Riverrun (40 page)

Cass shook her head slowly, pushed away from the wall, and walked slowly toward the stairs. Garner followed a few paces behind, saying nothing until they were at the front door.

“Mrs. Roe, there’s not much more I can do, and I’m truly sorry. I’ll be out every day to take a look, but the best you can do now is keep him comfortable and watch that leg. Drain it when the swellin’ goes up some, wash it down four, five times a day. Keep those wrappin’s clean and—” He sniffed, wiped a sleeve under his bulbous nose and scratched at his head again. “And give him whatever he wants to drink. If nothin’ else, it’ll keep his mind off the pain. He can’t get up, Mrs. Roe. He tears those muscles any more than he already has and he’ll for damn sure be wearin’ one of Proctor Johnson’s spare pegs. Good day, Mrs. Roe. I’ll be out again ’round noon.”

Cass kept her hand on the knob when the door closed, absorbing all that he’d told her until she heard the creak of his carriage fade away from the house. Then she turned, slowly, and saw Rachel and the others waiting in the corridor. Quickly, almost snapping at them, she explained David’s situation and all that had to be done to insure his recovery. She ordered the two girls back into the kitchen to prepare the medical needs; Amos she sent outside to round up those men not looking for Alice and Melissa. He was, she told him, to give them all lanterns and torches, and none were to come back until they had found something to tell her, not before, even if it took them the entire night.

“And when that’s done, Amos, please come into the library. I have something for you to do, alone.”

Ten minutes later she was in the library, a small room on the second floor, in front, that she had had prepared for the books she would bring to Riverrun. But the shelves were bare, the armchair unused, the desk gathering a film of dust across its small, smoothed top. There had been no money to fill the bookcases with other people’s dreams and ideas, and there had been no time for her to come in and sit, to read, to think, to hide when the world grew much too close to her. David had thought the whole idea a waste of valuable lumber, Melissa had only giggled and told her she was crazy. Perhaps she was, she thought as she sat behind the desk and pulled a sheet of paper toward her, an ink well, and a quill. Perhaps she had lost a part of her mind in a life that seemed to be made up of so much flight. Yet, if she was crazy, if she had lost portions of her reason—she grinned and shrugged, leaving the thought unfinished, blessing, instead, Rachel’s chance remark that had given her the best idea she had had in months.

And by the time Amos returned to her, having deployed all the men for the search, the letter she had written was done, sealed, and had been placed in a small leather pouch she tied securely with a thin iron chain like a necklace dipped in soot.

Rich; once, that had been her state and her blessing, until Kevin, and Hawkins, and the eternally damned Forrester. But when she had fled Philadelphia and David had managed to rescue a great deal of her gold from her local account, there had still been a fair amount left—not much, not wealth—and there were still those investments Cavendish had promised to recoup … more conservative, and more secure. That she had not thought of it sooner was, she decided, either monumental stupidity or a monument to the devotion she had poured into her holdings in Virginia. In fact, she seldom thought about the North anymore, seldom dreamed of the cobblestones and wharves, the carriages and balls, Independence Hall and the gardens around it. There had been more important things to bother her, more vital matters to attend to than memories of a time and a place she could not recover. But now it was August, and it was two years since the War had ended, since Lincoln was murdered. There had to be some money. Cavendish would not liquidate anything unless he had good and final reason to believe she was dead. Again, unless Geoffrey Hawkins had had the uncanny foresight to keep abreast of her absent affairs, and had somehow maneuvered an illegal seizure— She grinned and sat back and looked up at the old man.

“Amos,” she said gently, “I know you’re tired.”

Amos smiled slightly and shrugged; his weariness showed in the slant of his shoulders, the curve of his spine.

“Everything’s taken care of?”

He nodded. “Done what I could, Missus, done what I could.”

“Then I have to ask you one more thing, one more favor, and I don’t know if I dare. You’ve done so much already.”

Amos ducked his head as though he were embarrassed, pulled at the wattles trembling at his throat. “Didn’t do all that much, Missus. ’Sides, weren’t for you, the Lawd only knows what ditch I’d be diggin’ for a man what hates niggers. Can’t complain, Missus; ain’t gonna.”

Cass swallowed, and swept her gaze over the empty shelves lining the walls, empty of everything except a few volumes of Riverrun’s ledgers.

“Amos,”—she pushed the pouch to the edge of the desk—”I need this sent off immediately. I can’t wait until morning; it has to go now.” She lifted a hand, then, to still his coming comment. “And it can’t be from Meridine, either. I can’t say for sure, but I have a feeling that correspondence from this house doesn’t go unopened when we post it in town. I have no proof, but I can’t take the chance.”

“But Missus,” the old man said, “that means you have to go clear over to Burford. That’s … Lawd, Missus, that’s thirty miles!”

“If you leave right now, Amos, you can be back by nightfall tomorrow.”

“But Missus …”

She leaned forward anxiously. “Amos, I need the girls here to help me with Mr. Vessler. And you’re the only other one around here I can trust.” She poked at the sealed and bound letter. “This, if all goes well, Amos, is going to free us once and for all of everyone and everything that’s kept us from growing properly. And you must already know that we don’t have much time. You must do it, Amos. If not for me, then for the others. If I fail here, old friend, who knows what will happen.”

Amos shifted his weight from one foot to the other, eyeing the letter, his mistress, and the floor by his boots. Then, with a sigh that filled the room with shadows, he reached down and took it up, stuffing it snugly inside his shirt.

“I won’t do this for jes’ anyone, y’know, Missus.”

“I know that, Amos, and I’m grateful. I only wish I could show it more than I have.”

“Don’ matter, Missus. I knows what you sayin’. It be all right if I take the roan?”

“If she’s settled after the ride into town, yes. No carriage, though. It’ll attract too much attention.”

Amos grinned and pulled at the skin on the back of his hand. “Don’t worry ’bout me ’tracting ’tention,” he said. “Ain’t no moon tonight. Ain’t no one gonna see old Amos spooking by.”

Cass laughed, wanting to weep, took his hand in both of hers, and squeezed it tightly. When he had gone, she stared for nearly an hour at the single lamp’s light, wondering, hoping, wishing that she had second sight, the ability to see into the future so she could learn, now, what would happen to her life.

She rose and decided to look in on David. It would do her no good to go downstairs and await word from the searchers; she would only find her temper much shortened, her patience gone, and the result would be the upsetting of everyone else who waited with her.

But before she reached David’s door, she heard a faint muttering in the hall below. A low wail of grief. She would not move. She would let them come to her. She was tired of racing into the arms of calamity. Rachel found her a moment later. The girl was weeping.

“What?” Cass asked. “Come on, girl, tell me and get it over.”

“Mrs. Vessler,” the girl said, “they was … Simon and Abraham, they was down by the river and they found the horse. She … she lyin’ there, Mrs. Roe. Simon bringin’ her back now. She dead, Mrs. Roe. Oh Lawd help us, she dead!”

Chapter Twenty-Six

M
elody stood forlornly by the stove, watching a massive pot of boiling dark soup. It was fitting, somehow, she thought sadly. Ever since the night Simon had ridden into the backyard carrying Mrs. Vessler’s body, the whole place seemed be draped in unrelenting gloom. Mrs. Roe had not cried when they had buried her friend in the newly-made cemetery beyond the servants’ quarters, and she had not cried when it became clear Alice Jordan was not going to come back. Instead, she had become hard-eyed, stern-jawed, moving about the house and the fields with a determination that kept everyone out of her way. Rachel said she had lost her soul, but Melody wasn’t sure about that. There were still those beautiful flashes of kindness now and again that endeared the Missus to her, the touch on the shoulder, the muttered compliment on the work she was doing; nevertheless, there were no smiles. She was a soul, the girl thought, that was somehow trying to live without a heart.

She wiped a finger under her nose and made a desultory stir of the soup with a large wooden spoon.

If anyone didn’t have a soul, she had decided, it was poor Mrs. Vessler’s widower. She looked around quickly at the thought, a swift wash of guilt making her feel as though the walls and ceiling had suddenly sprung eyes. But it was true. Ever since Judah had ruined Mr. Vessler’s leg, ever since his wife had come home with her neck broken and smelling of sour wine, he had turned almost overnight into an old man. He stayed in his bed and demanded constant watching. He complained about the food that was brought up to him on a tray, he complained about the fresh bedding every morning and the change of clothes every other afternoon. Nothing suited him. Nothing pleased him, and the bellowing he did when his leg bothered him filled the house with a rage that made her cringe and search for a corner to hide in. Rachel said he was going to lose the leg, that every time she changed the bandages she could see the swelling spreading up toward his waist and down toward his feet. Bleeding him didn’t seem to do any good, nor did the incisions the doctor made that let out streams of yellowed pus.

Had she been as good a Christian as Amos exhorted her to be during Sunday dawn services, she probably would find some compassion for his pain. But obviously she wasn’t as faithful as she’d once believed, because all she could do some nights when he demanded attention, demanded relief, was wish that the leg was gone and done with, or that he himself was out of the house and away from the Missus.

Troubles, she thought sadly; this here house has got way more than its share.

Footsteps on the back stoop made her jump closer to the stove, lift the spoon and make an elaborate show of stirring as Rachel grunted in with two pails of water. She glared at the soup, at Melody, then carried the pails to the barrel by the dry sink and dumped them. She straightened, pressed her hands to her back, and groaned.

“I tell you, girl,” she said, “they ain’t gonna have to take this here place come next month. They ain’t gonna need all them fancy papers an’ things what the Missus talked about. We’s all gonna be dead by then, for sure. My Lawd, my back is killin’ me!”

Melody kept her silence, knowing that she dared not say a word when Rachel was complaining about her aches and pains. It was bad enough that all the men had to go armed into the fields now to keep the hill raiders from tearing up the tobacco; not one of them could be spared to help with the chores, so it was she and Rachel who fed the animals, cleaned the stables and the house, cooked the food, and looked after the Missus. They scarcely stopped moving from sunup to sunset, and even in her sleep Melody could not stop thinking about scrubbing and plucking and planting and dusting. It was driving her crazy. And Rachel didn’t need to hear it.

Suddenly Rachel cocked her head toward the corridor that led to the front, frowned, lifted a hand, and Melody tensed. “Someone comin’,” she said. “Mel, would you see to it this time? I don’ think I could move my shadow right now.”

Grateful to get out of the kitchen, Melody quickly wiped her hands on her apron and hurried down the hall and into the foyer. She waited then, impatiently, as she heard the sound of a large horse come to a halt in front of the porch, heard the saddle creaking as its rider dismounted.

A man, she thought when footsteps struck the wood. She wiped her hands down her front, straightened the scarf she had tied around her head, and opened the door immediately at the first knock.

“Sir?” she said, and stepped back with a start.

The man was tall, as tall as anyone she had ever seen except perhaps Judah. His hair was long and black, his face darkened by the sun and creased like beaten leather. His clothes, too, were black and tight-fitting, from the open-throated shirt to the trousers tucked into highly polished boots. His smile was friendly, but it only served to make more stark, more forbidding, the scar that ran in a jagged line from the corner of his right eye to the center of his right ear.

“Is your mistress at home, girl?” he said, a large-brimmed black hat held lightly in his hands.

Melody shook her head dumbly, her voice suddenly fled into a dry, rasping throat. Once the scar had registered, she’d noticed that his eyes were of a cold blue so pale they were almost colorless.

“When do you expect her, child?”

“She done … she be …” and she waved vaguely behind her.

The man nodded. “I see. She’s in the fields, is that what you’re trying to say, child?”

She nodded quickly.

“Well,” he said, and slowly fingered his chin. “Well.”

“You wants I should fetch her?” she said.

“No. No, that’s all right, child. But are you all right enough to give her a message for me?”‘

“What you mean, all right?” she answered, recovering. “I be fine. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with me, man.”

The man grinned and slipped his hat back onto his head. And with the movement, Melody saw what had been hidden before; around his waist was a wide, tooled gun belt, and in the twin holsters strapped to his thighs were bone-handled revolvers of a kind she had never seen.

“Are you listenin’ to me, child?”

“I listenin’,” she said sullenly, “but I ain’t no chile.”

“That may be,” he said good-naturedly. “That jus’ may be, little woman. But you listen good, you hear me? You get everything right and everything will be right for you.”