Riding Shotgun

by Rita Mae Brown

  Margaret almost stumbled out of the house. Bobby and Marie, the indentured servants, frankly stared, mouths agape.

  “You’ve got to call the sheriff!”

  “Sheriffs are in England. We don’t have them here,” Tom evenly answered.

  “Oh, for Chrissakes, drop the charade, will you? A man’s been murdered up the road. You’ve got to call the police!”

  “Margaret, stay here. Tell Bobby to load up the muskets—just in case. You know what to do.” He dashed around to the back and reappeared mounted on Helen.

  “Lead the way,” he told her.

  “Wait!” Margaret ran inside and returned. She handed up a flintlock pistol to Tom who stuck it in his belt.

  She handed another to Cig who took it without grumbling. If it was the only weapon around, she was going to use it.

  “Come on.” She turned Full Throttle west on the river road.

  The two rode in silence. As they reached the body, Tom dismounted.

  He whistled. “This is a bloody harvest, all right.”

  “I saw the killer. For a second he appeared in the mist and then ran into the forest. He was going to scalp this man.”

  “They always do that. You know that.”

  “Not today they don’t!”

  “Pryor, you’re not in possession of your senses,” Tom firmly chided her. “This is a Tuscarora Iroquois.”

  “What are you talking about?” She was mad as hell now.

  “The Iroquois and Manahoac peoples are west and north of the fall line for the most part, the Algonquin, east of it. Even though the savages have treaties between them this fellow”—he broke off and knelt down, rolled the corpse over on his back—“robbed him, too.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Tom pointed to two cut thongs at the waistline on the Indian’s leather breeches.

  Cig squinted. The awful reality that this was another time was beginning to sink in. She pushed it back. “There has to be some authority. You’ve got to tell someone.”

  “I will. I’ll tell our neighbors and I’ll tell James Blair who has a brain in his head.” Tom, a trace of bitterness in his voice, continued, “Won’t do a bit of good to tell the governor or the House of Burgesses. They’re too consumed with collecting taxes and sending them back to King William. The last time the Indians started slaughtering us, they wouldn’t even raise a militia. Of course, that was a different governor so I’ll hold my peace on this one. Still, the Crown wants our money but refuses to spend any to defend us.”

  She folded her hands over the pommel of her saddle. “What about the body?”

  “Help me.”

  Cig dismounted and the two of them heaved the corpse over Tom’s horse behind the saddle.

  They walked back toward Buckingham.

  She kept, her mouth shut. Scanning each bend of the river for a landmark, anything, her despair deepened. She felt herself enveloped by time, as though a velvet glove was closing around her. All she wanted was a telephone. She regretted the times she had cursed Alexander Graham Bell for interrupting her life. She prayed there would be some logical explanation—that Tom Deyhle was suffering from schizophrenia or manic-depression or any psychological term she could fling at him. He seemed sane and sound although at this moment he was worried. Her teeth chattered. She clamped her jaws shut.

  He noticed and said soothingly, “Don’t worry, sister. It’s been over twenty years since the last uprising. This is heathen killing heathen.”

  She turned to him with tears in her eyes. “That’s not why I’m afraid.”

  “What then?” He smiled, his voice kind.

  “I don’t know where I am. I don’t know what time it is. I’m not sure I know who I am.”

  He tilted his head back at the sky. “Eight o’clock about, you’re on your way home, Pryor Deyhle. You know, I think the mind is like a child’s toybox. Sometimes things are tossed inside and there’s a jumble. It will all sort out.”

  “You really do not have a telephone?” The tears flowed.

  “Sister, I never heard of such a thing.” Love and impatience carried in his voice.

  “Then what year is it? Truly, Tom, what year?”

  “1699.”

  “Oh, God.” She bit her lip until it bled. Otherwise she would have sobbed uncontrollably.

  10

  Drawing on reserves of self-control she scarcely knew she possessed, Cig continued to keep silent. Since the murdered Indian had riveted everyone’s attention, she didn’t have to say much. She tried to give no cause for alarm, because she figured this group of people wouldn’t be different from any other group of people: they’d gossip.

  If she acted too peculiar or disoriented she might find herself in a worse mess than she was already in.

  Tom took the body to Shirley Plantation about eleven miles downriver. He quietly instructed Margaret to be vigilant—just in case.

  Tom said the killer would probably head north or south toward the great swamps but not west over the fall line. Since an Indian in Jamestown was relatively uncommon he’d probably move through the woods to reach his destination.

  Cig struggled to absorb what wasn’t being said. The suppressed fear was palpable. Naturally, everyone’s first concern was his own immediate safety. The next worry was that this killing could presage a war between the tribes with the colonists caught in the middle.

  Tom wanted to get hold of Lionel deVries of Wessex Plantation and William Byrd, downriver. Both men were amassing fortunes by setting up trading posts with the Indians. Byrd rode into Carolina, specializing in coastal tribes, whereas deVries, apparently a bold soul, crossed the fall line, continuing even over the mountain range that people said was blue. He traded in the fertile Shenandoah Valley where few whites traveled.

  Cig, as if in a daze, untacked Full Throttle, wiped him down and turned him out in the paddock closest to the barn. The two cows in the paddock paid no attention to him.

  Margaret appeared, carrying two pails of milk. Cig took one from her.

  “You’ve been buffeted about these last hours. Exhausted, hungry, and then this morning—well…. Not the homecoming you imagined, I fear.”

  “The truth is, I don’t know where I am. Except geographically.” Cig knew she wasn’t making sense. She concentrated on not spilling the milk. Having a chore to do made her feel better.

  “It must be terrible to lose your memory.” Margaret sympathized.

  “Memory? It’s my mind I’m worried about,” Cig blurted out. “There’s got to be a telephone, a telegraph, hell, two tin cans on a string.”

  “String I have. As to the two other objects…” Margaret shook her head. “Do you recognize any of us?”

  “Your voice sounds familiar but I can’t place it.”

  “Tom?”

  “Only that we look alike.”

  Margaret, genuinely sympathetic, said, “I am sorry, Pryor.” She hesitated. “What about Castor and Pollux?”

  “Don’t recognize them either.”

  “Ah, well, fretting will only make it worse. Patience…”Margaret left off her sentence as she opened the heavy oak door to the fieldstone springhouse. She placed the milk pails in the stone-lined trench through which the cool water flowed. Big, round wrought-iron circles bolted into the side of the springhouse provided tethers for the pails. Margaret lifted the pail onto a long wrought-iron S-hook, one end hooked onto the pail handle and the other through an iron circle.

  “Beautiful stone work!” Cig exclaimed.

  “William Henry Harrison, in his kindness, lent us two of his shipyard men. He has great plans for the Berkeley Hundred and the shipyards will no doubt provide him, in good time, with the money to build and build. It’s his vice.”

  Margaret lifted up a white square chunk of butter as they left the springhouse, and the young woman carefully closed and bolted the door.

  “Are you worried about thieves?” Cig wondered.

  Margaret laughed. “I learned the hard way.
” She pointed to the cats. “We bolt the smokehouse, too. Of course, I think the raccoons and the fox have a lot to answer for, not to mention Highness, Nell Gwyn, and Little Smudge. She looks like a smudge, doesn’t she?” Margaret pointed to the dark gray cat, her bright green eyes full of playfulness.

  When they arrived back at the house, Margaret set out cold cornbread and the butter while she ground coffee. “Our greatest luxury. I imagine you could drink it anytime you wanted to in London. I keep the coffee here and the tea next to it. The flour is in this crock and sugar here. I use honey more than sugar though. Your beehives are flourishing. You’ll have to walk up to the clover meadows to see for yourself.”

  Cig gratefully ate the food placed before her. “Margaret, I appreciate your kindness. But I still can’t believe it’s 1699.”

  Margaret folded her hands in her lap. She had spent a restless night, worrying about the changes in her sister-in-law. Finally, she had reached the conclusion that Pryor, despite splendid good health, had suffered a mental affliction due to the rigors of her journey or perhaps some shock along the way that would reveal itself in time. No tainted blood ran in the Deyhle family or in the Buckinghams, for that matter, although the Buckinghams could be courageous as well as foolhardy. The knowledge that Pryor’s disturbance was most likely temporary enabled Margaret to tolerate her peculiarities, although she didn’t want anyone else to see Pryor until she had recovered her senses. She had always loved her husband’s sister and was prepared to help her, nurse her back to reality and pray continuously for her restoration. She was well aware that her own experience was too limited for her to imagine all that Pryor might have seen and endured on her journey. Margaret had never known the horrors that drove people to cross an ocean, but her grandparents had told her enough about the Old World to make her quite happy she was in the new one.

  “Actually, it’s November four, 1699,” Margaret quoted from the old-style calendar. The new, corrected calendar wouldn’t be used until 1752.

  Cig blinked. She vaguely remembered the calendar switch because she had read that presidents Jefferson and Madison could celebrate two birthdays if they wished, old style and new style.

  “I… I…” Cig searched Margaret’s face. If she really was in the last year of the seventeenth century, continuing to insist that she was from 1995 would make life harder for them both. Her main concern was not for herself but for Hunter and Laura. Were they safe? Would they manage without her? Grace, as their godmother, could provide for them but her heart broke each time she summoned their faces. “I remember names. Some names.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Shirley Plantation. Williamsburg. Uh, Flowerdew Hundred.” She rattled off some plantation names she could remember.

  “So you heard about Williamsburg while you were in London? The ship carrying that news must have had wings.”

  “Uh—” Cig hated to sound stupid. “I’m a little confused. Isn’t Williamsburg the capital?”

  Margaret beamed. Now she knew Pryor’s memory would return. “On paper.” She laughed. “The Assembly passed an act to build the city where Middle Plantation now stands. An excellent location between the York and the James, I think. When the state building burned last year, the Assembly decided to move to a place less beset by contagion. But the Act only passed this June. You must have heard as you were packing to come home.”

  Cig ignored that. “So nothing is built yet?”

  “Duke of Gloucester Street, a mile long, if you can imagine that, has been laid out. All other streets will be parallel to that. John Page sold two hundred eighty-three acres to the city. A most marvelous occasion for him.” She appreciated foresight and profit.

  “My God, we really are at the very beginning,” Cig gasped.

  Margaret tried to understand. “After London, we must look to you as the Indians look to us.”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that, Margaret. It’s just—” She wiped her forehead then abruptly changed the subject. Her temples throbbed. “I’m not a lunatic even if I seem like one. I’m peaceful.”

  Margaret’s response, spontaneous and warm, soothed Cig. “I think no such thing. This will pass. I feel strange that you don’t know me for I look upon you as a sister… yet that, too, shall be set right. I know it.”

  “Okay.” Cig weakly agreed.

  Margaret asked, “Okay?”

  “Ah—” Cig paused a moment. “It means ‘yes’ or everything’s fine, good. Okay.”

  “The rage in London?”

  “No—forget it.”

  11

  That night Margaret hauled buckets of water, which she poured into the huge cast-iron pot hanging in the winter kitchen attached to the back of the house. She thought a bath would lift Pryor’s spirits, so the two worked together to prepare it.

  A wooden tub shaped so a person could comfortably sit and stretch out her legs in it took up the center of the floor. Homemade soap from boiled pig’s fat mixed with aromatic herbs, mostly lavender, made do for the body and the hair as well. Cig untied her one pigtail, which she wore at the nape of her neck. She shook out her hair and surveyed herself in the small but good-quality mirror.

  “Margaret, every time I look there’s more gray.”

  Margaret checked over the full, dark head. “Nonsense.”

  “Why don’t you bathe first and I’ll follow?” Cig offered.

  “You go first, please.”

  “Do you ever take a bath with Tom?”

  Scandalized, then amused, Margaret laughed. “Never. Gentlemen and ladies should enjoy separate toilettes. Besides, he slops water everywhere.” After pouring the heated water into the tub she leaned over and tested it with her elbow. “Just right.”

  When Margaret had left, Cig stripped off her clothes and crawled into the tub. She stood straight up. It was a lot hotter than it looked. Little by little she scrunched down until she was up to her neck in deliciously warm water. As the temperature outside had skidded into the forties she appreciated the warmth. The big fire in the fireplace crackled and as the shadows danced around the kitchen, the pots loomed like a parasol of planets. The well-worn wood felt smooth and comfortable. Cig dozed off for a bit, only opening one eye when Margaret scooted back in to grab her dirty clothes.

  “I don’t have any clothes other than what you’ve got in your hands.”

  “Yes, you do. In your wardrobe. I haven’t moved a thread.” Margaret sat down on the stool next to the tub.

  Margaret absentmindedly rummaged through Cig’s vest and jacket pockets, natural enough if clothes are to be washed. She pulled out the dollars, the driver’s license with Cig’s photograph on it, two quarters and a dime and the little flashlight. Margaret stared at the driver’s license. Her hands shook.

  “It’s you. It’s the most perfect likeness I could imagine!” She read the dates of Cig’s birth, 6/8/55, and the expiration of the license, 6/8/00. “I don’t understand.” Trembling, Margaret placed the driver’s license beside her on the stool. Nell Gwyn jumped up and sat on it. No piece of paper, no matter how tiny, escapes the notice of a cat.

  “I don’t understand either, Margaret, but as you can plainly see that picture is of me and it’s not a painting. It’s a process called photography which was invented in the middle of the nineteenth century. And the license is so that I can drive a car. That’s a machine that’s like a coach in a way but runs on gasoline—you don’t need horses. Automobiles, or cars as we call them, were invented around the beginning of the twentieth century. I truly am from the twentieth century. Look at the money.”

  “What money?”

  “The paper—we use paper money.”

  Margaret’s luminous eyes shone with fear and curiosity as she placed the folded-over bills in her left hand and opened them. The attire of Washington, Hamilton, and Andrew Jackson was close enough to what she herself knew that she intently studied their faces. “One dollar.” She put the accent on the lar. The date on the dollar Bill was 1992. Margaret stared at th
e date.

  “Dollar. It’s the money of the United States of America. We’re a separate nation from England now—and we’re huge. The country stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.”

  Margaret couldn’t fathom that. She was still grappling with this strange physical evidence of another time, the photograph, and even if Pryor could have printed up the money—and beautiful it was, too, such high-quality engraving—she could not have created that—picture. “It’s you. Truly with God as my witness, this is you.” She read aloud the name, “Pryor Chesterfield Deyhle Blackwood.”

  “I’m widowed. I’m a Deyhle by birth. My husband died last year of a heart attack.” Cig withheld the rest of that sorry tale.

  “But you are Pryor Deyhle?” Margaret struggled to hang on to her own sanity.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “And you are Tom’s twin sister. You have to be. Look at you. Look at him.”

  “I—I don’t know—we do look like twins, but Margaret, I have no memory of living—this life. I remember everything about my other life, including some stuff I’d like to forget.”

  “No one can have two lives.”

  “Then I’m crazy. There’s no other explanation that I can think of—can you?”

  “You’ve lost your memory but you’re not without your faculties.” Margaret ran her finger over the photograph. “It’s smooth.”

  “Yes. Photography is a kind of miracle, I guess, I never thought about it before.” She pointed to her breeches. “Look at the zipper in my pants.”

  “What?”

  “Where the buttons would be in Tom’s breeches.”

  “You mean these little teeth?”

  “Yes. Now take the plastic tab and run it upwards.”

  Margaret clapped her hands together when she did just that. “Wonderful.”

  “That’s a zipper. Some are made out of metal. That one is made out of plastic, which came into being, gee, I don’t know, around World War Two.”

  Margaret blanched. “The world at war, what are you saying?”