But he felt a great deal of satisfaction indeed when people recognized him as he walked through Meridine’s business district, down the center of the street. He didn’t have to. He could just as easily have used the raised wooden sidewalks. But he wanted the word to get around, to get to Hawkins, wherever he was, that Martingale was in Meridine, walking as if he owned it. He headed straight for the two-story, red brick bank. When he arrived, he pushed aside the gate in the railing by the cages, and ignoring the startled protests of several men behind low desks, he marched, straight to Jennings’ door and opened it.
Thaddeus Jennings was standing at a sideboard, a decanter of brandy in his hand. Short-haired, full-bearded, rail-thin, and dressed as though he were receiving a monarch, he glared haughtily as Eric crossed the room. Glared, then backed away quickly when Eric took the glass from his hand and held it up to the light.
“Not bad,” he said with a grin. “And I’m so pleased you were anticipating my visit.”
“Mr. Martingale, what are you doing here, sir?” The eyes swept over his torn and dusty clothes with a disdain that was almost palpable.
Eric strode to the desk, enjoying himself thoroughly, and after taking a sip of the brandy, set the glass down on a stack of papers. He stared for a moment through the rear window, then slowly began to unbutton his shirt.
“See here, sir!”
“Don’t worry yourself about it, Thaddy boy,” he said. He reached to his waist and yanked off the money belt.
It was stained with his sweat and blood, stiff from dried salt, but he opened it easily and pulled out a sheaf of papers that he tossed onto the desk. “You will pull Mrs. Roe’s file out of your cabinet over there,” he said as he closed his shirt again. “You will calculate the amounts owed by her to Captain Hawkins and you will deduct those amounts from the credits I have just deposited with you. “
Jennings, disbelief fighting with his disdain, kept his movements deliberate as he retreated behind the desk, pulled a pince-nez from his waistcoat and set it on the bridge of his nose. Then, as though the papers were covered with filth, he picked them up one by one and read them, carefully. His eyes scarcely moved; his lips were taut. And when he was done, without a glance to Eric, he moved to a large wardrobe to the right of his desk and opened it. Within were many shelves that held stiff paper folders. He did not even have to search; his hand moved unerringly to a point directly in front of him and he slipped a folder out, brought it back to the desk; and opened it. Inside was a packet tied in black ribbon. He undid the knot and sifted through the folded documents. This time his eyes did move, and his lips.
“I—” he began. He shook his head as though to clear it. “I shall have to contact Captain—”
“No, you need not,” Eric said quietly, forcefully. “You merely have to transfer the proper funds from Mrs. Roe’s Riverrun account to Captain Hawkins’s account, and the debt is paid. In full. It will be up to Captain Hawkins, then, what he wants to do with all that money. He will leave, if I have anything to say about it”
A beaded band of perspiration broke out across the banker’s forehead.
“Mr. Jennings, am I to understand that you are refusing to take this money into your bank?”
The banker cleared his throat, but would not look up.
“Then am I to understand that I am going to have to take all this money—which appears to me to amount to nearly one thousand dollars in gold—to … a rival?”
He nearly laughed aloud at the look on Jennings’s face as he tried to remain professional and, at the same time, come to grips with something that was frightening him to death. And Eric knew what it was; he knew what Hawkins would say when he learned that his hold on Riverrun had been torn from him without his knowing it. For a brief moment, then, he sympathized with the banker’s plight; not even he was looking forward to meeting Hawkins again, once word of this had reached him.
But the sympathy lasted only as long as it took him to recognize it for what it was. Immediately he reached out for the papers and was mildly surprised when Jennings beat him to it and slipped them into the folder, then sat and pulled his quill to him, scribbled his initials on each of the documents in Riverrun’s packet, rebound them, and slid the entire folder into the center drawer.
“You’re a brave man, Jennings,” Eric said sincerely.
Jennings reached into a trouser pocket and pulled out a handkerchief to mop at his brow. “I don’t know about that,” he said, his voice quavering. “The man—”
“I know. You don’t have to tell me anything about him. I know.”
Jennings tapped the desk lightly. “I shall … I shall have to telegraph Richmond, of course. A formality, to be sure.”
“I’ll wait.”
Jennings then gave him his first genuine smile. “It won’t take more than an hour or so. I think perhaps we could both use another brandy.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
T
he woodlands that split Riverrun into its component islands of fields and dwellings were thinning now. The leaves were smoldering into patches of reds and golds that made Cass feel as though she were walking through soft fire. The house was far behind her; Abraham, when she had left, was still sitting on the porch step and looking bewildered. But there wasn’t any way she could explain to him how she felt. She tried not to believe that the structure upon which she had constructed her life was showing signs of decay, of weakness; the blows it had taken were finally beginning to make her wonder if it, and she, had the strength to survive. It was different those other times, she thought, when resolution came after the blackness of despair; then she had something definite to look forward to—the return of Eric, or the success of the plantation. But now she was faced with ultimate destruction and she was not sure she was able to cope with the implications. Hatred did nothing for her now; conjuring Geoffrey’s image did not produce the resolve she so desperately needed. And in realizing that, in understanding what had driven her before, she understood something else, something that nearly frightened her to tears: for all her fighting, for all the struggling she had done and the sacrifices she had made, she was alone. Worse, she was lonely. When all was said and done, and if fate decided that she should somehow come out of all this on top, what good would it do her? To whom would she able to crow except her reflection in a badly cracked mirror? Alice, Judah, all the others who worked with and for her would continue to look up to her, of that there was no doubt. Meridine would suddenly become the most friendly community the South had ever seen, where she was concerned. McRae, Brown, and the other neighboring farmers would be there when she needed a barn raised, a harvest transported, a ball to be filled with the sound of laughter. But so what? she wondered; what good was all of that if she didn’t have someone to share it with? Cassandra Bowsmith Roe, on her own, defeating the world and all that went with it. For what, Cass? For a headstone in the plantation’s cemetery that would say something like: By God, she did it? Who would care?
She came to a small stream and sat on the bank, plucking blades of grass and shredding them, spilling them into the water. Silver darts of fish played beneath the running surface, reds and blues of cardinals and jays flashed through the foliage, while squirrels showered her with twigs and shards of leaves, as they played in the branches like small gray ghosts. Who would care?
She heard a rustling in the shrubs across the water and glanced up, expecting to see her buck and doe. Idly, she reached down on the bank and toyed with a half-buried rock covered in moss, waiting, thinking that a glimpse of the two animals who used her land as their domain would bring her, if not an answer, then at least a quickening of luck.
And when the man broke through the brush and stood on the opposite bank grinning at her, she closed her fingers around the rock convulsively.
“Well,” he said, “looka here, looka here.” He was dressed in hunting browns, his hair and beard tangled with strings of grass and leaves. He carried a rifle in his left hand, and the pelt of a rabbit dangled from his belt. “Well, well, the boys sure are gonna be glad to see this. My, my.”
The boys. Her eyes narrowed. He was one of Hawkins’ men.
“What do you want?” she said as commandingly as she could, while her hand freed the rock without lifting it.
The man laughed. “Lady,” he said, “to keep us goin’ the way you have, you ain’t that stupid. My, my. Ain’t the captain gonna be pleased with ol’ Jeb.”
“I doubt it,” she said; and her arm flashed up from her side. The man called Jeb was too startled, had been too proud of his luck, to duck out of the way, and the rock thudded sickeningly against his temple. He swayed before his eyes rolled up into his head and he pitched backward into a briar. Cass was on her feet before he had fallen. She leapt over the narrow stream and took the rifle from the ground. She did not bother to see how badly she’d hurt him—she had neither the time nor the inclination.
She ran, following the stream as best she could, until she was able to pinpoint her direction and position, then thrust herself into the woods onto a narrow path over-hung with crablike branches. Her face caught several of them, and she winced at the whipping blows that brought thin lines of blood to her cheeks. She kept her free hand in front of her to ward off the worst of them. A decaying log threatened to trip her but she leapt over it cleanly, using the rifle for balance.
As she ran, stumbled, and ran again, she listened beyond her own thrashing for the signal that would mean the battle had begun. And it would, as soon as Jeb’s partners realized he was missing and searched him out. An hour, perhaps, if she were lucky. Less if some others had been only minutes away.
She broke out of the woodland wall into the cornfield already picked clean and ready for the next growing season. She wasted little time trying to pick her way among the furrows, leapt them instead as if she were her doe. Into the woods again, and out, this time flying over the tobacco ruts, waving her arms wildly when she spotted several white shirts milling about in front of the sheds. She did not want to call out. Even now her back was tightening, her shoulders hunching in anticipation of a shot that would ring out from the trees and fell her. But with her mind suddenly channeled into only one continuous thought, she did not believe that she would die: Others would, though she would not mark them. But not her. Not Cassandra. Not … now.
She almost fell when she left the rows and reached the cleared space in front of the sheds, but none of the men there moved to help her. They knew better. They only waited until she had regained her breath.
She leaned heavily on the rifle whose butt was jammed into the ground. “Cable,” she said, “you run to the house and tell the others it’s about ready to start. Don’t ask questions! Just do as I say. Once you get them moving, get Abraham and yourself down to the road and …” She frowned, trying to think. “Take the mules, get down to the road and put as many trees as you can across the lane. If you have to knock down the portal to do it, well, that’s the way it’ll have to be. Move!”
Cable was gone before she could say any more, and she forgot him as she turned to the rest and spotted old Billy hanging back, as if he weren’t expecting to be more than a gun.
“Billy,” she said, and grinned when he brightened, “you take four or five others and set yourselves in the woods behind the house.”
“But Missus,” he said, looking at the others, “ain’t we gonna stay here and—you know?”
“No,” she said. “Don’t be ridiculous. Look around you. What do you see?”
“Fields,” one of the men said.
“Trees,” another guessed.
Cass nodded quickly. “Right, and right. Fields and trees, and not a hell of a lot else. All they have to do is set themselves up here and burn us out. We’d be dead in an hour.”
“But—”
“Billy,” and she took a deep breath, glancing nervously at the rapidly westering sun. “Billy, it’s like this: we’ve got all that we want hidden in the house. With luck, and I think we have it for a change, they don’t know that. It’s the house we have to take care of, not these stupid sheds. So we’ll keep on doing what they think we’re doing—we’ll defend them. But not hard. And certainly not with all the manpower we have. My God, there’re only seven of us left, not counting the women. So we’ll leave you, Marcus, and you, Tim, and you, Edward. You three will stay here and make enough noise to wake the dead. Then you’ll get your asses out the back and into the trees, back to the place where Billy and the rest will be. That’s where we fight, not here.
“If it should come to it and the sheds start burning, you will not try to put out the fire, you understand? You’ll let the damned things burn to the ground and you’ll get the hell out.”
“What about Simon?”
“I don’t know about Simon,” she said angrily. “He’ll answer to me when he gets back.”
“If he ain’t dead,” one of them muttered.
“Dead or not, he’ll answer to me,” she snapped.
There was a pause. Then Billy chuckled, breaking the tension, and the others followed suit. She directed them to get back inside, wait as long as they could into dusk before they made their moves.
As soon as they left her, she turned and walked toward the house. This is, she told herself when her legs threatened to break into another run, no time to tip your hand, assuming that you still have a hand. Walk calmly. Keep your head up and your eyes straight ahead. That shadow over there is not holding a gun in its hand. That brush only conceals a groundhog. Nobody’s following you; its only the wind, only the wind. You’re all alone.
She came into the backyard more tense than she had ever been in her life. Cable was standing at the door, and when he saw her he ducked inside quickly.
Oh God, she thought wearily, now what?
But of all the possibilities that ran instantly through her mind, none of them even vaguely resembled what she discovered in the kitchen. Judah was standing at the head of the table, his face thunder cloud dark. On the table, spread-eagled, lay Simon. Cable was at the table’s foot, holding tightly to the man’s ankles.