The fallon legacy, p.12
The Fallon Legacy, page 12
“Damn! Lucille?”
“Gone, sir. One of the watchers thought he saw a pretty wench come out of the alley by the grogshop, but he was supposed to watch Wheeler, and he knew the girl was kept tied, so he didn’t think anything of it.”
“We should have turned her over to a magistrate,” Mortimer said.
Robert ignored that. “What we have to do is find her.”
“Captain, that might not be so easy. If she just fades in among the blacks, she can plain disappear. I know a few blacks who’ll ask questions for me, but not enough to find her if she wants to hide.”
“Money,” Mortimore said. “She won’t have any. That should make her easy enough to find.”
Miller shook his head. “She cleaned out Wheeler’s pockets, sir. There wasn’t a penny in that room, and with you picking up his tab, Captain, he had to have a tidy sum. He never went nowhere else.”
“Ben,” Robert said, “you’ll have to do your best.”
“All right, Captain. I just hope we have better luck than with Vesey. He hardly ever leaves his house. All his friends come to him.”
“Who’s Vesey?” Mortimore asked. “Does he have anything to do with the girl?”
“Something else,” Robert said, and explained about Jeremiah’s absence and his wife’s worry.
“Do you think this touches the uprising?”
Robert laughed. “Next thing you’ll be like the old women in church this morning, thinking everything is involved in that mess.” He sobered. “If he did kill Jeremiah, I’ll knot the rope around his neck myself, but it’ll turn out to be for some ordinary reason. I’ve learned Vesey is a lady’s man. It’s possible he wanted Sarah. She’s a good-looking woman.”
Mortimore had listened impatiently. “I’m not the only one who thinks a great deal is involved. Half the city thinks every black in the state is awaiting a signal to start killing whites. Everyone’s on tenterhooks about what the Committee will do next.”
“The other half of the city,” Robert rejoined, “is saying their people are faithful old family retainers and couldn’t be involved in anything like that. You can’t go by what people say. What’s this about a committee?”
“Oh, Christ! That’s why I came over. To see if you’d heard. But when I met Miller on the steps … The City Council has appointed a Committee of Safety and Vigilance under our old friend Kennedy. It was announced just a few hours ago, but they’ve already arrested eight, ten blacks, maybe more, including four of the governor’s slaves. I hear Bennett’s up in arms over that, claiming the entire thing is a farce and there isn’t any uprising planned. He was speaking out of the other side of his mouth yesterday.”
“Human nature, sir,” Miller said.
“And not our affair,” Robert said. “Not until they find an uprising, or cause one. Our business is to find Lucille Gautier. Once we do …”
Leonie sat naked before the mirror in Denmark’s bedroom and examined her reflection with satisfaction. Her dark skin was soft. Velvet, Denmark called it. Her breasts were high and firm, her waist tiny above the flare of her hips. Denmark had many women—she wasn’t deaf; she heard—but none had her ripe seventeen-year-old body or her exuberance at the newly discovered delights that body could give and receive. She’d succeed where the others failed, make him want only her. And she had a secret weapon, for when the right time came.
She’d been terrified the day her father discovered them, afraid he’d kill her, afraid he’d kill Denmark, afraid Denmark would kill him. When her father was dragged out, she’d screamed at Denmark, clawed at him. He’d slapped her to stop her shrieks, then taken her on the floor. She’d fought him, pounding with her fists while her legs wrapped around him convulsively. In that flood of passion when she didn’t know if she loved him or hated him, she was certain their child had been conceived. The child that would finally bind him to her, and convince her father to accept Denmark as her husband.
She hoped her father returned soon from wherever Denmark was keeping him. Vesey had explained that he had to be kept away—on a farm in the country, she thought—until he calmed down, that there were plans she shouldn’t worry her pretty head about, plans that her father might wreck because of what he’d found.
From the living room below, disturbingly hollow voices rose. All day men had come and gone, and voices had growled at her through the floor, but Denmark hadn’t come up, though she’d stayed naked to delight him. She pulled on the peignoir he’d given her, lace that offered glimpses and hints of the supple body beneath, and went downstairs. He had told her never to interrupt one of his meetings, or even to come downstairs while one was in progress; but if she could catch his eye from the door, perhaps he would come back to the bedroom with her and relax.
She cracked the living-room door. Voices hammered at her. She stopped with her eye to the crack. In the mirror on the wall she could make out the dim shapes of five men around the table. The curtains were drawn, casting the room into shadows, and the chest-on-chest against the far wall seemed to loom over them.
“I tell you, ain’t no way I could get through,” Jesse Blackwood said. A slender, pale-skinned man, he stood at one end of the table leaning on his fists. Vesey sat at the other end, with Monday Gell and Jack Purcell on one side, and a man it took her a minute to recognize as Gullah Jack on the other. He had shaved off his whiskers.
Vesey looked around the table. “Tell us again what happened.” His voice cracked.
“I done told you twice,” Blackwood began, then took a deep breath. “I rented a horse with the two dollars you give me. I had the pass you forged in my pocket. First two patrol I meet on the Neck, they don’t even look at me. I expect they take me for white. Third patrol had a man name Tyler McCoy in it, and he recognize me. They say all passes suspended, and I better get back to the city.”
“And you did what you was told,” Gullah Jack sneered.
“There was six of them. And they watch me.”
Jack’s face twisted. “They watch you? They watch you!”
“What else did they say, Jesse?” Denmark asked. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped sweat off his face. “Did they mention any names? Say they were looking for anybody in particular?”
Blackwood shook his head. “All they say is, they catch my black ass outside the city again, they skin it and hang it in a tree.”
Leonie frowned. Whatever Denmark was involved in, it seemed to be against the law. That didn’t worry her as much as his involvement with that Gullah Jack, though. When he looked at her she felt he could see right through her clothes, and she knew he could concoct philtres to make her do whatever he wanted. She’d told Denmark about her fears, though, and he’d just laughed and called her a country girl. She realized Monday Gell was speaking, and she’d missed the first of what he had to say.
“ … Ned and Rolla Bennett, too. I seen Poyas took, and Billy Carpenter with him. Paul got to have talked. They taking too many as is involved, else.” She stifled a gasp at Billy’s name.
“No difference,” Gullah Jack said. “Don’t make no difference at all.”
“Oh, shut up!” Vesey said. “We can’t get the country people in through the patrols, and the city people won’t rise without them. The militia and the City Guard are alerted, and they’ve apparently got our names. What do you want to do? March onto the gallows for them?”
There was a moment’s silence. Jack’s face flickered through a dozen contorted emotions. “You giving up? We can drink white blood! We can—”
“We can do nothing,” Vesey said. He stood, and his voice strengthened. “Not now. But even if they hang Peter and Ned and the rest, they’ll lower their guard again. And we’ll be ready.”
“You pretty casual about them hanging Poyas and the others,” Gell said.
“We don’t have time for mourning,” Vesey said. “We all knew any one of us, or all of us, might die. Now we have to carry on.”
Gell was persistent. “How we going to do that if they got our names? Every time somebody walk in the shop to get a piece of harness mended, I going to figure it the constables coming for me.”
“Don’t be in the shop,” Vesey said. “Hide for a few days. All of us should, until we see if we’re wanted. I’ll send word to the country, and Gullah Jack, too, that the people there are to disperse and wait for a new time. It won’t be long in coming. You watch. They let Peter loose once. They may let them all go if they keep their mouths shut. In a week we could all be together again, setting a new date.”
“You forgetting about Paul,” Gell said. “They ain’t turning him loose no matter what.”
“Paul was a fool! He deserves whatever he gets!” Vesey tugged at his coat, breathing deeply. “If there are any papers you haven’t burned yet, do it. Anything that as much as mentions a name or anything out of the ordinary. Are you prepared to get word to your people in the country?” he asked Gullah Jack. Jack watched him through glittering eyes, unspeaking. Leonie shivered. Vesey seemed to take his silence for assent. “All right, then. Let’s not waste any time.”
As the men rose from the table Leonie scurried back up the hall and ducked into the closet beneath the stairs. She peeked through a crack at the men leaving, one by one, and always peering through the window before opening the door as if to see what was waiting. Vesey was the last to come out of the dining room. She darted out to meet him.
“Surprise, my darling! I—”
He caught her hair in his fist, twisting her head back till she thought her throat would break, pulling the skin of her face tight. His eyes went from the closet to her and back again. “What were you doing? I told you never to come downstairs while I’m having a meeting! Do I have to pound it into your rump with a strap? Were you listening? Spying? What did you hear?”
“Nothing! I swear, nothing!” Her knees had turned to jelly. She had to clutch his coat with both hands to keep from hanging suspended by her hair. His eyes drilled into her. “I didn’t know anyone was still here. I was going to surprise you when they started coming out, so I hid in the closet. That’s all! I swear!”
After a minute he released his grip. She grabbed the newel post to keep from falling. “Go home,” he said. “I’ll see you in a few days.” He hurried up the stairs without looking at her again.
When a little strength came back to her legs, she followed. He had a horsehide traveling case on the bed, packing. Razor, shaving brush and mug, two clean shirts. She tried to take the shirts from him to fold them. He jerked them away and stuffed them in.
“I told you to go home, girl.”
“I have to talk to you, Denmark.”
“There’s no time now. We’ll talk in a few days.” He rummaged in the drawers of a dark bureau.
“Why can’t we talk now? What was going on down there? Why do you have to rush off? Is my father involved in this?”
He froze, pinning her with his dark eyes. “Were you lying to me, girl? Did you listen downstairs?”
“I told you—”
“I know, I know. Yes, your father’s involved. And if you want to keep a rope off his neck you’ll go home and keep your mouth shut. About me and about the meetings.”
“A rope!” She rushed into his arms. “Denmark, it’s your neck I’ll keep silent for. If I was tortured I wouldn’t say anything.”
He took her by the shoulders and held her at arms’ length. “Good God, girl. That body cries out for a man to hustle it into bed. Jeremiah should’ve understood I couldn’t keep my hands off you, even if he was my brother instead of just my friend.”
“He’s still all right, isn’t he, Denmark?”
He turned away, back to his packing. “He’s all right. Put some clothes on before I forget why I have to go. And remember to keep your mouth shut.”
She gasped. “I just realized. The uprising the whites are scared of. You’re all in the uprising.”
“God damn it, girl, I said to go home! Go home!”
Shivering, she took off the robe and began to dress. She still hadn’t told him about the baby, and now she realized she was afraid to. She began to weep silently. He didn’t look around from his packing.
16
Billy Carpenter lay on the stone floor staring at the ceiling of his cell. It was stone, too. And the walls. The cracks in the ceiling looked like a map. He’d spent the week since his arrest staring at it. The only opening was a grille, a foot square, in the iron-bound wooden door.
At first he’d been glad to get a cell by himself, what with the others raving with fear and rage. He wasn’t sure he could have stood even a little time in that stone box with one of them. Now they’d all quieted down, of course. An hour’s fear made the anger rise; a week of it dried the mouth. Now he wished one of them was in with him.
He got stiffly to his feet and put his face to the grille, staring at the grille in the cell door across from his. The hall was empty, so far as he could see. “Poyas.” He knew Poyas was in that cell. He’d seen him dragged in, kicking and screaming. “Poyas!” Poyas was chained to the floor, of course. What could he expect, attacking everybody who came close? “Poyas, damn it, answer me!”
The fool wasn’t going to answer, and the other man in his cell was probably too scared. Billy sank back to the stone floor. He didn’t know why he wanted to talk to Poyas anyway. All the man would say was, “Keep fighting,” and “Don’t say nothing,” and “Die like a man.” Didn’t he realize the time for all that was past? At first Billy had thought Vesey might move the rebellion up and rescue them. He didn’t know when that date was supposed to be—at his level, he was just to wait for orders—but now he didn’t think it was ever going to happen. It was time to think about ways to get out on his own.
The wall had a pattern of cracks that looked like an island. An island with no cells on it. And no ropes.
Footsteps outside brought him to the door again. A slight black boy in his middle teens was pushing a broom down the hall in desultory fashion. “Hey, you!” Billy called. The boy stiffened, started to look, then quickened his step, keeping his eyes firmly on the floor. “Boy, you wants Gullah Jack to get you?” The boy stopped, raising frightened eyes to the grille. “I want you to get me something, boy.”
“Ain’t allowed to get you nothing,” the boy mumbled.
“You want Gullah Jack to shrivel up you eyes in you head?”
The boy swallowed. “What you want?”
“Paper, pen, and ink. And somebody to carry a note.”
“You ain’t Gullah Jack.”
Billy pressed his face against the grille, face distorted by the bars, teeth bared in a grimace. “I knows him, boy. You don’t get me what I wants, you belly going to swell up like a pregnant woman till you busts. You don’t believe me, you wait. You belly be hurting before dark.”
The boy took off running. The heavy door at the end of the hall slammed behind him. Billy let himself drop. He’d done the best he could. It might still work.
An hour later a cloth bundle was pushed through the grille and fell to the stone with a thud. There was the sound of running feet. Quickly Billy unwrapped the bundle. A good pen, a bottle with a little black ink in the bottom, and two crumpled sheets of paper. The boy would be back, he knew. If he was scared enough to bring the pen and the rest, he was scared enough to come back. Carefully he smoothed out the paper, dipped the pen, and began.
Jeremiah had taught him how to do ciphers and write with proper grammar and spelling, though he hadn’t let him mess with the way he talked. His handwriting had been a complete failure, though, and finally Jeremiah had let him stick with printing, each letter carefully drawn with straight lines.
MRS. FALLON. I AM IN JAIL. YOU MUST GET ME OUT UNLESS YOU WANT EVERYTHING KNOWN … .
Robert was at his desk, writing to a bank in New Orleans, when Albert showed Ben Miller in. He put the letter aside. It was, he was beginning to think, a waste of time. Why should a bank lend to even a prosperous merchant in a city all the way across the country?
“Captain,” Miller said, as soon as the door closed behind the butler, “I have news.”
“Lucille?”
“No, Captain. Jeremiah Carpenter.”
Robert poured brandy for both of them. “What news?”
“Only rumors, Captain. But they were picked up by three of the boys.” He stopped to sip his brandy, and slipped farther back in the chair. “They say Jeremiah Carpenter is dead. Some say Vesey killed him, and others just say he’s dead because Vesey wanted him dead. But they all say Vesey was responsible, one way or another.”
Robert set his brandy down without drinking. He’d been almost certain Jeremiah was dead. Almost. But hearing that others thought so, too, made it more real, more final. He might not be able to bring the man back, but he could attend to his killer. “Is anyone willing to testify, anyone who has something to testify about?”
“Small chance, Captain. Right now everybody with a black skin is afraid to go near a magistrate.”
“Do you know where Vesey is now?”
Miller shook his head. “Matthew’s following him, but he changes where he sleeps every night. He’s scared.”
“I’ll see him hang.”
“How, Captain? No magistrate’s going to pay attention to black rumors, and secondhand at that.”
“I still have enough influence in this city to get a man arrested if I charge him with murder,” Robert snapped. “He’ll talk once he’s thrown in a cell, if only to claim self-defense.”
“I expect he will, Captain.”
“When will this Matthew report where Vesey’s staying the night?”
“Probably by eight o’clock.”
“Good. Let me know as soon as he comes.” The hotel keeper rose to leave. “Ben, I want him. Bad.”
“We’ll get him, Captain.”
Moira was in the entry hall when the rap came on the front door. Albert was nowhere in sight. She opened the door herself. A slender black boy, perhaps fifteen, stood awkwardly on the steps, his worn coat wet from the unseasonal rain. Grim clouds roiling to the east told of worse to come.
