“Get up, Augusta. Enough. You are forgiven.” He pulls his hand from me. “There’s real work that needs to be done tonight. You should leave me in peace. Go back to your home.”
“But Judge, we’re all alone in the house. Can’t you send someone to protect us?” My hands are on my face. The sobs come lurching up my throat.
“My men are all in the field, Augusta. Good Lord, get ahold of yourself.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t help it.” The wind is roaring outside like a wild beast.
“Let me get you a brandy.” Judge rises from his seat.
“I’m so sorry, Judge.”
He walks to a chest of drawers in the corner and pours a small brandy into a glass. He holds it out to me and I take it. I push myself off the floor and move back to my seat. The bottle taps against my leg. I pull it out. The bottle feels cold between my fingers.
Judge’s eyes are on me. I remove the cork. The acrid odor is intense. My head jerks away, but underneath, I can smell the laudanum. The liquid is darker than the brandy, and they swirl together in gold and brown as I pour in a little tonic. I can smell the bark and liquor, too. I tilt the glass back, feeling the heat of the laudanum against my lips. I open slightly, taking a small taste into my mouth. My mouth reflexes into a grimace in spite of myself.
“What is that?” Judge asks sharply.
I look at the bottle and place it on the table. It shines in the lamplight. “A tonic that Emma made to ward off the fever. I swear it’s the only thing that has kept us safe.” I lift the glass again. The liquid touches my lips, but I cannot drink.
Judge frowns at me and looks at the bottle. “It works, you say?” he asks. “What fear will do to people. You believe these darky superstitions?”
“I know it seems foolish, but Eli died from it, Judge, and we were all with him. But none of us have gotten sick. I worry myself all day about it. The only thing I can reason is because of Emma’s tonic.”
Judge picks up the bottle. His hand holds it tightly so that bones and veins bulge through his waxy skin. He lifts it to his nose and inhales in a huff. He pulls back quickly, his eyes wide and his mouth creased in a deep frown. He brings it back to his mouth and tilts the bottle back, taking a sip. “Awful stuff,” he says, wiping it from his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s bitter.”
“Yes, it is.” Drink it. I tilt my glass back again. One tiny sip. My skin buzzes from the taste of the laudanum. I cannot have more. This much I can tolerate, but no more. “Emma insists we drink it all at a gulp, but I just can’t. I have to sip it.”
His eyes are on the bottle, analyzing the muddy liquid inside. “It keeps the fever off, does it?”
“Yes, I’m sure it does. I’ll have Emma send you over more tomorrow.”
He sniffs at the bottle. “All at once?”
“Yes, sir.”
He gives a grim smile and tilts the bottle back, drawing it into his mouth. His throat contracts as he swallows. Once. Twice. His Adam’s apple bobs with each draught. Three times. Four. The bottle is empty. He gives a coughing groan, almost a belch, and sets the empty bottle on the table. “Terrible stuff. But if it keeps the fever at bay.” He walks evenly over to a chest of drawers and pours himself a brandy, which he throws back quickly. He leaves the glass on the chest and sits at the table, picking up his pen. He dips it into the ink and scratches at the paper. “Buck should be by soon to give me his report. They’ve been combing the North Ward, looking for these insurrectionists.” He coughs against his sleeve and resumes writing.
“Have they been out long? Hunting these men?” His face is mesmerizing. Is he reacting? His eyes squint. Will it work? The saddlebag is so close. How long before Buck comes?
Judge looks up at me and squints again. “Since sundown. With the storm now, I don’t know how much more work they can do. At least it seems to have broken the heat.” He holds his pen in midair, scanning the papers up and down. “Where was I?” He puts the pen against the paper and holds it there. He squints at the page. He lifts his left hand and rubs his eyes with his thumb and fingers. He squints at the page again. He looks at me.
His eyes are shocking blue. Though they blaze at me, they do not focus. They rove around me, trying to find my face. His mouth is open. His breath comes quickly. He has blanched pure white, the purple of his veins showing under the skin. He looks down at his hand. His hand is limp and the pen falls loose onto the table. He holds his hands before him, watching them as they tremble ever so gently. The wind is screaming through the trees. Rain has started to fall. It beats against the windows in waves.
Judge lifts his eyes to me, shaking his head. “My God, Augusta, what have you done?”
I stand and step back to the wall. “Nothing more than you deserve,” I whisper.
He looks around the room, at the lamp with its hissing wick, at his papers. He tries to grab the pen, but it rolls off the table and clatters on the floor. The papers flutter down over it. He looks up at me again and places his hands on the arms of the chair. He tries to push himself up. “I swear to God, I’ll kill you myself,” he says. His voice is weak and slurred. He glares at me. He means to come after me, but he can’t grip the chair. He pushes himself, but he has grown too weak. He wrenches forward in a convulsion. His body contracts as if he will vomit. He falls from the chair to his knees, hitting the small table, knocking it forward and crashing to the floor with it.
The lamp explodes into a million pieces of glittering glass, and a pool of flame jumps from the floorboards. Judge is curled up next to it, retching, his body rejecting the tonic and the poison. It floods out of his mouth in a river of mud. He is too weak already. The flames dance across the floor. They reach his legs and his dark pants flare up in bursts.
“Help me, Augusta. Dear God, help me.” He twists his body in agony, his face contorted and ghastly, like a demon’s from the depths of hell. He feels the fire. My God, the flames are everywhere. They leap from the floor to the drapes and climb until they are smoking garlands of flame that touch the ceiling.
I hold my skirts against me and race into his bedroom. I take up the leather satchel and pull it open to reveal a mass of banknotes.
The fire has swallowed the study. Judge is writhing on the floor, blanketed in flame, howling like a mad animal, like the wind outside.
I run down the stairs. I must hold tight to the saddlebag. I hug it against my stomach as I burst out the door into the torrents of rain. It is falling in pounding sheets, and the wind blows it against me. I am soaked before I reach the street. I don’t care. My God, Judge is dead. He must be dead.
This rain. The heat has broken. I have broken its back, and it is all cold, driving rain against my skin, in my hair, soaked through my dress. The streets are black. I cannot see through the rain that surrounds me. If only it is not too late for Simon. The gravel lane is so long, lined with wild gardens heaving in the wind and rain. The houses seem to melt from the relentless drive of it. They twist and bend in the wind that is pulling them apart, cracking them open, and flooding them with rain as they melt back into the earth. I have won. I have killed the dragon. He will not hunt and kill anymore. It is all like laughter and tears and this cold rain. I have killed him.
The keys are awkward in my fumbling hands. Finally, it slips into the lock, and the kitchen door opens. I must lock it again behind me. Emma and Henry. I race through the dining room and up the stairs, through my bedroom, and back to the nursery.
“Emma,” I whisper, tapping on the door. “Emma, it’s Gus.”
The door opens, and I fall into Emma’s arms. She holds me tight. Henry is sitting up in bed in the dark, frightened. My hair is hanging in thick wet strands over me, dripping water from my sleeves on the floor.
“Henry, you’re safe. We’re going to be safe. Mama is back.” I kneel beside his bed. He is in my arms. He is crying and doesn’t know why but that he wants to cry. Through the window, even through the heavy rain and wild wind, there is an orange glow over the trees,
rising up against the storm.
Emma steps behind me. “Whose house is that?” she asks, keeping her eyes on the orange light.
“Judge’s house,” I whisper, holding Henry close to me. “Judge’s house.”
Emma puts a hand on my shoulder. I feel as if my blood has suddenly reawakened, as if my heart is pumping again after being still for a long time. I am alive again. It is my father’s blood in me. Hill had the same blood. And Mike. It is their blood, too, pushing through me.
There is a pounding like cannon fire, close. Is it thunder? It sounds again. I let go of Henry and look at Emma. Her eyes are wide with terror. There is another loud crack. It is not thunder, even though the wind roars and lashes rain against the windowpanes. It is coming from the house. From downstairs.
“Gus!” A shout. A howl louder than the wind. The howl of a wild animal, caught in a trap. “Gus!”
“Buck,” I say. My mouth is dry. Emma is frozen, and Henry starts crying again. “Give me the gun. Take Henry to the barn. Quietly. Through Eli’s office.” Emma digs the pistol out of her pocket and hands it to me. She gathers Henry up in her arms.
I am already through the door. “Quietly,” I say. Emma holds Henry against her and steps slowly down the back stairs. I close my bedroom door and bolt it. My skirts are soaked and drag at my feet. My hands tremble. There is another pounding and then a crash. He has kicked the door in. I am at the top of the stairs. I shove the gun in the pocket of my soaked dress and hold tightly to the banister. The shaking seems to overwhelm me.
“Gus, where are you.” Buck is screaming.
“I’m here, Buck,” I call out. One step at a time down the stairs. He is a silhouette standing in the dark hall, the front door open behind him. The rain surges in, lashed by the wind.
“Pa is dead,” he says, and he looks up at the ceiling, bringing his hands to the sides of his head. His voice is thick, as if he has been drinking. “The house is on fire.”
My hand twists in my pocket, feeling for the gun, for the loop and trigger.
“I saw you running from the house. What did you do, Gus?” He lurches forward. Water drips off his black hair and chin. He is possessed by a senseless rage. He must have done that damage at the mill. “Did those niggers do it? Why were you at Pa’s house? Are you helping them?”
“I did it, Buck. They had nothing to do with it.” I slip the gun out of my pocket and point it at him. I brace myself against the banister.
His mouth opens, but he doesn’t speak. He shakes his head. “You’ve lost your mind.” The words come heaving out of him. “You don’t know your own mind anymore. Is this what Eli did to you? After everything we’ve all suffered. I can still hear the cannons, Gus. I hear them every day. And you go and join up with the people we are protecting you from.” He steps toward me. I raise the gun.
“I can see with my own eyes, Buck. Eli didn’t do anything to me. I know who you and Judge are. I can see the poison in all of you.”
“Poison? We’re getting the poison out, Gus. We’re fighting to save us all from chaos, from madness! God is on our side!” His voice rises to a shriek.
“God should strike you dead. Like the night of the barn dance? You coward, that’s how you fight?” My hand is shaking. Water drips from my sleeve.
He shakes his head, and the rainwater scatters. The force of the wind throws the front door back on its hinges. It slams into the wall and swings back. “We were attacked that night, Gus. I was protecting you.”
“You’re a liar. Why would you be so stupid as to tell Mike something that awful? It was planned. You and Judge did it. And now Mike is dead because of you and Judge.”
“Those niggers killed Mike. They stole something that wasn’t theirs, and they got what they deserved. You should be pointing that gun at them.”
“It’s all gone now, Buck, burned to ashes—the list and the money. You’ll never have any of it in spite of the killing you’ve done.”
“Why are you doing this, Gus? Why are you doing this to me? You had everything you needed. Why couldn’t you listen to Pa?”
“You all act like you are so honorable, but you aren’t. Not like Hill was. Or Pa. You tragic coward. You really do whatever your pa tells you.”
“I don’t want to have to do this, Gus.” He steps closer to me. “You know that I’ve always loved you, even when you were with Eli. I won’t take this from you. You’re the one full of poison. And I’ll rip it right out of you.” He takes another step.
I hold the pistol out from me. My hand grips the banister so tight it will break. “I will shoot you, Buck. I’m just afraid the bullet won’t kill you.”
He takes another step toward me. Another. The shadows hide his face. He is a black figure moving closer. I have to shoot him. I aim and pull the trigger. There is only a click. A misfire. The powder is wet.
He leaps at me and wrests the gun from my hand, flinging it aside. “I’ll rip the nigger lover out of you, Gus,” he says.
I fall back on the stairs. He is on top of me. His face is wild with rage. He presses his mouth against my face, hard. The taste of metal is on my tongue. He holds my wrists, pressing them into the sharp edge of the steps. His legs are over me, pinning me down. The bones will snap. I am screaming, but there is nobody to hear. He tears at my bodice, pulling and ripping at my skirts. The thunder cracks over us as if the house has been hit by a shell. Buck rears up and his body loosens. The pressure is gone. He looks into my eyes, and a small ribbon of blood comes from the corner of his mouth. He sighs, and his eyes roll back in his head. He falls backward off the stairs into a pile on the floor.
Simon is standing at the open doorway. A thread of smoke twines from the muzzle of the gun he is holding.
“Oh, Simon,” I whisper. “Thank God you’re alive.”
Twenty-five
IT IS JUST AN hour before sunrise and Simon must go. He must find that sad caravan and join them on their way to Kansas. He insists on going and he cannot stay in Albion. It is his duty, he says. And it is mine to stay here. The army will move in now. The sickness will abate. After last night, it is hard to worry about the sickness.
Simon was in the barn even before I got back from Judge’s. He brought Little John with him. Emma must have thought a miracle had happened when she found them there. It must have been some sort of miracle. I stood with Simon while he dug a common grave for Mike and Buck in the soft earth under the grape arbor. The rain dripped through the leaves onto us. He told me Garson had too much to bear already with what had happened. He couldn’t worry about an orphan boy, too. He laughed as he said it as if he were laughing at himself. Then he held the shovel and looked at me, both of us shivering dark shadows under the dripping leaves.
“I took him for me. And for Rachel. He will be my son.”
“You are good, Simon,” I said.
“I have a lot to make up for.” He forced the blade of the shovel into the earth and continued digging. The graves are flat now. Simon cut the turf over them and carefully replaced it. In a week or so, they will not be visible. And if they are, what can anyone say when there are so many new graves everywhere?
I don’t know how we slept last night.
Emma and I shared my bed with Little John and Henry tucked in between us. They curled up tight together and slept so soundly. Emma and I looked at each other for a long while. It has been so long since we shared a bed like that. Not since I was a girl. She took my hand and smiled. Her hands feel so good.
Simon slept in the nursery, but the doors were open, and I could hear his even, full breathing. It pulled at me. What will we do without him? We will go on. We have money and the house and whatever is left to us from Eli and from Judge after this chaos. But Simon will be missing. He will be an empty place, always waiting to be filled. I will wait for him. I know Emma will, too. He will come back to us.
Simon walks onto the back porch with Little John. Emma and Henry are close beside me. We are in our wraps and nightclothes. The morning mist i
s heavy, and the dark gray silhouettes of dawn rise up before a rose-edged sky. They must go before the light.
“Say goodbye to Simon, Henry. Shake his hand.” Simon smiles at me. Henry steps toward him and holds out his hand.
“You be a good boy, Mr. Branson, and listen to your mama,” Simon says. Little John reaches out to shake Henry’s hand, too. Henry reaches for him, and they give each other a hug and cautious kisses on the cheek.
“Good, Henry,” I say. “Tell Little John that you will write to him.” He nods and holds on to my skirts.
Simon hugs Emma and whispers something in her ear.
Then he is before me. I do not know what to say to him.
“Thank you, Gus,” he says.
“Thank you, Simon.” I step off the porch and put my arms around him. He holds me for a moment, the two of us pressed against each other. He will come back. I am certain he will. “And I have this for you.” I pull the bundle of newspaper from my pocket and put it in his hands.
“What is it?” he asks, and unfolds the paper and looks inside. “I can’t take this from you. Not now.”
“Yes, you can. It is yours. We had an agreement. That is your half.” I feel as if my whole body is smiling at him. “I do not want to be someone who dishonors an agreement. Take it. I want to see the good you will do with it.”
He smiles back. “As you say.” He winks at Emma. “We should be on our way. Right, Little John?” He takes Little John’s hand. “But you can’t be little anymore. You’re going to have to be a man to help me. You’ve got to be big now.”
“Yes, sir,” Little John says in his small voice. They turn and walk away down the gravel path to where the horse waits, tethered by the trough. Simon lifts Little John up and sets him in the saddle, then climbs on himself.
Emma puts her arm through mine, and we lean against each other. Henry stands between us, nestled in our skirts.
“What did he say to you, Emma?” I ask.
Emma smiles but keeps her eyes on Simon. “He just said he’s putting me in charge until he comes back. He wants me to watch over you, but he knows well enough you don’t need watching over.” She laughs and I pull her closer to me.
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