“So I get work here and there, wherever so I can,” she said, her voice a pleasant lilt. “Seamstress, cook, wherever so I am let.”
“What do you mean, let?” Melissa asked, curiosity momentarily overcoming her initial suspicion of the black.
Alice’s smile was sardonic. “The war be over, Miss, but that don’t mean colored folks got the rights. Some places, yes; most places, no. I head North, y’see, and find work in the city.”
“It’s just as bad up there,” David said sadly. “Not even all the whites can find work these days. A lot of the men are rejoining the army.”
“What for?”
“The Indians,” he said. “They don’t like the people traipsing west of the Mississippi, and they’re starting to fight back. Great excitement, they tell me.”
“Nice,” Alice said. “Always nice to get out and kill more folks.” She laughed, once, bitterly.
“Now that’s not fair,” Melissa protested. “People have a right to live where they want to, don’t they? They have a right.”
Alice shrugged, wrapped her delicate fingers around a dark mug of ale, and sipped at it slowly.
“Well, they do,” Melissa insisted, turning now to David, who only smiled and patted her hand.
Cassandra, as the talk wore on, sat back and watched them. It was a curious sensation, but it was as though she were watching a recital, detached from the scene as though she were the audience. The inn was growing warm, far more cozy as the flames in the fireplace crackled into the chimney to drown out the low howl of an autumn wind. The hunters had finished their drinks and left without a glance in her direction; the landlady was fussing back in the kitchen somewhere and her husband had finally come indoors to sit on a rocking chair by the hearth. Alice began to talk of life on the plantation, its risks, its sometimes happy moments, the monotony of daily chores that blended one sunset into another. Her face was softly featured, her eyes a deep brown that matched perfectly the fall of hair that pressed to her shoulders. She had a full figure, and Cass noted wryly that David was not above dropping his gaze now and then to the rise of the drab gray material of her dress—she was an exotic contrast to his own doll-like Missy, and Cass couldn’t help but believe that the black woman had considerably more native intelligence.
Eventually, David and his wife retired to their room upstairs, and after dousing the candles and leaving the fire, the landlady and her husband bid Cass goodnight. She was alone, then, with the black girl, the fireplace talking to itself, the wind’s counterpoint.
“I should say thank you,” Alice whispered then.
Cass smiled. “I was lucky.” She told her, then, of her journey to Meridine and what she wanted to do there, saying nothing of her involvement with Eric, or with Hawkins and his man, and the more she spoke the more her voice softened and her eyes grew bright. It was as though Alice were exactly the person she needed to talk to; she gave voice finally to a complete summary of her dreams—though those dreams would remain, as always, darkly private. And even when Alice began asking knowledgeable questions about the running of a plantation, Cass would not admit any obstacle; she overrode everything with a flash of teeth, a mimed slash of her knife.
“You’ll need people to work,” Alice said thoughtfully. “I don’t expect many be left after all this time.”
“There’ll be some,” she answered. “Nothing spectacular, of course, but there’ll be some around who’ll need a job.”
“Like me.”
Cass shook her head. “You’re going north.”
Brown eyes shaded for a moment, dark lips pursed.
“Could be. But I don’ like the cold. It gets fierce up there, so I’m told.”
“Alice—”
“Mrs. Roe, if you don’t mind me saying so … well, your friends, they seem good intentioned enough, but what do they know about farming? As much as you?”
Cass frowned, sat back, and stared at the beams crisscrossing the ceiling. It was something she had not considered. She’d only let them talk her into coming with her because she needed someone to support her, and both David and Melissa had fit the bill at the proper moment. And now that Alice had brought it up, Cass could not imagine Melissa toiling beside her in the fields from dawn to dusk, with no days off, for months on end. David, perhaps. But not Melissa. Suddenly she felt elation drain from her like air from a balloon, replaced by a feeling of gray-tinged dread.
“Now me,” Alice said with a bright smile, “I can cook, I can sew, and I do the damnedest cleanin’ job on a house that you ever did see!”
Cass reached over her shoulder and pulled a handful of hair to her chest, stroking it idly. “You don’t owe me anything, you know,” she said quietly.
“Only m’life,” Alice countered. “After gettin’ done what they wanted to get done, they wouldn’t have left me around to talk about it.” She raised a hand to stop Cass’s interruption. “It’s like that around here, Mrs. Roe, believe me. At least before, a nigger’s life was worth somethin’ to the man what owned him. Now?” She snapped her fingers in the air. “And ain’t no one gonna stop him, neither.” She set her forearms on the table and leaned forward. “Mrs. Roe, you can use me, I know you can! I don’t want to go north, not really. ’Ginia a beautiful place mos’ of the time, and you’re a nice person and … who knows? Maybe sometime I find a big rich man and he’ll set me on a hill with niggers o’ my own.” She laughed heartily, rocked back in her chair, and lifted her face to the ceiling, shaking her head until the tears rolled from her eyes.
“Well,” Cass said, after the spasm had finished. “I suppose four is better than three. Although I don’t know how David would handle another woman.”
“Don’t you worry about him, Mrs. Roe,” Alice said. “That lady of his, she got reins on him tighter than a choker, you bet on it.”
Cass extended her hand. Alice took it, and for a moment there was no time, no wind, no fire, but only a meeting of palms, and an unspoken promise Cass prayed she could keep.
Chapter Nineteen
A
fter so many obstacles, so many deaths, and so many flights from what should have been the hearth of her old age, Cass was suspicious instantly when she did not have to engage in any prolonged, tearful arguments to get what she wanted. In fact, she thought as she left the boardinghouse and walked down the street toward the agent’s office, if anything it was all too easy. From the moment she had been born, her one continuing lesson had been that nothing, absolutely nothing of substance was gained easily.
The carriage had arrived in Meridine two days before, a full four days ahead of schedule when Alice volunteered to take over much of the driving and lashed the now exhausted bay team through the night hours as well. They’d arrived at noon and were instantly lost in a mob of horses, carriages, buckboards, and pedestrians that swarmed through the town’s whitewashed center. White and red brick, clustered at an intersection from which narrow roads branched like spokes of a wheel to the outlying farms and factories. Like ripples from a stone dropped in water, the homes of Meridine encircled the business center in patterns of squared corners rather than rambling lanes, resembling an archer’s target without the circles. She’d been delighted with everything she saw, including the bustling dock area on the town’s south side where the Green River flowed lazily east in the direction of Richmond. It was apparent that the war had not touched Meridine directly. There was a new monument in the square for the dead, but no homes had been torched, no Union soldiers housed forcibly; there had not even been—if Willard Handcock, the agent, was to be believed-a minor cavalry skirmish within fifty miles. Meridine, then, was one of the few communities left in the western counties of Virginia able to provide produce and products for a hungry, starving market.
They had chosen a small boardinghouse near the river to stay at while their business was undertaken, and the only problem they encountered was convincing the owner—a feisty old woman who wore a calico bonnet night and day—that Alice was not a servant and therefore should not be stuck in the outbuilding quarters. It was David, finally, who laid the matter to rest with the passing of a gold coin. It did not stop the woman’s grumbling, nor did it completely take the hurt from Alice’s eyes, but it worked to forge among the quartet an even stronger bond.
A bond of which, Cass thought sadly, Melissa was the weakest link.
“Listen,” Melissa had said the first night away from the tavern, while Alice was driving and David was asleep among the few items of baggage lashed to the top, “I don’t have anything against those poor people, mind, Cass, but after all she is what she is, you know.”
Cass had said nothing, only bit down on her lip.
Now, as Cass reached the stretch of wooden sidewalk that was raised above the street a foot or so, she banished the gloom and stared in the shop windows, seeing her reflection and grinning. She wore a white-and-green frock more suited to July than October, though the neck was properly high and laced, the skirts only lightly starched and rustling. Over her shoulders lay a matching shawl whose fringe delighted in the noontime breeze, and she was aware that many heads turned her way as she walked. She smiled to herself and touched her hand to the hair she had fashioned into a loose but businesslike bun, with small curls that arched around her temples and were scattered over her forehead. She did not deceive herself by scowling at those whose admiration was more frank than others’; it was pleasant, after so long a time, to know that she had not lost what her father had once called her summer-spring beauty. True, there were lines about her green eyes, creases radiating lightly from her mouth, etchings of past troubles that had never been erased—but they seemed to add to, rather than detract from, her attractiveness, giving others an undeniable impression of strength and intelligence.
There came a shout from farther down the street and she stopped, straining against a roof post until she could see, in the distance, the rainbow-bright colors of a wagon calliope making its way from the docks behind a gaggle of shrieking children. A carnival, she thought; my God, how long has it been?
But there was no time for that now. She turned around and entered a narrow doorway, turning right into a large, musty office whose single massive window looked out on the parade of pedestrians and merchants. There were two desks in the room: one immediately in front of her, the other tucked into a gloomy corner, in the back. At the latter sat a stumpy, rough-looking man whose three-piece suit seemed forced around his corpulence rather than fitted. He rose quickly and hurried to her, extending his hand to take hers.
“How do, Mrs. Roe? A beautiful day, yes?”
Cass nodded and smiled. Willard Handcock was a recent emigrant from a country she’d not yet been able to pin down, and his enthusiasm for his adopted land was incredibly and pleasantly infectious. He led her instantly to his desk, offered her a chair, and only after she was seated and had assured him of her comfort did he take his own.
“So,” he said, hands folded loosely over his paunch. “It is summer again, yes? It always takes me by the neck this change in weather so late. Beautiful. As you are, Mrs. Roe, as you are.”
She nodded, and was amazed to find herself nearly giggling. I must either be tired or drunk, she thought but knew more rationally that it was the excitement of the occasion that made her so nervous, and so susceptible to compliments.
“But,” the agent said with a brisk rubbing of his palms, “we have business, yes? Your Mr. Vessler was in earlier and all things are arranged. I must say again, though, that I’m mighty surprised you come here. I did not know I even have the property on books until you make me look.” He grinned and ducked his head.
“You’re the only agent in town, Mr. Handcock,” she said. “Where else would I go?”
He shrugged expansively. “I should not argue, yes? No. I should instead give you these and ask you sign here … and here … and once more here.” He handed her several long sheets of paper bordered in gilt, and when she held them up she saw that her hands were trembling. “A brandy, Mrs. Roe? For the event.” And without waiting for an answer he pulled from a desk drawer a dusty decanter, wiping it with one sleeve. Two glasses came from another drawer, and he carefully measured out a single swallow of the amber liquid. “We drink when you sign,” he said.
Though Cass had placed her trust in David’s knowledge of the law, when the moment came to put her name on the lines Handcock had indicated, she paused. Too easy, she thought again. Too miraculous.
The agent held out a pen.
County law was quite specific, David had told her: properties deserted for a period of three years or more fell onto the county rolls for auction. The problem was, few Southerners, even in prospering Meridine, had the kind of gold needed to pick up such a large piece of land. Another year, and there would be many; but now, there was only herself.
“Mrs. Roe?”
The entrancing calligraphy on the documents blurred, re-formed, and she saw a faint image: Eric’s face. She closed her eyes at once and took a deep, shuddering breath as her fingers closed around the quill. A few brief letters strung together to form her name, and Riverrun would be hers. A few brief letters. She sighed, signed, while two great tears shimmered on her cheeks. Handcock misunderstood.
“Indeed, a joyous moment,” he said, taking the documents back and blotting them quickly with sand and coarse paper. He raised his glass and toasted her with a smile. Cass only sipped at the weak brandy, fighting not to choke. And then, as suddenly as it had come upon her, the mood broke. She was still laughing when she left the office with the papers folded neatly into a packet and tucked under her arm. The air was filled with the song of the calliope, the shouts of young children racing through the streets announcing the carnival’s arrival. A juggler nimbly sidestepped a wagon piled high with sacks of corn, a clown played leapfrog with a small yelping dog. Those on the sidewalk had stopped to watch the impromptu show, and many of the horsemen had reined in to form a circle around a man giving an exhibition of marksmanship with a bullwhip. It was as though Meridine had turned out just for her, and though she knew it was only a fancy, Cass reveled in it all the way back to her rooms.