Firebrand's Woman

by Vanessa Royall

  Delia could hear Farson’s breathless, panting whine as he scrambled toward the fence, and she knew that her only chance had presented itself. Almost as fast as Fleet Cloud in the race on the day of the manhood ritual, she dashed across the pasture toward her son. He was alarmed by now, although he did not know exactly why, and began to stumble toward her. The bull, charging headlong after the fleeing Farson, caught a glimpse of her skirt flying, wanted to stop but could not, became confused, and stumbled.

  Farson made it to the rail fence and had no trouble performing a one-armed vault over it.

  The bull smashed once into the fence, then slammed it again with his brutal head in an effort to find the intruder.

  Delia had Andrew now and was running with him toward another section of the fence.

  “Run! Run!” Farson yelled. To his credit, he did rip off his work shirt and dangle it over the fence in an attempt to hold the beast’s attention. But this ploy did not suffice. Doubly enraged now, the monster saw Delia carrying the child, and a new burst of hatred poured into his veins. He turned, paused only a moment as if to take aim, and charged at the woman and child.

  Delia could hear the pounding of the cloven hooves, but she did not look. To look would slow her down. If she looked backward, she might fall. And if the bull hit her and Andrew, she did not want to see it coming.

  Festus ran along the fence line, waving his shirt. “Come on,” he urged, “come on.”

  Delia thought that she could feel the hot wet breath of the beast upon her, and the fence rose and fell before her eyes as she ran. She was crying. There was no more Sir for her lungs, but somehow she managed to reach the fence, to throw herself across it. Then she was sprawled on the other side, lying in the grass. Andrew had landed on top of her, screaming. And Fes Farson, standing over her, looked down from his white, pale face. Jackal! was her instinctive thought.

  “Help me up,” Delia said.

  Fes did. Andrew was still howling. Jason had insisted on the name, as a mark of respect for his family’s illustrious friend, Chula Harjo. Delia had not liked the choice, but had decided that it was unwise to protest. A man’s firstborn was significant.

  “You don’t care for the name?” Jason had inquired, when he saw the frown on her face after he had proposed that the baby be christened Andrew Jackson Randolph.

  Delia had come very close to telling him the complete truth that time, come close to telling him it had been Jackson who had killed her parents. She told him everything else; they kept nothing from each other. But instead she said, “It is your right to name your son, and what you choose will please me as well.”

  Jason had studied her then, for a long moment. He was very much attuned to her ways, her expressions, her sudden reticences, and traits of her that he did not fully understand were attributed to her tribal past.

  “If you do not care for the name, is there a reason?” he’d asked.

  Yes, Yes, Yes! Delia had wanted to scream. But she did not. She chose silence. If he knew how much she hated Jackson, and why, then his knowledge might at some future time hinder her or prevent her from killing the beast, should that propitious moment ever come.

  “There’s no reason. It is a name like any other,” she had said.

  The child upon whom it had been conferred now gasped and choked in his mother’s arms. His arms were around her neck as hard as he could cling.

  “There now,” she soothed. “It’s all right. It’s over now.”

  Delia began to walk away from the fence, and Fes Farson followed. The bull bellowed a time or two and smacked into the wooden rails, which shivered and wobbled up and down the fence line, but did not give way. Then the beast just stood there for a moment, smelling grass, water, air, and remembered the cows. With an entirely different kind of bawling he trotted back to them, big head high, legs stiff, and tail flicking.

  “We must do something about that bull,” Delia said, holding Andrew’s head to her breast, walking back toward the house.

  Farson seemed remotely apologetic, but did not wish to commit himself, lest he be held culpable.

  “Mr. Randolph told me to put it out with the cows,” he whined. “And,” he added, “I wasn’t the one tendin’ the boy.”

  Full knowledge of her own lapse galled Delia. “And what were you doing in the barn?” she snapped.

  “Building stalls for the horses,” he shot back.

  “You? You were hired to supervise, not perform the work yourself.”

  He gave her a hard look, as if debating whether or not to say anything else. This was his boss’s wife, and already he’d behaved with less-than-exemplary courage in the pasture.

  “It’s hard to get enough hired hands,” was all he said, with a hangdog attitude.

  Jason had gone into the village of Harrisville that afternoon to fetch four girls who would serve at the party. Almost three years had passed since the hot afternoon of love beneath the tree. Almost three years, and not a week had gone by when Jason did not vow, “When the house and the barns are up, when the fields are in flower, I’m going to throw an affair that people will remember for a generation.”

  He meant it, too.

  To help her around the house, Delia had a young black girl called Tanya, whose freedom Jason had purchased. Tanya was comely and a hard worker, but she would not be able to take care of a hundred guests. So Delia had arranged to hire village girls for the task, and Jason had taken the carriage into Harrisville to bring the girls out to the farm. Tanya seemed somewhat distressed by this fact, as if the need for other help was somehow an indictment of her own capabilities; but she was a mournful girl, owing to her youthful enslavement, and said little.

  Tanya was polishing silver and Delia was fussing over little Andrew when they heard the carriage roll into the farmyard.

  “Papa!” cried the boy. With a child’s resiliency he had already forgotten all about the pasture and the bull. Now he ran from the house again, letting the screen door slam behind him.

  “That chile gonna get hisself killed yet,” muttered Tanya, as she and Delia followed Andrew out into the yard.

  Then the carriage rolled up, drawn by four gleaming black Arabians, imported from Spain and purchased in New Orleans. They were Jason’s pride, and the envy of all the counties of east Tennessee. The carriage was new as well, and had been equipped with wheel springs to cushion the ride. In a very short time Jason had managed considerable prosperity, most of it by his energy and ingenuity, although in the town there were dark mutterings about “Virginia money.”

  “Whoa!” he called, and the horses drew up, prancing and jingling their harness buckles. He leaped down from the carriage seat and grabbed his son, hugged him. “Hey, young man, how’s the fort holding?”

  Andrew giggled.

  Delia would not mention the bull just now. She turned to see the four young girls, none of them yet married, climb down from the carriage. Beth and Eloise, Prudence and…where was Deanna? Instead Delia recognized Melody Jasper, who worked as an all-purpose servant at Gale Foley’s place. (It was considerably larger than it had once been, a true inn now.)

  “Deanna was ill,” Jason explained, “and when I stopped at the inn for a beer, Gale volunteered Melody.”

  “That was kind of her,” Delia said, but she felt a formless flicker of alarm. Melody was a hard girl, much like Gale Foley, and although Delia knew nothing about her at first hand, Melody Jasper seemed…devious.

  “Please come in,” Delia told them. “There are some refreshments for you, and then Tanya will show you what is to be done.”

  Eloise, Prudence, and Beth hurried happily into the big new house, which they’d never seen, but about which people talked a great deal in the town. But Melody held back a bit.

  “Come in,” Delia began.

  “I ain’t about to work with no niggers,” Melody hissed, pointing at the black girl, who, fortunately, did not hear the comment.

  . But Jason did. He had not a few times been accused of undue
compassion, and always met such calumnies head-on.

  “Tanya is a free woman, and no slave,” he said, with Andrew still in his arms.

  “Still a nigger to me,” Melody smirked.

  “You offered to work for wages, and here you are,” Jason declared. “I haven’t time to take you back into town.”

  Melody thought of the long walk, and the wages, then glanced at the house with rude curiosity. At least she would get a chance to see it.

  “Well, this one time, on account of you’re such nice folks,” she shrugged. Without waiting to be asked again, she went inside.

  “Gale’s girl?” Delia’s question was almost a reproach. “I don’t like it.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. That was always his advice when something troubled her, and Delia had to admit that he was almost always—indeed, always—right.

  Everything in their lives seemed to be proceeding splendidly. What was there to worry about?

  “Well, young man,” Jason asked his son. “Anything interesting happen while I was gone?”

  Andrew chortled happily.

  “He almost got killed,” Delia said, quivering again with the memory.

  She explained what had happened.

  “The bull was out? Why, I told Fes to keep him locked up until next week.”

  “The beast was in the pasture today, and your son almost died because of it.”

  Jason’s eyes darkened, and he gave Andrew a sudden hug. The boy was surprised, but accepted this, too, as no more than his due.

  “There must have been some misunderstanding. I’ll have to talk to Fes.”

  “I think you’ll find him drinking in the barn. I think he’s drinking pretty much all of the time.”

  “Oh, I doubt that.”

  “Jason, I…there’s something about him…”

  But her husband was used to Delia’s suspicions. In the beginning she had good reason for them, but now that she was known and accepted by the people of the community, there was no cause for her uneasiness.

  “Don’t worry,” he said again. “I’ll talk to him. And meantime, we’ll all have to be a little more vigilant about the young soldier here.” He put Andrew down on the ground and tousled his hair.

  Delia had not missed the way he’d said “all.”

  “I’m so sorry…” she began.

  Jason saw her contrition, the hurt, and put his arm around her. “There, it could have happened to any—”

  Just at that moment the little boy decided to go back inside the house, and darted in front of the horses. High-spirited and nervous by nature and surprised by the child’s sudden movement, the two lead horses neighed and reared, and the wheel horses jerked forward. For one dazzling instant Andrew was beneath the pawing, iron-shod hooves.

  Jason dived, grabbed his son, and rolled away in the dirt.

  The hooves plunged down; for a moment it seemed that the horses might bolt.

  Jason rolled away, still holding Andrew.

  “Young man,” he said severely to the boy, who seemed to think some kind of game had taken place, “you stay in the house for the rest of the day. You’ll get yourself killed, do you know that?”

  They went inside then, and Delia remembered that Tanya’s words had been exactly like Jason’s.

  They would have to watch Andrew more carefully.

  Chapter XI

  The guests began to arrive well before dinner time. People from a few of the nearby farms and new plantations came on foot or on horseback; those from Harrisville itself or from more distant homesteads came in wagons or buggies. Rupert Harris, who had contrived to profit hugely over the years, pulled up in a carriage drawn by one of his many black slaves, both Harris and the slave dressed in magnificent swallow-tailed coats as red as Harris’s brindly beard, which was as crudely cut as it had always been. Soon the yard was filled with vehicles and horses; guests milled on the green lawn in front of the house drinking mint julep, corn whiskey, beer, tea, or lemonade.

  Delia and Jason greeted one and all as they left their horses in the care of Fes Farson and the hired men. Jason kept little Andrew in a firm grip, although the boy fidgeted and writhed with all the excitement taking place. Tanya and the four girls from town fetched drinks and tasty morsels, and everything was going smoothly. The tables were laid, and all that remained to finish preparations for dinner was to carve the beef now turning on spits over fires down in the orchard. Fes Farson would handle that task. He had volunteered, a big mug of beer in his hand, repeatedly flashing his weird grin.

  “Jason, how are you?” bellowed Rupert Harris, thrusting out a hairy red paw. “Nice place you got here. Damn nice. My share of the crop ain’t too bad, neither. Hey there, Delia, you look—” he scrutinized her for a moment—“you look even nicer than my share of the crop, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  She smiled and suggested a julep.

  “That’d be blood to a vampire,” he growled, moving off toward the lawn.

  Phil and Gale Foley arrived. Phil and Jason had become fairly well acquainted. Jason respected the efficiency with which Phil managed the sawmill and the flour mill; and both men saw that Harrisville—if properly developed—could eventually become a leading center of trade in the region, due to the richness of the land and the proximity of a navigable river.

  “I really needed Melody at the inn,” Gale said, smiling to show how charitable she was, “but seeing as we’re friends…”

  “Thank you,” Delia said.

  Later, when most of the guests had arrived, Delia went to check on the progress of the party. Everything was proceeding well, and the girls, under Tanya’s supervision, moved through the throng with trays and glasses and cups. Delia was just about to tell Fes Farson to start carving the barbecued beef, when she noticed Gale Foley whispering something to Melody, in a manner that seemed quick and sly.

  It’s your imagination, she told herself, recalling Jason’s usual advice: Don’t worry.

  Yet shortly thereafter Delia noticed that Melody was no longer circulating with her tray. She waited a little, checked the kitchen and the parlor, and glanced out back, where the hired men were engaged in some serious drinking. Puzzled and wondering, she walked all about the house and noticed that the door to her and Jason’s bedroom was closed. But she’d left all doors open, so that guests might see the entire house.

  She paused outside the door, listening.

  There was no sound, and yet…

  Quietly she turned the knob, eased open the door, and slipped into the room. The closet door was open, and in the closet, digging far back among the folds of hanging coats and dresses, was Melody.

  Delia knew instantly that she might already be too late.

  “Get out of there!”

  She was too late. Melody withdrew from the closet, a bit surprised to have been interrupted, but not at all shocked. In her hand she clutched the beaded leather pouch that contained Delia’s few treasures and remembrances from her past life: a few pieces of jewelry, Torch’s serpent bracelet, and the white stones with which he had first summoned her to the place of the willows. The pouch was unmistakably Indian, the contents even more so, save perhaps for the stones, which might mystify Melody.

  “What are you doing in my closet?” Delia demanded, with as much anger as she could summon.

  Melody just smiled. “I can’t tell the tribe from the beadwork,” she said. “Chickasaw, I suppose? Or Cherokee?”

  Delia said nothing, though it pained her not to be able to shout, “Chickasaw, yes, Chickasaw,” to spring forward and tear that weasely little smile from Melody’s hard face.

  “Gale always guessed,” Melody said. “And now we know she is right.”

  With a supreme effort of will, Delia saw that her only chance lay in doubt, in the casting of doubt.

  “What do you mean?” she demanded coldly.

  “Why—why, this,” Melody said, holding out the leather pouch as if for Delia’s inspection.

  “And did you
try to place it in my house for some reason?”

  “I—no, I was—”

  “Attempting theft?” pressed Delia, knowing she had good ground now, and set upon gaining more.

  “Are you a thief? Where did you get that pouch?”

  “It was…I was…”

  “I shall take you right out now before all the guests, and tell them of a thief in our midst!”

  Melody was genuinely frightened now. “I didn’t take it. I…was just…”

  “Yes?”

  “I just wanted to…”

  “Who put you up to this? You mentioned Gale Foley.”

  Melody struggled to keep her wits, and kept them.

  “Go ahead and do what you want,” she said, lifting her chin. “Tell them of a thief in your house. Take me out before them and say anything you want. I know where I found this leather purse, and all will know where it came from.”

  That was true. Delia saw that, while she had Melody at bay, there was no clear purpose in publicly accusing the girl of theft. An imbroglio would result, of accusation and counteraccusation, and no good would come to Delia as a result.

  “Give me the pouch,” she commanded.

  “What? Why?”

  “Did you find it here?”

  Suspicion. A trick? “Yes.”

  “Then it is mine and Jason’s, until we find out to whom it belongs.”

  Melody was incredulous, but saw in the ploy a way to escape being marked a thief.

  “As you wish,” she said, smirking.

  Delia took the purse and held it lightly, as if it were of absolutely no significance to her. “Now get out of here,” she said.

  “I’ll…yes, I’ll go back to my work now.”

  “No. Go home.”

  “But you hired me!”

  “You are dismissed,” Delia pronounced.