“That is foolish, that is dangerous,” Selene said sternly.
Simon opened the door barely enough for Amity to slide herself and her billowing skirts through and closed it at once, very softly. The scent of tuberoses carried poignant sweetness. The white moonlight poured down, outlining every blossom and every leaf.
She waited in the dense black shelter of the banyan tree and after a moment Simon came, a quickly moving shadow emerging from the path. He carried a sack which he put down.
“Food,” he said. “Selene gave it to me. She’s washed her hands of me and she’s right—”
“Where are you going?”
“There’s a sort of cave, all overgrown with vines. Selene knows about it. She thinks no one else does.”
“Somebody else might know. And if they get dogs—No, no, it’s not safe. You must be miles away from here by daylight!”
“Jamaica is an island, you know.”
“Simon! There are the Maroons! McWhinn told me. They live in what they call the cockpits, west of here. They might—”
“I’ve got to reach Saint Dominique as soon as I can. It’s a long swim,” he said lightly.
“For God’s sake don’t joke now!”
“I’m far from joking. I’m thinking about a boat. I’ll have to find something—somewhere. I wish,” Simon said suddenly, “that I could take you with me.”
18
SHE COULDN’T SEE HIS face clearly, in the deep shade of the banyan tree. She couldn’t hear his voice clearly, for the stridulous night clamor of the forest hummed all around them. But she knew that both his face and his voice were different. All at once, without any seeming movement, drawn together like two parts of the same being, they made one shadow instead of two.
She wanted it to last forever.
“Simon—do you mean this?”
“Do I mean what?”
“That you—that I—I mean—”
“Amy, you are a little fool. Why did you offer so coolly to set me free?”
“I made you marry me.”
“Nobody can make anybody do anything he doesn’t want to do.”
“Do you mean—did you really want to—”
“I wasn’t sure you really wanted marriage until you put your head against me, like this, in my arms that afternoon before we were married. Then I wasn’t sure but I thought perhaps you loved me and didn’t yet know it. I thought—God knows what I thought—but I decided to take the chance. I couldn’t believe you’d suggest marriage unless, in your heart, you loved me. But then later I knew, too, that I might have let my own desire carry me away. I thought I was unfair to you.”
“I always loved you. You were a fool not to see it.”
“Madam, you are addressing your husband. Not that I’m any bargain as a husband. I always thought, when the war was over, I’d come back to South Carolina and I thought perhaps I’d find you there—”
“Simon! I forgot. Mallam Penn belongs to you.”
“Mallam Penn!” He looked down, surprised, into her face.
“My father added a codicil to his will. It came to him through your side of the family so he willed it to you or your heir. Squire Wickes told me.”
“Your father did that?” he said slowly. “Why, then—Amy, he forgave me. A rebel. He was a good and just man. And the best friend I’ll ever have. … Amy, would it hurt you if we gave Mallam Penn to Jamey?”
“Nothing could hurt me now,” she said, smugly as a kitten.
“No, wait. This is a hell of a time to talk about money but I’ve got to. We’ll not have another chance to settle anything, so be practical for a moment—”
“This is practical.” She put her face close against Simon’s lips.
He laughed. “Now—listen, Mallam Penn’s a rich estate. But actually I can’t claim it, until after the war and after we win. There’s the South Carolina estate, that’s home to us. Jamey must have his share and Mallam Penn should go to him. It’s only a horse trade,” he said lightly as she began to protest. “No need to weep about it!”
“I’m not—I’m only—” These moments in the shelter of the great tree couldn’t really last forever. Her throat tightened. “I’m going away with you.”
“No,” he said firmly. “I don’t know how I’ll get to Saint Dominique. I don’t know how or when I’ll go back to America. Maybe by privateer. Maybe if I’m lucky, on a French warship. But after the war, I’ll come for you. My dear, my darling, I’ll come for you then. Now how did you get out of the house?”
“Out the window. The way you did.”
“Good girl.” He was smiling she knew, but then sober. “You can’t get in that way. Just walk straight into the house. It’s nobody’s business why you left it or where you’ve been. But come now—”
“I’m going away with you.”
“No.” He put his arm tight around her; he led her along the path, between the two banks of black hedges. At the entrance to the driveway he held her again in his arms. “I’ll see you somehow before I leave. That’s a promise. This is not good-bye. Go into the house. I’ll watch from here.”
She looked at the white open patch of the driveway. “You’re so close to the house I They might see you!” Terror caught her and she yielded. “If you won’t let me go with you, then go now. Hurry—be careful. I’ll stay here until—until you come for me. But Simon—” So many things to say, so short a time to say them and impossible to say anything in words, for he held her, he kissed her, and then before she knew it she was out from the sheltering dusk of the hedge, running lightly across the white patch of driveway. At the curving steps she stopped and looked back at the hedge and could scarcely see the little gap where she was sure Simon stood and watched her. She must show him some scrap of courage; she put up her hand in a little motion of farewell. The black and white night lay motionless, she didn’t know whether or not Simon saw that small move which meant good-bye and God keep you.
She went slowly into the lounge. No one saw her, no one was there, two or three candles dripped dismally in winding sheets of wax. When she knocked lightly at the door of her own room. Dolcy opened it and smiled. “Good—”
She had shaded the candle so the room was barely lighted. “I’ll stay with Jamey now. Thank you, Dolcy.” Jamey sat up. “Why did you go out the window?”
“He wouldn’t sleep. He watch the window,” Dolcy said. Jamey’s bright eyes were inquisitive. “Everything is white. I can see the path and—where did you go?”
“Never mind, I’ll tell you in the morning—”
“I stay here, lady,” Dolcy said firmly and unfastened Amity’s dress and took the pins out of her hair and brushed it, and looking at Amity’s face in the mirror, said softly, “Lady happy tonight! But sad, too.” Happy, yes, Amity thought later, when the candle was out and the moonlight put pale stripes through the jalousies. Happy and sad. It seemed a pity for her and Simon to be parted so soon and for so long. But she hoped with all her heart that every moment of that bright, white night took him farther from Mallam Penn.
She awoke suddenly, aware of darkness and Jamey’s voice. “Axe—” he said clearly.
“What?”
Dolcy’s soft voice came from somewhere near. “He asleep, lady. Talk in his sleep—it’s nothing—”
“Did he say axe?”
“He see axe in sugar house yesterday. Want to know about it.” Dolcy chuckled softly. “He see everything, that child. Remember every word.”
The moon was down by then; the stripes of light from the jalousies had vanished.
Amity barely remembered Jamey’s talking in his sleep when she awoke in the morning and Jamey was curled like a puppy at the foot of his bed. The sun was shining, the birds were singing.
She was really Simon’s wife now because he loved her as his wife. And by now he should be miles from Mallam Penn and safely hidden somewhere. He was resourceful; he had courage and good sense. She would put her faith in that. But Captain Boyce would arrive that day and th
e hunt would be on.
The hot bright morning wore on, though, and the two men with their prisoner did not arrive. There was only the thump thump from the mills, the distant sound of voices and wagon from the fields, no sound of horses’ hoofs trotting up the driveway. The longer they were delayed, Amity thought again and again, the stronger grew Simon’s chances of escape.
Once when she went out to the veranda to look down the driveway and also to look at the opening to the path where she and Simon had stood the night before, telling herself that it had really happened, Squire Wickes was sitting on the veranda. He gave her a little smile. “Sister Ann at the watchtower,” he said disarmingly. “The men should return soon. Shall we walk down the driveway?” She had to agree.
They had reached the open space in the hedge which gave a glimpse of the garden when he gave his tousled wig a jerk and said, “Selene told me of the blank papers you and your stepmother found and looked at.”
She must have given a little start for he said, “Quite right and proper that she should tell me. And I really think it was quite right and proper of you not to tell me—that is, so everyone present heard of them. Selene believes that these papers represented some threat, say, to somebody. Did you feel at all that Hester might have considered that she had some sort of claim upon Mallam Penn?”
“Oh, no! That is—she told Uncle Grappit that she would stay here if she chose but I questioned her and she told me she was angry and spoke the first words that came to her mind.”
“H’mm. Yes.” He rumpled his wig again and Amity thought absently that it would be a sturdy wig to resist Squire Wickes’ tousling. “Well, the sun grows too warm for an old man.”
Without further talk they returned to the veranda where he settled himself again, a silk handkerchief over his face, although she didn’t think he fell into the peaceful nap his attitude suggested.
She had also a brief talk with China. She met China as she came along the corridor and China stopped short, flushed and said in a defiant whisper, “Of course I lied but it was for your own good.”
“My own good! What do you mean?”
“Charles told me to. He said that if I insisted that you were married to a rebel, the British court would take Mallam Penn away from you and he said that your father wished it to belong to you so it was for your own good if I just said, no, you weren’t married to Simon. So I did. And that’s all—I didn’t know then that my husband had written that horrid codicil, leaving Mallam Penn to Simon and not saying one word about me! Or Jamey,” she said as an afterthought. Her cheeks flushed redder with anger but she gave Amity a sharp, shrewd look. “Was Simon on that ship? Where is he now?”
“I don’t know.” That at least was the truth. She steered away from that subject quickly. “China, you didn’t tell them about those papers of Hester’s—”
China’s eyes widened. “Certainly not! I don’t intend to get myself strangled!” She gave herself a shuddering little shake and brushed past Amity in a whirl of yellow and white striped muslin.
Amity stared after her for a moment. So China, too, had seen the possible significance of those blank papers, so carefully tied. She had also seen their potential danger to her. A child—but a shrewd child. It was not, though, like Charles to advise China to deny having witnessed Amity’s marriage.
Presently Amity’s driving need to know something, anything of Simon, sent her out again along the path to the banyan tree and Selene’s cabin. Selene was not really a witch woman—but Selene knew things. Although Selene had forbidden Amity to visit her cabin openly, and certainly Selene would not come to the great house to find Amity, still there was a faint hope of encountering Selene somewhere.
Amity passed Squire Wickes; the silk handkerchief blew gently in and out and whether he observed her from behind it she didn’t know.
The path was stifling that hot morning. As she rounded a curve of bamboos she saw Charles sitting on a logwood tree, which had fallen, probably during the earthquake. He said “Good morning” politely, rose politely and added politely that it was a very warm day.
She hesitated, then sat down on the logwood trunk and hoped that Charles would go back to the house.
But he sat down again, spreading out the full skirt of his coat, stared absently at nothing, and finally said in a faraway voice, “Are you looking for Selene? I’ve just seen her.”
“Why—why did you go to see her?”
“I thought she might know something of Simon Mallam.”
“Charles! Surely you—you don’t believe Uncle Grappit !”
“N-no. I can’t say that I believe that Simon Mallam strangled Hester. But of course, thinking it over, it is possible that he was on the ship. So therefore, if he is the seaman who escaped, he’d have come here. At least I think it likely. You don’t have to say yes or no to that, Amity. Besides—yes, on thinking it over, I can see that your face gave you away. When Grappit said Simon had been killed in Savannah you looked surprised and—and well, as if you knew better, that’s all. No shock, no grief. And then last night when Squire Wickes and McWhinn went to question Selene, you followed them, didn’t you? Selene is powerful—Selene could have protected him—Yes, a very remarkable woman.”
Amity could not restrain a question. “What did she say when you questioned her?”
He gave her a perplexed glance. “Why, really, I don’t know. But I feel that if this man is Simon we should give him a chance to escape.” He rose. “It really is very warm. I’d suggest we return to the house.”
If Selene had worked a spell upon him, Amity hoped that it would last! She gave a quick, last glance toward the green path with its dappled sunlight and shadows, saw nothing of Selene, and went with Charles.
They had almost reached the driveway when she said, “China told me that you had told her to say that I did not marry Simon. Why was that?”
“What? Oh. Yes, she surprised me, too, lying like that. But then I understood it—the parson and the lawyer back in America, you see. They were witnesses and perhaps they were murdered for that reason. China is the only remaining witness, and you know China, she was simply frightened. So she said that. Disclaim the whole thing was, I fancy, her idea.”
“You didn’t tell her to say that?”
“Why, no. Why should I?” His dark eyes wandered, grew far away, he waited a moment, then simply walked on toward the house as if he’d forgotten her existence.
Amity watched him, perplexed, until he rounded a clump of great green and glossy shrubs and disappeared.
Charles had never been in love with her and Amity had known it. He had talked of marriage, yes, but because it would have been what was called a good and sensible marriage, “all in the family” as China had said. When China told him to try a romantic approach, he had dutifully obeyed but his heart hadn’t been in it. So she certainly did not expect devotion on Charles’ part. But she didn’t expect such complete indifference either. It puzzled her a little.
Nothing moved along the path. She followed Charles. Second breakfast, that heavy meal which was neither luncheon nor dinner, was almost over. A kind of torpor, the effect of heat or food or the weariness of strain, hung over the entire room. Only Squire Wickes seemed refreshed and sprightly.
Grappit cocked his head to listen as the clock struck two. “Your men are taking a long time, Squire.”
“It’s a difficult road,” Squire Wickes said mildly. “I’ll have another little saffron cake—Thank you.”
The meal was scarcely finished when McWhinn entered, removed his hat, showing his shiny white head above his tanned and weather-beaten face and said that the axe was missing.
Grappit’s lantern jaw protruded. “What do you mean by disturbing our repast like this? What axe. What are you driveling about?”
“I’m not driveling. The axe from the sugar house, man. What axe would I be talking about?”
Axe, Jamey had said in his sleep. Jamey was a parrot; he saw everything, picked up words, repeated them; he had
seen the axe in the sugar house and inquired about it. Yet Amity felt as if her bodice was strangely, suffocatingly tight.
Grappit said angrily, “Somebody simply stole it and won’t admit it. It’s not important—”
Squire Wickes lifted his hand. “But I fear it is important. McWhinn, you’ve already inquired, of course. You are sure that none of the people stole the axe.”
“Not that one,” said McWhinn.
“No. No, not that one.” Squire Wickes tapped his fingers on the gaily enameled lid of his snuffbox. “This is bad,” he said.
Grappit snorted. “I tell you somebody stole it. You may go, McWhinn. We’ve not finished our—”
McWhinn’s eyes were like flints. “This axe is very important. All the people know it. It could make the difference between life and death at any moment. It’s got to be near at hand, so anybody can snatch it at any instant. Nobody on this penn or any other penn would take that particular axe.”
“He’s right, you know,” Squire Wickes said gravely. “I don’t like this, sir.”
For the first time, a wall erected itself unexpectedly between Squire Wickes and the rest of them. It was an invisible wall but perfectly defined, the wall between investigator and suspect. “I must ask you, what is the situation about weapons in the house?”
“W-weapons?” Grappit said.
“Pistols—swords, muskets, surely you gentlemen are armed.”
“Why—why—I have nothing. I’m a man of peace and—”
Charles said, “I have a sword, sir, and a blunderbuss.”
“And you, Mr. Neville?”
“A pistol and a sword. A dress sword.” Neville’s eyes caught a rather satiric glance from Charles and he flushed. “Well, if we go to England—why, there’s the court! Assemblies! Besides the hilt is gold and—”
“Certainly, certainly,” Squire Wickes said. “McWhinn, what is your view of these weapons ?”
Enemy in the House Page 16
