Gathering Deep

by Lisa Maxwell

  As I walked in, Byron was wiping his brow with a rumpled blue handkerchief. “Thought you’d want to see it, so I brought it right over,” he was saying to Dr. Aimes.

  “You say you found this in the attic?” Lucy’s dad asked, peering at the crate through the thick lenses of his glasses. “I thought we cleaned that out back in June?”

  Byron tucked the handkerchief into his back pocket. “We did. But when the electrical crew went in to redo some of the wiring, they ran into this tucked away in the back of one of the eaves.”

  Piers motioned for me to come over to the table. I stood near him, and he wrapped an arm around my waist as we watched Byron and Dr. Aimes carefully pry open the lid. We all leaned forward a little to see what the crate contained, but at first I couldn’t make out anything but some old fabric gone black with age and mold.

  It took them a little longer to make sense of the box’s contents. That whole big crate, and all that was inside was a couple of old books wrapped in yards and yards of the moldering old material.

  “That’s it?” T.J. asked, clearly unimpressed.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Dr. Aimes answered, completely missing his youngest child’s disappointment.

  T.J. shook his head, like he couldn’t believe he’d waited around for nothing, and then took off into another room.

  When they opened the first of the books, Lucy let out a small, strangled gasp.

  “Would you look at that,” Dr. Aimes said with a kind of satisfied triumph that made it clear he hadn’t noticed his daughter’s distress either. He turned the book to show us that the object wasn’t a book at all. Beneath the cover, a startlingly crisp image of a couple peered out from behind thick glass.

  I recognized who they were immediately—in the big house there were matching portraits of Roman Dutilette and his much younger French wife, Josephine. But seeing them like this, I understood Lucy’s reaction. The images were so clear, so lifelike that it seemed like the pair had been shrunken and trapped under the glass.

  “Did you have any record of Roman commissioning a daguerreotype?” Dr. Aimes asked Byron, but he didn’t wait for an answer. He was already moving on to the other book, which turned out to actually be a book this time.

  “It appears to be a journal,” he said, holding the slim volume in his gloved hands and opening it carefully. It was covered in dark, cracked leather that looked near to disintegrating, but the edges of the pages were tipped in gold. Even I could see that at one time, it had been a rich man’s book.

  As Dr. Aimes turned the pages of the book carefully, his whole expression was rapt and almost possessive. He was looking at the book like it was some kind of buried treasure for him alone. “From my very meager French, it looks like a journal that belonged to Roman Dutilette. But much of it is written in some kind of code.”

  “Why would he write in code?” Lucy asked doubtfully.

  “Probably to keep his thoughts private. It’s not like he would’ve been the first,” Piers explained. “William Byrd’s is probably the most famous example of a slave owner keeping a coded diary, but I doubt he was the only one.” Piers leaned forward, his brows drawn together as he looked at the book. “Can I see it?” he asked.

  Dr. Aimes frowned, like he wasn’t quite ready to give up the volume, but Piers was already pulling on a pair of the white gloves they use for handling the old stuff. Reluctantly, Dr. Aimes handed it over.

  “It’s not a code,” Piers said after a few moments of studying the pages.

  “What do you mean?” Dr. Aimes looked completely baffled.

  “It’s a language,” Piers explained, pointing out something on the small volume’s yellowed pages. “See here, this marking is the Nsibidi symbol for woman.”

  “En-sigh-what?” Byron asked, narrowing his eyes at Piers.

  “Nsibidi. It’s a language that’s used in Western Africa by the Igbo people,” Piers said. “I did a paper on some of the ceremonial uses of it a few years back for Professor Lamont’s grad seminar. It’s still used, but there are hundreds of secret symbols that are only passed between family members or between teachers and their students.”

  “Why would Dutilette be writing in some African language?” Byron asked, scowling at Piers.

  “Oh, there could be any number of reasons,” Dr. Aimes said. “It’s possible that he didn’t write it, or it’s possible that one of his slaves taught him.”

  Byron snorted.

  Dr. Aimes didn’t acknowledge Byron’s derision. “Can you read any more of it?” he asked Piers.

  Piers shook his head. “Languages aren’t really my thing,” he said. “But if I’m right about what it is, it shouldn’t be all that hard to translate.”

  “Leonard, you’re going to have to put that away now.” Lucy’s mom peeked her head through the door. “Dinner is almost ready, and we have a guest.” Mrs. Aimes gave me a smile that was a welcome and apology all at once. It was a motherly smile, and it felt like a punch to the gut. “You’re staying too, Piers?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, flashing her a smile. Then his eyes met mine, and the smile dimmed.

  “Byron?”

  “No, ma’am, but thank you. I’ll just be getting these artifacts back,” he said, reaching for the book.

  “Oh, I can bring them later,” Dr. Aimes said, still studying the book with a resolute intensity.

  Byron scowled. “I think it’s best if I take them to the office, where I can secure them,” he said, determined.

  Dr. Aimes looked up, clearly irritated. “Byron, I understand that you worked for the last owner, but I’m the director of the project now. The house and its contents are my responsibility. Not yours.”

  “You might be director, but I’m in charge of the artifacts,” Byron shot back darkly. “Anything happens to them, and it’s my ass on the line.”

  “I’ll walk them over later tonight,” Dr. Aimes said. His tone was so stark that it was clear the decision was final.

  “I really think we need to follow protocol on this … ”

  “Are you implying that I don’t know how to handle artifacts?” Dr. Aimes asked. I’d never heard his voice go steely like that.

  See, Lucy’s dad is all gangly limbs and tufts of hair sticking out at odd angles, and he has a way about him that makes you think of a snug corner in an old library when he speaks. Like there’s book dust in his voice. He’d brought his whole family to Louisiana because restoring Le Ciel was his dream, and his family loved him enough not to hate him for it. But glaring at Byron like he was, I saw a side of him I hadn’t noticed before.

  For a moment, Byron looked like he wanted to argue, but he didn’t. He glared at Dr. Aimes before he sullenly took his leave, looking back more than once before he finally left the parlor.

  Dr. Aimes took a moment longer to look over the book before he set the two artifacts back into the crate reluctantly.

  “Oh, Piers,” Dr. Aimes said, his voice back to its usual softness and his expression relaxed. “Hold on. There’s one other thing I wanted to talk to you about … Let me just grab it.” He stood abruptly and disappeared into another room.

  “Are you okay?” Piers asked Lucy. “For a second there, you looked like you were about to fall over.”

  Lucy’s cheeked flushed in embarrassment. “The picture took me off guard.”

  “They seem to have a tendency to do that with you,” Piers said with a smirk. “Strange for a photographer … ” he teased.

  Lucy slapped his arm. “Shut up. You know why I fainted the last time.”

  Earlier in the summer, Lucy and Piers had been with Dr. Aimes when he’d found a daguerreotype of Armantine Lyon, the girl Lucy had dreamed she was in a past lifetime. The unexpected sight of seeing Armantine’s face in her waking hours had made her faint dead away. I hadn’t realized back then what was happening to Lucy—or to me—so I’d teased her about it mercilessly.

  “I remember what Josephine Dutilette was like to Armantine,” Lucy went on. “Wh
en I saw Josephine’s eyes staring up at me … ” She shuddered. “Let’s just say, that woman was a piece of work. I don’t have any desire to ever run into her again, not in any lifetime.”

  Lucy’s father returned a moment later with a foam cube. He set it on the coffee table between us and opened it. Inside was a small, dark piece of wood that at first looked like a misshapen star. Then I realized it was a carved doll of some sort that had a bit of ancient-looking, rust-colored thread wound about its body.

  “You still have that thing?” Lucy sounded horrified.

  “Of course,” Dr. Aimes replied. “After we recovered it from Thisbe’s cabin, we cataloged it, same as the other artifacts.”

  The University of New Orleans, which owned the plantation and ran its living history museum, had also managed to buy an adjoining plot of land containing a cabin that once belonged to Thisbe. The historians all knew that Thisbe was an ex-slave and influential in the life of the area, but none of the university staff—Dr. Aimes included—had any idea of how powerful she’d really been. And they certainly didn’t know she was still around.

  “Mama Legba told you to get rid of that, Dad. She told you how dangerous it was,” Lucy said.

  Piers shifted next to me, and when I glanced over at him, he was looking at the small doll with the same wariness as Lucy. He’d been there the day they discovered the charm, and I knew he was as upset as Lucy to see that Dr. Aimes still had it.

  “It’s history, Luce. This is probably more than a hundred and fifty years old,” Dr. Aimes said, his voice gruff with more than a little irritation. “You can’t get rid of something like that because of some superstition. And besides, while I’m sure Ms. Legba meant well enough, since when do you put any stock in stories about spirits and curses?”

  Lucy’s mouth shut abruptly, and she glanced at me like she didn’t know what to do. It’s not exactly like she could explain to her father why she thought the charm was dangerous, not without explaining everything else. Not that he would have believed her anyway.

  After all, the charm didn’t look like much—just a gnarled little piece of dark wood—so I understood why Dr. Aimes wouldn’t have paid much attention to Mama Legba’s warnings about it, but the unease that filtered through the room once the foam crate had been opened was so thick and obvious that I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t sensing it. I couldn’t imagine why he’d even want to have that thing near him much less keep it in his own house.

  “I was talking to Professor Lamont about this,” Dr. Aimes told Piers. “He said his lab up at Vanderbilt could run some tests on it before we put it in the museum. I thought maybe you’d like to take it for me? I could get a courier, but if you go, you might get some extra lab time under your belt,” he finished with a smile.

  “Oh,” Piers said, shifting again in his chair. “I don’t know … Things have been pretty busy around here with the preservation crew,” he hedged. “I’m not sure if I can get the time off.”

  “I can talk to Byron,” Dr. Aimes told him, waving away his excuse. “It shouldn’t be a problem to give you a few days off from your usual shifts. Besides, now that we’ve found the journal, I’d like Lamont to take a look at it as well.”

  “Thanks, but—”

  “It sounds like a great opportunity,” I interrupted. I knew Piers was about to turn it down so he could stay close to me. Which was exactly what I’d been afraid of him doing—giving up pieces of his life to protect mine. It was exactly what I didn’t want him to do, because I knew in the long run, he’d end up hating me for it.

  “I don’t know,” Piers said, clearly frustrated with me.

  “I’ll be fine,” I told him, pasting on a smile that I hoped looked genuine. “Besides, it’ll only take a couple of days, right?” I asked, glancing at Dr. Aimes, who gave me a nod in answer. “You’ll be back in no time. No big deal,” I said, trying to send him the not-so-subtle message that he should agree.

  Piers didn’t respond. He frowned at me with an undecipherable look in his eyes. But he must have known he was stuck. Between me and Dr. Aimes, he didn’t have any other excuse that wouldn’t have raised suspicions. “I don’t know … ”

  “Well, give some thought to it,” Dr. Aimes said.

  “Lovely,” Mrs. Aimes drawled from the doorway to the kitchen. “Now if you would be so kind as to put that away so we can eat?”

  Dinner was pleasant enough, but I could tell Piers was pissed about me insisting he go to Nashville. It hadn’t done anything to help the tension that was already between us, and I was more than a little nervous about what he would say when he pulled me aside after dinner.

  Alone in Dr. Aimes’s cluttered office, Piers again went through all the reasons he shouldn’t go to Nashville or leave me to myself.

  “We haven’t even talked to Mama Legba like we planned,” he said. “We need to meet up with her tomorrow, because you know that if the police came to her, they think the killing had something to do with the occult. Thisbe has to be involved.”

  “So we’ll talk to her first. But you know as well as I do that if you don’t go, you’re going to have to come up with a better reason. Usually, you’d jump at a chance like this. I thought we were supposed keep acting like everything’s normal so we don’t have to involve anyone else. Wasn’t that the whole purpose of my story about Momma visiting a sick relative?”

  “You’re right,” Piers said, running a hand over his head. “But I don’t like the idea of leaving you alone right now. Not with bodies turning up in the Quarter.”

  “It’s just for a couple of days,” I told him again. “Until then, I’ll be staying with Lucy in a well-warded house that’s been covered twice over by Mama Legba’s protective charms. I’ll be fine.”

  He still didn’t look convinced. “I still can’t help but feel like you’re trying to push me away, Chloe.”

  I pretended like I didn’t hear the question in his tone as I walked over to the table where Dr. Aimes had left the foam container and lifted the lid. Again, that uneasy energy whispered through the room. “This was Thisbe’s, right?”

  Piers nodded.

  “Did you ever consider that it might be able to tell us something about her, or about what she might do next? If you’re in the lab, we wouldn’t have to wait to find out what they learn about it.”

  He frowned, and I could tell he didn’t like where I was going.

  “Think about it,” I pushed. “If you’re the one who delivers the charm to Professor Lamont, and if you get to help out in the lab, you’ll have firsthand knowledge about anything they learn. That would be a lot more help to figuring out what Thisbe might do than all of us sitting here waiting for something else to happen.”

  The way he scowled at me told me that he knew I was right. “I still don’t like it,” he said.

  “Me neither. Look, like Dr. Aimes said, you don’t have to decide right this second. Let’s see what Mama Legba has to say, but at least consider it?” Without thinking, I reached out and ran a single finger across the rough thread of the little doll.

  A shuddering unease ran through me, and then all at once, the room around me was gone.

  The smell of woodsmoke burned my nostrils and the light from the fire in the brick hearth cast a strange, pulsing glow over the meager furnishings in the room. My skin felt the fingers of the cold night beyond reaching for me through the sparse warmth of the fire, but I shrugged it off.

  What did a little cold matter when I had power settled over me like a heavy cloak?

  A bone-deep sense of absolute rightness and conviction flooded through me as I looked at the body of the man lying on the narrow bed. He was beautifully built, with strong features that even in sleep looked formidable and sure. Simply looking at him, knowing he was mine, had a warmth curling low in my belly. I had an overwhelming urge to press my lips against his broad and generous mouth.

  But I didn’t. There would be time enough for that later—a lifetime of days. But tonight, there was work
still to be done.

  I pulled a low three-legged stool close to the bed where he lay and rested his palm in the skirts that covered my lap. I already had everything I needed, but still I hesitated.

  “No,” I thought wildly.

  No more hesitation. No more second thoughts. I knew what needed done, and I would do it. I would keep him safe.

  I took the knife I’d prepared and carefully shaved a bit of his hair from his temple and added it to the lock of my own hair that I’d already cut, binding them together with a few drops of red candle wax. Always red for power.

  Then I took a bit of sewing thread and pierced the clump of wax as I murmured the words that would bind him to me. The man shifted in his sleep as I finished the incantation, but I ignored him. Working more quickly now, I fastened the clump of wax to the small figure I’d carved from one of the great oaks on the neighboring property. I’d selected the largest of the trees for its constancy and power.

  When I was finished, I looked at my handiwork for a moment, sensing the warmth that built in my palm where the charm rested. Magic like this should have been more than enough to bind most, but he wasn’t like most. He had a strength and a power to him that everyone could sense—the others, who made way when he passed by. The slave driver, who’d never raised the whip to mar his back. Even his master, who refused to sell him, no matter the price offered.

  I knew well enough it would take something stronger than a simple binding to hold him safe when he was so determined to die for the sake of living. Not that he’d told me any specifics of what he was planning. But he didn’t have to, because I could smell it in the air, cutting through the smoke from the fires that boiled the cane. Disquiet and recklessness has its own particular perfume—sweet and thick smelling, with a little rot underneath. For weeks now, that scent had been thick in the fields, wafting through the cabins filled with uneasy bodies, and following Augustine everywhere he went.