Dreams of Savannah

by Roseanna M. White

  Having Spence included rekindled Phin’s smile for a moment, but it faded when the commander strolled onward. Phin had woken up this morning thinking of Delia, of those wide green eyes begging him to stay. Worried about whales and tigers and giant squid.

  How could that make him want to laugh at the same time it made him go tense and alert?

  Hudgins looked back at the ever-nearing sails. “What do you think? Will they surrender as easily as the Golden Rocket did yesterday?”

  Phin studied the lines of the ships, the size and outfitting. “They’re both merchant vessels. They won’t be well enough armed to fight. They’ll surrender.”

  A few minutes later, the warning shot boomed out from the Sumter, landing off the bow of the nearest ship. A few minutes more, and the Union vessel struck her colors and raised the white flag.

  Hudgins straightened and jerked his head toward the rowboats. “That would be our cue. Let’s make it quick, gentlemen, so the Sumter can meet that second ship too.”

  Phin’s feet pivoted, obedient and quick. But Delia’s imploring face flashed before his mind’s eye again. Her voice echoed in his ears. “Don’t go.”

  He shook his head to clear it and clamped down on the tide of emotion that swamped him. They’d all felt regret last night, watching the Rocket burn. They all probably wondered if today’s tasks would be any easier.

  But letting such doubts linger would only hurt them. He couldn’t hesitate, couldn’t let himself put a pretty face on his fear and use it as an excuse. Better to use that image as inspiration.

  He climbed into the rowboat with his friends and grabbed an oar. A little exertion was exactly what he needed. Grinning, Spencer followed behind him and took up the other oar. The other three members, two marines and then Davidson, looked every bit as happy.

  Phin blinked away another image of Delia’s imploring eyes.

  At Hudgins’s nod, Phin and Spencer stroked the oars through the water, headed for the now-anchored ship bearing the name Cuba on its hull. No surprise, then, to see her so near the port of Cienfuegos. The only questions were whether she was registered in the Union and to whom her cargo belonged.

  Their boat bumped against the Cuba, and Hudgins led the way up the ladder, Phin close behind. When his boots hit the deck, he felt the glowers of the vessel’s crew upon them. One of the elder members stepped forward, thunder in his brow. “What is the meaning of this, gentlemen?”

  Hudgins sketched a bow. “It is my honor to inform you that you have been apprehended by the CSS Sumter. Might we see your papers, please?”

  The captain folded his arms over his chest. “Confederates.”

  “At your service, sir.” Hudgins lifted a brow. “And you are?”

  The captain growled low in his throat but motioned another man forward with a few leaves of paper. “Captain Stroud. You will see we are of the everlasting state of Maine.”

  Hudgins’s lips hinted at a smile. “Yankees.” He took the papers and handed them off to Phin, apparently unwilling to break eye contact with the man opposite him.

  Stroud made a mocking imitation of the midshipman’s bow. “At your service, sir. Now I demand you let us go. It is Spanish cargo we carry, of no concern to you.”

  Phin flipped through the papers. “Well, you are from Maine and your cargo belongs to Spain, sir, we grant you that.”

  Hudgins inclined his head. “Which means we have the honor of offering you a tow to Cienfuegos, Captain Stroud, where we can turn your cargo over to the proper authorities and deliver you to a United States consulate before dealing with your ship.”

  Sputtering, face gone red, Stroud took one menacing step toward Hudgins. “Pirating rebels!”

  Given the tic in Hudgins’s jaw, the prize master didn’t take kindly to his years at the Naval Academy being tainted by such a misnomer. Phin edged forward, putting his shoulder just a bit in front of Hudgins, and fastened on a smile that would hopefully calm his superior even as it taunted Stroud. “Perhaps if you mean in the tradition of the Sons of Liberty.”

  “How dare you liken yourselves to the Patriots?” The captain rolled back his shoulders and tugged down his coat, gaze sizzling. “Those who prey on innocent merchant vessels simply because of the flag they fly are pirates, pure and simple.”

  Hudgins’s hand landed on Phin’s shoulder. Friendly and tense all at once. “Dunn, see to the tow. I’m going to escort Captain Stroud and his crew to his cabin, where they will remain under guard until we can deliver them to their consulate.”

  Phin turned, but not before the disdain seething through Stroud sent a frisson of warning up his spine. He glanced at the two marines with them, at Spencer and Davidson.

  They’d have to be well on their guard until they reached Cuba.

  Chapter Four

  Salina stifled a delighted laugh at the closing line of Delia’s latest story, covering her mouth with her hand to keep from being overheard. How did she come up with such things? Grand adventure, sweet romance, enduring love . . . such fanciful ideas. As idealistic as their author.

  Completely outside Salina’s experience, but still she loved to hear Delia read them to her or—better still—read them herself.

  Though she’d been prepared to make notes of any outright mistakes, she straightened the papers without leaving a mark. Sure and there were some notes she could have made about the characters and their viewpoints, but why point out the ugly side of things that Miss Delia couldn’t see? She’d ignored them because she didn’t know nothing about them, and Salina would just as soon leave it that way. She’d tell her the story was perfect just as soon as she got home.

  In the meantime, work enough waited to keep her busy. Salina gathered up the clothes ready to go to the laundress and employed her hip to open the door. A spiritual hummed its way out of her throat, the same one her murruh had always sung to her on the Owenses’ plantation.

  With the missus and her daughters out for the morning, the house had relaxed, its gray bricks all but sighing. Salina padded down the back stairs without caring whether she made any noise, smiling at the loud Gullah banter that came from the kitchen. When she entered, both the cook and the laundress looked up.

  “Is you bringin me mo work there, Salina girl?”

  She grinned at the hired laundress, who was sorting through a mound of rumpled cotton while she and the cook gossiped. “We can all use more work, ain’t that right, Fanny?”

  The wiry cook snorted and nodded toward the pile. “Sure and right, gal. Put it on down for Emmy and git yo’self out the way. Them there roses Miss Delia favors be bloomin, and I reckon she’d like it if some was waitin in her room.”

  “You be a smaa’t one, Fanny.” She added Delia’s clothes to the pile and waved her farewell as she stepped out into the blistering July sunshine. She sure missed going to the mountains this summer. But she wouldn’t complain, no sir. If she gave the missus an excuse, she’d be in the rice fields yet, where death came so slow you wished it would hurry, and so fast you never got to meet your own children.

  My, but she wished Mr. Phin had married Delia before he went off to fight the Yankees. Then she’d be away from here. To a place with its own set of problems, sure enough. But it couldn’t be bad as this, with a snake ready to bite her heel if she took a single misstep.

  “Salina.”

  Speaking of missteps . . . She sighed to a halt halfway to the rose bushes. Ought to have known Big Tom would be out here, it being his domain, but he was usually tending the flowers round the front of the house this time of day. “Tom, what you doin back here?”

  The young gardener emerged from behind the trellis, his straw hat casting a shadow across his handsome face. Salina forced a swallow down her parched throat. When the master bought Big Tom last year, she’d thought him the best looking man she’d ever set eyes upon. He wasn’t so tall as his name might make you think, but he was broad with muscles, and so intense all the time that he seemed bigger than he was.

  She
always felt like corn mush around him, though she wasn’t about to let him know it. He had half the maids in Savannah sighing over him, and rumors abounded about the trouble he led them willingly into.

  She didn’t mean to be one of them.

  He slid to her side, closer than he ought to have gotten. No, he wasn’t so tall, but still he towered over her. She took a step back, folded her arms over her chest, and prayed the good Lord he wouldn’t see what his nearness did to her.

  “I’s right where I s’pposed to be. Question is, where you disappear to last night, ooman?”

  Salina straightened her spine to make up for the fact that her knees went plumb weak when that smooth, deep voice of his wound its way into her ears. “I had to check on Miss Delia.”

  She shouldn’t have glanced up into his eyes—those warm cinnamon depths sparked with knowing. He eased a little closer. “Now, Salina, we both know Miss Delia don’t never need you that late. Not skay’d of me, are ya?”

  Scared? Not in the way he meant. Her eyes slid shut. “Tom, I done told you to keep your distance. Ain’t nothing gonna come here.”

  “Why?” His fingers brushed her cheek. They smelled of warm earth and green life. “You kin’t tell me you don’t like me, sweethaa’t. I see it in yo eyes—when you dare to look at me.”

  “Don’t matter what I like.” She pulled away because she had to, even turned toward the roses again, and reminded herself of all the reasons to stay clear of him. “’Tain’t allowed.”

  His snort followed her, his shadow keeping pace and holding her in its arms as she walked. “Massuhs don’t never mind if their slaves get married, Salina. You breed, you just give ’em more slaves.”

  His voice went flintier with each word, and his shadow settled beside her, arms stopping at the elbow like they were crossed. She didn’t dare look at him again and focused instead on the roses—though she hadn’t thought to bring anything to cut them with. “Married, is it? That what you said to Abbie and Josie and—”

  “Ah, that different. Yo different, Salina. Give me the word, and I settle right down. Give the massuh more slaves.”

  She shook her head. Even if she wanted to believe that—and she wasn’t enough of a simpleton to—it wouldn’t have mattered. “Ain’t the way it is for me. The master—”

  “Tell me he don’t touch you.” Tom grabbed her shoulder, spun her around. His eyes burned bright as the summer sun. “If he do, I . . . we kin get away, Salina. I heard them Yankees will welcome any of us that can reach their lines, welcome us wif open arms.”

  “No. Tom.” She gripped his wrists and prayed her words could convey even a portion of the unease that idea sparked inside her. “You run away, the massuh don’t just wait for you to come back and laugh it off as a lark, give you a few days in a holding yard when you wander back. You run away, you get kilt. Ain’t worth the risk.”

  “Ain’t it?” He pulled her closer, bent down till their noses nearly touched. “Don’t you wanna be free?”

  Free. A stranger word she’d never heard. How many songs had she learned as a child that spoke secretly of an elusive freedom? How many covered the desire to escape the master, using the words of spiritual freedom that the white man couldn’t argue with, since he was the one who taught it to them?

  But it wasn’t so simple. Not for her. She drew in a deep breath and met Big Tom’s probing gaze. “My murruh always told me family be the most important thing in the world. That freedom ain’t worth two cents if you can’t share it with the ones you love.”

  He nodded. “’Course. But you ain’t got no family here, Salina. I asked Fanny, and she say yo aunt’s yo only family left, and she’s on a rice plantation somewheres.”

  The Owenses’ rice plantation, to be exact. “I got family here.” When he frowned, she wet her lips and wondered if she dare speak the words that ought never be spoken. Seeing the determination in his eyes, she suspected it might be the only way to convince him to let his fool ideas go. “The master don’t never touch me, Tom. It was my murruh he wanted.”

  His hands fell away, and his eyes went wide. And flat. “Mass Owens be yo’ . . . but . . . they say you didn’t come here till you was ten.”

  “From his plantation. I lived there with Murruh till she died, then he brought me here.”

  He backed away a step. “I knew . . . ain’t no secret you a mulatto, bein so light. I jest didn’t . . . yo’ his blood.”

  And there, that was the single fact that made her life less her own than any other slave in the house. They at least had the dream of freedom, of escape, of the whispers from the North, of that big long word that the whole South was willing to fight against—emancipation. But even if slavery were no more, Salina knew she wouldn’t leave. Couldn’t. Not when her best friend who might not even know they were sisters was still here, still needing her.

  Not when her mother’s people kept backing away when they realized she was the master’s child, and that he acknowledged it enough to keep his promise to her murruh to see after her. To make sure she was never sold, never put in hard labor. When he gave her to the daughter she most loved and said she could stay right there beside her all her days.

  Assuming he didn’t die anytime soon, or the missus would send her away in half a flicker. She knew who Salina’s father was, for sure and certain. And hated her for it.

  Tom slid another step away but then halted, and his face went more determined than ever. “Still. If’n you wanted to—”

  “I don’t, Tom. I can’t.”

  Footsteps sounded from the direction of the house, and when the master stepped into the garden, Salina was real glad Tom had dropped his hands and stood a good space away now. Especially when Mass Owens arched his brows in that way that meant you better answer just as he wanted. “Is there a problem, Salina?”

  Tom swept his hat off, bowed just a bit, and put it back on. “No suh, Mass Owens. I jest goin to get her some shears for them there roses for your Miss Delia is all.”

  “Then you might as well cut them for her too and deliver them to the kitchen. Salina.” He held an arm outstretched toward the door he’d just come through. Command masked in invitation.

  She didn’t even dare look at Tom to send him a silent good-bye, just tucked her head down and hurried toward the house.

  Mass Owens fell in behind her but stopped her a ways from the door with a gentle hand on her elbow. “Look at me, Salina.”

  A deep breath was needed before she could manage it. She made a conscious effort to keep the Gullah from her speech, since he had asked her repeatedly not to speak her mother’s language in his presence. “Yes, sir?”

  He glanced at the garden again. “Is Big Tom giving you trouble? If he is, I can send him elsewhere.”

  She measured out her response like a coveted spice. Not too fast, not too slow. “No, sir. I’ve taken care of it. He meant no harm and won’t bother me again.” Even if some silly part of her, the part just like Abbie and Josie, wanted him to. Wanted, at least, to go squealing to a friend that the most handsome man in all Savannah had offered to run off with her.

  Mass Owens seemed to hear what she didn’t say as much as what she did. “I know best, Salina. It may not seem so to you, but I do. And the best thing for you is to go with Delia.”

  “Yes, sir, I know.” She did, when it came to that.

  But it was the part that always came next that dimmed her every tomorrow. The part she saw even now boiling behind his eyes.

  He drew in a long breath and inclined his head. “And even then, you’re not to wed a Negro, you know that. I won’t be your master once she marries, but I’ll still be your father, and you’ll honor my wishes. You hear?”

  He’d said it before. The first time hearing him call himself her father had been such a thrill—he’d never put voice to it before—that she’d scarce paid any mind to what it was he commanded.

  But the meaning had struck harder each of the three times he’d reiterated it. Murruh had apparently been go
od enough to bed, but he couldn’t bear the thought of his blood being bound to a black man—though heaven knew he’d never sanction her wedding a white man neither. No, she’d pay for his sin by being forever on the outside looking in, not suited for the people of either of her parents.

  Oh, to be in one of Miss Delia’s stories, with all her happy endings, where the uglies didn’t exist or were neatly defeated by the end of the tale. Oh, to be a bird that could fly away and build its nest wherever it wanted. Oh, to be either black or white, to have a place.

  “You’ll have a good life with Delia. Rich and full, she’ll see to that.” Mass Owens looked as though he might reach out and touch her cheek, or maybe chuck her under the chin. He didn’t, of course.

  “I know she will, sir. And I wouldn’t want to be no—I mean, anywhere but with her.” Not to say she wouldn’t like to be with her and have a family of her own too. But it would have to be enough to be Delia’s companion. Maybe mammy to her children.

  It would have to be enough . . . even if it wasn’t.

  He nodded and preceded her into the house, apparently satisfied that his orders would be obeyed. As always.

  Salina sighed and let her gaze move beyond the gardens, out to the sandy street with its folk bustling by. You could always spot the longtime Savannahians by their hunched shuffle, a result of plodding year after year through the foot-deep sand that served as pavement. Seemed most of the men out and about these days were soldiers or militiamen, decked out in their spiffy uniforms.

  Whenever Miss Delia and Miss Lacy had other young misses over, they talked of little but the floods of handsome bucks, who in turn seemed more interested in courting the few reputable ladies left in the city than in protecting anything from the Yankees stationed off the coast.

  Maybe Miss Delia would fall for one of them, one who would marry her now. Maybe . . . oh, who was she fooling? There wasn’t anyone for Miss Delia but Mr. Phin. Salina could tell that sure enough by the way her green eyes went all dreamy whenever his name came up. And all her stories lately seemed to have a certain type of hero.