A blaze of light and a muffled curse from the far end of the low stable snapped her back. It was Abraham and Amos at the makeshift forge. She knew they were not repairing shoes for the horses or plows for the fields; they were molding ammunition for the few weapons they had left.
From the servants’ quarters she heard a low, quiet singing, almost a dirge, caught on the light breeze and wafted over the trees. She remembered the night of Chet’s funeral and the music then, and how shocked she had been when she realized that the blacks mourned so differently than she had for her Aunt Agatha—their music had been sprightly, almost joyful, and it had taken Amos’s quiet words the following day to make her understand that they were celebrating a release, not a death.
The milk cow lowed. A hog snorted in its sleep. She could hear Judah’s and Alice’s voices coming from the open kitchen door through which light spilled onto the grass in a silvery-gold rectangle. Judah, whom she had found in the ruins of Riverrun; Alice, whom she had saved from certain death at the hands of a drunken hunter. She grinned to herself. Face it, girl, she thought, you’re not exactly the kind of woman Aunt Aggie would have wanted to see you turn into.
She was about ready to join her two friends in the house when she heard the unmistakable crack of a single shot being fired out by the curing sheds. Instantly, she broke into a headlong run that took her into and through the trees almost before she knew it. Her ears strained as she ran, listening for the sounds of further attack, but there was nothing but the thudding of her boots on the ground, the brushing of shrubs against her legs. An owl complained as she passed under it, and something scuttled away from her quickly into the empty furrows of the open field.
Against the far line of trees, the sheds were invisible. Clouds had covered the moon in a thin, gray haze, and she stumbled several times before reaching the open space they had cleared only two days before. No fences, no trees, no obstacles of any kind for the marksmen (or so she had told them they were) hidden within the peak-roofed building. There were no lights that she could see, or anything that sounded like retreating or advancing horsemen.
She stood in the middle of the clearing, then, and whistled twice, once, twice more, and heard the protesting creak of the tail, narrow door as it opened inward. She remained absolutely still. A single wrong move before she was recognized, and she would be dead.
“It’s—” she cleared her throat, “it’s me, Cable. It’s Mrs. Roe.”
A deep voice like muted thunder drifted from the darkness. “You ’lone?”
“I am. I heard a shot.”
Immediately, a torch flared and she had to throw up a hand to protect her eyes from the glare. Cable, a black as tall as Judah but as thin as a shadow, stalked from the shed beneath the torch. He carried a rifle in one hand, and had a bandolier of ammunition strapped across his chest. He was perspiring heavily, and Cass could see that he was not walking as steadily as he should. At first she thought he’d been drinking, but revised her opinion when she saw the trembling hand that held the flame.
“It come from out there,” Cable said, pointing across the vast, open field.
She turned, staring, knowing she would not be able to see anything or anyone, but searching nevertheless. And as she searched, she heard another shot, more distant. Instinctively, the two of them fell to their knees and Cable’s rifle came up to his hip.
“Don’ know, Missus,” he said, shaking his head.
“I do,” she said.
It had begun. This night there would be gunfire. There would be shouts and muffled threats carried on the air. Horsemen would ride by dressed in black, not shooting, not stopping. More than likely the mutilated corpses of small forest animals would be tossed at the sheds for the blacks to find the next morning. It was the tension-filled and deceiving calm before the holocaust; the war of nerves before the hell that Geoffrey had spawned exploded into violence all over Riverrun. She could only hope that Eric would be back in time to help her, that she would be able to find the courage to keep the men confident that they were going to be all right. If she faltered, they would; and if they did, Hawkins would have exactly what he wanted.
She straightened and explained to Cable as best she could what she thought the captain was planning, what was going to happen throughout the night. “You won’t get much sleep, I’m afraid. That’s his whole idea.”
“That don’ bother me none, Missus,” the cadaverous black said with a wide, white grin.” ’Cordin’ to Amos, I don’ never sleeps anyways.”
Cass laughed, touched his arm and turned to go. “Missus,” he said quickly, “don’ you think you should have a man wi’ you?”
She shook her head. “No. I make enough noise as it is. One more, and we’ll sound like an army. They,” and she pointed back toward the field, “may not be aiming at anyone in particular, but I don’t want any stray shots just happening to come my way. Douse the light and go back inside, Cable. Get as much sleep as you can. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Yes, Missus,” he answered; but he did not move from his position nor did he quench the torch until she was out of range of the light and he could no longer hear her. Then, with a slow shake of his head and a broad smile of admiration, he returned to the shed. It was empty and silent, except for the wind that pushed shadows through the rafters.
Chapter Thirty-Two
A
t first the pain was like sunrise on a flatland—distant, red, only a warning of the heat and unease to come. But when, in the darkness, Eric shifted slightly, the pain rushed at him like a great, fiery locomotive filling all of his senses with the sound and thunder of its approach. Despite himself, he groaned, and froze as best he could until he was sure that no one had heard him. He lay still a minute while the fire subsided. He dared not open his eyes, using his ears instead to sift what information he could from the air.
He was inside, though whether in a cabin or a house he did not know. It was old, however. Dust and mold, the presence of musty age that no eye could see. His cheek was pressed flat against what he assumed was the floor, and his hands were bound behind his waist. His legs were tied tightly at the ankles, but his captor had forgotten to take off his boots. Mistake number one, Eric thought.
He listened, heard nothing, no one. He strained his ears and could just make out the faint chorus of insects and tree frogs, the far-off lonely baying of a traveling mongrel.
The fire was gone; only a throbbing remained. He had been struck high in the shoulder, and he was sure by the feel of flesh already tightening around the wound that it was more superficial than dangerous, not striking muscle or bone. Then he remembered seeing Lambert just before the shot was fired, and the pain returned—this time as a consuming rage that almost had him moving prematurely and giving away the fact that he’d returned to consciousness.
Lambert. He had known. They had been waiting for him; it was no coincidence. They had been waiting to ambush him because someone had told them he’d be riding along that road at about that particular time. Did they know what he carried? He pressed himself against the flooring, and sighed when he felt the money belt still around his waist. Unless they had already gone into it and had just left it there, the secret was for the time being still safe. But time was something he had little of. If Lambert knew about this, then Hawkins obviously did, and the captain would not sit around and wait for the last day, now. Which meant that the longer he was kept here, the more danger Cass was in, and the less likely he would get out of this alive. Hawkins, he knew, was not keeping him here just to prevent him from reaching Meridine. He opened his eyes.
A cabin. The walls were roughhewn and there were gaps between the logs that were as black as the room save for a faint aura of moonlight. There was no fire, there was no furniture that he could see, and he assumed that the door lay beyond his outstretched feet. Slowly, then, gritting his teeth to keep from crying out, he rolled over onto his back. The pain was not nearly as bad as he’d anticipated, and an experimental rotation of his shoulder told him someone—though he doubted it was Lambert—had bound the wound properly. He was right, then. Hawkins wanted him alive, but only until he needed him. He smiled, and searched through the darkness for something, anything he could use to make his escape, listening at the same time for any betraying noise that would tell him about the number of guards who had been posted outside. Considering he’d been wounded, he did not think Lambert would give up more than one man. That was the arrogance that Lambert carried about him like a cloak, an arrogance that would refuse him to admit to himself that Eric was capable of slipping away once again. That, he thought, will be mistake number two. Ten minutes later, he discovered mistake number three.
“W
here is Simon?”
Judah looked at her blankly.
Cass strode to the end of the porch and stared out through the darkness at the gardens, for a moment regretting that she had kept them there because she had so little time to enjoy them, to walk their paths and lament the dying of each season’s flower.
“He was supposed to come back and report to me,” she said. “Go down to the road, Judah, and see if he fell asleep. I’ll have his damned black hide if he’s failing me now.”
Judah, his face menacing with its patchwork of cuts and scrapes, nodded and took off at a run. For his size, he moved remarkably swiftly, preternaturally silently. Yet all his skills had not been enough to prevent him, after his fight with David and his subsequent flight, from falling almost literally into the campfire of a Klan convocation. Luck had been with him. The confusion was so great that he was able to escape almost immediately, he’d said, “makin’ sure some of ’em don’ breathe so good no more.” The rest of his injuries had come from his wandering through the hills without being able to light a fire for protection and warmth. He didn’t want to recall how many gullies he had fallen into, how many small and dank caves he had crawled into to sleep the daylight hours away.
“But why did you come back?” Cass had asked him.
Judah had shrugged before admitting reluctantly, and touchingly, that he was lonesome, that he was tired of running.
A shot.
Cass stiffened, then forced herself to relax when she realized what she was doing. She knew that Hawkins’s plan was already working, even though she understood its purpose. This won’t do, she told herself when she went inside; you’ve got to set the example, Cassandra, or no one else will be able to stand it.
In the kitchen, Alice was sitting by the huge fireplace with a moist cloth draped over her eyes. She took it off when Cass walked in, and Cass could see that the swelling was already beginning to retreat, leaving behind it ugly shadows of purple and black. She smiled, and Alice replaced the bandage.
Rachel and Melody came out of the corridor that led off toward the dining room and their own small rooms. They were arguing heatedly about the state of Melody’s bed, and Cass was dismayed. Fighting about housekeeping, she thought, when they should be worried about their lives. “All right,” she said, stepping between them just when it seemed as if they were going to come to blows. “All right!”
The two girls looked up at her, Melody’s eyes brimming.
“Now listen, you two,” Cass said sternly, “I have got to have some quiet around here. You’re going to drive us all insane with that bickering, you understand me? Rachel, the men will need something warm to last them the night. Get some broth and bread together and I’ll have Abraham bring it out to the sheds later. Melody, you go upstairs and see if there’s anything Mr. Vessler needs. You will not aggravate him, do you understand? Now get to it, before I tan you!”
She stepped aside as Rachel, with one last parting glare at Melody, strode angrily into the scullery to fetch some stew meat and greens. The other girl, wiping at her face with the hem of her apron, scuttled out of the room toward the front.
“You were hard on them,” Alice said.
“I had to be,” Cass said, smiling before she realized that Alice couldn’t see her. “If I don’t keep them busy, they’re going to tear each other’s throats out.”
“And what about you? You goin’ sleep at all?”
The back door was open. There was another shot.
“With that?” Cass said. “How can I sleep when I keep thinking that one of those balls might find a lucky mark?”
“They’s only black folks,” Alice said.
“They’re people,” Cass retorted. “And they’ve not given up on me yet, which is more than I can say for myself sometimes.”
Alice shifted, and the cloth dropped from her eyes. In the firelight, Cass thought she looked more beautiful than ever, despite her troubles, and she was oddly envious of Judah. And as she thought the name, the man came into the room and stood expectantly on the threshold. From the look on his face, she knew he had not found Simon. “They took him,” she said flatly.
Judah shook his head. “No’m,” he said. “I don’ think so …”
G
od!
The cry was smothered before it had a chance to escape, but it echoed and re-echoed as spasms of burning fire traveled across his shoulders and down his spine. He did not think he was going to be able to do it. Tears sprang to his eyes, and he tasted blood at his lips.
Cass, for God’s sake, help me!
He was sitting in the place where he had lain, his arms stretched down and tight behind him. He had thought he would be able to bring his hands under his buttocks and work the rope knot free with his teeth, but the wound would not let him. He had tried four times already; the first two had blacked him out, for how long he didn’t know. The last two refused to allow him that solace, and the pain spread like a summer brushfire. He was dizzy, sweating, shaking his head to clear it while he half-expected that the door would slam open and he would find himself staring into the muzzle of someone’s cocked gun.
Harry, he thought then, why the hell didn’t I listen to you and stay in London where all we had to worry about was losing our shirts?