The black swan (91 page)

"Mammy," she said shakily. "I ... I want Adam's fa-father to know him before—before it's too late."

Mammy put her arm around her favorite child. "You jes' got de mizzer'bles now! Tomorra things seem diffunt."

"I want him here. Mammy. I want him to know Adam.'*

"You cain't do dat, Miz Zoe. Dat man ain't knowed all dese yeahs he gots a chil'. An' Mastah Adam, he doan know nobuddy 'cep' Mastah Paul. How you gwine tell him now?" She shook her woolly head mournfully. "Uhh-uhhh. You done kep' yo' secret. Ain't no time fo' tellin' now. What's people gwine say?"

"I don't care now, Mammy. I'm not ashamed of Adam, or of giving birth to him. Why should I be ashamed of how

it happened? I shouldn't have listened to Papa. He said I sinned then. I think it was the rest of my life that I sinned. I kept Adam from a father who might have loved him. Maybe this wouldn't have happened if—'*

"No, ma'am, Miz Zoe. You daddy woulda kilt you. Ah 'members ol' Mastah Horace. You done right, yes, ma'am!"

"Mammy," Zoe pleaded. "I couldn't live with myself if Adam died and—"

"He ain't gwine die! Ah woan have you sayin' dat, callin* down de evil eye on 'im. Mastah Adam be jes' fine."

Mammy stomped off, leaving Zoe to her thoughts. For once, Zoe's resolve didn't weaken in the face of disapproval.

Mammy muttered to herself, her old head shaking as she remembered the night and young Miss Zoe. Lawd, dat was a turrible time, turrible. Upstandin', pious, self-right-ous, y'all could call Mastah Horace all dem things, an* he jes' flang 'em all on Miss Zoe. Mammy clucked, shaking her head. An' now Miz Zoe wantin' to staht it all up agin. 'Tain't fittin'. 'Tain't a good notion no-ways, an' it jes' ain't fittin'. No, ma'am!

As Mammy came to the bed, preoccupied with the past, Johnnie Mae said, "Oi be a-goin' back to the swamp now."

Mammy's jowls shuddered. "He ain't fit yit!"

"Oi be a-goin' to fetch Tom an' Seth. Mayhap we fin* them who did this. Mayhap Oi kilt one wie moi gun. Oi be a-leavin' now, an' a-comin' back."

Mammy considered for a moment. "Ah ain't one to hoi* wiff killin'," she said gravely. "But effen you fin's 'em, you come git Mammy. Ah gwine do 'em in whiff mah choppin' knife. You come git Mammy, you heah?'*

"Oi'll git ye," Johnnie Mae promised.

Late the next afternoon Tom was pounding at Zoe*s front door. His pale face was covered with perspiration. "Where is he? I saw that get-up an' I knew. It was Edmund, wasn't it, Zoe?" He watched Zoe's face, feeling a deep, hot emotion he'd believed long dead, boil up inside.

She nodded.

"Oh, yes, it's Edmund's way all right. The whole place stinks of him. Johnnie Mae finished one of 'em. Blond bastard I never seen before. Bled to death. Christ! I hope he took a long time doin' it." Tom laboriously cliMbed

the stairs. Once during the yellow fever epidemic in 1853, he'd started after Revanche. Weakness and grief had overcome him then. Not this time. Whether or not Adam lived, Tom vowed Edmund Revanche would not. He would find him—and fittingly destroy him.

"Tom." Zoe's voice halted him halfway up. "You . . , you know the Confederate agents, don't you?"

"Sho', I know 'em. Why? Adam -hasn't got trouble there? Nobody believed those fool rumors."

"It's nothing like that. I—I want to get a telegraph message through to ... to the North. Can you do it for me?"

Zoe's cheeks were blush red in her pale face. Her hands were clasped tight. Tom patted her awkwardly. "You look like you better sit down, Zoe, before you fall. What's on your mind?"

She turned from him, biting her lip. If she couldn't tell Tom, she'd never be able to carry it through. But it was so hard to say, to make her wicked secret public. And what if she were wrong? "I need to get in touch with someone. Tom, will you help me?"

"You know I will. Any thin' I can do. But you gotta tell me more'n this. Who is it?"

Zoe was silent for a long time, then she whispered. "Roderick Courtland."

"Courtland? Why Courtland? Did Adam—?"

"Adam has said nothing. He dreams of Dulcie. He calls only for her."

Tom shook his head, clearing the cobwebs. "Well, what's the message?"

Zoe stared at her hands, her words coming out singly like extracted teeth. "Tell him . . . tell Mr. Courtland to come. I need him desperately. And Tom, you must be certain to sign my name Zoe McCloud Tremain. That will tell him all he needs to know. He'll understand then."

"Maybe it'll tell him, but it sho' don't tell me an>thin'."

"He . . . he's Adam's father."

During the next days Zoe prayed and took her turn nursing, anxiously awaiting Rod's arrival. Mammy, gray and sagging with fatigue, remained at Adam's side. Her bed was the cot left in his room after Claudine's death. Mammy hardly slept an hour at a time, barely closing her eyes before Adam's fevered nightmare cries would awaken her and bring her to him.

Mammy's potions had worked, but she took little comfort in the receding of the swelling and the healing of the bee stings. Fever lived in Adam, high and constant and debilitating. The lacerations from the whip, embedded with swamp mud, were largely ignored those first crucial nights. Now each laceration was a stripe of infection, with teeth of pain in its yellow-gray center bordered by angry red flesh.

Mammy's old eyes, grayed over with cataracts, strained as she cleaned the festering wounds. Several times each day she asked of Rosebud, "Do Ah git it clean out?"

"Ain't no way fo' keepin' it clean. Mammy. It jes' full wiff pus."

"Den we gwine warsh him again. De bees doan kill 'im, we ain't gwine let no festerin' do it. Johnnie Mae say she gwine bring de herbs fo' de poultice. Den he be fine. Do Ah got it clean?"

Roderick Courtland's hands trembled as he read the telegraph and the name of the sender. His mind was a jumble, trying to connect two images. One out of a far-distant past and the other from the present. Zoe McCloud . . . Tremain. She had run away from him twenty-seven years ago. He had never seen nor heard from her again, until this day. Adam Tremain. Her son. His son! It was possible —more than possible. Why else would .Zoe write to him now? What else could explain the coincidences of their last names? Why else would he have felt such a strong liking—no, love—for the young man who should have been merely a business partner?

It took Rod two days to find a supply ship going through the Cape Fear blockade, and a great deal of influence peddling to wangle permission aboard. He refused to perform services for the North while he was in the South. He would not spy for his own country or against his son's.

That he was a civilian, and one who refused to serve the Union as well, was almost fatal to his desires. Rod was nearly to the point of agreeing to anything, when he gained permission as a personal favor from a friend.

"I don't think you have any idea of what you're walking into. Rod. You've taken a lot for granted. There are no friends between North and South now. There aren't even fathers and sons."

"Fm going, with your help or without it. My son is there, and nothing is going to keep me away. You could make it a lot easier."

"I've said I'll help you. But a man doesn't like to send his friend on a suicide venture."

Three days later Rod stood on the deck of the supply ship, looking out across a dark ocean toward a dark, undistinguished shore. His clothing was dark. Everything was dark. This nightwork in an unpredictable sea, in a hostile environment, was in stark contrast to his own world of Manhattan banks, lunches in crowded oyster bars, the Stock Exchange, theater, and balls. This blackened, eerie expanse of nothingness was his son's world, and Rod found himself intimidated by its quiet, lurking violence.

The second mate lowered a longboat and helped Rod aboard. "Good luck, sir." Then he disappeared. Rod was alone, heading toward a shore he couldn't see. Unfamiliar with the tides and ways of the ocean, Rod ran aground. To his unaccustomed eyes he seemed to be miles from shore. He sat perplexed and undecided until the rhythm of the incoming tide began to impress itself upon him, and his eyes began to take note of the waves, watching them roll in lighter than the unseen sand.

As though he'd been doing it for years. Rod swung his legs over the side of the boat and pushed it off the sandbar, continuing to the shore. He was disproportionately proud of himself as he beached the boat and ran quickly across the sand to the pines. He didn't know if this was Molasses Creek, but he could hide here until Tom found him. Already he was clammy and cold in his wet, clinging clothes. Silently he cursed himself for having gotten on the sandbar, then Tom for not arriving with the promptness of his New York driver.

Tom waited with the wagon sheltered in the woods, expecting Rod to march boldly toward the main road. Both men waited, cold and uncomfortable until first light, when Tom could easily see Rod's tracks heading for the copse of pine not thirty yards away.

Annoyed enough not to care who saw or heard him, Tom yelled at the horses and ran straight for the pines. "I've been waitin' for you by the road half the night!" he growled.

"I was told the road wasn't safe.'*

"How in the hell was I to know you'd have the sense not to walk right down the damned road. Get in. Zoe's like to think we both got our heads blowed off."

On the way to Smithville Tom told Rod what had happened. Having had several hours to think while he waited, Tom was in no mood to minimize any of Edmund's deeds. Rod received a full and bluntly honest summary of his son's life during the time Tom had known him.

He listened in near silence, his shoulders slumped, and he stared bleakly ahead. "She never told me about him, not even when she knew we had met."

"I don't expect it'd be too easy for a woman to come right out an' tell the world her son's father ain't his father a-tall. Seems like she's talkin' now because she thinks he's dyin'."

"Is he, Tom?"

"Don't know. He's strong as ten ornery mules, but it's been a long siege. Fever's taken a lot outa him, but my money's on him. Hell, Rod, everythin's ridin' on that boy makin' it."

They entered the main street of Smithville in pensive silence. Tom reined the horses in front of the house. "This is it. You go on in. I'm gonna rub down the horses."

Zoe knew he was there before he touched the door. It had been twenty-six years since she had given birth to this man's son, nearly twenty-seven years since she had last seen him. Her hands fumbled with the lock. "Rod . . ."

He stood on the top step, changed, older, and yet the same youthful, brilliant blue eyes stared into hers. The same sensitive mouth turned upward in the shy, yet bold smile she remembered.

She moved back as he entered the house, dwarfing the entry hall with his size and presence. He was dressed in dark clothing similar to Adam's. He removed his watch cap, exposing a mane of waving silver hair.

"Tom told me." His voice—^how could she have forgotten? Perhaps she never had. Perhaps that was why she so liked to hear Adam talk or read to her. She grasped at a small table. "Zoe—are you ill?"

"No, no, I'm fine. I . . . Rod, Adam is—"

"I already know, Zoe. I knew as soon as I saw your name on the telegram. May I see him now?"

"Oh, please." She led him to Adam's room.

Mammy sat snoring in a chair by Adam's bed. "She won't leave his side. She . . . she's always looked after him, from the time he was a baby. She—" Zoe sniffed, and regained control. "Do you remember her, Rod?"

"I remember her." Rod's eyes were on Adam. He murmured in a restless, fevered sleep, talking of drums and fires and Dulcie. The swelling from the bee stings and the blisters from the cantharides had nearly disappeared, but the odor of infection had not. Adam was thdn, hollow-cheeked, flushed with fever. "How long has he been like this?"

"Days. Ever since Johnnie Mae brought him home. But Mammy says he is better. She says—oh. Rod, I'm so afraid. He's going to die, isn't he? He—he doesn't even know me."

Rod stood by the bed several minutes, then sank into the chair near Adam, his hands limp between his legs.

Zoe fought back tears looking from one man to the other, so alike and yet so different. In Adam there was enough of herself to soften the craggy sharpness of Rod's features.

"Why did you keep him from me, Zoe? Whatever you thought of me, you couldn't have thought I wouldn't want my own son."

"I—Papa—I didn't know what . . ." she stammered, then took a deep breath, and said in a low, nearly steady voice. "There didn't seem to be anything I could do at the time. I wasn't sure of so many things."

"I wanted to marry you. Didn't that mean anything to you? Or was that what you ran away to avoid?"

Zoe was speechless, her throat and eyes thick with tears.

"There's so much of you in him, Zoe. You reared him well," Rod said quietly. "I loved you. Didn't you know—or didn't you care?"

"I..." Zoe shrank from him. She didn't know this man. She'd hardly known him that summer so long ago. She'd been so filled with love for him then, she'd allowed herself to be swept along. Now here he was again, throwing it all at her, urging her to talk, to explain, to reveal her innermost secrets when she no longer could. The hideous, hateful years with Paul Tremain had robbed her of words and feelings of love. Through those years the memory of Rod had become only an idealized dream of a summer's love long past. But Paul had been real. His criticism of her, his drunken demands on her, his loathing of her. That had

been real. But the lovely summer with Rod . . . she didn't know what that was, fantasy or reality. "It was all a long time ago, Rod."

Rod shook his head. "I don't understand you. I don't suppose I ever did, but I didn't think I could be that wrong."

*'No."

"Well, thank you for this, Zoe." He touched Adam's hot forehead.

Rod slept in the front room on the sofa, insisting he would be quite comfortable. Zoe went to her room, her mind a wild montage of days past. She wandered about, unable to settle down enough to prepare for bed.

Before her danced another self, a seventeen-year-old Zoe sent to visit her older sister. Faith, in Boston for the summer. Mammy, younger, and as excited as she to be taking a train north, sat by her side. Faith had been pregnant and homesick. Walter, her husband of two years, was stationed in Boston as adjutant to General Denker. Zoe, the youngest and the most willing daughter, was sent to her sister.