Witch Angel

by Trana Mae Simmons

  Jeannie sniffed and nodded her head. Realizing the young girl was trying to maintain a posture of bravado in front of her brother, while still fighting the hysteria of nearly burning to death, Alaynia stepped forward and wrapped an arm around Jeannie’s waist. “I’ll take care of her, Shain.”

  Someone shouted for Shain, and he started to turn away. Just as quickly, he swung back and pulled both Alaynia and Jeannie into his arms for a brief hug. The flickering flames outlined his agonized face when he pushed them away. “Go on now, both of you,” he growled. “Get somewhere safe.”

  He ran toward a group of men, who were shoveling dirt on the flames spreading through the grass and beating at them with wet feed sacks. Jeannie instantly began shaking with reaction, and Alaynia led her toward the bridge. Keeping an arm firmly around her, she walked across the bridge and down the path toward the manor house. By the time they reached the yard, Jeannie had stopped shaking somewhat. She looked up at Alaynia. “I’ll go change clothes and come back to help the women in the kitchen.”

  “Shain said you should rest, honey. You’ve had a pretty bad scare.”

  “Not any worse than you did when your horse threw you,” Jeannie said stoutly. “I can’t just sit up in my room and do nothing. You’ll help me make Shain understand that, won’t you?”

  “I’ll try, Jeannie. But promise me that you’ll at least rest for a few minutes—until you’re feeling a little less shaky.”

  Jeannie nodded in agreement and lifted a trembling hand to brush back a golden curl from her forehead. Her face was streaked and dirty, but she sniffled and straightened her shoulders. When Alaynia reached out to rub at a smear of ash on her cheek, Jeannie threw herself into Alaynia’s arms once more. Alaynia held Jeannie close and soothed her, her own eyes tearing in sympathy as Jeannie’s slight figure nestled against her and her arms clung tightly. A fierce stab of love for the young girl raced through Alaynia, and she laid her head against Jeannie’s. How quickly her young life could have changed if Alaynia hadn’t reacted to the sudden crisis. The flames had spread with amazing speed across the yards of skirt material and could have caught on Alaynia’s clothing, also, but she hadn’t given an instant’s thought to any danger to herself.

  Over Jeannie’s head, she could see the burning chapel. Tongues of fire leaped high into the sky, glowing an evil orange and interspersed with thick, flying ash, and even pieces of wood borne on the gusts of rising air. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes from the time she smelled the smoke until the bucket brigade formed in an attempt to save the structure, but it had already been too late. Jeannie’s future could have been destroyed in only a few seconds—far less time than it had taken the fire to devastate the chapel.

  Jeannie drew back and said, “I haven’t thanked you, Alaynia. You saved my life.”

  Saying ‘you’re welcome’ seemed rather inane to Alaynia, and she bent to kiss Jeannie’s forehead. “I’m just so glad you’re all right, honey. Now, hadn’t you better go change—and check on Tiny?”

  “I guess,” Jeannie agreed. “I’ll take his litter box up with me.”

  Reluctantly, Jeannie stepped away from Alaynia. She swiped the heels of her hands against her cheeks, took a deep breath, and headed for the sand pile on the other side of the barn. Alaynia’s arms suddenly felt empty, and she watched until Jeannie disappeared around a corner.

  This must be how a mother feels when she’s rescued her child from danger. Jeannie’s bravery filled her with pride, and she experienced a surge of satisfaction at being there when Jeannie needed her—both when the flames threatened her young life and during the aftermath to help Jeannie gather her shattered emotions. Jeannie had trustingly clung to her, her shudders and trembling abating as Alaynia soothed her. She was rapidly growing to love the young girl, and her desire to return to her former life suffered a major rent when she realized she would have to settle for reading about Jeannie’s later life in Louisiana census reports.

  And—she turned her head and stared back at the site of the fire—she would also have to settle for only reading about Jeannie’s brother in those same reports. The flames consuming the chapel had died somewhat, but she could hear shouts in the distance as the battle to keep the fire from spreading continued. She recognized one voice among the others—raised in stern command.

  Suddenly she gulped and slowly shifted her gaze in the direction of the graveyard. When she returned to her own time—and to the Chenaie of the future—would she wander through that same graveyard? Touch the headstones with trembling fingers as she read the inscriptions? One of them would be Shain’s tombstone.

  Would there be another headstone beside it, inscribed with the name of the woman he married? That seemed a given, since in this time period he was the only male left to continue the St. Clair line. The ache of jealousy coursing through her left Alaynia trembling far worse than Jeannie had in her arms.

  Chapter 14

  Shain and Cole dismounted in front of the overseer’s cabin the next morning as pink fingers of sunlight crept over the eastern horizon. They strode across the wooden porch, and Shain shoved the cabin door open without knocking. His overseer, Carrington, pushed his chair back from the table and rose so quickly the chair almost toppled. Wringing a tea towel in her hands, his wife swung around from the cook stove.

  “Sit down, Carrington,” Shain ordered. “We’ve got some talking to do.”

  Carrington slowly reseated himself, a look of wariness on his seamed face. He glanced at his small-statured wife, who immediately scurried over to one of the cabinets and removed two coffee mugs. When Shain and Cole sat, his wife set the cups in front of them and poured them full of steaming hot coffee.

  “Thank you,” Shain said instinctively before he turned his full attention on his plantation manager. “Damn it, Carrington! I want to know how the hell that fire could have happened!”

  Shaking his graying head, Carrington slumped even deeper into his chair. “Mr. St. Clair, I been doing the best I can. I got two men watching the grounds at night, and that leaves us short in the fields ‘cause those men gotta sleep sometime. I told you the other day when them mules foundered on spoiled feed that I didn’t think it was an accident.”

  “I can tell you for damned sure that the chapel didn’t burn by accident,” Shain said in a grim voice. “We found a kerosene can in the woods nearby, and a broken lantern inside the front door.”

  “I didn’t tell the men to patrol out that way,” Carrington admitted. “Figured it was more important to watch the fields and house. You planning to put out some more guards, after what happened last night?”

  He glanced inquiringly at Cole, and Shain belatedly introduced the two men, then shook his head in answer to Carrington’s question. “I don’t plan on turning Chenaie into an armed camp, but something’s got to be done. Cole’s going into St. Francisville this morning to report the fire to the parish sheriff. All we’ve got is evidence that it was set, though—nothing to tell us who did it.”

  Carrington glanced at his wife, who was standing over by the cook stove again, and the woman reluctantly nodded her head. Shain immediately sensed he wouldn’t like whatever they had to tell him, yet he had to know everything—even rumors. Chenaie’s future was his responsibility.

  Shain leaned on the table and said, “Look, I know you two are closer to the workers here than I am and hear things I wouldn’t. If you know something about this, I expect you to tell me.”

  “Well, it really ain’t nothing I know for sure,” Carrington replied. “Mr. St. Clair, I took this job ‘cause I needed it and ‘cause you offered to let part of my wages go to buy this place here for me and my wife. With a deal like that, I decided not to pay much attention to all them stories about Chenaie. And my job here’s to manage the field crews and get the crops in—that’s all.”

  As he waited for Carrington to continue, Shain picked up his coffee cup and took a sip. He didn’t need to ask his manager what stories he’d heard—he knew them w
ell enough himself.

  People claimed his grandfather, Basil, still roamed Chenaie, even twenty-five years after the old man’s death. Almost every worker’s cabin had a French cross painted on the door to ward off evil spirits, and every time a flicker of swamp gas showed itself, the stories and rumors grew in new force. One tale even went that the Yankees had spared Chenaie because it was protected by a spiritual force.

  Hell, even Tana admitted that the blue-coats had headed for Chenaie after they destroyed Cole’s plantation, but turned southward with Chenaie already in sight. Shain had traced the army’s still-visible path himself after he returned home and was at a loss to explain the abrupt change of direction.

  “Uh ...” Carrington cleared his throat. “I don’t want you to think I’m speaking out of turn here, Mr. St. Clair, but ...”

  “Spit it out,” Shain growled.

  “Like I said, it wasn’t me that heard. I was out in the fields all day yesterday. But Myra here ...” Carrington shifted his head in his wife’s direction. “She’s at home all day—talks to the other women while they tend their gardens. And a couple of them saw that voodoo lady and her son at Chenaie yesterday afternoon.”

  “Tana’s not a voodoo practitioner,” Cole snarled, speaking for the first time since they’d entered the cabin. “She was here because Shain’s guest, Miss Mirabeau, was thrown from her horse, and Shain wanted Tana to examine her. Tana’s a healer—she’s treated more than one of the workers here, and she’s delivered almost every one of the babies born at Chenaie since she’s been living here.”

  Recalling Cole’s own joking words about Tana while they gathered the piglets the day before, Shain shot him a wry look. Cole flushed slightly, but continued, “Tana and Little Jim don’t bother anyone. And she always comes when someone needs her.”

  “Cole,” Shain said. “Let Carrington go on.”

  Shrugging his shoulders, Carrington motioned Myra over to the table. She hesitantly took the only empty chair and clasped her hands on the surface. “It wasn’t the woman they was talking about,” she said in a trembling voice. “The boy ... well, they say he’s still a boy in his mind, but he’s as big and heavy as you, Mr. St. Clair.”

  “Little Jim’s never harmed anyone in his life!” Cole spat. “And Tana leaves him at home, unless she’s free to keep an eye on him.”

  “He was here yesterday,” Myra insisted. “Cammie, she gave him a watermelon from her patch, and some greens. Told him to give them to his mama to pay her for the medicine Cammie got last month for her stomach pains. And she said that when the boy left, she saw one of those voodoo dolls sticking out of his back pocket.”

  “I don’t believe that!” Cole’s fist thudded on the table. The coffee cups shook, and Myra sprang to her feet. She moved over behind her husband and gripped his shoulders.

  “Looka here, Mr. Dubose,” Carrington said, raising one arm to pat his wife’s hand. “My Myra don’t lie. She was just telling Mr. St. Clair what she’d heard—like he asked her to.”

  Cole scraped his chair back and stood. “I apologize, Miz Carrington,” he muttered. “But I’ve known Tana all my life, and Little Jim since he was born twenty years ago. There’s not a mean bone in Little Jim’s body. Besides, it’s a long step from seeing him with a voodoo doll that he could’ve picked up anywhere to accusing him of setting the chapel fire!”

  “Calm down, Cole,” Shain put in. “I don’t think Carrington’s accusing Little Jim of anything—at least not doing anything deliberately. Little Jim’s mind is stuck at five years old, though, and a five-year-old doesn’t always think before he does something. You and I were about that age when we started a fire over at your place with those firecrackers we filched.”

  Cole uttered a contemptuous sound, but instead of answering Shain, he walked over to the door and stared outside.

  “I sort of agree with Mr. Dubose,” Carrington said. “The things that’ve been going on here—like the fire—just don’t jibe with what I’ve seen of that Tana woman’s son. And I’ve noticed that you don’t get many visitors from ‘mong your neighbors here at Chenaie. Now, a body hears things, Mr. St. Clair. A lot of folks around here ain’t too happy ‘bout you not letting that timber company cross your land. And a company that powerful—well, appears to me they’d be kind of ashamed of letting one landowner stand in the way of what they wanted to do.”

  “And they’d do whatever it took to come out on top,” Shain agreed, liking his overseer more by the moment. “I’ve thought of that, and it seems like a hell of a lot more plausible explanation for the accidents plaguing Chenaie than a poor kid whose mind isn’t all there.”

  “There’s still that voodoo doll,” Myra said quietly. “Cammie’s sure of what she saw.”

  “Voodoo’s been a part of the South ever since they started bringing in slaves,” Shain said as he pushed his coffee cup aside and rose. “The best way to counteract that black magic foolishness is by educating our people so they’ll ignore it. And the same thing goes for the talk about spirits at Chenaie. I’m not about to even add substance to those rumors, because they’re completely unfounded. And I’d appreciate it if my employees backed me up.”

  Shain held out his hand, and Carrington stood to shake it. “I enjoy my job, Mr. St. Clair,” Carrington said. “You can count on me.”

  “Keep your ears open,” Shain replied. “And you, too, Miz Carrington, if you will. I don’t have to tell you that it’s more than just my family’s lives riding on Chenaie’s crops being successful. We’ve got ten cabins filled with sharecropper families, plus another five families of people working the crops for the season.”

  “And if you can’t pay your workers, they’ll leave,” Carrington added. “Won’t be no job here for me, if I don’t have any workers to manage.”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that. Carrington, you’re aware that I fired the man who had your job before you. And I’ll admit, after my experience with him and the problems we’ve kept having even under you, I wanted someone to blame. I’m glad we had this discussion, because I’m convinced now that you’re doing your best under the circumstances, and I think the two of us will work well together. I want you to know that I’m more than satisfied with the job you’re doing in the fields. You’ve even got that cane crop looking like it might be profitable this year. And the workers and their families appear happier than they were under the man I had before you.”

  “Thank you,” Carrington said with a bob of his head.

  “You can also tell the people that if the crops make enough profit this year, I’ll try to get the plantation store open again. It’ll have fair prices, too, not like the stores on some of the other plantations. We’ll price things the same as they can buy stuff for in St. Francisville. As far as I’m concerned, the law that says the workers have to stay on the same land as long as they owe money at the plantation store is a way for the owners to underhandedly control their people.”

  Shain glanced around the small cabin at the freshly-mopped pine floor, neatly stacked dishes and supplies on the shelves behind the polished cook stove, and starched curtains hanging beside windows open to catch the morning breeze. His previous overseer had been married, also, but after one visit, Shain had refused to enter the filthy cabin again. Now the place sparkled with cleanliness, and he’d bet the bed in the adjoining bedroom was already neatly made up.

  Against the wall to his left were a worn settee and armchair, the same ones the previous overseer had used. An attempt had been made to scrub the food stains from the arms of the furniture, but they were too deeply ingrained. Dark spots dotted the material, and the seat of the armchair sagged almost to the floor, making it an uncomfortable resting place for a tired man after a long day’s labor.

  “You’ve done a fine job with this place, Miz Carrington,” Shain said. “You know, the attic over the kitchen house is filled with furniture that used to be in the manor house. Why don’t you check with Jeannie and have her show it to you? Take what you’d l
ike for your place, and see if any of the other workers can use any of it, after you choose.”

  “Oh,” Myra said with a gasp. “It’s probably much too nice for our cabins.”

  “Nonsense,” Shain replied. “It’s just sitting up there, gathering dust.” He grinned at her and Myra blushed, the pretty color in her cheeks removing several years from her age. “Consider that an order, ma’am,” he said in a mock-stern voice, laughing aloud when Myra teasingly curtsied and nodded her head.

  In a graver voice, Shain continued, “We’ll meet each evening from now on, Carrington. I’ll see you in my study after supper. In the meantime, if there’s anything I need to know before that, send someone to find me.”

  “I will, Mr. St. Clair. You can be sure of that.” He glanced at his wife with a look of love on his face. “And thank you for making my Myra smile.”

  “You’re completely welcome.”

  Shain walked to the door and clapped Cole on the shoulder as he passed. On the porch, he glanced through the open window to see Carrington slip an arm around his wife’s waist. “Mr. St. Clair’s a good man,” Myra told her husband. “You were lucky to find a job here.”

  “Yeah,” Carrington said with a lopsided grin at her. “Long as he doesn’t ask me to mow that graveyard for him.”

  Myra stifled a small shiver. “Oh, I hope he doesn’t ask you to do that.”

  * * * *

  “Long as he doesn’t ask me to mow that graveyard for him,” Basil mocked the overseer. “My grandson’s got more sense of obligation than that. Family takes care of family resting places.”

  “Is that why you scare away anyone who even looks at the graveyard who’s not family?” Francesca asked.

  Basil whirled to face her and Sylvia. “I wish you two would mind your own business. Or pay attention to what you’ve been trained to do!”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sylvia thrust her face forward, determined she wasn’t going to back down from the ghost this time. “We’re doing our job here.”