‘What, Jeb? What’s up?’ The man who had been watching Mattie so intently was the last to catch on that something was afoot. Sensing the odd tension in the air, he looked perplexedly from one to another.
‘This – ain’t – Johnny Sherwood,’ Sangster said, very slowly. ‘An’ what’s more, it ain’t –’ He stopped. Then he smiled, a huge, savagely malicious smile. ‘It’s a mother-fuckin’ niggrah,’ he said softly. ‘By Christ, it’s a niggrah and a Sherwood!’ He took two steps and had Joshua by his shirtfront, his face thrust close. ‘It’s the uppity – Sherwoods’ – uppity – niggrah – ain’t it?’ he asked, screwing the shirt tighter about his fist at every word. ‘It’s Joshua.’ He breathed the word softly, filled it with venom and hate. ‘Ain’t it?’
Mattie, barefoot and clad in nothing but one of Logan Sherwood’s oversized nightshirts, scrambled without thought from the bed and flew at Sangster like a harpy. ‘Get away from him! Get away!’ She threw herself upon him, shrieking, blind with terror and with fury, and for a moment, taken off balance, he let go of Joshua and staggered back before her onslaught. The door was open. ‘Joshua! Run!’
There was one moment when he could have fled, when the three men, bemused by the fury of Mattie’s attack and the pitch of her furious screaming, were, as she had hoped, watching her, not him. He did not take advantage of it. As Jeb Sangster drew back his hand to slap Mattie away, Joshua launched himself upon him. Within seconds he was pinioned, arms twisted behind his back, a savage hand buried in his thick hair.
He fought like a fury for a moment or so and then, knowing himself overwhelmed, he subsided, standing quiet, head forced back, in their ungentle hands.
‘Joshua,’ Mattie said. She too was held. The man who had been staring at her had caught her and twisted her around, her back to him, his rough hands hard across her breasts. She could feel his body against her, moving, disgusting her. ‘Joshua!’
‘We hang uppity niggrahs,’ Jeb Sangster said, conversationally, twisting Joshua’s arm harder, hearing it crack. ‘Don’t we, boys?’
‘Sure do.’
‘Dark for it.’ The man who held Mattie grinned. ‘Quicker to shoot him.’
‘Quicker, yes,’ Jeb Sangster said softly. ‘All the more reason to hang him. I remember this bastard. Thought himself better than us white trash. Didn’t you?’ He gave a last vicious turn to Joshua’s arm, which brought a grunt of pain. ‘Hold him, Gus.’ He let go and stepped back, grabbing his rifle and lifting it to threaten both Joshua and Mattie. ‘OK, boys. Let them go. Gus – the fishing line. Tie them up. Then we’ll have us some fun.’
‘Yes, Sir, Jeb.’ The man let go of Joshua and reached for the line coiled neatly upon the table.
‘No,’ Mattie said, and then again, ‘No!’ Once bound, Joshua would have no chance at all – they would drag him out and string him, choking, to the nearest tree. ‘No!’ For that moment she did not care if she lived or died. Ignoring the rifle, she launched herself towards the man who reached for the fishing line. In the same second Joshua swung clumsily, one arm hanging uselessly at his side, at the man closest to him.
The rifle spoke, thunderous in the enclosed space. Mattie screamed. Joshua grunted and dropped where he stood. Jeb Sangster, feeding an old hatred, took aim very precisely and fired again. ‘Pity,’ he said, as blood and brain splattered the dirt floor. ‘A hangin’ would ’a bin better. Slower, like.’
Mattie’s assailant had her pinned to the floor, leaning above her, his face bearing down onto hers. The other man stood watching, grinning. ‘Need any help, Amos?’
‘You want niggrah leavin’s?’ Jeb Sangster asked, true disgust in his voice. ‘Take ’em. I’ll see you outside.’
As he left he aimed a kick at the struggling Mattie’s side that took her breath and allowed her attacker time to grab both her hands and mount her. He was speaking, low and intense, obscenities repeated over and over again.
‘Go it, Amos.’ The other man was laughing, down on his haunches watching. ‘Go on, boy. Get in there. Christ, Amos – never knew you had it in you –’
* * *
She lay for hours after they had left, shocked into a state of near insensibility, curled upon the bed, her eyes fixed upon the bloodstained sheet that she had flung over Joshua’s body. It was full daylight before she dragged herself to her feet and set about the only task her numbed mind could encompass. She sprinkled the precious oil they had been so carefully conserving for the lamps over the sheet, and the furniture, stood for a moment, a glowing brand in her hand, looking down at all that was left of Joshua Sherwood. She did not pull the sheet away – she knew too well what lay beneath it; it would haunt her for ever. She made her goodbyes, quiet and tearless, then tossed the torch upon the oilsoaked cloth, staggering back, her arm flung up before her face, as it exploded into flame. She had not intended to leave the cabin; she had intended to burn there with him upon his funeral pyre. Yet somehow she found herself in the open, watching as the cleansing flames licked and crackled from window and door, towered into the air. It was then at last that the tears came, and, filthy and bloodstained, the nightgown all but ripped from her body, Mattie crumpled to the ground, sobbing, and willing herself to die.
* * *
Almost she succeeded. She never afterwards knew how long she lay there, or at what point she dragged herself into the darkness of another slave hut and lay upon the board bed, her face turned to the wall. She drifted in and out of consciousness, in and out of nightmare. She ate nothing and drank little. She spoke to Joshua. She spoke to her father. She pleaded with God to let her die. Light-headed, she relived again and again the terrible moment of Joshua’s death; saw the man Sangster’s livid, hate-filled face as he pulled the trigger. Cried until there were no more tears, no more feeling. Until the moment that she opened her eyes, sensing a presence beside her and saw to her horror another of the scarecrow men that had haunted her, one-armed, filthy, the rags he wore bloodstained; and this was no spectre, but a solid, foul-smelling reality. Weak as she was, Mattie surged up, screaming, fingers clawed.
Even one-armed, he held her with ease, and the terrible spurt of energy soon died.
‘Mattie,’ he said. ‘Oh, God, Mattie – what’s happened here – what?’ He was crying, tears sliding down the filthy cheeks and into the wild black beard.
She lifted her head, narrowing her sore, reddened eyes against the light that streamed through the door, and found herself looking into the changed face, haggard and marked by pain, privation and grief, of Russell Sherwood.
* * *
She kept her secret, and Joshua’s. There was enough to tell without that. Russell nursed her devotedly in the days that followed, and she used the time well. When at last he deemed it the time to ask, gently, what had happened, she had concocted a tale that was near enough to the truth to withstand scrutiny, but which neither incriminated Joshua in the death of Logan nor told of her own involvement with him. She also spared Russell any suspicion that Logan had killed his own son. It was easy to blame the death and destruction around them first on Sherman’s men and then on the gangs of deserters that Russell knew all too well were infesting the countryside. Robert, she said, had come to warn them of danger but had been unable to get away in time and had died defending the house and his father. Logan had been shot, and had later died of his wounds. Joshua and a couple of the other slaves had stayed loyally with her, until the arrival of the deserters, when Joshua had been killed and the others had fled. It was all very plausible.
‘But you, Russell? How are you here? We were told you were all dead. Shake said he saw it. The others?’ She lifted her eyes to his.
Russell shook his head. ‘No, Mattie. No hope of that. They’re dead. I saw them die. And Shake would have believed me dead, too. I nearly was.’ He lifted his hand to his hairline, parting the dark hair to show a deeply grooved scar on his forehead. ‘I woke up in a Northern prison camp, so sick I hardly knew who I was, let alone where I was. Later I sent a message
– it obviously didn’t arrive.’ He shrugged a little, as if shaking off the intolerable memories. She reached a thin hand and he took it in his, laid it against his unshaven cheek. ‘Mattie, poor Mattie. God knows, you did nothing to deserve any of this. I’ll make it up to you, Mattie. I promise. Anything – anything I can do –’
She waited a long, quiet moment. Then, ‘I want to go home, Russell,’ she said. ‘I just want to go home.’
* * *
It took three months to arrange passage to England; the war was over, and the blockade lifted, but trade with the shattered South had not yet resumed, and there were few ships as yet sailing from Liverpool. Mattie spent the last anxious month in Savannah – the city, unbelievably, as graceful and lovely as it had ever been, apparently untouched by war – haunting the shipping offices, standing hour by watchful hour upon the bluff, looking downriver towards the sea. She stayed in a small hotel not far from the waterfront, having begged Russell not to let anyone know she was there. He had misunderstood entirely the reason for her anxiety, as she had intended, and had willingly and gently agreed. With an unexpected delicacy he had never questioned her about her own experience at the hands of the deserters who had murdered Joshua; but certainly he guessed what had happened, and believed that he understood her reluctance to face people and their well-intentioned, prying questions. Having escorted her to Savannah, he was concerned at the thought of leaving her there alone, but Mattie insisted. The war might be over, but a new battle awaited him at Pleasant Hill; plantations were being confiscated, broken up, sold off. If he stayed away too long he could well find he had nothing to go back to, and after all that had been sacrificed such a thought was unbearable for both of them. Mattie knew one thing. While there was breath in Russell’s body, one-armed or not, he would fight to protect Sherwood land.
And so she waited, alone and with hard-held patience. When at last the ship that was to take her to England drew away from the quayside – that same quayside at which she and Johnny had disembarked in such expectation five long years before – she watched as Savannah dropped rapidly astern with nothing but an overwhelming sense of relief.
She was safe, and the secret she guarded was safe with her.
As they passed beneath the ruined bulk of Fort Pulaski, lying wrecked and deserted in the summer sun, and surged through the running tide towards the open sea, the child within Mattie quickened and stirred for the first time.
Part Three
Coombe House, Kent
1883
Interlude
It had been a long and lovely summer. The Kentish countryside basked still beneath an autumn sun, the slightest breeze drifting from a balmy westerly direction, bearing with it the smells of hops and of harvest.
The soft bricks and mossed tiles of Coombe House gave back the warmth of the sun; bees hummed in late honeysuckle and perfumed scarlet petals dropped from September roses. The river, beside which two distant figures strolled, curled lazily beyond the green lawns and lost itself, glittering, beneath the drooping green canopy of the woodland trees. A single swan sailed placidly upon its waters. The voices and laughter of the two young people who walked beside it drifted back to the open windows of the house.
‘I must say, Mattie, the garden is looking truly splendid. I said as much to Mr Wheeler just the other day.’ Angelina Wheeler turned from the window, looked affectionately at the tall, lean-built woman who was pouring tea. ‘You really do have the greenest of green fingers!’
Mattie Sherwood smiled. ‘Thank you, Lina. You’re very kind.’ She carried the cups to her friend’s side, stood with her looking out over the peaceful scene. ‘It is, as you know, one of my passions.’ As she moved, a big old dog, shaggy and golden, ambled beside her, and sat leaning heavily against her legs. She laughed. ‘Jake, for goodness’ sake! You’ll push me right over!’
‘He’s getting fat,’ the other woman said, laughing with her.
Mattie bent to fondle the big, soft head. ‘He’s getting old.’
‘Aren’t we all?’ There was a harmless coquettishness in the question that made Mattie smile. Angelina, ten years Mattie’s junior, was almost as pretty as her daughter Carolyn, with whom Harry walked by the river, and she well knew it. Her satin afternoon gown, a becoming shade of rose, flounced, beribboned and bustled, showed off her softly rounded figure to perfection. Her fair hair was tucked beneath a feathered bonnet.
Mattie, who, on her guests’ unexpected arrival, had been caught on her knees in the very garden of which Angelina was so admiring, and was herself wearing her favourite and most serviceable – and therefore most shabby – skirt and blouse, laughed again. ‘What nonsense! Look at you! Dressed to the nines and as pretty as a picture! You look no different to when we first met – what? – seventeen years ago?’
Angelina blushed, pleased. ‘Seventeen years! Is it really so long? I suppose it must be! Such happy years – they’ve flown so quickly!’ and then, with the slightly anxious generosity that was so much a part of her character and which Mattie had always found tiresome and endearing in about equal parts, added quickly, ‘But, Mattie, no matter how I tried I could never look as you do, you know.’
‘I?’ Mattie had turned to the window, watching as the two youngsters moved from the water towards the house. ‘Good heavens, whatever can you mean?’
‘Distinguished,’ Angelina said, sturdily. ‘Handsome. That’s the very word dear Mr Wheeler used about you only the other day.’
‘Handsome?’ Mattie turned astonished eyes to the other woman. ‘Oh, lord, Lina, what a thing to say about a grey-haired old biddy of forty-five who spends most of her time with dirty hands and fingernails you could plant a good crop of potatoes in!’
‘Oh, don’t be silly! Your hair isn’t grey, it’s softest silver, and it suits you well.’ Angelina raised a small, mockingly warning finger. ‘If you aren’t careful I shall tell you what else George said.’
Mattie cocked her head to one side, adopted a low, masculine tone with a touch of a Yorkshire accent. ‘I can’t think why our Mattie hasn’t remarried in all this time. T’isn’t natural, that’s what – handsome woman like that. T’isn’t as if she hasn’t had her chances –’
Angelina squealed in delight. ‘Oh, Mattie, that’s it! That’s it exactly! You have dear George to a “T”!’
‘Hardly surprising after seventeen years of being told the same thing,’ Mattie said, gently dry.
Her friend joined her at the window, slipped an arm through hers. ‘You know it’s only because we care for you – because we’re concerned for you.’
Mattie laid a garden-roughened hand on hers for a moment. ‘Yes, I do know that. Of course I do.’ She smiled again. ‘As with quite relentless determination do, quite independently, my Cousin Constance and my Sherwood brother-in-law – both of whom heartily agree with you and urge me in every letter to find myself a sensible and well-set-up husband who will deliver me from my self-imposed and unsociable state and make of me, they hope, a normal, respectable woman.’ Mischief glinted in her eyes. ‘What you all fail, I fear, to understand, is that I have remained unmarried by design rather than by accident. Lina, my dear, I actually like living alone – except, of course, that I don’t. I have Jake. I have the house. I have the garden.’ Her eyes rested for a long moment on the two figures who, together, approached across the soft green grass. ‘And I have Harry. Why should I need more?’
The smaller woman opened her mouth, and then with unusual self-restraint shut it again. There was a moment’s silence. Then, ‘Would you never think of marriage?’ Angelina asked, clear curiosity in her voice.
Mattie considered. ‘Yes. But only to a man who understands me. Who doesn’t only love me, but likes me.’ She laughed, with a clear ripple of true amusement. ‘And since, I suspect, no such paragon exists, then I shall do very well as I am.’
‘You don’t think that Harry has missed having a father?’
‘He had a father, Lina,’ Mattie said, evenly.
&
nbsp; ‘Well, yes – of course – I didn’t mean –’
‘We’ve spoken of it, of course we have. There have been offers, as you know.’ Mattie’s eye were still soft, upon her son, who laughed and lifted a hand in greeting as he saw her standing in the window. ‘If Harry had wanted it I would have married. For him. But always he said no. Always he said – we’re happy as we are. And always we have been.’ She turned abruptly, moved towards the fireplace. ‘I’ll ring for more tea. This has gone cold, and I expect the children would like a cup.’
Angelina laughed, watching the young couple who strolled towards them. ‘Children! You always call them children!’
‘Well, of course! That’s what they are.’ Mattie tugged at the bell pull.
‘Hardly.’ Angelina sat in a straight-backed chair, arranged her skirt about her, glanced archly up. ‘Our Carolyn is just seventeen, and young Harry will be eighteen next week, will he not? Caro is in a great fuss over what to buy him. Mr Wheeler and I were only saying the other day what a very handsome pair they make.’ She put her head on one side, hopefully, watching Mattie.
There was a small but marked silence. Then, ‘Handsome seems a word much bandied in the Wheeler household?’ Mattie said, lightly, but with the faintest edge to her voice.
Angelina leaned forward a little. ‘Mattie, my dear – they are very fond of each other –’
‘Well, of course they are. They were practically brought up together.’ The words this time were brusque. ‘They’re like brother and sister. Of course they’re fond of each other.’
Apparently unaware of any agitation her words might be causing, Angelina trilled laughter again. ‘Mattie! Brother and sister? Why, my dear, where ever are your eyes? That may have been true in the past – but now? Oh, no, I think not, you know. Brother and sister indeed! Why, Caro is already six months older than I was when I married dear George.’
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