Galilee (87 page)

“What about Nickelberry—the things he'd seen. How did he deal with that?”

“Oh Nub was a cool one. It was all too much for Charles, but Nub . . . I don't know, he just took everything in his stride. And he saw power. That was the crux of it. He saw power the like of which he'd never seen before, and he knew that if he had me, he had a piece of that power. He wasn't helping me out of Christian charity. He'd lived the life of an underdog. He'd been brought up with nothing. He'd come out of the war with nothing. But now he had me. My life was in his hands, and he wasn't going to let it slip away.”

“Did you talk about what he'd seen?”

“Later. But not for many weeks. I was too sick. He'd brought out medicines that my sister Zabrina had given him, and he promised me that he'd stay with me and make me well.”

“What did he want in exchange?”

“At the time, nothing. We made our way out to the shore, and we lived there in the dunes for a few weeks. Nobody came there; we were quite safe from discovery. He made a shelter for us, and I lay in it, listening to the sea, slowly getting well. He was my nurse, he was my comforter; he fed me, he bathed me, he listened to me rave in my fevers. He went out and brought back food. God knows where he got it. What he did to get it. His only concern was to make me well. I know it may sound perverse, but when I look back on that time, I think of it more fondly than any of my time in Charleston. I felt this great weight off me. Like I'd been cured of some sickness. I'd had every excess known to man. I'd made love to so many bodies, had so much beauty in my hands. I'd been so high I thought I'd never come down. And now it was all over. I was living out under the stars with nothing to call my own, just the sea, and time to think. That's when I first began to dream of building myself
a boat and sailing away . . .

“Then one day Nub started talking about his own dreams. And I realized it wasn't going to be so easy. He had a friend in me; that's what he believed at least. We were going to work together, when I was well.

“ ‘This is the perfect time to start over,'
he said to me.
‘If we work together we could make a fortune out there.' ”

“What did you say to him?”

“I told him I didn't want to have anything more to do with people. I'd had my fill of them. I told him about my dream of building a boat and sailing away.

“I expected him to laugh. But he didn't. In fact he said he thought it was a very good idea. But then he said:
‘You can't just sail away and forget what we've been through together. You owe me something.'

“And of course he was right. He'd risked his life for me in Charleston, shooting the Morrow brothers. He'd risked his life getting me out of L'Enfant. Lord knows, he'd seen things that would have driven lesser men mad, because of me. And then, when we'd reached the shore he'd tended to me night and day. Without him and Zabrina's poultices I would have been disfigured; maybe died. Of course I owed him. There was no question about it.

“So I asked him what he wanted from me. And he had a very simple answer: he wanted me to help make him rich. The way he saw it there were opportunities to make fortunes out there. Reconstruction was underway. There were roads to lay, cities to rebuild, bellies to feed. And the men who were at the heart of all that—with the wit and the skill to make themselves indispensable—those men were going to be richer than any men in the history of America.”

“Was he right about all this?”

“More or less. There were a few oil tycoons and railroad magnates who were already so rich nobody was going to catch up with them. But he'd given the whole business some careful thinking, and he was not a stupid man; not by any means. He knew that as a team—with his pragmatism and my vision, his understanding of what people wanted and my capacity to get the opposition out of the way—we could become very powerful in a very short time. And he was impatient. He'd lived in the gutter for long enough. He wanted a better life. And he didn't care how he got it, as long as he got it.” He paused, and stared out to sea. “I could still get myself my boat, he said to me, I could still sail away. That was fine and dandy. He'd even help me find a boat; only the best. But he needed me to help him in return. He wanted to have a wife and kids, and he wanted them to live the good life. It seemed like such a small thing when I was agreeing to it. Anyway, how could I refuse, after
he'd done all he'd done for me?”

“We made a kind of pact, right there on the shore. I swore I would never cheat him, or any of his family. I swore on my life that I'd be his friend, and his family's friend, for as long as I lived.”

Rachel had a sickening sense of where this was going.

“I think you begin to understand,” Galilee said.

“He didn't keep the same name . . .”

“No, he didn't. A couple of days later he came back to the shore in a fine old mood. He'd found a body in a ditch—or what was left of it. A Yankee, who'd died many, many miles from home. In his satchel were all his papers: everything Nickelberry needed to become another man, which in those days was not very much. After that day, he was never “Nub” Nickelberry again. He became a man called Geary.”

This was not remotely what Rachel had expected, but as she contemplated the information she saw how the pieces fitted. The roots of the family into which she'd married were deep in blood and filth; was it any wonder the dynasty that sprung from this beginning was in every way shameful and hollow?

“I didn't know what I'd agreed to,” Galilee went on. “I didn't realize until a lot later the scale of Nub's ambition, or what he was prepared to have us do to make it a reality.”

“If you
had
known . . . ?”

“Would I have agreed? Yes, I would have agreed. I wouldn't have liked it, but I would have agreed.”

“Why?”

“Because how was I ever going to be free of him otherwise?”

“You could have just walked away.”

“I owed him too much. If I'd cheated him, history would have just repeated itself. I would have been pulled into something else—some other piece of human folly—and had to endure that instead. I would have had to pay the price eventually. The only way to be free—at least this was the way I thought of it—was to work with Nub, and help make his dreams come true. Then I'd have earned a dream of my own. I could have my boat, and . . . off I'd go.” Galilee sighed deeply. “It was messy, working for him; very messy. But he was right when he talked about the opportunities. They were everywhere. Of course, to get ahead of the crowd you needed something extra. He had me. I was the one he sent in if he had trouble with somebody, to make sure he never had trouble again. And I was good at it. Once I was in the rhythm I realized I had quite a skill for terrorizing people.”

“You get it from Cesaria.”

“No doubt. And believe me I was in the right mood to do violence. I was an exile now; I felt free to do whatever crossed my mind, however inhumane. I hated the world, and I hated the people in it. So it made me happy to be the spoiler, to be the bloodletter.”

“And Nub—”

“Geary, now. Mr. Geary.”

“Geary. He never got his hands dirty? You did all the intimidation, he did all the business?”

“No, he'd get involved when he felt like it. He was a cook. He liked knives and carcasses. Sometimes he'd astonish me. I'd see him do something, so cold, so indifferent to the suffering he was causing, and I'd be . . . I'd be in awe of him.”

“In awe?”

“Yes. Because I'd always felt things too much. I'd agonized over things I did. My head had always been filled with voices telling me not to do this, not to do that; or to look out for the consequences. That was why I liked to get drunk, and high; it hushed those voices. But when I was with Geary: no voices at all. Nothing. Silence. It was nice.

“And as the months went by, and I got completely well, and strong again, I began to get a reputation as somebody to be afraid of, and that was nice too. The more of that reputation I got the more I made sure I deserved it. When I needed to make an example of somebody, I was vicious. There was this part of me that was cruel, venomous, and when people saw that in my eyes or heard it in my voice . . . it made them compliant. Often—especially later—I didn't need to lay a finger on them. They'd just see me coming, and they'd be asking what they could do for us, how they could help us.”

“And the men who didn't?”

“Died. At my hands. Usually quickly. Sometimes not. Sometimes, if Geary thought an example had to be made of a guy, I'd do something so bad—” He stopped. She couldn't see his face. But she heard the soft sobs that escaped him; and could see his silhouette shake as he was wracked. He took a moment to recover himself and then continued, his voice muted.

“We started to expand our territories, state by state. We went north into Virginia, we went into Tennessee and Missouri, we worked our way through as far as Oklahoma, then down into Texas. Wherever we went, Geary bought up land, most of the time with money he didn't have, but by now he had a name and a reputation; he was this new guy out of Charleston who had a vision and a fast tongue and a way of getting what he wanted, and anyone who said no to him regretted it, so fewer and fewer people did. Fewer and fewer wanted to. They wanted to be in business with him: he was the face of the future, and he always acted as though he had so much money that you'd get rich just by shaking hands with him.” His voice was gathering strength again. “The thing was, a lot of people
did
get rich off him. He was a natural; he had a nose for wealth. I think he even surprised himself.

“In a little over three years he was a millionaire, and he decided it was time to start a family. He married a rich woman out of Georgia, who'd taken all her money up north before the war. Her name was Bedelia Townsend, and she seemed to be the perfect match for him. She was beautiful, she was ambitious, and she wanted the world right there, in the palm of her hand. There was only one problem. He didn't take care of her in the bedroom as she would have liked. So I kept her company.”

“Did she have children by you?”

“No. They were all his. I was very careful about that. Pleasuring her was one thing, giving her a Barbarossa was another.”

“Weren't you tempted?”

“To make a half-breed with her? Oh yes, I was tempted. But I was afraid that would spoil what was between us. I loved being with her. Nothing made me happier.”

“And what did Geary think about all this?”

“He didn't care. He was out empire-building. As long as Bedelia produced children, and I was there to play the bully-boy if somebody crossed him, he didn't concern himself with what we did together. It was a busy time for a cook who wanted to be a king. And to be fair to him, he worked, night and day. The seeds of everything the Geary family became were sown in that decade after the end of the war.”

“So there must have come a time when you'd paid your debt to him.”

“Oh there did. But if I'd walked away from him, where would I have gone? I couldn't go back to L'Enfant. I had no other life besides the Gearys.”

“You could have gone away to sea.”

“That's what happened, eventually.” He paused, thinking on this moment. “But I didn't go alone.”

“You took Bedelia?” Rachel said softly.

“Yes. I took Bedeia. She was the first woman to step on
The Samarkand
and you were the second. We sailed off, without telling Geary we were going. She left a letter, I think, explaining her feelings; telling him she wanted more than he'd given her.”

“How could she do that? How could she leave her children?”

He leaned a little closer to her. “You wouldn't have done that for me?” he said.

“Yes,” she murmured, “of course I would.”

“That's your answer then.”

“Did she ever see them again?”

“Oh yes. Later. But she also had another child . . .”

“You had your half-breed?”

“ ‘Yes . . .”

“Niolopua . . . ?”

“Yes. My Niolopua. I made sure he understood from the beginning that he had Barbarossian blood. That way he could escape at least some of the claims of time. My father had told me that some of his bastards—the ones who lived in ignorance of who they were—lived ordinary, human lives. Seventy years and they were gone. It was only the children who knew their real nature who could outlive their Biblical span.”

“I don't understand,” Rachel said. “If you've got Barbarossian blood what does it matter whether you know it or not?”

“It's not a matter of blood. It's a matter of
knowing
who you are. It's knowledge, not chemistry that makes us Barbarossas.”

“And if you'd never told him?”

“He'd be a long time dead by now.”

“So you and Bedelia go out to sea on
The Samarkand,
and eventually you find your way here?”

“Yes. We came here by chance; the winds brought us here and it seemed like paradise. There was nobody at this end of the island back then. It was like the beginning of the world. We weren't the first visitors, of course. There was a mission in Poi'pu. That's where she had Niolopua. And while she was recovering, I finished work on the house.” He looked past her, along the beach. “It hasn't changed much,” he said. “The air still smells as sweet as when I was here with her.”

She thought of Niolopua as he spoke: of the many times she'd seen unreadable expressions cross his face, and wondered what mysteries lay buried in him. Now she knew. He'd been the dutiful son, watching over the house built for his mother all those long years ago, watching the horizon and waiting for a sail, the sail of his father's boat, to come into view. She wanted to weep, for the loss of him. Not that she'd known him well; but he had been a connection to the past, and to the woman whose love had made so much of what had happened to Rachel possible. Without Bedelia, there would have been no house here in Eden.