Strands of Bronze and Gold, page 24
I paused with my hand raised to rap on the office door. Would he hold out his scepter to me?
I knocked.
“Come in,” Bernard said.
He sat behind his desk with papers spread about. He looked tired. I breathed a sigh of relief when he smiled and rose, holding out his arms. “And to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure? I was working away, late and lonely, and now you bring me a lovely surprise.”
I put my arms around his neck. “I missed you at supper. Weren’t you hungry?”
His arms tightened. “Mmm. You smell good. I ate while I added figures. I had abandoned my work too long. Besides, I supposed you would like to spend the evening alone with your family before their departure.”
I played with his black silk neck scarf. “That’s one reason I came down to see you, besides missing you. I wondered if you would reconsider and let them stay on until the wedding. It would make me so happy.”
His arms loosened. “Oho! So that is what you wondered? Well, ma belle, you are certainly very beautiful and very enticing, but what you ask I will not do. They have met me, they have seen you are well and realized the advantages of our marriage, and that goal is now accomplished. I want them gone in the morning and you to myself once more. If you all behave yourselves, perhaps they may come again next year.”
I looked into his face for one moment to be certain there was no use pursuing the subject, then, with a gasp of exasperation, broke free and swirled out the door.
“What?” Bernard called from behind me. “And I thought you had missed me.” Unlike Queen Esther, I had failed. At least the penalty for me was not death.
In my bedchamber I slammed my fist against the pillow. If only it were his face.
“He’s not a bad sort,” Harry said, “but—be careful, little sister. And remember to ask for what we talked about.”
“I will. At the right time.”
Junius shuffled his feet and looked down at his boots, then clumsily took my hand. “If you’re worried about anything—anything—write to me and I’ll come. I don’t care what happens to me, I’ll come get you. Remember that.”
“I’ll remember.”
Anne held me tightly. “You have a secret strength he knows nothing of,” she whispered. “Hold on to it.”
Bernard came out and, it seemed to me, practically stuffed my family into the carriage. I watched until the forest closed around them, then turned without a word to my fiancé and went into the house. I managed to avoid him all that day, keeping to my room and sending a message at suppertime that I was unwell.
The wild weather that night suited my mood.
Sleet and freezing rain plinked and pelted against my bedchamber windows, and sharp cracks sounded as trees split from expanding ice in crevices. Great boughs, weighed down by their crystal coating, fell with crashes.
In the morning my room was as cold as a cave of ice in spite of the fire blazing in the hearth. I shivered into my dressing gown and pulled back the heavy brocade draperies to squint at a scene from fairyland—breathtakingly, painfully lovely. The forest was of diamonds, every last twig and blade of grass encased in its own glassy shell. The sun shone brilliantly and the reflected glitter stabbed my eyes like needles. Across the sweeping drive lay several of the cedars, snapped at the trunk. The diseased oak also lay shattered, its black, rotten innards exposed. At least the storm had done one good deed.
I turned the knob on my balcony door, to step outside for just a moment. It was frozen shut, not to be budged.
Trapped. I was trapped in this place. qct
My siblings were safely on the train heading north, but how was Anarchy faring? And were the feet of birds and squirrels stuck to the branches? I had never before seen such a devastating ice storm; it was a cruel thing indeed.
The laundress, Molly, popped in to bring warm water and to dress me.
“Good morning,” I said, plunging my hands into the basin. “It was an exciting night, wasn’t it? Where are Talitha and Odette?”
“Ooooh.” The whites showed around Molly’s irises. “You don’t know the half of it, Miss. The whole house gone topsy-turvy. Miz Duckworth be moaning and wailing on account of a vision she had. And that foreign girl—she gone crazy, talking about leaving and carrying on and won’t do nothing. And Talitha done run off! I went to wake her this morning, and her cot had old clothes stuffed in to make it lumpy. She ain’t nowheres.”
The water turned cold on my hands as they remained frozen, dripping, above the basin. “Where …,” I said carefully, “where do you think Talitha’s gone?”
Molly nearly vibrated with excitement. “Oh, she run off with Charles, of course. To Canada maybe, but none of us knows for sure ’cause she didn’t tell no one a thing. Never did tell no one a thing. Always thought she too good for the rest of us. Master in a fit ’cause his property’s gone and in this weather he can’t call out the patrollers.”
Never before had Molly spoken to me in more than monosyllables.
“What did Mrs. Duckworth see?”
“Creepy crawlers and noisy black crows and nasty, bad things. We all standing around downstairs and getting her to tell us again and again. You got to hear. Feels like a haunt passing over your grave.”
I opened my mouth and shut it. “Thank you for telling me,” I said, friendly but dismissive.
As she went out the door, I slowly wiped my hands. Talitha and Charles—Bernard would expend a great deal to find and punish them. Why had they left in such terrible weather when the song had advised them to wait for spring? I could only suppose they were eager to be together and hoped the storm would delay the search for them. Oh, bless that they are indeed together and that they reach safety. Help them find Gideon and let him put them on the course to follow the drinking gourd, I said in silent prayer. If only I could speak privately to Gideon—how else would I ever learn what became of them?
I pulled open a wardrobe door. The heavy boots I had offered Talitha were gone and so was the black velvet cloak. I was glad she had remembered to take them, but oh! I wished she had trusted me enough to say goodbye.
I sank to the edge of my bed. I wanted to go to Odette “gone crazy” and Ducky moaning, but if I went downstairs, I would have to face Bernard in a fury, and at this moment I couldn’t bear it. When I remembered the way he had treated my family, hot anger rose, strangling my throat. My fine fiancé.
I was too twitchy for any activity. My hands shook so that I dropped the pen I took up to scrawl a letter. I’d never be able to thread a needle. I picked up I Have Lived and Loved: The Story of a Planter’s Northern Bride, but I stared unseeing at the page. It was a silly book anyway.
A tight little pain throbbed at the base of my skull. What was wrong with the place this morning? Always the atmosphere of the abbey was tense, but now a heavy pressure seemed to be building up to fever pitch. A tremor, a quivering undercurrent writhed. Perhaps the ice storm had caused some electrical charge in the air.
Abruptly I stood, letting the book fall unheeded to the floor. I had to face what I had to face. I stalked into the hall.
Immediately four shadowy figures joined me. They darted on either side like skittish gusts of wind, restless and chaotic, boiling. “What?” I cried out loud, trying to hold them in one place with my eyes. “What is it you want? Tell me!”
They wouldn’t come into focus, and I was answered by silence.
Ducky slumped on the sofa in her room while Daphne bathed the housekeeper’s grub-white face with a wet cloth.
“I sent away all them slack-jawed girls that was hanging around,” Daphne told me. “Ordered them to go do their work, so I hope they doing it. They just be making Miz Duckworth more upset.”
The housekeeper raised her face, her eyes squeezed shut in distress. Stringy strands of gray hair escaped from her cap. “Oh, Miss Sophia, I awoke this morning from a most terrible dream.”
“I heard. Tell me about it,” I said.
Her mouth worked for a moment before she spoke. “I was approaching the abbey from the front when a great many crows burst forth out of the gnarled oak—you know, the one by the drive—cawing and screaming right toward me in a black cloud. Their feathers brushed me and their claws tore at my clothes and scraped my face.” She rubbed hard at her wrists.
I laid my hand gently on her shoulder. “What happened then?”
She took a deep breath. “The oak cracked open right down the middle, and the most noisome and noxious insects poured out in a tide of scuttling little bodies. There were cockroaches and beetles and centipedes …” She began trembling convulsively, scrabbled at my skirt with her puffy hands, and finally clutched my wrist. I didn’t try to make her loosen it. Instead, I clutched back.
When she could collect herself, she continued, “They spread all over the grounds and the house, and they—they spread all over me.” She loosed me and rocked back and forth, covering her face with her apron.
Her dream wasn’t melodramatic or silly, as I had expected. Rather, horror slithered down my spine. Along with the crawly sensation of tiny legs all over my skin. I struggled to pull myself and Ducky back to reality.
“Well, actually,” I said, “that really happened. Not the insects, of course—or maybe only a few. But that tree did fall over in the storm last night. I saw it out my window, and it’s lying across the drive. You must have heard it in your sleep and somehow dreamed what had happened.”
“Oh?” Ducky wiped her face on her apron and looked up with hope making her small eyes open wider than usual. “It did fall? Goodness, who’d have thought it? Now, isn’t that the strangest thing, that I knew it in my sleep? Why, I was certain it was a foretelling—a foretelling of something terrible about to happen. I’ve had them before and it felt just like. Goodness. Who’d have thought it?”
I fetched her some tea and tucked a robe over her lap. “Why don’t you rest here for the day? We’ll come for you if you’re needed. Daphne, will you stay with her?”
“Of course, Miss.”
As I was leaving, a sudden wail sounded behind me. “But having it really fall is just as bad! It’s a sign. A sign!” Ducky began moaning again.
Any comforting words stuck in my throat. I could only shake my head and hurry away before I lost my own composure.
I found Odette in her tiny servant’s room, feverishly packing her things in a carpetbag.
She flicked a quick, defiant glance my way. “As you see, I am going now, so it is no use your coming all the way up the stairs. This place and that man—it is all wrong. It has been horribly, horribly wrong for many years.” She sniffed suddenly and I thought her black eyes shone with tears, but she turned quickly away. “I know enough now. I will go and you ought to go too.”
“You’re welcome to leave, Odette,” I said, “but just know that Mrs. Duckworth did not have a vision about the future. She dreamed the oak tree fell, and it actually did come uprooted during the night. She heard it in her sleep and that caused the dream.”
“That is not really why I leave.” She raised her sharp chin. “I only said that to the foolish girls. I leave because I have learned all I can and it is enough.”
“Enough about what?”
“This place and that man. And I warn you, if you do not go now, you may never get away.”
“Tell me what you’re talking about.”
She shook her head and wouldn’t answer.
“Well, you can’t leave today,” I said. “No one can get out.”
She sat down on her small bed and her hands dropped into her lap. “Maybe not today, then, but soon.”
“I’ll miss you,” I said. “I wish you luck.” Odette and I had had a strange relationship from the beginning. Now I felt curiously bereft at the thought of her departure.
A bellow sounded from downstairs, from the vicinity of the library. Bernard was shouting my name. Trapped. I was trapped as if I were in Mr. Poe’s story, with the walls of the abbey slowly creeping inward, constricting. I tensed to run in the opposite direction but dismissed that temptation. Eventually I must face him.
He loomed in the doorway, peering down the hall. He turned on his heels when I approached. Evidence of his rage—two shattered vases—lay near the wall where he had smashed them.
He paced back and forth while Finnegan did his own pacing so that the room seethed. Bernard stalked over to the window, jerked back the curtain, and stared out at the frozen landscape.
Not turning, he took several deep breaths and said, “In Mongolia once, I experienced an earthquake. Buildings buckled and split and crumbled. People ran, screamed, stumbled, their faces contorted with fear. Last night I stayed up watching the ice fall in shining sheets. I listened to the cracks and crashes. Not as stimulating as the earthquake, but still it is exhilarating to view nature’s destructive power.”
“How very compassionate,” I muttered.
He whirled around. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
My eyes locked on his long, white, fascinating fingers when he left the window to hold his hands near the fire.
“Now this morning, bah! I have business to attend to in Memphis and cannot get there and Bass—the fool—does not come. This inactivity drives me mad! Troubles stir at the river docks, and—perhaps you have heard—the slave Talitha has escaped.” He began slamming his fist against his open palm, then stiffened and flexed his fingers. “That, at least, I can leave to the ice. No doubt she is dead by now, frozen or crushed beneath a downed tree. The roads are impassable—she cannot have gone far.”
I pulled my gaze away from Bernard’s hands. Please let Talitha reach Charles. Please let them get safely away.
Finnegan began barking at the shade of Tara, who had drifted up as if listening, until Bernard tore at his hair and yelled, “Quiet, sir! Down!” and the dog lay reluctantly on the tiger-skin rug, growling low.
My silence fell heavily in the room. Bernard should know I was upset. I slumped in my chair and glared.
The logs in the fire sizzled and fizzed furiously from the frozen water inside.
Bernard threw his arms into the air. “So, are you going to bore me now with sulking because your family has gone? Is that the oh-so-pleasant order of the day?”
For once I simply didn’t care that he was restless and angry. “Do you expect me to thank you for depriving me of my loved ones in such a way? That was cruel. Cruel.” I pulled up straight, grabbed the poker, and jabbed at a log, sending sparks soaring.
He hung over me. “Perhaps if you had not ignored me during their visit, they would still be here.”
“Ignored you? When has anyone in your presence ever ignored you? When have I ever, in the last six months, been allowed to ignore you?”
He dropped his head and took a deep breath as if struggling to hold back his temper. “I know you are not feeling yourself, Sophia. You are upset about your family, and there is an unease in the air—something left by the wretched storm. So, we are left here to entertain each other, locked in our icy prison. How shall we proceed? Hmm?” He squatted down and looped my hair around his hands, watching me with keen eyes.
His breath hit me in the face—blood and meat. I bit the inside of my jaw to keep from screaming. “Bernard,” I said in a quiet, careful tone, “would you please read to me? That book by Dickens? It’s the only thing I’m in the mood for.”
“Very well,” he said in an equally quiet, careful tone. “Perhaps that will transport us from our surroundings. He is an amusing author, if somewhat common. And afterward you will be a more attentive, affectionate companion than you have been these weeks.”
As I tried to make myself listen to Bernard’s beautiful voice reading Bleak House, Victoire and Tatiana, Tara and Adele draped themselves over the furniture in limp, liquid, despairing motions.
The ice dripped away as the weather warmed the next day. Groundsmen dragged felled trees and limbs to bonfires throughout the property. A low pall of smoke hung about Wyndriven Abbey, making my eyes water and my nose run.
No news had come about Talitha, except that Charles was indeed also missing. The longer without a report, the better.
I took Lily out in an attempt to escape the haze with a trot on the hillside. Garvey saddled her and insisted, as usual, on accompanying me. Gone were the obsequious, admiring looks he had bestowed upon me early on. Also gone was the smoldering hatred, to be replaced by the impression of a barely hidden smirk, a secret glee. I ended my ride abruptly.
Sitting on a stone bench in the garden, I now ripped at my fingernails with my teeth. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. Perhaps I wouldn’t hate every moment of the rest of my life.
My absent glance moved across the lawns and caught at the ruins shrouded with dry, withered vines—the folly. The copy of an ancient Indian temple. It couldn’t be more than twenty-five years old, yet it appeared a thousand. Suddenly, inexplicably, I was curious. I looked furtively at the house. No one was in sight. How would it hurt if I peeked inside? Slowly I rose and moved toward the building, with its tumbled granite blocks scattered about. From the roof, a stone monkey, furred with mold, grinned down.
I ran my fingers over the indentations in the rock. Moss had collected in the carvings to outline the designs in bright emerald. It was striking and exotic. Bernard indeed had the talent to create objects of beauty. I pulled back the dying wisteria that curtained the concealed door I had discovered on my former exploration, dug my ragged fingernails into the crack, and pulled.
To my surprise, it opened readily, as if on a spring. A puff of cold, fetid air hit my face. The place smelled of rancid dampness and mildew, the floor slimy with mud and lingering ice. I drew back, then steeled myself and moved onward, into the yawning mouth. Scabby, grayish lichen encrusted the walls. A sluggish bubbling sounded from partially frozen water in a fountain up ahead. My eyes were not accustomed to the dim light, filtered from the pierced designs in the stone fretwork and further darkened by tangled creepers.
