Witch Angel

by Trana Mae Simmons

  “The time will come when you need to,” Tana said in an acquiescent voice. “When you do, you can come to me.”

  “I don’t even know where you live, Tana.”

  “You will find me.” Tana smiled enigmatically, then walked over to the fireplace mantle and picked something up. “You are interested in Chenaie’s past?”

  Alaynia frowned as she crossed the room to where Tana stood. “What’s that? I don’t remember it being there before.”

  Tana’s eyes widened, and she placed the book back on the mantle. “I must go now.” She started for the door, picking up her satchel from the bed as she passed. “I would like to see Cole before I leave.”

  “Wait!” Alaynia cried.

  Tana turned in the doorway. “I must go,” she repeated. “But remember, I am your friend. If you need me, I will know.”

  She disappeared and Alaynia couldn’t even hear her footsteps in the hallway. Remembering Tana’s gliding, regal walk, she recalled that she hadn’t heard the other woman’s footsteps while they walked down the hallway, either—only the sounds of her own boot steps on the wooden floor.

  Frustrated at Tana’s departure after the healer had filled her mind with a host of more unanswered questions, Alaynia swung back to the fireplace. A large Bible lay on the mantle, beside a package of letters tied with a piece of string. They darned sure hadn’t been there earlier, because she would have definitely noticed them.

  She picked up the Bible and blew at a layer of dust. Opening the front cover, she squinted at the elaborate handwriting until she made out the details of names with birth and death dates on the pages. She closed it and laid it back down. Nothing unusual there. She’d run across dozens of family Bibles in her restoration work. Even in her own time, many families kept up that tradition, and the Bibles were valuable in tracing a family’s genealogy, a popular pastime. She’d give the Bible to Shain at the first opportunity.

  The letters, also, she decided. Maybe whichever servant had cleaned her room had run across them and thought they belonged to her.

  Suddenly an unexplainable urge to read the letters overtook Alaynia. She even reached out and picked up the letters, and started to untie the string. Then she noticed the goose bumps on her arms and threw the letters back onto the mantle. Whirling, she stared around the room, her heart beating frantically.

  Nothing out of the ordinary met her gaze, but she would almost swear that Tana hadn’t closed the bedroom door behind her. It was closed now, though she hadn’t heard the tumblers click into place. She gritted her teeth to calm herself and hurried over to the armoire to grab the first dress her fingers touched. Behind the dressing screen, she pulled off her robe. In less than thirty seconds flat, she ran from the room, carrying a pair of slippers that she didn’t pause to put on until she reached the top of the front stairwell, which led down into the main part of the manor house.

  Just before she started down the stairwell, she glanced back along the hallway. The door to her room—which she knew damned well she’d left open this time—slowly closed on its hinges.

  Chapter 13

  This was stupid—pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace, glancing at the door connecting her room to Shain’s every few seconds and then back at the window, from which she could see the graveyard. Alaynia ceased her frustrated strides and sat on the edge of the bed. After the evening meal, Shain had caught her alone for a moment and told her of his plans to meet with his overseer, but assured her that he would try to wind up his business with the man early. Before she could inform him of her change of mind about their plans, he had strode out of the house.

  The connecting door had no lock—not even a keyhole for an old-fashioned skeleton key. She supposed the plantation master’s wife would never think of denying her husband access to her bed. And she didn’t know herself if she could follow through on her decision, if the two of them were again alone in the room. The window could be closed and locked with a latch and hook, but nothing that flimsy would keep out what Alaynia could only sense—and what she felt Tana’s actions had confirmed, that there was something utterly strange about her room.

  She set her lips in determination and rose from the bed. A far better idea would be for her to wait for Shain downstairs. She jerked the hallway door open, and the young black girl outside it drew back, almost stumbling over a water bucket at her feet.

  “Oh! I ... I brought water, Miz Mirabeau. For your bath.”

  “Thank you, Netta,” Alaynia said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Just pour the water in the tub. But first, tell me if Shain’s come back in. I need to speak to him.”

  “He be in the study, Miz Mirabeau. Come in just now.”

  Netta picked up the water bucket, and Alaynia saw another pail sitting by the wall. Frowning in annoyance as she recalled the steep stairwell Netta had to climb to get to the upper story of the house, she grabbed the other bucket herself and started back into the room. That slender girl must have arms of steel to carry two of these heavy buckets upstairs at once.

  Netta emerged from behind the dressing screen and hurried over to try to take the bucket Alaynia carried. “Oh, no’m. Be too heavy for you.”

  “Netta, I can ...”

  Netta tugged on the bucket and Alaynia relinquished it before their struggle caused the water to slosh onto the floor. Shaking her head, Alaynia turned back to the bedroom door.

  “Miz Mirabeau?” When Alaynia glanced around, Netta said, “Thank you. But it be my job.”

  Alaynia smiled and nodded, but her smile left her face as she walked down the hallway. The people at Chenaie all had their duties—their jobs—but there wasn’t one darned thing she could do to make herself useful. The afternoon had dragged after they got back from Jake’s. Shain had already left the house by the time she came downstairs after Tana’s ministrations. Jeannie must have spent the rest of the day with the piglets, and no one appeared to think that Alaynia might want something to occupy her time. When she made the mistake of wandering into the kitchen and offering to help slice vegetables, the cook had been so scandalized that she quickly departed. She wasn’t used to this inactivity ...

  She paused at the top of the front stairwell. Down that other hallway, in the original portion of the house, were four more bedrooms, one of which was Jeannie’s where she’d had her coffee that morning. She heard a strange sound from an open doorway at the end of the hall, and a second later a tiny animal scuttled toward her, Jeannie in hot pursuit.

  For a split second, Alaynia was horrified at seeing Jeannie chasing what she thought was a large rat down the dim hallway, before she recognized one of the piglets. When the piglet came near, she scooped it up and held the squealing animal out to Jeannie.

  “Oh, thanks, Alaynia,” Jeannie said in a breathless voice. She cuddled it close and the piglet’s squeals quieted. “If Tiny had gotten down the stairs and Shain had found him, my brother would’ve had a fit.”

  “I thought you said at supper that the sow was taking care of the new babies,” Alaynia said.

  “I didn’t lie, truly I didn’t, Alaynia,” Jeannie insisted. “But when I went back out after we ate to check on them, Tiny was all by himself over in the corner of the pen. He’s the littlest one—the runt—and it’s too hard for him to fight through the others to eat. I’ll take him back outside just as soon as he gets a little bigger.”

  “Tiny, huh?” Alaynia reached out and stroked a finger across the piglet’s bristly head. “He’ll grow fast with you personally taking care of him. I’ve heard that pigs make awfully good pets, Jeannie. You can even train them to use a litter box.”

  “A little box for what?” Jeannie asked.

  “Not little—litter,” Alaynia corrected with a chuckle. “For when he has to use the bathroom.”

  Jeannie continued to stare at her with a mystified expression until Alaynia realized the young girl had probably never heard of a bathroom. “Like when you use the outhouse,” she explained with a grimace of distaste a
t the thought of the little building between Chenaie’s kitchen and barn. “Or the chamber pot.”

  Jeannie blushed prettily and ducked her head. “Shain says ladies never discuss things like that. But ...” She slipped Alaynia a conspiratorial look. “After all, it is something everyone has to do. I’ve already had to clean up after Tiny twice. Do people really keep pigs for pets where you live?”

  “Some of them,” Alaynia admitted with a laugh. “I’ve always been too busy to look after an animal.”

  “How do you make one of those litter boxes?”

  “It’s just a box with some sand in it. Put Tiny back in your room and shut the door so he can’t get out, and I’ll show you how to make one. I’ll bet we can find something out in the barn to use.”

  Alaynia waited at the stairwell while Jeannie carried Tiny back down the hallway and closed the door on him. When she returned, Jeannie said, “We better go down the back stairwell. Shain’s sure to see us if we go through the front of the house, and he’ll want to know where we’re going.” With a worried look on her face as they headed for the other stairwell, Jeannie continued, “It’s not that I’m trying to be sneaky, Alaynia. But Shain can be so bossy sometimes, and I’m perfectly capable of taking care of one little pig. I’m going to be fifteen in two more weeks, but he still thinks that I need to ask his permission every time I even want to go riding. Why, Betty already has her own carriage, and she goes to St. Francisville at least once a week.”

  Rolling her eyes, Alaynia followed the chattering girl down the stairwell. On the back veranda, Jeannie took a lantern from a hook and lit it with the matches conveniently left in the drawer of a small table. Jennie continued to enumerate the list of decisions she felt competent to make on her own in light of her advanced age as they walked toward the barn.

  She doesn’t know how lucky she is to have someone care what she does, Alaynia thought. At the orphanage, the rules were set in concrete—school during the day, homework in the evening, with maybe an hour allowed for an approved television program now and then. The sisters hadn’t even permitted a television in the house until Alaynia was ten, when one of the wealthy patrons donated a set to them. And the nuns were far too busy caring for the physical and educational needs of their charges to spend much time befriending them. Still, Alaynia had realized in later years that she’d probably been better off in the orphanage with the sisters than bouncing around a slew of foster homes. Recalling her own rebellion at Shain’s bossy attitude, she understood the caring interlaced with his commands—at least as far as Jeannie was concerned. She herself was perfectly capable of making her own decisions.

  Jeannie seemed to know her way around the barn, and quickly found a small wooden box in the feed trough of one of the empty stalls.

  “The groom puts grain in these for the horses,” she explained to Alaynia. “The sides are small enough for Tiny to crawl over. There’s probably a shovel in the tack room, and I think there’s a pile of sand out by the old kiln, where they used to make bricks.”

  A moment later, Alaynia followed Jeannie around the side of the barn to a domed kiln, overgrown now with weeds. Jeannie handed her the lantern and set the wooden box down by a pile of sand. Taking the shovel from Alaynia, she dug into the sand and half-filled the box.

  “That should do it.” She stuck the shovel upright in the sand and reached down for the box. “I’ll take the shovel back in the morning.”

  Alaynia sniffed the air, then laid her free hand on Jeannie’s shoulder when the young girl started to walk away. “Wait a minute, Jeannie. Do you smell smoke?”

  The lantern light outlined Jeannie’s face as she lifted her head and smelled the air. She frowned, then nodded. “The groom was shoeing some horses today over at the blacksmith shop,” she said, “but he’s supposed to put the fire out at night.”

  Alaynia set the lantern down and peered through the darkness. Her eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, and a stronger whiff of smoke reached her. She turned her head into the odor, toward the area of the plantation where Shain had told her earlier in the day that the gazebo and chapel were built.

  “Jeannie, look. The moon’s over there, but there’s a light in the trees back that way. Jeannie, I think something’s on fire.”

  “We have to get Shain!”

  Jeannie dropped the box and ran. Alaynia grabbed the lantern and took off after her. They raced toward the manor house, with Alaynia cursing her long skirts and finally managing to gather them up in one hand and free her legs. As they passed the kitchen house, Jeannie pointed at a huge bell on the porch. “Ring it, Alaynia!” she shouted. “I’ll get Shain!”

  Alaynia veered toward the bell and set the lantern on the ground. She seized the rope hanging from the bell and pulled it frantically, over and over again. The loud clangs reverberated across the night and, almost at once, someone lit a lantern inside the kitchen house. An instant later, she saw Shain running across the back veranda of the manor house, closely followed by Cole Dubose.

  Alaynia released the bell pull, and Shain paused for only a second beside her as Cole sped on to the barn. “The workers will be coming,” Shain informed her. “Send them out to the fire, and tell them to bring anything they can find to carry water in.”

  Alaynia nodded, but he was already gone. By then, men were streaming into the yard and Alaynia shouted at them, pointing in the direction Shain had taken. The kitchen house door opened and the cook ran out, her arms full of cooking pots and kettles. She ran out into the yard, where she started handing out the containers to the arriving men.

  Jeannie skidded to a stop by Alaynia, a grim look on her young face and holding four of the chamber pots from the upstairs bedrooms by their handles. She thrust two of them at Alaynia, and started after the men. Alaynia barely managed to snatch Jeannie’s arm before she got out of reach. “Jeannie, I don’t think Shain would want you out there! It’s going to be dangerous!”

  “They’ll have to form a bucket brigade from the pond,” Jeannie insisted. “They’re going to need every person they can get, because the chapel’s farther away from the pond.”

  “The chapel?”

  “Shain said he thought that’s what it was when he saw the fire from the back veranda. But it can spread, Alaynia. Come on.” Jerking her arm free, Jeannie tore off across the yard.

  “Miz Jeannie be right.” Alaynia turned to see the cook standing beside her. “The women, they be coming soon’s they get the children took care of,” the cook continued. “Keep a couple here to help fix some coffee and food, I will, and send the rest out to the pond.”

  Lifting her skirts again, Alaynia ran after Jeannie. By now, flames lit up the night sky and she could easily follow the path everyone else had taken. At the pond, she saw a wooden bridge built over the narrow end, with the gazebo on the other side. A hundred yards or so from the gazebo, flames engulfed a smaller structure.

  Alaynia raced across the bridge and down the other shore, to where the men had already formed the bucket brigade. She tossed her chamber pots at the man at the head of the brigade and took a place in the line beside Jeannie. Particles of flying ash filled the air, and she choked and coughed as she tried to breathe. But she had little time to worry about how her lungs would be affected, as bucket after pail after kettle of water passed down the line.

  Sweat poured down her body from both exertion and heat from the burning chapel. At one point, when a bucket was slow in coming, she glanced down the line and saw it stretching out for at least three dozen more people, some of them now women, as the cook had promised. She had no idea how the people nearer the burning structure could stand the heat. And the water didn’t seem to be impacting the leaping flames one bit.

  Shain’s voice shouted above the noise of the burning chapel. Fear gripped her when she realized how close he was to the fire. He waved his arms, and the men and women in the brigade began falling back toward the pond. Suddenly the chapel collapsed with a loud whoosh, and sparks and pieces of burning timber sh
ot upwards.

  “Let it go!” Shain shouted. “Concentrate on keeping the fire from spreading! We’ll need shovels and some feed sacks!”

  Several of the men raced toward the bridge to return to the barn, and Alaynia started toward Shain. But all at once Jeannie screamed, and Alaynia swiftly turned. A flame flickered up Jeannie’s long skirt, and Jeannie beat at it hysterically.

  Alaynia launched herself at Jeannie and tumbled them both to the ground. She gripped the screaming girl tightly and rolled toward the pond a few feet away. As soon as they landed in the shallow water, Alaynia sat up and pulled the shuddering girl against her. “Jeannie, it’s all right. The fire on your dress is out. Please, calm down now, so we can see if your legs are burned.”

  Jeannie buried her face on Alaynia’s neck, then drew in a quavering breath. Shain splashed into the water beside them, and he immediately knelt to reach for Jeannie. “Jeannie! Good God, Jeannie, what are you doing out here?” he asked in a ravaged voice. “Let’s get you back to the house.”

  Jeannie pulled away from Alaynia and flung herself against Shain’s chest. He stood with her in his arms, gazing down at Alaynia. “Are you all right? Can you get up?”

  “I’m fine.” To prove her point, Alaynia rose beside him and stepped onto the shore. When Shain joined her, she examined Jeannie’s legs, pulling away the burned skirt material and looking for any signs of blistering. She found one small red spot, but no sign of any other burns.

  “Thank God you knew what to do,” Shain murmured. “She could have died—or been scarred for life.”

  “I’m all right now,” Jennie insisted. “You need to help with the fire.”

  Shain reluctantly placed her back on her feet, but held onto her arms. “I want you to go back to the house, Jeannie. Alaynia will take you. I can’t be worried about you two and still do what’s needed here.”

  “I will,” Jeannie agreed.

  “And put something on that burn on your leg. And rest.”