The Homecoming (10 page)

“Not rightly yet, Mister London.”

“Who’s looking?”

“Mister Coglin’s men, I believe.”

“With the dogs?”

“Not yet, Mister London. Those dogs is unruly in the chase and tend to do damage. Don’t want no damage done to the stock, you always says.”

Teague nodded, dismissed him with a wave, and went slowly up the steps and across the creaking boards to the open doors. The front hall was empty, but the house stank of sickness and death. In keeping with the ancient custom, the great gilded mirror in the front hall had been draped with black cloth, as had all the other mirrors in the house.

The Irish believed that the spirit of the newly dead would enter an uncovered mirror, and live there, in between the two worlds, trapped forever.

So the mirrors were all draped.

Teague drew in a breath and held it.

Death
.

The house reeked of death and dying. It flowed like a miasma down the main staircase and pooled around his boots. He glanced into the music room and saw that it was still infested by Mr. Aukinlek. He exhaled, smacked the dust off his jodhpurs, scraped his boots on the brush bars by the doors, and went looking for his tobacco pouch.

A few minutes after midnight Teague was sitting in a cane rocker on the gallery outside the Jasmine Room, still in his riding clothes, his blue jacket hanging off the chair rail behind him. He was smoking a bent briar full of latakia, his boots propped up against the railing.

Through the open glass doors behind him he could hear the soft voices of the women tending to Anora, and the singsong monotony of Aukinlek’s voice as he administered the Last Rites, and under that Anora’s fretful murmuring as they wiped her body down with vinegar sponges and dabbed at her swollen lips with ice.

He pulled in a wheezing breath, shook his big shaggy head. Even the smoke from his pipe couldn’t quite cover the smell of a sickroom.

He pushed himself up out of the cane rocker and walked a short way down the gallery, his spurs clanking, the old boards groaning under his weight, passing by very close to Kate, who was standing in the shadows by the French doors. Kate smelled the tobacco on him as he passed, and the rank sweat in his clothes.

Teague was a big, thick man, well over six feet and two hundred pounds, and most of it was still muscle. But he was feeling his years
tonight. Their weight lay heavy on him, the necessary things that had been done, and the troubles that had come of them.

And there was something about the gallery tonight that troubled him. He felt a
presence
in it, felt that he was being watched, appraised, and not by a loving eye. He was being
judged
.

His conscience, perhaps? Not likely. It never had before, and he had given it a great deal of cause. He shrugged this feeling off, dismissed it.

At the corner of the gallery he put his shoulder against the pillar and looked out into the night, feeling the life of Hy Brasail Plantation in the dark all around, the steamy heat lying over it like a woolen blanket.

It was too hot for sleep, so most of the people were gathered under the cottonwood trees by the horse paddock, the red glow of their cheroots flaring up in the dark. There were girls down by the Mississippi singing “Shall We Gather at the River” as they washed themselves. Somewhere belowstairs a brat was grizzling. The whining turned into sobbing and then rose up into a grating howl that was abruptly cut off by a meaty smack.

Under the live oak branches fireflies flickered through the hanging shreds of moss. A faint breeze was rolling in off the river, bringing the fertile aroma of saw grass and river mud. The shack windows glimmered with lantern light. Wood smoke drifted in the dark and he could hear the faint tinkling of a mandolin coming from the overseer’s house on the far side of the peach orchard. Out by the stables came a deep, trumpeting whinny, followed by a booming crack as Tecumseh kicked out at the timbers of his box stall.

He heard the gallery boards creaking behind him and turned to see a black shape standing in the shadows, a sliver of yellow light lying on her cheek, her eyes hidden in the dark.

Talitha.

He stepped away from the gallery railing, moving into the shadows with her.

“What the hell are you doing up here?”

Talitha spoke, a throaty whisper.

“She still lives?”

“She does,” said Teague, in a hoarse, angry whisper, keeping his distance from the girl. “How can this be?”

Talitha moved closer to Teague, stepping into the shaft of light from the window. Teague looked into her almond-shaped eyes, her half-open lips, the way the simple cotton shift lay on her rounded body, her high
breasts, her taut nipples under the thin fabric. He could smell her and his blood began to rise up. Talitha was like a sickness to him. Even in a slave cot she was the devil to pay.

“I don’t know. No one ever lasted this long.”

“Where have you been?”

A silence, and then a flash of white as she smiled up at him.

“Why? Did Mister London miss me?”

More bloody insolence.

“Answer the question.”

“I been over by Thibodaux,” she said, with a sly tone. “In our secret place. I been waiting. I thought you’d come looking.”

“While Anora’s dying and the house is in a shambles?”

“You come before, Mister London. You come lots of times.”

“You have drawn attention, girl. And now you come sneaking up the staircase at night. What if you had been seen?”

“I know how to not get seen, Mister London. All good slave childs know how to do that.”

“It was stupid to come here. It was stupid to run off that same night. It looks poorly to the people. Already there is talk. You drew attention. Do you still have the animal?”

She lifted her hands into the light. She was holding a wicker sewing basket, the lid held down with scarlet ribbons.

“Yes. But now your lady is surrounded by the house women. There is no way to bring it close to her again. In this heat, in the dark, it’s dangerous to handle. It will strike at anything on a night like this.”

Teague was silent for a time, listening to the voices from the sickroom, someone singing “Annie Laurie” in a childish voice. They sang it to her when she was asleep. He came back to Talitha.

“She is dying. There is no need to take the risk. You should not be up here. Go down through the summer kitchen. Wait in the box maze by the jupiter willow. I’ll come down to you.”

“Soon? I’ll make you forget the lady again.”

“Don’t chide me,” said Teague, his temper rising up. Talitha held out the wicker basket, shook it teasingly. Teague stepped back. The animal inside the basket made a sound like a kettle and the wicker sides bulged as it coiled.

Talitha showed her teeth.

“You
better
come soon,” she said with fire, “or maybe I’ll take me another. Mister Telesphore, he been looking at me that way.”

Teague raised a hand, but she slipped away from the blow, making no sound at all. Teague watched the darker shadows where she had disappeared for a long minute, thinking about her. Kate stood nearby, listening to him wheeze, smelling his scent, tobacco and leather and sweat, thinking about him.

Teague felt a chilly hand on the back of his neck and shook his head like a heavy horse. Then he turned and walked back up to the open French doors, passing close by Kate and, it seemed to her, avoiding the space in which she stood.

He stopped at the threshold, took a deep breath, and stepped into the sickroom.

It was lit by candles set on chairs all around Anora’s bed, and one of the houseboys—Cutnose, or one of his brothers—was sitting in a corner, tugging on a cord connected to a fan of embroidered cloth suspended from the beams. The fan moved ponderously back and forth, making the candle flames flicker and sending crazy shadows dancing around the walls.

In the bed Anora was a small doll-like figure, shrunken and emaciated. Her eyes were closed and her rich black hair—all that was left of her beauty—lay fanned out in a shining arc on the satin pillow. Her yellow hands were folded on top of the coverlet and a rosary made of peridot lay tangled through her fingers.

The house women—Flora, Jezrael, and Constant—looked up from their rosaries as Teague came into the room. Mr. Aukinlek had his back to the windows and did not hear Teague step in. He was reading a Psalm—“Oh Lord let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul—”

“Enough,” said Teague, cutting through the prayers. “Leave us. All of you.”

The women rose without a word, Cutnose too, and all seemed to shimmer out of the room. Aukinlek turned to say something portentous, but a look at Teague’s face reduced him to a stammer and he too was gone. Teague came over and looked down at Anora—who had not opened her eyes or stirred in any way—and then he glanced around the room.

The Jasmine Room was named so because Anora had commissioned an artist from Baton Rouge to come and hand-paint a bower of jasmine onto the ceiling and halfway down the walls. It was a light and airy room, with tall sash windows that opened onto the gallery. The carpet and most
of the furniture had been cleared away to make room for the daybed and the salt bath and a long trestle table littered with washbasins and fresh cloths.

All that was left of the original furnishings was an ancient mirror in a gilt baroque frame—not a large mirror, no more than thirty inches on a side, but it was precious to Anora because it had come down to her through the Mercer line and had once been in her grandmother’s bedroom in their town house in Dublin.

It was said to have come originally from Paris, where the Mercers had once been the Du Mêrcièrs. This was before the Terror, and few of that branch had escaped the guillotine. The mirror was all that was left of those times, and so it was a treasure to Anora, a fragment of all that had been lost by the Mercers and the Gwinnetts over the centuries.

In keeping with the custom, the mirror was draped tonight, a stark black rectangle floating in the middle of a field of painted jasmine.

Teague pulled up a rickety wooden chair and sat down on it. The frame creaked under his weight as he leaned back and crossed his legs. Anora’s breathing quickened and in a moment she opened her eyes, glancing around the room with a frightened expression until she settled on his face.

The frightened look changed into a calm, direct regard, although the light in her hazel eyes was dimmed and her face was nearly unrecognizable.

She moved her lips but no sound came out, only a series of dry clicks. Teague poured water into a silver cup and held it to her lips, using his left hand to lift her up so that she could sip at the rim. Her body was as hot as a cookstove and her linen tunic was soaked.

She managed to swallow the water and Teague laid her back down. She closed her eyes for a time and then looked at him again.

“I’ve been asking for you, Lon … Where have you been?”

“I had to go up to see Telesphore. Business.”

“I saw … I saw you ride away. You never looked back … but then you never do.”

A pause.

“Why were you asking for me, Anora?”

Another long wait while Anora seemed to go deep inside herself and then struggle back to the surface.

“The … girls, Lon. Will you see to them? Especially Cora. She won’t … understand.”

Teague sighed and held his temper.

“If you mean will I see to their interests, your godfather has taken great care to do that himself. Their money is as safe as yours has been. Little good it has done for us, for our affairs, but that was John Gwinnett Mercer’s wish.”

Anora closed her eyes and was silent for a time. Teague watched her chest rising and falling under the sheet. It looked like a bird was caught in the fabric, a febrile flutter only.

“You … will have the tontine, Lon, when I am gone. That will see your … affairs set aright. What I wish … what I … 
require
 … of you … is that you
care
for them, Lon, as you care for Jubal and Tyree. Cora is only six, and Eleanor not yet eight. They will need you. You have a great capacity to love, Lon … as you once loved me … let them see your love for them. You are their father. They are your blood as well as mine.”

Teague had already decided to send Cora and Eleanor to Niceville, to live with the Mercers or the Gwinnetts. He had no use and no patience for wet-nursing a pair of useless infants, especially since their resources were so well sequestered. As that was also John Gwinnett Mercer’s work, let him bear the burden of raising them up.

As for Jubal and Tyree, at thirteen and fifteen they were finally at a useful age and after they had gone to Trinity in Dublin and then away for their Grand Tour of Europe, they could come back as ripened men and see to the affairs of Hy Brasail. But there was no need to speak of this to Anora.

“I will do right by the girls, Anora.”

“
Our
girls, Lon. Yours and mine. I have your word?”

“My word, Anora. They will not want for care or good company. That I pledge.”

This appeared to satisfy her.

She was quiet for a time, and the sound of nightjars and cicadas seemed to fill the room. Her skeletal fingers twitched at the peridot rosary in a fretful way, but her face was still. The chair creaked as he got to his feet. She opened her eyes as he stood by the bed, looking down at her.

“Will you kiss me, Lon?”

He hesitated, and then leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. Her skin was hot and damp. She lifted a bony hand and clutched at his cravat, pulling
him close. She lifted her head, kissed him on the lips, and fell back, her eyes fixed on his.

She did not release him.

Her lips moved. She was saying something. He leaned closer. She swallowed and tried again.

“You have killed me, Lon.”

He pulled back but she held him.

“No. Do not lie to my face. This is my last hour and there is no time for any more lies. When it bit me, I saw it, slipping away across the comforter. It was a harlequin coral. I know who put it there. I know why she put it there. So do you.”

She released him and reached for the rosary again, her eyes closing.