Tidewater Bride

by Laura Frantz

  What else was McCaskey confessing?

  At last the kitchen was redolent of the sugary-spicy drink ready to ferment. Or so she hoped, as she felt so addled concocting it.

  “Selah.” At her name so tenderly spoken, she swung round, nearly singeing the hem of her skirts.

  Lost in thought, she hadn’t heard Xander enter the kitchen. She’d simply stood stirring the concoction in the kettle, her back to him. Now, facing him, she braced for ill news, his expression unreadable.

  “The last time McCaskey saw Watseka, she was alive.”

  Alive? Overcome with relief, she closed her eyes, a dozen more questions dancing on her tongue.

  “If McCaskey is to be believed, there’s still hope, though his conduct is inexcusable. He and the nurse caged her and placed her at the farthest reaches of Laurent land.”

  “Caged?” Her heart was so heavy she wasn’t sure she could bear it. “Like an animal?”

  “They fed her occasional scraps till the day she disappeared. They couldn’t decide what to do with her once they’d caged her. They debated whether or not to kill her.”

  She shuddered, such depravity flipping her stomach. “They don’t know where she is?”

  “He claims she was moved. By whom he doesn’t ken. A sennight ago, I came upon the spot at the far west corner of Laurent’s land where she was being held, which may confirm his story.”

  “But what of all the rest? The fire and Nurse Lineboro’s liaison with Helion Laurent?”

  “She told McCaskey ’twas Laurent who started the fire. When she learned what he’d done, and the dire ramifications under Virginia law, she decided McCaskey was her choice. Their intent was to implicate Laurent for both the fire and Watseka.”

  Selah stared at him, grappling with all the facts and implications. ’Twas a love triangle gone dangerously awry as both men sought the favor of one woman.

  “The nurse may have returned to Laurent after all.” Xander’s ire was evident, his tone tight. “For now, we’ll renew our search for Watseka.”

  “Of course.” The bubbling kettle drew her notice, and he swung it off the fire to rest on the hearthstones for her. “What are you going to do with the factor?”

  “If Watseka isn’t found, I’ll turn him over to the Powhatans. I told him so after he confessed to Meihtawk as well. McCaskey has a great deal at stake.”

  “What if he runs too?”

  “Meihtawk will shadow him. For now, McCaskey will continue to search with us.”

  She leaned against the kitchen table and raised the edge of her apron to dry her damp eyes. “I fear for Watseka if she’s in Laurent’s hands. After his treatment of Mattachanna—”

  “Say no more, Selah.”

  Their eyes locked, the depths of their distress communicated in a single, wordless look. He didn’t want the past to impose upon the present, which was disturbing enough. This she understood, though she felt like wringing her hands.

  “I’ll continue to pray,” she told him.

  What more could she do?

  42

  Suppertime came, but no Xander.

  As her mother, Shay, and Widow Brodie ate, Selah pushed her food around her plate and listened hard to every sound outside. Table talk was nearly nonexistent, each of them silently entertaining their own questions and concerns. The dwindling day brought a soft rain, muting the hoofbeats she longed to hear. Search parties usually ended by late afternoon. What could be keeping them?

  Tomorrow was the Sabbath. A blessed reprieve from work if not worry. Dwell on the good, Father would say. And so she would. Thankfully, Cook had seemed better once Candace gave her a medicinal posset. Shay lent a hand wherever he could and had found a great many nails to be reused in the rebuilding. The maids cleaned the main house from top to bottom, not only the empty garret.

  But no hoofbeats. No husband.

  Her imagination made fearsome leaps. Had they had another confrontation with Laurent or found Nurse Lineboro with him? What if McCaskey had run after all? What if all three of them turned on Xander?

  She ate a bite of fish without tasting it. Poked at a potato. Declined dessert. In the distance she finally heard what her heart craved.

  Candace looked to the windows. “God be praised, if ’tis them.”

  Abandoning the table, Selah went into the hall to the riverfront door. Lord, please . . . let it be good news.

  But no sign of Watseka did she see. Only harried, weary men damp with rain and in need of supper, scattering in different directions. Xander came through the door with a simple shake of his sodden head. She swallowed her questions as he shrugged off his coat and crossed into their new rooms.

  “Have a supper tray brought, aye?”

  “I’ll ready it myself,” she answered.

  Returning to the dining room, she met three pairs of inquiring eyes. “He’s said little yet, but there appears to be nothing new. He’ll take supper in private.”

  They nodded in understanding, their relief at his return as palpable as their dismay at his coming home empty-handed. Selah filled a plate with the foods he usually enjoyed but doubted he had any appetite for them. At least he was home. Safe and sound.

  While he ate if for no other reason than to have strength for the days ahead, she took up a book and tried to read, but the words on the page escaped her.

  At last he put down his fork. “There’s to be no more searching.”

  Her heart seemed to stop. “Is Watseka—” She could not say the hated word. Everything in her rebelled.

  His voice was quiet and measured. “If I’d heeded the Scripture of this morn during our devotions, I’d have saved us another futile afternoon.”

  Her thoughts reached back to the early dawn hour that had marked their Bible reading.

  “You ken how timely Psalms is. How it oft speaks to our circumstances.”

  She sighed, her mind still muddled. “I was but half awake, having passed a near sleepless night. I recall it not.”

  Pushing his half-finished supper aside, he reached for his Bible, which lay open to this morning’s reading. “‘Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.’”

  She took in the words, trying to reconcile them with their predicament. Rest. Wait patiently. Fret not. She was failing at all.

  His shadow-rimmed eyes bore a hole into her. “You ken we are to do no more.”

  “Nothing?”

  His gaze returned to the Psalms. He seemed strangely at peace. “We simply wait. Pray.”

  “But . . .” The whispered protest died on her lips.

  “The outcome of all that concerns us is more to be trusted in His hands than ours.”

  This she couldn’t deny. But to simply do . . . nothing? While Watseka was suffering?

  Could she trust God in this?

  Could she trust her husband?

  The Sabbath broke golden and cool, the walk to church pleasant. Still, Selah could not grasp Xander’s sudden peace about matters. Rather than settle her, it chafed. Fatigue turned her testy. She felt as nettled as in days of old when she’d been caught in the cobwebs of misunderstanding him. Of misjudging him.

  Walking alongside her, Candace regarded her anxiously as if sensing her internal struggle. They made a subdued party as they passed through the open doors of the chapel.

  This morn, all eyes seemed to be on them as a couple. News of their marrying was spreading slowly over the Tidewater. Xander reached for her gloved hand, his comforting touch somehow intensifying her misery. Memories of Father and the last Sabbaths they’d spent with him inside these walls only lent to her sagging spirits. Not even Shay with his steady if concerned smile made a dent in her melancholy.

  Where was her faith? Her trust? Such seemed crowded out by confusion and hurt.

  A hush descended. The order of service began with the Psalm reading. She nearly missed the itinerant pastor’s sonorous words
with her ruminating, and then the faintest glimmer of light illuminated her clouded mind.

  “‘Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass . . .’”

  He read on, but the next words were lost to her. Were he and Xander in league? Nay, her husband looked as surprised as she at the choice of Scripture. Was this not blessed confirmation that they were indeed to do nothing? Releasing a deep, steadying breath, she let go of her tight tangle of worries to the only One who could help unravel them.

  Early the next morn Xander left for James Towne by shallop. What business betook him there he did not say, nor did she ask. She was practicing rest and patient waiting. Her morning was spent in the orchard with her brother, picking endless wheelbarrow loads of apples, which Shay rolled back and forth for cider making. Xander had told him to keep near the house in his absence while McCaskey and the ever-present Meihtawk took to the fields.

  Midday she joined her mother and Xander’s aunt on the portico as they were wont to do, sharing details of their days. Newly made garments for the indentures—brown linen shirts and breeches—overflowed a large basket. Though gout had slowed the older woman’s fingers, her efforts were unflagging.

  Selah sat on the steps and arranged in various vases the flowers she’d picked, her eyes on the river, which was growing more restive. She smelled a heaviness in the air, the bite of the coming autumn.

  “I fear we are in for unwelcome weather.” Widow Brodie scanned the darkening skies. “Cook predicts a northeaster by nightfall. Though I can abide a bit of wind, ’tis lightning that frightens me.”

  “Will the shallop hazard such?” Candace asked the question Selah didn’t.

  “Alexander is an able sailor but won’t take risks. He’s not forgotten the hundred-year storm all Virginia lived through years ago.” She returned to her sewing. “He may wait in James Towne till the morrow if the wind worsens, though he won’t like the delay.”

  Nor would Selah.

  Where would Watseka spend the storm?

  Lord, yet another petition to bring before Thee. Of late I fear I’m in danger of storming heaven’s very gates.

  She stood to search for the maids, leaving her flowers. “Best batten things down.”

  By three o’clock, lightning had licked the horizon and the indentures were pulled from the fields. Selah could see them hurrying toward their rebuilt quarters from her perch in the garret beside Shay. Though Nurse Lineboro had gone, her heavily perfumed scent remained. Selah waved a fan to banish it, the heat of the garret unrelieved by the closed windows. Before her watchful gaze the storm played out like theater. Wind wailed about the rafters. Rose petals scattered and fences bent from the storm’s force. Yet no rain slashed the glass.

  “I spy our resident wrongdoer,” Shay remarked with no mirth. “Better here than gaol, I suppose.”

  True enough, McCaskey disappeared into his quarters, only to be locked inside. Meihtawk remained outside, prowling about the main house and dependencies, occasionally disappearing into the summer kitchen, where he passed time with Cook.

  Come twilight, no shallop moored in the wave-tossed water off Rose-n-Vale’s wharf. The wind strengthened, blowing with such force it flung sand against the windowpanes.

  All retired but Shay, who lingered in the hall with the dogs. Glad for his nearness, Selah kept watch in her bedchamber, alone with a flickering taper and her thoughts. Sleep held no escape lest she have bad dreams. Of lostness and Watseka and Father. Of that terrible morn when their world turned upside down.

  Xander, my beloved, stay on in James Towne lest you put yourself in danger. I am not good at waiting, but we shall make out all right tonight. Though I feel great anxiety for Watseka, that particular Scripture oft returns to me and keeps me from falling to pieces.

  She nodded off in the uncomfortable chair. Only when Shay shook her awake did she rouse. He held a candle, the flame adance in a draft. His face was drawn, his eyes too huge in his tanned face.

  “Sister, we are in grave straits.”

  She started from her chair. “What means you?”

  “An African has come to us in this storm, only we can’t understand a word he says.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Meihtawk is with him in the hall.”

  Shaking off sleep, she followed him through the midnight-black parlor, their candle snuffed in a draft. They kept on, hand in hand, till they reached the lantern-lit hall. There stood a tall man, little more than bones. Meihtawk stood regarding him as though he were a ghost, his musket dangling from one sinewy hand. But nary a growl from the dogs as they sniffed and circled the man. Surely this was a favorable sign?

  He was one of the enslaved, but she did not know whose. Tenderness smote her at his terrible scars, upraised and scarlet even in the dim light. She’d not seen him before, to her recollection, except perhaps at a distance in the fields. His sunken eyes fastened on her, and he waved his arm rapidly, ever agitated, as if asking them to come.

  “He puts himself at great risk being here.” Shay’s face showed a rare perplexity. “Though in such a storm this may be the only time he can come in secret.”

  “Lord help him if he’s branded a runaway, if his master knows he’s missing.” Reaching out, Selah clasped the man’s trembling hand, if only to quiet it. She squeezed the bony fingers in some sort of wordless affirmation. He still beckoned with the other, gaze pleading.

  Thunder resounded like cannon fire. Even now branches and untethered things clattered across the house’s exterior. How could they follow him, if that was indeed his intent? But how could they not?

  What would Xander do?

  She let go of him. “My husband—he is not here. But we will help you if we can.”

  Her speech came to naught. No kindling lit his restless eyes. No sign that he understood the slightest word. A chill passed through her that had naught to do with the wind’s battering. Was this Laurent’s slave? Had Laurent made those heinous scars? Was he even now searching for his property?

  Time was against them. She sensed it to her marrow. The four of them hovered in agonizing suspension, precious seconds ticking by. When the hall clock struck ten, Selah seized a fire bucket full of sand along one wall and dumped it onto the floor. Her brother and the African gaped.

  Selah looked at Shay. “Fetch me an iron poker from the hearth.”

  At her summons he moved quickly. Praying for clarity, Selah took the poker and drew a dog in the sand with the tip. Her poor attempt gave her pause, but immediately the man’s face cleared. As he gestured to Ruby and Jett, Selah nearly wilted with relief. A blessed start. She held out the poker to him. He took it without hesitation.

  Shay raised the lantern higher as the man began drawing in the sand. Lines emerged. An outline. Bars? A rude drawing of a . . . cage. Xander seemed to whisper in her ear. “He and the nurse caged her . . .”

  She startled as both dogs set up a tremendous barking and charged past them, their nails clicking on the hall floor.

  “Someone comes.” Shay looked toward the locked front door, which was seldom used.

  Xander? Selah’s fleeting hope faded. Ruby and Jett never barked at their master.

  Shay’s eyes narrowed. “I fear ’tis Laurent.”

  “Stay here and hold your ground, then. Say nothing of what has happened tonight.” Selah looked to Meihtawk and the African. “Jett shall go with us three.”

  Resistance replaced Meihtawk’s usual mask. “You stay,” he told Selah, no doubt thinking of Xander.

  “Nay, I cannot in good conscience,” she told him, then followed him and the African to the riverfront door.

  43

  Something ominous settled in Xander’s spirit at the onset of the storm that had nothing to do with the weather. Although all of James Towne and the coastline had gone tapsalteerie, he’d seen worse. As Rose-n-Vale’s shallop tugged at its moorings, confirming his re
turn upriver was futile, he sought a different route.

  His business with the tobacco inspector done, he sought refuge at Swan’s to sit out the tumult. The ordinary’s four rooms were mostly empty, a few lone travelers happening by.

  A serving of oysters and two pints of ale later, Xander stared out the window as barrels careened down streets and brush and leaves whipped past along with a hat or two.

  “You look on tenterhooks, Renick.” The proprietor stood at table’s end as a serving girl cleared away his empty dishes. “Shall I ready a room?”

  “Rather a bold horse.”

  Swan scratched his head. “You’ve never been one for flinching at shadows, but falling trees are another matter. Gaining Rose-n-Vale without injury to you or your mount is chancy.”

  “At least there’s no rain,” Xander told him. “And the dark is a way off yet.”

  With a nod, Swan turned aside. “I’ll send word to the stables, then.”

  Xander paid his bill and stood at the back door to wait for a mount, the wind tugging at his hat and yanking at his coattails with fierce talons. Northeasters wreaked special havoc on the coast, as ships and piers were oft dashed to pieces. Inland would be less fractious, or so he hoped. Selah was in good company, thus he had no fear on that score.

  As he swung himself into the saddle, a Scripture leapt to mind, chilling in its force if comforting in its promise.

  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

  Meihtawk could lead blindfolded, even in the dark. Never had Selah seen so capable a woodsman. Wisely he kept to open ground, well away from the trees shuddering and cracking at the forest’s fringes. In the dark their reverberating upon the ground sent a tremor through her. She’d tied her neckerchief about her bent head as sand and twigs stung her exposed skin. Betimes she clutched a fence to stay upright, the raw wood driving splinters into her ungloved hands. All the while she clung to one verse like a rope, an anchor.