New Mercies (19 page)

I moved closer to Magdalene and saw that her face was covered with a white powder, which had sifted over her dress. It might have been flour. Whatever it was made her look even more like an apparition. She took a step backward, her hands clasped protectively over her bosom. “Let me see the recipe,” I said. “I’m partial to cake, too, but I’ve never heard of lady cake.”

“It’s a secret—a secret receipt. I can’t show you.” Magdalene’s voice was conspiratorial.

“But you said you shared it with Amalia.”

“It’s a family secret.”

“I’m Amalia’s family. I’m Nora Bondurant, Amalia’s niece.” I did not hold out my hand, for fear the white powder would attach itself to me.

“You!”

Not knowing how to respond, I simply looked at her until Magdalene dropped her gaze. She took a step backward and turned, but before she could scurry away, I grabbed her arm, throwing her off balance. She started to fall, but I caught her shoulder with one hand. She felt like a chicken whose tiny bones could be crushed if I squeezed her. With my other hand, I pulled the envelope from her dress. Magdalene grabbed for it, dragging her broken fingernails across my hand, leaving trails of white. But I held it high above my head so that she could not reach it. “Sit.” I pushed her into the chair.

Magdalene crumpled and began to whimper as I looked
inside the envelope and removed a wad of money—fifty dollars in one- and five-dollar bills. “There’s no recipe here for lady cake.” I felt just a little ashamed at my nastiness. Still, she had tried to steal money.

“The money’s mine. It’s owed me.”

“Is that why you sneak in here like a thief in the night? If it was owed you, wouldn’t you have asked for it?” This time, I smiled to offset the harsh words.

Magdalene cocked her head to one side and smiled as she batted lashless eyes at me and sighed. “How best to answer you? You’re purely and simply not understanding.” She straightened up, resting her chin on a crooked forefinger. Then she smiled. “I do adore your blue glass buttons.” She pointed to the buttons on my blouse. “I have not seen blue glass buttons that shade since a ball at D’Evereux away off.” She paused. “Of course, the quality was better back then.” Magdalene pursed her thin lips, as if she had said something she shouldn’t have. “Your buttons are the color of morning glories. But then, I never took to morning glories. They’re purely weeds, you know.”

She must have passed for a wit in her time, and she still was adroit enough to have changed the subject. If it weren’t for the money in my hand, I might have forgotten what I’d asked her. “Why did you steal my aunt’s money?” I asked again.

“Your aunt . . . ” she mused, but I did not respond, so she changed tactics. “I did not steal it,” Magdalene said hotly. “As you can see, you are holding it in your hand.”

“But you would have stolen it if I had not caught you.”

“You put too fine a point on it.” As if talking to a child, she added, “Besides, one cannot steal what belongs to one.”

I was impatient now. “Are you telling me you used my aunt’s desk as a safety-deposit box? You must have spied on Amalia, for how else would you have known about the hidden drawer?”

Magdalene sniffed. “Every piece of furniture in Natchez has a hidden drawer. How do you think we kept the Yankees from stealing us blind? Besides, Mr. Lott had a desk just like this one. He had two made and gave one to Amalia as a betrothal gift.”

“How romantic,” I blurted out, and Magdalene laughed. Odalie was wrong when she said Magdalene was feeble; nonetheless, she did not appear to be capable of carrying out a double murder. Magdalene wasn’t as frail as she seemed, but she certainly wasn’t strong, either. And flirting, not firearms, seemed to be her weapon of choice.

She was shrewd enough to steal, however. I put the money into the pocket of my skirt and dropped the envelope onto the desk. “You can go along. Ezra will be here any minute.”

“I shall not leave without my money.”

“
Your
money.”

“Look at the envelope.” She was indignant now.

A name was on the envelope: Bayard Lott. It was written in indelible pencil, and I had seen enough of Amalia’s writing to know it was in her hand.

Magdalene shot me a look of triumph. “You see! Now please kindly give me my money.”

I was confused, but not confused enough to hand over the bills. “That is Mr. Lott’s name, not yours. The envelope is torn and stained. My aunt may have reused it. Besides, why would she give anything to your husband? You have said yourself that they hated each other. It was in the newspapers.”

“Oh, Mr. Lott loved her just like a dog loves a good whipping.” Magdalene giggled, then grew serious. “She gave my husband fifty dollars every month, and now that he is gone, the money is mine.”

I laughed at such a preposterous statement. “That’s unlikely, but I’ll talk to Mr. Satterfield about it.”

Magdalene bounded out of the chair, startling me so that I put my hand over my pocket, but she did not grab for the money. Instead, she stood next to me and looked up into my face. She smelled a little.

“It’s mine. You ask Ezra,” she hissed. Suddenly, she spit on the floor. “You give it to me before that dries, or there’ll be trouble.” Perhaps she realized she had been unladylike and was unlikely to get anywhere with threats, because suddenly her mood lightened and she pouted and wrung her thin hands together. “You are as tight as Dick’s hatband,” she whined. “I am two and seventy years of age, too old for any good. If you don’t give the money to me, I shall die starved. You can see for yourself I am poorly thin and do not get a sufficient to eat.”

She did look undernourished, and I wavered. “Why would my aunt support you? If she and your husband hated each other, why would she give him charity?”

“Not charity!” Magdalene stamped her foot. Then she changed her mood again and smiled sweetly at me. Magdalene Lott was as nuts as Odalie. Mr. Satterfield was right: I did not understand Natchez women.

“Then what else would it be? It’s clearly charity.” I hoped to annoy her enough that she would stop the posturing and blurt out something of interest.

And she did just that. “Amalia gave Mr. Lott a competence to keep what he knew to himself.”

“She paid him money to keep a secret?”

“Money will do till God makes something better.”

“He was blackmailing her.”

Instead of denying it, Magdalene shrugged. “Call it what you like. It makes no difference to me. Just give me the money.”

“What did he know about my aunt?”

“She wouldn’t want you to know.” Magdalene postured like a child with a secret. She seated herself in the chair again and gripped the arms with her hands.

I did not care to play her games any longer and told her so, asking her again to leave. But having decided she was in no danger and being unwilling to leave without the money, Magdalene showed no indication of going home. Cooped up in that moldering mansion with Bayard Lott, she must have missed the society of others. I was considering picking her up and carrying her out of the room, when Ezra entered from the great hall. He did not say a word, but when Magdalene saw him, she pulled back into the chair and her face took on a cagey look. Her eyes darted from Ezra to me. Ezra said nothing, just stood there with his arms at his sides.

“Mrs. Lott has taken an envelope with fifty dollars in it from Miss Amalia’s desk.” My words were unnecessary, since Ezra probably had been lurking outside the door during the entire conversation. “Mr. Lott’s name is on it, and Mrs. Lott says the money is hers.”

Ezra said nothing, just waited for me to continue.

“She claims Miss Amalia gave him the money every month.”
I rolled my eyes to show Ezra that I had not been taken in.

Ezra turned to Magdalene, his dark eyes boring into her, but Magdalene held her own.

“Why would she give your husband money?” I asked her again.

Magdalene had turned tenacious. “I said once, and I’ll say again: He knew something that she didn’t want spoken.”

Ezra took a step forward and said, “Get!”

Magdalene stood up and stamped her foot. “Don’t you warn me home. I will not be talked to in such a manner by a servant.”

I dismissed her with a wave of my hand and turned my back on her. Ezra stepped forward and took her arm, edging her to the door. “Aunt Polly got a Coke-Cola bottle for you. Green, like you like. I hang it from your tree for you.” I realized the tree with the bottles that I’d seen on my way to the quarters must belong to Magdalene.

“Ooh,” she cooed, and started for the French doors. But she was not done. She jerked her arm from Ezra’s grasp, then held out her hand, palm up, for the money.

But I folded my arms to show that she would not get it.

“That her money,” Ezra said suddenly.

I was too surprised to speak.

Ezra nodded. “She right. Miss Amalia give it to Mr. Bayard every and each month. She have me to take it to him.”

I removed the bills from my pocket and handed them to Magdalene.

She counted them, then smiled up at me. “I kindly thank you.” She started for the door, and when she reached it, she put her hand on the door frame. Long years ago, that might have been a
dramatic exit, but now the gesture was pitiful. “Amalia led a corruptible life,” she said. “What Mr. Lott knew was that Amalia was your daddy’s mother. And who would know that better than Bayard Lott?” She laughed like a naughty child as she clutched at the doorjamb with a hand as veined and translucent as a dried leaf. “Please to have Ezra bring me the money next month.”

After Magdalene disappeared through the French doors, I turned to Ezra. His face was stripped of emotion. Slaves would have had to develop that countenance to hide their feelings from their owners. And present employers.

“Should you see her home, Ezra? After all, she’s seventy-two years old.” It had begun to drizzle outside—no more than a fine mist, but the path through the underbrush would be slippery.

“Don’t be telling me. I got nothing to do with her age.” Ezra paused to get control of himself as he watched Magdalene disappear in the underbrush. “She ain’t sugar. She won’t melt.”

“No.” I waited silently until Ezra turned and looked me in the eye before asking, “What she said about my father, it’s a preposterous statement, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Of course it is.” I nodded for emphasis. “Still, Mrs. Lott isn’t the first to say it. The same story was told to me last night.”

Ezra’s face remained placid, and he didn’t reply.

“You yourself must have heard it before now.”

“It get told over and again, but I don’t pay mind to white folks’ gossip. It just narrow-hearted littleness.” Ezra shifted a little, as if the conversation made him uncomfortable. “If you ain’t
staying here the night, you want me to take you to the hotel in the automobile? I operate it. I drive Miss Amalia to town every day to sell milk. That a good car. I keep it first-rate. You be proud to have it.”

I hardly intended to drive the REO back to Colorado and had decided to give it to Ezra, but this was not the time to discuss it. “Please sit down.” I seated myself on the top of the steps that Amalia had once used to climb into her bed.

Ezra remained standing until I pointed to the chair by the desk that Magdalene had perched on; then he sat down.

“What do you know about Miss Amalia?”

“Everything and nothing.”

This would not be easy. “What do you know about my father’s parentage?

“I a servant. It not my business.”

“It is my business, of course. Don’t you think if Amalia Bondurant were my grandmother and not my aunt that I have a right to know it?”

Ezra leaned forward in the chair, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together, looking at the floor. “I guess I see Miss Magdalene get home. Some of these days, she fall in the woods. Her feet ain’t mates no more.” He didn’t get up, however.

“She must be home by now.” We were silent a moment. “Did you hang all those bottles in the tree for her?”

He nodded. “Mr. Bayard a hard man.”

“What was he like?”

“I got no use for him. If there a living devil, Shadowland be his home. Mr. Bayard lay them two open to trouble and sorrow. Miss Amalia say Miss Magdalene born to take other people’s leavings,
so Miss Amalia give Mr. Bayard the money to take care of her, ’cause Miss Amalia was sorry to her heart about Miss Magdalene’s tribulation. You think Miss Magdalene treat her good for that, but she don’t.”

“You don’t believe Mr. Bayard was blackmailing Miss Amalia?”

Ezra thought that over and shook his head. “She give him the money free of gratis. Miss Amalia have a heart like fine gold. She see Mr. Bayard smack Miss Magdalene after she say her mind one time. He tell her women and chickens ought to let somebody think for ’em.”

“And Amalia believed otherwise?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am. Don’t nobody think for Miss Amalia. She plucky all right.”

“So Miss Amalia and Mr. Lott did talk from time to time.”

“I never said not.”

“No, but others told me they hadn’t exchanged a word in years.”

“Not a word they didn’t have to.”

“There’s a path between here and Shadowland. I saw it from the window. Someone’s been going back and forth.”

“Goats,” Ezra said. “Goats tromps where they wants to.”

“But you go over there sometimes.”

“I never had any tarry with him, ’cept for the money. Sometimes, I helps Miss Magdalene.” He got up from the desk, slowly, stiffly. Ezra was older than I had thought, probably in his seventies. “Now, if you got nothing more—”

He had warmed to me a little, possibly because I had stood up for Amalia with Magdalene, and I wanted to take advantage of that. “I do have something more,” I said quickly.

But it seemed that he had not warmed up much, because he looked at me warily as he sat back down.

“I asked you about my father’s mother. Was she Miss Emilie or Miss Amalia?”

Ezra shifted, and I thought a look of sorrow passed over his face, but the light outside has grown even dimmer since the rain had started, and I could not be sure. “Your daddy born in New Orleans. How you expect me to know?” he replied.