Riding Shotgun

by Rita Mae Brown

  Cig put her finger to her lips before the group could screech at the sight of the vixen. The silence created even more tension.

  A few long minutes passed and then three hounds, hard on the scent, cleared the cornfield. Fitzroy followed, looking to Cig.

  She removed her cap, pointing in the direction the vixen took. He smiled and pushed on, and a strange Chill racked her body. By now the rest of the pack came out of the cornfield. Cig moved down the hill, falling in behind the pack.

  The sweet smell of the ears hanging on the stalks to dry, fodder for winter, curled into her nostrils as she approached the bottom of the hill. The hounds picked up the scent and opened up. She squeezed Throttle but just as quickly pulled him up. The hounds lost the scent.

  “By the saints!” She heard Fitzroy curse.

  The sun was near the top of the sky; it must be close to eleven. The day warmed considerably, the scent rising with it.

  Without thinking about it she rode over to Fitzroy much as she would to Roger Davis. He was even more handsome at close quarters, his blue eyes sparkling.

  “Given the warmth the only hope is to cast by a creek.”

  He said nothing for a moment. “A Huntsman, are you, madam?”

  “I’m sorry. Second nature.” She blushed. She’d forgotten that she wasn’t the master, this wasn’t her Huntsman. She had no right to offer direction. “You’ve a beautiful pack and my enthusiasm for more sport made me forget my manners.”

  He nodded his head. “Patrick Devlin Fitzroy at your service, madam.” His brogue had a lilt to it.

  “Pryor Deyhle.” She smiled. “It’s the strangest thing, but I feel we’ve met before.”

  He smiled now. “I regret that we have not, but you ride like the Devil himself. Dress like him, too.” He indicated her scarlet jacket.

  She didn’t know whether to laugh or be insulted. “You won’t lose me in the woods this way.”

  “Ah, Virginia practicality. Not much forest in County Cork.” His eyebrows pointed upward for a moment. “You are Tom Deyhle’s twin, I gather?”

  “I am.”

  “And where did you find such a horse? Not in the New World, I’ll wager.”

  “Uh—” She lied, “A Barb I purchased in England.”

  “If ever I’m a rich man III send you back over the water to buy one for me.”

  As the field caught up to them and gathered round Cig said, “Thank you for this fine day. It was a pleasure to hunt with you, sir.”

  The others thanked Fitzroy as Lionel joined Cig. Abraham came along her other side, much to Lionel’s irritation.

  When they returned to Shirley a famished bunch, they rushed to the sumptuous hunt breakfast as their grooms and Edward Hill’s servants rubbed down the horses, which, once cooled out, were rewarded with oats laced with a bit of bran and molasses made into a mash.

  Ham biscuits, sausage gravy, hot cornbread, mountains of sweet butter, slabs of bacon, eggs, pancakes and waffles drenched in the thickest maple syrup or creamy clover honey, and orange rinds dazzled the guests for whom citrus was a rare delicacy.

  As they ate, the hunt became fiercer, the fox bigger, and the stone wall loomed large as Hampton Court.

  The ladies peppered Cig with questions about her riding habit. Margaret, at her elbow, said or whispered names, mentioned children and subtly nudged her in the right direction.

  The men, swilling stout home brew as well as more refined spirits along with the biscuits, spoke of tobacco prices, the hopes of acquiring land farther upriver, and they picked over the issues before the Assembly. The subject of the murdered Indian was thoroughly dissected with Lionel firmly expressing the opinion that if the Indians could benefit from trade, plunder would be less alluring.

  The men also discussed the ladies. Abraham wanted to have a few moments with Tom. He wanted to ask about Pryor but Tom, in the center of the group and well-liked by all, couldn’t be pried away. So Abraham pretended to be interested and peeked out from time to time to catch a glimpse of Pryor.

  Fitzroy, irreverent, had the men laughing and he didn’t mind being the butt of the jokes himself.

  In time the gentlemen joined the ladies, which provoked more hilarity. Daniel Boothrod declared that what Virginia needed, apart from more good women like his wife, was more foxhunting and more dances. Abraham declared that they should invite the foxes to the balls at which point Fitzroy bowed to the ladies and purred, “But we have.”

  Lionel fumed inwardly. He wished he’d said that for Pryor laughed with delight. Willful and independent from birth, she was even more so since her return from England. He stared at her and felt that she had changed. She had always been reckless and wild but now she openly challenged him. Well, that would change when he married her.

  19

  A warm south wind fluttered over the pastures and lawn. If Cig closed her eyes it felt like spring. Before she could rise to carry her plate back to the table a servant, Welsh from the look of her, gently lifted it from her hands.

  “Thank you.”

  “Anything more, m’um?” the young woman asked.

  “No, thank you.” As everyone was talking to everyone else, and she found herself alone, she chose the moment to gratefully slip away. She walked toward the stable, a magnet for her since she gravitated toward animals whenever she needed to think. Hearing the laughter of the grooms, she stopped then walked over to a black gum tree at the edge of the lawn.

  She leaned against the textured bark, her eyes sweeping the buildings, noticing the efficient use of topography and materials. The laughter and conversation hummed in the near distance, the horses nickered to one another as the grooms hauled buckets of water, snapping each other with rags. An old man, his white beard patchy, his teeth long gone, dozed while seated on an upturned wooden bucket. Between his boots rested curry combs.

  The squeal of children, dressed like tiny adults, made her smile as did the barking of the house dogs chasing the balls thrown for their benefit.

  Cattle grazed on good pastures, chickens strutted and scratched, careful not to waken sleeping cats stuffed full of ham biscuits.

  Shirley Plantation was quick with life, with plans for the future. The sweet smell of hay, roasting ears of corn and cleaned leather filled her with memories of parties at her parents’ farm. Grace would rush about begging anyone and everyone to chase her. Cig usually did, invariably getting her starched dress dirty whereas Grace never seemed to attract so much as a speck of dust. If she shut her eyes the sounds were the same except no horns honked, no motors started and stopped, no big rubber tires crunched down the stone driveway and no radio played in the background. Her mother used to bring out the kitchen radio, putting it on a wide branch of the lowest tree. Extension cords snaked over the lawn. Apart from that, the energy, the gossip, the flirting and fighting, the dogs ecstatic with excitement—it was the same.

  She closed her eyes as tears filled them. When she opened them she wanted to see Hunter and Laura. She didn’t care what century. She wanted to hear their bickering and laughter.

  And she missed Blackie.

  The tears left wet trails down her cheeks for she desperately missed her sister, angry and wounded as she was.

  She wondered who she was. Who thinks about their surroundings, about the minutiae of daily life? Ivory soap ads, Melissa Etheridge songs, baseball caps in every color and cowboy boots to match, faded Levis and crisp white T-shirts, the Messiah sung on Christmas Eve, water balloon fights on a sweltering August afternoon, a poem by William Butler Yeats, a painting by John Singer Sargent or Arthur Munnings, photographs of the family, hunting photographs by Marshall Hawkins, tedious State of the Union addresses by a droning president attempting to be forceful. All those things rushed before her, the primary colors of childhood mixed with the splatterdash of adolescence.

  Never could she have imagined how much she was a part of her time. Because she lived on a farm she usually felt out of step, a throwback. She was happy with that. She often g
rumbled that her era was vulgar, crude, and violent. It was also relentlessly commercial. At least vulgarity could be fun. Commercialism was nothing but deadening.

  But she wasn’t a throwback. She was a creature of the last quarter of the twentieth century and she would surely be a denizen of the twenty-first, soon to be wired in by her computer to the globe, to inner space, to a new undertow of violence and revelation as interactive media unleashed people in all their sickness and their glory. As the world teetered on the cusp of two centuries, people craved safety, wanting to go backwards to some dream of a golden age, yet inevitably pushing on into God-knows-what—the ever-dangerous future.

  She wiped her eyes, closing them more tightly. She could smell the gas from the pump, hear the clank of the gas cap as she set it on her trunk lid, vowing not to drive off and leave it there.

  She opened her eyes. Shirley Plantation unfolded before her. She needed to find and hold to herself bits of life from this time. And she knew she would change because of this. The Pryor Deyhle of 1699, in ways she couldn’t understand, by necessity, would have to be different from the woman of the twentieth century… even though her core remained pure, an integrity of the soul.

  The soft linen of the good handkerchief Margaret lent her felt reassuring against her cheek. She inhaled sharply, squared her shoulders and pulled herself together.

  A footfall behind her made her clear her throat, blink away the last of the tears.

  “Mademoiselle.” Lionel swept off his hat, the feathers waving in the slight breeze. He held his hat in his left hand as with his right he propped himself against the black gum. “Are you well?”

  “Yes. A bit overcome.” The strong but clean odor of perspiration reached her. He certainly smelled like Blackie minus the benefits of modern deodorants. “All the people… this place… I had forgotten so much…”

  “Not me, I hope.”

  “You are etched on my mind.”

  “Rather your heart.” He drew close. “You puzzle me… but then you always have.”

  “Lionel, if I were like every other woman you would be swiftly bored. Anyway, I puzzle myself.” She smiled.

  He laughed and reached for her hand. “Then we’ll have a lifetime of finding answers, I should think.” He brushed his lips across the back of her hand. “Again, mademoiselle, I ask for your hand.”

  The smoothness of him, the brimming self-confidence born of physical power and intelligence were the same as what she remembered. So was the ambition.

  “Would you like my foot, too?”

  “All of you! Head to toe,” he roared, putting his arms around her. “You’ll want for nothing, Pryor, nothing. If you want rubies from India you shall have them!”

  She wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face in his shirt. His waistcoat was unbuttoned due to the warmth. “Oh, Lionel, if you only knew how much I want to believe you.”

  He kissed her cheeks, felt the tears. “I pledge my heart, my wealth, my future.”

  She held on for dear life. “I need to settle my mind and my fears.” She let go and looked him in the eye. “There are things going on inside of me which I don’t understand.” She brightened, smiled up at him. “Let’s join the others.”

  He laughed as she slipped her arm through his. They walked back to the group. Out of the corner of her eye Cig knew Patrick Devlin Fitzroy was observing them intently.

  20

  Happily worn out from the hunting, the festivities, and the ride back home, Cig, Margaret, and Tom rested before the fire. Each cat had chosen a human lap, snuggling in the warmth, tail curled around her nose.

  “Who is Patrick Fitzroy?” Cig asked, absentmindedly stroking Little Smudge.

  “A damned Irishman.”

  “Tom,” Margaret admonished.

  “For an Irishman he’s—” Tom held up one palm indicating the man was acceptable, “but he’s poor.”

  “Well born though. The younger son of a great lord in the south, I hear.”

  “I don’t believe that. The man’s a blacksmith.”

  “That’s a useful occupation,” Cig commented.

  “That’s why I don’t think he’s high born,” Tom said agreeably.

  “You don’t believe any Irishman is high born.”

  “Must you point out my failings, my love?” Tom stretched out his legs, greatly disturbing Nell Gwyn who slid off his lap. She wedged herself between his thigh and the high-backed chair.

  “There’s not enough time.” Margaret smiled impishly.

  Cig laughed.

  “Two against one. All right, ladies, be cruel to me. Abandon me to your depredations.” He laughed with them then softly said, “Remember how Braxton complained? How he’d run to Mother crying, Two against one,’ and it usually was, poor fellow.”

  “God needed musicians.”

  “Ah, Sister, if only I hadn’t made light of that. I criticized him for not studying medicine or law… even surveying.”

  Margaret soothed him. “He was a most forgiving young man… and he loved you. Don’t dwell on it, Husband, there’s nought you can do.”

  Cig changed the subject. “When all the men gathered to smoke, what did they say about the murdered Indian?”

  Gingerly Tom tried to step around it. “Not much.”

  “All those men standing around—who had seen the body—Edward Hill, Daniel, Lionel, and no one said much? I don’t believe it.”

  “Pryor, there’s nothing to fret over.”

  “Then why don’t you tell me what the other men thought?”

  A flicker of irritation played over Tom’s face. “You don’t have to know everything. This is men’s business.”

  “I think not.” Anger flashed in Cig’s eyes.

  “Tom.” Margaret lowered her voice. Tom knew that tone.

  “All right then.” He stood up before the fire while Nell remained in the chair. “Some think it was individual revenge. Others remember 1622—when the Indians attacked on Good Friday… almost as though they knew it was a day of suffering. All were slaughtered at Bermuda Hundred. Odd,” he put his hand on the mantelpiece, “that rich land at the mouth of the Appomattox River—no one will go near it.”

  “1676,” Margaret added, “more horrible killing.”

  Cig leveled her eyes at Tom. “Are the Indians gathering together? Do you think they’re getting ready for war?”

  “Hard to tell. William Byrd and Lionel deVries don’t believe we’re in danger. They report no preparations for war or movement of their peoples but I think the Indians could gather before even they would know.”

  “They can move farther west. There’s enough land for all.” Margaret innocently thought this seemed reasonable.

  “But more of us will come here.” Cig put her hands behind her head. “How long before they want to drive us back into the ocean?”

  Both Tom and Margaret considered this disturbing thought. Cig wanted to tell them about the West, about the later, sorrowful Indian Wars, but even if Tom could have believed this for one instant, what good would such knowledge do?

  “By that time I hope the Crown has sent us troops.”

  “I wouldn’t rely on the King of England for one skinny minute.” Cig used a common Southern phrase.

  Tom guffawed. “You’ve the strangest way of speaking sometimes.”

  “Well, maybe when the door to my memory was shut the door to language opened.”

  “And what of the door to your heart?” shrewd Margaret murmured.

  Cig declined a reply.

  21

  A languor sweetened the end of a hunting day. No matter how exhausted they were from the ride and the chores that followed, a sweetness remained like the aftertaste of rich chocolate.

  Cig curled up before the huge fireplace after Tom and Margaret retired to bed. She loved to stare in the fire as the flames changed colors from yellow to scarlet to deep red with a hint of blue or green around the edges. Their dance and crackle was hypnotic. All three cats curle
d around her. She dozed on and off.

  The hunt astonished her. She wondered what else had passed down generation to generation. She remembered the first time she set foot on English soil, 1978. The damp familiarity of the place, the rich expressions, the attitudes were much like those of her own family yet they’d left during Cromwell’s reign. She marveled at how persistent was culture, with language as the bedrock.

  Each generation thinks everything started with its birth. In fact, we inherit all that went before. The automobile is a carriage without a horse, a telephone is a legless courier. What we’ve done over the centuries has been to change and accelerate the things we’ve always done. We travel from place to place faster. We get messages faster and faster. We want happiness faster. But underneath, little had changed.

  Cig was not a contemplative person. It was her strength and her weakness. This bizarre time warp forced her inward. She kept coming back, like a hummingbird to an orange trumpet vine, to her children, Blackie, Grace, and herself. She existed in an emotional fog, no different from the fog she rode through to arrive at Buckingham. Slowly emerging from this interior mist was the ripe suspicion that she might be the architect of her own undoing. This disquieting thought would push its way forward and she’d push it right back.

  She didn’t drive Blackie into Grace’s arms. As for Grace, what did Cig ever do to her other than the stuff all sisters do? Why would Grace want the only thing that Cig loved apart from Hunter, Laura, and foxhunting?

  What did she do to deserve this? Intellectually she knew that we build our own lives. Emotionally she didn’t believe this mess was her doing, and then a little fishhook would snag in her brain, a little painful tug of memory, like the time she told Grace to marry the richest man she could find. She was nineteen and Grace, seventeen. She didn’t remember what started the fight but she remembered yelling at Grace, “You couldn’t think your way out of a paper bag so you’d better marry some rich jerk who thinks you’re beautiful and who’ll pay your bills.” Okay, she was hitting below the belt, but that was a long time ago, more than twenty years.