Riding Shotgun

by Rita Mae Brown

“Let’s hope the southwestern god has a little breath left.”

  “Sometimes he can blow deep into November.” Margaret hummed as she walked, swinging her basket in time. Puffs of dust attended each step.

  They reached the crest of the hill. A large square surrounded by a two-and-a-half-foot wall of river stone marked the graveyard. A white gate, the top cut in a crescent, hung on huge iron hinges. Margaret opened the gate.

  Two large stones, beautifully carved, marked the graves of Charles and Elizabeth Deyhle. Elizabeth’s read:

  Elizabeth Rinton Buckingham Deyhle,

  Beloved Mother, Cherished Wife,

  Born April 9, 1642, Died June 20, 1697.

  Next to her rested Charles Richard Deyhle:

  A Founder of the Fifth Crown,

  Born January 18, 1629, Died December 20, 1697.

  She noticed the smaller marker.

  Braxton Harburtson Deyhle,

  Born 1678, Died 1695.

  “Who was Braxton?”

  “Your brother.”

  “How did he die?”

  “The sweating sickness.” Margaret knelt down and began digging the small holes for the spring bulbs.

  “Poor fellow. So young.”

  “And gifted. Had he lived your father would have sent him to Hannover to study music. Braxton wanted to go to Vienna but Charles said Hannover housed temptations enough.”

  “Why Hannover?”

  “Your father had friends there who assured him there was a fine organ master.”

  Cig surveyed even smaller stones. “Babies?”

  Margaret nodded.

  “Where are Charles’s parents buried?”

  “In England. After the Restoration they returned to London to petition King Charles for help… help in the form of cannon and soldiers. Your grandmother’s lungs gave way. Shortly thereafter your grandfather died in a duel. They say he grew intemperate after Priscilla’s death. Someone bumped into him one night leaving Court and he drew his sword. Your grandfather was a fine swordsman but he had the misfortune to pick a fight with the king’s blade.”

  “Who, or what, is ‘the king’s blade’?”

  “The finest swordsman in the kingdom, the personal bodyguard of the king.”

  “Sometimes I think our lives are nothing but footprints leading to death.” Cig placed a daffodil bulb in a hole. “I wonder how many carcasses I’ve left behind. How many lives have I lived—if indeed I’ve lived any of them fully? How many times have I known you and in what relation?”

  “Since you can’t answer those questions, why fret over them? Do what you can.”

  A flash of irritation prompted Cig. “Practical. Very practical.”

  “Yes,” Margaret flashed back. “Wherever you are you might as well be useful.”

  “I am useful! I’m just lost, goddammit!”

  “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “Don’t be a Puritan.”

  Margaret squinted at Cig. “I am not, but you should take more care with your faith. Look…” she pointed to the darkening western sky, the clouds piling up.

  Cig shielded her eyes. “Maybe they’ll slip by. Anyway, we have another hour or so before they get here. That gives me another hour to bitch and moan.” She made fun of herself. “Margaret, do I seem like the Pryor you knew?”

  “More somber.” Margaret brushed loose dirt off her apron. “But yes, you are the Pryor I knew.”

  “Can you tell me about myself? I know that sounds strange.”

  “Well, you would rather be outside than inside. You’ve never cared a fig for adornments. Both your mother and I would have to dress you for society. You are particularly stubborn about your hair.” She reached over to pull Pryor’s single braid. “You liked horses better than men and you were always laughing. You had, as your mother put it, ‘a sunny nature.’”

  Cig listened then slowly replied. “I used to be that way when I was younger. Laughing. Playing. I got away from it somehow.”

  “Worries.”

  “Huh?”

  “We care too much for the world and it cares too little for us.” Margaret smiled sweetly. “We worry what others think. We worry about money, the weather, and there are those for whom worrying about this world isn’t enough woe. They’re worrying about the next.”

  “Is Tom religious?”

  “He cares not a fig for his immortal soul.” Margaret felt the thin skin of the daffodil bulb. “Are you religious?”

  “Don’t look at me.” Cig shrugged.

  “Who else am I to look at?”

  Cig laughed. “No, I’m not religious. I don’t trust people who think they have answers about my spiritual life. It’s even worse when God gets into politics.”

  “Why would He lower Himself? Kings and governments are transitory. God is eternal.”

  Cig rested on her haunches to sort out bulbs. “Margaret, I’ve got a lot to learn from you. I assumed you all would be primitive, I guess because your living conditions are primitive by the standards of my time. Actually, you’re further along,” she tapped her head, “than most of my friends.” She sighed. “I live in an empty, cynical time.”

  “That’s up to you.” Margaret smoothed earth over a bulb.

  “Huh?”

  “Just because people around you are cynical doesn’t mean you must follow suit.”

  Cig stood up to rest her knees and to consider what Margaret had just said to her. Margaret was right. She had no reply. Like most riders her knees hurt the older she got. “We need rose bushes.” She pointed to where she’d place them.

  “I know. I want some at the house, too.”

  “Can you buy them?”

  “If I order a huge cargo from England. Tom would die—actually, I’d be the one to die. He hasn’t the time for fripperies, as he puts it.”

  “What about cuttings?”

  “Mrs. Boothrod grows handsome roses. I can’t bring myself to ask the dragon for any.”

  “Will I meet her?”

  “You will. At Shirley. Oh, I should tell you, their son, Abraham, is smitten with you. He’s a bit younger.”

  “Am I smitten with him?”

  “No, but you like him tremendously. I have high hopes for that young man.”

  ‘You sound like an old lady. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-five. Not old. Not young.”

  “You’d be quite young in my time—the bloom of youth, and you do look very pretty.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  Margaret perked up. “As long as I keep my teeth! I just hate when people’s teeth fall out and their mouths shrink in.”

  “Use a toothbrush.” Cig pulled her small portable one from her jacket pocket.

  “Isn’t that clever?”

  “You use toothpaste and water. Baking soda does the trick, too.”

  “I use a toothpick.”

  “Use them both, although you don’t have a toothbrush—well, if you study this I bet you can make one.”

  Margaret ran her thumb over the bristles. “What kind of animal hair is this?”

  “It isn’t. It’s plastic. I’d try pig bristles. If they’re too thick then use horse whiskers.”

  “I bet I could make one.” Margaret stood up herself for a moment, the soft dirt sprinkling off her apron. “Pryor, if you don’t recognize me, if you really are from another time, do you know what will happen to me, to Tom?”

  “My sister has the earliest Deyhle Bibles and papers. I have the records after 1860. I don’t know, although if I ever get back home—I mean back to that home—I will know because I’ll get the papers from Grace. But you had to have lived a pretty long life and had children or I wouldn’t be here. Are you worried?”

  “No”

  “Feeling sick?”

  “No.”

  “Curious?”

  “Being in a graveyard makes me think on mortality. And we lost Braxton, Elizabeth, and Charles so close to one another. Then we were
afraid we’d lose you at sea. It was a terrible time. I thought it would never end.”

  “But it did.”

  “When I was a little girl I would cry when anything upset me. I had a little puppy, Roger Dodger. I can still see his silly face. One of the horses stepped on him and he died, i cried and I cried and I cried. And my mother said, ‘Sorrow is how we learn to love. Your heart isn’t breaking. It hurts because it’s getting larger. The larger it gets the more love it holds.’ You know, I’ve thought of that so often—when everyone died, when you hadn’t come home to us after so many months.”

  “She’s a wise woman. Is she still alive?”

  “Oh, yes. She lives in Charleston with her second husband.”

  “Have I met her?”

  “At the wedding. You two got on but then you are hard not to like.”

  “What a kind thing to say. I don’t feel very likable.” She knelt back down to push in the last of the bulbs. “I’ve been afraid to ask you questions about myself.”

  “I don’t mind. Perhaps my answers will help you to remember. I find if I can call up a picture in my mind that I can remember the smallest items, the color of a snuffbox, say, or the pattern of lace on a fine shirt.”

  Cig stood up. “I’m afraid if I learn about this life that I will have lost my life, the life I know, and then I’ll never see my children.” Tears filled her eyes.

  “Pryor, poor Pryor.” Margaret wrapped her arms around her, hugging her tight. She offered Cig a handkerchief to blow her nose and continued. “I can’t know how you feel and I must sound unconvincing but I do believe you are here for a reason and—and do you have a better answer?”

  “No—I guess the world is crazy no matter what time you live in, or where.”

  “Were I to visit your time I imagine I’d be lost. Some things would be familiar, many strange and frightening. But people are the same, are they not?”

  Cig nodded. “You put different clothes on them, that’s all. There are fashions of ideas, too, but people are people. Some are crooked, some straight. Some are smart, most aren’t.” She laughed. “And I count myself in the latter group. Some are serious and some know how to laugh and most of us can’t see any farther than the nose on our face.”

  “And neither will we for those storm clouds are flying across the sky.” Margaret looked up at the roiling, black clouds, which seemed low enough to touch.

  18

  Light frost hugged the ground, and the crisp air promised good scent at Shirley Plantation. Neighbors gathered from throughout the Tidewater. Many followed the hunt on foot. Elderly ladies and gentlemen and their servants traipsed to higher ground to better follow the hunt’s progress. A few followed in carriages.

  The barns, with their simple, handsome brick exteriors and graceful arches over the windows, were as Cig remembered them, which gave her some feeling of security.

  As they approached the main gathering she asked Tom, “Where’s the main house?”

  “Where it’s always been.” Tom pointed to a serviceable but not distinguished brick building.

  The lovely mansion Cig had known was yet to be built. She tried to remember the history of Shirley Plantation but all that came to mind was Edward hill II’s beating by Nathaniel Bacon. Bacon, rebelling against the governor of Jamestown and those who supported him, held the second owner of Shirley captive, along with his pregnant wife and their children. That rebellion in 1675 might have fomented far more trouble than it did had Bacon not perished from dysentery. Bacon’s Rebellion and the prior great massacre of 1622 left their mark on the survivors.

  Margaret discreetly pointed out Edward hill III, who had been Bacon’s captive as a child. Mounted on a stout seal brown gelding, hill greeted his guests with enthusiasm. Intelligence shone from his face. He could not have known, Cig thought, that he would be remembered even into her time for his business acumen and wise use of his landholdings, or that his family would contribute to Virginia in each succeeding generation. Here he was, already third generation, no firsthand memory of the Old World, a new man in a New World.

  “’Pon my soul!” Daniel Boothrod waved his lace handkerchief at Cig, then tucked it in his sleeve.

  “Who’s that?” Cig whispered to Margaret.

  “Daniel Boothrod, a most enthusiastic gentleman.”

  What a jolly popinjay he was, with a towering peruke, a kind of wig, a frock coat of deep burgundy, a burnt orange brocaded waistcoat and a white silk shirt, lace spilling from under his coat cuffs and at his throat.

  Margaret giggled. “It’s not prudent to wear a wig whilst hunting.”

  “Too hot,” Tom offered. His hair was close cropped so that he could wear a wig when the occasion demanded it.

  “Do you wear a wig, Tom?”

  “As little as possible, you know that,” he said. “I don’t look half-bad though.”

  “You only look half-good.” She jabbed at him with her hunting whip, the deer bone handle smooth in her hand, as Daniel strode over with his stiffly arrogant wife, even more festooned than her husband.

  “A vision, a vision for these eyes.” Daniel removed his hat with a flourish and bowed low from the waist. His wife’s eyes narrowed to slits. Mrs. Boothrod inclined her head, which was a way of bidding them hello without curtsying since one curtsied only to superiors and equals. Her snub couldn’t have been more plain. The Deyhles and her husband chose to ignore it and her.

  “You flatter me, sir.” Cig smiled at Daniel whom she instinctively liked.

  “I greet your return with profound thanksgiving for many are the travails of travel, as St. Paul was wont to tell us… but then St. Paul might have fared better in those wretched countries had he been less aggressive in his zeal.” He gulped a shallow little breath so he could continue in his florid manner. “And how did you find that queen of cities, London?”

  “Bursting with commerce but rather dull, sir, since you were conspicuously absent.” She struggled to think of not just what to say but how to say it.

  Tremendously pleased with the compliment he bowed again, turning one foot out perpendicular to the other like a ballet dancer. This choreographed display of courtliness and a handsome calf finally proved too much for his madam. Her teal-colored hat dipping over one eye, she had to cock her head to gaze eye to eye with her husband. “Mr. Boothrod, we’ll be adrift in the back of the riders if you don’t come along.” She smiled tightly at Cig. “My husband cherishes the notion that he has the best legs in the colony.”

  “The best calves, I’m sure.” Cig couldn’t resist.

  “Ah, every man has a calf and an ass.” Tom’s cheeks blushed with glee.

  “Oh, good, Tom, next you’ll be asking to see my ass.” Daniel guffawed.

  “Really!” Mrs. Boothrod tapped the side of her riding skirt with her crop, the picture of righteous irritation. “Don’t be an ass.” Realizing what she had said, her small mouth opened like a tiny surprised bivalve.

  “Christ rode an ass into Jerusalem… so I don’t mind being one.” Daniel glanced from his wife to the Deyhles then bowed again. “By your leave ladies, Tom.”

  “How did I do?” Cig whispered as Daniel propelled a sputtering Amelie Boothrod toward her horse.

  “Splendid.” Margaret praised her. “You handled the dragon like a St. George.”

  “A pain in the ass,” Tom whispered. “I’ve got to get that word out of my mind.” They all laughed.

  “Daniel must be quite wealthy.”

  “Some years he is and some he isn’t,” Margaret replied.

  “The same could be said for us all. We rise and fall on a tide of tobacco.”

  “Plant peanuts.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Ground nuts, I mean.”

  “Pryor, ground nuts are for animals.” Tom grimaced at the thought of eating fodder.

  “Put a crop in anyway,” she insisted.

  “Let’s discuss this later.”

  The Deyhles rode over to their host. He leaned
out of the saddle and warmly kissed Cig’s hand. “Pryor Deyhle, I am so happy to see you, mademoiselle. If you’re with us we’ll run red foxes!”

  “There are always red foxes at Shirley.” She smiled, knowing there always would be, and she began to feel confident, for foxhunting was her element regardless of the century.

  A throng of people rode over, all talking at once, all eager to greet Pryor. With Margaret and Tom’s help she chatted, laughed, and got through it with few mistakes, although people thought her attire quite severe and a few were scandalized by her wearing breeches.

  Lionel deVries joined the group. A small coterie swam around him currying for favor.

  Lionel swept off his hat and bowed his head, beaming at the sight of her.

  “Artemis herself.”

  “Flatterer.” But she loved it. She felt that giddy sensation, the warm flush of confusion and attraction, and it was as though she was seeing him for the first time, seeing him as she had once before… in a time to come.

  Lionel rode up beside her, reached for her hand and pressed it to his lips. “I have no need of invention in your presence. Simple descriptive powers will do.” Then he touched his hat and said to Margaret, “You, of course, must be Hera.”

  Margaret’s silvery laugh was infectious. “I hope I have a more faithful husband.”

  The gathering laughed although Amelie Boothrod’s was forced but she did say, “Zeus was faithful for three hundred years. That means Daniel has two hundred and fifty remaining.”

  The group howled.

  Daniel replied, “In your presence, my angel, two hundred and fifty years will be as the twinkling of an eye.” He winked. “But how could I fall to a circus of vices after a feast of such virtue?” The men whistled while the ladies applauded. Amelie beamed, although she didn’t believe a word of it. Somehow it didn’t matter at the moment.

  In this frontier, this fragile outpost of European ambition and culture, social gatherings were cherished. The dueling of the Boothrods enriched the celebratory atmosphere. People labored long and hard on their farms and at their trades. Sunlight, as precious as gold, guided their activities. Laughter, even more precious than gold, bound them together. If there were a shortage of foxes they would chase anything that ran, including one another.