Amber House: Neverwas (45 page)

I saw her, shifting in the chair in the corner, holding a piece of

needlework. “Where you be, child?” she said, seeking blindly.

“Nyangu.” And she saw me then, and smiled.

“Sarah!” she said. “You have need of me?”

“When I woke up Deirdre, everything changed. The world

changed. For the worse. You have to help me fix it. So I can save

Jackson.”

“Jackson with you?”

I could hardly say the words. “He’s dead.”

She looked stricken, but she nodded. “He gambled on you to

see it through,” she said. “We mustn’t fail him. Tell me.”

“The Captain plans to kill a man who is coming to visit

Deirdre — a distant relative. I don’t know exactly when.”

“That be today, child. Soon. The husband of a cousin stopping

here on his way north. A military man from Virginia. Why

would the Captain kill this man?”

“It was the coin. Dobson’s coin. The Captain was using it to

figure out how to make his fortune.”

Nyangu nodded. “It is a thing of very old pain.”

“We have to stop him. Without General Washington, every-

thing changes.
You
have to stop him.”

“How do I do such a thing? How can I save this man

Washington?”

302 O

A new voice spoke behind me. “Why do you speak of my

cousin?” Deirdre stepped into the room
through
me, raising

gooseflesh, causing me to shudder. She looked something like the

way I remembered her from the attic, prematurely grayed and

weak. But she had lost much of the confusion — the
madness
—

that had been in her eyes before. “To whom do you speak, Nanga?

One of the ones to come? Is it the girl I saw in my dream?”

“Yes, Deirdre. The one named for your Sarah.”

“Can she see me, hear my words?”

I nodded. Nyangu said, “Yes, she can.”

Deirdre addressed the air. “Then I must thank you, grand-

daughter, for waking me from that dream.”

“She says we must stop the Captain.”

“Because he intends to kill cousin George.” She shook her

head, thinking. “We cannot stop the Captain. But we might stop

General Washington. Intercept him. Warn him. I cannot go —

I would not make it half so far. But you or Sarah-Louise could go.”

“Why would he believe me?” Nyangu asked Deirdre. “He

don’t know me. Why would he take the word of a slave?”

“I will give you a note. Cousin George knows my writing.”

She started out of the room with a decisiveness that reminded

me of the little girl she had once been, headstrong and unstop-

pable. But where the hall joined the landing, the Captain stood

waiting. “What are you doing wandering around in your

nightshift?” he said with disgust. “Get back to your room.” He

grabbed her wrist and hauled her along by it as Nyangu watched,

immobilized.

Deirdre twisted her arm, trying to break free. “But I must get

ready, Joseph. Make sure the luncheon is laid, put on a frock.

He’ll be here soon.”

I had seen this already, I realized. But I had seen it
differently
.

Deirdre had not been fighting the Captain’s grip. Things had

already begun to change.

o303

“No,” the Captain said, shoving her through the door. “He’s

not coming.”

“He’s not?” she said. “Did he write again? Send his regrets?”

“He’s not coming,” her husband said again firmly and pulled

her door shut. And then he locked it.
Another change.
He pulled the pistol from his waistband and checked it, then his watch. Then

he leaned on the rail and yelled down toward the kitchen. “Fix

me a plate. I’m in a hurry.”

He went to his room and grabbed his greatcoat. Then he

jogged down the stairs.

“What do I do now?” Nyangu asked.

“Take the page from the journal where the Captain circled

Washington’s name. Then he’ll believe you.”

“He’ll kill me if he finds me in his study.”

“I’ll keep watch.”

She nodded. She started moving.

She went to the Captain’s desk and opened the side drawers,

searching through their contents. She lifted the leather blotter,

opened the wooden box on the desktop. She shook her head,

frustrated, then closed her eyes and leaned on the desk. A tremor

shook her; a trickle of blood started from her nose. She whirled,

stood on tiptoe, and felt on top of a cupboard. She stepped back,

triumphant, a key in her fingers. She opened the center drawer

and pulled out the leather-bound journal. She hissed to me,

“Which page will it be?”

“It must be one of the last he wrote. It says on top,
Assassination
.”

She flipped the pages from the rear forward until she found

the right page. She ripped it out and tucked it in her apron

pocket. Then she started to put the room back to rights.

I heard a chair scrape back in the dining room. I ran part-

way down the stairs. The Captain said, “Give the rest to the

hound.”

“Get out!” I yelled to Nyangu. “Now! He’s coming!”

304 O

She ran on bare feet out the door and into the hall that led off

to the left. The Captain had been headed for the front door, but

he stopped when he heard those soft running footsteps. He

climbed up to the lower landing, craning his neck to see up to

the balcony, then took the upper stairs two at a time. Even invis-

ible, I shrank back from him. He crossed to his room with huge

steps. He stopped in the door.

From where I stood at the rail, I saw Nyangu slip out of her

hiding place and scurry farther down the hall. The Captain’s

head jerked forward; he’d noticed something. I walked closer as

he took several steps into the room to stand before his desk. He

leaned forward slightly, touching his finger to the surface. Then

he held his finger up and rubbed the red spot on it against his

thumb. It was blood.

He trotted back out of the room, his gun raised. He checked

the locked door on Deirdre’s room, looked in the Nautical

Room, and paused by the door beyond the stairs. Then he started

down the steps, walking sideways and backward, keeping his

eyes on the hall above.

He went all the way down to the lower floor, and I heard him

push open the swinging door to the kitchen. Then he came back

to the lowest step and stopped, the gun still held high.

Nyangu, meanwhile, had slipped midway down the hall and

climbed on the bench there. Her fingers felt along the top of the

crown molding. I knew she was looking for the secret door.

“I know you’re up there,” the Captain roared from below.

“Come out now and give me back what you stole, and you’ll only

get a whipping. Make me hunt you down” — the sliding panel in

front of Nyangu popped open — “and I’ll shoot you where you

stand.”

She eased the door open, so slowly it made no more sound

than a sigh. The Captain took a step up, his ear tipped to hear.

He took another and another.

o305

“He’s climbing up,” I told her. She jerked and gave the panel a

tiny shove. The wheels made a small metallic whir. The Captain

began to run. I screamed, “Oh, my God, he’s coming!”

Nyangu leapt up into the mouth of the hidden stair and

slammed the panel shut. The Captain had reached the top of the

stairs, saw the hall empty, and whirled, cursing, to start back

down. I ran after him. “We’re on the stairs,” I shrieked. “We’re

coming down.”

At the lower landing, the Captain leapt past the remaining

steps to the foot of the stairs. I clattered down after him. I

saw him pause in the swinging door to the kitchen and lower

the gun.

The gun blasted; Nyangu screamed. I got to the door and saw

her scrambling up again inside the hidden stair. The Captain

lunged and caught her foot and pulled, and she slid back down,

turning as she came. She reached out with claws and slashed his

face. He swore and wiped his cheek with his sleeve, which came

away marked with blood. She scrambled upward, backward, and

he lunged at her again. She grabbed the door frame and leapt up,

jamming her bent legs forward to hit the Captain’s midsection

with her heels. He doubled over, gasping, and she jerked loose,

scrabbling up the steps again. He snatched a knife from the table,

then started up the steps after her, moving fast.

I could not follow. In my time, the hidden door would be

sealed. I spun around and ran for the main stairs.

When I got to the second-floor hall, the secret panel hung

open. The bench below the door was on its side; paintings hung

askew; a vase farther down the hall had been smashed on the

floor. I heard the Captain roaring just beyond the corner,

“Open this door, damn you! I’ll beat you, daughter, if you do not

unlock it!”

I reached the turn in the hall and saw the Captain heaving his

shoulder against the door to Sarah-Louise’s bedroom. It held

306 O

solid. He pivoted and kicked up just under the doorknob. The

rim lock gave way; the door burst in.

He advanced inside. I ran to the door, but I was helpless to do

anything. The Captain held his knife low and tilted it back and

forth, so that light played from its blade.

Sarah-Louise put herself in front of Nyangu. “Don’t touch

her, Father.”

The Captain struck his daughter and she slammed against the

wall and onto the floor.

Nyangu darted forward, screaming, a surgical blade in her

hand. Lazily, the Captain blocked her swing and shoved her back.

She staggered into the specimen table beneath the window;

there was the crash of breaking glass as the bell jar with the

Good Mother spider hit the floor.

Nyangu scrabbled away from the smashed bell jar, pulling a

shard of glass from her forearm. She pushed to her feet, using

the wall to brace herself. I saw her eyes dart down to the side.

The Captain took out his coin, his lucky coin, and flipped it,

gleaming, end over end, head over head. He caught it. He looked.

He smiled.

“Time to die, witch,” he said with enjoyment.

In one fluid motion, Nyangu bent and grabbed a stick on the

floor, the stick that had been inside the bell jar. She whipped it

around and flicked it straight at the Captain. Something flew

from it and landed on his lapel.

He looked. And laughed, his teeth showing. “A spider?”

His hand clapped down on his lapel, smashing the thing. “I

think not.”

But his laughter stopped, and he held up his hand to look more

closely.

“No,” he breathed, brushing his hands over his lapel, his

shoulder. Slapping his neck, his face. “Help me. Sarah, help

me, girl!”

o307

Nyangu shot past him, grabbed Sarah-Louise’s hand, and

tugged the girl into the hall. The door slammed shut. The

Captain twisted the knob and pulled, still swatting. I saw tiny

spiders swarming his face. Hundreds of them. More. They filled

the claw marks down the cheek. They crawled along the lashes

of his staring eyes.

His face, his handsome face, was beginning to swell. He sank

onto his knees.

I could imagine how it must feel. A pulsing blossoming into

pain, undeniable pain. Burning at the edges of everything. I
knew
how it must feel. My hand ached.

The storm had already started, I had no notion when. The

hurricane storm of time changing. Darkness was creeping in

from the sides, and the wind was rising.

I stood up straight and held my arms out before me. Motes of

me danced like embers, glowing, drifting, rising. They hurt as

they broke away and blurred into a smoldering cloud. And each

one of them carried a memory that grew fainter as it left:
The

crushing defeat of the colonials at New York.

It never was
, I thought.

The Second Colonial Uprising of 1832. The victory of Nazi Germany
at Normandy. The sacking of the Imperial City of China. The destruction
of London. The invasion of Australia.

All of it
, I thought:
Neverwas.

And I was well satisfied. Part of me prayed, for Mom and

Dad, for Sammy, for Richard and his family, but I would not stop

this if I could.

I stood in the center, in the house,
with
the house, and Time spread out around us, all of it happening at once, eternal articulation, each moment intimately known. I
was
a grieving girl with blond curls who took a silver coin from a dead man’s venom-swelled body. I
was
a young woman returned home, knowing

some part of me was left behind in that place where they’d tried

308 O

to cut away my visions. I
was
a mother who saw a fireball squeeze backward to become a car filled with her husband and child, and

saw the car fishtail away backward from the last apple tree of a

century-old orchard. I
was
a slave woman who sent my child

north because I loved her but loved as well all the grandchildren

strung like pearls into the future. I
was
a woman seated in a sloop steered by a green-eyed man who smiled at our green-eyed little girl.

I was myself, nearly gone, blown away like smoke, and I was

well satisfied. I thought with the last words left to me,
Time without him in it will not b —