The Furies (52 page)

“We’re in luck, Mrs. A. We’ve only to wait until Tuesday night. There’s a White Star steamer sailing from North River at ten o’clock. Straight up the coast, overnight at Boston, then along the St. Lawrence to Montreal—” He pulled a manila envelope from his coat. “I bought the girl’s ticket.”

“Wonderful!”

Michael flung the scarf onto a bench and raked droplets of melted snow from his hair. “Have you spoken with Louis?”

“Just now. He seems contrite.”

“Is he ready to work?”

“He will be in an hour.”

“Why the delay?”

“I’ve one thing yet to take care of—” Her eyes were hard.

“Very well. While I’m waiting, I’ll chop up that crate and burn the pieces. As soon as Louis is free, I’ll set him to clearing the slush out of the front drive. My, won’t that raise eyebrows next door! Mrs. de la Gura’s son doing servant’s work—”

Amused, he walked toward the dining room. Amanda followed. “Come with me, Louis,” she said.

“Where?”

Michael gaped when she answered, “The carriage house.”

The dapple gray mare whickered as Amanda and her son entered the frame building at the rear of the property. The light was poor and the interior smelled of straw and manure. The mare’s breath streamed from her nostrils in the cold air. She bumped the side of her stall.

Water dripped from the wheels and springs of the carriage Michael had only recently returned to its place. Amanda reached up and drew the stiff-handled whip from its socket.

“Louis, take off your robe.”

“My robe? What are you going to—?”

“You heard what I said. Take the robe off and stand against that post, facing it. Put your hands on the post, over your head.”

The boy swallowed. The ferocity she’d seen on his face last night might never have existed. He looked terrified, young and vulnerable—

She ached at the thought of what she was about to do. Yet it had to be done.

Louis dropped the robe, lifted his hands to grasp the post. She watched his back prickle into gooseflesh as he waited, his head turned slightly, one eye visible.

“Now,” she said, “you remember this moment, because I’ll never do such a thing to you again—just as you’ll never treat another person the way you treated Kathleen. I remind you once more—she did nothing to deserve the hurt you gave her. Not just the physical hurt—she’ll carry the memory all her life. I want you to carry the memory of this. How it feels to be hurt by wanton cruelty. You remember, Louis—and let it keep you from hurting any other blameless person—ever again.”

“Ma—” he began. The whip flicked up past her shoulder, and forward. The tip struck between his shoulder blades with a sharp, smacking sound.

Louis’ hands tightened on the post. He clenched his teeth.

She whipped him again. This time he cried aloud.

The cry disturbed the mare. She kicked the side of the stall. Louis’ whole body was trembling. Sweat covered his cheeks. The second blow had left a thin scarlet stripe on his skin.

Amanda struck a third time. He cried louder, digging his fingers into the post. The mare whinnied, kicked again. One of the stall boards cracked.

She forced herself to fall into a rhythm: the long, flexible tip of the whip came back, then flew forward to mark him. The whip butt grew slippery in her hand—

Six strokes.

Seven—

Blood began to run down the boy’s back. The mare was wild with terror, bucking and slamming her hoofs into the stall’s side, smashing the boards—

Eight.

Nine
—

Louis groaned, started to slide down the post. White-faced, Amanda whispered, “Stand up. Stand up and
feel it.
”

The savagery of her voice made him pull himself erect. He braced for the next blow, listened for the whisper of the whip cutting the air, closed his eyes—

Screamed when the whip flayed him.

The mare kicked, the sound thunderous. Two more boards in the side of the stall splintered apart.

“All right,” Amanda said, ashen.

Louis turned. His hands jerked at his sides. He stared at her, tears in the corners of his eyes. There was no hate in that glance, only dull suffering—

She walked to the carriage, picked up a handful of straw, wiped the blood from the whip and replaced it in the socket. Then she faced her son. “Come here.”

He walked to her, stumbling the last couple of steps. She caught him in both arms, cushioning him against her, arms around his waist.

“Cry if you want. Cry—no one will hear you—”

He did, letting the long sobs free him of some of his pain. Amanda cried too, in silence, holding him close until the worst of his shuddering passed—

Finally he got control of himself. She stepped back, barely aware that the sleeves of her dress were stained red.

“If you’re ever tempted to hurt someone again, remember today.”

“I will, Ma.”

“Swear it, Louis.”

“I swear. Before God, I swear it.”

A knot seemed to break within her. She could barely speak. “Now”—she wiped her cheeks with the back of one hand—“put your robe on—”

He did, groaning when the fabric came in contact with the lash marks.

“We’ll go upstairs. I’ll dress and bandage the cuts. You can rest for an hour. Then you’re going to work. You’ll hurt quite a few days, I expect. It’s proper you should.”

The dapple gray blubbered her lips, still stirring restlessly in the broken stall as the two of them walked into the winter sunlight, the boy leaning on his mother for support.

At twilight on Sunday evening, Amanda was at work at the desk in the library, comfortably dressed in one of the three bloomer outfits she owned—a matching top and trousers in lavender. She was going over the fist of investments she’d made using Jephtha Kent’s earnings from the Ophir Mineralogical Combine. If the Sierra claim looked as promising as Israel Hope’s letter suggested, those earnings should soon increase sharply.

She figured the different percentages of growth for each of the issues in which she’d invested the mining profits. None of that money had gone to purchase Stovall Works shares, as she’d originally intended. Boston Holdings operated solely on income from the Blackstone mill.

She worked slowly. Her eyes itched from scanning the columns of figures. After jotting a final note on two stocks whose poor performance merited immediate sale, she turned to the weekly edition of Mr. Greeley’s
Tribune.

She read an account of a lecture given in New York the preceding week by the philosopher, Emerson, then a review of a concert by the Swedish opera star, Jenny Lind, who was touring America under personal contract to the showman Phineas Barnum. She found both articles informative but dull. On the livelier side was a scathing feature about the poor performance of New York’s police.

The writer accused the chief of taking criminal bribes—including one from the city’s foremost female abortionist—and argued that city police protection would never be satisfactory until the force was given some semblance of professionalism, the first step being uniforms. But those, the police had steadfastly refused to wear ever since Mayor Harper had suggested the idea in the mid-40s. The police contended they were “free Americans,” and thus should not be required to appear in public in “livery befitting servants.”

A dispatch from Illinois caught her attention next. It dealt with the Whigs in that western state, and quoted a lawyer named Lincoln who had served one term in Congress during the Mexican war and was apparently becoming a power in the party.

The lawyer’s first name was Abraham. Amanda wondered whether he could be the same person she’d seen briefly when she and Jared had been traveling to Tennessee years ago. Because Jared had contracted an illness, they’d stopped for a couple of weeks at a cabin in Kentucky. She remembered farmer Lincoln’s boy Abraham quite clearly. Though he had only been five years old, he’d displayed an unusual curiosity about letters and words.

Expressing himself on the strength of the Whigs in Illinois, Lincoln was then quoted on his personal views about the Know-Nothings. The nature of his opinions made it instantly clear why Horace Greeley had given them space.

“How can anyone who abhors the oppression of Negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that
‘all men are created equal.’
Now we practically read it ‘all men are created equal,
except Negroes.
’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes,
foreigners and Catholics.
’

“When it comes to this I should prefer emigration to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for example, where despotism can be taken pure, without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

The statement summed up Amanda’s own beliefs about as well as she’d ever been able to do herself. She decided to show the piece to Michael. It might help abate his deep-seated antagonism toward colored people, pointing out as it did that there was little difference between those who would deny the black man liberty, and those who wanted to keep the immigrant Irish in much the same kind of inferior position.

She had just started to tear the article from the page when the door opened and Mr. Mayor meowed. She glanced up, rubbing her eyes—the older she grew, the longer they took to refocus from close work to something more distant.

Hampton presented a silver tray bearing a rectangle of white pasteboard.

“A gentleman in the sitting room, Mrs. de la Gura. He’s most insistent about seeing you.”

“I wasn’t expecting any callers—”

“The gentleman isn’t from New York. From his speech, I would judge he comes from one of the southern states.”

The peace that had begun to settle over her since Saturday morning shattered as she snatched the engraved card and read the name:

VIRGIL TUNWORTH, CAPT., U.S.A. (RET.)

The card fell to the floor. Hampton peered at her. “Is everything all right, madam?”

“Yes—yes—” She retrieved the card, her pulse racing. “Where’s Michael?”

“In the carriage house, I believe. He and Master Louis are repairing the broken stall.”

“Give him the card, bring him in here and tell him to wait—”

She started out, whirled back. “No, go upstairs first. Lock Mary in her room. Tell her to keep absolutely quiet, no matter what happens.” When Hampton seemed slow to comprehend, she exclaimed, “The man is her owner!”

Hampton frowned. “The name did seem slightly familiar—”

“Mary mentioned him the other night. How in God’s name he got here, I don’t know.”

In the sitting room, Captain Virgil Tunworth paced back and forth before the windows overlooking the bare trees of Madison Square. The captain was a small, spare man in his early fifties. Wisps of gray hair lay across a bald skull. He spun around when Amanda entered.

Feigning cordiality, she smiled. “Captain Tunworth—!”

She noted the sooty shoulders of his cream-colored tailcoat; a black smudge on his stand-up collar. The gaslight emphasized the white stubble on his chin; he apparently hadn’t shaved for a day or more.

The captain had served in the army for several years before taking up a more profitable career—the supervision of his family’s lands near Lexington. He still carried himself in an erect, military fashion, and affected a severe manner.

“Good evening, Mrs. de la Gura.” His glance said he hadn’t forgotten their unpleasant meeting in Virginia—and his expression quickly registered disapproval of her lavender trousers.

Still smiling, she said, “This is indeed a surprise—”

“You needn’t pretend it’s a pleasant one. You know why I’ve come.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t the faintest idea,” she said, drying her palm on the handkerchief she kept tucked in her sleeve. She approached the bell pull. “May I ring for a drink for you?”

“Thank you, no.” Politeness was clearly an effort. “I’m filthy and worn out from the train, so let’s conclude our business promptly.”

Amanda walked past him to the window. Saw a hack waiting under the portico, its side lamps aglow in the lowering dark.

“What business, sir?”

In a cupped tone, he replied, “You’re harboring a nigger girl who belongs to me.”

“Captain Tunworth, that—that is the most astonishing—and preposterous—accusation I’ve ever heard!”

“Astonishing, I grant you. I’m sure you weren’t expecting me. But preposterous? Hardly. You see, Mrs. de la Gura”—he stalked toward her, openly belligerent—“some whose niggers run away are content to let them go. I am not. My wench Mary was conducted to Clifton Forge last Wednesday and shipped in a packing case to this house—”

He raised a hand on which a diamond ring guttered. “Before you trap yourself with denials, allow me to finish. I know how Mary got away because I whipped one of my bucks half to death—until he told me he’d seen her conferring with Mr. Syme when my wife sent Mary and the buck to town on an errand. You certainly know who Mr. Syme is—your cousin’s fellow conspirator? After the buck confessed, we caught him.”

Suddenly Amanda felt terror. “Who caught him?”

“Why, some gentlemen who feel exactly as I do about fugitives and those who assist them. Congress has passed a law denying niggers sanctuary in the northern states—and so we’re entitled to their return. I regret to say that after Mr. Syme admitted his perfidy—following a little moral suasion with a board applied to his bare feet—he tried to escape. He couldn’t walk, let alone run. Took a pistol ball in the back. He’s dead. I’m of the opinion Syme’s wife warned your cousin, the Reverend. He’s disappeared—”

“Jephtha’s gone?” Amanda gasped. “Where?”

“To hell, I sincerely hope,” the captain replied with a tart smile. “He was interfering with the law of these United States. He conspired to rob me of my property. As I say, Mary was spirited away on Wednesday. By sundown Friday Mr. Syme had departed this earth—but not before he told us your cousin had driven Mary all the way to the Clifton Forge depot of the Virginia Central line. Some cash and some threats loosened the tongue of the express agent there. That’s how I learned the destination of the box the Reverend shipped. This morning, an hour after I got off that infernal train, I fetched the local manager of Adams Express straight out of church. I only had to remind him that abetting the escape of a slave now carries serious penalties—”