by Donna Cooner
Baby Daughter.
Puzzled, Tara stared at the stone, then felt as if the cold breeze entered her heart.
Whose baby daughter? Lisa’s—and Jarrett’s? So it seemed, but there were others buried in this plantation plot.
The breeze picked up again, scattering leaves by her feet. The sun was falling, she realized. She stood and looked to the river. Trees shadowed her vision. In the distance the day was still crimson and gold. Nearer, it seemed to be wrapped in darkness, and she was suddenly, despite herself, afraid. She thought of the beautiful woman in the portrait, sleeping death’s sleep, deep in the ground.
Rotting, no matter how beautiful the monument to her.
What had happened to Lisa? she wondered, and she suddenly thought that she was very much alone out here, that darkness was falling, that she couldn’t see any of the men she had seen so often before who so subtly patrolled the plantation.
She turned around, eager to flee the tiny cemetery, feeling as if all manner of eyes were staring at her from the encroaching shadows. As she hurried through the gate, her heart skipped a beat as she felt a hard tug upon her skirt. A flash of panic seized hold of her, and she briefly thought that the ghost of Jarrett’s first wife had returned to waylay her, to tell her that she was not mistress here, that she was an impostor in all that she had done.
Her skirt was caught on one of the elegantly designed flowers in the wrought-iron gate. She wrenched it free, and then, her heart still beating hard, decided that she would not race for the house.
She walked there slowly, almost sedately.
But her teeth chattered all the while.
She hurried into the buffet in the parlor and started to pour herself a sherry. She hesitated and strode into the library, found the whiskey bottle, and poured herself a stiff drink. It scalded her throat as she swallowed down two fingers, but it gave her the desired effect. She felt much calmer, and very foolish, and after a moment’s thought she was convinced she could find out the answers to the questions she was continually asking and everyone continually evading.
She told Hattie that she would take a tray in her room that night. When Jeeves delivered it, she took great pleasure in thanking him for having shown her to the graveyard, but she didn’t ask him a single question about anyone buried within it. She smiled instead, and told him that she was amazed with the size and efficiency of the plantation.
“Of course, I realize that I’ve seen very little. Jarrett described many things for me; yet I’ve not quite got the lay of the place.”
“The lay of the place, Mrs. McKenzie?”
“Well,” she said innocently, “I have to admit, even the shape of the state is a little confused in my mind.” She walked over to her bed, sitting on it, drawing an imaginary peninsula.
“Jeeves, come show me the lay of the land. This stretch of the bed is the length of the territory. What is where?”
Jeeves frowned at her doubtfully for a moment, then shook his head and smiled. “All right,” he agreed, walking over to the side of the bed where she had drawn her imaginary map. “There are the Florida Keys down here, and all that swampland! Up here is Jacksonville, and down from there a bit, St. Augustine. Coming all the way around, far on the other side of the panhandle, there’s Pensacola. There, inward, toward the middle, is Tallahassee. Know why it’s the capital now?” Jeeves asked.
Tara shook her head. “No, why?”
Jeeves answered her, still smiling, involved in his geography lesson now. “Well, the lawmakers used to meet once a year at Pensacola, then the next time all the way around at St. Augustine, but either way it was about a fifty-nine-day journey by water, and once there was a shipwreck off the southern coast and half the men were stranded down there. Tallahassee was right in the middle, a good place to meet. Now, dropping down to the middle of the territory, west side again, there’s Tampa. And there’s the river. And we’ve come in here, and all this—this is Indian land.”
“All right,” Tara said, rubbing a hand over the bed. “Let’s start on a smaller scale. There’s Tampa, the river, and here we are at Cimarron. Show me all around Cimarron.”
“Here,” Jeeves said, “is Jarrett’s land. Right here—” Jeeves said, pointing, “begins Mr. Treat’s property.” He kept talking. Tara smiled. Robert was straight down the little stream that wandered down below the lawn from the river. It would be an easy ride.
And she would ride it in the morning!
Jeeves didn’t go to bed that night.
He sat up in the master’s library, in one of the plush chairs before the bookshelves, and he studied the contents of those shelves.
There were numerous books. Some classics, some fiction. Mostly there were journals on farming, breeding livestock, and building. There were texts on medicinal herbs, on home remedies, on binding and setting broken limbs. There were bound copies of paintings by Audubon, and more journals on flora and fauna, poisonous snakes, and dangerous plants. There were military journals, and one special text had been signed to Jarrett McKenzie from Andy Jackson himself. It was interesting, Jeeves had always thought, to study a man’s reading materials. Many a frontiersman—and this was one dangerous frontier at the moment!—disdained reading of any kind. In his day, as a matter of fact, Jeeves had met many a fine planter who couldn’t read or write a lick himself. Not so here. Jarrett McKenzie loved books. Not as much as Robert Treat—Treat’s library doubled this one, and Treat himself was quite an exceptional scholar on the history of the territory, on the Spanish and British periods, on the pirates—even on the Indians. He knew who’d been here long before the Seminoles, and he knew about trails—which he’d shown Jarrett and James—that had existed long before the encroaching Americans had made the place their own.
Jeeves liked both libraries—and both men. He had been born a free black himself, but not so his parents. His father, Jonah, had been the property of a Georgia cracker, a small-scale farmer so called from the “crack” of the bullwhip many such men carried for use with their cattle. The cracker had just acquired a Spanish land grant to some property just outside of St. Augustine. There, Jonah had met his future wife, Maria, a woman of mixed black and Indian blood, and in the brief time their owner had kept them together, Jeeves had been conceived.
To avoid potential trouble the Georgian had tried selling off his powerful black field hand. But Jonah had joined up with a band of black Seminoles. The cracker, just a small planter really, had feared Jonah returning for his wife and causing murder or havoc. A decent enough man, and maybe a smart one, the planter had offered Jonah the opportunity to work for his own legal release and that of his wife. Jonah had still been short the money when Jeeves had been nearly due, but the cracker had shown a real heart and given both Jonah and Maria their documents of freedom before Jeeves had been born. They had made good what they had owed him, working hard for the planter and using their spare time at odd jobs for others as well for many years to come.
Jeeves had been lucky. He’d grown up a free black man. But he’d hated a lot of what he had seen. Some men were good to their slaves, almost as good to them as they were to their own children. But other men were cruel, as quick to beat and shackle fellow human beings as they were their farm animals. Jeeves saw too much of it. The best that a man could be was to be free, even if a master was a decent enough man.
As a young man Jeeves decided to make his way north. A French whore in Baton Rouge taught him how to read, and he used his lessons well. He could imitate accents easily and discovered that an English one could acquire him many interesting jobs. He’d gained employment in Boston, earned a fair income and learned a great deal more about human nature, and then realized he wanted to come home.
In St. Augustine he’d learned his parents had both gone to work for a young fool soldier who was trying to make a civilization out of a wilderness. He’d met up with Jarrett McKenzie because his folks—both old now and past their prime—had found easy employment and gentle living with the “fool” young s
oldier. Not a soldier anymore, but a planter who’d gotten one big land grant. They’d known Mrs. McKenzie since she’d been a wee girl, and through her they’d taken on house work at the place they were calling Cimarron.
He hadn’t been among them a month before his mother had passed on quietly in her sleep; his father, without her, had willed himself to die, Jeeves was convinced. Sitting out on a rocking chair at day’s end, he’d simply said that he was tired, and he could hear his Maria calling softly to him over water. Jesus was comin’ for to carry him home. He’d closed his eyes and died.
Jeeves had taken them both back to a Negro cemetery outside of St. Augustine to bury them. It wasn’t custom to bury white folks with black, even if the blacks were free. That hadn’t mattered to Jarrett McKenzie. It wasn’t custom to bury Indian folk with white folk, either, and Jarrett had already had one of his stepmother’s uncles buried on the property. But Maria and Jonah had earned their freedom out of St. Augustine, right near the burying ground, and it had seemed fitting to take them back.
But he’d come back to Jarrett’s place. Jarrett already had the huge German, Rutger, working on the place, clearing land, supervising the building of the loading docks, buying up grain and the like. But for such a fine house Jarrett and his wife needed a butler. Something as good and refined as an English butler—only more serviceable. Jeeves fit the picture perfectly. There was something about Cimarron that was unique and special. Jarrett McKenzie didn’t want slaves; he wanted people who worked for him and he didn’t seem to care where a man or woman might come from, or what color—or colors—he might be. There were Indians, blacks, half-Indians, quarter-blacks, Irishmen, Frenchies, and all manner of others on the property. Maybe, at first, Jeeves had even thought he owed the McKenzies, who had given his parents such a good home when they’d both been well past their primes. But as time went on, he had simply come to like and respect his employer so much that there could never be a question of his leaving.
Especially after Lisa died.
He hadn’t ever seen a man suffer in such silent pain in all his days, except, maybe, his father, and his father had willed himself to die. Jarrett McKenzie had been too young to do that, too vital, too alive—maybe even too needed by too many other people. He’d gone on, gone through all the motions of daily living. He’d put up a damned good front before the world, hardened himself, and kept hurting inside.
Until now.
Jeeves smiled. She’d brought new life back to the house. In fact, she’d just about managed to set Mr. Jarrett McKenzie into a tumult now and again. Awfully damned good for him.
Jeeves had heard a lot of accents in his days. He’d learned to do most of them. White folks could be amazing. They were always astounded to hear a black man who could speak with an elocution superior to their own. Speaking and accents had become very important to him at an early age. So he should have known just where this lovely new Mrs. McKenzie came from.
But he couldn’t seem to put his finger on a place!
He arched his back, sitting up straighter, staring out into the great hall.
She hadn’t come down the stairs.
It seemed he’d been wrong. He’d had the strange feeling she’d been about to take flight from Cimarron. Why, he wasn’t exactly sure. He’d seen a certain strange longing in her eyes when she’d watched Jarrett upon occasion—when Jarrett’s back had been to her. Jeeves was damned sure without either of them divulging secrets that it was no normal marriage, and yet it was something to watch the two of them. Jeeves liked her. Oh, yes, he liked his new young mistress! She might be afraid, but her determination was far greater than her fear. She liked people, and her curiosity and sensitivity were great. She was as light and beautiful as a golden summer’s angel, but she was strong, too, with a wiry, inner strength that would take her far.
Far. Out of the house, he had feared.
But she hadn’t moved. He had spent half the night awake, and now he was feeling just a little bit foolish. He’d been wrong, it seemed, thinking she might run away in the night.
Still, he waited.
One A.M.
He’d almost dozed. He jumped as his foot was tapped and looked up to find Rutger towering over him. Oddly enough, the powerful, handsome German and he were now the best of friends. They’d circled one another carefully for months, Jeeves certain the other man was still not convinced that a freed black man was a good idea. Then there had been a Christmas when they’d wound up alone on the porch, the two most important men in the service of the McKenzie main household, and over too much cider and whiskey Rutger had admitted that Jeeves was just the damnedest black man he’d ever seen. Jeeves had told him he couldn’t say quite the same—Rutger was the only German he had known. Rutger had determined to teach Jeeves about Germany that night, with an emphasis on Octoberfest.
They’d both worked with killer hangovers the next day, but they’d become very good, if very strange, friends.
“My watch,” Rutger said. “ ’Ceptin’ you may want to make sure Mrs. McKenzie is still sleeping up there. You were snoring.”
Jeeves rose to his full height. “I never snore!”
“Then there were buffalo charging through somewhere. Go on, get some sleep. I’ll keep an eye on our new mistress.”
Jeeves started out of the room, then paused in the doorway, looking back. “Now, you stay awake!” he warned.
Rutger had pulled down a book and was pouring himself a whiskey.
“You’re the one who was snoring, Mr. Proper Butler.”
Jeeves sniffed and left him. In the great hallway he gave himself a shake. It was almost morning; she hadn’t stirred. What had made him think that she was so ready to bolt when he was convinced that she was both intrigued and entranced by her husband—if not in love with him?
He rubbed his neck. Well, it seems he had been mistaken. She wasn’t going anywhere. He was glad of it.
He walked on up the stairs, weary, ready for sleep. He’d be damned glad when Jarrett was back. Damned glad.
Although the military still waited in Tampa, no attack by the Indians had come.
Jarrett realized that when he reached town at last with the Pattersons, Jim and Jill, her sister Marianne, his young brother J.P., and their seven children, Paddy, Jane, Anne-Marie, Michael, Seth, and the youngest of the brood, the twins, Caleb and Joshua. He’d ridden Charlemagne through what would have been a few days’ ride for the two of them were they not escorting the caravan of two wagons, three cows, four goats, and a pack of boisterous chickens. The roads were poor in the interior and bridges were few and far between, so it had been a long and painful journey. But, as he had always been exceptionally fond of the Pattersons, he did not begrudge them this torturous trip, even if he did wish with all his heart that it would come to a speedy end.
It had not been a good time to leave home. After all the time he had so foolishly wasted, he’d gained himself a wife again.
And though she had kept him awake into the night wondering in a smoldering fury just who William might be, he had, at last, discovered the truth.
Her brother … William was her brother.
Not much to go on, he thought. But somehow, that one very simple truth he had ruthlessly dragged from her that morning gave him hope. Eventually the whole of her past might be his, and then …
Which would come first, he wondered wearily. The truth about Tara? Or the end of this wretched, accelerating war with the Indians? With his own brother’s people?
“Oh, Jarrett! We’re all but there!” Jill called out delightedly. She had been walking at the front of the wagon, flicking a whip upon occasion above the heads of the oxen that carried along what earthly possessions they had decided to take.
No one living near Jarrett’s Cimarron had yet been attacked, but Indian assaults to the north of them on numerous of the sugarcane plantations had swiftly followed Osceola’s well-planned attacks upon Wiley Thompson and Major Dade and his men. Often the owners had escaped, but the planta
tions had been burned to the ground, and many of those who had lived upon them had disappeared. They had either been taken prisoner by the Indians, were still running through the cypress hammocks to escape them, or lay dead among the ashes of their homes.
Jill left the oxen and came to stand beside Charlemagne. She looked at the homes of the fledgling town of Tampa, the smoke that spewed from numerous chimneys, and the military guard that surrounded the place. “My God, we’ve made it!” Jill breathed, smiling, looking up at Jarrett. She had a very pretty face. She was nearly forty and thin as a rail. She had been raising her children in all but a wilderness for nearly twenty years, and the cares of her life had drawn deep lines and grooves about her eyes and mouth, but she remained a bright, compelling, and attractive woman, one who seldom gave up a fight. She and Lisa had been dear friends, though they had come from very different worlds. They had been much alike, both ready for adventure, and both deeply in love with their homes, their husbands, and the very wild beauty of the new American territory. Lisa’s father had been a very young Revolutionary War hero, a respected politician, a rich man who had raised his daughter with every luxury. Jill had been an orphan, growing up on a plantation in Georgia, picking cotton along with the master’s slaves.
She refused to own slaves herself, and like Cimarron, the Patterson property had been worked by free men of many different colors and shades. One by one their people had left them, determined to escape the coming disaster.
Jill had determined it was time for the family to leave their property behind—until the difficulty was over.
“This is it—we’re here,” Jarrett said, agreeing with her. Jim came up to stand behind his wife. A tall, lanky, almost homely man, worn by hard work, strong and solid in his friendships.
“Thank you kindly, Jarrett,” he said, slipping his arms around his wife’s waist and staring at the town they could all but touch. “We wouldn’t have made it without you,” he said frankly.