The Bracelet (10 page)

6

C
ELIA RETRIEVED HER WRITING BOX FROM HER ROOM AND
settled into the library to wait. She rested her feet on a small footstool and began a letter, but her thoughts wouldn’t settle. For weeks she had looked forward to Sutton’s homecoming, but everything had gone wrong.

First, there was Leo Channing and his nonsense. Was Channing the reason Sutton had changed his mind? The Mackays were one of the best families in Savannah. Perhaps Sutton wouldn’t want a wife whose family was mired in a salacious story even if the events that had precipitated it lay years in the past. Then there was the Mackays’ missing ship and Papa’s worrisome obligation for it.

She closed her eyes and replayed yesterday’s brief conversation with Sutton, recalling the childhood escapade that had brought them together but nearly ended in tragedy. It had happened on All Hallows’ Eve thirteen years ago. Sutton had just turned fourteen and Celia was barely twelve.

All of Savannah, eager for diversion after a summer marked by fears of yellow fever, had turned out in costume to promenade through the squares. Celia was with a group of girls from her school, laughing and teasing one another as they ran along Bull Street. It was dark as pitch, save for the flickering torches people
had placed at the street corners. Firecrackers popped, scattering a group of smaller children playing in the park.

A small boy tossed a ball into the air, and it lodged in the tree branches. He began to wail, and nothing would distract him. Setting her basket of goodies on the ground, Celia hiked her skirts and shinnied up the tree to rescue the ball. When she dropped to the ground, a very attractive young boy stood there, grinning down at her. “Bravo.”

“Brava.” She tossed the ball to its grateful owner as the revelers headed toward the river to watch a fireworks display.

“Come again?” He braced himself against the tree, one arm outstretched.

“Bravo is masculine. Brava is feminine. I’m a girl.”

He laughed. “You don’t say? You sound just like my teacher.”

“Goodness, I hope I’m not as stuffy as all that. But it’s important to get things right, don’t you think?”

“I do.” He handed her the basket of chocolates and oranges she’d been carrying. “Going to the fireworks?”

“Of course.”

“Want me to walk with you? Keep the haints away?”

“No such thing.”

“’Course there is. They’re everywhere.” He fell into step beside her. “The worst of ’em isn’t here in town though. The worst one lives in the woods out by Screven’s Landing. They say she knows how to mix a poison that will turn you into stone if you so much as get it on your skin. And if she catches you messing around her special tree, she ties you up and makes you drink the poison so you can never leave and tell anyone where she lives.”

A delicious trickle of fear skittered along her spine. “That’s the silliest thing I ever heard.” Celia looked up at him as they passed beneath a flickering torch, the grass brittle beneath their feet. “What’s your name anyway?”

“Sutton Mackay. I know you. You’re Mr. Browning’s daughter.”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I saw you coming out of church with him on Sunday. And with your sister, I guess.

“My cousin Ivy. She lives with us because she has no parents anymore.”

They cut across Reynolds Square and headed for the river, where the crowd had gathered for the fireworks.

Celia shifted her basket to her other arm. “I should know you, too, but I don’t.”

“Our fathers know each other from Commerce Row. I’ve been away at school every year since I was seven, and my family spends most summers in Europe. I like traveling around and seeing new places, but my mother complains that we are hardly ever at home in Savannah.”

They stood together on the crowded wharf as the first fireworks exploded above the dark waters of the river and the onlookers broke into applause.

“I can prove it, you know,” he said.

“Prove what?” She glanced up at the gray-eyed, curly-haired boy who stood a head taller than she.

“That the Screven’s Landing haint is real.”

“Sutton Mackay, are you trying to scare me? Because it won’t work.”

“Good. If you aren’t afraid, then you won’t mind coming with me.”

She sucked in a breath. “You’re going over there now? In the dark?”

“Of course. That’s when the haints come out.” He stepped back and grinned down at her. “Come on. I’ll row us over.”

“I can’t. My father will expect me home soon.”

“We can get there and back in an hour.”

Celia hesitated for only a moment. Something about this boy spoke to her girlish heart. He was courteous. Smart too. And he would be an extraordinarily handsome man one day, if his muscles ever filled out his skinny frame. Her father knew his, so it wasn’t as if she were heading off with a total stranger. And for some reason she found it important to impress him. “All right. But we can’t stay long.”

“Come on.” The boy grabbed her hand, and they wove through the crowd to a short wooden pier near the offices on Commerce Row. Instinctively Celia glanced up at the darkened windows of her father’s office overlooking the Port of Savannah. From time to time he allowed her to visit to watch the activity on the wharves, where the noise of men loading cotton and timber onto snows and schooners and the screech of railway cars mingled with the piercing whistles of steamships coming up the river from Boston, New York, and New Orleans.

“Here we are,” Sutton said above the pop-pop-pop of fireworks still raining red and green sparkles into the water. He jumped into a small skiff tethered to a wooden piling and helped her into the boat. He cast off and began to row toward the landing on the South Carolina side of the river. An autumn breeze ruffled the surface of the water awash in moonlight.

“You ever been to the landing before?” he asked.

“Once or twice with my father.” She remembered the narrow corduroy road that led through the swampy Carolina lowlands, the slaves working in vast rice fields separated by a network of dikes and ditches. The smell of pluff mud in the tidal creek. The unrelenting sun.

“But not at night, I bet.”

“No.” Now that they were in the middle of the river in the dead of night, she was frightened, sorry she had agreed to such a silly adventure. To quell her nerves she took a chocolate bonbon from her basket and popped it into her mouth.

Sutton pulled smoothly on the oars. “You got any more chocolate?”

She proffered the basket and he chose a piece. “Thanks.”

Celia looked up as a muted roar rose from the wharf. The last of the fireworks shot into the darkness. Now the crowd would disperse. Her friends would wonder what had happened to her. Papa and Mrs. Maguire would expect her home. “Sutton, we have to go back.”

“Why? Getting scared?”

“No. It was wrong of me to go running off without getting Papa’s permission. He will be worried if I’m not home on time.”

“We’re almost there. We’ll wait five minutes, and if we don’t see the haint, we’ll start straight home.”

Moments later she felt the boat bumping the landing. Sutton tied off the skiff and helped her onto the bank. Moonlight illuminated the deserted road. Insects trilled in the marsh grasses. The air smelled of sulfur and salt.

“See that tree over there?” Sutton pointed to a spot just off the road where the dark shape of an ancient oak tree loomed, its mossy beard moving in the slight breeze coming off the sea. “That’s where the Screven’s haint lives.”

“She lives in a tree?”

“No. She lives in back of it, farther in the woods. But that tree is her special one. It’s the one she’ll kill to protect. We have to get closer to it to coax her out of her hiding place.”

“I’ve seen enough.”

“We haven’t seen anything yet. Come on.” He took her hand, and they approached the tree. Celia shivered.

“Listen,” he whispered. “Someone’s coming.”

Celia strained her ears. “I don’t hear anything.”

They waited for what seemed to Celia like hours. She imagined the worried faces of her father and Mrs. Maguire. Papa might punish her, or he might be so happy to find her alive that he would let
her off with a stern reprimand. Right now either was more appealing than standing here waiting for something that did not even exist outside this boy’s wild imagination.

“I know how to make her come out.” Sutton took a penknife from his pocket.

“What are you doing?”

“Carving our initials into her special tree.”

“No! She might—”

“Oh, so you do admit she’s real.” He began carving a small
S
into the tree.

“No. Yes. I don’t know.” She stamped her foot. “Sutton Mackay, I demand that you take me home this instant.”

He finished the
S
and began a
C
.

She stood by, tapping her foot and swatting at insects that darted through the chilly night air.

“There.” He gave a quick nod of satisfaction and put his knife away. “Now spit on your hand.”

“What?”

“Spit on your hand.”

“I will not. That’s disgusting.”

He laughed. “Come on. Just one dainty little spit bubble?”

She spat into her palm. “There. Satisfied?”

He followed suit, then pressed his palm against hers. “Yep. Now we’re friends for life.”

“Fine. May we please go home now? I—”

She was interrupted by a low growl and the sound of rushing feet. Weak light from a small torch glimmered through the trees. She screamed.

“Run!” Sutton shoved her onto the path in front of him.

A dark figure emerged from the undergrowth. Sutton stuck out his booted foot, and the haint went down with such force that Celia heard a bone snap.

An animal-like howl filled the air. Then the plaintive cry of a human voice. “Help me!”

Sutton was shaking, breathing so hard Celia could hear every intake of air.

“This isn’t a haint,” she said.

“No.” He retrieved the torch and knelt. “It’s a live person. And she’s hurt.”

Celia knelt on the other side of a thin, elderly woman. “Are you all right?”

“My arm. It’s broke, I think.” The old woman tried to move but then winced and lay still.

“If you can make it to the skiff, we’ll take you to the doctor,” Sutton said. “My father is Burke Mackay. He will take care of—”

“Just leave me alone.” The old woman sat up and cradled her injured arm. “Just git on outta here. I don’t need you. I got my own remedies.”

“We’re sorry,” Sutton said. “You scared us, coming out of the dark like that.”

“Wasn’t that what you wanted? To be scared witless on All Hallows’ Eve so’s you could go back and boast to your friends how you saw the Screven’s haint?”

“It was only a silly dare,” Celia said. “I’m sorry I took it. And I’m sorry you got hurt.”

“Sorry won’t fix nothin’ now, will it? Help me up.”

Sutton complied. “At least let us help you get home.”

“So’s you can tell all them other ruffians where I live? I’d never hear the end of it then, would I?”

Sutton handed her the sputtering torch, and she disappeared into the trees.

“Let’s go.” Shame laced Sutton’s voice.

Celia felt let down too. What had begun as a lark had ended in regret. Wordlessly they entered the boat and started back across
the river. When they landed at the dock on East Broad Street, the streets were nearly empty.

“Are you going to tell anyone what happened?” Sutton asked as they hurried through the velvety darkness toward Madison Square.

“If Papa asks where I’ve been, I won’t lie.”

“That’s what I thought.” They reached Bull Street. Sutton paused.

“What?”

“I have to take her some money or some food or something. To make up for what I did.”

When they reached her gate, he handed her the basket. “I’m sorry, Celia. I never should have taken you over there.” He shrugged. “I guess I wanted you to like me.”

“And you thought the best way to accomplish that was to scare me half to—”

“Miss Celia?” Mrs. Maguire was standing above her, shaking her shoulder. “Miss Celia, wake up. Mr. Mackay is here.”

Celia jerked awake. Cups rattled in their saucers as Mrs. Maguire set a tea tray onto the table beside her chair. Sutton stood in the doorway, half hidden behind an enormous bouquet of lateseason roses. He crossed the room, handed her the roses, and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Did we wake you?”

“I didn’t sleep much last night.” Celia inhaled the faint, sweet scent of the copper-colored roses. “These are beautiful. Thank you.” She caught the housekeeper’s eye. “Mrs. Maguire, could you find a vase for these?”

“I’ll put them on the table in your room.” The housekeeper swept one hand toward the tea tray. “I brought the cookies and extra milk for the tea.”

She took the roses and pulled the door closed behind her.

Celia motioned Sutton to the chair beside hers and picked up the teapot to pour.

“I’m sorry if our conversation yesterday was the cause of your restless night.” Sutton reached out to take the cup she offered him. “I shouldn’t have brought it up then, but it has been weighing on me ever since I got back, and it came out before I meant it to.”