A Tangled Mercy

by Joy Jordan-Lake

  A woman in a kelly green and pink sundress raised her champagne. “Now don’t you all mind us. Pretend we’re not here, hanging on every last word.”

  Botts straightened to his full height and seemed to expand at the neck. Like a cobra, Kate thought.

  His head did come down in a flash, his hiss directly in her ear. “Listen to me well, Katherine. I did remove the object in question. Trust me when I say that is none of your concern.”

  With that, he stalked away.

  “Do not turn your back on me again, Botts,” Kate called after him.

  Shoulders hunched forward, he kept walking.

  Before she could stop to think, before she remembered just where she was, Kate yanked a platter from a passing waiter and hurled it, a giant sterling Frisbee, toward Botts’s retreating back. As it spun, the long lines of Sperrys and sandals and white buck oxfords sprang back from the scattershot spray of goat cheese and toast points and bacon unfurling from shrimp.

  The sterling hit Botts between the shoulder blades. Then clattered down to the lawn.

  Silence. All the guests had gone still.

  Only Botts moved, his small head swinging slowly around.

  Kate followed the stares of the onlookers down the lawn to the grounded circle of silver. Vaguely, she saw that Rose had quietly raised her champagne.

  But the rest did not move, waiting, perhaps, for Kate to make some gesture of penance for making a scene in public—and, worse, in posh, old-money public.

  But she was too angry for gestures or penance.

  Shoulders squared, she ignored the gawking crowd as she marched to meet Botts. She didn’t care who might be listening. “Look. I need answers from you. You look horrified. Good. Your stealing the only thing my mother owned of value is despicable. And your trying to convince her for years to trust you? Pathetic.”

  Botts’s throat spasmed. “My trying to convince Sarah Grace to trust me?”

  “Your letters. To her.”

  Hands visibly shaking now, Botts nodded. “I will contact you with a time for us to talk. Again.”

  “I need a date. As in tomorrow. And a time.”

  Small eyes boring hard into hers, Botts finally nodded. “As I happen to be back in town for a few days: tomorrow.”

  “How can I trust you to show up?”

  Kate tucked her hair back behind her ears, and Botts’s eyes went to the heron earrings. He stared at them.

  “Where did you get those?” he demanded. And before she could answer, he turned, muttering, “My God, she never let go. She never did let go.”

  Kate chased after him, the high heels of her sandals sinking into the lawn. “Sarah Grace? Let go of what?”

  He rounded on her. “If she’d meant you to know, don’t you think she’d have told you in all those years? Why do you have to disturb her memory with these hammering questions, questions, questions?” He threw up an arm in exasperation. “We will meet tomorrow at noon. At my firm’s office on Broad. You can be assured I will be there.”

  “No.” Kate planted her feet. “Someplace that’s neutral territory. The porch of the inn on Meeting. Where we met last time.”

  Botts’s head ticked back. “Where you ambushed me, you mean.” He stalked forward, but over his shoulder, he snapped, “Tomorrow then. Noon. At the inn.”

  Suddenly aware of the weight of the crowd’s stares, its stunned and mortified silence, Kate turned and knelt by the grounded platter as Rose came to stand over her.

  “Katherine, dear, there are people here to take care of the mess.”

  Kate shook her head. “Rose, I was your guest. And I behaved like a lunatic.”

  Rose patted her shoulder. “Good manners can be so very predictable.”

  Stumbling back to her feet, Kate handed the silver platter to a server, who winked at her.

  “A streak of the renegade,” Rose mused. “So like your momma—in her earlier years.”

  Kate turned. “If that’s true, then what happened to her? I can see where maybe she still had that streak, but what she became was more broken than fiery.”

  Rose patted her hand. “That’s what’s brought you here, yes? To find out why for yourself.”

  Sighing, Kate turned her back to the other guests, who were beginning to murmur again and still glancing her way. Botts had already stalked toward the valet stand and was motioning for the valet to hurry. “Rose, forgive me. You’ve already been so kind. But I need to leave.” She grimaced. “Before the gracious hosts of this lovely affair ask me to leave. And honestly, I’m too embarrassed to stay. But I don’t want you to have to leave early.”

  Rose considered. “I’m perfectly willing to make an early departure, now that we have made our presence felt, you know.” She smiled meaningfully.

  “Or”—a thought was occurring to Kate, but she wasn’t sure it was a good one—“I wonder, if I could find a ride back to town, how would that be? You’d probably like to have a conversation with some civilized, nonviolent folks at some point tonight. And you’ll want to distance yourself from me.”

  Rose patted her cheek. “No chance of your losing the fiery, my dear. You come find me if you can’t come up with a ride, hear? At my age, my mark in society has been made and no longer requires time spent with buttressing at these sorts of events. Although the champagne tonight is particularly good.” Marching away, she called back over her shoulder, “And for the record, I neveh distance myself from a good telling off.”

  Kate had forgotten to delete Scudder Lambeth’s number from her phone. There it was, under “Recent Calls.” She blurted into the phone as soon as he answered. “Scudder, this is Kate Drayton, and before you hang up—I know it’s tempting—”

  He laughed. “Actually, I’m way too curious to find out what’s got you talking so fast.”

  “I’m no good at the whole damsel-in-distress role—”

  “Why does that not surprise me?”

  “But I could really, really use a ride back into town. I’m out at Magnolia. And you’re probably busy, which is totally fine, and I understand—”

  “Whoa now. I’m just finishing work for the day—on Miz Rose’s floors, as a matter of fact. I’d be happy to come out there. But did something happen to Miz Rose?”

  Kate shut one of her eyes as if she might make the scene go away, then gave him the gist in one long, rambling sentence.

  He let out a whistle. “Sorry I couldn’t have seen that. Was it a good, solid throw, though? I’d like to think you have a good arm.”

  Plunking down—in spite of her little black dress—by the side of the sand driveway, Kate waited. And tried not to relive all the times she’d waited for her father like this on the side of a road, no headlights ahead in the distance.

  Scudder’s truck, with Restoration Inc. on its doors, arrived in a cloud of sand dust. “I’m honored” was the first thing he said as he swung down to greet her. “Didn’t think you’d have called me to help.”

  Kate felt her throat tighten with panic. “I don’t want you to think that I . . . mean anything by it.”

  “It’s just a ride, Kate. From a friend. Not a declaration of undying devotion. I swear I won’t get any ideas.” He plucked at the front of his T-shirt, which was filmed in sawdust. “Exhibit for the defense number one: I didn’t even change out of filthy work clothes before coming.”

  Her shoulders relaxed as she climbed up into his truck. “Honestly, after my little display of temper back there, I’m not sure there’s anybody else in Charleston who’d give me a ride.”

  “Gabe would’ve. If he could drive.”

  Kate brightened. “You’re right. Gabe would’ve. That’s two.”

  Scudder snapped his fingers. “I take that back. He and Dan are doing something at Mother E tonight. Guess you’re back down to one.”

  Scudder’s pickup rolled past curtains of mist hanging on the banks of the Ashley. Cypresses bent to dip the silver moss of their hair in water the color of ink.

  Blackwate
r swamp.

  “Okay.” He shot her a look. “At the risk of sounding like I’m taking advantage of being your one and only ride back, as we’ve established, let me just ask: You want to see anything else while you’re out here?”

  “Actually . . .”

  “Name it.”

  “Listen, you’ve been gracious already just to come out—but could we pass by Drayton Hall? I think it’s close, and I was reading today about the slave burying ground.”

  “Next property over. You got it.”

  They walked through the Drayton Hall burying ground without speaking. Before them was nothing but uneven land, some plots marked by plain, unmarked stones half sunk into the earth or by upended bottles.

  Kate broke the silence at last as she knelt over some pottery shards piled on one mound. “If only there were a way of knowing for sure who was buried here. How they died. What they were like.” She made her way to the far end. “Most of them have no names at all. Maybe none of them do.”

  Scudder knelt a few yards away. “Kate. You’ll want to see this.”

  “What is it?”

  “A name—if we can make it out. And a date.”

  She knelt beside him on the spongy earth and ran her fingers over the stone that someone had etched into by hand with something sharp, its ragged letters and numbers weathered nearly smooth and covered in moss.

  Kate bent closer. “The name’s hard to make out, and there’s no birth year, just a d and a period. The death year’s almost not visible anymore. Looks like eighteen . . .” She and Scudder dug at the base of the stone with their bare hands.

  And read out the year at the same time. “Twenty-two.”

  They exchanged looks over the stone.

  Kate ran her fingers over its moss-covered letters. Then her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh God. I think I know what this says.”

  Chapter 31

  1822

  A storm was rolling above him now, the rain hammering hard at the far edge of the swamp and approaching.

  Tom ran until he was sure his lungs had caught fire. City-soft feet split open, shed layers of flesh. Flailing at the edge of the water, he was cheating the bloodhounds. For now.

  His feet snagged on roots submerged just under the cypress-stained black of the water, his arms beating back whetted points of palmetto. Then he lurched sideways, one leg sunk to its knee in some swamp creature’s watery refuge.

  Thunder rolled on top of what was already a roar in his ears, his breath and his blood coming too fast.

  He slipped again, this time thrown to his back in the mud, his head slamming onto the knee of a cypress. For a moment he lay where he fell, unmoving but for the heave of his chest.

  He lay flogged by exhaustion, the thunder approaching, a hammer hitting its anvil and, with it, the lightning, sparks from the forge.

  Pale fire shattered the sky into shards of black glass. Saplings bowed near to double in the buffeting wind, rain falling in silvery sheets. Magnolia blooms trembled, withered petals glowing white.

  A crash of lightning now, straight overhead.

  Over the thunder and over the rain and over the roar in his ears, there was another sound, too.

  It might only have been a marsh owl.

  It might only have been in his mind.

  Or it might have been bloodhounds baying into the dark.

  As the storm’s fury stilled, only drizzle remained, like an apology after a tantrum.

  Tom’s thoughts filled with Dinah—with the hell he had left her to. With the baby she would deliver. Ours, he tried to believe. But it was no good. He had seen what he’d seen: her head thrown back in terror, her soundless scream.

  He longed for her now, and for a life he had not ever known: to hold the woman he loved all through one single night. To protect what was theirs.

  Tom’s whole body ached—with wounds and strains but mostly with wanting her.

  A blue heron stood not ten feet away, the water halfway up its long legs. Its neck arched back in a C, its crested head not moving, wings folded and quiet—a promise of power, waiting and still.

  Tom saw the gator surface just then, its eyes appearing first above ripples of black, followed by high-vaulted nostrils and a long, sinister snout.

  He saw it too late.

  The gator’s jaws opened, a great yawning chasm. And snapped down.

  But the heron was quicker, lifting off from the water. The gator’s jaws clamping on air, he sank back into blackwater.

  The swamp sat silent again, as smooth and still as an ebony floor, as if a man could walk on top of it. This place of mist and darkness and death would be his home now, until he found a way out.

  Or until they found him.

  Whichever came first.

  Above the swamp, the moon was nothing but the white of a thumbnail, only just emerging again from behind a dark, thin skin of clouds. There were no stars, as if some lamplighter, lazy or drunk, had neglected to light them.

  They would have determined by now that he’d been a part of the plot. Even if no one had named him yet—and that was unlikely—his disappearance from the shop on East Bay signaled his guilt. Old Widow Russell would be staving about with the brown leather book where she recorded profits and losses. She would be livid about what his running had cost her.

  Tom was dizzy with hunger, his last meal more than a full day ago—had it been only one day since the world had crashed in?—before he’d saved the life of the traitor George Wilson.

  In the distance, a marsh owl.

  And then something else. Tom was certain this time: bloodhounds.

  And they were closer. The dogs would be fresh and just fed, while he was raw and spent and bloodied.

  None of this—his eyes swollen to slits, his grated feet, the baying of hounds, a rifle lowered and cocked—had been part of the plan. Yet his running had also been coming for years, laid up in him like the coals in his forge blown into fire by the bellows.

  The baying grew louder behind him. Coming faster.

  His mosquito-swarmed eyes fast swelling shut, cypress trunks blurred into a line.

  But he could still hear.

  All too well he could hear.

  Tom splashed headlong into the water, one hand grasping for a fallen cypress, its trunk mummified in moss and resurrection fern. As he eased deeper, the ooze of the blackwater’s bottom fell away from under his feet so that he could no longer stand. He clung to moss, his nails prying into the wood, sodden and soft, which broke away like an old sponge.

  Feet churning for something solid, he threw one arm over the top of the log. And there he hung, face pressed hard against rot and waterlogged wood and ferns that thrived on death.

  The hounds, bellowing, had reached the far edge of the swamp, where they circled and whined, maddened to frantic at the scent that disappeared into blackwater.

  They tore back and forth, barking and baffled. Then, led by the largest, they bore right. Tom, sinking still lower into the water, heard their howls growing close.

  He clung to his log, his face hidden from the shore by the downed tree. Blood pounded in his ears. Deafening.

  The dogs circled the swamp, its mist thickening as the day leaned toward dusk. Night settled over the Low Country, tucking its edges first beneath the live oaks, then spreading out to blanket the swamp, the land holding fast to the last glimmers of day like a child fighting sleep.

  From the water where he clung to his log, Tom heard every curse of the slave catcher, every whine of the dogs. So close. They were so close.

  He could not afford to breathe. Could not so much as shift a finger on the log where he clung.

  If the dogs picked out his scent or the gunman heard his intake of breath, there would be no running, no fight that wasn’t met with a shot to the head. And if they took him alive, it would be for the pleasure of hauling him back into the city, executing him in front of a rapt and breathless crowd.

  The bloodhounds circled, sorting one scent from the jumble of
swamp-fox lairs and marsh-owl nests and egret eggs. They seemed to have lost the trail. The dogs’ whining faded at the far end of the swamp.

  For a moment, Tom’s fingers relaxed, just barely, there on the log.

  For a moment, he drew a breath.

  Then a tail thrashed through the water behind him—something else that had not lost his scent.

  The gator.

  For a moment the creature stayed there, suspended in water, tunneled eyes unblinking, examining Tom, its square snout submerged but for the nostrils.

  His arms clamped on the rot of a log. Swamp algae and roots and vines were wrapped around his ankles, his calves, his knees. Tom forced his body still, terror sending his fingers deep into the log’s bark as if it were butter.

  As the swamp inked darker with night, he inched himself down the log, away from the reptile.

  But the gator’s snout rose out of the water. His mouth opened, teeth gleaming.

  Tom threw himself backward and under the water, the gator’s jaws snapping above him.

  Then finding his arm.

  Tom’s head fell back in agony, his mouth open in a scream that was soundless. The gator’s jaw sank into his forearm, each tooth impaling past skin into meat.

  Using the full force of the strength he’d gathered swinging hammers over his head hundreds of times every day, he fisted the gator between the eyes with his right hand.

  The creature, stunned, loosened its hold. Drew back. But only a foot or so.

  Slowly, making no sudden moves, Tom eased away. Found his footing. Left arm limp and losing blood fast by his side, he reached with his right for a nearby vine to stop himself from falling, the pain excruciating. Staggering, he backed more steps away, eyes still on the gator.

  Its snout floated there at the surface, the creature not yet retreating. Just stalled for a moment in its attack.

  Tom stumbled onto dry ground, the bloodhounds baying not far away. Still searching for his scent.

  And here he stood with a row of speared wounds in his arm, gushing blood.

  Pain crashed through him, fuzzing his vision. Tom pressed on the wound with his opposite hand. Limping and staying low, he retraced his steps.