by Andre Norton
As she backed a little away from the trapdoor she was startled by a crescendo of knocks from the outer door. Someone out there was beating almost frenzied-ly on the panel. Mrs. Pryor glanced around, and put down the lantern.
“Come!” she beckoned both Persis and Molly to join her. “It will like as not take the three of us—”
With one hand on the latch-bar, the housekeeper gestured for them to take position behind her, as if she feared she might be sent flying inward when she opened the door.
“Ready—” Mrs. Pryor warned during a short lull. Persis saw Molly brace herself and did likewise. Then the door, freed of its fastening, burst inward.
Persis, drenched by the incoming rain, cried out. From hair to shoes she was almost instantly as wet as if she had fallen into the cistern below. And so violent was the assault of water and wind she could hardly take a breath, gasping like a newly landed fish.
But the fury of the storm swept in someone else. Persis was only aware of a crouching figure who was blown, or rushed near the hearth. Then she gave all the strength she could muster to aid Mrs. Pryor and Molly in, once more shutting and securing the door. They forced it closed, leaving runnels of rain, even bits of torn leaves on the floor. When the bolts at top and bottom were again set Mrs. Pryor stood for a long moment breathing deeply, her round face red under the draggle of her soaked and wind-twisted cap and hair. Molly’s hands were at her breast, which rose and fell with the deep gusts she drew into and expelled from her laboring lungs.
Only Persis turned to see who had come out of the storm. She shrank back, muffling a scream only in time. That—that thing—crouched by the hearth hardly looked human!
There were long dark sticks of legs, arms as thin, ending in hands like the claws of some huge predatory bird. And the rest of the body was covered with water-slimed leather, some of that in tatters, topped by a shirt so stained as to be nearly as dark as the leather. But it was the head—now swung around toward the girl–In color it was as dark brown as the wretched rags of the shirt, and it bore no resemblance to any living creature. How could it? With those great upstanding ears like those of a bat, while the eyes were only deep holes not even showing a flicker of life within them. The nose was merely a raised lump in which Persis saw no nostrils, but the mouth was round, pursed, stuck outward from the surface as if this monster sought fiercely to suck at something.
Mrs. Pryor came away from the door. There was no dismay on the housekeeper’s face as she stooped to pick up the lantern and set it once more on the table.
“Ill weather, Askra,” she commented.
The tattered, mud-smeared creature out of the storm stood up stiffly, as if her joints were racked by rheumatism. Now Persis could see a tangle of coarse gray hair on her shoulders, rain-wet into loops which dripped on the floor.
She grunted and reached both bird-claw hands to the back of her head, fumbled there for a moment or two, and then that awful, unnatural face fell forward, lying, still held by a cord, to hang like a bib on her flat breast.
The newcomer was dark skinned, but her features were totally unlike those of the black servants. Instead she had a large, high-bridged nose jutting forward to overhang her mouth and chin, while her forehead slanted back in a way to accent the nose even more.
Persis had seen Indians in the North, the broken remnants of the once proud and feared Six Nations. But this very old woman was very different from those. For all her ragged and filthy clothing she carried herself as if she were mistress here. And she said nothing as she brushed back the matted elf locks of her hair. Her eyes slid past Mrs. Pryor and she did not answer the other’s comment. Instead she looked directly at Persis.
Try as she might to break that steady locking of gaze the girl could not move her eyes, nor turn away her head. The other held her in a kind of trance by some force of personality, as if she could so reach directly into the captive’s mind and read every thought lying there.
“Rockets!” That cry brought an abrupt end to their confrontation.
Lydia stood in the doorway from the hall. Her cloak was plastered to her body, streams of water ran from it.
“We saw rockets!” she repeated. “There’s a wreck on the reef!”
6
P ersis paced the hallway back and forth. She could not sit still, nor could she control the vivid pictures her imagination painted of what might be happening out there, beyond the walls of the house which shuddered under every lash of the wind. Lydia was strung up to a high rate of excitement, but even she did not again seek the dangerous walk on the roof, only chattered faster and faster about other storms and what had resulted from them. She had shed the dripping cloak and now sat on the bottom step of the stair talking, always talking. Until Persis wanted to cover her ears as Molly had done.
She grew so tired with her pacing that at last she was driven to a chair in the dining room where three candles made very small pools of light, and shadows hung over their shoulders like baneful beasts about to seize their prey. As Mrs. Pryor had warned, the food was cold—bread, jam, slices of cured ham, with not even a cup of comforting tea to wash it down.
Lydia still speculated on the prizes which such high seas offered—she seemed to have no thought in her head of lives which might be lost on those vessels caught in the full turbulence of the storm. But she was silenced completely when the crystals in the unlit chandelier over them gave a sudden sharp tinkle, clashing prism against prism, and the very floor under them appeared to shift.
Persis noted that Lydia’s hand, resting on the table, closed in a tight grip on the edge of the board, her nails cutting into the heavy linen of the cloth which covered it.
But that lurch of the house was followed by a calm and Persis relaxed a little until Mrs. Pryor came in, herding Sukie before her, examining each windowsill for signs of a betraying trickle of water.
“Is—is it over?” Persis asked.
“Laws, no, Miss. This is the center—what they call ‘the eye’—when that passes over we’ll again have wind.” There was something steadying about Mrs. Pryor, as if no torrent of rain, no fury of gale could beset her. As Persis had done she changed into dry clothing and reordered her old-fashioned coiffure, looking her usual self.
But the news she had brought was certainly not encouraging and Persis instinctively braced herself for a return of the fury. She had even lost all idea of time; it seemed to her that the fury had lasted forever. Was it night, morning—? However, tired as she was, she could not have crawled into bed with that rage of elements outside.
Then the blow did start again, even as the housekeeper had predicted, and went on for what seemed like hours and hours, never letting them go. Lydia stopped talking at last. Persis had barely listened to her chatter when the second hard assault began. Sometimes she could not hear anyway, only see the other’s lips moving. They sat in the parlor, a single wavering candle flame between them. Once or twice there came such a crash that Persis was sure a part of the house had been beaten in. But she had regained enough of her own stubborn courage so that she refused to let Lydia see how stark her fear was.
What of the ships out there? The Arrow had been brought to the wharf so that its repairs could be more easily estimated. But with this second battering it might be left in a far worse state. Captain Leverett was on the open sea—daring his ship—and his life with those of his men. The rockets Lydia had sighted—would those who had fired them be as lucky as they of the Arrow had been?
Persis discovered Lydia was watching her closely, with some of the same searching which had been used by the tattered hag who had sought shelter in the kitchen hours earlier.
“Glad you aren’t out there?” Lydia’s lips shaped a hint of a smile. “The Arrow would never have lasted through this—and probably Crewe would not have dared to steer too close to the reef to help—not in this storm. And Crewe is the best wrecker on the Keys.”
Persis did not want to think about the Arrow; she wished she could erase the sounds of th
e storm as well.
“How did he become a wrecker?” Persis asked.
Lydia pouted. “Because he is so stubborn. He has had his master’s papers since he was eighteen; our father was an Indies merchant in the Canton Trade. He wanted Crewe to go in with him but Crewe had to have the sea. So he ran away on one of the China clippers. He was only twelve but he had the same stubborn temper even then!” She laughed. “He still does—hotter than hell, Ralph says—only he keeps it all inside. But when he lets go—“She made a gesture which suggested the scattering of bits of emotion. “Anyway, he is a natural-born seaman, and he worked hard. Then he got in with Palmer Briggs—”
Persis gave a start which she was sure that the sharp-eyed Lydia did not miss. Palmer Briggs was well known in New York—too well known and for the worst of reasons.
“Oh, Crewe never commanded a slaver.” Lydia’s chin lifted a fraction. “Only scum takes out one of those. But Palmer was interested in wrecking. He’d lost a couple of slave ships to the Navy and they were downright suspicious of anything he sent to sea. So he made a deal with Crewe—to try the Keys and see how it worked. Only right after that Palmer Briggs did fail, in fact he went bankrupt. And Crewe bought the ship somehow from the trustees who took over to settle affairs.
“Then he came down here and purchased this Key, from the widow of Sancho Mendoza who held it by Spanish law. He thought that the Key West men were working together to get rid of those they did not like. And they certainly had no time for Crewe. He’s beat them to too many wrecks and made first deals with the captains. This house—he brought ships’ carpenters in from the islands to build it.” She looked around with pride.
“When my father died, Crewe had me go to school in Charleston in the Carolinas—” She made a face. “Don’t do this, a lady never thinks of that, and all the rest!” Her voice made clear her opinion of the school. “I kept begging him to bring me here. What a fool I was!”
Her expression was set now. “I didn’t know, you see, just what it would mean being shut away on this—this desert! There was a girl from Key West at school—Sallie Mathews—and she had made life there sound so exciting. But there’s nothing to do here. And I don’t see how Crewe ever expects me to get married. Married to who—Dr. Veering? He’s near old enough to be my father, and besides all he can think of are his plants. And the rescued people from the ships—they stay only long enough to get passage away. I might just as well be buried!”
Persis longed to ask how Ralph Grillon fitted into Lydia’s dismal picture of life on Lost Lady, but she wanted no confidences.
“You’re lucky.” Lydia was watching her again with a slightly calculating look. “You have a good reason to go on to Key West, even to the Bahamas. Just don’t let Crewe try to run things for you, too.”
“There is no reason why he should take any responsibility for my affairs,” Persis tried to make that sound emphatic.
Lydia laughed. “Crewe doesn’t give reasons—he just goes ahead and does what he thinks is proper and suddenly you find yourself under his thumb. So watch out!” She lifted her hand to half-cover a yawn. “I’m sleepy. One gets used to this after a while, you know, and you can really sleep.”
Persis took that for a hint. She did not in the least desire to climb the stairs to her own shuttered room. But Lydia had already blown out one candle and taken up the second. Very reluctantly Persis arose in turn, shielding the very small flame of the last candle with her cupped hand, and followed Lydia up the stairs. She wished now that she had suggested Molly would share her quarters but her pride kept her from carrying out that wish.
Once in her chamber she undressed only to the extent of shedding her dress and slippers, putting on her wrapper and lying on the wide bed ready for any alarm. However, perhaps Lydia was right, one did become accustomed to the continual sound of the storm. For, in spite of the fear she fought so hard to conceal, Persis did fall into a very disturbing sleep.
Disturbed by dreams—Once more she stood pressed against the wall of the upper hall listening to that whisper which might have come from invisible silken skirts brushing against the floor, seeing those slowly weaving glints of light. But this time as the presence passed her she was drawn after it in spite of every force of will she used to try and break free.
Then the walls of the corridor were gone, the house was gone. She was in the open, though around her, at a distance, was a barrier of stone. There was no sign of the storm. It was night and somehow very still, no insect call, not a stir of breeze, only the swish-swish which marked the unseen passing of the presence.
They came to the far side of the barrier. The glints now flickered with greater speed, but always in a constrained area. Then slowly, very slowly, those sank toward the earth, seemed to plunge into the dark surface she could not clearly see. And, at their disappearance, Persis was free.
She awoke. The room steamed with humidity and heat. Her clothing was plastered to her body and her head ached. But for a moment the dream lingered with her so that it seemed she would be not on this wide bed, in a room, but outside in the dark of a night where there was no moon, no star she could remember.
Persis sat up. There had been, she tried to tell herself sensibly, nothing really frightening about the dream. She had not herself been menaced in any way. Why did she then feel so weak, so shaken, as if she had to outrun pursuers bent on taking her life? She rubbed her hands across her sweat-dampened face. Only then she realized that there was no sound of wind or rain. And around the edges of the shutters where she could see was light.
Pulling herself off the bed she went to the near window, listened intently for any sound of the storm. It was as quiet as it had been in her first awakening here. Thankfully she jerked out the tags of rags that maids had tamped in to cover all possible cracks and looked out into a morning which was cloudy, yes, but still.
The vegetation had a ragged look. She saw several fallen palms, and the water in the canal lapped very high against the mound.
The Arrow appeared as if it had been hammed against the wharf, one side stove in. But there was no sign of the Nonpareil at anchorage.
Persis washed in water from the pitcher on the dressing stand, dressed in fresh underlinen and one of her own gowns which Molly had done her best to rehabilitate. It was a pink muslin patterned with small shiny dots, though it looked rather limp and ill used in spite of Molly’s effort to refurbish it.
Now she was aware of being very hungry. Would the fires be lit again? She would like above all a cup of hot tea; her mouth actually felt dry when she thought of it. Tea and biscuits, and perhaps some of the fruit which seemed a usual part of any breakfast here.
There was no use in trying to make her hair curl properly. The damp of the sea wind denied her that small vanity. So she combed and braided it up into a knot which was the best she could do. And then she went out into the hall. For a second the memory of her dream gripped her again—but it was only a dream Persis told herself firmly. She was not going to be continually set aflutter by her imagination.
The house was very quiet. Perhaps the rest of the household were still sleeping off the alarms of the storm. She hesitated for a moment at Lydia’s door, half-inclined to knock; then felt no need. Rather she could find Molly, and the best place to hunt would be the kitchen.
As Persis went, the quiet of the house disturbed her more and more. She had an odd feeling that she was the only one now within its walls, deserted. An odd fancy and one she quickly quenched. Only, when she found the kitchen also empty, no fire set, nor any sign of Mam Rose and the others, she was again shaken.
The back door which they had bolted so firmly after the arrival of Askra now stood a little ajar. Instinctively, Persis headed for that. Mam Rose and the maids must have returned to their own cabins—that was it—and had overslept. It was not her place to awaken them, of course, but she could at least step outside and see what kind of a day it was.
A fresh sea wind pulled at her skirts and tugged vainly to lo
osen a lock or two from her tight top braids. Leaves and plants torn into fragments littered the ground. She could see no path through this mess, nor any sign of the cabins, though she continued toward the farther side of the mound, picking her way with care among the debris.
Then, there had been a slippage of the earth and shell of which the mound itself was made. Enough to uncover rough stones, set in a line which could only mean they had been placed there on purpose.
And two of those had been rammed askew by half a palm; its trunk now a splintered stump. Persis paused. Those stones—they should have stood higher—much higher! But how did she know that?
Wondering, she gathered up her skirts with both hands and edged past the wreckage of the palm to look at the remnants of what must be a very old wall. One of the long splinters torn from the palm had dug deeply into the surface of the mound at this point and there was something there—not stone—
Persis stooped, jerked a good-sized bit of palm frond loose, and dug into the loosened earth. A box! Of some dull metal which was the same color now as the ground which had held it.
It was narrow, about eighteen inches long. She wriggled it out of its niche and picked it up, to discover it was surprisingly heavy. Lead? A lead box. Something concealed here long ago by the Spaniards, or by a pirate?
She tried to force it open and finally had to admit that though she could see no lock, it was firmly closed. Carrying it carefully, she went back to the kitchen, in her mind a memory picture of the rack of knives on the wall there.
“Aaaaa–”
Persis jumped and dropped the knife, the blade of which she had been trying to force under the edge of the lid.
That witchlike creature who had been blown out of the storm was standing there staring at her with that same compelling, measuring look. Persis had never remembered feeling such a fear of any person before—