Drum (70 page)

slashed with deep wounds and now green with the crawling iridescence of flies. A shred of black trousers was still buttoned around the waist but the tattered remnant could not cover the bloody gash of emasculation. Some six feet away, the severed head, lying on its cheek in the gravel, stared back at her through open eyes that seemed still to be terrified by what they had seen and experienced.

She knelt down beside the body and waved her hand to brush the buzzing flies away, beckoning to Lucretia Borgia to come closer. Gently Augusta reached out a hand and placed it on a spot on the cold flesh that was not mutilated.

"Thank you, Drumson. I'm very grateful. I wish you could hear me say it." She lingered, trying to picture this mutilated body as the grinning slave who had been at her beck and call daily; as the grave and dignified servant who had so deftly waited on them at table last night; and as the man who had offered his body as a shield for Hammond. While she was kneeling there, Brutus and another slave, each carrying one end of a wooden coffin, came around the corner of the house. To get to her, they had to step over the dead bodies of the slaves who had been killed the night before —a mass of black arms, rough homespun-covered legs and woolly black pates. They set the coffin down on the ground before the lowest step.

Augusta stood up slowly. It seemed as though she could never walk the few steps to where the head stared at her but she determinedly placed one foot in front of the other and then, her eyes wide open but her hands recoiling from the touch, she reached down and picked it up. Her revulsion passed and she brushed the sand and gravel from the matted, bloodied hair. Holding the head in both hands, she carried it back to Drumson's body and laid it down, as close to where it had been severed as possible. Then she looked around for Lucretia Borgia only to see her tugging at the arms of a corpse, pulling it away from the body that lay beneath it.

"Git yo' big arms and laigs off'n my boys," she was sputtering as she hauled the big fellow aside. "What you worthless trash a-doin', layin' on my Meg and Alph." She gave another heave and the corpse slid away from the two bodies under it. With some difficulty she managed to bend their arms, trying to fold their hands across their chests. Augusta watched her numbly for a moment, realizing that no matter what they had done, Meg and Alph were still a

part of this woman who was trying to cover her sorrow by her brusque scolding. Then she went inside the house to fetch the silk quilt that shimmered in the dim light of the hall. She gathered it up and brought it outside, flinging it wide over the coffin and then, as it settled, straightening it out inside the box.

"Brutus."

"Yes, ma'am, Miz 'Gusta."

"Go in the ladies' sitting room and bring me one of those green velvet pillows from the couch."

Wide-eyed, he looked at her but he was back in a moment with the pillow, which she fitted into the coffin.

"Now, Brutus, lift poor Drumson in."

"Cain't touch him, Miz 'Gusta. Cain't touch him 'thout'n he got no head. No, Miz 'Gusta, cain't do it." Brutus backed away but he had not figured on Lucretia Borgia. With her own dead straightened out on the grass, she had come over to where Augusta was standing and as Brutus badked away he collided with her. She gave him a push with one hand and a resounding slap with the other.

"You do as yo' mist'ess tell you. Git that Drumson inter the box. Put his haid in too. Ifn you don', nigger, they's goin' to be makin' 'nother box fo' you right soon, 'cause, nigger, I'se goin' to clobber you good."

And Brutus obeyed. With the rolling-eyed slave who had accompanied him, they lifted Drumson's body and then his head and placed them in the coffin, but it remained for Augusta to straighten the head and to wrap the silk coverlet around him, tucking it in well.

"Take him to the burying ground," she said, "and dig a grave for him."

"White folks' buryin' ground?" Lucretia Borgia asked in surprise.

"Exactly," Augusta answered. "Who has a better right to be there?" She stepped back as Brutus and the other slave lifted the coffin to their shoulders. Where Drumson's body had lain on the steps, she noticed a flash of light and she reached down and picked up a curious silver filigreed box, attached to a well worn chain. She remembered having caught glimpses of such a chain under Drumson's collar when he was working around the house in the morning. It belonged to him and her first impulse was to put it in his coffin but she remembered Elvira, now heavy with child and the Mandingo woman who was even now upstairs. Some-

day there might be another Drumson. She would keep it for him.

Her task was over. When Brutus returned, she would send him back to the slave shed and have him bring over a detail of slaves and the farm wagon. Somewhere, she did not much care where as long as it was far enough away from the house, they could dig a conunon grave for the men who had been in Montgomery's caffle and the Falconhurst slaves who had perished along with them. If Lucretia Borgia wanted to bury her two sons separately she could—it was immaterial to Augusta. Whatever their crime against Hammond had been, their death had wiped it out.

With the silver box and chain in her hand, she entered the house. It was cool and dark inside and the windows were still barricaded with furniture. She must tell Drumson to set things to rights—no, there was no Drumson to tell. Brutus would have to take over now.

Hammond was resting from the effects of the laudanum and she dreaded the time of his awakening and the pain that would return with his consciousness. Just now she wanted to be alone. She climbed the stairs slowly, clutching the bannister with one hand, the silver chain dangling from the other. The big chest under the front windows from which she had taken the silk quilt was open, and she closed the cover and sat down on it.

In the quiet of the upper hall she thought of what had transpired the night before between Hammond Maxwell and herself. Their sudden intimacy had been as much of a surprise to her as it must have been to him. And yet not truly a surprise, for the love each expressed for the other seemed perfectly natural, as natural as her marriage to Hammond that was sure to ensue. Yes, she had grown to love that man, and as time went on she would love him even more; each day would weave the pattern of their Uves more closely together.

She looked out of the window, grateful that the balcony hid the twisted bodies in the drive below, and her eyes came to rest on the long Une of saplings that stretched from the house to the main road. So Augusta Devereaux who had once been plain Gussie Delavan was now to become Mrs. Hammond MaxweU of Falconhurst. She could not deny that the thought made her glad. And yet there was no possessiveness in what she felt. She had come to love this house, this haven of security, just as she had come to love

its master; in her heart she could not separate one from the other.

Her hand caressed the smooth polished mahogany of the chest, and she thought of Drumson. How much she owed— how much she and Hammond both owed—to this greathearted Negro who would soon be resting under the live oaks in the burying ground. Drumson had died for them as he had lived for them. That she must never forget, as long as she lived.

Her hand still clutched the silver chain and she studied the little box attached to it. What did it contain? Some conjure, some weird talisman? Her fingers found the catch and opened it, but inside the box she saw only a piece of stained discolored cloth. The cloth was so old that it crumbled as she unwrapped it, and inside there was only a handful of gray dust.

Although its history was unknown to her, she felt that this precious dust had come a long way—and still had a long way to go. Some day soon there would be a son to Drumson, and she would hang it around his neck. She would keep it in trust for him, she told herself as she fastened the chain around her own neck and let the little silver box fall into the bosom of her dress. At first it was cold against her skin, cold as the touch of death, but soon it grew warm and comforting and it seemed to her that the dead slave had come back to life.

Now there were footsteps upstairs and a door slammed while voices spoke and answered each other in the hall. Hearing them, she sat upright on the chest. She searched for a handkerchief but found none and dabbed at her eyes with the hem of her petticoat, running her fingers through her hair and buttoning a button of her dress before she stood up. Her one moment of weakness was over and she started counting, on her fingers, the number of places to set for breakfast. But first she would run downstairs to see if Hammond was resting. She hoped he was still sleeping and had not awakened to pain. Drumson too was sleeping and he would not awaken to pain either. Nothing would ever disturb him again. He was no longer a slave. His death had at last earned him his freedom.