The Freedom Maze (15 page)

In July, the talk was all of whether or not Mr. Beaufort Waters was going to marry Miss Liza.

It began when Luxembourg the gardener heard Mr. Beau asking Dr. Fairchild for his daughter’s hand in marriage through the office window one morning. Before the evening bell, the whole plantation knew as much about it as if they’d been right there in the flower bed, listening. Dr. Charles had said Miss Liza was too young to think of getting married, and Mr. Beau himself in no position to support a family. Mr. Beau had taken it pretty well, Luxembourg said, but when Miss Liza and Mrs. Charles found out, they were fit to be tied.

“Mrs. Charles, she so stuck on that man, you think she the one walking out with him,” Antigua said. “She dead set on Miss Liza marrying him. And she will, too. You just wait and see.”

Sophie was not surprised when Mrs. Charles showed up in Old Missy’s room next morning with Miss Liza in tow, looking pale and red-eyed. “Well, Mother Fairchild,” she said, brushing past Sophie as if she wasn’t there. “What are we going to do about Charles?”

“Charles?” Old Missy said blankly. “What’s wrong with Charles?”

Miss Liza wailed, “Oh, Grandmama!” and burst into noisy hysterics.

Sophie had to admire her stamina. Not even Miss Liza could possibly scream all morning, but it certainly seemed like she did. Old Missy sent Sophie running for vinaigrettes and hartshorn and glasses of restorative cold tea, but Mrs. Charles didn’t do a thing to make her stop. She just patted her hand and told Old Missy how wonderful Mr. Beau was and how rich a plantation Seven Oaks was and how her little girl’s heart was broken past repair. She wouldn’t be surprised, she said, if Miss Liza stayed an old maid for the rest of her life.

Miss Liza, an old maid! It was all Sophie could do to keep from laughing out loud.

Old Missy was not amused. “Don’t talk nonsense, Lucy. Charles is absolutely right. Liza is far too young to commit her future to the first passably handsome young man she meets, especially with the political situation so unsettled. Oh, do stop crying, Liza. You’ll make yourself sick.”

Miss Liza cried even harder.

Next day, Mrs. Charles came over to inform her mother-in-law that Miss Liza was laid down on her bed, pining away with love. Old Missy went down to Oak Cottage with the intention of shaming her granddaughter out of bed. But Miss Liza could not be shamed. Over the next week, Sophie watched mother and daughter wear Dr. Charles and Old Missy down bit by bit. On Sunday, Mr. Beau Waters was invited to dinner, and by suppertime, he and Miss Elizabeth Fairchild were engaged to be married.

The oak-tree gossips were shocked.

“She ain’t nothing but a baby!” said Hepzibah.

“She plenty old enough to make a man’s life a misery,” said Antigua. “Besides, there ain’t going to be no wedding for two years, nearly. Dr. Charles, he put his foot down she can’t marry until she turn eighteen.”

China said, “Your life ain’t going to be worth living, girl.”

“It ain’t now.” Antigua sighed. “Mrs. Charles, she promise Miss Liza to celebrate with the biggest ball this parish ever seen. They already making up the guest list.”

The ball was set for the second week in August, to give Old Missy’s daughters, their husbands and their children, time to travel to Oak River, stay for a nice visit, and get home again in good time for harvest. That would make at least ten guests sleeping and eating at Oak River for two weeks or more, plus their servants. Forty guests were invited to dinner before the ball, and two hundred more to the ball itself.

This meant that every room in both houses had to be turned out and cleaned. Feather beds had to be beaten and aired, the guest linen pressed, the rugs swept, the spare lamps cleaned and filled, the furniture rubbed with beeswax and linseed oil, the doodads dusted, and all the good china and crystal washed and dried and set out in the pantry.

It was too much for Sally, Korea, Samson, and Peru to accomplish, even working dawn to dark, so Old Missy loaned Sophie to Uncle Germany to help.

“Library needs dusted,” he told her. “Take all them books down — every last one — and wipe the shelves clean. And put them back just like they was, or Dr. Charles’ll have my hide. Don’t you go reading none of them, though.”

It was like telling a starving person not to eat.

Fortunately, most of the Fairchild library was made up of books Sophie would never dream of reading, books with titles like
The Seven Lamps of Architecture
and
Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts and Manufactures.
More tempting were the set of Jane Austen and the works of Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper.
Leatherstocking
she shut after the first page, but
Ivanhoe
was harder to put down. And when Sophie discovered
Emma,
she was lost. She was standing by an empty bookshelf, feather duster forgotten, immersed in
Emma,
when the library door opened. She started guiltily, then relaxed when she saw it was only Antigua.

“My land, Antigua, I thought you were Uncle Germany!”

Antigua stepped over the stacks of books and snatched
Emma
away.

“That’s not yours,” Sophie said indignantly.

“Ain’t yours, neither.” Antigua laid the book on a pile. “What you doing here, anyway?”

Sophie flourished her duster. “Dusting!”

“That ain’t what I mean.” Antigua grabbed Sophie and dragged her to the mantelpiece mirror. “Look at you,” she said. “You near as white as Miss Liza. Your hair ain’t nappy, your nose ain’t wide, and you ain’t got no more lips than a chicken. You could run away North easy as Elijah going to Heaven.”

Sophie studied their doubled reflection, Antigua’s pale brown beside her own fading tan. They didn’t look all that different to her, with their rabbit-eared tignons and their hand-me-down dresses and their faces flushed and troubled.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

Antigua released her with a disgusted shake. “You don’t
understand?
Sophie, you duller than a broken knife. Your master give you a traveling pass and a purse of money. And what do you do? You loses them!”

“They were stolen.” Sophie remembered it clearly — the panic she’d felt when she searched for her bag on the steamboat and found it gone.

Antigua was shaking with fury. “Don’t make no never mind. You was free. Nobody watching you, nobody looking for you, nobody to know if you light out North or West or wherever you likes. And what do you do? You crawls here to Oak River and holds out you hands for the chains like they was bracelets.”

Up to now, Sophie had kept her temper with Antigua. She’d ignored the teasing and the insults, even gotten in a few herself, when she could think fast enough. But this was too much. She flew at Antigua, both hands raised. Antigua grabbed her wrists. They reeled, staggered, tripped over a pile of books, and fell on top of the embroidered fire screen, which collapsed under them with a sickening crack.

“Lord God Almighty,” whispered Antigua. “Get up.”

“Yes,” said a chilly voice. “By all means. Get up.”

Mrs. Charles stood in the doorway, her hands folded at the waist of her lavender afternoon dress, calm as a cat at a mouse hole. “Who is responsible for this mess?”

Sophie scrambled to her feet and hung her head, too frightened to speak.

“Fighting? I’m shocked.” Mrs. Charles took her rawhide strip from her sash and slapped it lightly across her hand. “Antigua, step forward.”

Antigua threw Sophie a sulfurous glance, stepped forward over the ruins of the fire screen, and knelt in front of Mrs. Charles. Sophie’s ears buzzed. Was this a time to speak or a time to keep silent? She didn’t want to be whipped, but she didn’t want to see Antigua whipped either.

Mrs. Charles raised the strap high.

“Wait!”

Mrs. Charles lowered her arm and lifted her eyebrows.

Sophie licked her lips. “It wasn’t Antigua. I got mad and pushed her. I’m sorry.”

Antigua couldn’t have looked more startled if Sophie had suddenly grown another head.

Mrs. Charles shrugged. “Get up, Antigua. Sophie, kneel.” Sophie took a reluctant step forward. “Hurry up, girl!” Sharp fingers seized Sophie’s shoulder and thrust her to her knees. Sophie tensed and the rawhide whistled down and cut across her back.

The first blow was a sharp sting, painful, but not unbearable. Sophie gasped, more from shock than pain. The second and third blows, laid over the first, hurt much worse. Sophie cried out and tried to crawl away, but Mrs. Charles held her tight. Again and again the rawhide slashed down across her shoulders and back. Sophie huddled in on herself, screaming and sobbing, sure the beating would never end. And then it did.

Mrs. Charles nudged Sophie with her foot. “Stop that screeching, girl! I never heard such a fuss over a little whipping. As for you, Antigua, don’t think you’ve got off scot-free.”

Through her fog of pain, Sophie heard the whistle and slap of rawhide and Antigua’s grunt. Mrs. Charles said, “Send someone in here to clear up this mess and take the fire screen to the carpenter. Then get yourself back down to Oak Cottage. Mr. Waters is coming to take Miss Liza riding.” And she swept out of the room.

Sophie tried to sit up. The movement rubbed the sore skin of her back against her dress, which hurt almost as much as the beating. She gave a yelp.

“Hush,” Antigua said urgently. “You doesn’t want Young Missy coming back, does you?”

Sophie clenched her jaw and tried to stop crying. “I’m sorry.”

“For what? For telling the truth? I ain’t surprised. I ain’t never heard of such foolishness since Compair Lapin met Tar Baby. Come on, now.” She helped Sophie up and held her steady when she swayed dizzily. “Aunt Winney’ll fix you up. You just lean on me.”

Up in Old Missy’s dressing room, Aunt Winney clucked and shook her head. “Sounds like quite a licking. Not that she ain’t got it coming.”

Sophie, who’d just about pulled herself together, fell apart again.

Aunt Winney reached for her stick and hauled herself painfully to her feet. “T’aint no good carrying on that-a-way. What’s done is done. I reckon you best come up yonder so’s I can take a look at you. Don’t want Missy Caro coming in and getting all exercised. Antigua, you can help me up them stairs. I swan, they gets steeper ever day.”

The three of them crept up the attic stairs, Antigua dragging ruthlessly on the old woman’s arm.

“You jumpy as a bird on a cat’s head,” Aunt Winney said.

“Miss Liza waiting for me, and I still gots to find Peru. One licking’s enough for one day. There.” She heaved Aunt Winney up the last step. “Sophie, you take care, hear?” And she was gone.

Aunt Winney sat Sophie down and helped her ease the yellow dress from her shoulders.

“Could be worse,” she said, poking painfully at Sophie’s back. “You ain’t cut more’n a lick. In Old Massa’s day, I sees mens cain’t hardly stand, they’s cut so bad, hoeing cane while the overseer watch to make sure they keeps working.” She shook her head. “Them was bad days, but they over now, and so’s your whupping. I gots some ointment Africa give me will take the fire out of it.”

The ointment smelled of herbs and stung like fire ants. Sophie hissed at the pain, but she managed not to cry out. Aunt Winney wrapped her ribs with a torn-up apron, helped her dress, and sent her down to finish her task.

When she got to the library, the fire screen was gone, the books stacked neatly. Sophie painfully replaced them on the shelves in alphabetical order. She wasn’t tempted to open a single one.

That night, she dreamed about Mrs. Charles, fanged like a great, pale snake, biting at her back as she fled up endless steps. Whoever she ran to — Aunt Enid, Papa, Old Missy, Mama — slapped a rawhide strip against a giant hand and grinned at her. She woke to the airless dressing room, the throbbing of her back, and an overpowering sense of helplessness. When she finally went back to sleep, she dreamed she was with the Creature in the summerhouse, dressed up in her blue gingham shirtwaist and eating candy from one of Grandmama’s gold-rimmed plates.

The Creature said, “You ain’t got good sense. But it ain’t nowhere writ down that good sense always the best guide to follow. You make a good choice, young Sophie.”

“Is that the end of the story?” Sophie asked eagerly. “Can I go home now?”

“Bless you, child, that just an incident. The real story just starting.”

Thanks to Africa’s ointment, the welts on Sophie’s back faded quickly.
The welts on her mind faded, too, though not entirely. Sophie had had lessons before in keeping her head down and her expression pleasant. This one was just harder than most.

Still, there were times when acting like she didn’t have a thought in her head was just not possible.

About a week after the whipping, with the family expected in a few days and everybody’s nerves in rags, Old Missy sent Sophie down to Oak Cottage with a message for Miss Liza. She wasn’t in the garden and she wasn’t in the parlor, so Sophie went to look her bedroom. The door was shut. Sophie knocked and went in.

And there was Miss Liza, parading her white gauze ballgown in front of the long lookingglass. She’d cut out the neck of her gown so low she was in danger of falling right out of it. Her eyes met Sophie’s in the mirror, and her face blazed furious scarlet.