Ciji Ware (22 page)

Through the parlor window she watched her father bend into the stiff January wind as he headed toward the stable yard. She sat on the harp stool, frozen with apprehension, and then slowly lifted her hands and continued—midbar—with the Bach cantata.

The tall clock in the foyer suddenly struck the hour of eleven. Its tolling sound rose above her mindless music-making and roused Daphne from her stupor. She jumped up from her padded perch, convinced that she must follow her father, despite the likely chance he would be terribly cross with her. When he was in these awful tempers, he shunned all company—in contrast to her mother, who cried out for Daphne’s presence when she fell into dark despair.

The youngster made a dash up the staircase and down the hallway. The newborn wasn’t crying as she ran past her mother’s bedchamber. All was silent in the house.

He’s probably already dead. How stupid of her to give him a name! He’s bound to end up buried next to all the other Whitaker babies.

A faint voice called out. “Daphne?”

Her mother sounded feeble and weary. She ignored Susannah Whitaker’s summons and rushed into her own bedchamber, flinging open the armoire. She seized her red woolen cloak and ran out again, not casting so much as a glance in her mother’s direction as she sped by her open door, down the broad staircase, and out through the scullery leading to the mansion’s rear door.

The air outside was unusually frigid for the Natchez Territories and the limbs of the leafless trees were etched against clear skies. She saw the flash of a figure on horseback two hundred yards ahead, moving through the underbrush. On foot, she picked up her pace, but horse and rider outdistanced her with every step and soon she couldn’t see anything but trees and birds flitting from branch to branch.

She trudged along the path through the woods until her lungs began to ache and her legs grew weary. Why was she doing this? she asked herself haplessly as tears welled in her eyes, obscuring her vision. She halted and leaned, gasping, against a tree. As her father had said, what was the point?

Everyone
’
s
so
sad
at
Devon
Oaks
…
Angry
and
sad.

And no one but Mammy and Kendra even seemed to notice that she, Daphne, was alive and sad, too. Suki and Maddy and Eustice had been shipped off to Natchez once again during their mother’s latest confinement, and Daphne was alone, cut off, certain that as far as her parents were concerned, she might as well not be there either.

The first sob escaped her lips, and slowly her back slid down the length of the tree trunk. Months of loneliness and fear poured out of her like the rush of the river during spring thaw. She wept for all the dead babies; for life as it had become on the plantation; for a future devoid of laughter or joy.

She had no idea how long she’d been crying when, suddenly, she heard the sounds of twigs snapping and branches moving.

“Well… look what we have here!” exclaimed a deep voice.

Daphne, her breath visible in the chilly air, raised her head from the cradle of her arms and felt a wave of embarrassment prompt a deep flush. Two men on horseback called out to her, not fifty feet from where she sat crumpled on the hard earth within the folds of her cloak. She swiftly wiped each eye with an edge of the fabric and saw the red wool darken with moisture.

“Daphne,” the younger man exclaimed, “what are you doing out here, sitting under a tree in the cold? You’ll catch your death! C’mon, girl, give me your hand.”

By this time, Simon Hopkins the Younger and his roan gelding were by her side. Daphne gazed up at the fifteen-year-old with dark hair and kind eyes. He leaned over his saddle and held out his hand, but Daphne just stared at father and son as if they were apparitions risen from the mist.

“My father…” she began brokenly. “Have you seen him? He looked so angry. I… I tried to follow him, and—” Daphne felt another sob swell in her throat and choked it back.

The Hopkins men exchanged glances. Simon’s father cleared his throat and looked at her kindly from the majesty of his sixteen-hands-high gray stallion.

“Your father’s upset, and surely he has cause to be,” he said compassionately, “as we all have during these difficult times. Simon and I saw him by the creek a bit ago. We were heading to your house to call on your mother. My Mary wants to come by in a day or two to see if Susannah and the new babe will be needing anything—”

“The baby’s dead… or he will be,” Daphne intervened in a dull voice.

“Now, there! That’s not true,” the elder Simon admonished. “Your father just told us the little mite is holdin’ his own, despite his size.”

“Then why is Daddy’s acting so… so…”

Before she could finish describing her father’s earlier whiskey-swilling behavior, her glance fell on young Simon’s waistline. Just visible where his riding habit fell open to reveal a ruffled shirt, her father’s distinctive pearl-handled pistol was jammed into the young man’s belt.

She stared with mounting apprehension and blurted, “That’s Daddy’s gun! Why do
you
have it?”

“Not to worry, my girl,” the elder Simon said briskly. “Your father seemed… a bit out of sorts just now, ’tis all. Feeling the pinch of the creditors, I suspect. Every planter in the Territories feels the same.”

“But you took his gun?” Daphne asked, incredulous.

“Just for a while,” young Simon said soothingly, smiling at her from atop his horse. “We said we’d lock it in the cabinet in his study for him, and he agreed that was the proper place for it.”

Daphne’s gaze drifted from Simon’s face to that of his father, who hadn’t time to disguise the worry that creased his brow. She stared in the direction whence they’d ridden.

“Where is he now?” Daphne demanded. “Why didn’t he come back with you?”

“He said he wants to check the fish trap in the eddy near Big Rock.”

Daphne stared while a thousand thoughts skittered through her brain.

“Oh, no,” she whispered. She jumped to her feet, shouting, “Daddy! Daddy… please don’t! Please! Please!
Please!
” Her last words rose to a shriek.

“Daphne, wait!” Simon cried. “What’s wrong?”

Ignoring him, she set off at a dead run toward Whitaker Creek, her cloak and dark blond hair streaming behind her.

“Daphne!” Simon’s father shouted in alarm, her name echoing in the misty air.

Daphne raced down the footpath toward the creek whose rushing water could just be heard in the distance. Behind her, the Hopkins men spurred their horses in pursuit. On and on she ran, as terrible images stalked her like the goblins Mammy said would get her if she didn’t behave like a lady.

She reached the creekside location at the spot where she, Maddy, and Suki swam in the summertime. Eustice was afraid of the water, she remembered. Her timid little brother wouldn’t even dip a toe in the stream.

Her father’s horse was calmly grazing in a patch of grass that had survived the unexpected frost. Daphne frantically surveyed the undulating water where a large rock rising near the riverbank had created a pool large enough to accommodate several bathers at once. There, about a foot below the aqueous surface, she saw her father, facedown, his arms drifting out like Christ on the cross.

“Jesu! I can’t believe he—” Simon’s father shouted, bolting from his mount.

“Stay there, Father!” his son cried, leaping from his horse. “I’ll get him. He can’t have been in there long!”

“Daaaa-ddy!”
Daphne screamed in a keening cry. “No… nooooo,” and as her wails reverberated in her own ears, she realized she sounded just like her mother had when the last baby had died.

Sim waded into the icy water up to his waist, grabbed one of Charles’s boots around the ankle, and slowly tugged his body toward the creek bank. Daphne gaped in horror as they rolled her father onto his back, his glassy eyes staring up at nothing.

“Oh, my God!” the senior Simon exclaimed, pointing to Charles’s bulging pockets. “The damnable fool’s stuffed rocks in his coat!”

His son rested a forefinger on Charles’s neck and then sadly shook his head. “He’s dead.”

“Like Eboli,” Daphne whispered, staring wide-eyed at Sim who now stood several paces from her with water streaming down his breeches into puddles around his boots.

“Who?”
Simon senior demanded roughly.

“Eboli,” Daphne repeated in a small voice. “A slave we owned, who tried to run away. Daddy beat him for it. He ran away again, but Daddy and his men caught him and… beat him again.” She pointed at the collection of rocks spilling from the pockets of her father’s frock coat. “Eboli put stones in
his
pockets and threw himself into Whitaker Creek. That’s why he sank nearly to the bottom of the stream and drowned.”

“Ah… Eboli,” Sim’s father murmured, nodding. “A most unfortunate matter.”

Tears were streaming silently down Daphne’s cheeks as she pointed toward the stand of trees at their backs. “Daddy said Eboli couldn’t be buried in the family plot… in consecrated ground… so he’s buried somewhere here in the woods,” she said, barely above a whisper. “Daddy never would tell Ellie where it was—and said he’d beat the slaves who helped him bury Eboli if they ever told her, or the other women.”

“Ellie?”

“Eboli’s wife. Mammy’s sister.”

Ignoring his own sodden state, the younger Simon walked slowly toward Daphne and enfolded the young girl in his arms. Sobs had begun to wrack her chest, and together they sank upon the damp grass while Daphne wept as if she were the last person on earth.

The older man’s voice intruded. “No need for anyone to know Charles has done this damn, fool thing,” he declared. “He was checking the fish trap in the pool, ’tis all. He was alone out here… checking on the trap. He slipped on an icy rock and fell in by mistake, didn’t he, now? Unusual to have ice in these parts. Must have hit his head, and knocked himself unconscious.”

Daphne raised her head from Sim’s chest where her tears had melted into his damp linen shirt. “But the stones in his pockets—” she protested shrilly.

“No one knows he committed this sin but Sim, you, and I, Daphne,” the elder Simon insisted. He stared intently at the two young people, and added, “There’s no point in distressing poor, benighted Susannah Whitaker more than she already is by letting some damned vicar say Charles can’t be buried in sacred ground. I
hate
that sort of nonsense!”

“But, surely, Father—”

“And killing himself isn’t exactly the news the other hard-pressed planters around here need to hear right now,” Simon Hopkins declared, raising his voice to smother his son’s objections.

Daphne gazed at her father’s body. Tiny ice crystals clung to his drenched clothes. His skin had taken on the same blue tinge as Mama’s dead babies when they were put into their tiny coffins before the lids were nailed shut.

Simon’s father bent down and extracted several stones from the drowned man’s pockets.

“Father… I really… I don’t think—” his son ventured.

“You will both do as I say, do you hear me?” the Hopkins patriarch bellowed. “Tis for the best, I tell you!”

The younger Simon’s lips settled into a thin line as his father angrily began tossing the stones, one by one, into the brook. Each time he heaved a rock into the water, he punctuated his action with a solitary word.

“It… never… happened—do you hear me?”

Splash. Splash. Splash.

“Father,” Simon demanded sharply. “Are you asking Daphne and me to
lie
to everyone about this?”

His sire, panting now from exertion, merely pulled more rocks out of Charles’s coat pockets and tossed them into Whitaker Creek.

“It
…
never
…
happened
…
at
…
all!”

Daphne had ceased to listen to the man’s words. All she could hear was the sound of rushing water and, intermittently, the impact of stones landing in the creek and the shrill call of startled birds rustling in the trees that lined the stream.

Splash. Splash. Splash. Splash
…
Splash!

Chapter 10

Water from Whitaker Creek splashed over the bank, drenching Daphne Duvallon’s tennis shoes.

“Daphne? Daphne!” a voice rang out.

A peculiar mental fog clogged Daphne’s conscious mind until, finally, she was alert enough to realize she was slumped against the trunk of a willow tree, on the very edge of the creek. Oddly, she was now several yards farther downstream from the pool of deeper water that swirled gently around a large rock and rippled out from the base of the boulder.

“Daphne! Where
are
you?” Sim called, concern evident in the raised timbre of his voice.