Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (105 page)

Roger tripped over someone lying on the ground and landed on his knees, brackish water seeping through his breeches. He’d landed with his hands on the fallen man, and the sudden warmth on his cold fingers was a shock that brought him back to himself.

The man moaned and Roger jerked his hands away, then recovered himself and groped for the man’s hand. It was gone, and his own hand was filled with a gush of hot blood that reeked like a slaughterhouse.

“Jesus,” he said, and, wiping his hand on his breeches, he grappled with the other in his bag, he had cloths…he yanked out something white and tried to tie it round…he felt frantically for a wrist, but that was gone, too. He got a fragment of sleeve and felt his way up it as fast as he could, but he reached the still-solid upper arm a moment after the man died—he could feel the sudden limpness of the body under his hand.

He was still kneeling there with the unused cloth in his hand when someone tripped over
him
and fell headlong with a tremendous splash. Roger got up onto his feet and duck-walked to the fallen man.

“Are you all right?” he shouted, bending forward. Something whistled over his head, and he threw himself flat on top of the man.

“Jesus Christ!” the man exclaimed, punching wildly at Roger. “Get the devil off me, you bugger!”

They wrestled in the mud and water for a moment, each trying to use the other for leverage to rise, and the cannon kept on firing. Roger pushed the man away and managed to roll up onto his knees in the mud. Cries for help were coming from behind him, and he turned in that direction.

The fog was almost gone, driven off by explosions, but the gun smoke drifted white and low across the uneven ground, showing him brief flashes of color and movement as it shredded.

“Help, help me!”

He saw the man then, on hands and knees, dragging one leg, and he splashed through the puddles to reach him. Not much blood, but the leg was clearly wounded; he got a shoulder under the man’s arm and got him on his feet, hustled him as fast as possible away from the redoubt, out of range…

The air shattered again and the earth seemed to tilt under him; he was lying on the ground with the man he’d been helping on top of him, the man’s jaw knocked away and hot blood and chunks of teeth soaking into his chest. Panicked, he struggled out from under the twitching body—Oh, God, oh, God, he was still alive—and then he was kneeling by the man, slipping in the mud, catching himself with a hand on the chest where he could feel the heart beating in time with the blood spurting,
Oh, Jesus, help me!

He groped for words, frantic. It was all gone. All the comforting words he’d gleaned, all his stock-in-trade…

“You’re not alone,” he panted, pressing hard on the heaving chest, as though he could anchor the man to the earth he was dissolving into. “I’m here. I won’t leave you. It’s gonna be all right. You’re gonna be all right.” He kept repeating that, kept his hands pressing hard, and then, in the midst of the spouting carnage, felt the life leave the body.

Just…gone.

He sat on his heels, gasping, frozen in place, one hand on the still body as though it were glued there, and then the drums.

A faint throb through the rhythmic sounds of gunfire. His bones had absorbed that without his noticing; he could feel the ebb when the first rank of muskets fell back and the surge when the second rank reached the edge of the redoubt and fired. Something in the back of his head was counting…
one…two…

“What the hell,” he said thickly, and stood up, shaking his head. There were three men near him, two still on the ground, the third struggling to rise. He got up and staggered over to them, gave the live man his hand, and pulled him up, wordless. One of the others was plainly dead, the other almost so. He let go of the man he was holding and collapsed on his knees by the dying one, taking the man’s cold face between his hands, the dark eyes bleared with fear and ebbing blood.

“I’m here,” he said, though the cannon fired then and his words made no sound.

The drums. He heard them clearly now, and a sort of yell, a lot of men shouting together. And then a rumbling, squashing, splashing, and suddenly there were horses everywhere, running…Running at the fucking redoubts full of guns.

A crash of guns and the cavalry split, half the horses wheeling, back and away, the rest scattering, dancing through the fallen men, trying not to step on the bodies, big heads jerking as they fought the reins.

He didn’t run; he couldn’t. He walked forward, slowly, sword flopping at his side, stopping where he found a man down. Some he could help, with a drink or a hand to press upon a wound while a friend tied a cloth around it. A word, a blessing where he could. Some were gone, and he laid a hand on them in farewell and commended their souls to God with a hasty prayer.

He found a wounded boy and picked him up, carrying him back through the smoke and puddles, away from the cannon.

Another roar. The fourth column came running through the broken ground, to throw themselves into the fighting at the redoubt. He saw an officer with a flag of some kind run up shouting, then fall, shot through the head. A little boy, a little black boy in blue and yellow, grabbed the flag and then bodies hid him from view.

“Jesus Christ,” Roger said, because there wasn’t anything else he could possibly say. He could feel the boy’s heart beating under his hand through the soaked cloth of his coat. And then it stopped.

The cavalry charge had broken altogether. Horses were being ridden or led away, a few of them fallen, huge and dead in the marshy ground, or struggling to rise, neighing in panic.

An officer in a gaudy uniform was crawling away from a dead horse. Roger set the boy’s body down and ran heavily to the officer. Blood was gushing down the man’s thigh and his face, and Roger fumbled in his pocket, but there was nothing there. The man doubled up, hands pressing his groin, and saying something in a language Roger didn’t recognize.

“It’s all right,” he said to the man, taking him by the arm. “You’re going to be all right. I won’t leave you.”

“Bóg i Marija pomóżcie mi,”
the man gasped.

“Aye, right. God be with you.” He turned the man on his side, pulled out his shirttail and ripped it off, then stuffed it into the man’s trousers, pressing into the hot wetness. He leaned on the wound with both hands, and the man screamed.

Then there were several cavalrymen there, all talking at once in multiple languages, and they pushed Roger out of the way and picked the wounded officer up bodily, carrying him away.

Most of the firing had stopped now. The cannon was silent, but his ears felt as though fire-bells were ringing in his head; it hurt.

He sat down, slowly, in the mud and became aware of rain running down his face. He closed his eyes. And after some time, became aware that a few words had come back to him.

“Out of the depths I cry unto you, O, Lord. O, Lord, hear my voice.”

The trembling didn’t stop, but some little time later, he got up and staggered away toward the distant marshes, to help bury the dead.

THE AIR STILL SMELLED
of burning, and the onshore wind in the evening had added a faint stink of death to the usual smell of the marshes. But the battle was over, the Americans defeated. Lord John had turned up in the afternoon, stained with powder smoke but cheerful, to assure her that it
was
over, and all was well.

She didn’t
think
she’d screamed at him, but whatever she’d said had made his face set beneath the mottling of black powder, and he’d squeezed her hand hard and said, “I’ll find him.” And left.

The next day, she’d received a note from Lord John saying simply,
I have walked the entire field, with my aides. We have not found him, neither dead nor injured. A hundred or so prisoners were taken, and he is not among them. Hal has sent an official inquiry to General Lincoln.

“We have not found him, neither dead nor injured.”
She whispered that under her breath, over and over, throughout the day, as a means of keeping herself from going out to comb that bloody field herself, turning over every grain of sand and blade of saw grass. And in the evening, Lord John had come again, worn and weary, but with a clean face and a smile.

“You said that your husband meant to speak with a Captain Marion, so I went into the American camp with a flag of truce, looking for one. He’s now a lieutenant colonel, it seems, but he did speak with Roger—and he told me that Roger came off the field with him, unhurt, and went to help with the burial of the fallen Americans.”

“Oh, God.” Her knees had given way and she’d sat down, her feelings in chaos.
He isn’t dead, he wasn’t hurt.
And the feeling of relief at that was enormous—but instantly shot through with doubt, questions, and an abiding fear.
If he’s alive, why isn’t he
here
?

“Where?” she managed, after a moment. “Where…did they bury them?”

“I don’t know,” Lord John said, his brow creased a little. “I’ll find out, if you like. But I think the burials must surely have been completed by now—there was considerable carnage on the field, but Lieutenant Colonel Maitland thinks there were not above two hundred killed. He was commanding the redoubt,” he added, seeing her blank look. He cleared his throat.

“I think that perhaps,” he said diffidently, “he might have then gone with the army surgeons, to help with the wounded?”

“Oh.” She managed to take a breath that completely filled her lungs; the first one in the last three days. “Yes. That—sounds very reasonable.”
But why the
hell
didn’t he send me a note?

She gathered enough strength to get up and offer Lord John thanks and her hand. He took the hand, drew her in, and embraced her, his arms the first warmth she remembered feeling since Roger had left.

“It will be all right, my dear,” he said softly, patted her, and stepped back. “I’m sure it will be all right.”

BRIANNA VACILLATED BETWEEN
being sure, too, and not being sure at all—but the balance of evidence seemed to indicate that Roger probably was (a) alive and (b) reasonably intact, and that semi-conviction was at least enough to let her return to work, seeking to drown her doubt in turpentine.

She couldn’t decide whether painting Angelina Brumby was more like trying to catch a butterfly without a net or lying in wait all night by a waterhole, waiting for some shy wild beast to appear for a few seconds, during which you might—if lucky—snap its photo.

“And what I wouldn’t give for my Nikon right now…” she muttered under her breath. Today was the first hair day. Angelina had spent nearly two hours under the hands of Savannah’s most popular hairdresser, emerging at last under a cloud of painstakingly engineered curls and ringlets, these powdered to a fare-thee-well and further decorated by a dozen or so brilliants stabbed in at random. The whole construction was so vast that it gave the impression that Angelina was carrying about her own personal thunderstorm, complete with lightning flashes.

The notion made Brianna smile, and Angelina, who had been looking rather apprehensive, perked up in response.

“Do you like it?” she asked hopefully, poking gingerly at her head.

“I do,” Bree said. “Here, let me…” For Angelina, unable or unwilling to bend her bedizened head enough to look down, was about to collide with the little platform on which the sitter’s chair was perched.

Once settled, Angelina became her usual self, chatty and distractible—and always in movement, with waving hands, turning head, widening eyes, constant questions and speculations. But if she was difficult to capture on canvas, she was also charming to watch, and Bree was constantly torn between exasperation and fascination, trying to catch something of the blithe butterfly without having to drive a hatpin through her thorax to make her
be still
for five minutes.

She had had nearly two weeks of dealing with Angelina, though, and now set a vase of wax flowers on the table, with firm instructions that Angelina should fix her eyes upon this and count the petals. She then turned over a two-minute sandglass and urged her subject not to speak or move until the glass ran out.

This procedure—repeated at intervals—let her circle Angelina, sketchpad in hand, making rough sketches of the head and neck, with quick visual notes of a ringlet coming down the curve of the neck, a deep wave over one of Angelina’s shell-pink ears…the morning sun was coming through the window, glowing sweetly through the ear. She wanted to try to catch that pink…

There was time, perhaps, to work on the arms and hands….She had as much as she needed of the hair for now, and Angelina was wearing a soft gray-silk wrapper that left her arms bare to the elbow.

“Ooh! Are you painting me now?” Angelina sat up straighter, wrinkling her nose at the smell of fresh turpentine.

“I will be, soon,” Bree assured her, setting out the palette and brushes. “If you want to stretch for a few minutes, though, this would be a good time.”

Angelina made her way down to the floor, one hand minding her swaying hair and the other fanned for balance, and vanished without urging. Brianna could hear her clattering out into the sunshine at the back of the house, calling to Jem and Mandy, who were playing ball in the yard with the little Henderson boy from next door.

Bree drew a deep breath, savoring the momentary solitude. There was a strong touch of fall in the air, though the sun was bright through the window, and a single late bumblebee hummed slowly in, circled the disappointing wax flowers, and bumbled out again.

It would be winter soon in the mountains. She felt a pang of longing for the high rocks and the clean scent of balsam fir, snow, and mud, the close warm smell of sheltered animals. Much more for her parents, for the sense of her family all about her. Moved by impulse, she turned the page of her sketchbook and tried to capture a glimpse of her father’s face—just a line or two in profile, the straight long nose and the strong brow. And the small curved line that suggested his smile, hidden in the corner of his mouth.

That was enough for now. With the comforting sense of his presence near her, she opened the box where she kept the small lead-foil tubes she had made, the ends folded over to close them, and the little pots of hand-ground pigment, and made up her simple palette. Lead white, a touch of lampblack, and a dab of madder lake. A moment’s hesitation, and she added a thin line of lead-tin yellow, and a spot of smalt, the nearest thing she could get—
so far,
she thought with determination—to cobalt.

With the color of shadows in her mind, she went across to the small collection of canvases leaning against the wall and, uncovering the unfinished portrait of Jane, set it on the table, where it would catch the morning light.

“That’s the trouble,” she murmured. “Maybe…” The light. She’d done it with an imagined light source, falling from the right, so as to throw the delicate jawline into relief. But what she hadn’t thought to imagine was what
kind
of light it was. The shadows cast by a morning light sometimes had a faint green tinge, while those of midday were dusky, a slight browning of the natural skin tones, and evening shadows were blue and gray and sometimes a deep lavender. But what time of day suited the mysterious Jane?

She frowned at the portrait, trying to feel the girl, know something of her through Fanny’s words, her emotions.

She was a prostitute.
Fanny had said her original drawing had been made by one of the…customers…at the brothel. Surely, then, it had been made at night?
Firelight, then…or candlelight?

Her ruminations were interrupted by the sound of Angelina’s laughter and footsteps in the hallway. A man’s voice, amused—Mr. Brumby.
And what’s he thinking just now? Is he pleased about the battle, or dismayed?

“Mr. Salomon is in my office, Henrike,” he was saying over his shoulder as he came in. “Take him something to eat, would you? Ah, Mrs. MacKenzie. A very good morning to you, ma’am.” Alfred Brumby paused in the doorway, smiling in at her. Angelina clung to his arm, beaming up at him and shedding white powder on the sleeve of his bottle-green coat, but he didn’t appear to notice. “And how is the work proceeding, might I ask?”

He was courteous enough to make it sound as though he really
was
asking permission to inquire, rather than demanding a progress report.

“Very well, sir,” Bree said, and stepped back, gesturing, so he could come in and see the head sketches that she’d done so far, arranged in fans on the table: Angelina’s complete head and neck from multiple angles, close view of hairline, side and front, assorted small details of ringlets, waves, and brilliants.

“Beautiful, beautiful!” he exclaimed. He bent over them, taking a quizzing glass from his pocket and using it to examine the drawings. “She’s captured you exactly, my dear—a thing I shouldn’t have thought possible without the use of leg-irons, I confess.”

“Mr. Brumby!” Angelina swatted at him, but laughed, flushing like a June rose.

Lord, that color!
But there was no chance of it lasting long enough to study—she’d just have to fix it in mind and try later. She cast a longing glance at the tempting dab of madder on her fresh palette.

Mr. Brumby had a due regard for his own time, though, and thus for hers as well, and after a few more flattering remarks he kissed his wife’s hand and left to meet Mr. Salomon, leaving Angelina still an enchanting shade of pink.

“Sit down,” Bree said, hastily offering a hand. “Let’s see how much we can get done before our elevenses.”

The awe of actual oil paints—perhaps aided by the fumes of turpentine and linseed oil—seemed to calm Angelina, and while she sat with unusual rigidity, it didn’t really matter at the moment, and the studio was temporarily filled with a peaceful silence made up of small noises: children outside, dogs scratching and snuffling, muffled pot-banging and talk from the cookhouse, a thump of feet and murmur of voices overhead as the maids swept out the hearths, emptied the chamber pots, and aired the linens, the jingle and clop of wagons passing in the street.

A single distant
boom
came in on the breeze from the window and she stiffened for a moment, but as nothing further happened, she relaxed back into the work, though now with the thought of Roger hovering over her left shoulder, watching her paint. She imagined for a moment his arm about her waist and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled, in anticipation of warm breath.

The mantelpiece clock in the drawing room down the hall struck eleven in an imperious chime, and Bree felt her stomach gurgle in anticipation. Breakfast had been at six, and she could do with a slice of cake and a cup of tea.

“R oo wrkg n m mth?” Mrs. Brumby said, moving her lips as little as possible, just in case.

“No, you can talk,” Brianna assured her, suppressing a smile. “Don’t move your hands, though.”

“Oh, of course!” The hand that had risen unconsciously to fiddle with her densely sculpted curls dropped like a stone into her lap, but then she giggled. “Must I have Henrike feed me my elevenses? I hear her coming.”