Wild Seed (18 page)

"What does that matter?"

"It does not matter. You are a man to whom it need not matter. I thought he could be a good husband. On the ship, I worried that I could not be the wife he needed. I wanted to please him. Now I can only think that he will never let me go."

"Never?" Isaac repeated with gentle irony. "That's a long time, even for you and him."

She turned away. Another time she might have been amused to hear Isaac counseling patience. He was not a patient young man. But now, for her sake, he was desperate.

"You'll get freedom, Anyanwu," he said, "but first you'll have to reach him. He's like a tortoise encased in a shell that gets thicker every year. It will take a long time for you to reach the man inside, but you have a long time, and there is a man inside who must be reached. He was born as we were. He's warped because he can't die, but he's still a man." Isaac paused for breath. "Take the time, Anyanwu. Break the shell; go in. He might turn out to be what you need, just as I think you're what he needs."

She shook her head. She knew now how the slaves had felt as they lay chained on the bench, the slaver's hot iron burning into their flesh. In her pride, she had denied that she was a slave. She could no longer deny it. Doro's mark had been on her from the day they met. She could break free of him only by dying and sacrificing her children and leaving him loose upon the world to become even more of an animal. So much of what Isaac said seemed to be right. Or was it her cowardice, her fear of Doro's terrible way of killing that made his words seem so reasonable? How could she know? Whatever she did would result in evil.

Isaac got up, came to her, took her hands, and drew her to her feet. "I don't know what kind of husband I could be to . . . to someone like you," he said. "But if wanting to please you counts for anything . . ."

Wearily, hopelessly, she allowed him to draw her closer. Had she been an ordinary woman, he would have crushed the breath from her. After a moment, she said, "If Doro had done this differently, Isaac, if he had told me when we met that he wanted a wife for his son and not for himself, I would not have shamed you by refusing you."

"I'm not ashamed," he whispered. "Just as long as you're not going to make him kill you . . ."

"If I had the courage of your mother, I would kill myself."

He stared at her in alarm.

"No, I will live," she said reassuringly. "I have not the courage to die. I had never thought before that I was a coward, but I am. Living has become too precious a habit."

"You're no more a coward than the rest of us," he said.

"The rest of you, at least, are not doing evil in your own eyes."

"Anyanwu . . ."

"No." She rested her head against him. "I have decided. I will not tell any more brave lies, even to myself." She looked up at his young face, his boy face. "We will marry. You are a good man, Isaac. I am the wrong wife for you, but perhaps, somehow, in this place, among these people, it will not matter."

He lifted her with the strength of his arms alone and carried her to the great soft bed, there to make the children who would prolong her slavery.

Book II

Lot's Children

1741

CHAPTER 7

Doro had come to Wheatley to see to the welfare of one of his daughters. He had a feeling something was wrong with her, and as usual, he allowed such feelings to guide him.

As he rode into town from the landing, he could hear a loud dispute in progress—something about one man's cow ruining another's garden.

Doro approached the disputants slowly, watching them. They stood before Isaac, who sat on a bench in front of the house he and Anyanwu had built over fifty years before. Isaac, slender and youthful-looking in spite of his age and his thick gray hair, had no official authority to settle disputes. He had been a farmer, then a merchant—never a magistrate. But even when he was younger, people brought their disagreements to him. He was one of Doro's favorite sons. That made him powerful and influential. Also, he was known for his honesty and fairness. People liked him as they could not quite like Doro. They could worship Doro as a god, they could give him their love, their fear, their respect, but most found him too intimidating to like. One of the reasons Doro came back to a son like Isaac, old and past most of his usefulness, was that Isaac was a friend as well as a son. Isaac was one of the few people who could enjoy Doro's company without fear or falseness. And Isaac was an old man, soon to die. They all died so quickly . . .

Doro reached the house and sat slouched for a moment on his black mare—a handsome animal who had come with his latest less-than-handsome body. The two men arguing over the cow had calmed down by now. Isaac had a way of calming unreasonable people. Another man could say and do exactly what Isaac said and did and be knocked down for his trouble. But people listened to Isaac.

"Pelham," Isaac was saying to the older of the two men—a gaunt, large-boned farmer whom Doro remembered as poor breeding stock.

"Pelham, if you need help repairing that fence, I'll send one of my sons over."

"My boy can handle it," Pelham answered. "Anything to do with wood, he can handle."

Pelham's son, Doro recalled, had just about enough sense not to wet himself. He was a huge, powerful man with the mind of a child—a timid, gentle child, fortunately. Doro was glad to hear that he could handle something.

Isaac looked up, noticed for the first time the small sharp-featured stranger Doro was just then, and did what he had always done. With none of the talents of his brother Lale to warn him, Isaac inevitably recognized Doro. "Well," he said, "it's about time you got back to us." Then he turned toward the house and called, "Peter, come out here."

He stood up spryly and took the reins of Doro's horse, handing them to his son Peter as the boy came out of the house.

"Someday, I'm going to get you to tell me how you always know me," Doro said. "It can't be anything you see."

Isaac laughed. "I'd tell you if I understood it myself. You're you, that's all."

Now that Doro had spoken, Pelham and the other man recognized him and spoke together in a confused babble of welcome.

Doro held up his hand. "I'm here to see my children," he said.

The welcomes subsided. The two men shook his hand, wished him a good evening, and hurried off to spread the news of his return. In his few words, he had told him that his visit was unofficial. He had not come to take a new body, and thus would not hold court to settle serious grievances or offer needed financial or other aid in the way that had become customary in Wheatley and some of his other settlements. This visit, he was only a man come to see his children—of whom there were forty-two here, ranging from infants to Isaac. It was rare for him to come to town for no other purpose than to see them, but when he did, other people left him alone. If anyone was in desperate need, they approached one of his children.

"Come on in," Isaac said. "Have some beer, some food." He did not have an old man's voice, high and cracking. His voice had become deeper and fuller—it contributed to his authority. But all Doro could hear in it now was honest pleasure.

"No food yet," Doro said. "Where's Anyanwu?"

"Helping with the Sloane baby. Mrs. Sloane let it get sick and almost die before she asked for help. Anyanwu says it has pneumonia," Isaac poured two tankards of beer.

"Is it going to be all right?"

"Anyanwu says so—although she was ready to strangle the Sloanes. Even they've been here long enough to know better than to let a child suffer that way with her only a few doors away." Isaac paused. "They're afraid of her blackness and her power. They think she's a witch, and the mold-medicine she made some poison."

Doro frowned, took a swallow of beer. The Sloanes were his newest wild seed—a couple who had found each other before Doro found them. They were dangerous, unstable, painfully sensitive people who heard the thoughts of others in intermittent bursts. When one received a burst of pain, anger, fear, any intense emotion, it was immediately transmitted to the other, and both suffered. None of this was deliberate or controlled. It simply happened. Helplessly, the Sloanes did a great deal of fighting and drinking and crying and praying for it to stop happening, but it would not. Not ever. That was why Doro had brought them to Wheatley. They were amazingly good breeding stock to be wild seed. He suspected that in one way or another, they were each descended from his people. Certainly, they were enough like his people to make excellent prey. And as soon as they had produced a few more children, Doro intended to take them both. It would be almost a kindness.

But for now, they would go on being abysmal parents, neglecting and abusing their children not out of cruelty, but because they hurt too badly themselves to notice their children's pain. In fact, they were likely to notice that pain only as a new addition to their own. Thus, sometimes their kind murdered children. Doro had not believed the Sloanes were dangerous in that way. Now, he was less certain.

"Isaac . . .?"

Isaac looked at him, understood the unspoken question. "I assume you mean to keep the parents alive for a while."

"Yes."

"Then you'd better find another home for the child—and for every other child they have. Anyanwu says they should never have had any."

"Which means, of course, that they should have as many as possible."

"From your point of view, yes. Good useful people. I've already begun talking to them about giving up the child."

"Good. And?"

"They're worried about what people might think. I got the impression they'd be glad to get rid of the child if not for that—and one other thing."

"What?"

Isaac looked away. "They're worried about who'll care for them when they're old. I told them you'd talk to them about that."

Doro smiled thinly. Isaac refused to lie to the people he thought Doro had selected as prey. Most often, he refused to tell them anything at all. Sometimes such people guessed what was being kept from them, and they ran. Doro took pleasure in hunting them down. Lann Sloane, Doro thought, would be especially good game. The man had a kind of animal wariness about him.

"Anyanwu would say you have on your leopard face now," Isaac commented.

Doro shrugged. He knew what Anyanwu would say, and that she meant it when she compared him to one kind of animal or another. Once she had said such things out of fear or anger. Now she said them out of grim hatred. She had made herself the nearest thing he had to an enemy. She obeyed. She was civil. But she could hold a grudge as no one Doro had ever known. She was alive because of Isaac. Doro had no doubt that if he had tried to give her to any of his other sons, she would have refused and died. He had asked her what Isaac said to change her mind, and when she refused to tell him, he had asked Isaac. To his surprise, Isaac refused to tell him, too. His son refused him very little, angered him very rarely. But this time . . .

"You've given her to me," Isaac had said. "Now she and I have to have things of our own." His face and his voice told Doro he would not say any more. Doro had left Wheatley the next day, confident that Isaac would take care of the details-marry the woman, build himself a house, help her learn to live in the settlement, decide on work for himself, start the children coming. Even at twenty-five, Isaac had been very capable. And Doro had not trusted himself to stay near either Isaac or Anyanwu. The depth of his own anger amazed him. Normally, people had only to annoy him to die for their error. He had to think to remember how long it had been since he had felt real anger and left those who caused it alive. But his son and this tiresome little forest peasant who was, fortunately for her, the best wild seed he had ever found, had lived. There was no forgiveness in Anyanwu, though. If she had learned to love her husband, she had not learned to forgive her husband's father. Now and then, Doro tried to penetrate her polite, aloof hostility, tried to break her, bring her back to what she was when he took her from her people. He was not accustomed to people resisting him, not accustomed to their hating him. The woman was a puzzle he had not yet solved—which was why now, after she had given him eight children, given Isaac five children, she was still alive. She would come to him again, without the coldness. She would make herself young without being told to do so, and she would come to him. Then, satisfied, he would kill her.

He licked his lips thinking about it, and Isaac coughed. Doro looked at his son with the old fondness and amended his thought. Anyanwu would live until Isaac died. She was keeping Isaac healthy, perhaps keeping him alive. She was doing it for herself, of course. Isaac had captured her long ago as he captured everyone, and she did not want to lose him any sooner than she had to. But her reasons did not matter. Inadvertently, she was doing Doro a service. He did not want to lose Isaac any sooner than he had to either. He shook his head, spoke to divert himself from the thought of his son's dying.

"I was down in the city on business," he said. "Then about a week ago when I was supposed to leave for England, I found myself thinking about Nweke." This was Anyanwu's youngest daughter. Doro claimed her as his daughter too, though Anyanwu disputed this. Doro had worn the body that fathered the girl, but he had not worn it at the time of the fathering. He had taken it afterward.

"Nweke's all right," Isaac said. "As all right as she can be, I suppose. Her transition is coming soon and she has her bad days, but Anyanwu seems to be able to comfort her."

"You haven't noticed her having any special trouble in the past few days?"

Isaac thought for a moment. "No, not that I recall. I haven't seen too much of her. She's been helping to sew for a friend who's getting married—the Van Ness girl, you know."

Doro nodded.