The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  After a quick cast about the area, where he found nothing more than a frog to remark upon, Fraser pushed back through the rushes to the path. “He was injured, yes, but if his neck were broken he would not have been able to drag himself away from where he fell. In fact, I wonder why he would crawl away at all, if not to escape an assailant. For there are no stones lying about here, for him to fall upon and bash in his head.”

  “His head is bashed in?”

  “As the sharp rap of a spoon cracks the shell of a soft-boiled egg.” Fraser mounted his horse.

  Harrington’s features went from merely white to ashen. He might not be as quick as some, but even he could see what this intelligence implied. Perhaps the serpentine log had been brought here for inoffensive reasons. But no innocent purpose explained the cutting of the saddle-strap. As for the weapon that had finished off the injured man and then conveniently disappeared . . .

  A shout rang out. The horses shifted uneasily. Harrington produced a handkerchief from an inner pocket and rose in his stirrups. He waved his small white flag toward a similarly-hued man on horseback far across the marsh, where the land rose again onto terra firma. Or Bella Vista, as the case might be. “My respects to Mr. Dabney,” he called, “but we have found the man, and no longer require assistance.”

  “Very well,” returned the other man, and turned his horse away.

  “No,” muttered Harrington, sinking back down into his saddle, “No, we no longer require the assistance of the Dabneys. Let us return to Oak Grove, Captain Fraser. We must give Pollard the usual obsequies, and I must turn my efforts to finding someone to take his place.”

  “And we must discover whose hand is behind this dreadful occurrence,” added Fraser.

  The plantation owner regarded his guest with bleak eyes, and did not reply.

  * * * * *

  Fraser stood in the sultry shade of one of the great oaks, fanning himself with his hat and observing the scene before him, but, as befit his status as guest, not participating.

  Outside Pollard’s small house, where his body now lay in more semblance of dignity than it had been discovered, Harrington and Dabney spoke in soft but intense voices. Harrington extended his hand, revealing something small that glinted all the more urgently in the sunlight for the slight trembling of his limbs. It was the button from the stable.

  Dabney bridled and his tone rose from baritone to tenor. “What impertinence!”

  Harrington murmured something soothing.

  “I shall have my man bring my coat to you, to prove that all its buttons are sewn tightly!”

  Harrington hid the button once again in his pocket and gazed down at his boots.

  “I am a gentleman. I do not sneak about stableyards damaging saddles. If he had been my social equal, I would have called him out upon the field of honor. But he was not. He was beneath my notice.” Here Dabney bowed briefly toward the small house, acknowledging but hardly respecting the dead.

  Harrington raised his hands, palm outwards, placatingly. “My dear Mr. Dabney, John, I do beg your pardon. You must recognize the difficult position I find myself in.”

  Dabney nodded, grudgingly conceding the point, and stalked off toward the house.

  Fraser replaced his hat. Yes, Harrington occupied a very difficult position. Which might explain his grasping so desperately at straws that he risked alienating the eligible Mr. Dabney. Although, Fraser supposed, Miss Letitia’s own eligibility provided insurance.

  And Harrington’s suggestion was no more than a straw. Dabney would know of the marsh, since it bordered his own lands. He would not have known which saddle was Pollard’s. And Fraser could not imagine the fop with his smooth white hands carrying an oak branch down from the lawn, let alone lying in wait beside it, some heavy object to hand, in the chance Pollard’s fall was not sufficient to kill him. Dabney was correct that bashing in a man’s brains fell far below the dignity his position demanded.

  Pollard might have been of a harsh and unfeeling character, hardened further by his disagreeable vocation, but he had been a white man. He had not died by Dabney’s white hand, he had died by a black one. And a slave murdering his master’s man required immediate apprehension and punishment, ere his example spread, to the detriment of the peace, the order, the purity, and the prosperity of Southern society.

  Last Sunday morning Fraser had sat beside the Harringtons at the nearby church, politely bowing his Presbyterian head to the papist Anglican services. The sermon had been directed as much toward the ebony faces lining the balcony as toward the planters filling the pews. For the salvation of their souls, the minister said, those in bondage must realize that submission was pleasing to the Lord. They must learn respect and obedience to all those whom God in his providence had placed in authority over them. And if they were not obedient, then . . .

  Fraser wondered whether that same minister had ever read to the slaves the book of Moses, called Exodus, or whether a lettered slave such as Mason was familiar with its story: “And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows.”

  Harrington paced back and forth before the steps of Pollard’s house with every appearance of a sapper measuring out a length of fuse. Frowning, equally restless, Fraser strolled away into the heat of the late afternoon. The saddle-strap. The branch lying in the rushes. A hand bringing—something—down upon Pollard’s head. It could well be that this deadly object had been cast far into the marsh, and would never be recovered. Still, though, if he could get some sense of it, he might could put a name to the person who had held it.

  The Hebrew slaves of the Bible had labored to make bricks without straw. Fraser turned toward the pile of bricks he had observed only this morning, in a more peaceful time. It was not now occupied by any laborers polishing their hoes. He picked up one of the bricks and weighed it in his hand. It was heavy, hot, and gritty. It would have done to smash a man’s head in. So would a hoe have done. But Pollard’s wound was concave, not vee-shaped. Whatever had hit him, it had not had a sharp edge.

  Ignoring the dark eyes observing him, Fraser replaced the brick and walked toward the neat clapboard dependencies ranged behind the main house, summoned by the aromas of baking breads and roasting meats. Cooking implements, he thought, and the cook Venus exchanging such a plangent gaze with Mason.

  Fraser stopped in the shadow of a wisteria-covered garden arch to survey the scene. A girl sat on a bench outside the kitchen using a small, sharp knife to shuck oysters into an earthenware bowl. Another employed a wooden pestle and stone mortar to macerate some sort of sharp-smelling spice—cinnamon, perhaps. Mason, the man himself, sat upon a stump of wood reading a book.

  Through the window of the kitchen, Fraser watched as Venus bent over a small spherical iron pot suspended from a bracket above the hearth. Flames licked up its sides like the purifying fire of some ancient Roman rite. She stirred the ingredients, then turned to a small basin set nearby. From it she lifted two long strips of gray fabric. She wrung out the—white stockings, Fraser realized—and folded them away into a bundle of blue cloth from which depended a needle and thread. That she tucked away in a basket woven of rushes, very like to the basket she had been carrying this morning. Atop the telltale cloth she arranged the leafy tops of carrots or turnips, and then she set the basket aside.

  It was not Venus’s place to wash or mend clothing. The hierarchy of the household was clearly defined, the house servants each with his or her own task, and all of them set above the field hands. However, if the situation demanded washing or mending . . .

  Fraser’s frown intensified to a scowl. He turned and walked back to the house as quickly as he could stride, his cheeks burning as with a fever. For he could think of nothing so much as the beann-nighe of the Gael’s mythology, the supernatural washerwoman seen laundering the clothes of next person in the community to die.

  * * * * *

  The dinn
er table was once again furnished with finest Virginia ham, a saddle of mutton, turkey, canvas duck, beef, oysters, plum pudding, tarts, peaches preserved in brandy, pickles, condiments, preserves, and quince marmalade. And yet Fraser’s appetite was not whetted as keenly tonight as it had been the night before. Despite the open windows, the air was close, and to his nostrils the perfumes of the meats seemed tainted with the stagnant odor of the marsh.

  Politely he sampled the foodstuffs laid before him, and considered the gold and silver encrusted candelabrum rising like a temple to Mammon from their midst. He supposed its small sphinxes were intended to reflect Egyptian style, but to him they appeared to be no more than Frenchified fancies, golden calves commenting upon the morality play in which he found himself acting a role.

  Save for Dabney, who made such small talk as occurred to his small mind, the company was silent. Misses Letitia and Betsy drooped picturesquely over their plates, although their solemn demeanors were positively blithesome compared to their father’s. It appeared that to Harrington, the feast was no more than funeral meats, dry as ashes upon his tongue, holding no nourishment. He signaled Mason to remove his plate, and the footman did so.

  The lad was wearing his usual livery, white shirt and breeches beneath a long waistcoat cut of blue broadcloth and closed with brass buttons that winked in the candlelight like conspiring eyes. His stockings were white, and his buckled shoes were polished to a gleam darker than that of his extraordinary golden skin.

  Or was his color extraordinary? Fraser saw in the shadows beyond the doorway the cook, Venus, making some last preparation to a platter of figs, raisins, and almonds. She handed it to Mason with a smile filled with such affection that Fraser could count every white tooth. And yet there was something else in her smile, an edge of concern that reflected as though in a mirror Harrington’s somber face.

  Mason returned to the dining room and set the platter down before his master. Harrington chose one morsel and looked up, meeting the lad’s eye with a twist of his lips that he perhaps intended to be a smile. Their faces shared the same features, Fraser saw—a slightly receding chin, a high forehead, and especially an aquiline nose, not a lineament often seen in the African race.

  What he saw was the truth of the matter. Rumor had it that even so noble a figure as former President Jefferson was served at table by a youth who was his very image, his own son sired upon a slave woman. Such relationships, Fraser had heard, were not uncommon. Why, there were occasions upon which a plantation owner would sell his own offspring, fearful wickedness as that might be.

  Harrington’s position was similar to Jefferson’s—his wife was dead, leaving only daughters, and the beauteous Ethiopian Venus was in his power. He would have had no need to commit violence upon her person. Acceding to his wishes could well bring her every advantage—and in Venus’s instance, had, for she bore him a son whom he prized enough to not only christen with the name of one of Virginia’s great families, but also to educate.

  Perhaps the woman was less pagan Venus than Christian Eve, tempted not by a suggestively-shaped branch but by the genuine infernal serpent to eat of the apple of knowledge of good and evil. For what if an intelligent young slave like Mason were allowed a few glimpses of education or liberty and given the first crude notions of natural right? Might he not rise to an indignation unfelt by his compatriots, who were kept ignorant and submissive in the interests of self-preservation more so even than profit?

  And yet if the temptation to murder was infernal, surely the temptation to dignity was not. Fraser had friends here in these American states who, in recalling their recent struggle against what they saw as British tyranny, said they felt called upon to manifest the sincerity of their expressions of freedom by extending that same freedom to others, who though of a different color were the work of the same almighty hand.

  The young ladies rose from the table and, ringlets bobbing, betook themselves to the drawing room. Mason served the wines and then slipped discreetly away. Harrington, considering the red port in his goblet as though it were blood, muttered of calling in the county sheriff and neighboring planters—they would wring the name of the evildoer from the slave population, yes they would. Dabney made noises of agreement, his face becoming rosier and rosier as he drank. Fraser sipped his Madeira and reflected upon the business of the last twenty-four hours.

  Even if Mason had not found any number of small knives ready to hand in the kitchen, one of Harrington’s pen-knives would have served to turn Pollard’s saddle into a deadly trap. Perhaps the serpentine log had been produced especially for the murderous occasion, perhaps it had indeed come to the marsh to secure a snare or net, and was made useful in a very different way.

  It had been the work of only a few moments for Mason to take off his shoes and stockings, so his footprints would blend with the others, and to follow Pollard into the marsh, there to finish him off with . . . Fraser, although not a betting man, would wager his pension on the murder weapon being Venus’s small iron pot. How better to destroy traces of blood and hair than by fire?

  This morning she and her son had stood side by side, he with his waistcoat hanging open, wiping his shoe upon his stocking. Had he just then, in the light of day, noticed the missing button and concealed it as best he could? Had he had no time to wash his feet before replacing his footwear, so that his stockings were stained with mud? Probably so, otherwise Venus would not have taken her surreptitious turn as washerwoman and seamstress.

  A movement in the doorway was Cato, beckoning urgently to Dabney, who despite showing every evidence of indignation answered the call. Their voices, hissing whispers, rose and fell in the corridor. Then Dabney reappeared, a smirk pleating his doughy face. “Mr. Harrington? Might I have a word, please? Your indulgence, Captain Fraser.”

  Fraser rose and bowed. Taking his goblet with him, Harrington led Dabney down the hall to his study. The door shut with a thud. In the drawing room, one of the young ladies began to play the pianoforte and the other to sing: Sur le pont d’Avignon, l’on y danse, l’on y danse . . . These Americans, with their mania for the French. Fraser supposed he could lay the blame for that at the door of the otherwise estimable Mr. Jefferson.

  Desirous of a cooling breeze, or at least of fresher air, Fraser walked out onto the veranda. But the night air seemed hardly less oppressive, hanging in a moist pall over plantation and river. Lamplight shone from the windows of Pollard’s house as two old bondswomen kept vigil over his mortal remains. Behind the cedar hedge, the Saturday night bonfire’s yellow sparks snapped upwards, clearer than the smudged stars above. The faces of those gathered around the fire were deeply shadowed, almost demonic in appearance, but that impression was mitigated by the snatches of song or even trills of laughter emanating from them. Were the all-too-human slaves celebrating the brief instant between Pollard’s demise and the wrath that would follow?

  Fraser sensed himself to be between the rock of Sinai and the hard place of the desert. While he felt no sympathy for Pollard, neither did he approve of Mason’s deed. Nevertheless, Mason’s plight could hardly fail to move him. Yes, it was his duty as an officer and a gentleman, not to mention as Harrington’s guest, to reveal his deductions in the matter. Especially if his deductions could prevent the brutal hand of justice from falling upon a guiltless person. For even if Mason did not suffer the consequences of his deed, some other soul in bondage would.

  Voices leached through the open window at Fraser’s back, the window of the study where prospective father and son-in-law were closeted.

  “The devil you say!” exclaimed Harrington, his voice sharp with dismay. “You are gulling me, Mr. Dabney, in retaliation for my unfortunate question about the button.”

  “Not so, not so,” Dabney replied smoothly. “My man Cato told me just now. I sent him to the stables before dinner to ascertain the condition of my horses. He felt your boy Gideon had not cleaned their hooves properly.”

  “Gideon has been with me for many years, he k
nows horses.”

  “That is not my point, Mr. Harrington. Cato had a word or two with Gideon, which Gideon repaid with insults, saying that Cato, as my valet, was putting on airs—well, he should, should he not?—and then having the audacity to raise his fists! Of course my man was constrained to defend himself.”

  Harrington said nothing, no doubt thinking that the matter of who began the scuffle was immaterial.

  “Then your footman, Mason, appeared on the scene—with one of your books tucked beneath his arm, Cato tells me! The impudence!”

  Still Harrington said nothing.

  “He told them to stop their fighting. Before Cato could point out that he had no power over either man, Gideon replied, plain as the nose on your face and the tongue in your mouth, ‘Are you my judge? What will you do? Wait beside the path in the slough while I exercise the horses?’”

  “That doesn’t have to mean, that’s not necessarily . . .” A thump and creak indicated that Harrington had sat heavily down in his desk chair.

  “Gideon sleeps in the stable loft, does he not? He told Cato he saw Mason in the tack room, late last night, a candle in his hand.”

  “But if he never saw Mason cut the strap . . .”

  Dabney’s voice became heavier, like a muddy river in spate. “Mason underestimates Cato’s loyalty to me and Gideon’s to you. Why don’t you inspect his waistcoat to see if all the buttons are sewn in the same fashion? Why don’t you ask the other house servants where Mason was at dawn this morning? He was most certainly not in the pantry serving the breakfast. The woman Venus, now, she said he was in the kitchen, but Cato never saw him there, even when he was preparing my tea. I trust no one else with my tea, mind, it’s a very good grade of . . .”

  A slapping sound made Fraser step back, but apparently it was Harrington bringing his palm down upon his desk. “Infamous! Infamous! I raised that lad as—as though he were my own son, and yet he repays my attentions to him by murdering my overseer? I will have his head for this!”