What Lies Buried: A Novel of Old Cape Fear

by Dewey Lambdin

  “God,” Livesey all but moaned at last, “I wish we’d never found them.”

  “I’m sorry,” Samuel muttered, turning sheepish.

  “Oh no, lad, don’t take on so,” Livesey gravelled, reaching down to take his son’s shoulder. “You’ve nothing to apologize for. You did well, and I’m both surprised and pleased by your abilities.

  “No, ’tis me … for being so blind. I fear that Jemmy has the right of it,” Livesey confessed, removing his hand from Samuel to rub absently at his stump, feeling very old and weary. “Those flowers are involved in Harry’s murder. How, I don’t know, but … That glade was a place where Harry met a woman … perhaps a lot of women over time, ‘cause fine as Priscilla or Georgina are, or were, onejust didn’t satisfy his … humors. I’d thought he’d outgrown such, but it appears that all this time I was deluding myself. Perhaps as your uncle Harry deluded us all. And Dear Lord, but it’s hurt-some!” he concluded with a hiss, slamming a fist on his right thigh as if to accentuate the pain he felt …to add the physical to the spiritual.

  “Wayull,” Bowlegs softly drawled in the shame-faced silence that followed Livesey’s strangled revelation, “leastways we know it warn’t nobody poor done it, Mistah Livesey. ‘Twuz a gennleman on a well-shod, highsteppin’ horse ‘at bushwhacked him. Had hisself real fine ridin’ boots. Double-barrel coachin’ gun’d be dear, too. An’ th’ girl’s shoe prints look well-made. Li’l bitty heels. Not what you’d reckon t’see this deep in th’ woods. You said ‘at ribbon wuz costly, Mistah Livesey. Hit ppears t’me whoever done it wuz th’ lofty sort.”

  Livesey held out his hand to re-examine the rotting flowers and study the ribbon more closely. The stems had been well-wrapped, bound in a double bow, very neatly, almost prissily done—with loving caret he sneered to himself. Even the free ends had been snipped inwards to tiny swallow-tails. Truly, a person of Quality” had taken great pains to make the nosegay.

  “Aye, a lady’s work. Or a clever gentleman’s,” Livesey agreed with a grimace of distaste. “Perhaps a rich lady’s maid servant, at her orders. Lord, if word of this gets out, it will break Georgina’s heart! Yet, puts us no closer to discovering the why, or the who.”

  “Mr Ramseur, maybe, Father?” Samuel opined. “He’s lots of servants who could’ve tied it. And he’s rich enough, and hated Uncle Harry. This is his side of the Cape Fear … like he told us.”

  “Maybe hit warn’t Sim Bates, but Prince Dick has plenty other people workin’ fer him who coulda done hit, Cap’m.”

  “One of the others in the barons’ faction, too, maybe, Jemmy,” Samuel stuck in. “Like Father said. Or Ramseur said, whichever.”

  “No call t’fash Miz Georgina, Mistah Livesey,” Jemmy suggested. “We could th’ow it away, again … fergit we found it.”

  “Let’s not tell anyone we found it,” Livesey decided suddenly, peering intently into their eyes. “Else we … spook the perpetrator. And I’ll conjure both of you to say not a blessed word about all that we did this afternoon. Say, instead, that we went hunting, found some promising deer tracks, but came home empty-handed; can you do that for me?” With a much more demanding glare at Samuel than atjemmy Bowlegs.

  “Good. But no … we’ll not throw this away. It’s evidence,” Livesey declared. “Sooner or later, it may lead us to the identity of the killer, or killers.

  “Feller thought he th’owed it away, he might git keerless, hey?” Bowlegs chuckled with a sly, sage look. “‘Til hit lead right to him?”

  “Like you always say, Father,” Samuel recited, looking up at his sire with a dutiful expression, “sooner or later, the truth will out.”

  “Ay-meh-un!” Jemmy Bowlegs loudly added, in such a pious tone that it startled both of the Liveseys, the father most of all.

  Chapter 12

  HE SAID what?” Matthew Livesey grunted over his simple supper as Bess related the gossip of the afternoon’s gathering. “That Uncle Harry was … messing with Anne Moore. Or a girl from across the river. Biddy MacDougall.” Bess cringed.

  “After I specifically warned you both not to indulge in idle speculation, you …” Livesey spluttered, as testy as Bess had ever seen him.

  “Father, I could hardly avoid it,” Bess rejoined meekly. “It was the only topic of conversation. I said nothing. I didn’t have to. Much as folk were talking, I didn’t have to say a word to hear as many opinions as I wished.”

  “Hmmm.” Livesey frowned heavily at her, nigh scathingly. “And you know gossip, Father,” Bess tried to cajole. “Mr Lakey gets invited to so many teas and things, he hears everything firsthand. ’tis a wonder he can bear to be out on his plantation, and cut off from fresh gossip, he relishes it so. There can’t be a thing in the entire colony he doesn’t hear of, sooner or later.”

  “And delights in passing on,” Livesey fumed. “Vile, or no.”

  “Well, yes,” Bess replied, adding quickly, “but he swore us not to repeat what he related about Anne Moore and Uncle Harry. He deemed it vile trash, not worth repeating. He was quite angry over it, himself.”

  “Mmm, hah.” Livesey nodded. “Good. He has some sense. Though I do not appreciate his relating it to you. Goose-brain.”

  “Bess, Father?” Samuel snorted with glee. “Or, Mr Lakey?”

  “Lakey, of course,” Livesey sniffed. “Ridiculous twit.”

  “Mr Lakey, Father?” Bess suggested coyly. “Or, Sam’l?”

  “Again Lakey, young miss.” Livesey at last smiled, cozened out of his anger. “Bless me, but you’re both as smart as paint tonight, far too quick on the rejoinder for me.”

  “Mrs Yadkin was there, too,” Bess related, as she slid back from the table to fetch what was left of her blueberry cobbler. “If not for Mr Lakey, she’d have corraled me up something fearsome. She sends you her regards, Father. Again,” she chuckled from the sideboard as she set out smaller plates, and fresh forks.

  “Oomph,” Livesey observed with a wince at the mention of that name.

  “I didn’t bring it up with her, either, Father,” Bess went on. “But she talked about the last evening you and Uncle Harry were at her tavern. How she last saw him getting on his horse and riding off down Third Street, and turning off for his home.”

  “Now, how could she have seen that?” Livesey wondered, almost scoffing.

  “She said she had to go outside for awhile,” Bess replied as she came back to the table with the dish of cobbler, and a short stack of dessert plates from their everyday service. “When you and he said your good-byes, I think. No, perhaps twice, ‘cause she said he came in and had a brandy and stingoe, then settled his reckoning after. Then, when he saddled up and rode off down Third Street and turned off for his home. Perhaps she went out twice. Something about chasing down a Mr Pocock, who didn’t pay for his supper?

  “Sam’l, don’t hog it,” Livesey ordered as his son dug into the cobbler with a large serving spoon before Bess could even be seated. “Leave some for us, what?”

  After supper, Livesey enjoyed a pipe on his front porch. It was not as grand a gallery or veranda as the Burgwyns, or other longer-settled homeowners on Dock Street had. It was pine boards, railed, and shaded by split shingles, barely deep enough for two rough, pew-like benches, some planter tubs cut down from molasses casks which held a variety of spring flowers and perennials Bess had set out, and his rocking chair. His bad leg was stretched out in front of him to ease it, That Thing propped on the rim of a planter tub. It was aching something sinful. Too much riding and walking on slippery, uneven ground, he thought; more exercise than he’d gotten in a week of work at the chandlery, or stumping about the town. He had a decanter of rum in the sideboard; a few sips might be needed to let him sleep that night, he considered. Or a willow-bark tea?

  A long, clay, church-warden pipe fumed lazily in his mouth as he rocked slowly back and forth, the small white bowl resting on his now-taut upper stomach. Local leaf was good as any Virginia export lately, and he wished again they had land. Cotton w
as fine, but tobacco … now there was a profitable crop!

  Dark had fallen, and the town, somnolent to begin with on Sunday, with all public houses closed, was disturbed only by the peeping of the frogs, or the faint cry of a final gull winging its way to a nighttime nest somewhere. Watch bells chimed from the ships anchored in the harbor at the foot of the street. Crickets sawed and creaked, in time to the rhythmic groan of the porch boards below his rocker’s runners. Off to the west, dull red glows lit Eagle’s Island, where sleepy millhands stoked the tar-pots and rendering tubs to keep the product soft for the next day’s labors. And a faint smudge of wood smoke wafted across the last after-glow of sundown. Lights were springing up here and there in Wilmington. A porch lantern on the more affluent houses, brass or bronze frames with inset Muscovy mica—isinglass. Poorer homes (such as his) lit their tiny share of the night with cheaper tin lanterns set with thin-pared sheets of cowhorn. Only by the courthouse were there proper street lamps so far, or along the wharves at the foot of the hill. Often as Wilmington had suffered raging fires, the idea of emulating the grand street lighting of London or New York was looked upon with suspicion. And the cost was sure to be hideous-dear.

  So how hadMrs Yadkin seen us, then? he wondered, troubled.

  They’d embraced and shaken hands near the lanterns at the gate of the stable yard and court. And there were two more small lanterns on the porch of the ordinary, which lit the courtyard well enough. But the night beyond …?

  Livesey stopped rocking and shifted upright in his chair.

  Beyond the lanterns’ circular dull gloamings, the streets were doubly dark—dark as a boot! Down Third Street at the intersection of Market Street, there was one tiny lantern by St James’s Church, but beyond a few paces, a rider would be swallowed by the night. Beyond that one, there were real street lamps at Third and Princess, by the courthouse yard. And, as Livesey recalled, there had been no moon to see by the night of the murder. It had been new at the time. He leaned forward to look up from the porch overhang to confirm that the moon was now but a quarter-moon, a week later. So how couldM.rs Yadkin have seen Harry turn his horse at either intersection?

  Wide as she blared her eyes, Livesey had always suspected that her sight was bad, and the woman too vain to suffer the indignity of spectacles. He had even japed about her sight with their family physician, Dr Armand DeRosset, when he had come in a few months earlier to order a supply of pre-ground spectacles from Philadelphia. He had told Livesey that as men aged, they began to lose their near-sight at first, while their far-sight remained sharp years longer. Whilst the women-folk lost their far-sight first, and kept their near-sight, so necessary for neat sewing, cooking and household chores, almost as if God had planned it Himself. A man would need far-sight to explore or hunt, to labor and build, to detect approaching dangers so he could be protection to his family, and what was his, so the Good Lord had ordained male eyes for that purpose. Women, being the weaker sex meant to be protected by men, didn’t need far-sight after their children had at least survived and grown to near adulthood, so God let them retain near-sight in their declining years.

  And since Barbara Yadkin was of an age, certainly, to need the aid of spectacles for far-sight, then how had she seen far enough to see what she had told Bess she’d seen, without them?

  “Imagined it,” Livesey dismissed with a grunt, and a puff on his pipe. “Even if she did see him, the lights would be better down by the courthouse, at Princess Street. Not Market, surely.”

  He leaned back in his rocker and thrust with That Thing. He blew a perfect halo of tobacco smoke that ghosted away on the river wind, closely followed by another that twined and spun like a plate on some juggler’s stick. IfHarry had turned down Market, though …

  “Dear Lord,” Matthew Livesey sighed, frozen on the back roll of his rocker stiffened by a distasteful discovery.

  Anne and Osgoode Moore’s house was on Market Street, not three lots down from the intersection with Third!

  Georgina had not come into Wilmington for Court Sessions with Harry this time. Might that have given Harry an opportunity, or the sinful urge, to canter past his lover’s house—if those deplorable rumors about them were true? AndtheDevil take ’em, he most bitterly thought.

  And Osgoode Moore. But he’d been at the tavern, too, right in the thick of things. But when had he left, Livesey wondered? And how soon before or after Harry had left? Suspicions, one atop the next, and each more vexing and disturbing—and more confusing! Livesey could not recall Moore’s excited voice raised in high dudgeon against poll taxes or the system of Royal governors, in that last wine-sodden hour he himself had been at the Widow Yadkin’s.

  “Dear Lord,” he sighed again, loosing the tension in his body, and rocking forward again. To find the answers to those puzzlers, he would have to go see Barbara Yadkin, and ‘front her, direct!

  And, what that befuddled chick-a-biddy might make of his sudden attention …he shuddered to contemplate.

  Chapter 13

  LIVESEY TOOK his breakfast at the Widow Yadkin’s Ordinary, J in hopes it would be less crowded than at mid-day. It was—at least in the public rooms. Travelers who had stayed the night were saddling up in the court and stable yard, yawning and scratching as packs were tied to muleback, donkeyback, or slung into oxcarts or pony traps. The public rooms were messy from their feeding, but blessedly silent and empty by the time he took a table freer of grease or spilled victuals than most. A sleepy, dawdling slattern mopped his table down with a dishclout stained the approximate color of spilled beer or tea, making the rough tabletop cleaner, though wetter, than before.

  “Stabling for your two horses!” Livesey heard a shrill voice say from outside. “Room for the night, three to the bed. Supper, ale, two bottles o’ ‘Teneriffe’ wine, sirs. And breakfast, sirs! And punch!”

  Livesey leaned back far enough to see out the window, to behold Barbara Yadkin in a morning gown, over which she’d thrown some dressing robe that resembled a coarse horse blanket. Her own hair topped that apparition, tweaked into curls over stiff paper spills. In morning’s light—bleakest of all and unkindest to women, no matter how lovely they’d seemed the night before—her complexion without artifice was like a plucked chicken’s. And shouting as she did didn’t help!

  “Four shillings for stabling and fodder,” she was demanding of the rough-looking trio of travelers who loomed over her. “Five pence a man for supper, five pence for breakfast. Four pence bed per head …”

  “An’ a rough’un ’twas, too!” the leader ranted back. “As makes no difference, you contracted it!” Barbara Yadkin said in riposte. “Wanted cheaper, did you? I offered you the floor in front of the hearth! That’s … five shillings altogether!”

  “Five shillings six pence,” Livesey grunted to himself.

  “Ale, Teneriffe, punch, that’s … two shillings more, sirs!” she tried to sum up. “Seven shillings is your reckoning. Seven shillings is what I want, orl sic the constable on you!”

  Livesey’s gaze went to the notice board over the counter of the bar, and he clucked in disapproval. Two bottles of poor port, three quarts of ale with their supper—and to his lights these men looked like the sort who’d put down more—was more like four shillings, six pence, of itself! No wonder the woman was husband-hunting as hungry as a shark; she needed someone who did sums!

  The leader of the travelers got a sly look and was quick to dig into a washleather purse hung on his belt, doling out silver coinage. English money was so rare, anything would pass: French, Spanish, Dutch, even Austrian—all varying in value. He’d not have looked as pleased as Mrs Yadkin did, without a chance to sort it over! But back in she came, seemingly satisfied by the exchange, face grim as Death-on-a-Mopstick. Andjust about as handsome or desirable.

  “Why, Matthew … Mr Livesey!” she gasped, startled to see him in her “establishment.” Her hands went fluttering to her hair, to the throat of her horse blanket robe.

  “Mistress Yadkin, good mo
rrow to you, ma’am,” Livesey bade her.

  “Bless my soul, I never … !” she cheeped, blushing, midway between coy and chagrined she wasn’t turned out more fetching for him. “Delia? Girl?” she barked for the serving wench, as loud as a regimental sergeant-major, then flushed as she mellowed to a more becoming coo. “You usually break your fast at home, I do believe, Mr Livesey? Such a surprise for me … you will excuse me just the moment, whilst I repair my habiliment? You will take coffee … anything else you wish? Delia!” she crowed again. “Just a moment, surely…?”

  “Of course, Mistress Yadkin,” Livesey said with a cheery grin.

  “Um, yes,just the moment, then,” she peeped, flustered.

  She came back not ten minutes later, now dressed in a sack gown with her hair un-papered and combed out almost girlish, with makeup done to a palely white perfection, and a beauty mark on her cheek, as Livesey savored his second mug of coffee with milk and loaf-sugar.

  “You have not gotten your breakfast yet, sir?” Barbara Yadkin squinted in disapproval, narrowing her hugely goggling eyes for once.

  “You said you would rejoin me soon enough, so I have not placed my order with your server, ma’am,” Livesey told her.