Amber House: Neverwas (14 page)

for the man. Some held the hands of their children. Many of

them, I saw, wore some bit of yellow. They stood silently, a ring

of dark faces, bitter and determined.

The police seemed to reach some unspoken agreement. The

beaten man was lifted and put in the back of a police car. The ring

of watchers parted slightly to let the police retreat.

N

I held Papa’s hand tight as we walked along the dock on Spa Creek. The
sailors and dockworkers all stopped what they were doing to nod and back
out of Papa’s way. Papa owned both the ships tied up here, and many
more besides. He was the boss of all of them.

And of the greasy man who walked with us, Mr. Carruthers. I did not
like Mr. Carruthers.

“Sold an even dozen already for top dollar,” Carruthers said, as though
Papa should pat him on the head. “Clean the rest up for auction. Lost
twenty-three in the crossing. Still have —”

Papa held up a hand, stopped him. He opened the book he carried

tucked under his him. He made careful notes in his beautiful handwriting. I loved Papa’s handwriting — like a pea-vine growing and curling
across the paper. “Still have twelve bucks, ten females, and six children
over the age of five,” Carruthers finished. “We will make a good profit.”

At the dock’s edge, amongst a stack of crates and barrels, a raggedy pile
of worn sailcloth moved ever-so-slightly. I let go Papa’s hand and went
closer. There was an unpleasant odor that grew stronger as I drew near.

“Here, come away from there,” Mr. Carruthers told me, but I merely
looked at him coldly. I did not take directions from him. “ ’Scuse me,
Missy, begging pardon, but you don’t want no part of that there.”

o59

Had it been ought but Mr. Carruthers, I should have minded him, but
instead, even under Papa’s watchful eye, I bent quickly and threw back
the cloth. “Merciful Lord!” I said, horrified, and crossed myself to ward
off evil.

A female slave lay there, a tumble of limbs, her face battered and
bloody.

“Now see there, Missy. You shoulda oughter’ve listened to me.” Mr.

Carruthers was pleased with my horror. “That one’s dead, Capt’n

Dobson, sir.”

“I saw the cloth move,” I said, my eyes narrowing.

“ ’Twas the wind,” he said.

Her arm flopped out; her fingers brushed my boot. Swollen eyes opened
to slits and I saw that she saw me. Her split lips moved and a word sighed
out, so soft that only I heard. “Dee-da-ra,” she said. My name.

She had touched my boot and knew my name.

“I want her, Papa,” I announced.

“Deirdre, I will find you a healthy girl, a smiling, pretty girl,” Papa
said reasonably, coaxingly. “This one is beyond our help.”

“I want
her
,” I said, stamping my foot. And Papa sighed and made it so.

They loaded her onto a make-shift pallet in the back of our skiff.

When we arrived home, I told Absalom to handle her gently, and he
smiled and said he would. I insisted they take her up to the small room
beside mine. “I want to make sure she is cared for properly.” And Papa
sighed and made it so.

CH A P T ER SE V E N

K

I woke thinking about that black woman driven almost to death

in — a slave ship. I knew a couple of my ancestors had been slave

traders. One of them in fact had a daughter named Deirdre. Odd

that I should dream of her so specifically.

Teeth brushed, hair combed, I headed for the stairs. Just

before the balcony, I noted a rectangle of light where there

shouldn’t have been one — someone had left open the door to

the Captain’s suite again. It was irritating. I had repeatedly asked everyone to
please
leave that door closed.

I strode for the open door, brisk steps that got slower and

slower. An unpleasant feeling grew in me that I was trespassing,

that I should go no farther. I stopped near the opening, looking in.

It was a strangely oppressive view. The Captain had been one

of my two slave-trading ancestors, married to the woman that

my dream child Deirdre grew up to become. The room was suit-

able, somehow, to be the resting place of a slaver. It was decidedly masculine, dressed with dark green and oxblood red fabrics. An

oil painting of a ship in a storm hung over a fireplace. The walls

were decorated with a collection of swords that came from all

over the world. And every surface was littered with scrimshaw —

the teeth of slaughtered whales carved by the sailors who had

harvested their oil.

I stood there, wavering, wanting to tug the door closed, but

unwilling to put my hand out. I heard a
thunk
that sounded like it came from the middle of the room, then heard it again. And

again. Metal on wood. I wondered what it could be.

o61

I changed my mind. I would leave the door be. Why bother to

close it when someone would just open it again. I turned again

to head for the stairs.

A flicker of movement caught my eye. A spider scuttled

across the carpet. Its body was a golden orb — a Good Mother,

the species was called. She ran under the door of the next

bedroom.

I shuddered, slightly nauseated. I hated all bugs and creepy

crawlers, but I hated spiders more, and hated Good Mothers

most of all. They were poisonous and their bite never really

healed. I remembered the first time I’d encountered one, when

I was Sammy’s age. I’d wanted to go puddle-stomping with

Jackson up Amber House’s front drive. So I’d found my boots

and stuck my hand inside one to make sure I hadn’t left a

sock stuffed in the bottom. My fingers brushed against some

crackly straws that I was going to fish out, but then Jackson

appeared and shouted at me to drop the boot. When it hit the

ground, a Good Mother plopped out and tried to drag herself

away on broken legs. I could still remember the sick feeling

little-me had, watching her. Then Jackson smashed her under

his shoe.

If I let this little monster get away, then maybe the next day

I’d find it in my shoe or bed — or, worse, in Sammy’s. I pulled

off a slipper and made myself open the door she’d run under.

The room was another one I rarely entered. It was plain com-

pared to the rest of Amber House — a bed, a chest of drawers,

a crucifix centered over the bed, a painting of two children. The

room always felt cold to me, perhaps because it was so sparsely

furnished. No one used it. It waited in shadows, its curtains

always drawn.

The spider sat in the rectangle of light that fell in through the

doorway, poised and ready to run. I held my breath and lifted

my slipper.

62 O

As if she could sense my intentions, the spider was off and

scuttling, freaky-fast. I went after her, bent over, smacking the

floor with my slipper, missing, missing again. I clenched my teeth

to keep from shrieking. She darted under the darker shadow of

the bureau, then dashed out into the open space beside the bed.

I swung the slipper again, but she leapt up onto one of the legs of

the bed’s headboard and ran up its curves. At the top of the bed-

post, almost at eye level, she paused. She was staring at me.

I raised the slipper again.

The spider jumped onto the wall, and scrambled up it, duck-

ing behind the wide wooden crucifix. Standing as far away as I

could, I nudged the bottom of the cross with my slipper.

Two things fell loose and down behind the bed’s headboard.

One was the spider. I bent, looked below the bed, and saw her

running for the far side. I darted around the end of it, only to

spot her scuttling up the wall into the window curtains. I gave

up then. I wasn’t poking around the curtains in search of a poi-

sonous spider. I’d probably find a few.

I stopped on my way out the door. Walked back to the bed.

Bent down to look for the other thing that had fallen from behind

the crucifix.

And found a slip of paper with a familiar spidery script.

Fate is in thy hands.

I stared at it. Again the sense of a poem tugged at my mind,

like a singsong nursery rhyme I couldn’t quite hear.
“We chase . . .

drawn on . . . toward mystery . . . hushed . . . wake” and “rise to meet.”

It seemed like my fragments should be in it too. I could almost

hear it.

I went back to my room and opened the little dollhouse. I

spread out the paper pieces already there, nudging them into

a column, adding the piece from behind the cross. I changed

them up, and changed them up again, until I was satisfied with

my ordering:

o63

seek the point where past and future meet

Fate is in thy hands

Make all good amends

choose it all again

That’s right
, I thought, but didn’t know what I meant.

The missing pieces hovered, like a name on the tip of my

tongue — almost ready to be spoken, but somehow always slip-

ping away. Why had all these fragments come to me? It couldn’t be

just a coincidence, could it? There had to be some meaning there.

But then I rolled my eyes.
Are you out of your mind? Someone is

sending you a message? Get a grip.

I closed the little house and headed for the kitchen. And

noticed with another flicker of irritation at the perversity of it

that now the door to the Captain’s rooms had been closed.

The walk down the stairs and through the entry was oddly

silent without the constant tick of the grandfather clock, ban-

ished to the east wing. It seemed as if the house was missing its

heartbeat. The more I listened, the more the silence massed

around me. I felt alone, like the world had emptied while I slept,

and I had been left behind.

It’s just the house and me
, I thought irrationally.

I paused at the kitchen’s swinging door, my hands pressed

against the wood, hoping Sam was on the other side.

The door swung into me and I screeched. “Lordy, child,”

Rose exclaimed, jumping back a little, “don’t stand behind a

push-through door.”

“Sorry,” I said, recovering myself.

She held the door open for me. “Come in. Saved you some

johnnycakes.” She went to the oven, pulled out a plate, and put

it on a mat on the table.

“Thank you,” I said. “That was really nice.”

She snorted. “Didn’t want you making a fresh mess in my

clean kitchen.”

64 O

“I try to clean up after myself, Mrs. Valois. I hope I’m not —”

She shook her head and leaned against the counter, not look-

ing at me but speaking with sudden gentleness. “You do fine,

child. You always have. I shouldn’t have suggested otherwise.”

It was another one of those moments — seeing a person from a

whole different perspective. Like the prickly Rose I thought I knew

wasn’t who she was at all. Like everybody had entire casts of char-

acters inside them, but only showed most people one or two.

I didn’t know what to say. Feebly, I settled on shifting the

subject. “Where is everyone?”

“Your folks went down into Annapolis to get the last things

they need for the party tonight. Sammy’s out with your aunt.”

I nodded. “Thanks.” I dug into the pancakes, immersed in

jealousy:
Sam is always with Maggie.

A crash startled me. Rose had dropped the plate she’d been

drying. I jumped up. “Can I help?”

She bent over the mess as if she had a stitch in her side, with

tears rolling down her face. I felt dazed, helpless. The outside

door opened, and Jackson came in with an armload of firewood.

When he saw Rose, he dropped the wood on the hearth and took

her around the shoulders, trying to guide her toward a chair.

“Sit, Gran. I’ll clean it up.”

Embarrassed, she brushed him off. “I just need to rest a spell.

Make sure you get after the slivers with a wet cloth.” She averted

her face and pushed through the swinging door.

He stood there a moment, watching the door make smaller

and smaller arcs. Then he went to the closet for the whisk

broom and dustpan.

I bent down to pick up the biggest pieces. He crouched beside

me. “I got it.”

I went back to my chair and awkwardly shoved into my mouth

a bite I didn’t know if I could swallow. The pieces of china

shrieked as Jackson swept them together into the dustpan

o65

“It wasn’t the plate, was it?” I asked.

He shook his head. “December twenty-first,” he said. “The

day my grandfather — died.” The broken pieces shrieked again

as he dumped them in the trash.

“Oh,” I said.

He stood there a moment, contemplating the dead plate.

“Your grandmother used to get so upset when something got

broken. She’d say, ‘Every little thing has its own story to tell,

even if we can’t hear it. When it’s broken, those stories are gone

forever.’ ” He put the trash can back under the sink. “Anyone

ever tell you how my grandfather died?”

I shook my head.

“He was part of the Equality movement back in the seventies.