The big house could be seen for a mile at least. The lanterns that bordered the property, and those that trimmed the walking paths, had all been lit, and light shone out of every window from the bottom to the top of the place.
From a distance, it would’ve been impossible to tell that this was a confiscated home. Tonight it looked alive, as though the house had drifted back in time. It shone with merry life in a way it might not have since the previous inhabitants’ own parties. Those parties had been decadent and had surely overwhelmed the nearby fragment of woods with laughter and music as well.
Neither was a sign of civilized society, the March women well knew. People could laugh and curse in the same breath. They could dance and brandish a whip in the same night, and the one activity did not always interrupt the other for long. It made walking toward the house feel like foolishness, and that feeling, when they knew that there was no captor here, that they were going to celebrate their own, made them feel as though there were more chains than those the eye could see. It made the oldest among them wonder whether or not freedom was something that could be declared, or whether it would have to be learned and practiced, like one of Meg’s lessons.
It was the songs that gave the partygoers away. Whatever familiar discomfort the March women felt as they drew nearer to the stately manor that night, the unconfessed hesitation that fluttered inside their chests like fragile wings, it dissipated when they heard the hollers.
There was dancing around a bonfire on the big house lawn, and every so often a call would start from one side, someone hollering out a phrase, and the rest giving a unified response, and throughout, whoops and laughter and shouts that carried bits of story in them. As always, part of it was a song they’d heard before, and the other part was being written here, tonight, by those in attendance.
Any memories of another big house they’d known from the old life, where the lanterns were lit for the captor’s guests, melted away. This was the place where they’d found rest on their way to the colony, and these were their own people, lighting lanterns to illuminate the night for their own amusement and not someone else’s.
Amy’s and Beth’s steps quickened first, until they were several paces ahead, glancing back as though to ask Mammy’s approval. She smiled to spur them on, and in a moment they were absorbed, zipping among the clusters of partygoers and around the crackling fire that lapped at the night sky.
Meg and Jo were too old to dash away excitedly, nor could they have while holding a cast iron cooking pot between them. It’d been filled that afternoon with crawfish after Jo and Yannick’s swimming excursion, and now the women would have to find the cooking fire before anything else.
Partygoers shouted in salutation when Mammy, Meg, and Jo were nearer, and they smiled or waved in reply. Some faces were familiar—from the colony, or their time living in the big house—and others weren’t, but they were pleasant and inviting just the same. Eventually, there were bolder sorts, children or young men who came right up to the pot to peek inside and survey its contents, one boy calling back over his shoulder.
“They brought mud bugs!” he announced, to a swell of approval. Jo appreciated the nosiness much more when it resulted in the boy and one other relieving her and her sister of the pot, and carrying it the rest of the way themselves.
“I’ll follow,” Mammy said. “You girls enjoy the festivities, and see that your sisters do as well.”
“We will, Mammy.”
They watched her for a moment, slipping into the young men’s wake, inclining her head when she was greeted, a smile visible on her face every time she turned at a new sound, despite that her daughters were behind her. Then Jo linked her arm with Meg’s.
“What shall we do first?”
“Well,” Meg said, drawing in a deep breath as though she were preparing to submerge herself in water. “I suppose I should ask each one whether they have learned their letters, how to read and how to write them, and invite the ones who haven’t to the colony to learn.”
“What?” Jo recoiled. “Meg,” she began to protest before recognizing the glint of amusement in her sister’s eye. “I see. Well, never let it be said you haven’t got a sense of humor.”
“Honestly, Jo, you must think me as boring as Amy does, you very nearly believed me,” she said as the two strolled around the fire a second time, taking stock of who surrounded it.
When the bonfire snapped, the women’s shoulders cinched up toward their necks momentarily, and turning to ensure it stayed where it was meant to, they noticed for the first time what had been used for kindling.
When the March family first arrived, there had been a grand portrait in the entryway of the big house, a painting of a white man and someone assumed to be his sister or his wife—there was no way to tell. Behind them, but still purposely included in the portrait, was a brown-skinned child holding the man’s riding crop. The child looked well and was dressed in fine clothing, though unlike the other two models he did not smile or wear a soft expression.
It was upsetting all the same.
More than once a new inhabitant of the big house would be found standing before the portrait, staring into it, arrested by everything the painting meant. It was not lost on them, nor was it possible to ignore, what it was meant to convey. Worse, and what would often ensnare those who’d simply meant to pass by the display, was the understanding of the efforts taken to produce the portrait in the first place.
Often it was the consideration of the many intentional steps planned and executed that made something sinister, where it might otherwise have seemed unfortunate at best. But a child had been selected—or was readily and constantly on hand—and he was made to stand within reach, in clothing that set him apart from his friends or even his family, since the clothes he wore looked almost royal. After all of that, he was given something to hold, something that clearly had not belonged to him. It was not something any enslaved person would have laid hands on without express instruction and permission, since it was as likely to be used on their back as on a horse’s hindquarters. That he’d been made to hold it filled the observer’s guts with a curdling, sour air, and eventually someone in the big house, long after the pictured man and woman had fled, graciously draped a length of material over it.
Jo hadn’t approved—not of the portrait, and not of the decision to obscure it. It had become a haunt, whispering from behind its veil, impressing the picture onto one’s mind when they passed, since they refused to look at it anymore. If something was worth covering, it was worth taking down, she’d decided, and that was what she had done. Because of what it was, and because of what her sister had suffered, she’d taken the heavy, cumbersome thing down, turned it toward the wall and on its side beside the staircase, removing it from its hallowed place by enough distance that soon it was possible not to know what the disgraced art piece pictured.
Now she returned to the property to find the portrait roaring in the fire beside them, and Jo smiled, satisfied and warm.
“There’s music,” Meg said. She’d drifted away without her sister noticing, and now came back to retrieve her. “Inside the house, they’re dancing.”
“I want no part of that,” Jo said.
“But I do,” Meg replied, and, taking her sister’s hand, rushed across the lawn with the others excited to join the revelry.
They could only take a step or two inside the wide front door. Just beyond it, the floor was being trampled and stomped by men and women circling each other, entangling and then freeing themselves, exchanging sides, and lacing together before twirling apart. Beneath where the offending portrait had hung, there stood a fiddler, a banjo player, and an overturned pot made into a drum. The house thrummed with the vibrations both of the instruments and of the onlookers who didn’t dance but stomped a foot or clapped in time.
Before they could be crushed, Jo dragged Meg to the foot of the staircase, though it took some effort. Meg’s eyes were wide and wanting, and she craned her neck as thoug
h there was some aspect of the dance she could not, but must, see. Her lips parted each time she tried to hold them closed, and when a man hoisted a woman into the air and the whole room gave a high-pitched exclamation, Meg’s chest inflated so that Jo thought she was going to float away.
And then she did, happily, when a young man dashed to the stairs and offered his hand, the same sort of wide smile gleaming on his face. Before she could snatch her sister back from Wisdom Carter, who was as tall and daft as his brother, but objectively more handsome, Meg was gone.
That was enough for Jo to know the foot of the staircase was unsafe. She would not wait for another young man to be encouraged by Wisdom’s success, especially when his brother Honor was never far behind him. Joanna March had no desire to be swept into the churning sea of dancers, dragged to her death, most likely stomped should she miss an unspoken cue and fall underfoot. She was even less interested in being flung to everyone’s delight. So she climbed all the way to the landing and settled in between others too amused to take part or too engaged in conversation. Below, she watched her sister spin, the decadent dress that Beth had restored looking as though it’d been made for just this occasion.
“Safe enough to smile now,” a voice beside her said.
Jo snapped her head to the side to see who was standing so close that his breath had grazed her face.
Whoever he was, he’d been smart enough to pull back and give her space to regard him. He wasn’t smiling, not exactly. When Jo narrowed her eyes at him, something happened in the dark eyes before her that made her think he must be smiling somewhere unseen. That annoyed her.
“Don’t let yourself be bothered,” she told him, and turned her attention back to her sister in the bustling foyer below.
“You aren’t a bother,” he replied, alerting her that he was still there.
“You’re becoming one.”
“Am I?” Now he grinned freely. It was a handsome one, and that annoyed Jo more.
“Did you watch me? You must’ve if you knew precisely when I started smiling.”
“It’s romantic, isn’t it? To be noticed from afar? That’s what I’ve gleaned from books.”
“What sort of books are you reading then?” Jo asked before forcing herself to look away from the young man and back at the dancing.
“The kind with romance in them, naturally.”
She tried to ignore him, or at least to seem distracted enough to convey aloofness. She failed because every other moment, her eyes slid back to find him, lest she miss whatever he did next.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, and his eyes widened a bit, his shoulder pulling back.
“Do I in particular require a reason outside the reception, or do you plan on questioning everyone this way?”
“Only the ones who intrude on me.”
“I don’t think anyone else will have the nerve, don’t worry. I could’ve thought you unfriendly before your uncharacteristic smile.”
“Oh, could you have?” she asked. “And how would you know what’s characteristic of me and what isn’t?”
Jo could hear her voice rising and knew her brow was furrowed. He must have observed it, too, yet his eyes were still bright. That did not annoy Jo. In fact, it worked to undo some of the perhaps exaggerated annoyance she’d felt before, since outside her family she had often been cautioned that a temperate manner was the only one acceptable in young women, lest gentlemen be driven away.
“I think we’re probably quite alike,” the young man said.
“And why, complete stranger, would you think such a thing?”
“Because we’re both seeking solitude at the top of the staircase, content to observe, but not so disinterested that it doesn’t make us happy to see them all so happy.” He looked at her a moment longer before turning to rest his forearms on the banister, leaning over it as though the conversation was done. If Jo waited long enough, it would be like they’d never spoken at all, his attention was so clearly transferred back to the party.
“I used to live in this house,” she blurted.
“I live in this house now,” he answered, and turned back to her with a smile. “You see? Alike.”
She snorted amusedly.
“You must have gone on to the colony,” he said.
“We did. My sisters, and Mammy. Papa built us a home before he left.”
“Has he gone to help the war effort?” the young man asked, sober for the first time.
“Yes. And, yes, I know—we must be proud.”
“I wasn’t going to say that. You must feel any way you like about the call to arms. We each must.”
“You haven’t enlisted?” she asked.
“No one’s convinced me freedom needs earning. It’s owed, and I will have it, whether here or abroad.”
“Abroad,” she repeated, and he must have assumed she was taken aback by the mere thought. In fact, it was at hearing anyone so near the famous colony speak as though there might be a whole world to see, or as though if there was life outside the Outer Banks, it could be anywhere but the American North. “Not to Boston?”
“No indeed,” he answered. “Though I might consider visiting Chicago, if it suits me.”
“What’s in Chicago?” Jo asked. “From what I read, most of Europe’s decided to settle there, and while they’re quite unwelcome, they also tend to be quite unwelcoming to Black folk.”
“Oh, I’ve no intention of staying. I only want to go long enough to visit Camp Douglas and see where they keep the Confederate prisoners of war.”
“Oh, well. That’s quite an attraction. I wouldn’t mind seeing it myself.”
“Two tickets then,” he said. “We’ll make a day of it.”
The two stood firm-footed now, facing each other and away from the rail. He was tall, and somewhat slight. He didn’t have the shoulders Meg sometimes described of Joseph Williams. This boy somehow towered but did not take up too much space. He wasn’t imposing, except when he stood too close and whispered observations to strange young women. His clothes were neat, but not extraordinary. He wore a white blouse tucked into trousers, and a simple vest atop it. The vest lay open, as it had no buttons, and it made him seem rakish and gregarious in the way Jo already knew he was.
“Did your mother give you a name, young man?”
“She gave me one, and I gave myself another.”
“Tell me both.”
“What for?”
“So I can decide which of you was right, of course.”
“She called me Loren,” he said with a smile that caught Jo’s lips as well. “But I prefer Lore.”
“I’m sure your mother’s a wonderful woman, but I didn’t expect her to be wrong.”
“Then you agree with me,” he said, raising one brow.
“No, I just assumed you’d be wrong, so it didn’t surprise me.”
“And you know better?”
“I do.”
“Then, please. Have mercy on me.”
She reached up and took his chin between her finger and thumb, turning his head first one way and then the other.
“Mm. You’re a Lorie, that’s certain.”
“So I am,” he said, comfortable in her hold.
“You’re easily persuaded.”
“Only of what’s right.”
Jo released him, and Lorie followed when she walked away from the staircase and into what had once only been a library. Now there were pallets where families cuddled together, what furniture hadn’t been claimed and taken elsewhere pushed against the wall to leave the floor clear for bedding. Whoever slept here was elsewhere just now, and Jo and Lorie navigated the room alone, first admiring the wallpaper whose blue and white pattern depicted several pastoral scenes. Without communicating the game to each other, they determined where the pattern began, and how many times it repeated in an arbitrarily observed space before moving on.
There were few books remaining, and Jo had seen them all when she lived here, but she ran her fi
nger down their spines because it was lavish to have even these few, and to have a place specially to house them. She pulled a tome from the shelf and opened it to press her nose between the pages. When she glanced at Lorie, he was watching her as docilely as he had before. It was an undemanding kind of gaze, one that did not seem to require any performance or self-consciousness on her part, and one that she had never experienced outside her family. Jo offered the open book to him, and he stepped closer, bending his head to do as she had done before nodding his approval.
When they walked around, making slow progress around the frame of the room and back to the door, Jo felt him behind her somehow, even when he was a pace or two away. She’d never been in his company before, and she couldn’t help thinking there was something uncommon about the way it felt to be. It was more an absence of unfamiliarity rather than the active presence of comfort, but perhaps it shouldn’t feel like anything. Perhaps it should be the way it was with Yannick, and others. The way she could sense something just outside herself, as though it emanated from them. It was like an invitation, and she was aware of it, but it never quite reached her, and she was comfortable ignoring it until it dulled or dimmed, as long as they were.
She tried to make sense of why she felt differently with this young man she’d just met. It must mean something , she felt her mind insisting, despite that the rest of her made no such demand. Her heart didn’t skip a beat the way she’d heard Meg describe, and while it would have alarmed her if it had, that it didn’t was equally confounding. It made it difficult to know what was happening, except to know that some thing was.
So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix: 2 (Remixed Classics) Page 8