The Splendour Falls (33 page)

I made a so-so gesture with my hand. ‘Mother said we had the same temperament. I guess that explains why they got divorced.'

Reverend Watkins chuckled, as if in spite of himself, then said kindly, ‘You've lost a lot in two years.'

‘I'm impressed,' I said, letting him know that I recognized a leading statement when I heard it. ‘That was a very smooth segue.'

His grimace was rueful. ‘Not so smooth you didn't catch it.'

‘I'm very shrink-savvy.' I liked that he owned up to it right away, though. Points to him for being candid. ‘Did Paula tell you about the nightmare?'

‘Yes.' He nodded, folding his arms, as if settling in for a chat. ‘Except, I gather you weren't actually asleep?'

I chose my words carefully, not wanting to lie in a churchyard. ‘I'd
been
asleep. I'd gone down to let my dog out for a pee, then came back up. I could have been only half conscious, moving on autopilot. Haven't you ever been dreaming on your feet?'

He acknowledged that with a nod. ‘Paula's just worried about you, that's all.'

‘Well, I've got a lot on my mind.' Like wondering if something was up at Maddox Landing, and why people kept bringing up ghosts, and what the TTC – or maybe just Addie – was doing in the summerhouse so late. But that wasn't what he was asking in his roundabout way.

‘Maybe my half-sleeping brain dreamed up a girl jumping into the river,' I said, then lifted my hand in an oath. ‘But whatever the reason, I promise it is
not
because I'm contemplating doing the same thing.'

After studying me for a long moment, the reverend nodded. ‘All right. You've satisfied me and kept your word to your cousin. I'll let you get on with what you really came for.' Smiling slightly, he nodded to a fenced rectangle of ground. ‘Colonel Davis is over there.'

He'd taken me by surprise again. ‘Either you are psychic' – scary thought – ‘or I am
really
transparent.'

With a soft chuckle, the reverend stepped off the path, heading for the plot. ‘Sylvie, everyone who grew up in this town – which is about ninety-five per cent of the current population – at least half believes the Colonel haunts that house.
I
can't believe you didn't come to see his grave sooner.'

I laughed, briefly but honestly. ‘I thought it would be at Old Cahawba, so I went there first.'

We reached the spot where a huge oak tree shaded generations of my ancestors. The men had a lot of military titles: Major Jack, Captain Samuel and even a lowly lieutenant. He died in 1969 at the age of twentyone. He hadn't had a chance to rise to the ranks of his predecessors.

There were a lot of children. No immunizations in 1856. Lots of women dying and being buried with their infants. Motherhood was a dangerous occupation.

‘It's so weird,' I said, a little numbly, ‘to go from no roots – that I knew of – to all this.'

Circling the plot, I read more names, saving the big monument on the corner for last.
COLONEL JOSIAH DAVIS, CSA
1821–75. The Confederate army was ten years gone by the time he died, but he'd had it etched in stone beside his name.

The inscription below was odd:
I WATCH, AND WAIT, FOR THY RETURN IN SPLENDOUR
.

A frisson ran down my back, as if that word –
watch
– had touched a nerve. I'd been certain, from the beginning, that the figure at the window was watching for something.

‘What does that mean?' I asked the reverend. ‘Is it scripture?'

‘Not really. It could be a reference to the Second Coming, when Christ will return to earth in glory and gather the faithful. Which I'm sure Colonel Davis considered himself.' We shared a smile at my ancestor's expense. ‘But local lore,' Reverend Watkins continued, ‘passed down from those who knew him, says it's probably a more secular reference.'

‘Oh. “The South shall rise again”? That kind of thing?'

‘Precisely.'

‘I hope he's not still holding his breath on that one.'

The reverend laughed. ‘Oh, there are plenty of living people who are still holding their breath on that.'

‘How can they?' I asked. ‘All things considered.'

‘Well, as we're taught here in the South, the War Between the States wasn't about slavery, it was about states' rights. But that's an ugly history lesson for such a beautiful day.'

‘I suppose it is.' I read over the nearest gravestones, still searching. I'd wanted to see the Colonel's marker, to satisfy my curiosity. But my other purpose was to find the information I couldn't seem to locate in the house.

‘I see Mary Maddox Davis, his second wife,' I said. ‘And this must be the son from that marriage. But where is his first wife? And the children from that marriage?'

‘You do realize that was before my time,' the reverend said with a straight face. ‘But they say his first wife specified in her will that she wanted to be sent back to South Carolina, where she was from.'

‘That was unusual, wasn't it?'

He confirmed that with a nod. ‘Wives are virtually always buried in their husband's family plot.'

‘Is that why there are no daughters here?' I pointed to the section with the Colonel's children. ‘I see sons that must have died in the war. But except for one infant, there're no girls.'

An uncomfortable expression passed over the reverend's face. ‘There is one. But it's not with the others.'

He pointed, sighting along the Colonel's grand marker, which was canted, not at a nice forty-five degrees, appropriate for the corner spot, but at an odd
angle, as if he, in death, had turned to look at something.

I walked forward from the monument. Trying to stay a straight course through the gravestones was tricky, and there was a point where the ground abruptly dipped and came back up, as if there had been a thin trench there. And just beyond that, there was a small, plain stone, covered with dark stains from the elements.

HANNAH DEIRDRE DAVIS
BORN DECEMBER 21, 1852
DIED JUNE 20, 1870

There were lilacs growing over her grave.

My heart gave a pang, as if I'd just learned of a old friend's death. Which was absurd – I'd known Lilac Girl was long gone. But it was different seeing her grave, knowing from the dates that it was
her
thoughts I'd been reading, her path I'd imagined down the streets of Cahawba.

Reverend Watkins had followed me from the Davis plot, and I turned to him, emotion making me abrupt. ‘Why is she way over here?'

‘You see that?' He gestured to the spot where I'd almost tripped, where the shallow trench was all but hidden by the grass. ‘There used to be a line of shrubs marking the edge of the churchyard. The edge of hallowed ground, to use an outdated term. When the cemetery started filling up, the hedges came down, so it could expand.'

My heart slowly sank with an awful suspicion. ‘So, Hannah was originally buried outside the cemetery?'

After a brief pause, during which he seemed to debate what he was going to share with me, the reverend nodded. ‘Apparently she committed suicide.'

‘ “Apparently”?' He was watching me for a reaction, so I tried not to give him one. ‘She must have, if they wouldn't bury her on holy ground. That's the punishment, right?'

‘That would be a reason, yes.'

‘How did she do it?' I asked, even though, in the pit of my stomach, I already knew the answer.

Watching my face, the reverend told me. ‘She threw herself into the river and drowned.'

R
everend Watkins looked suddenly alarmed, and he took me firmly by the arm, as if he thought I might pass out. Which, to be honest, I felt like I might.

‘Are you all right, Sylvie?'

‘Yeah,' I said, not even convincing myself.

‘Let's go sit down.' He directed me to a bench under one of the trees. He didn't speak or prompt me, just waited for me to say something.

‘Was that some kind of test?' I demanded, anger surging hot under my skin now that the cold of shock had passed. ‘I saw –
dreamed
about a girl jumping in the
river, and you wanted to see how I'd react to Hannah's grave?'

‘No. Not at all.' The reverend sounded genuinely contrite. ‘I didn't think about the similarity until it was too late to change the subject. And once you'd figured out she committed suicide, I couldn't very well lie about it.'

I chewed on the quandary this posed, wavering in my resolution that my psyche wasn't making this up. Could I have heard this rumoured about somewhere? I was sure Shawn and Kimberly hadn't said anything about a girl in the woods.

The reverend was watching me warily, and I slid a guarded look towards him. ‘If I ask you a question, will you promise not to read anything into it?'

‘I promise I'll try.'

‘Do you believe in ghosts?'

He didn't seem surprised; I suppose it wasn't exactly a non sequitur, given our earlier discussion. ‘I believe our souls go on to some other plane. Heaven, I hope. Would
you
want to stick around here?'

‘Not really.' But the Colonel might, waiting for the South to rise again. Looking between the two markers, the grand column of the Colonel's and the small, worn stone of his daughter's, I asked, ‘What made her do it, do you think?'

It wasn't
quite
rhetorical, but I was surprised he had an answer. ‘The story goes that she had a suitor that her father didn't approve of. The Colonel refused to let them marry, and the guy left town. When Hannah realized he wasn't coming back, she threw herself off the
embankment. The reverend here at the time tried to smooth things over for the girl, suggesting that it had been an accident. But it didn't fly, at least not with the Colonel. And you see where he had her buried.'

My heart ached for Hannah, and for the cold lack of sympathy from her one family member. I could do the maths. All her brothers must have been gone by then, killed in the war. ‘What a hateful bastard.'

Watkins didn't correct me, though he said sympathetically, ‘The reverend kept excellent diaries; he implied that Colonel Davis was never quite right in the head after he came back from the war.'

‘Whatever happened to her sweet-heart?' I asked. Did Hannah love him so much that life wasn't worth living? Did he betray her? There was more story here. It was a far, faint resonance, like a bell rung on a distant hill.

‘No one knows. He was never heard from again.' Reverend Watkins let that sit a moment, then checked his watch. ‘I have an appointment to give the convocation this evening at the high school graduation. But I hate leaving this on such a sad note, especially when I've really enjoyed talking to you, Sylvie.'

Attempting to shake off my disquiet, I arched an eyebrow. ‘Discussing my family's sordid history, you mean?'

‘Every family has skeletons in the closet.' His smile took on a teasing slant. ‘And what about you? Are you feeling more peaceful of mind and spirit?'

My own tone turned droll. ‘I'm feeling like Paula might give me some peace now, if that counts.'

Chuckling, he rose and gave me a hand up. ‘It counts for something.'

I glanced back towards Hannah's grave. ‘Who planted the lilacs for her, I wonder. Did the reverend say?'

Watkins followed my gaze. ‘I don't recall. I'll find Reverend Holzphaffel's journals and see if he mentions them. I read his diaries when I first came here, to get a sense of the history of the place, then put them in a safe place.' He gave me a wry look as we took the flagstone path towards the front of the church. ‘He didn't mince words in his opinions of people.'

I bet that would be a lot more interesting than William S. Davis's book. As he opened the cemetery gate for me, I said honestly, ‘Thank you for your time, Reverend Watkins.'

‘Whenever you want to talk – about the present or the past' – he grinned – ‘just stop by. I'm almost always here.' We'd reached my bike and he asked, ‘Are you all right to ride back? I noticed you were limping a little bit back there.'

‘Just on the uneven ground.' I looked down automatically. ‘After two days of bicycling, I'm surprised it's not worse.'

‘Well, I'm glad it's not.' Reverend Watkins held out his hand. I put mine in his to shake it, but he held my fingers in a strong, sure grip. Looking me in the eye, he said, ‘God bless you, Sylvie.'

The words startled me a bit. They were strange to hear when I hadn't sneezed. But they had meaning for him, and that gave them a sort of power. ‘Thank you,
Reverend,' I said, a little formally in return, then smiled. ‘I probably need all the help I can get.'

The ride back to Bluestone Hill passed in a haze. Despite my assurances to the reverend, by the time I reached the turnoff to the house, I
was
tired and sore – and strangely disheartened. The shock of learning about Hannah's suicide was settling in and wearing me down.