She did not think these things during lovemaking; there were no thoughts then, and none were possible. But later, with Jason beside her, drifting into sleep, herself filled and easy, the throbbing fading now, fading, ebbing away until it should again be called from the mysterious source of joy—yes, later she would think of it, and wonder that ecstasy must be a kind of death. Because one moment your body belonged to you, and pleasure was an abstraction, something to be considered from a distance, desired and sought. But then there would be that one special kiss, or a particular caress, or the subtle thrust of a lover, or some shred of delicious memory, and then your body belonged not to you but to the pleasure itself, which could not be stopped or held at bay, and you were then in a different state, about which nothing could be done until pleasure was done. And the pleasure would not let you rest until it had exhausted its own appetite on your tender flesh, which it held in thrall, to enslave and feast upon, to dominate and consume.
And so it was on this night, too, as Jason caressed her with his body, and she responded, now above him, now beneath, until the miraculous moment came, and began, and was all about, and Delia could do nothing to hold it back, did not want to. They held each other and were in turn held by the enchanting surges for which man and woman were created.
Then Jason slept and Delia slept, too. The wind moved in the branches of the trees beside the house—or did she dream it?—and she awoke and Went to the window. Torch was not there. He had not come for her, nor would he. But far out on the dark fields of night, she saw the horseman, a phantasm, like smoke or fog upon a mount of pale mist, riding toward her like the wind until he disappeared into the wind itself.
The face of her first lover was outlined in the stars.
Chapter XIII
Delia stood at the mirror in her bedroom, looking at her image over and over.
Will he know? Can he tell?
First she studied her face for a long time. Then she turned away from the glass for a moment, to glance back suddenly, surprising herself, trying to see herself as if for the first time, trying to decide what she saw there in the mirror.
Her complexion gave no cause for concern. It was as pure as it had always been. But her hair was so dark! And deep in her eyes, ineradicable and never to be hidden, was the heritage of her people, a slow smoky depthlessness that seemed to see everything, a quality of blackness that bespoke indomitability, and infinite patience. Delia could not lie with her eyes, and anyone who looked carefully would be able to read in them I know and I have waited and All things shall come to pass.
Would Andrew Jackson look carefully into her eyes, and see those thoughts within?
“Soon I shall know,” she said to herself. There was nothing to be done about it now. She left the bedroom and went down onto the verandah, waiting. It seemed as if she could no longer endure waiting, and at the same time she wished Jackson would never arrive at all.
“It will be over before you know it,” Jason had encouraged her. “He’ll arrive in mid-afternoon, speak with the men here—just Harris and a few others—stay the night, and then ride on to the villages west of us.”
He would stay the night. Chula Harjo would be beneath Delia’s roof.
The day was drowsy with midsummer heat. In the kitchen Tanya was busy preparing a great stone jug of lemonade. Jackson was said to be fond of lemonade, which he often drank mixed with whiskey, and he was also fond of elderberry pie. Six such pies, baked on the previous day, now rested on a pantry shelf, covered with a long strip of cotton cloth to keep off the flies. Across the yard Jason emerged from the stables, and with him, leading Jason’s horse, came Paul, the big, one-eared ex-slave. Paul passed the reins to Jason, who swung easily into the saddle and made some comment to the black man, who laughed and returned to his work. Since the departure of Fes Farson, Jason had exercised personal supervision of the farmhands, and although it took more of his time than he would have liked, the farm was running far more smoothly.
Jason rode across the yard and reined in the horse next to the verandah.
“I’m going to ride down to the main road. He’s due any time now, so I’ll meet him out there.”
She gave him a wan smile.
“Don’t worry,” he said, and rode off.
Tanya seemed to notice her mistress’s agitation, quite unusual in Delia. “Now, looka here, young mastah,” she said to little Andrew, who was eating blueberry cookies and drinking milk at the kitchen table. “Seems your mama’s mighty vexed ’bout somefin. Le’s you ’n’ me cheer her up.”
She took the little boy by the hand and led him out to the verandah, where Delia stood watching the roadway.
“Don’ worry, Miz. We’s all ready. Ev’thin’s done been done to prepare foh Mista Jackson’s visit.”
Delia turned. The boy ran to her and she picked him up. “Oh, I know that, Tanya…” Her voice trailed off.
“Then what is it, Miz? I sweah I nevah have evah seed you in this kine of way. Anythin’ I done or din’ do?”
“Where sojer?” Andrew wanted to know.
“Coming. He’s coming. You father went to meet him. No, Tanya, everything’s all right. It must be the heat.”
Tanya contrived to look relieved, although she was sure Delia’s nervousness had to be the result of something more serious.
“Sho is hot, I’ll agree,” she said, and went back to the lemonade.
“Papa with sojer?” asked Andrew. He had been told of Jackson’s imminent visit, and one of the field hands had elaborated upon Jackson’s career for the little boy’s benefit. “Sojer shoot Injuns!” he cried gleefully, making a little pistol with his fist and outstretched finger.
“Don’t say things like that,” Delia admonished him, but her heart was not in it. She was too distracted. “Here, you go play with your rocking horse.”
“Chase Injuns!” Andrew cried, and scurried to the wooden horse on the grass beside the house. In a moment he was yelping and howling, caught up in some dangerous chase.
Sojer shoot injuns. Nothing but the words of an innocent child, and yet weighty with meaning to Delia. Watching him teeter back and forth on the toy, she shuddered. Someday he would learn of his mixed ancestry. She would tell him, and he would be proud of it. Or would he? Of course. He was the great-grandson of a mighty Chickasaw chief! But would that really mean anything to him? Perhaps he would reject the knowledge, spend his life hiding it, even ashamed of it. Thinking of such a possibility, she felt a pain beneath her breasts. How complicated everything was. One’s home. One’s blood. One’s people.
Don’t be absurd, she told herself. These people of Harrisville are yours now. Jason is your husband and Andrew is your son. You have a home and a great farm. Thus she sought to put her mind at ease.
What would old Teva say, Delia thought, if she saw me carrying on this way?
Thoughts of the old seeress, unbidden, brought the memories flooding back. The village in the mountains, the snug warmth of a wigwam in winter, ghostly tales around the fire. Delia thought of the meadow below her village, how it sloped down to the river, across which lay the grave of Four Bears, the graves of so many others fallen in battle. She thought of the willows that had seen and sheltered the tender, flaming love of a great young brave and a girl named Gyva; and her heart quickened when she knew that she could never deny a magical bond to the mountains of her homeland, to the forests of time over which Ababinili kept his sacred vigil, and to all her memories and dreams that were no more, yet could never be extinguished.
Oh, it was hopeless! How could an Indian-hunter, Indian-killer like Jacksa Chula not read her heart, not see in her dark and watchful eyes the indelible proof of her past?
Then thunder on the roadway lifted her from woeful introspection, as a party of riders at full gallop pounded up the drive. Delia felt something much like fear slip beneath her skin. She could see Jason on his black Arabian, and she knew these visitors were expected—indeed invited—but the speed and suddenness of their approach s
eemed the advent of a war party, not a group of guests.
Trees and hedges shut out her view then, and she walked quickly inside the house, to watch from her kitchen window. She had not seen Jackson, or anyone who looked like he was supposed to look. Maybe something had happened, plans had been changed?
Laughing with excitement, little Andrew slid off his hobbyhorse and toddled after her into the house.
“Land sakes!” Tanya was exclaiming, “mus’ be the devil hisself on the warpath, all that racket.”
Delia did not reply, but the black woman’s choice of the word devil could not have been far from right.
Outside, the men were dismounting, with Paul and the other hired hands hurrying to take the horses. She could not see Chula Harjo in the group, though there were many riders. Then some of the men moved, horses shifted positions, and Delia saw Jason holding the bridle of a big gray horse, and she knew. It is he, she thought. Her mind flashed back to the terrible stories, to Talking Rock, the pitchfork her mother had used, and Four Bears creeping down the rocky walls of Roaring Gorge to rescue her. This tall man now dismounting the gray, this Jacksa Chula—he who had killed her parents, he who must once have held the baby Beloved-of-Earth in his arms, who must have intended to sell her as a slave—he not only lived and breathed, but stood there in the dust in the yard of her very home. Soon he would come near her hearth, to talk and drink and eat, as if he were a human being like everyone else!
“Miz, you all right?” Tanya was asking.
Delia realized her breath was coming in fast, short gasps.
“I’m all right,” she said, trying to calm herself, studying Chula Harjo.
He was very tall, taller than Jason, and wore a wide-brimmed weather-beaten hat from which long, straight white hair hung to his shoulders. A faded-blue, waist-length jacket of the Spanish style, a relic of the Florida expeditions, accentuated his broad shoulders and the hard planes of his back. Two rows of gold buttons, irredeemably tarnished, ran down the front of the jacket. Jackson did not care for adornments; he never had. The accoutrements of haberdashery would only serve to distract from the main attraction, which was what he wanted to be, and was.
Then the horses were taken to the stables, and Jackson’s outriders were directed to a cool keg of beer set up in the orchard. Jason had planned things so that he would have a chance to talk to the general alone, prior to the arrival of Rupert Harris, Phil Foley, Felix Wohl, and a few of the others who had been selected as a delegation from Harrisville and the outlying plantations and farms.
Jason and Chula Harjo were striding toward the house now, side by side, and Delia’s eyes were fastened on the general. So lean he was, so hard, just like they said in all the stories. He wore tan riding breeches and high, unpolished boots, the loose tops of which flopped around bony knees, and a long, white-man’s killing knife hung from his belt. Jackson held himself erect without seeming to, held himself with a natural, overwhelming dignity, a strength weathered and tempered and made tougher than anything that had ever been foolhardy enough to challenge it.
Delia watched him come toward her, and her heart was beating like a drum. But then she remembered who she was.
She recalled the wisdom of the old seeress, she of the sacred birthmark: Those who are true to what they be have no need of fear.
That was the great secret of a warrior’s heart. And since Chula Harjo was a warrior, he must know the secret, too.
And so do I, Delia vowed. With an effort of will she brought herself under control. What had she been permitting herself to do? A Chickasaw did not flinch or quiver, nor let her heart grow faint and race away.
No, a Chickasaw, always in battle, ever in danger, even in defeat, met the eyes of an enemy, and though a Chickasaw might die, never would he yield.
Never would she yield!
Then the door opened, and Delia was as still as a mountain lake in winter. Her deep black eyes stared straight and true, locked on Andrew Jackson, fixed upon his sharp blue eyes. She saw curiosity grow in them. Perhaps she had overcompensated for her fear. Perhaps her glance was too bold.
But if he was surprised or offended, he gave no sign. She saw him attempt to gauge the significance of her long glance, and then he seemed to decide that she was only doing what so many others had done: Seeing him for the first time, they were compelled to measure what they saw against the stories they had heard. That did not bother him; he more than measured up.
Yet she saw something else in his eyes, too; and he seemed to study her face, trying to sort it out, separate her from the thousands of images in his mind.
“Lady Randolph,” he said, very courteously, and a short bow followed. “Forgive me, but somehow you seem familiar. Have we met before?”
Beneath his hairline, near the temple, was a long scar, etched twenty years before by Four Bears during the raid at Roaring Gorge.
With her own hand she took up a glass from the pantry shelf and poured into it a measure of cool lemonade. She moved as if in a dream, and each shred of lemon pulp in the liquid seemed to spin like a shooting star, or like a grainy creature of the deep. Then her hand reached for the jug of whiskey, and she thought, He will take this from me and drink of it. I could use poison, the magic herbs of Teva! But she had none of them, and so she carried the drink to the verandah, where Jason sat talking with Chula Harjo, and handed her ultimate enemy a drink to quench his thirst. He thanked her, and sipped, and thanked her again, and lived on, breathing the air he had shut off from the lungs of Delia’s mother and father.
Chula was even now bouncing little Andrew on his bony knee, and the boy seemed not to mind at all. In fact he seemed very happy.
“Lemonade, Jason?” she asked.
“Please. Have Tanya bring it. You sit down with us.”
“By all means,” the general said, turning to her. It was odd. When he spoke of politics, policy, war, Jackson was rough and irreverent. Yet when a pretty woman came near, he softened, grew almost courtly. Delia saw this phenomenon now, as he motioned her to a seat beside him, and she saw no hint of falseness or of artifice.
This is a great man, she thought, recalling Jason’s words. But what was a great man, and why did he become so? Must one kill to be great? Was that what had made Four Bears great?
“Mrs. Randolph,” Chula Harjo was saying, his bright, fierce face so close to her, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your hospitality and this lemonade on such a hot afternoon.”
She told him that he was welcome to both.
“We’re just pleased that you could give us some of your time,” Jason put in. “The others will be along shortly.”
Tanya brought more lemonade, whiskey, and thin-sliced pieces of elderberry pie. Jackson ate two pieces right away. Little Andrew was sent out with the servant, protesting as he went, and Jackson laughed sympathetically. “You just mind your ma, there, young man,” he advised, then pulled from his belt a jagged arrowhead. “Here, son, you can have this.”
Like any child, the boy accepted the gift appreciatively, even though he had no idea what it was.
“That arrow almost split my skull up near Boone-town, fifteen years ago. Choctaw, it is. Was one of those situations where it was him or me. It was him, that time.”
“General,” Jason protested, “that must mean a great deal to you. Here, Andy, give that back.”
“Andy?”
“Well, General,” grinned Jason, “we had to name him after somebody, now didn’t we?”
“Well, well,” Jackson said, truly pleased. “Then, by all means, keep that arrowhead, son, and run along now like your ma says.”
Watching, listening, Delia ascribed a few minimal qualities of humanity to Jackson; but she would not let herself be moved, she would not let down her guard. The demons who walked upon the earth were always deceptive; that was one of the first things she had ever learned. Besides, he wore that long killing-knife.
“And where does your family come from, child?” Jackson was asking.
“Why, that’s surely interesting. I’ve spent a lot of time in that state, and a great state it is, too. What part you from?”
Delia did not think about it, or consider her answer. His shrewd blue hawk’s eyes were on her, and all the past stood between them. He must remember, or there was no meaning to anything at all.
“Talking Rock,” she said. “The village of Talking Rock.”
“That was quite a while back,” Jason interjected, with a casualness that hovered on the air.
But Jackson seemed not to notice. His eyes darkened, and he nodded.
“Talking Rock,” he said, patting his leg. “Got a souvenir from that one, too.” He looked very closely at Delia. “
He spoke no more of Georgia. Talk turned to the progress Tennesseeans were making in forging their state. And after not too long a time a carriage was seen coming up the drive.
“That’ll be Phil Foley,” Jason said.
He was half-correct. Delia could see, beside Phil Foley on the carriage seat, a woman, whose bright scarf could only partly obscure her blond hair.
Gale had come along for the ride.
Gale did not restrain herself when she was presented to the famous general. Words of admiration-many of them repeated several times—poured from her quick-working mouth, and it seemed she would swoon (or at least pretend to). Then she saw, to her great surprise, that Jackson appeared to be almost pained at her display, and she lapsed into silence. But she could not understand why he would not like to listen to such praise.
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