A Guardian of Slaves

by Naomi Finley

  “Always watching. Always on edge. We understand that all too well. I think a wedding is exactly what we needed. It’s a time to celebrate,” I said.

  The door opened, and we all turned as Mrs. Abbotts and Josephine entered.

  “Good day, ladies,” Miss Smith greeted them in her monotonous voice.

  My heart pounded at the sight of Josephine. Over the months since we’d attended her wedding, she’d lost more weight. Her cheekbones had taken over her face and dark circles formed under her eyes. The rose muslin gown she wore failed to add color to her cheeks.

  Mrs. Abbotts spoke to Miss Smith at the end of the counter. Josephine ambled aimlessly around the store, never making eye contact with us. I moved toward her, my throat thickening.

  “Good morning, Josephine,” my voice squeaked.

  She turned to look at me with glassy, empty eyes. Her brow wrinkled in confusion, as if she were trying to place my voice. Then recognition lit her face. “Willow, how are you?” With a trembling hand she smoothed her blond tresses.

  Guilt devoured me. I wanted to pull her aside and whisper in her ear that I had her son and he was safe and loved. That I’d received word Jethro was settled in a town called Chatham in Lower Canada. But nothing I could say would take away the ache of the walking corpse she’d become. It was clear she used laudanum to forget her pain.

  “I’m well. When we all return home, I’d be pleased to have you over for a luncheon.”

  “That would be lovely.” Her arm moved like a mechanical piece as she touched mine. “Why don’t I bring Lucille along?”

  Hadn’t she rid herself of that woman by now? I bit down hard. “I’d rather it just be you. It’d be nice to just be ourselves for a change, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “That would be nice.” Her words stretched.

  Whitney’s steps made the wooden planks creak as she moved in beside me.

  “Hello,” Josephine said. Her eyes centered on the narrow gap between Whitney’s face and mine. A smile formed on her lips. “Word has it you are to be married.”

  “I am.”

  Sadness spread across her face. “Do you love him?”

  “I do.”

  “I loved someone. It seems like so long ago now—”

  “Ladies, it appears Josephine is tired.” Mrs. Abbotts pushed her way between Josephine and us. “She hasn’t been herself lately, as you can see. Married life has her quite busy. She simply puts too much pressure on herself to be a loving, doting wife. Isn’t that so, dear?”

  “Yes…busy. Very busy.” Josephine fluttered a gloved hand in the air, and her set smile landed on her mother. A hardness no strength of medicine could numb or hide contorted her face. “Shall we go,” she said in a deadly cold tone that made the hair on my arms stand on end.

  I stared out the window long after they disappeared down the boardwalk.

  “Are you all right?” Whitney whispered.

  Tears threatened to overwhelm me. “She’s hurting…and I could ease her pain. I could tell her—”

  “Don’t,” she said in a low voice, sending a look Miss Smith’s way. She stood dusting the front display window. “You did as Jethro requested.”

  “I fear I’ve lost my desire to shop. Do you mind if we go home?”

  “Of course not. I’ll pay for our things and meet you outside.”

  I nodded and strode to the door, and the silent tears flowed.

  Closing the store door behind me, I turned to walk to our waiting carriage and ran headfirst into someone. A firm grip prevented me from toppling over.

  “I’m sorry. Please accept my a-apology.” I brushed away my tears with the fingertips of my gloves, but to no avail.

  “It pains me to see your distress.” Silas said in his deep voice. “Is there something I can do?”

  I jerked from his grasp and stumbled back, wiping my hands over my clothing as if to cleanse myself of his touch. “No. I’m fine. Good day, Mr. Anderson.” I maneuvered past him and scrambled into the carriage.

  Whitney exited the store, and her eyes regarded Mr. Anderson with disdain as she moved past him, but she kept her lips sealed and took the hand the coachman offered her. Arranging her skirt, she sat down beside me and veiled my hand with hers, where it lay wadded in a fist on the seat. The tender smile she offered me said everything will be all right. Despondency enveloped me because soon she’d be moving on as a married woman, and the comfort of her daily presence would become a distant memory.

  The coachman took his position, and the carriage lurched forward. From the corner of my eye, I saw Silas standing studying us. And for the first time, his façade faltered, and the murderous and harrowing look that transformed his handsome face froze my blood.

  Silas

  I WATCHED WILLOW HENDRICKS’S CARRIAGE pull away.

  Under my fingers, her body was trembling when I’d caught her. As she bolted toward the carriage, the usual irritating way she threw her shoulders back with pride and determination had faltered. Today her shoulders stooped forward in defeat, and the crack in her demeanor sent a ripple of pleasure through me. Moments ago she’d stood before me, and her cheeks, like succulent summer peaches, had caught her tears. My breathing had stilled with the urge to flick out my tongue and savor the sweet nectar of her pain.

  Her beauty blinded men. She was a woman not yet broken. The pathetic Bowden Armstrong had fallen victim to her womanly ways, and in doing so, he’d failed to remind her of her place. She needed taming, and I was just the man to do it.

  Such a task took patience. Willow would become my possession and my wife. When we were married, I’d teach her to bow to me. Her becoming suspicious of me would ruin everything, and all would be lost. Each word I said or move I’d made was calculated.

  I’d moved into position and secured the widow’s homestead. From the beginning, two obstacles had hindered me in swooping in and rescuing the grieving daughter of the tycoon Charles Hendricks, and that was Armstrong and the Barry woman.

  I wasn’t past sending the redhead to the bottom of the Ashley River. The thought of her lifeless form, silenced once and for all, decayed and bloated as it surfaced on the water thickened the saliva in my mouth. No woman humiliated me and got away with it. But chance had taken care of the Northern woman for the time being and removed her from the top of my list, with her marrying the dockworker. Soon she’d be gone from Livingston and no more an immediate threat.

  Armstrong was another matter. I wanted to rip his beating heart from his chest. Taking him out had proven to be no easy task. I’d intended to sweep in after the horses had made hog slop of his head, but the bastard wouldn’t die. He’d clawed and fought to live—a sight that on any other day would cloak me with warmth, but not that day. Well, he might not be dead, but the accident had caused him to slither away like a wounded animal.

  Collins reported Armstrong had a buyer come by his place the other day, an artist from Liverpool. Selling out only meant one thing, and that was that the hideous, disfigured man would run.

  Run, little birdie, run, the voices chimed.

  Had the gods finally shone their favor on me? Was the string of curses on my family over?

  Challenges had risen at every turn. Ending Charles Hendricks’s life had been too easy. The unexpected arrival of his brother had put a twist in my plans. I had yet to figure out what to do with him. But he’d moved to the top of my execution list. Showing up at my place with his suspicious eyes roaming over every inch of my land and his endless questions of where I drifted in from and what were my intentions in asking to court his niece. It wasn’t the final words he’d said as he swung up on his horse and tugged the reins that steamed my blood, but the warning in his eyes.

  No one threatens the McCoy men and gets away with it!

  The burn of my fingernails biting into my palms pulled me from my thoughts. I glanced down at my fists and flexed my fingers. Lifting a hand, I rubbed the iron grip of the muscles in my jaw.

  “Excuse me, sir,” a
gentleman said.

  I stepped aside to let him by. Turning, I leaned against the post out front of the general store and studied the folks of Charleston as they went about their business. The stink of wealth some exuded sickened me. Did any of them know what it was like to be so poor your stomach convulsed until only dry heaves came? A few…maybe. How tired I grew of their upturned noses and gold-lined pocketbooks. Watching them shake and tremble when I emptied them was intoxicating.

  A carriage pulled up in front of me, and a blond woman disembarked followed by a young boy around six or eight.

  “But Mother, must we go to the bank first?” the boy asked.

  “Yes, Albert darling,” she said, adjusting his collar. “Then I promise we’ll go next door to the general store.” She patted his dark locks before kissing the tip of his nose.

  The boy grinned with pleasure, succumbing to her affection. She circled his shoulders with her arm and mounted the stairs, offered me a smile in passing, and walked down the boardwalk.

  Nauseating, I sneered. But even as I thought that, the voices rose, gibbering—

  “Eat this slowly, or you’ll be sick.” Mother stands over me at the table, her hand on my shoulder. I feel its warmth; her warmth.

  I look at the bowl of stew and lift my spoon. I want to scarf it down. My hand shakes. I haven’t eaten for three days, not since Pa locked me in the outbuilding. Mother said he’s off on another drinking binge in town. I fear for her. He will be angry that she freed me, but it was so dark, and cold, and I am so hungry—

  The door flies open. The spoon falls from my fingers. I hear Mother gasp, and her hand jerks away from my shoulder. Pa darkens the doorway. I cringe back into the chair, wanting to follow Mother, wherever she went, wanting to feel her at my back. We should have heard him, why didn’t we hear him?

  His eyes are on me. His face is red, and the vein in the center of his forehead pulses as rage overtakes him. My heart is hammering, too fast—I can’t hear anything but its pounding.

  His eyes turn to Mother, and his hand moves to the gun tucked in his waistband.

  No! my mind screams.

  “You will defy me no more!”

  The crack of the gun seems to ricochet around the room. I scream. Blood and brain matter splatter my face. I hear a groan from Mother, and she falls on me. Heavy and wet. In my terror, I push her weight off of me. Her head cracks on the table before hitting the floor. I jump from my chair. Horror fills me. I see the hole where Pa has parted her skull.

  I can’t breathe. Can’t think.

  I drop to my knees beside her. The knees of my trousers grow damp in a crimson pond of blood spilling over the floorboards. “Mother…” I sob, reaching for her limp hand. Her lifeless eyes stare at me.

  Who will protect me now?

  My head snaps forward, the blow nearly toppling me over. “Go get a shovel, boy, and get her in the ground before she starts smelling up the place.” He spits on her body before raising his jar of whiskey to his lips.

  I run out the door. On the porch, I spot the slave boy, shaking at the corner of the house.

  “Come on, Caesar,” I say.

  “What happened?”

  “He killed her,” I cry. Blinded by floods of tears, I plunge through mother’s prize rose bushes, feeling the bite of the thorns on my trousers. The pain is so small compared to the crushing inside my chest.

  Together Caesar and I dig the shallow grave, bathing the ground in our tears. Hours later, we haul my mother’s body across the floor and down the rotting porch steps. The crack of her head hitting each tread makes me wince and brings tears I thought long spent. Her body leaves a burgundy stain as we struggle to pull her to the grave.

  Later in bed I try to block the sounds and sights of the day from my mind. I drift off to sleep only to awake screaming and digging at my ears. I cry out for her, but she doesn’t come because she is gone.

  Stop! I grabbed the sides of my head. A guttural grunt vibrated in my chest, and my body trembled. To feel made one less of a man. To remember the pathetic tears, the pain, the anger and emptiness of the lost boy I once was, was a weakness I’d carved out.

  Loving my mother had earned me nothing. My brother and father had used her tenderness toward me as a weapon. Love was for the weak and with it brought pain and suffering.

  No one would ever have power over me again. Pa had made sure of it. And my brother…that night on the road back from Charleston…

  I stare down at the woman—Olivia Hendricks. She’s sitting within the rumpled circle of her skirts, reeling from the blow. Pa’d hit her hard. She shouldn’t have stood up for that slave woman. Didn’t do any good anyway, I note, registering the screams as Pa and my brother and his friend Yates have their fun.

  The screams stop. I hear Pa chuckling, and look up. He’s got that nigger by the arm, half dragging her over to me and the woman at my feet. His eyes gleam with the lust to inflict pain. I know that look all too well.

  He throws the nigger down next to her fool mistress. “Get a rope. We’re going to have ourselves some fun,” Pa shouts, eyeing me. I step back. “Mama’s boy,” he sneers. My brother goes for the rope.

  When he’s securing the noose around Olivia’s neck, she screams, “Curse you! Curse you all! May you suffer painful obscurity!” and I go cold. Those words have weight.

  But Olivia dies like anybody else. And when her and the slave’s bodies are wiggling and fighting for life, I look into Olivia’s bulging eyes and a thrill charges through me beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. Sweat dampens my hands, and my heart races with exhilaration. I cock my head and watch her take her last breath.

  It was after that the voices in my head awoke.

  Never had the body of a woman beneath me filled me with the same sensation as ending a life. Women were a curse to men. As the weaker sex, they fed off the desire of men to penetrate the warmth between their legs. I’d never been such a man. But when I bedded Willow Hendricks, and bed her I would, would she be the first to give me the same ecstasy?

  “Helpless little boy.” Olivia’s voice rose above the rest of the murmurings.

  “Go away!” I shook my head to rid myself of her taunting.

  “Sir, is everything fine?” An elderly man stood in front of me on the boardwalk, his fossil face saturated with concern.

  I dislodged the voices from my head. “Quite well.” I tipped my hat and dodged past him.

  You’re the king and Willow will be your queen, the voices whispered. You’ll secure her fortune and then she’ll meet the same fate as her mother.

  After all, weren’t humans merely pieces on a chessboard, to be discarded as they outlived their usefulness?

  Willow

  “MISS HENDRICKS, GOOD AFTERNOON,” SAM Bennick said with a broad smile when I walked into his office one afternoon in mid-October. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” He indicated an empty chair in front of the desk.

  Seated, I smoothed the fabric of my skirt before clasping my hands in my lap. “My uncle will be returning tomorrow to take us home. I wanted to stop by and see if you have found anything on my father’s daughter.”

  In the midst of the chaos going on in my life, I’d never stopped thinking of her. How old was she? What was she like?

  He took a deep breath. “Nothing that will provide you with the answers you seek. His friends in London say they don’t recall Charles with any woman. At least none that stood out as someone of interest to him. However, our sources say they’d seen him over the years with a child down by the docks.”

  “And the child: did they say if it was a boy or girl? Maybe a full name. Anything?” My trotting heart quickened to a gallop, and I pulled at the suddenly restricting high collar on my blouse.

  He dropped his eyes to the brass magnifying glass on his walnut desk; his fingers had repeatedly turned it since I’d sat down. “The child was a girl, but they couldn’t recall a name. There’s no way of telling if it was her—”

  “Do you rememb
er my father at all?”

  The spinning of the magnifying glass stopped. “You’ve lost me.”

  I leaned forward, resting folded hands on the desk. “He wasn’t the type to waste time on children. If he was carting a child around with him, there has to be a connection. Was there anything they remembered about the girl? Like her hair color…eyes?”

  His grave expression gave me pause. “What is it? You know something.”

  “She was a mulatto,” he said.

  His lips continued to move but his words became a murmur as my thoughts mashed into one jumbled mess.

  A mulatto. Did Father have a love affair with a colored woman? And was this why he’d kept Callie a secret?

  “We need to find her.” I cut him off in mid-sentence. “I must know. If things weren’t awry here, I’d go myself. If this girl is Callie, I want to meet her. Surely if she had a relationship with Father, she’s been wondering what happened to him.”

  “Your father’s influences reached far, and folks in London know of his death.”

  I nodded and sank back into my chair. “Do you think he told her about me?”

  “One can never know. I’ve known you all your life, and I consider you like a niece. If I can find her, I will.” He made no effort to suppress the sadness over the loss of his friend as he regarded me. Since my father’s passing he’d shown palpable reverence in the handling of my father’s affairs and answered my ledger full of questions. He’d even sat through many of my breakdowns and awkwardly offered a gentle pat of reassurance on occasion.

  “I hate to do this, but I have an appointment soon.” He stood and circled the desk. “I’ll keep digging, and I’ll be sure to inform you about anything I come up with.”

  I rose and held out my gloved hand. “Thank you, Sam.”

  “We’ll find her.” His fingers gripped mine.

  I left his office holding onto his belief. Someday…somehow, Callie and I would meet; even if I had to set sail myself, I’d find her.