River Magic

by Martha Hix

  “We can’t leave just yet.” Panic, merging with the pragmatic, gripped India. “We must go to White Post.”

  “Conn’s right, Ind. We need to make haste.”

  “Indy, sweetheart, we’ve got to save your neck.”

  “I haven’t come this far—after so many, many months—and not do what I can to save my family. And save Antoinette, too, now. My purpose is to find Papa’s gold. Don’t tell me I can’t.”

  A semblance of a smile lifted an edge of Burke’s mouth. “Ind can sure get big for such a doll-size gal.”

  “She’s learned to make up for her size.” Respect and admiration in Connor’s mien. “The lady’s set on a goal, and we shouldn’t stop her.”

  “Whatever. But, Conn, I suggest we steam to a different locale and wait for nightfall before you set off.”

  “Sounds wise to me.”

  India noted a desktop Seth Thomas. Already the hour of seven had passed. “It’s also for the best if we don’t dock at White Post. We can go ashore a mile or so away, walk to the root cellar.” India eyed the patient. “Burke, do you think you can see after her for a few hours?”

  “Aye.”

  Wading ashore, shovels in hand—and ducking behind trees and shrubs to keep from alerting the sentries—India, Connor, and Matt headed for the buildings that surrounded White Post Plantation’s root cellar. A half moon gave enough light to keep the hunters from stepping in holes or on varmints—much appreciated. But would that light call attention to them?

  Luckily, they caught the Union occupiers unaware, and, in fact, asleep, even the sentries. No one noticed as they stole to the root cellar that could make or break a family.

  Thankfully, Matt knew where to dig. While the open doorway provided some light, he lit a lucifer to guide him to the exact spot. “Someone’s been poking around here.” He pointed out evidence of a recent excavation. “We’re out of luck.”

  “Let’s see for ourselves.” Connor got to digging.

  India and Matt did their part, but after making a foot-deep hole in the ground, she put down her shovel to lament, “All this way for nothing.”

  “Squirt, I’ll bet any amount of money Zeke Pays has it.”

  “You’re not a gambling man.”

  Matt spoke. “That Iowa codger is halfway home by now.”

  “You’re wrong, Marshall. I’ve got faith in him. He’s done the heroic thing for his ’purty li’l gal.’ ”

  India couldn’t believe her ear, and wished for full light to see Connor’s face. “I never thought I’d ever hear you say anything nice about Zeke.”

  “Miracles do happen.”

  Not too keen on the mystical at the moment, India clicked her tongue. “Well, let’s hightail it before the Army catches us trespassing on requisitioned property.”

  She bent to collect her discarded shovel, but her fingers touched something foreign. She jumped, imagining spiders and slithering reptiles, but this wasn’t alive. It felt like paper. Crumpled. She lifted it toward the light from the cellar door.

  A smile as radiant as the brightest day in summer burst across her face. “Sonny Boy, miracles do happen.”

  It was a calling card, of sorts. A paper bouquet fashioned by the most precious, most wonderful, most adorable hero who’d ever graced the State of Iowa.

  Twenty-five

  Three nights later, in the starlit hours before dawn, the Delta Star, all lights extinguished, nosed into a secluded cove on the northern edge of Pleasant Hill. Those who’d make this their final destination had to debark briskly, and a reluctant Burke had to get underway forthwith, else Federal patrol boats might get suspicious.

  Ashore, Intrepid shook his mane, snorted, then lowered his head to crop grasses, clearly gratified to have his hooves on land for the first time in weeks.

  India gazed back at the Delta Star. She, along with Connor and Matt, watched the great freighter back-paddle from the cove, her captain on the bridge.

  “It’s better that Burke goes.” Connor glanced over to the litter holding Antoinette. “She was lost to him, even before she lost her mind. He needs to get on with his life.”

  India suspected it would be a long, long time, perhaps forever, before Burke O’Brien would recover a broken heart. This, she knew, was not what her man needed to hear. She called up a cheerful tone. “Don’t forget he’s fated to meet his true bride on his thirtieth birthday.”

  “That’s four more years to suffer.”

  “At least it’s not a lifetime.”

  “Hey, y’all. Stop yammering.” Matt positioned himself at one end of the litter. “We need to get Antoinette abed. And I’m way overdue to cuddle my wife and boy.”

  “Put Antoinette in the kitchen house.” India smiled. “I’ll tend her there until the household awakens.”

  Matt agreed. “Heave ho, Major.”

  Connor handed Intrepid’s reins to India, but dawdled. “Remember back in Rock Island?” he whispered to her, teasing, his breath making the hair stand up at her nape. “You vowed that I’d be the last man you’d bring home to Pleasant Hill.”

  “You would bring that up.”

  “I would. You were right. I’m the very last man you’ll introduce to Granny.” His tongue darted to an earlobe; she shivered, happy. “I am the first, and I’ll be the last.”

  “You can bank on that.”

  Matt said, “Stop! You’re torturing a love-hungry man.”

  Connor ran a fingertip across her lip. “Duty calls.”

  The men picked up the litter, began to climb the footpath leading up the hill where the plantation dwellings were situated. India, holding Intrepid’s reins loosely, lagged back.

  She inhaled the scents of river, magnolias, grasses. Such richness filled her with both joy and sadness. Home, at last. Soon she’d reunite with Granny Mabel, Persia, America, Catfish, Honoré, wee Stonewall . . . and sweet Zeke.

  But for the moment, and with even grander appreciation than Intrepid showed, she wanted simply to revel in the comfort of having her feet on the ground. Marshall ground

  So much had happened since leaving. Ohio, Illinois, afterward. Never would she have imagined returning home with a man to call her own. “Imagine, a Yankee from Dixie,” she said to Intrepid. “Who’d’ve ever thought? Then, I never figured on being wanted by the Union. But I might never’ve made it home. My neck could’ve dangled from several ropes. All in all, I’m one lucky gal. Tessa’s magic may’ve done Antoinette and Burke ill, but she had her chances, and he’ll have his. Now I’ve got mine.”

  Grinning, she hastened Intrepid along the path, eager to catch up with the Tennessean who’d become her very own Aladdin.

  Over these past months, Connor O’Brien had visualized many images of Pleasant Hill Plantation. He’d settled on a grim picture. A plantation house of perhaps eight or ten rooms, all falling to disgrace. He’d presumed remnants of Marshalls would be digging through abandoned slave gardens, seeking nourishment from a sprout or two of turnips and their greens.

  Leaning a shoulder against the wall outside the kitchen, India inside tending to Antoinette’s womanly needs and fingers of dawn helping him along, Connor eyed reality.

  Back in the boxcar, India had been right. It would take lots of money to keep this place afloat.

  Connor ambled away to study the grounds of the “farm” where India had been born and reared. “Pleasant hill” didn’t begin to describe it.

  Moss-draped live oaks, long mature and spreading wide, were in abundance. Magnolias, crape myrtles, oleanders, and azaleas banked the grand lawn—wider than Old Man River itself—that wove down the hill to the river. The land approach, from St. Francisville to the north, gave a splendid view of the shaded, cobbled lane. It didn’t take much to picture liveried, gilt carriages rolling up to the Marshall family seat.

  Connor swallowed. Three floors of red brick in height, with wings extending eastward, that wasn’t merely a home sitting on a ridge overlooking the Mississippi River. It was a palace.


  Fifteen marble steps led up to the main entrance and its deep, recessed portico. A dozen Corinthian columns supported a cornice, with a turreted widow’s walk capping the slate roof. Below the cornice, verandas extended across the structure on each floor. Pleasant Hill was not in disrepair.

  Surely India hadn’t lied about the family’s financial situation, but looks told a different story, even though neither fancy coaches lined the carriageway nor schools of slaves busied about. The war had touched Pleasant Hill, no doubt about that. Yet . . . somehow, through diligent effort on someone’s part, this place was surviving.

  Connor O’Brien was not a man to smoke or drink, not because of a puritan bent, but because it simply never appealed to him, habits that would get in the way of his attention to military duty. Right now, he’d have taken a big slug of some of Burke’s best bourbon whiskey, morning or not.

  India Marshall came from big money.

  Southern money.

  How would her family react to the man she’d brought home? A Southerner in the Union Army. Old Zeke could be paving the way for a Yankee invasion, but this Yankee had arrived poor and certain to stay that way.

  Connor centered on the kitchen. Behind those walls, his sweetheart tended the injured, just as she’d tended the misfortunates at Rock Island. Without complaint. As if she didn’t know the difference. Never once did she complain about privation—except for a little grousing in the boxcar.

  Her brother wasn’t the sort to compare his situation to the one he’d once known, either. Connor couldn’t recall hearing a word of brag out of either Marshall, which was the sort of attitude that came from several generations of big money.

  Connor chuckled, amazed. India had talked about Arabic lineage. Someone in the Marshall family must have rubbed a magic lamp and asked for pots of gold. Maybe that was where the inheritance falling to Winston Marshall, senior, had sprung.

  Continuing his reconnaissance tour, Connor set a course for the slave quarters. Nearing them, he saw a round black woman exit the overseer’s house.

  Humming, she wore a white turban on her head and a generous apron to protect her red-plaid dress. Under an arm she toted a whole ham; in a hand, a basket of eggs. Hers was a friendly voice as she asked, “Hey, massa, who you?”

  “Major Connor O’Brien.” He tipped his hat and stopped abreast of her. “What are you doing here, Mammy?” he asked, getting an idea of how Pleasant Hill had survived. The Marshalls had somehow held on to their slaves, which had a sickening quality to it. “Don’t you know you’ve been freed?”

  She set the basket down, placed the chicken atop it, then gave him what-for. “Firstly, I ain’t yo’ mammy. I’s Dahlia.”

  No one could put someone in their place quicker than a confident black woman in the South, and Dahlia was no exception. No doubt she’d blistered the butts of many misbehaving white children and a half dozen of her own. “I’s the cook. And I ain’t no slave. I’s hired right after you Yankees rode up to steal us blind.”

  Hired with what? he wondered.

  “ ’Sides,” she went on, “what dat, slav’ry? Ever’body a slave, even you. Doan you look at me like dat, Yankee. You’s serving Massa Lincoln, I’s fixing to serve breakfast for a fine gal doan come home. We’s all gots to eat. We’s all gots to work. We’s all slave to it.”

  “You have a point, Miss Dahlia. But slavery takes away freedom of choice.”

  “Where’m I goan go? You goan take Dahlia up North, set her free in the middle of nowhere, where she gots nobody?” Her big black eyes flashed. “I chooses not to live un’er some box up town. Miz India, she choosed to sell her purty pearls and the diamond rings her mammy left her. She sold ’em to a hateful Yankee massa to pay my sal’ry, but dat what she choosed. Just like dem Yankees choosed to go through the house and fill empty pockets, back last year.”

  Dahlia bent from the waist. “Iffen you’s here to start trouble, I’s goan scream. Miz India, she goan come after you with her gran’mammy’s butcher knife. Iffen I doan do it myse’f.”

  He patted the air. “There’ll be no need for that, ma’am. And I apologize for my mistake. I’m new around here.”

  “You a thief? Turn out dem pockets.”

  He did as ordered, and the emptiness gave evidence to his financial fix—chasing a woman didn’t come cheap. “Actually, Miss Dahlia, I’m affianced to your Miss India.”

  “You’s pullin’ Dahlia’s leg.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Humph. You may be purty, but—what you doin’, snoopin’ around here like a hungry dog?”

  “I had ideas to get at the truth. I’ve got it now. Thank you very much.”

  “Humph.” Lifting her nose and giving him a cold shoulder, the cook picked up her goods and sashayed by him.

  Connor had the truth, all right. That big beautiful palace wasn’t in disrepair because the residents had learned how to make the best of their situation. India was a master at it.

  “Is that ye, ye whelp? What tookened ye so long?”

  There was no mistaking that voice. Connor changed directions again. He strode toward the elderly man and the petite elderly woman who approached him. Zeke Pays had trimmed his ragged beard, had even put a curling iron to the ends. What a dandy! He had his arm lifted at a gallant angle, and his lady’s palm lay across it. She had to be Granny Mabel.

  She wore neither crinolines nor lace. She was dressed for work, wearing britches and a cotton shirt, making the best of it.

  “Mabel honey, I suspect yer grand-girl be home. This be her man, Major Connor O’Brien of the Union Army.”

  “Welcome, sir.”

  Connor took relief in her genuine greeting.

  And he got a glimpse of what India would look like, a decade or so after 1900. Mabel Mathews Marshall, angular-faced and blue-eyed, was a fair-complected archetype of her granddaughter. Growing old with India would be a visual delight.

  Yet Connor couldn’t quell a worry. Where did he, a penniless soldier, fit into Pleasant Hill?

  India delighted in being home. After making certain of Antoinette’s comfort, and after feeding the patient a bowl of gruel that she’d swallowed mechanically, India reunited with her beautiful-as-ever little sister.

  She told Persia as much as could be told about her adventures in the space of a few minutes, most of that time being spent talking about Connor, though she did thank Persia for the inspiration that got her through a few close calls.

  As for closer calls, India decided not to mention Port Hudson. There would be time enough for it, and she wanted nothing to spoil today.

  “It’s marvelous having you home.” Persia’s ivory-toned face eased into a beatific smile. “Life is wonderful right now. You and a fiance here, and I’ve just received word from Tim.”

  “How is he?” India asked, barely recalling that the poetry reader had once been her ideal.

  “Tim is fine. But he fears the war is lost to the South.”

  “What will be, will be. Too bad it’s not over now.”

  India and Persia hugged, agreeing.

  Dahlia arrived. In no uncertain terms she shooed the sisters out of her kitchen. They fetched an invalid chair, got Antoinette into it, then wheeled her to a ground-floor room in the big house adjacent to the suite America never left. Her nurse took over. India went to her still-lovely older sister, tried to make conversation, but America didn’t understand.

  “Where’s Kirby? Where’s my man?” she asked over and over.

  “We’ve told her time and again Kirby’s dead. It doesn’t sink in.” Persia pulled India aside. “Let’s go. I’m hungry. Dahlia’s scraped together a fine breakfast.”

  “First, I want you to meet my man.”

  Persia being Persia, she patted her thick coil of raven-black hair and pinched her cheeks to make herself presentable. “How do I look?”

  “Like Persia.”

  Once the introductions were over, and after Connor had met all the family, they broke their fast in the gaze
bo overlooking the river. All that remained of the home crew, save for America, sat at table; Connor and Zeke made welcome additions, even though Connor appeared shy in the face of a Marshall multitude.

  He’d get over it.

  A morning breeze bathed the eaters, defying the Louisiana summer. Plates were heaped with ham and its red-eye gravy, grits, eggs, plus fluffy biscuits. India smiled. Why, this was just like the old days. Lots of food and lots of folks.

  No one spoke a word against Connor or Zeke for their Yankeeness, though India knew it didn’t go unnoticed. Persia’s husband was fighting with General Forrest, Catfish had lost his father to an enemy bullet, and the whole family had suffered in varying degrees for the War of the Rebellion.

  India supposed the Billy Blues she’d brought here in 1863 had inured the family to enemy presence. And Matt’s easy acceptance of Connor had to mean something. Whatever the case, she wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

  Granny Mabel and Zeke—India took pride in having figured those two would make a pair—chatted and teased each other.

  But Persia stole the show, giving the lowdown on Tim Glennie’s latest letter. When hadn’t she been the center of attention? Once that would have bothered India. No more. She smiled again, thinking about all that inspiration and how it had given her the gumption to keep after Connor. But she did cast a covert eye to see how he was reacting to the beauteous Persia. He didn’t seem the least bit in thrall.

  “Uncle Matt,” said Kirby Abbott, III, better known as Catfish, “I am glad you’re home. I’m sick of runnin’ the farm.”

  Matt pulled his eyes from his voluptuous blond wife. They hadn’t wanted to leave their room; there was no guessing why. He ruffled his nephew’s hair. “It’s good to be back, lad.”

  Young Stonewall banged his spoon on the table, not at all interested in his father paying attention to another boy. “Me. See me,” shrieked the toddler. “Me.”