‘You mean you won’t come and tuck me up for my sleep?’ He laughed. ‘You see what a spoiled darling of an invalid I am becoming. It’s high time you took the law into your own hands a little. I shall look forward to seeing you, and in better colour, I hope, when you return. Oh, botheration,’ the sound of the gong that Aaron loved to beat echoed through the house. ‘There is luncheon and I’ve not had a chance at my revenge. Don’t forget to take your winnings and put them safe away in that locked box of yours. You’ve not lost the key again, I hope?’
‘No, indeed.’ Her hand went up to the chain round her neck. What a blessing this money would be, and yet how could she bear to take it?
‘Where do you ride today?’ he asked casually as she rose to move the cards off his table, ready for his luncheon tray.
‘Oh,’ the truth came out before she had time to think of a lie. ‘I thought I might go down to the old wharf.’
‘So far?’ Something changed in his face. ‘Then I must not expect you before tea-time. Enjoy your ride, my love, but do not forget that I shall be counting the moments until you return.’
‘Oh, Hyde!’ She must not say it. There was nothing in the world she could say. ‘Take care of yourself,’ she swallowed a sob. ‘Be good, while I am gone.’
A knock on the door. Sam with Hyde’s tray. ‘Miss Abigail is served, ma’am.’ With that look of silent reproach she had had from all the servants today.
And Hyde, from the bed. ‘If you are gone too long, love, I promise nothing. But so far as the old wharf and back: about that, I believe, I can be reasonable. Only, kiss me for luck, before you go.’
Extraordinary request. They did not kiss, or at least only at formal greetings and leave-takings. ‘Are you sure you deserve it?’ she temporised. How could she bear to kiss him? How could he bear not to, just this once?
‘Positive.’ The blister was quite healed by now. His right hand pulled her down with a strength she had not expected. ‘Bless you, my love.’ Surely this once she might use the word.
Her lips brushed his cheek, then, with a quick twist she was free. ‘Eat your lunch. Rest well. Be good.’
‘Call that a kiss?’ But she had escaped and was sobbing her heart out in the ladies’ retiring room on the ground floor. When she joined Miss Abigail ten minutes later, it was almost a relief to have the whole meal devoted to the expected scold. She was late, she was frivolous, she was mannerless, she was leading Hyde into bad ways ... It went on endlessly, and she crumbled her bread, pushed scalloped oysters this way and that with her two-pronged fork, and listened, hardly hearing. Only, at the very end, rising to go and change into her riding-habit, she allowed herself one retort. ‘And yet, Miss Abigail, it seems you trust me, since Hyde asked you not to scold me, and you assume that I will not tell him you have.’
It was a silencer. She escaped. Past Hyde’s door. He would be sleeping now, since his light luncheon took much less time than the elaborate affair to which she and Miss Abigail had to sit down. Anne would be sitting beside him. She had managed to avoid Anne all morning. Even for one last glimpse of Hyde, she could not face her now.
Alice had been crying too. ‘I don’ know how we’ll get along without you, ma’am.’ She buttoned tiny dark green buttons unwillingly.
‘You’ll have to, Alice. But, please, for my sake, help her — help your mistress ... Help her be kind to him.’
‘Bless you, ma’am. We’d all give our lives. For him.’
The sun shone. Birds sang. A group of children playing in the dust outside the double row of whitewashed cottages came running up to beg for the candy she always carried for them. She handed it out mechanically. Must remember to tell Josephine about these new habits of hers. Old women smiled at her from their doorsteps. Men working in the cotton fields paused and straightened up to wave their hats to her cheerfully. She returned their greetings without knowing what she said. Never again ... Never again ... Never again.
Ariel was getting restless, aware of slack hands on the reins. She pulled herself together. This was no day to be run away with. Almost there. She could hear the voice of the river now, its quiet murmur along the sheltered shore of the island. Let Josephine only be there, ready. Let it be quick: and over. Tomorrow she would make her plans for going back to France. The money she had won from Hyde would pay her fare. No use hoping for anything from Josephine who would, inevitably, be furious. And to use Hyde’s own money to abandon him ... But how much worse, for all of them, if she stayed.
There. She came out of the tangle of wild plum and sweet-scented yellow jasmine on to the shore. The old wharf lay below her, deserted, but straining her ears she thought she could hear the sound of singing from upstream. It was a gay, lilting tune she had not heard before, and as it grew louder and the boat pulled into view round the bend of the river she felt a sudden surge of bitterness. Childish, of course, to expect the rowers to mind about her going as the house servants did. The boat swept nearer, racing down with the tide, black against the golden savannah grass of the swamps on either side of the river. The tune came over the water more clearly now, and she began to make out the words. Extraordinary. She had heard about this song. ‘Day of glory, day of freedom,’ it began, and though apparently religious, its message was obvious. It celebrated the day of liberation for the slaves. On some plantations, to be heard singing it meant a beating to which death would be preferable. Even on Winchelsea, she had never heard it sung.
‘Day of glo—’ The singing stopped suddenly, then began again, raggedly at first, an old familiar tune, ‘Jenny shake her toe at me.’ Stan, steering, must have seen her waiting there on the beach. But what of Josephine? She would never have allowed them to sing that song ... Juliet looked about her, suddenly cold with terror in the sunshine of the lonely beach. Could Josephine have said or done, in her anger, something so unspeakable, uttered some threat so dreadful, as to precipitate the revolt that every plantation owner dreaded? But here? On Winchelsea? Where every man was free? It seemed impossible. And yet, with Josephine, anything was possible. And, now, she could see. There was no elegant figure seated comfortably under the stern awning.
The singers had got into their swing now:
‘Hurray, Miss Susie oh,
Jenny gone away.’
One last, strong pull and they were coming into the wharf, while Juliet tied Ariel to the hitching post with trembling hands and ran down to meet them.
‘Satan.’ She had never thought his name inauspicious until now. ‘What have you done with her?’ Probably she should be afraid for her own life, but what did she care about that?
‘Done?’ Satan paused to give the last orders to the rowers, then jumped ashore to join her on the rotting wharf. She had forgotten how huge he was, and how black, silhouetted there against the golden beginnings of sunset. He looked down at her. ‘Ma’am, you’re never frit of me? Old Satan?’ Could there be, actually, a note of scorn in his voice? ‘You should go for to have more sense, missy.’ Something extraordinarily reassuring both about his tone and the use of the less dignified form of address. He scratched his coarse white curls, obviously thinking it over, then, disconcertingly, burst into a great bull’s roar of laughter. ‘Lawd-a-mussy-me, you never went to think we dunked her in the river back there?’ He was literally laughing till the tears came. ‘Law, miss — ma’am —’ he was pulling himself together. ‘How I wish we had. Hey, you boys,’ he shouted down to his crew, who were resting on their oars, probably within earshot. ‘Take her round to the main dock, and leave her all right and tight as if I was watching you, I’m going to walk the mistress back across the island.’ He turned back to Juliet, his voice extraordinarily gentle. ‘You didn’t ought to be out on your lone, if you can think such things, ma’am. Not that I blame you, the things gets said. Just the same,’ he was unhitching Ariel, ‘I reckon you’ve got plenty spunk to stay and wait for us, thinking what you did. There: up you go. Why didn’t you turn and run for it, when you thought that?’
‘I do
n’t know.’ She thought about it, ‘Satan, I ask your pardon. I should have known better. I think, really, I did. That’s why I didn’t turn and run.’
He was leading Ariel, well aware that she was in no state to control him. ‘Thank you, ma’am.’ He smiled up at her, that immense, heart-warming smile. ‘I reckon that’s the first time I’ve had pardon asked me by someone white since Master Hyde was a little ‘un. But you’re worriting all this time about the mistress. Well, I’m sorry, if you wanted her back, but she’s vamoosed.’
‘What?’
‘Cut and run. Well,’ fairly, ‘it’s Charleston Races this week. You wouldn’t really expect the mistress to stay stuck in that dismal old house up there, when the races was on, now would you?’
‘Dear God.’ She might have known. ‘But you sent a message?’
‘Ma’am, how could I? There warn’t no one there. Not even old Sukey. Just a note stuck on the door.’ He reached into the deep pocket of his osnaburgs. ‘Ain’t it just a lucky thing the master always wanted us to learn to read? See: there it says, in big letters so anyone could read it: “Gone to Charleston to the races.” She don’t say nothing ‘bout when she’s coming back, so there didn’t seem much sense staying round waiting. Races last weeks, see.’
‘Yes.’ She did indeed see. Once in Charleston, Josephine would never return to what even Satan called ‘that dismal old house’. She would stay, hidden one must hope, somewhere in Charleston. Presently, in her own good time, she would send her new address. In the meanwhile, ‘Where are we going, Satan?’
He smiled up at her again. ‘We’re going for your ride, ma’am. I reckon you need a mite o’ time before we go back to the house. Besides, they won’t be expecting you yet awhile, will they?’
‘No. Thank you, Satan. I don’t know what to do.’ She spoke as much to herself as to him.
‘I don’t reckon there’s much you can do, ma’am, but keep on as you are. And don’t you go forgetting again that every man jack on the place is on your side.’ He looked at her thoughtfully for a very long moment. ‘Mebbe it’s too bad she warn’t there, the mistress. Supposing we had dunked her in the Savannah; it’s no more than she’s earned, over and over, and see how easy things would be then.’
‘Satan!’ A firm hand stopped Ariel in his tracks. ‘I’ll forgive you this once, but you’re never to say that again, nor even to think it. Promise me?’
‘Very good, ma’am. I promise. And I won’t let the others think like that neither, which will be a hard thing, but I’ll do it. And pray God for all of us.’
‘Amen.’ And then, suddenly aware of dwindling light. ‘Satan, it’s high time I was home.’
‘Sho’ is, ma’am. It’s but to cut across the family lot and we’ll be there in ten minutes.’
She had never chanced on the family graveyard before, hidden away as it was behind a screen of tall magnolias interspersed with low-growing evergreens. Her first, superstitious qualm at the idea of taking a short cut across it vanished the moment she saw it. This was a happy place, full of early flowers, the air sweet with the fragrance of hyacinth and narcissus. It was beautifully cared for, too, the coarse grass neatly trimmed round the grave-plots, the stones as clean and moss-free as when they were new. Around it, a thick hedge of cherokee roses was just coming into bloom, great white flowers with golden centres.
Instinctively, she dismounted, and let Satan lead Ariel quietly along the central path, while she paused for a moment to read the Purchises long gone.
‘The big one at the end; that’s the first Mister Hyde,’ said Satan. ‘Him as came over with Oglethorpe and founded the place. And here’s Miss Abigail’s man, that the French killed.’
‘The French?’
‘You didn’t know?’ They paused together, Ariel snuffling affectionately at the old man’s shoulder as they looked at the neat plot covered all over with the hyacinths Abigail loved. At the head, the white stone read, simply, ‘Gils Habersham. Murdered at Toulon. December loth, 1793.’
‘Murdered?’
‘That’s what Miss Abigail said to put. Well, I reckon she was right. He was a loyalist, see, in the old days. When Mister Washington and his lot won, he had to get out — went to England, he did, and got little thanks, by what Miss Abigail says, for what he’d done, and less money. So he ‘listed in their army, for bread like, and got killed by the French at that place it says there. Not in fair fight. They’d rebelled, see, and had to give in. He got left behind, somehow, and they hanged him. A Habersham. Miss Abigail’s man. He’s not there,’ he explained, looking down at the sweet-scented hyacinths. ‘God knows where he is. You need to bear with Miss Abigail if she don’t much like the French.’
‘Dear God, yes.’ It was cold, now, in the little graveyard. The light was almost gone. ‘Satan, we’re late. We must hurry. But thank you for telling me.’
‘We reckoned,’ he lifted her lightly into the saddle. ‘Aaron and I, you needed to know. To see why she goes on like she does. She comes down here every morning, to make sure all’s right. Poor Miss Abigail. She hadn’t seen him, when he died, for more’n ten years. Mebbe it was all for the best, really. She was pretty set in her ways by then. Poor Miss Abigail. You all right now, ma’am?’
‘Yes.’ Odd how thinking of poor Abigail had steadied her. ‘Look, Satan! The lights are on in the house. We must hurry.’
‘Yes, ma’am. Won’t they all just be pleased to see it’s you again, after all. I always did reckon the Lord looked after His own, and looks like I was right. Oh —’ his hand slowed Ariel for a moment. ‘That song we were singing when we come round the bend. You know it?’
‘Yes, I know it, Satan. That’s what frightened me.’
‘I don’t know as how I blame you, at that. Ma’am, you won’t tell the master we were singing it? We couldn’t help ourselves, see, we were so pleased you’d have to stay.’
‘Thank you, Satan. I won’t tell.’ They were on the carriage sweep now and could see Aaron throwing open the big doors. Lights inside the house made it seem suddenly darker. Juliet smiled down at Satan. ‘Don’t tell him,’ she said, ‘let’s see how long he takes to find out.’ And then, louder. ‘That will do, Satan. Take Ariel round to the stables, will you?’
‘Yes, ma’am, Mis’ Josephine.’ Satan’s delightful grin was for a happy secret shared.
Juliet looped her habit over her arm and trod lightly up the shelving steps to the front portico. ‘Thank you, Aaron.’ Her cool voice was perfectly Josephine’s.
Watching him bow respectfully and close the doors behind her, all without a word, she realised for the first time just how much the servants’ behaviour towards her had changed since they had discovered who she was — or rather, who she was not. Now, as Josephine again, she felt Aaron’s dislike almost as a physical thing between them. She threw him the whip she never used and drew off her riding gloves to let them fall on the floor as Josephine would. ‘It’s late.’ She made it sound as if it was his fault. And then, because she could not help it. ‘Has the master waked yet?’
He had bent, stiffly, like the old man he was, to pick up the gloves. Now he straightened like a twenty-year-old and advanced a step, gazing at her, his dark face inscrutable in the shadowed hall. ‘Yes, ma’am, he’s waked, and been asking for you this hour and more.’ If his tone held a question, she chose to ignore it.
‘Oh, very well. I’d best step by in my dirt and tell him I’ve not been carried off by pirates this time. He always did say he liked the smell of horses.’ Hard to keep her booted tread steady, almost impossibly hard not to hurry down the hall to the door she had never expected to open again. ‘Well, here I am at last!’ Her quick eye noted that the lamps had not been lit in the sickroom. Anne was doing her tatting by the light of one candle, while Hyde lay on the bed doing nothing. ‘A fine welcome!’ She advanced a step into the room. ‘I quite thought from what Aaron said that you had been looking out for me. I’m sorry if I have disturbed your sleep. No, Anne, don’t move. Since you’
re all so peaceful I’ll go shift this stinking habit of mine before I think of taking your place.’
‘Josephine?’ The quiet figure on the bed shifted slightly.
‘Who else? You’re very glum here, all in the dark. And poor Anne ruining her eyes at that tatting of hers. One candle, indeed!’ A vigorous tug at the bell-rope. ‘We must have things gayer before I come to sit with you. Here, Sam —’ As always, he must have been hovering outside the door. ‘Fetch the lamps at once. I don’t know what you’re thinking of to leave them in the dark like this.’ She prided herself that the angry tone was precisely Josephine’s.
‘Please, ma’am, he said — the master said, no lamps till you got home.’ Sam’s frightened voice told her all she needed to know.
‘Malingering, Hyde?’ She moved forward to stand over the bed, tall and straight in her dark green habit. ‘You know Judge James says you must occupy yourself with getting better. Is this your idea of occupation?
‘My head aches with reading.’ Surprisingly, for Hyde, he sounded almost fretful. ‘And I’m not at all sure I’m not running a fever again.’
‘Oh, no!’ She bent down to put a hand on his forehead. ‘Hyde! You’re making it up! I truly believe you have decided to be a permanent invalid. And if you think I’m going to stay cooped up here reading aloud to you for the rest of my natural life, you’re crazy. That’s right, Sam, lamps, and plenty of them.’ She waited while the ritual of lighting up was completed, then turned back to Hyde. ‘And only this morning you were talking of getting up. I’m sure I don’t know what has got into you.’
‘A megrim.’ He pulled himself up in bed and she bent, automatically to adjust the pillows for him. ‘I see no reason why your sex should have a monopoly of those. And, mind you, Jo, I may have urged you to take some fresh air and exercise, but I never asked you to abandon me for the better part of three hours. It never occurred to you, I take it, that I might even be anxious about you?’
All for Love Page 14