s face creased into such a look of pain whenever Eleanor’s name was mentioned that neither of his sisters wanted to distress him, so they waited until they were alone with Lawrence in the parlor before telling him where they had gone and what they had done. The younger Bennett brother had more influence over his father than the other three children put together. If anyone could ensure that the trousseau would not be rejected, it was he.
“So the snake didn’t bite her? You’re sure of that?” he asked.
Death Brings a Shadow Page 13
