Amber House: Neverwas (33 page)

doing is important, but we just can’t talk about it. You under-

stand?” He nodded. “Shall we go up those” — I pointed to the

iron stairs — “and come down the main ones so it’ll look like

Maggie was telling the truth?”

He nodded again. He was willing to do that for Maggie.

I turned to Jackson. “Will you — can you — come back?

Later?”

“I’ll come back.”

N

We were still eating Christmas for dinner. Leftover goose, pota-

toes, and gravy. I felt them all watching me: Dad, Mom, Maggie.

I put a smile on my face and tried to act normal. I talked anima-

tedly to Sam about going crabbing.

My father asked, “Where did you learn about crabbing, Sarah?”

For a moment, I couldn’t remember. And then I could.

o209

“Jackson taught me,” I said. “Some time ago.”

Afterward, I attempted to continue the hunt alone.

I climbed the stairs, wondering where to look next, questions

forming and re-forming in my head: Why was the coin relevant?

What had Deirdre done?

I went to the small room I knew to be Nanga’s. Perhaps she

would have some idea, some clue, some help to offer. I didn’t

know why I hadn’t thought to ask before.

I opened the door into the room and found myself standing

beside the Captain, so close I thought he must be able to feel me

next to him. He was dressed in shirtsleeves — no jacket or vest.

His face was rough with stubble; I had never seen him anything

but perfectly clean shaven. He wavered slightly on his feet, and I

guessed he must be drunk.

His cheek was marked with three parallel red stripes. He put

his fingers to them, then looked to see the tips wet with blood.

Nyangu was pressed into the corner of the room. She too was

bleeding, from a cut on her lip. “Kill me!” she yelled at him. “I

have no wish to live a slave. And I would rather die than let you

touch me.”

“I will kill you one day,” the Captain promised, “you and all

your line. An old hag warned me long ago to beware a black

witch and her witch seed.” He grabbed something hanging

around his neck, hidden beneath his shirt. “So every day I ask, ‘Is

today the day I can kill her?‘ And every day it tells me,
No
. But one day,” he said, “one day — our luck will change. And until

then, I have use for you.”

He started forward, and I backed out, closing the door.

I remembered then. Jackson was also descended from

the Captain.

N

210 O

I changed my mind about hunting alone. I hid in my room and

waited. I heard Maggie bring Sammy up to bed. I heard my par-

ents talking as they went room to room, turning out lights. I

heard the house grow quiet and still.

Then I slipped out and down the halls to the wrought-iron

landing, the spiral stair, the pool in the garden. To find Jackson

waiting, as always.

“Where to?” he said.

“That hidden stair in Heart House reminded me that there are

more.” I turned and started back, leading through the conserva-

tory to the door that opened on the west wing’s ground floor.

“Yeah?” he said, following. “I never had any idea.”

“You never foresaw us doing this?” I whispered, once inside

the house.

“No,” he whispered back. “I don’t see everything that is going

to happen in the future. Just like you don’t see everything that

happened in the past. It’s hit-and-miss.”

“So,” I said, struggling to get clear, “you don’t know for a fact

that what we’re doing is going to work.”

“I see that it
can
work, Sare. We can get there from here. But the future is never fixed. We make choices and the future

changes. The future can go in a hundred different directions.”

“Better ones?”

He was silent a moment. “Some of them.”

That was
so
not what I wanted to hear. “Then,” I said, “we

could
be making things worse.”

He stopped before the turn that would take us to the rear gal-

lery behind the library and kitchen. “We still have to choose.

Every choice changes the future. We just have to do our best to

choose unselfishly. ‘Act in good faith,’ as Gran says.”

I didn’t want noble advice; I wanted certainty.

“Look, Sare, one thing I can tell you: If you don’t act, if you

don’t choose, what lies ahead is
not good
for a lot of people. I o211

know you’re scared, but I think we just have to keep going. We’ll

never get there if we don’t keep going.”

He was right, of course. But I was filled with the bitterness of

uncertainty. If he could see the future, I wanted him to tell me

that everything was going to be all right. Like my parents used

to when I was little. I swallowed hard and started forward again.

He was right. We just had to keep going.

In the kitchen, I went to the strange little built-in, waist-high

cupboard next to the closet. It opened onto a panel full of latch-

ing drawers, each drawer shaped to hold a specific piece of silver

service. I felt blindly along the molding on the top of the cup-

board. “There’s a catch or lever hidden up here,” I said. “You

found it last time.”

“Weird,” he said. He thought a moment, then reached up and

shifted a small piece of wood with a
click
. The top edge of the panel of drawers popped a crack. We then were able to pull

the whole set of drawers forward and down on the hinges hid-

den on the bottom edge. The backside of the drawers inverted to

become steps, leading up to an entire staircase, concealed in the

recess of the wall beside the rough bricks of the kitchen and din-

ing room fireplaces.

“Wow,” Jackson said.

I steadied myself on the wall to start to climb, but then I saw

Fiona, white-haired and bent with age, pushing up the stairs

ahead of us, a bag over her arm. So we followed her up, paus-

ing to trip the lever that would close the cupboard behind us.

Ahead, Fiona hauled herself up onto the first landing and contin-

ued on to the next, and then passed silently into the darkness at

the top.

Into the hidden attic Jackson and I had found before in the

other time.

When we opened the old brass-bound door, I found Fiona

kneeling in the shadows, before an open trunk set on a faded

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rug. The hairs on my arms rose, because I remembered that

trunk from the other time. It had held memories better left

forgotten.

She placed things from her bag inside. When she was done,

she closed the lid but didn’t lock it. She lifted her head, looking

into the darkness. “Do you see? It is everything the house showed

me to bring.”

“Shall we open it?” Jackson said from behind.

“It’s full of bad things,” I told him. Partial images of echoes

rose in my mind, one after the other: blood splattering from the

scourging of Nanga’s back; a girl in blond ringlets forcing a baby

under water; Deirdre driving a blade into her husband’s chest.

The memories burned.

But still I had to see and touch the things that had been hidden

inside.

“Open it,” I said.

Jackson bent and lifted the lid. I made myself kneel in front of

the trunk.

I couldn’t remember specifically what had been in the box

before, the last time, but I knew there had been different items

than these. I saw a moth-eaten military jacket from another era.

A dagger. A goblet. A rosary. A razor. A whip handle. A leather

pouch. A pen and book. I didn’t think I could make myself touch

them. It didn’t matter that I didn’t remember them. I knew what

they were. Evils locked in a forbidden box.

A baby’s blanket, a soft knitted thing, peeked from the tangle.

I gritted my teeth. I pulled it free.

I saw two pale white hands shake the blanket out. Deirdre’s

hands. She was sitting by the hearth in the kitchen, spreading

the blanket on her lap. “Give her to me,” she said. “She and I shall sit by the fire while you fetch some dry clothes.”

Nanga was there too, holding a wet and dripping baby. A baby

I knew, somehow, had just been held at the bottom of a bucket of

o213

water. A baby I had once watched a little girl nearly drown,

before Nanga stopped her.

Nanga lay the baby in Deirdre’s lap and both women worked

to strip off the wet clothing. “She tried to kill my child,” Nyangu

said. “She knew what the gypsy told the Captain. They will kill

her. We will not be able to stop them.”

“I have a little money, Nanga, and friends in the north. I can

send you both to safety.”

But Nanga began to sob, a deep, wrenching keening that

brought me to tears. She gasped out words — “I cannot. I can-

not. But you will send her.”

I couldn’t bear to witness any more. I let the blanket go and

closed my eyes and made the vision stop.

“What was it?” Jackson asked.

“Nyangu had to send her baby away.” I shook my head. “But

she wouldn’t go with her.”

I looked in the trunk again, to see if there was anything I

could bear to touch. I saw a hat pin, gold and onyx, jabbed

through a piece of cloth.

The vision that came was at night. Outside on the front porch

of Amber House. A black woman, already noticeably pregnant,

crept by me, holding the pin. I had seen her before, twice —

guiding a group of slaves north to freedom, and giving birth to

a baby.

I looked left and saw where she was headed. A man had Maeve

pinned against the wall. She was struggling to get away from

him, but he had her arm twisted up behind her back. He kissed

her. Hard. A possessive, violent gesture. He leaned back far

enough to grip her bodice and tear.

But then Della had her arm around his throat and the hand

with the pin in it up against his head. “You feel this point in your ear, Mister? Best you keep still, ’cause if I jab a little deeper, you aren’t ever gonna be the same.”

214 O

The man let Maeve go and held very still. Maeve ran past me

to the front door. I expected her to hide inside, but she came

back with a shotgun. “You can let him go now,” she said, and

Della backed away. “I should shoot you now, Ramsay,” Maeve

told the man. “Just know if I ever see you on my property again,

I will shoot first and swear you tried to rape me later.”

The man snarled at Della, “You’re a dead woman,” then left.

Della slumped down, and there was blood on the floor

beneath her. Maeve helped her to her feet. “We must get you

back home, to your husband and safety.”

“He’s dead,” Della said. “I will be too, soon, after this one is

born. I want her to be born here.”

“ ‘Her?’ You cannot know —”

“I know. My grandmother’s grandmother came here a slave,

and died here free.”

“Nanga,” Maeve and I said together. The vision faded.

“Tell me,” Jackson said, but I shook my head.

“Hold on. One more.”

I reached into the trunk at random and pulled out the goblet.

I saw a man’s hand holding it steady as he poured it full of red

wine. The hand fascinated me — tan and strong, the nails per-

fectly trimmed, the fingers decorated with rings. My vision

widened. It was the Captain, reaching inside his jacket for a

small paper packet, the contents of which he dumped in the

wine. I thought to myself,
That’s what they do when they poison

someone in a movie.

The Captain lifted the glass, turned, and carried it to the din-

ing table where Deirdre’s father sat, smoking a cigar. The

Captain held out the goblet.

“Thank you, Foster,” Dobson said. And I thought,
Don’t drink

it!
But as in a movie, no one could hear my warning.

The Captain sat down facing Dobson, watching him drink

deeply. The older man smiled, enjoying the wine. “Let me say,

o215

Foster, that you’ve acted the gentleman in all this. It was not easy to refuse you. You know I like you, and you’re my best captain.

But Deirdre is my only child and will inherit everything. She

should marry one of her own kind.”

“So said the father of my first wife,” the Captain said.

“And he was right. Your lives together were harsh. A father

wants better for his daughter.”

“As I want for mine.” He was still watching Dobson. Waiting.

A puzzled furrow shaped between the brows of the older

man. His hand reached for his collar, pulled at his cravat. His

face started to redden. I could see
understanding
fill his eyes.

The Captain observed him curiously. His head nodded

slightly. He said, “I will marry Deirdre. Mrs. Dobson will need

a strong man to run the business — and will be glad to trade

Deirdre for safety. But she won’t live long after that.” He reached

into Dobson’s watch pocket and pulled out the two-headed coin.

“A woman my Lyddie had treated kindly told me I must do two

tasks to assure the future of Lyddie’s child. The first was to take

the two dearest treasures of my enemy, and today I have accom-

plished that.”

“. . . enemy?” Dobson gasped.

“When my ship,” the Captain said quietly, “when
all
the ships in our convoy were seized by the Crown,
your
ships made it