Riverrun

by Andrews, Felicia

  “I don’t believe it,” Cass said, and the next few minutes were swamped in embraces, in crying, in mutual drying of tears, while Eric sat back at the table and looked on with an amused grin. He had been told the entire story, both Cass’s side and now Alice’s, and why they weren’t at each other’s throats he did not know. He decided immediately that he had better not try to fathom the mystery. To do so would probably only lead to more confusion and grief than he could possibly handle.

  Alice, it seemed, was not as tough as she’d wanted everyone to believe. When she saw what her feminine machinations had produced in the battle between Judah and David, she had fled. Realizing that she would be known in Meridine the moment she set foot on the streets, she had made her way to Burford. There she became the housekeeper for a man whose business she did not know—or had not known until only a few days ago. It was then that she realized what she had stumbled onto and she’d decided to visit Riverrun again.

  “Visit?” Cass said. “You mean you’re not staying?”

  Alice smiled sadly. “Wish I could, Mrs. Roe, but I got my skin to worry about.”

  “You’d have no worries here,” Eric said.

  “Yes, I would,” she answered. “Indeed I would. You ain’t asked me what my boss’s name is yet, y’know.” When she received only blank stares, she took a deep breath and turned back to the stove. “Mr. Vern Lambert,” she said.

  “By God,” Eric said, too stunned to be angry.

  Cass moved to stand beside her, frowning, her head cocked as if she had not heard the name correctly. “Vern Lambert? But Alice!”

  “I didn’t know,” Alice said in self-defense. “How was I to know about these things, Mrs. Roe? He don’t hurt me, and he don’t try nothin’, and it weren’t until I heard him talkin’ the other mornin’ with some of his friends that I knew for sure what he was up to.” She looked around the room as if seeking absolution.

  “It’s all right,” Eric said. “No one’s blaming you for anything.”

  “Of course not,” Cass agreed. “Alice, will you please get away from that stove and sit down? I can’t talk to your back all the time.”

  Alice grinned and did as she was asked, but Cass did not miss the look she gave Eric as she settled herself. It was a veiled wondering, and perhaps a hint, and Cass wished she could ask Eric what he had told the black woman before she’d come down from her room. But by now, Eric had taken over the conversation completely and was giving her a shortened and somewhat romanticized version of the travails he’d endured at the hands of Gerald Forester and Geoffrey Hawkins. Quickly, he explained to Alice what had happened to Cass’s hopes of receiving money from Philadelphia, and asked her if she knew anything at all about what Lambert was planning now that his arrogance had been soundly trounced.

  “Don’t know for sure,” she said. “We’s down in Meridine for the time bein’, and he’s scarcely home at all. We’s got a place some army man cleared for us, and I’m stiff doin’ the cookin’ and the washin’. Ain’t no one else around so I talks to myself a lot.” She tried to smile, but she could see the anticipation in their faces and she sobered instantly. “I don’t hear everythin’,” she insisted, making sure they understood; and when they nodded, she put a hand to her temple as though pressure there would force her memory to work properly.

  “He works for that Yankee captain, you know that. Well, it ’pears that they—”

  “Alice,” Cass said then, and Alice blinked at the interruption. “Alice, you’re beginning to sound like Rachel. I know you have a little book learning, and I know how you talk. Come on, you’re driving me crazy with that field-hand talk.”

  Alice bristled, then laughed, and looked to Eric. “She know me too well, Mrs. Roe does. It’s Vern, y’see. He thinks that my blackness is the same thing as my dumbness. He expects me to talk like that, and I can’t hardly get out of the trail no more.”

  Cass nodded, still smiling, though she felt a hollow begin to form in her stomach, cast a quick glance at Eric, and saw the sullen expression that settled over his face when he didn’t make a conscious effort to banish it. He’s still brooding, she thought; damn it, that’s all I need.

  “Seems you really put the fear to that captain t’other night,” Alice said, almost gleefully. “They sneak around the house at night when they think I’m in bed, and they set on the back porch and talk to all hours. That captain there, he thinks highly of you in spite of what you done, but he’s mighty rageful at it, too. From what I can see, they’re awfully mad that Mr. Martingale here done come back from wherever he’s been, and they think you all are going to get out from under, the captain—at least, that’s the way Mr. Lambert put it.

  “So … so I don’t know when, exactly, but they’re comin’ back, Mrs. Roe. Mr. Lambert’s got lots of money and he’s been told to get as many bodies as he can.”

  Eric rose and stalked to the door, staring out at the yard with his hands clasped behind his back. Cass watched as Alice turned to follow him with her eyes, and saw her gaze settle on the shiny black glove.

  “The man is insane,” he said. “He has Garvey in his pocket and everyone else in town scared to death of him and his men, and he intends to drive us into war. The more guns he can buy, the less chance we have.” He shook his head and turned back to the room. “I don’t know, Cass. I don’t know if we can do it.”

  Cass took a long minute to absorb what she had just heard before allowing herself to rise and kick back her chair. “What the hell are you talking about, Eric Martingale? Just who the hell do you think you are talking to like that?”

  “It’s common sense, Cass,” he said. “The way I see it—”

  “The way you see it?”

  “Mrs. Roe—”

  “Hush, Alice. This is between me and Mr. Martingale.”

  “But Mrs. Roe, there’s someone on the porch.”

  They froze, and the sound of rain filled the room. The pounding came a moment later, a solemn, almost stately knocking that reverberated through the house and made the walls seem to tremble. Eric took a step forward, looked to Cass, and stopped. She waited, then realized he was not going to answer it himself; with a puzzled glance at him, she hurried out to the hall, pulled open the door, and stepped back, one hand behind her waist clenched into a fist.

  Geoffrey Hawkins, water cascading from the folds of his black slicker, doffed his broad-brimmed hat and shook it carefully over the porch boards.

  “May I come in?” he said, gesturing with his iron claw.

  “I don’t see why you should,” she answered tightly.

  “Perhaps you’d think better of it if I told you I had a proposition to make, one that should satisfy … well, just about everyone in this unfortunate situation.”

  “There is no situation you have not created, Geoffrey,” she said.

  “Let him in, Cass,” Eric said from the stairway. “If all he’ll do is talk, there’s no harm in it.”

  “My word as a gentleman,” Hawkins said. He smiled briefly at Cass, stepped around her, and followed Eric into the sitting room. Cass slammed the door, thinking to return to Alice in the kitchen, but she decided that it would do her no good at all to lose her temper now. Patience and logic were what she needed to keep Geoffrey from mesmerizing Eric. She stood staring into the room for a long moment while they waited for her. She heard Alice moving about furtively, heard the rear door open and close softly and the muffled sound of a horse picking its way through the muddy garden paths. A cold draught swirled around her ankles. She considered asking the others to wait while she fetched David, but she vetoed her own suggestion when she realized that she could not depend on his being as lucid as he had been recently. His cough was getting much worse, and now he was spitting phlegm in peat gouts. Suddenly she felt unpleasantly alone.

  The few pieces of furniture she had gathered were settled in a small area directly in front of the fieldstone fireplace. Eric was already seated in one corner of the couch, Geoffrey in a wing chair canted t
oward the hearth. Cass nearly went to sit beside Eric, but recognized the error that would have been when she saw the flash in Geoffrey’s eye; instead, then, she took her place in the opposite corner and crossed her legs as a man does. Geoffrey seemed unsettled, but he covered it quickly and pointed his metal hand at the slicker now draped over a hook in front of the low-burning fire.

  “Barely keeps you warm, that thing,” he said. “A relic from my days with the Union. But you wouldn’t know about that, would you, Mr. Martingale?”

  Eric shook his head. His gloved hand was resting lightly in his lap, but Cass could see his forefinger tapping his thigh impatiently.

  “Nevertheless,” Hawkins continued, “I did not come here to indulge in reminiscence. I said I have a proposal for you, and I intend to make it. It is a fair one, I believe, and it should once and for all put enmity behind us, where it should be.” He smiled and wiped a finger across his eyepatch. “You see, my boys are getting rather restless these days.”

  “I might have thought that had been … cured,” Eric said.

  “Like your Mr. Vessler,” Hawkins said. “Stabilized, but not cured.”

  “I think I’ve had about enough of this,” Cass said suddenly. She could not stand the urbane tone of the Union officer, nor the way Eric sat there taking the scorn that was heaped on him in the name of civility.

  “But my proposal,” Hawkins protested lightly. “Surely, now that I’ve come this far, you don’t intend to cast me out again.”

  “I did it once, I can do it again,” she said.

  Hawkins looked around the room slowly. “I don’t see your man here, though, do I?”

  The insult to Eric made her choke, but he did nothing to defend himself.

  “Very well,” Hawkins said with a loud sigh. “The point is this, my friends: life has a great deal of advantages for those who know how to utilize them in the proper way. At this point, I believe it’s fair to estimate that the advantage, in our case, is primarily mine.” He paused, but Cass said nothing and Eric would only stare at the fire that sizzled as stray raindrops found their way down the chimney. “I’m glad you agree on that, at least,” he said then. “Well, I am more than willing to put a stop to this nonsense. After all, the war is over and I’m sure we’re all sick of fighting, of men dying, and things like that. You know I hold your debts, Cassandra, every last one of them. They are in the keeping of Mr. Jennings, a gentleman with whom you’ve had business before, as I recall.”

  Cass nodded, in spite of herself. She clenched her fists impotently in her lap.

  “I will forgive them.”

  The announcement could not have startled them more than a thunderclap exploding directly over the house. Eric straightened sharply, and Cass found herself holding her breath. There was a condition, there had to be, and until she heard it she would not, could not make any move Hawkins might interpret as a degree of interest.

  “You’re … very generous,” Eric said, his voice hoarse.

  “Not at all,” Hawkins said coldly. “In return for forgiving the debts, and before Riverrun falls quite naturally into my hands, you must swear in the proper manner before a proper judge to leave Virginia. Leave the country. Forever.” He grinned. “It’s as simple as that.”

  “What makes you think Riverrun would ‘fall quite naturally’ into your hands?” Cass demanded.

  “Because you’ll not be able to raise enough money to survive the winter with the crop you will have left.”

  “Have … left?” Eric said.

  “My God, Eric,” Cass said, “how can you be so stupid? Don’t you see what you’re doing? Can’t you see what he’s trying to do to us?” She rose from the couch and walked stiffly to the hall door. “Bastard,” she said. “Get out of my house.”

  “You’ll have time to think on it,” Hawkins said. “Plenty of time. Say … one week.” He pushed himself from his chair and snatched down the slicker with his hook. He looked to Eric. “One week, Mr. Martingale.”

  “We’ll let you know.”

  Hawkins’s smile broadened as he slipped the black material over his head and slapped on his hat. Then, with a metallic salute to both of them, he strode to the door, opened it, and put his back to the gusting autumn wind.

  “You’re a bastard,” Cass spat at him.

  Geoffrey’s smile vanished as he indicated with a nod Eric still staring at the fire. “You’d better listen to him, m’dear. He’ll want to save your life.”

  “And you?”

  Hawkins grinned, and the red patch over his eye caught the firelight like a pool of shimmering blood.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  She stood in front of Eric, her breasts heaving, her hands tight on her hips. She wanted to kick out at his legs, claw at his face, but could only stare at him bewilderedly and shake her head.

  “What is the matter with you? Why didn’t you stand up to him?”

  He sighed loudly, and did not answer.

  “Eric, I’m talking to you!” She pointed at the door. “Why didn’t you throw him out?”

  “Because,” he said, in a voice so low she had to lean forward to hear, “it’s no use, Cass. He’s right. He has all the cards, and all we have—”

  “Is you and me, you fool!” she snapped. “My God, you can’t sit there and tell me you’ve come this far for nothing! If he had shown up on the day you came back, you would have killed him, and you would have laughed doing it. Eric, what’s happened to you?”

  He looked up at her, and she almost gasped. The life that had set fire to his obsidian eyes was less than an ember now. It was as though some supernatural creature had crept into his bed one evening and sucked him dry of everything that made him Eric Martingale. This one here was not the man she loved, not the man she had kept in her heart for half a decade. Someone had stolen him, and replaced him with a mirror image that bore no resemblance to the one who had ridden with her through enemy lines and had, with battles boiling over nearby hills, made love to her as though each day were their last.

  A thought struck her with the intensity of a lightning bolt, so sharply she nearly cried out and dropped to her knees: had she done this to him? Was it her fault? Had her protective, possessive mania for Riverrun driven him out of himself like this?

  She had said: I will not have you or anyone else ruin what I have done these past three years. You … or anyone else. You.

  She swayed, her hands dropping to her sides. In one moment of rage, in one swing of a pendulum she had denied him all that he had suffered—for her and for Riverrun.

  “Get mad,” she muttered.

  “What?” he said.

  Her eyes widened. “I said get mad, damn it!”

  “Cass, you don’t understand.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “No, you do not. Captain Hawkins—”

  “He is not in the army anymore!”

  “—knows the power of dealing with strength, Cassandra. He knows how to deploy his troops well enough to bring about the enemy’s downfall without firing a shot. He can do it, Cass, believe me he can do it. Forgiving the debts is only a ploy, a way to give us a sense of security we don’t really have. While we’re celebrating, he’ll come after us, no matter what he says. In any case, he’ll see to it we never bring the crop to the river for shipping, assuming we’re able to find a buyer for it. And you can be damned sure our sources in Meridine have mysteriously dried up.

  “No, Cass, he has us. One way or the other he has us. And God damn it to hell, Cass, I’m tired of fighting! I have done nothing but run for the past four years, and I … am … fed up!”

  I was right, Cass thought; I have done it to him. But what I have done, I can undo. I have to. Or Riverrun is lost.

  She reached out and grabbed for his hands. He pulled them away, but his right moved too slowly. She took hold of the glove and yanked, unintentionally snapping it off the hand. Eric immediately whipped the hand behind his waist, glaring at her for a long moment before bringing it back into
the firelight.

  Cass felt tears stinging her eyes. The hand was perfectly formed; no crippling, no fingers missing. But from the wrist to the fingers ran several thick bands of ugly white. And in the center of the palm was a star-burst scar that seemed to her shocked mind a fanged mouth groping for air.

  “Lambert,” he said evenly. “The day I threw him off my land, his whip did this, just as my knife gave him his scar. I would not let him see it again. When Sara healed it for me, I put on the glove to remind Lambert that he could not stop me from doing what I wanted. And … it almost worked.”

  “What do you mean, almost?” she cried, wanting to take him by the shoulders and shake him until his bones shattered. “He didn’t stop you, Eric. You’re here, aren’t you? You’re back.”

  He rose and stood in front of the fire. “I’m back. But you’re here now, Cass. This is your place, not mine. And I’m tired.”

  Was it still only morning? she thought. My God, do I still have a full day ahead of me?

  She moved to his side, took his arm, and turned him around. Then she grabbed his hand and held it up, forcing him to look at it. “This,” she said, “you got for Riverrun. For nothing, right? Isn’t that right, Eric? For nothing? My God, what did they do to you on that ship? What could they possibly have done to turn you into such a … such a spineless coward?”

  And before she knew what she was doing, she pulled back her hand and slapped him as hard as she could. His head rocked back as the imprint of her palm reddened his cheek. She slapped him again, and his hand snared her wrist. Her free hand balled into a fist and she struck him on the chest, making him grunt. A demon possessed her, then, and she flailed at him, screaming the most vile imprecations her lips could fashion, kicking at him until he bellowed his own helplessness and rage. He grabbed her about the waist and lifted her, still kicking, and virtually ran with her to the stairs, to the second floor, and into his room. He threw her on the bed and with one fist grabbed hold of her shirt. The coarse material tore at the seams when he yanked with all his strength. Immediately, she leapt off the mattress but he blocked her path to the door. She spat at him, and he tore his own shirt to shreds trying to get it off, kicking his boots against the wall so hard they sounded like gunshots, ripping the trousers from his legs and advancing on her finally, naked, panting, his skin marked with the scars of what he had done for her.