Riverrun

by Andrews, Felicia

She straightened and explained to Cable as best she could what she thought the captain was planning, what was going to happen throughout the night. “You won’t get much sleep, I’m afraid. That’s his whole idea.”

  “That don’ bother me none, Missus,” the cadaverous black said with a wide, white grin.” ’Cordin’ to Amos, I don’ never sleeps anyways.”

  Cass laughed, touched his arm and turned to go. “Missus,” he said quickly, “don’ you think you should have a man wi’ you?”

  She shook her head. “No. I make enough noise as it is. One more, and we’ll sound like an army. They,” and she pointed back toward the field, “may not be aiming at anyone in particular, but I don’t want any stray shots just happening to come my way. Douse the light and go back inside, Cable. Get as much sleep as you can. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Yes, Missus,” he answered; but he did not move from his position nor did he quench the torch until she was out of range of the light and he could no longer hear her. Then, with a slow shake of his head and a broad smile of admiration, he returned to the shed. It was empty and silent, except for the wind that pushed shadows through the rafters.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  At first the pain was like sunrise on a flatland—distant, red, only a warning of the heat and unease to come. But when, in the darkness, Eric shifted slightly, the pain rushed at him like a great, fiery locomotive filling all of his senses with the sound and thunder of its approach. Despite himself, he groaned, and froze as best he could until he was sure that no one had heard him. He lay still a minute while the fire subsided. He dared not open his eyes, using his ears instead to sift what information he could from the air.

  He was inside, though whether in a cabin or a house he did not know. It was old, however. Dust and mold, the presence of musty age that no eye could see. His cheek was pressed flat against what he assumed was the floor, and his hands were bound behind his waist. His legs were tied tightly at the ankles, but his captor had forgotten to take off his boots. Mistake number one, Eric thought.

  He listened, heard nothing, no one. He strained his ears and could just make out the faint chorus of insects and tree frogs, the far-off lonely baying of a traveling mongrel.

  The fire was gone; only a throbbing remained. He had been struck high in the shoulder, and he was sure by the feel of flesh already tightening around the wound that it was more superficial than dangerous, not striking muscle or bone. Then he remembered seeing Lambert just before the shot was fired, and the pain returned—this time as a consuming rage that almost had him moving prematurely and giving away the fact that he’d returned to consciousness.

  Lambert. He had known. They had been waiting for him; it was no coincidence. They had been waiting to ambush him because someone had told them he’d be riding along that road at about that particular time. Did they know what he carried? He pressed himself against the flooring, and sighed when he felt the money belt still around his waist. Unless they had already gone into it and had just left it there, the secret was for the time being still safe. But time was something he had little of. If Lambert knew about this, then Hawkins obviously did, and the captain would not sit around and wait for the last day, now. Which meant that the longer he was kept here, the more danger Cass was in, and the less likely he would get out of this alive. Hawkins, he knew, was not keeping him here just to prevent him from reaching Meridine. He opened his eyes.

  A cabin. The walls were roughhewn and there were gaps between the logs that were as black as the room save for a faint aura of moonlight. There was no fire, there was no furniture that he could see, and he assumed that the door lay beyond his outstretched feet. Slowly, then, gritting his teeth to keep from crying out, he rolled over onto his back. The pain was not nearly as bad as he’d anticipated, and an experimental rotation of his shoulder told him someone—though he doubted it was Lambert—had bound the wound properly. He was right, then. Hawkins wanted him alive, but only until he needed him. He smiled, and searched through the darkness for something, anything he could use to make his escape, listening at the same time for any betraying noise that would tell him about the number of guards who had been posted outside. Considering he’d been wounded, he did not think Lambert would give up more than one man. That was the arrogance that Lambert carried about him like a cloak, an arrogance that would refuse him to admit to himself that Eric was capable of slipping away once again. That, he thought, will be mistake number two. Ten minutes later, he discovered mistake number three.

  “Where is Simon?”

  Judah looked at her blankly.

  Cass strode to the end of the porch and stared out through the darkness at the gardens, for a moment regretting that she had kept them there because she had so little time to enjoy them, to walk their paths and lament the dying of each season’s flower.

  “He was supposed to come back and report to me,” she said. “Go down to the road, Judah, and see if he fell asleep. I’ll have his damned black hide if he’s failing me now.”

  Judah, his face menacing with its patchwork of cuts and scrapes, nodded and took off at a run. For his size, he moved remarkably swiftly, preternaturally silently. Yet all his skills had not been enough to prevent him, after his fight with David and his subsequent flight, from falling almost literally into the campfire of a Klan convocation. Luck had been with him. The confusion was so great that he was able to escape almost immediately, he’d said, “makin’ sure some of ’em don’ breathe so good no more.” The rest of his injuries had come from his wandering through the hills without being able to light a fire for protection and warmth. He didn’t want to recall how many gullies he had fallen into, how many small and dank caves he had crawled into to sleep the daylight hours away.

  “But why did you come back?” Cass had asked him.

  Judah had shrugged before admitting reluctantly, and touchingly, that he was lonesome, that he was tired of running.

  A shot.

  Cass stiffened, then forced herself to relax when she realized what she was doing. She knew that Hawkins’s plan was already working, even though she understood its purpose. This won’t do, she told herself when she went inside; you’ve got to set the example, Cassandra, or no one else will be able to stand it.

  In the kitchen, Alice was sitting by the huge fireplace with a moist cloth draped over her eyes. She took it off when Cass walked in, and Cass could see that the swelling was already beginning to retreat, leaving behind it ugly shadows of purple and black. She smiled, and Alice replaced the bandage.

  Rachel and Melody came out of the corridor that led off toward the dining room and their own small rooms. They were arguing heatedly about the state of Melody’s bed, and Cass was dismayed. Fighting about housekeeping, she thought, when they should be worried about their lives. “All right,” she said, stepping between them just when it seemed as if they were going to come to blows. “All right!”

  The two girls looked up at her, Melody’s eyes brimming.

  “Now listen, you two,” Cass said sternly, “I have got to have some quiet around here. You’re going to drive us all insane with that bickering, you understand me? Rachel, the men will need something warm to last them the night. Get some broth and bread together and I’ll have Abraham bring it out to the sheds later. Melody, you go upstairs and see if there’s anything Mr. Vessler needs. You will not aggravate him, do you understand? Now get to it, before I tan you!”

  She stepped aside as Rachel, with one last parting glare at Melody, strode angrily into the scullery to fetch some stew meat and greens. The other girl, wiping at her face with the hem of her apron, scuttled out of the room toward the front.

  “You were hard on them,” Alice said.

  “I had to be,” Cass said, smiling before she realized that Alice couldn’t see her. “If I don’t keep them busy, they’re going to tear each other’s throats out.”

  “And what about you? You goin’ sleep at all?”

  The back door was open. There was another shot.<
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  “With that?” Cass said. “How can I sleep when I keep thinking that one of those balls might find a lucky mark?”

  “They’s only black folks,” Alice said.

  “They’re people,” Cass retorted. “And they’ve not given up on me yet, which is more than I can say for myself sometimes.”

  Alice shifted, and the cloth dropped from her eyes. In the firelight, Cass thought she looked more beautiful than ever, despite her troubles, and she was oddly envious of Judah. And as she thought the name, the man came into the room and stood expectantly on the threshold. From the look on his face, she knew he had not found Simon. “They took him,” she said flatly.

  Judah shook his head. “No’m,” he said. “I don’ think so …”

  God! The cry was smothered before it had a chance to escape, but it echoed and re-echoed as spasms of burning fire traveled across his shoulders and down his spine. He did not think he was going to be able to do it. Tears sprang to his eyes, and he tasted blood at his lips.

  Cass, for God’s sake, help me!

  He was sitting in the place where he had lain, his arms stretched down and tight behind him. He had thought he would be able to bring his hands under his buttocks and work the rope knot free with his teeth, but the wound would not let him. He had tried four times already; the first two had blacked him out, for how long he didn’t know. The last two refused to allow him that solace, and the pain spread like a summer brushfire. He was dizzy, sweating, shaking his head to clear it while he half-expected that the door would slam open and he would find himself staring into the muzzle of someone’s cocked gun.

  Harry, he thought then, why the hell didn’t I listen to you and stay in London where all we had to worry about was losing our shirts?

  He took a slow, deep breath. Another. The pain resumed its accustomed throbbing. He stared at the cabin’s one small window and thought he saw a shadow move across it. A bird, he thought. A man would have seen what I’m doing and would have been in here. A bird. That’s all it was. Yet his eyes would not leave the window until he felt himself growing tired as the weight of sleep began to find chinks in the barrier of his pain. He looked away quickly. There was no time for unconsciousness now. Every hour that kept him away from Cassandra and Riverrun was another nail in the coffin Hawkins was building to place them both in. He wondered for a moment what would have happened had he built Riverrun closer to a more substantial community, where the law was more easily enforced and the courts more in touch with that same law. He did not know, and he realized that it was useless to dwell upon it. Ifs and I-wish-I-had-knowns had never solved a problem before, and they weren’t about to now. He had to make the best of the situation. And, he thought grimly, since it’s bound to end in more than one death if I have any say in it, perhaps it’s a good thing the law, in the person of Sheriff Garvey, was as lax and approachable as it was. Otherwise, he would probably spend the rest of his days in jail.

  Not, he thought with a sardonic grin, that he wasn’t in a jail already. But this jail was one he would get out of. Concentration would do it. He stared at the door until nothing else filled his mind but the blackness of it, the emptiness of it, the promise of what lay beyond. He stared until his eyes ceased their watering, his arms ceased their trembling and began to move slowly, an inch at a time, down beyond his waist.

  “What do you mean?” Cass demanded. “What do you mean, you don’t think they took him?”

  For the first time since she had known him, Judah appeared uncertain. From the moment he had come into the room he had been unable to take his eyes off Alice, and now his gaze seemed to appeal to her for help, while at the same time knowing that she was as much in the dark as his mistress. His hands moved in front of him and he rubbed his palms together, slowly, nervously.

  “He s’pose t’be in the hickory.”

  Cass nodded sharply.

  “They can’t get him down without they either shoot him like a coon or drag him down. They ain’t no fight signs there, Missus. He jes’ gone.”

  “They could have threatened him,” she said impatiently. “There are a hundred ways they could have done it.” She punched a fist into her palm. “Damn that man! Sometimes I think he’s a magician. Damn his soul!”

  “Missus,” Judah said, “I don’ think he was taken.”

  Exasperated, Cass slumped into a chair, and setting her elbows on the table, buried her face momentarily in her hands. “What exactly are you talking about now, Judah?” she said, her voice muffled and weary.

  “You t’ink all the reasons you want to, Missus, but Simon, he don’ come down outa that hickory lest he gots somethin’ to tell you. That’s what you tol’ him to do, and that’s what he do. The only way he come down from there, he gots to be dead or he gots to come down by hisself, with nobody around to take him. That’s the way it is, Missus. Nobody takes Simon ’cept whats Simon wants to take him.”

  “He’s right,” Alice said. “That’s the way Simon is, and you of all people should know that.”

  Cass did know it, but she did not want to come to grips with it. It opened too many new boxes containing too many new questions, and she had all the problems she could deal with just at the moment. She had to think.

  “Judah,” Alice said, “go out to the stable and fetch Abraham. He’s small enough. Put him up in the hickory with something to shoot with.” When Judah hesitated, Alice frowned. “Judah, do it. We can’t have too much time go by without someone down there, you hear me?”

  Judah left immediately. Cass lifted her face, and Alice grinned at her. “I think I feel better,” Alice said.

  Cass laughed; and once the laughter started it was impossible to stop. She leaned back and roared at the ceiling, dropped her face into her hands and tried to smother the sound that escaped through her fingers. She gasped, giggled, broke into another peal and tried to stand. Her legs, however, would not hold her, and she fell back into her chair, still laughing, wiping now with the back of her hands the tears that coursed down her cheeks. Ludicrous, she told herself, and laughed again.

  Rachel came in from the scullery with the broth ingredients in her dark wooden bowl, saw the two women practically lying on the table in what seemed to her to be hysterics, and ducked back out again. This she wanted no part of.

  “Be … calm!” she ordered Alice, who only exploded again and set off Cass’s own momentary loss of control.

  For nearly ten minutes they fought to regain their composure, each one staring at the other and igniting another round. Finally, however, Cass could no longer stand the aching that spread through her chest and her stomach. She waved at Alice mock-angrily and stood, stumbled to the doorway, and made her way down the corridor toward the stairs. It was, she thought, as though she were drunk, as though she had emptied the wine that cooled in the cellar, or had taken more than a glass of the hard, clear liquid that Amos prepared each week behind his shack.

  “Stop,” she whispered to herself when, at the foot of the steps, she nearly started herself off again. With the heels of her hands pressed to her eyes, she waited, testing herself, for that one last guffaw she knew would come. And when it did, she ran up the stairs, away from the still-sputtering laughter she heard coming from the kitchen. She ran into David’s room where she found him sitting up, a book in his lap. The lantern made flickering shadows that seemed to have no source. His nightshirt was opened to the waist, and she could see the painfully thin chest, the flesh reduced to drumhead tightness, the ribs as clearly defined as though he’d not eaten for weeks. His hair was nearly totally gray now, and the black of his eyes had gone flat, colorless as Vern Lambert’s.

  “Where’s Melody?” she said.

  “I sent her away. She tries to tell me stories.”

  “She’s supposed to be cheering you up, you know.”

  “She doesn’t.”

  Cass scowled and took Melody’s stool, folded her hands in her lap and sat there for several minutes without speaking, staring at the folds of the
coverlet as it draped over the side of the mattress. She could see faint stains, knew they were blood, wished there were something more she could do than continually promise him a visit from Garner.

  The problem was, she also knew, David did not want to see the doctor again. He had made up his own mind about his fate, and he would not let anyone—from Garner to Rachel—disrupt his plans. Cass could only hope against what she knew the outcome would be, and pray that she was not fooling herself when she tried to believe he would last out the winter.

  “Judah thinks Simon has run off,” she said at last. David shook his head, his gaze on the far wall, unwavering, barely seeing.

  “I don’t know why,” she said.

  “I never did like that boy,” he said. “He worked too hard. Never trust a boy that works too hard.”

  “David,” she said softly, “you’re not making sense.” He coughed, and there was another silence.

  Cass thought she heard another shot, but when she looked quickly at him he had not moved, had not blinked.

  The room grew oppressive. Door, windows, and drapes were closed, and the air trapped within was overly warm despite the night’s chill that lingered outside the panes. There was also the acrid smell of David’s bandages, of blood, of the deep brass pot on the other side of the bed filled with his lungs’ clearings. She fought back the sensation of gagging. There was another smell, too, but it was one she would rather not put a name to, one she desperately drove from her thoughts.

  “It’s in the air,” he said suddenly, and she jumped at the sound.

  “What is?”

  “You know what I mean, Cass. It’s in the air. I can feel it even up here.”

  “Hawkins?”

  David nodded, slowly. “Him. His men, what they’re doing out there. I can feel it. It’s like … like another blanket sitting on top of me.”

  She tried to understand, to feel as he did, could only succeed in wincing at the smells that now pervaded the room.

  “I expect they’ll wait until tomorrow night,” he said. She nodded, saying nothing.