“No,” Beatrice said. “You thought he was, but he wasn’t. Jeremiah thought it was because you hit your head—but then he wasn’t sure if it was all coming from your head or if you caught the fever like we had—or both,” she added with a sigh. “I say it’s both— You don’t think Thomas Henry is here now, do you, Sayer?” She was looking at her with such a concerned expression that Sayer reached her hand out to her.
“No,” she said, trying to sound convincing. “I’m so sorry I worried you.”
Beatrice came to her then, crawling up the foot of the bed so she could sit on her other side, and Sayer hugged both girls hard.
“We were scared,” Beatrice said. “When you didn’t know us. We told you and we told you who we were, but you just wanted to look for Thomas Henry.”
“I’m all right now,” she said, hoping it was true. “Is Rorie still here?” She was certain she was right about that at least, that she’d seen and talked to Rorie Conley.
“She’s here—and her cow. Jeremiah went and got it—he said that animal was contrary enough to make a priest swear. Anyway, we got milk now—and butter. Rorie went looking for eggs a while ago. Jeremiah cut her a walking stick so she could. It had a gall on it at the top and he cut a face in it so she could see where she’s going,” Amity said, laughing. “She thinks he’s crazy, and she thinks she can find where those hens that got stolen might be nesting. She said they weren’t stolen for keeps—just scattered around.”
No, Sayer thought. Not for keeps. For the worry and the hunger losing them would inflict.
“Then I think I better get up and see about making us something to eat,” Sayer said. But she realized as she said it that she might not be physically able to accomplish such a major task and that there might not be anything left for her to cook.
“Jeremiah made us cracker pudding,” Beatrice said.
“I like cracker pudding,” Amity said. “It’s got sugar and raisins.”
“Where did you get sugar and raisins?” Sayer asked.
“I didn’t get them,” Amity said. “Jeremiah did. He had them on his horse. Can we eat it now?” She looked at Sayer hopefully. “He said it’s for all of us.”
“I...suppose so.”
“It’s in the pie safe. I can set the table,” Beatrice said. She crawled to the foot of the bed to get out and walked a little unsteadily over to the cupboard where Sayer kept the everyday crockery. The Royal Doulton china, the gilt and rose-patterned dishes that had belonged to her mother and the only thing Sayer had left of her own family, was kept packed in two boxes of sawdust out of harm’s way. She still remembered the rare Sunday dinners when her mother had brought it out, and she was proud to say that she’d taken good care of it in the intervening years. A few chips here and there, but not a single piece broken, not even when the set had been shipped to her after she’d married Thomas Henry. She was still surprised that her aunt had gone to the trouble to locate the boxes of china in her big attic and send them on.
“Sayer!” Beatrice said sharply, and Sayer looked at her, realizing then that she’d been inattentive long enough to scare both girls.
“I see the tin cups are clean—use those for the pudding,” Sayer said quickly. She managed to sit on the side of the bed, then to stand without any accompanying dizziness. She made it to the washstand and looked at herself in the dim mirror.
“Oh,” she said softly. How unlike herself she looked. Her aunt Cecelia had made certain that Sayer understood she was no great beauty, but even taking into account the poor quality of the mirror and the patch of her hair that had been cut out around the gash in her scalp, she thought she had never appeared as bedraggled as this.
There was water in the ewer, and she poured some in the basin and pulled the privacy curtain for modesty’s sake. She stared at her reflection in the mirror again. Clearly she should have been worrying about whether Thomas Henry could recognize her instead of the other way around.
She bathed as best she could, taking her time lest she run out of energy before she’d finished. The process was tiring, but not overly so. She had a slight headache that was mostly tenderness around the place where she had fallen. She had no memory of that, either. She remembered Rorie offering her things to eat, and she must have actually eaten them. She would have been much frailer otherwise. And she seemed to be thinking clearly despite the fact that the girls had said she hadn’t known them. She had no idea how well she’d functioned during all that time. She gave a quiet sigh. There was no way of knowing anything when she apparently couldn’t rely on her own memory of recent events—what little there was of it. It seemed that she was destined to have gaps in her ability to recall important things in her life.
Eventually, she put on a worn work dress hanging on a nearby peg. It had always been too long, and now it seemed even more so. The hem dragged the floor, but she couldn’t worry about that now. The dress was fresh and clean, and for that reason alone a joy to put on. Rorie must have washed it for her. Sayer would never be able to repay Rorie Conley for the kindness she’d shown her and the girls.
She realized suddenly that someone had cut and frayed new sweet-gum twigs and put them in the small pewter vase where she kept the ones to be used as toothbrushes. The phantom Jeremiah? she wondered. The cutter of wood and the maker of cracker pudding? The man she must have mistaken for Thomas Henry?
She used one of the sweet-gum twigs to brush her teeth with salt and she felt the better for it, then combed out her hair and braided it into a single braid that hung down her back. She could hear the girls whispering to each other as she worked.
I’m afraid, she thought suddenly, and for once she was certain she could name her fear.
Jeremiah.
Who was he and what was he doing here? Rorie and the girls seemed to trust him, and Sayer didn’t understand that at all.
When she pushed the curtain back and stepped out, both girls were still sitting at the table, the place where she herself needed to be as quickly as possible. Despite her good start, her legs were feeling wobbly now, and she managed to make it to a chair before they buckled under her.
“Harder work than I thought,” she said to them, trying not to seem so breathless. Still, everything considered, she was actually feeling nearly like herself again. She realized that while the girls had set the table with the tin cups and spoons and gotten the cracker pudding from the pie safe, they hadn’t yet eaten.
“Is it that bad, or aren’t you hungry?” she asked.
“We wanted to wait for you,” Beatrice said. “It’s been a long time since we all sat at the table together.”
“Yes,” Sayer said. “It has.”
“But I want all of us to sit at the table. I want Thomas Henry to come home,” Amity said. “We need him. Why isn’t he coming?”
“I don’t know, Amity,” Sayer said. “He might have a long way to come. We’ll just have to be patient.”
“I don’t want to be patient,” Beatrice said. “I want my brother. Everything would be all right if he was here. Do you think he forgot us?” She abruptly looked away and wiped at her eyes.
“No,” Sayer said. “He hasn’t forgotten us. Thomas Henry would never do that.” She reached to take each of the girls by the hand, and when their circle was complete, they bowed their heads. “Thank You, Lord, for Your mercy...for letting us sit down together again,” she said. “And thank You for Rorie Conley’s good help.”
“And for the cracker pudding,” Amity added. “And Jeremiah.”
“And please, Lord, keep Thomas Henry safe. Amen,” they said in unison, because it was their custom. They had long ago agreed that they should ask only for that because anything else would be selfish in light of so many other families who were waiting for someone they loved just as they were. Thomas Henry had to do his duty, and if he couldn’t be at home with them, then the thing
they wanted most was that he should stay safe from harm.
“Taste the cracker pudding,” Amity urged. “You’ll like it.”
Sayer took a tentative spoonful of the gray soggy mass and put it into her cup. She took a bite of it, and then another. It was quite...edible, though “pudding” was perhaps an overly generous description.
“See?” Amity said, filling her cup and digging into hers. “I told you it was good. Jeremiah says you learn to make strange things out of strange things in the army.”
“He doesn’t know the half of it, does he?” Sayer said, thinking of her own efforts to make coffee out of roasted acorns and bacon fat according to a recipe in an Alabama newspaper someone had nailed up on the wall in the general store down at the crossroads. “I do like this, though—”
“You in the cabin!” someone suddenly yelled from the outside. “Hey, in there!”
Sayer knew the voice, and her heart began to pound with apprehension. “Both of you stay inside,” she said quietly.
“But what if you don’t—”
“Beatrice, do as I say!” Sayer said sharply. “I will talk to your Uncle Halbert. I don’t know who he has with him and I mean for you and Amity to stay in here. You are not to come out unless I call you.”
Sayer got up and stood by the chair for a moment to make sure she was steady enough to face down Halbert Garth. She could hear a horse blowing—several of them—but no one was talking. She realized that the musket was no longer on the pegs over the mantel. She had no other weapon—but Halbert and his friends didn’t need to know that.
“Get me a tea towel, Beatrice,” Sayer said, and Beatrice ran to the sideboard to find one. She brought it back immediately, and Sayer took the only big spoon she had out of the table drawer. She stuck the bowl end up her sleeve and covered the rest of the spoon and her hands with the towel, as if Halbert Garth and his company had interrupted her in some task—or perhaps not. She would let them worry about what she might have concealed.
“Open the door, Amity,” Sayer said. “And close it right behind me.”
“Well! Sayer!” Halbert said as soon as she stepped outside. “I heard you was...sick.”
“Not I, Mr. Garth,” she said, trying to keep her eyes on the two other men with him without seeming to do so. She didn’t recognize them, but she recognized their lack of respect as they looked her over. “The girls had a bad fever. They’re up and around now. What brings you all the way up here?”
“Had some reports of bushwhackers up this way,” he said. “We come to see about it.”
“All three of you?” Sayer asked because even she knew it would take more men than that to put a body of deserters and bushwhackers on the run.
Halbert Garth ignored her thinly veiled sarcasm. “And I’m wanting to know if you’ve had word from Thomas Henry.”
“No,” she said. “But I expect to.”
“Do you, now?” He spat tobacco juice in a high arc. “Seems to me like he ain’t coming back. I’ve made me some inquiries. Can’t find anybody in the Highland Guards what knows why he ain’t turned up yet.”
“That doesn’t mean he won’t. I thank you for going to all that trouble for us, Mr. Garth. I’m sure Thomas Henry isn’t the only one delayed. I was just telling the girls that we had to be patient. Don’t you agree?”
One of the other men gave a snort of laughter, which he immediately choked off because of the look Halbert gave him.
“Now, you listen to me. You ain’t going to last another winter up here,” Halbert said. “You know that. I’m still willing to take over this property. I’ll even give you money so’s you can settle down in another place—of course the amount is going to come down every time I have to come back up here and make another offer. You take what I’m offering now and you’ll get a good price. All we have to do is have Thomas Henry declared a casualty of the war and me the executor. That won’t be no problem. I’m his next blood relative. You can go on back where you come from. Take them girls with you—”
“They’re your kin, too, Mr. Garth. As for your taking over this land, I don’t believe that’s what your father wanted,” Sayer said. “And I know it’s not what Thomas Henry wants.”
“Thomas Henry is dead, woman, and you know it!”
“If he is, I still won’t be handing the Garth land over to you. Not ever. Thomas Henry learned a good deal from your father. I know he has a will, and I’m sure you’re not in it. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“What makes you so sure he filed that will? Wills get misplaced all the time. This is my land! Mine! I’m the oldest son! If you think you can hold out against me—”
Halbert broke off so abruptly, both of the men with him turned in their saddles to look at him. But Halbert’s attention was elsewhere. He was looking at the man on horseback who had just ridden around the side of the cabin and halted not far from the edge of the porch. Sayer could just see him out of the corner of her eye, but she didn’t turn to look at him. She kept her eyes on Halbert, and from the look on his face she knew that he was as surprised as she was. The man didn’t say anything; he simply waited, with complete confidence in his right to be there.
Halbert’s two followers looked at each other and then to Halbert for guidance, but Halbert was focused now on Sayer.
“Who is this, then?” he asked, his eyes narrowed. “You done got yourself a step-husband?”
Sayer could feel her face flush at the insult, and she struggled to stay calm and not give Halbert the satisfaction of knowing how much the remark had offended her. He wanted her to be offended. She had no doubt about that.
The man rode forward then, straight toward Halbert, letting his mount walk directly into Halbert’s horse, causing it to shy away and Halbert to work hard to rein it in.
“Maybe you’d rather say something to me, Mr. Garth,” the man said quietly.
Halbert smiled. “I’m just saying how it looks. That’s all.”
“Then maybe you ought to work on that. It’s not good for a man’s mind to abide in a place so low.”
They stared at each other.
“Either of you men fight in the war?” the man suddenly asked without taking his eyes off Halbert.
Neither of them answered.
“That’s what I thought. I believe you should know that I did, and the three of you are nothing to me. I won’t even break a sweat—except for digging the hole to bury you in. You understand me, don’t you, Mr. Garth?”
His voice remained quiet and calm, and his message was all the more unsettling for it. Halbert attempted a smile again, but didn’t quite make it. Still, he wasn’t ready to concede his ground.
“It ain’t right—you being up here with her alone. She’s my kin. I’m obliged to see she don’t shame the Garth name—”
“Well, if that don’t take the cake,” Rorie said, hobbling up from the nearest stand of trees, stick in one hand, basket in the other. Sayer nearly smiled, not because of her timely arrival but because of the face on the walking stick. And the basket Rorie was carrying appeared to be heavy with what Sayer hoped were foraged hen eggs.
“Ain’t nobody brought shame on the house of Garth so far but you, Halbert,” Rorie said, setting the basket on the ground. “I heard tell that’s why your name ain’t on the deed to this land. You might have forgot all about that, but I ain’t—and nobody else around here has, either, I can guarantee you that. Since they ain’t no bushwhackers here as far as I can tell, I reckon you better be looking someplace else.”
“One of these days you are going to push me too far, Rorie Conley,” Halbert said, jabbing his finger in Rorie’s direction.
“I know, Halbert. And I can’t hardly wait. Of course, it’ll be a little one-sided, unless you bring your friends there with you. Sorry you all can’t stay for supper. Might be too chancy
for a man your age, what with the girls so soon past being sickly. As for Sayer being alone, she ain’t. So don’t you go fretting yourself about that. I’m here—as you can plainly see—and so is my cow and my mule. Been here the whole time, and that’s the pure truth. What have you got to say about that, Halbert Garth?”
“You had better be staying out of my business!” Halbert said to her, clearly ignoring the man who had initially challenged him. He glared at her for a moment, then wheeled his horse and rode off the way he’d come, his two henchmen following close behind.
Sayer immediately sat down on the edge of the porch, her head bowed, breathless with the effort it had taken to stand up to Halbert.
“Are you going to faint?”
She looked up into the face of the man who had made the inquiry, the man whose name she could only guess, and shook her head.
“Say something, then.”
“I...don’t understand.”
“Say something. Something sensible would be helpful.”
“Who are you?”
“Very good,” he said. “That was as sensible as can be. But what were you going to do with this?” he asked, taking the spoon out of her hand.
“Make them wonder,” she said.
“Well, you made me wonder, too. I thought you had Rorie’s revolver.”
“What would Rorie be doing with a revolver?”
“She brought it over in a basket in case she needed to shoot me with it.”
“She didn’t, I see,” Sayer said.
“Well, not yet.”
She kept glancing at him; it was too unsettling to look at him directly because he had apparently been roaming around in her life for some time now, only she couldn’t remember any of it.
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