Shadowbrook Part 9

Nicole downed the shimmering oyster. "Delicious," she agreed. "I love oysters. Maman did not approve. Not fit food for a lady, she said. Only for common folk."

"What would your maman say if she saw you now?" Quent asked, slurping down two oysters and opening two more for her.

"She would wag her finger," Nicole admitted. "But she would understand after I explained that it was oysters or nothing, and that I am very hungry. Where did you get that?" She nodded toward the willow-reed basket, grayed with age and long soaking.

"There's a cave beneath those rocks. The entrance is underwater and it's hard to find unless you know where to look. The basket was in there."

"You knew where to look."

"Yes. We're on Shadowbrook land now. I've been swimming here since I was a boy."

"You and Monsieur Shea?"

"That's right." d.a.m.n the woman. Every conversation he had with her ended with Cormac Shea.

In the morning they left the riverbank and cut inland. "Straight up the bank would get us there faster," Quent said, "but there's a stretch of marshland between here and the house where the mosquitoes are the size of your fist. Better if we avoid that."

Nicole was grateful for the shade of the woodland route, and Monsieur Hale seemed to enjoy pointing out various landmarks and features of the Patent as they came into view. More for himself than her, Nicole thought, as if he needed reminding.

"That road there leads to the sawmill. Used to be only half as wide, but we broadened it some years back. This is the back road to the mill. Round the other side there's what we call the big road, the one my grandfather built when he first got here." Quent squatted and studied the rutted track. "Doesn't seem to have been sc.r.a.ped or graded for the last couple of seasons."

A league or so further on there was another break in the trees, and another path wide enough for a horse and wagon. "That's the back way to the gristmill and the sugarhouse," he said. "But if you're not driving a wagon, quickest way's to take the cutoff by a pair of white pines. Takes you by way of Big Two."

"What is made at a sugarhouse? And what is Big Two?"

"Sugar's how you make rum."

"And Big Two?"

"Pair of hills." He didn't explain that the hills had gotten their name because of their resemblance to a woman's b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

A bit farther on they climbed a rise that gave them a view over what appeared to be an inland sea, or perhaps a lake. Only when she looked more closely did Nicole realize it was a field of wheat, the tall stalks rippling in the early morning breeze.

They stood for a time while Quent shaded his eyes with his hand and gazed at the crop. "Almost ripe by the smell of it," he said after a few seconds. "But there's far too many weeds been allowed to take root. Can't think why-" He broke off.

"Why what?"

"Nothing." No point in telling her that it was perishing strange that the sun had been up for nearly four hours and there were no slaves pulling the weeds from the field. He didn't look forward to telling Nicole about Shadowbrook's slaves.

It disturbed him that he'd seen no one on the sawmill road, or heading to or from the sugarhouse or the gristmill. More than fifty people lived in this southern part of the Patent; if you counted the folks up north at Do Good, there were close to three times that many on the place. But they hadn't pa.s.sed another human being since they set foot on Shadowbrook's land. The hairs on the back of his neck were p.r.i.c.kling. Quent took his gun from his shoulder and began pouring powder down the muzzle while they walked.

Nicole watched him, her dark eyes nearly black with concern. Quent said nothing, and for once she didn't ask any questions.

An hour or so later, when the sun was directly overhead, the house appeared. "That's Shadowbrook," Quent said softly.

Because of the detour they'd taken to avoid the marsh, they approached the house from the side, but that wasn't much of a disadvantage. Like most houses she'd seen here in the New World, it appeared foursquare, planted solidly atop a rise and fronting on the river. As far as she could see, Shadowbrook was without wings, though it seemed to sprawl out the back for some ways, as if bits had been added on year by year. It was built of wood and gleamed white beneath a slate roof, with shutters the same dusky blue-gray color. She counted four chimneys, though she expected there were more. "It looks to be a fine house," she said.

He heard her voice as if it came from a far distance and raised his hand to silence her. Quent listened hard, trying to hear the danger. He knew it was there-the hot July breeze carried the stink of fear along with the smell of the river and of rampant summer growth. He heard nothing but silence at first, then a shift in the currents of air brought a whisper of something that sounded like moaning.

For a moment he wondered if his father had died, if he was hearing Ephraim Hale's mourning song. No, if it were, everyone would be up by the burying place at Squirrel Oaks. This sound came from the vicinity of the house.

The sound grew louder. It was a keening, a collective misery. Now Nicole heard it, too. "Mon Dieu, what is that?" She made a hurried sign of the cross.

"I'm not sure. Could be-" He stopped because there was another sound, a whooshing and cracking, and a second immediately after. "Sweet Jesus Christ! Sweet Jesus! Stay here. Don't move." He took off, his long strides burning the distance between himself and the house.

Nicole watched him for a moment, felt the loneliness of the woods at her back; then, ignoring his words, she went after him.

The gra.s.s around the house was usually close cut and bright green. Now it was browned and britde and long enough to flatten as Quent ran across it. The moaning had stopped; and he heard only the whoosh and crack.

There was a flat piece of earth on the far side of the house; they called it the Frolic Ground. It got its name after Quentin Hale survived to see his first birthday. His father gave a great dinner, a frotic, to celebrate.

The Frolic Ground was a hundred fathoms long-it would take a tall man two hundred strides to cover its length-and nearly as wide. It was surrounded by ornamental posts from which lanterns could be strung to light the darkness. There was an enormous fire pit to one side, big enough to roast a couple of oxen and many, many fowl, as Ephraim had done on Quent's first birthday. Over a hundred local Indians were there that day, along with every single soul who lived and worked on the Patent, whatever their color or religious persuasion. Even the Quakers of Do Good came, standing primly to one side and not joining in the dancing or whooping and hollering that marked the occasion.

A seventh whoosh and cracking cut through the midday summer silence. Quent winced. In a moment he had covered the last twenty strides.

Fifty men and women huddled together in the Frolic Ground, black slaves and the white tenant farmers who worked on the Patent. They stood in a semicircle around one of the big wagons used to haul felled trees to the sawmill. The wagon's traces were empty and staked to the ground, and guylines had been fixed either side to keep the whole thing steady. The wagon wheels were nearly as tall as Quent himself, st.u.r.dy enough to carry the weight of four or five ma.s.sive tree trunks. Plenty strong enough to support even the huge man who was tied to one of them.

The man was spread-eagled and roped in place, belly to the hub, arms and legs splayed against the spokes, and naked from the waist up. His broad ebony back was welted with the stripes he'd received since Quent had heard the first crack of the whip moments before. His huge bald head was turned away from the Ground's entrance, but Quent knew the man tied to the wagon wheel was Solomon the Barrel Maker.

The crowd was silent, their attention riveted on the man with the whip.

Quent raised the long gun to his shoulder, his finger tightening on the trigger. "Use that thing again and I'll blow your head off."

The crowd swiveled toward him as if it were a single creature. "Master Quent," someone muttered. "Master Quent be home."

"How in b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l did you get here?" John Hale stepped from the far side of the wagon to the empty s.p.a.ce between it and the onlookers. The hand hanging at his side held a pistol. "Whipper, pay him no mind. Do your duty."

The whipper looked first at the tall redhead wearing buckskins and pointing a deadly long gun directly at him, then at the much shorter dark man dressed in black breeches and a white linen shirt, coatless in deference to the hot sun.

"If he wants to stay alive, he'd better not," Quent called out. "And whatever you call this business, it's got nothing to do with duty. There's not been a public whipping on Shadowbrook since Grandfather's day. Father forbade it."

"Father is ill. I'm running things now. The Barrel Maker told me an untruth." John raised the hand holding the pistol and c.o.c.ked it. He aimed it straight at his brother. "Put down the long gun or I'll shoot."

"Don't be a jacka.s.s," Quent said. "You can't shoot faster than I can and you know it. You there, whipper, I said put it down. This is the last time I'm telling you. Next time I'll shoot your hand off."

"Don't-" John began, but the man had already dropped the whip.

"Good," Quent said. "Now, kick it over toward me. Good." Quent addressed the crowd without taking his eyes off his brother. "Big Jacob, you there?" He'd seen the old man in the crowd as soon as he approached the Frolic Ground. Big Jacob lived at the sugarhouse and looked after the young horses kept in a paddock on that part of the Patent.

"I be here, Master Quent. And mighty glad to be seeing you."

"Glad to be here, Jacob. Now, kindly come forward and untie Solomon."

John whirled around and pointed the pistol in the direction of the slave. "Stay where you are."

"John, if you discharge that pistol in any direction, I will blow you to kingdom come. You have my word on it. Do as I say, Jacob."

For a moment no one moved. Quent heard a woman whisper; he was pretty sure the speaker was Clemency the Washerwoman. Clemency carried a lot of weight among the slaves, in every sense. She was as wide as most doorways, though a good deal shorter. He looked into the crowd for her and spotted Six-Finger Sam, who looked after the kitchen garden and did odd jobs around the big house. In apple season Sam ran the press that made their cider, and was in charge of the huge cauldrons in which they cooked apple b.u.t.ter and of drying some part of the crop, so one way or another they'd have a taste of fruit throughout the winter. Six-Finger Sam almost never spoke. On the other hand, Clemency, was the storyteller among the Patent Negroes. "Clemency, she be the one keeps our yesterday," Kitchen Hannah had told Quent years before. "The Washerwoman, she knows who be who and what be what, and how they came to be the way they be. Clemency, she keep the inside-free alive in us slaved folks."

Quent knew about the inside-free. "That be the real difference between white peoples and nigra peoples, little master." Solomon had told him. "We nigra peoples got to rely on the inside-free."

"Jacob!" Quent called again. "Do as I say. No one will hurt you."

"Stay where you are!" John's voice was edged with panic. His extended arm trembled. "I'm the master here!" It was a shrill shriek, almost like a woman's. "You do what I say."

"No, that's not exactly true just yet." A new voice spoke, one that was infirm and shook with illness, but that still carried authority in a way that John's never would. Ephraim Hale stood just inside the gate of the Frolic Ground. Quent took his eyes off John long enough for one quick look at his father. Ephraim was bent over a pair of waist-high sticks, leaning heavily on them, but his voice grew firmer and more sure as he spoke: "I am the master here as long as I'm alive. John, Quent, both of you put down your weapons. Jacob, do as Master Quentin instructed. Release Solomon from the wheel."

Quent felt a flood of relief. He would not have to kill his brother. At least not yet. But John's outstretched hand was shaking noticeably now. Nothing was more unreliable than a pistol; this one could go off and do considerable damage. "Both of us at the same time, John," Quent said easily. "As Father wishes. On the count of three. One, two ..."

Then the guns were on the ground and Jacob was untying Solomon the Barrel Maker. And in a flurry of petticoats and purpose, Lorene Devrey Hale arrived to take charge of her household.

Cormac knew that time had pa.s.sed, but he had no idea how much. He was enveloped not just by steam, but by a strange fragrance, sharp and at the same time sweet, like nothing he'd ever smelled before. It entered through his nose and filled his entire being. It was wonderful. He opened his mouth and swallowed the scent. He hungered for it, wanted as much of it as he could devour. The magic went straight to his crotch. He was enormous, filled with a sweet hot pressure that must be satisfied. He thought of Nicole. At least once he whispered her name aloud.

He wasn't sure if he was awake or asleep when he felt himself swallowed and sucked dry. He had only a vague impression of thick dark hair and pale, naked flesh, somehow cool despite the heat of the sweat lodge. The steam was too thick to allow him to see anything, but he didn't care. He shuddered with pleasure, gave himself up to bliss, and then to deeper sleep.

The next thing he knew someone was calling his name. He recognized Takito's voice. "Roll over, my son. I will finish what the steam has begun."

There was no resistance in Cormac and no questioning; the steam had melted both away. He turned on his belly and the powerful touch of the curing priest began at the nape of his neck and traveled rapidly to the base of his spine, probing every muscle, every old scar, missing nothing. Takito, he knew, was using his fingertips to read not just his body, but his mind.

After a time the touch changed. It became somehow stronger, more insistent. And it did not soothe as it had. The fingers felt less skilled, more bruising. Takito wasn't a tall man, but Cormac sensed the priest crouching in the low-ceilinged wigwam. He was aware of the priest moving around to the other side of the pallet, swiftly and smoothly. There was no lurching movement, no indication that he dragged one foot.

Cormac didn't move, unwilling to show that he was now totally awake and no longer drunk with steam and the powerful herbal magic of the Midewiwin. The man's fingers attempted to reach under him-it was not Takito anymore, he was sure of that.

"Ayi." Cormac rolled toward the imposter, using his full body weight to drive both himself and whoever had replaced the blind priest to the ground. The man uttered a surprised grunt, but in the time it took to draw one breath Cormac knew his adversary was a skilled wrestler. He fought off the attempts to imprison his leg. The only sounds were their struggles for breath as both men grappled for control. The imposter was stronger and every movement brought him closer to dominance. The only thing that saved Cormac from being immediately overwhelmed was what remained of the coating of bear grease. He was still too slick to grab, but it was only a matter of time before the other man's strength would overpower him.

The a.s.sailant gave up trying to capture a leg in the cla.s.sic hold and rose to a crouch, dragging the half Potawatomi brave with him. In a swift movement he wrapped both arms around the chest of the powerful metis and squeezed. Ayi! He had heard this one was a fighter from the land of the clouds, a kapi who had come from the world beyond, where the redheaded warriors of his father's people hunted beside the fearless Anishinabeg braves of the old days. Still, after the priest's special attentions, he had not expected such a struggle.

Cormac felt the life being crushed out of him. His opponent's arms were iron bands tightening around his chest. He made his mind a blank and saw only the Sacred Fire of the Potawatomi. He saw the glowing red coal of his manhood ceremony; he felt himself grasp it and find it cool as ice in his hand. Strength rose from his belly and filled him. He reached up and clasped his hands around the other man's neck. It was like a tree trunk, thick and unbending. The arms that imprisoned him hugged him still tighter. Nothing he did freed him from the increasing pressure on his chest. He couldn't breathe and he wasn't strong enough to pull his opponent over his head. Soon he would lose his spirit. No, by the Sacred Fire, he would not. He was not meant to free his death song in a dark sweat lodge, crouched over like an animal.

With one last, enormous effort the tree trunk bent. The imposter's chin was almost touching his shoulder. Close, closer, finally close enough so Corm could turn and sink his teeth into flesh. The man screamed.

Cormac tasted the brave's blood and did not relax his jaws until he had torn away a chunk of flesh. The other man screamed again and Cormac increased the pressure on the powerful neck until finally he heard it snap and felt the sagging weight of death.

For a moment he stayed where he was, gasping for air, then he realized that his jaws were still locked around a piece of the cheek of his enemy. He shuddered. This was the one way in which he was not truly even half a Real Person; he had been infected with the white man's horror of human meat. He spat out his enemy's flesh and staggered out of the wigwam. If the priest were still there he would kill him, too. Cormac's eyes were having difficulty adjusting to the light after so long in the dark, but he was sure the clearing was empty. Both the fires had been put out and it was dusk, the relative cool of evening descending. He must have been five or six hours in the sweat lodge.

He thought of the medicine bag hidden in the dying maple tree. Ayi! Great Spirit, let it still be there. It had to be; if they had found the deerskin pouch, why would they have sent someone to search him? And that had to have been what the a.s.sailant was trying to do. Otherwise he would have simply slit Cormac's throat in the first moments of the attack.

He was still pouring sweat and his heart was beating like a war drum. Whatever had happened to Memetosia's treasure couldn't be changed now. The immediate task was to clear his head so he could decide what to do next. Cormac took a couple of unsteady steps toward the stream and plunged in.

The first shock of the icy water on his overheated skin stole his breath, and he sucked in great gulps of air. Then the cool water soothed him, calming his heart and restoring strength to his muscles. When he got out of the stream he was himself again.

He stood for a moment, listening with his body as well as his ears, totally Anishinabeg for the few heartbeats that could spell life or death. There was no immediate danger. He was alone.

His buckskins were no longer neatly folded on the flat rock where he had put them. They had been shaken out and examined. After he was dressed he climbed what remained of the dying maple tree. When he reached the branch hanging out over the water he paused for a moment, preparing himself for whatever he must find. He shimmied forward and stretched out his hand; his fingers touched the leather thong of Memetosia's medicine bag. Cormac reached for the pouch, clutching it tightly as he unwound the thong. Whatever was inside was still there. He could feel it. He breathed a prayer of thanksgiving to the Great Spirit of the Sacred Fire, then, thinking of the many Sunday mornings in the front room of Shadowbrook, one to Miss Lorene's Jesus G.o.d as well.

He spent a few more moments at the sweat lodge, then made his way back to the house. It was dark, but he could see no shimmer of candlelight behind any of the windows. The Lydius house loomed like a black smudge in the night. Cormac tried the back door. It was open. Cautiously he let himself in and went from room to room. The house was empty; even the kitchen fireplace was cold. There was no sign of Genevieve or any of the Lydius family, much less of the Miami chief and his entourage. The only proof that Memetosia and his braves had been there, that Cormac had not somehow dreamed the whole thing, was the medicine bag around his neck and the faint, lingering scent of bear grease in the kitchen.

His tomahawk and his knife were where he'd left them in the front hall. His long gun was gone.

THURSDAY, JULY 16, 1754.

SHADOWBROOK, THE HALE PATENT.

Nicole had not realized how much she longed for food that was not meat. There were bright orange carrots on the table, short and stubby and slathered in honey and b.u.t.ter; potatoes that were hashed with cream, and turnips that had been cooked in the dripping pan below spit-roasted small birds and bathed with their juices. The birds were crisped to a fine golden brown and had been brought to the table skewered on spits that stood upright in a special holder, quail, perhaps, or maybe very young pigeons. Nicole wasn't sure and she didn't care much. The large pie filled with spiced venison appealed to her much more, but not as much as the produce of the gardens she'd seen out behind the house earlier, or the biscuits made from the wheat flour they said was milled a short distance away.

"Mostly squirrels and birds, and once we took to the rivers, fish." Monsieur Hale might have been reading her mind, but he was simply responding to a question from his mother. "And rabbits. Plenty of those. But no potherbs or saladings and no biscuits or johnnycakes. That's what you miss most in the wilderness." He helped himself to another couple of biscuits as he spoke.

"Then perhaps"-Lorene Devrey Hale had a beautiful speaking voice, low and clear and like the rustle of silk-"given the quality of the fine potherbs here at Shadowbrook, and our excellent wheat, you will not again stay so long away in the wilderness." She wasn't looking at Quent when she spoke. She was studying her firstborn. John did not return her glance, but stayed concentrated on eating, ripping apart a pigeon with his hands and his teeth.

Nicole watched him as well. He ate with anger, as he seemed to do most things. Her companions of the journey were both easier in their skin than was this John Hale, and he did not make her feel easy in hers.

Yesterday Madame Hale had appeared while they were all still in the place they called the Frolic Ground. She had been very white, with two spots of high color on her cheeks, but she had created order out of chaos. Clearly she knew it was a miracle that both her children were not dead. Her eyes kept flicking from one son to the other. Lingering longest on the younger, Nicole thought.

Madame's instructions had been quickly obeyed. Two of the slaves made a carrying seat of their clasped hands and gently lifted Ephraim Hale as if he weighed nothing and took him away. Nicole had never seen a black-skinned person until she and Papa landed in Virginia. Once there she had seen many. Every one, she discovered, was owned by a white person. The mistress of the boardinghouse where Nicole and her papa stayed explained: "Says in the Bible that's how it's to be, child. Noah cursed his son Ham. And Ham went to Africa and turned into a darky, and he and his descendants have always to be slaves. That's the will of G.o.d Almighty, child. It's right and proper that black heathens work for good Christian white folks. Long as they do what they're told and don't make any trouble, they're taken care of."

Oui, as the big black man with the bald head had been taken care of. Nicole watched two of the slave women help him walk away from the scene of the whipping.

Madame Hale, too, had watched them go, then she turned to the crowd. "Now you must all return to your work. This affair is over and done with." She turned to her younger son. "And you, Quentin, your business, at least for the moment, is to tell me who this is." That's when she'd looked directly at Nicole for the first time.

And that's when Quentin Hale realized she was there. "I thought I told you to wait where I left you."

"I chose to follow you."

"So I see." He didn't say more because his mother was waiting. "May I present Mademoiselle Nicole Crane. She was traveling with Cormac when he found me. We couldn't leave her in the woods, so we brought her along. Mademoiselle, this is my mother."

"Enchantee, madame." Nicole had known what she looked like, but she pretended she was in Papa's drawing room being presented to a general or diplomat. She dropped a deep and graceful curtsy.

Lorene's eyes had narrowed; she nodded and murmured some politeness in response to the greeting. Nicole wished she knew what the other woman was thinking, and the meaning of the quick but studied glance she directed at her youngest son. But all she said was, "You look like a savage, Quentin, and you smell worse. Where is Cormac?"

"He had someone to see in Albany. He'll be along."

"Very well. Go and make yourself presentable. I will take charge of our guest. Come along, my dear," and she'd reached out her hand. Nicole had had no choice but to put hers in the older woman's, acutely conscious that she had been without any creme or lotion for months and her skin felt like tree bark.

Lorene made no mention of the girl's roughened hands. She took Nicole to one of Shadowbrook's large bedrooms and had a slave called Runsabout-"Her real name is Ruth, but when Quentin was little he called her Runsabout, because Kitchen Hannah was always sending her on errands"-bring a large copper tub and buckets of hot water. "You'll be wanting a bath, mademoiselle. And some clothes. I will have someone bring you some dresses of mine if you would not mind borrowing them."

"I would be honored, madame. You are so very kind." Nicole wondered what Quent's mother would say if she knew of the many times Nicole had bathed naked in forest streams, with Quent and Cormac keeping guard. Whenever she looked their backs were to her, but she'd never been entirely sure they hadn't peeked.

"It is my pleasure," the older woman had a.s.sured her. "And I'll send a seamstress to make some quick adjustments." Quentin's mother was at least a head taller than Nicole. "Such a dainty one you are, mademoiselle. My son looks like a giant beside you."

"Your son is a giant, madame."