A Hiss Before Dying

by Rita Mae Brown

  Eudes replied, “They will do their business and go home. Maybe the hope of spring has the sap rising, I don’t know but I do know as long as men are fools for women we have a job.”

  Outside the kitchen, the candlelight played on the young faces. Men drank a bit, then rose, holding out their hands to the lady they wished. Up the stairs they climbed, some men so eager, they began to unbutton their breeches before reaching the top stairs.

  Georgina played whist with three customers, who, having been satisfied, wished a bracing game before returning to their ever-so-Christian homes and hearths.

  Despite her love of cards, Georgina kept a sharp eye on her girls. Given that most all of her customers returned home at a reasonable hour, she knew a girl could service two or three clients if necessary. Ladies’ maids would hasten upstairs to tie up a corset once a man left, quickly reset hair, and change the sheets if needed. The maids worked as hard as the girls and usually without extra tips. The girls, the smart ones, learned to tip the maids and therefore trotted downstairs at a faster pace than the cheap ones. They served more customers, which equaled more money. The tightwads never did figure that out.

  Binky, carrying decanters to each vacated room, stuck his head into Deborah’s room while Sarah, a young maid, powdered Deborah’s perfect bosoms. Sarah didn’t look up at Binky, although Deborah turned to speak to him.

  “Binky, you’d better get downstairs. Georgina doesn’t want men up here who aren’t customers.”

  As if to second her, a mighty moan could be heard in the next room along with an appeal to Jesus.

  “I’m bringing a decanter of wine now that you’re free. What did he do?” His lower lip quivered.

  “What they all do, Binky. And I pretend I am overcome by their manliness. Some have more manliness than others.” She laughed as Sarah now brushed her hair.

  “I have a way for us to leave.” He retrieved the wrinkled paper from his vest pocket describing Mignon, having picked it from Georgina’s wastebasket. “I’ve kept this for two weeks. Thinking about it.”

  Deborah snatched it from him but couldn’t read, handing it to Sarah.

  “Runaway slave. Aged thirty-one. Highly skilled in culinary arts. Distinguishing features, light eyes, short of stature. Name: Mignon. A one hundred dollar reward if found. Notify Jeffrey Holloway at Big Rawly, Albemarle County.” Sarah glared at Binky. “You can’t turn her in.”

  “It will give us our start.” He nearly spat at Sarah.

  “Binky, I can make one hundred dollars on a slow night.” Deborah laughed.

  “We can make a life. You will never have to open your legs for one of these men again.” His voice rose.

  “Binky, shut up.” Deborah’s heavily made-up eyes fluttered. “What kind of work can you do?”

  “Anything. I love you. I want to marry you.” Tears filled his eyes. “I can’t stand other men touching you, shoving themselves inside you.”

  “You’ve stood it this long. What’s the matter with you?” She put her hands on her small waist, a smallness enhanced by a whalebone corset, which Sarah cinched to perfection.

  “I can’t stand it anymore.” He stepped toward her as Sarah stepped between them.

  “Binky, if you don’t go downstairs now, Georgina will wonder where you are and where Deborah is, since Mr. Udall has left. Save this for another day, or better yet, forget it,” Sarah said.

  “Go on, Binky, we can talk about this later.” Deborah paused. “You can’t turn in one of our people. Mignon isn’t the only runaway here.”

  “But she’s the one I can prove and she’s the one with the big reward.” He walked to the door. “I’m a free black. What do I care?”

  Sarah, herself a woman of color, snapped. “You’d better care if you want to live, boy.” She folded the paper sheet, tucking it into her more modestly clad bosom.

  Breathing deeply, Deborah held Sarah’s hand for a moment. “I’d better get down.”

  “Kevin Murray is waiting. I overheard him ask Georgina where you are. He had a bulge in his breeches.”

  “Let’s hope it’s money.” Deborah laughed in relief. “God, that man smells like a goat. I should be paid double for tending to him.”

  With that, she quietly closed the door to her room, walked past the others, some quiet, some not, to descend the stairs like a queen. Georgina glanced up from her cards and smiled as Kevin nearly tripped over his own feet to reach Deborah. Grabbing her hand, he pulled her up the stairs, a big grin on his face.

  Georgina smiled as she studied her cards.

  Horace Greene also looked up. “A beauty that one but cold, Georgina, cold.”

  “Well, you will have to warm her up.” Georgina snapped her cards together in front of her lips.

  Lionel Thomas, another player, raised an eyebrow. “Horace, you do know how to warm up a woman, do you not?”

  “Shut up, Lionel.”

  The players laughed, including Horace, whose wife never indicated she enjoyed his attentions. At least Georgina’s girls acted as though they did, except for Deborah. Good at what she did, he never felt she was truly there. He might as well have been on top of Mrs. Greene, except that Deborah was much younger and prettier.

  The last customer left at midnight, an early night for the girls. They retired to their rooms along with the ladies’ maids who needed to untie their corsets, bring them fresh pitchers of water to wash up, gossip.

  In the kitchen, Mignon and Eudes tidied dishes, glasses, scrubbed the work tables.

  “Do you have a view from your room, Mignon?” Eudes asked.

  “Yes. I can see the backyard.”

  “Good. One should always have a bit of something to look at.” He checked the large wall clock just as the wind rattled the large window over the deep sink. “That one will bite.”

  “How far must you walk to get home?” she inquired.

  “Only two blocks. Brick and tight, my little house. Granted, the wind finds a way in even with the windows shut, but it’s pleasing with a front porch.” He smiled at her. “When spring truly arrives, I will escort you to my porch and we can watch the world go by like two civilized people.”

  “That would be…wonderful.” She smiled, then curtseyed to him, laughed leaving the kitchen.

  As Mignon made her way down the long front hall to the back of the building, which was not as tight as she or anyone else would have wished, she passed Georgina’s office door, closed, although she faintly heard her boss’s voice. She continued on, hurrying to escape the chilly hallway. Her small room would have a fire in the grate. Georgina took care of her people.

  Sarah had handed the canny woman the sheet announcing Mignon’s escape.

  Georgina studied the reward paper. “Where did you get this? I’d throw it away. Sarah, I don’t want to know how many of my girls are runaways.”

  “Yes, Ma’am, but Binky wants to turn her in for the reward.”

  “He what!”

  Sarah leaned toward her boss, who had been fair to her and all the girls. “He wants the money so he can marry Deborah.”

  “She can’t be serious.” Her light eyebrows rose almost to her coiffed hair.

  “No, Ma’am. She told him that she can make that on a slow night but he’s crazy, crazy about her.”

  Georgina sat down, pointed to a chair for Sarah. “I see. So he doesn’t know that Deborah, too, is a runaway?”

  “No, Ma’am. She doesn’t tell any man the truth and she may not tell us either, but we know more than they do.”

  “Yes,” Georgina drawled, “not having a turgid member is a great advantage in life. Women can think. Sarah, say nothing. There is no need for anyone here to know who is slave and who is free. All are free here.”

  “Yes, Ma’am, I know that.” Sarah, herself, was a runaway.

  “He would turn in one of his own people? My God.”

  “He doesn’t see it that way. He’s a freeman and better than we are, not meaning you, Miss Georgina.”

&nb
sp; Georgina was white.

  “Sarah, I am grateful to you for this. Tell no one, no one.” Georgina rose, as did Sarah.

  The proprietor pulled open a desk drawer, drawing out twenty dollars, handing it to Sarah.

  “Oh, thank you.” Sarah folded the bills, a good sum, slipping them down her bosom.

  As she left, Georgina also left, closing and locking the door. She walked up the stairs with a brisk step, knocked on Deborah’s door.

  Once there she relayed the problem, as one of her best girls faced her wearing only a thin nightgown, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

  “He’s crazy. This has nothing to do with me.”

  “Deborah, it has everything to do with you, although I do not hold you responsible.” She took a deep breath. “We must act in concert. You keep him occupied, don’t give him the chance to report Mignon. I know you can’t do it forever but try to keep him occupied for a few days while I consider how to handle this. He will jeopardize other girls, hurt the business.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “Deborah, marry him if you have to. Not that I hope it comes to that but divert his mind. I will take care of you.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “Breathe a word to no one.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  With that Georgina left, closing the door behind her. Deborah considered what could be worse, marrying Binky, if it did come to that, or crossing Georgina. The thought of marriage made her ill. The thought of crossing Georgina scared the Devil out of her. She would do as asked. Also, she liked the little woman, Mignon. She liked most all the girls at the house and she knew she was not the only one who had fled for something better.

  And no matter what, it was better and she had the bank account to prove it.

  November 11, 2016 Friday

  Her black coat shone as she slowly walked toward Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, Tucker.

  “Can’t you three keep people off this mountain?” the large mature black bear asked.

  “No.” Tucker looked up at the long snout. “Our mother and her best friend, Susan Tucker, own the eastern side of this. No one should be here unless it’s one of them or someone with them. It’s trespassing.”

  “They’ve set traps. I dropped rocks in them, so the traps are sprung.”

  “Are they traps big enough for you?” Pewter wondered.

  “No. Big enough for coyote, for fox, raccoon.” The bear sat down on her haunches. “But how do I know they won’t come back for me? Shoot me.”

  “Odin didn’t get trapped, did he?” Mrs. Murphy liked the young coyote even if she didn’t completely trust him.

  “No, most of the coyote traps are on Royal Orchard, northwest of here.” She named a spectacular estate on the mountain’s ridge.

  “Have you seen who’s doing this?” Tucker lifted her head. Opened her nostrils, inhaling the light fragrance of rabbit on the air.

  “Usually I see a clean-cut guy wearing a plaid jacket. Sometimes a woman is with him. She looks rich enough.”

  “Odd,” the tough little dog replied. “Usually women don’t go in for that sort of thing.”

  “Maybe the price of pelts went up?” the tiger suggested.

  “Sweetpea,” Tucker addressed the bear by name, as she would usually be on Harry’s land in fall and early winter, then repair to one of the small caves on the mountainside to sleep for the hard winter, “be careful.”

  “I am. We’re all careful ever since that man was stuck under the big rock. Too many people crawling around these mountains. Any time a human dies, never good. Never good at all.”

  “You all heard about the man found shot at Sugarday? The Waldingfield beagles found him,” Pewter remarked.

  “We did. Sugarday’s some miles from the mountains. It’s one thing when people kill one another on city streets. When they’re out here, I don’t know. I figure it has to do with us, with pelts, or with minerals—something in the ground they’ve found out about or,” she paused, “I don’t know. I just know it’s not the regular way people kill one another.”

  “True,” Mrs. Murphy agreed.

  As the three walked back down the side of the mountain, the temperature rising slightly as they reached the old rutted road or what was left of it, Tucker said, “Sweetpea’s right. Has something to do with pelts or something in the ground, like gold.”

  “That will be the day when gold is found around here.” Pewter laughed.

  “Maybe the men and women are scouting for black walnut. Cut a few, steal them. Big money.” Pewter glared at her. “Mother would shoot them.”

  “Not if they shot her first.” Mrs. Murphy had a bad feeling about all this.

  Having the two cats’ attention, Tucker changed the subject. “First, Sweetpea telling us about strange people, poachers maybe. Then when Cooper found the Tahoe, that scent.”

  Tucker lurched a bit to her left. Going up was always easier than going down.

  The two cats descended without saying anything. As they reached the lower pastures, following the creek up to the beaver lodge, Mrs. Murphy said, “Well, you can sure smell the beavers.”

  “Mmm.” Pewter feigned disinterest.

  “And I smelled old bones where the tombstones had been disturbed. You remember, where someone had thrust a knife into the earth a couple of times?” Tucker watched as a beaver dove into the water from the opposite bank.

  “Of course you did,” Pewter sarcastically replied.

  “I did and I said so at the time.” Tucker was angry. “Old bones not in the casket. Whatever it was, it was closer to the surface. Old bones. People don’t put bodies in a grave without proper burial.”

  “Oh, poof. An old murder.” The gray cat tossed her head. “If it is one, who cares? I don’t even care about the new murders. If people want to kill one another, go ahead.”

  “I don’t know.” Mrs. Murphy picked up the pace toward the barn.

  “Poof and piffle. When Harry and Fair ate breakfast today, they said it was Armistice Day.” Pewter stuck to her guns. “The end of World War One. They killed millions.”

  “They killed even more in World War Two,” the dog replied.

  “Then why worry about old bones in St. Luke’s graveyard and two dead men now? Who cares? People will keep on killing one another. It’s what they do.”

  “But they kill us, too. Sweetpea’s sprung the traps. Who knows how many animals they kill each year?” Tucker sadly thought about it.

  “Exactly. If they kill us, that’s terrible. If they kill one another, why should we care? They’re not right, you know. Something’s scrambled upstairs.”

  Neither Mrs. Murphy nor Tucker could answer that.

  March 21, 1786 Tuesday

  The spring equinox brought fair winds, sunshine. Croci pushed fully aboveground. Daffodils peeked up through the soil. The snowdrops were about finished. Winter, long, hard, cruel, seemed to be loosening its grasp, but then Richmond felt spring earlier than the lands west of the fall line.

  Georgina walked toward her establishment, passing gardens in front of houses, under windows, behind iron fences, radiant blooms, she adored the blooms and the color. When she passed another woman, she looked neither right nor left. The lady would never acknowledge her but Georgina knew those high-tone bitches, as she thought of them, envied her attire, her sure sense of line as well as adornment. And Georgina paid the milliner extra to be certain that her hats outshone everyone else’s, whether it be the wife of a banker, a lawyer, a preacher, or yet another politician on the make. Apart from the poundage, she was attractive, in her middle age, her mind most of all. She missed nothing. Given her business she heard a great deal. Men enlivened by good drink and the ministrations of a beautiful woman often become indiscreet.

  She knew Sam Udall’s bank was growing. She also knew some of the more senior bankers, especially those tied to the old Tidewater families, were not growing yet seemed self-satisfied. The old money favored the status quo and the status quo suffered greatly d
uring the war for independence. Udall, on the other hand, favored the new man, the businessman. If a bit of graft or payback greased the wheels of commerce, so be it. While he lacked social cachet, she felt he would eventually become the premier moneyman in Richmond. She liked knowing that. She especially liked knowing if she needed funds for expansion, they would be forthcoming at an attractive interest rate.

  The new men did not have sons who would dissipate their fortunes. Often their sons worked with them. Dissipation would come with later generations—but they did have daughters, whom they needed to marry off at considerable expense.

  Smiling as she opened the gate to the impressive but unadorned three-story home, she paused to consider her portico. Needed something.

  Opening the door, she heard an argument upstairs. Removing her hat, she climbed the stairs, stopping outside Deborah’s room.

  “If you’re my wife, you do as I say,” Binky hollered.

  “But I’m not your wife!”

  “But you will be. I will make money. There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” he shouted.

  “Binky, don’t be a fool. We have it good here. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to work my fingers to the bone, even if it’s for my own business. This is good work. In time, I will consider what comes next.”

  “I come next.”

  “You have no trade. Your idea of money is to turn in a runaway slave, and let me tell you, Binky Watson, if you do that you will not live to see another dawn.”

  This had never occurred to the besotted youth. “Kill me? Who would kill me?”

  “Any slave in Richmond. Don’t be a damned fool.”

  “I’m free.”

  “So you may be, but you ought to have the sense to know who your people are. I’ve heard enough of this. It’s time for midday meal.”

  “You don’t work midday.” He pouted.

  “I will today. It feels like spring. The men will be in here like rutting rams. And this weekend, the money will roll in.”

  Georgina stepped back, a slight smile on her face. Deborah was no silly whore. The woman had brains as well as compelling allure. She could use Deborah in better fashion than she had. Quietly she descended the stairs.