The Fallon Legacy, page 10
“There’s no time to talk!” He softened his voice. “Sarah, believe me, there’s no time. I want us out of this city. I want you to start packing today, now. When Leonie gets home she can help. I have to go tell Denmark.”
“Jeremiah, you’re not in some kind of trouble?”
“No,” he smiled sadly, “I’m not in trouble. I have to go now.”
He cut off her questions with a quick kiss and left. That he felt he had to tell Vesey made him feel worse than ever. It wasn’t just that he owed him an explanation. With Vesey’s talk of violence, that verse he’d flung at him the last time he’d left Vesey’s home, it was a matter of safety. All he could do was leave before the streets filled with blood, and convince Vesey that his going wasn’t a betrayal.
On Bull Street he stopped at the sight of a familiar face going up Vesey’s step. What was Leonie doing at Vesey’s house? He watched the whitewashed house. She didn’t come out. Unwelcome thoughts entered his head. Oh, God, she didn’t come out.
William Paul started up in surprise when he came into the yard. “What … Jeremiah, what you doing here?”
He brushed past the skinny man.
“Jeremiah,” Paul said desperately, “you got a minute? I hear there going to be a army come from Santo Domingo … Jeremiah? Jeremiah, come on and let’s sit.”
Jeremiah banged open the door, Paul’s voice fading behind him. He took the stairs two at a time. The door to Vesey’s bedroom was cracked, and a moaning woman’s voice rolled through.
“Oh, God, yes! Yes, Denmark! Oh, God, Denmark, yes!”
He pushed his way in, the room kaleidoscoping around him. The creaking bed. Vesey’s pale tan buttocks rising and falling. The slender brown legs wrapped around Vesey’s waist. The girl’s head tossing on the pillow, hair fanned, mouth slack.
“Oh, God, harder! Use me, Denmark! Harder! Oh, God, yes!”
“Leonie!” he screamed, and threw himself forward in a clumsy dive.
Vesey twisted desperately, but the girl was oblivious, hugging him tighter, and Jeremiah’s momentum took them all off the bed on the far side. His hands locked around Vesey’s throat. He ignored the other man’s frantic blows.
“Son-of-a-bitch!” he sobbed. Why wouldn’t Vesey die? His struggles were becoming weaker, but he still fought. “Son-of-a-bitch!”
Abruptly strong hands were pulling him off Vesey. He twisted, fighting to get back to the man slowly lifting himself from the floor, but Paul, Peter Poyas, and Gullah Jack held him. Leonie wept in the corner, hiding her nakedness with a sheet from the bed.
“You bastard!” Jeremiah spat. “I believed in you! Bastard!”
“I know it was wrong,” Vesey said, hastily pulling on a pair of pants, “but I’m going to marry her. Believe me, Jeremiah, I—”
“You mother-raping bastard son-of-a-bitch!” Jeremiah began to sob and couldn’t stop. “There aren’t enough women in this city? You had to take my daughter? My daughter!”
Vesey hesitated, looking at the girl crumpled in the corner. “We can’t talk now. Take him someplace quiet. We can’t let this jeopardize our plans. Jeremiah, I’ll explain later. I will.”
“Bastard!” Jeremiah spat as they dragged him out.
He let them pull him out of the house. When they realized he wasn’t going to fight anymore, Gullah Jack walked ahead, while Paul and Poyas held his arms. They turned toward the shed at the rear of the property.
This was the end of hope, he thought. Vesey would keep him locked up until after the uprising so he could … so … because of Leonie. Sarah and Leonie would be in the city when it happened, their souls tainted by what they would see and hear. God forbid by what they might do. He had to have that hope left at least.
Abruptly Jack whirled. Jeremiah had just time to see the long blade of the dagger before it slammed into his chest. He stared at the hilt against his coat in disbelief. There was no pain, just an incredible feeling of heaviness.
Jack’s face gleamed with triumph. “Like Vesey say, this nigger ain’t going to jep’dize nothing.” He stuck his face so close to Jeremiah’s that his whiskers brushed the other man’s face. “You still sneering, ed’cated nigger? When Vesey tired of that wench of yours, I going to jump her myself.”
“Sarah,” Jeremiah whispered. Then there was no breath and no time.
William Paul jumped back as Jeremiah sagged, letting Poyas lower the body to the ground. “He ain’t mean this! Vesey ain’t mean kill him!”
Poyas knelt, holding Jeremiah in his arms. He didn’t look up.
“I say kill him,” Jack replied. “He ain’t mess up nothing now. You best help me get this body hid ’fore somebody see it.”
“Peter, you going to squat there on your knees? He done kill Jeremiah! Ain’t you going to say nothing?”
Poyas shivered. “I say we better hide him ’fore somebody see.”
Paul’s mouth worked. “I guess,” he managed.
Paul didn’t look at Jeremiah’s face as they carried his body down the garden to the back of the woodshed. He had held his arm, but he hadn’t known what was going to happen. He kept telling himself that.
They dug the grave behind the slope-roofed shed. Paul began to sweat. Poyas laid Jeremiah in gently, and put his kerchief over his face.
“What you sweating for?” Jack asked when the last shovelful of dirt had been replaced.
“I hot,” Paul mumbled. Poyas said nothing. He hadn’t sweated.
Jack nodded slowly, nostrils flaring as if to smell for fear. “Denmark, he got a soft spot for this nigger, and he got too much on he plate to get more worry now. You better don’t say nothing.” Suddenly he grabbed a handful of dirt from the grave, sprinkling it in the air and mumbling while he fixed them with a malevolent glare. “You talk, your tongues shrivel in you mouth.”
Paul nodded dumbly; Poyas kept his silence. Jack swiveled his head between them, sniffing, then nodded and disappeared up the yard.
“He going to kill us,” Paul said once the bushy-whiskered man was gone. “We don’t tell Denmark, he kill us to make sure we never do. We don’t got to say the words. You can write printing.”
“Shut up,” Poyas growled.
“What you mean shut up?”
“Denmark find out, he kill that Jack with he bare hand. Them country folk, they figure Jack dead, that white hangman alive, you know who they be scared of most. Just one go to the militia and we all hang. We don’t tell Denmark nothing.”
“But that Jack he kill us both,” Paul protested.
Poyas put a hand on Paul’s shoulder. “Don’t you worry none. Three of us disappear, Denmark he get ’spicious, and Jack know it.”
“What we going to do, Peter?”
“Come all that burning and shooting,” Poyas said grimly, “somebody going to get a musket ball in the bushy whiskers.” He rounded on Paul violently. Paul tried to duck back, but Poyas had his shirt in both fists. “You keep you mouth shut, understand? You don’t say nothing to Denmark nor nobody. We take care of it our ownselves, you and me, when the time’s right.”
“Sure, Peter. I keeps my mouth shut.”
“All right,” Poyas said. He released his grip on Paul’s shirt. “Just you remember it.”
Paul watched Peter walk up the yard. He was almost as scary as Gullah Jack. Either one would kill him if he crossed them. Abruptly he remembered he was alone beside the unsanctified grave of a man he’d helped murder. He hurried out of the garden, leaving his rake where it lay. He needed to be a long way from that grave.
It was plain enough even to him, he thought. If he let Denmark know, Poyas would kill him. If he didn’t, Jack would kill him. What to do? God, what to do?
Peter realized he’d walked all the way to East Bay. He was at Fitzsimmons Wharf, below the fish market. On a lazy Sunday afternoon there wasn’t any work going on. There was no one on the wharf at all except for one black man near the end, leaning on a piling and idly watching the ships. Paul thought he recognized him. Peter Prioleau, a slave of Colonel John Prioleau. He was one of those Vesey warned against, one of those content with their chains, who took old clothes and were grateful for food handed out at the kitchen door.
Suddenly a plan was in his head, full grown. He could try to recruit Prioleau, who didn’t know him, telling him Gullah Jack was the rebellion’s leader. The whites would hang Gullah Jack, and he’d be safe. Maybe he could find two or three others, to make sure somebody ran to his master.
He walked down the wharf, reminding himself to be careful. He didn’t want to end up being flogged or hung. He leaned against the next piling down from Prioleau. Not far out a schooner was anchored, a flag at the masthead with the number ninety-six on it. He pointed at it.
“I seen a lot of flags with seventy-six, but I ain’t never seen one with ninety-six,” he said.
Prioleau looked at him. “I guess I ain’t neither.” There was no glimmer of recognition on his face.
Paul was satisfied. He took a deep breath. “Something serious going to happen in this city … .”
14
There were rain squalls the last Thursday in May, and Robert remained in his study, going over Graham’s reports on the work at the foundry. Graham wanted money he’d be hard pressed to provide without selling the cotton mill. And there were the lawyer’s reports on Cordelia Applegate. Somewhere in there had to be an answer to Lucille.
She still refused to say anything, even when he hinted he might help her get away from Wheeler. And hint was all he could do, for the burly man loomed smiling in the room whenever they talked, making his own heavy hints that he had to make certain Lucille’s charms were enjoyed by him alone. They were in a room above a grogshop because the tavern keeper where they had been before had told Wheeler to leave. Lucille’s screams were disturbing other patrons. She hadn’t told him anything, though, or he’d be gone. As it was, Robert wasn’t sure how long before Wheeler decided to risk the constable’s pursuit and carried her off to where he could get down to real torture.
He was on one of Graham’s reports when there was a tap at the door. “Come,” he said, and Albert entered.
“Mr. Fallon, one of the stableboys, Henry Elkins, came to me with a story you should hear.”
Another problem, Robert thought. “Have him in, then.”
Albert opened the door and motioned a muscular black youth into the room. “Tell Mr. Fallon what you told me, Henry.”
Henry shifted from foot to foot as if afraid his boots would damage the Turkey carpet. He crumpled his hands, and his eyes flitted around the room as he spoke hesitantly.
“This fellow come up to me whilst I was fishing this morning. I was give the morning. I weren’t shirking. Anyhow, he talk about the weather, and the fish, and then he say there going to be a big uprising of slaves in the city, and I should ought to be in it. He say there thousands coming in from the country, and they going to kill all the whites. He want me to come put my name in some book. I get scared, so I come tell Albert.” He shrugged uncomfortably.
Slave uprising. It was what every white feared, whether he let himself admit it or not, whether he opposed slavery or kept five hundred hands at cotton. It wasn’t to be credited that rebelling slaves might distinguish between those who opposed slavery and those who supported it. A white skin would be a signal for the knife, and not even the most ardent abolitionist wanted his throat cut in the cause of freedom.
Robert raised a questioning eyebrow at Albert. “I believe he’s telling the truth, sir,” the butler replied.
Robert nodded. “Henry, I’ll have a gold piece for you this evening, and I may want you to tell your story to some other men.”
The stableboy’s face brightened at the mention of gold. “Yes, sir.”
“Albert, I’ll want my carriage brought round immediately. I have to see the intendant about this.”
“Yes, sir.” Albert showed the boy out, then paused. His face worked for a minute before he spoke. “Sir, I have to tell you. I came to you because of the massacre talk. If it had just been an escape, I wouldn’t have.”
“I never expected you would,” Robert said quietly.
After a moment Albert bowed. “I’ll see to your carriage, sir.”
It was after four when Robert lifted the brass knocker on James Hamilton’s front door. A frightened black butler let him in. The house was crowded with worried men. Governor Bennett stood on the landing above the entry hall with Colonel Hayne, Bennett nodding as Hayne put some point across with gestures. A half-dozen militia officers occupied straight chairs along the wall, and Hamilton himself had his head together with John Prioleau. They both looked up at Robert’s entrance.
“Mr. Hamilton,” Robert said, “Colonel Prioleau. Either you’ve already heard my news, or I’ve come at a strangely opportune time.”
“What news?” Hamilton said impatiently. “We must leave in a few minutes for a meeting at City Hall.”
Robert kept a rein on his temper and his dislike. “One of my servants was approached this morning by a man who claimed he was recruiting for a slave uprising.”
Hamilton nodded irritably. “Probably William Paul. He approached one of the colonel’s blacks last Sunday, though the colonel didn’t report it until today. I must say you’re more prompt.”
“I didn’t know until today,” Prioleau said testily. “I was out of town, and I’m afraid my wife thought it was just foolishness.”
“Well,” Hamilton said, “we have it in hand now. The colonel’s man recognized this William, and he’ll be questioned at the Council meeting.”
“I’ve met William Paul,” Robert said. One of Jeremiah’s friends, he recalled. “Hard to believe he’d be mixed up in anything like this.”
“You’d be surprised to find out a nigger’s black,” Hamilton snapped. “I’m surprised you didn’t wait till we all had our throats slit in our beds before you said anything.”
“Here, here, Hamilton,” Prioleau said hastily. “No call for that kind of talk.”
Robert spoke levelly. “I’d like to bring my stableboy, Henry, to give evidence to the Council. He might be able to identify William Paul, if he’s the same man.”
“We have our identification,” Hamilton said, “from Colonel Prioleau’s Peter, and the Council meeting isn’t open to the public.” He was politely correct to the point of insult. “If you’ll excuse us now, Mr. Fallon, we have the business of discovering how far this rot has spread.” He climbed the stairs and joined Bennett and Hayne.
Prioleau shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry, Fallon.”
“And I, Prioleau.”
When Robert reached home Ben Miller was waiting in the entry hall, and Sarah Carpenter, bonnet tied firmly under her chin and hands clasped on her lap, sat on a straight-back chair against the wall. “Wheeler’s changed rooms again, Captain,” Miller began.
“I’ll see you in a minute, Ben,” he said. “Mrs. Carpenter, what can I do for you?”
She stood up, clutching her skirt uncertainly. “Mr. Fallon, I have to talk to you. Please? Jeremiah always trusted you, and I don’t know who else to talk to.”
“Of course, Mrs. Carpenter. Would you step into my study?”
“He’s gone, Mr. Fallon,” she burst out. “Jeremiah’s gone!”
“Gone! You mean he’s dead?” He cursed his tongue inwardly as her face twisted. Her knees wavered, and he helped her back to a chair. “Ben, get Albert to bring some tea.”
“I’m all right,” she managed. “Please, I don’t want tea. I want you to help me find Jeremiah.”
“Tell me what happened.”
She produced a handkerchief from her reticule to dab at her eyes. “Last Sunday Jeremiah said we were leaving Charleston.”
“Leaving? Did he say why?”
“No, sir. He just said say good-bye to my friends because before the week was out we’d be on a ship for New York. Then he went off to tell Denmark, Denmark Vesey, that we were going. He didn’t come back.” She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath before continuing. “I went to Vesey, he’s an old friend of Jeremiah’s, and Vesey said he’d come and that he’d agreed to put off leaving and go upcountry on some kind of errand for him. For Vesey, I mean. Vesey said he was surprised Jeremiah hadn’t sent me a note, but I wasn’t to worry because Jeremiah’d be back shortly. Only it’s been near a week, Mr. Fallon, and all Vesey says is Jeremiah’ll be back soon, but I haven’t had a word from him. I … I went to a magistrate, Mr. Kennedy, but he wasn’t much interested.” She looked away. “He thought Jeremiah had run off with a woman, and I ought to forget about him and get a new man.”
“That sounds like Kennedy,” Robert muttered. “Jeremiah’s probably so far upcountry he has no way to write you. Did Vesey say what the errand was?”
“No, sir. Something about wood. Mr. Fallon, I don’t know what to believe.”
“You can believe Jeremiah’s all right. I promise you I’ll find him and get word back to you. And a letter.”
“You will? Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. I’d better be going now. I’ve taken up too much of your time.”
“Won’t you at least have that cup of tea?” Robert asked gently.
“No, sir. I have to go.”
Once she was gone, Robert looked at Ben, and the other man didn’t need to hear the question. “I’ve heard of Vesey, Captain. He’s supposed to be a troublemaker, but blacks respect him.”
“I don’t like this story of Jeremiah going off without even a word for his wife, Ben. Can you set somebody to keep an eye on Vesey? If there’s been dirty work done, the only way we’re likely to find out is to follow Vesey till he makes a slip.”
“I’ll get on it right away, Captain.”
Robert scanned the Friday newspaper for word of the City Council meeting and found none. He had to concede it was just as well Hamilton wasn’t letting any news out. He’d feared an official panic, with blacks arrested on suspicion and whisper, and hung on the assumption they wouldn’t have been arrested if they weren’t guilty. It had happened before, in other places.
In the mid-afternoon, Albert announced Glenn Mortimore.
