The Widow's War (26 page)

Dear God,
he prays,
let this baby come into the world easily. Let it be healthy. Let it thrive. Let Carrie’s labor be short; let her pain be light. Let her not suffer too much . . .

The wind shrieks around him and the windows of the house disappear, glowing under the snow like buried lanterns. Out in the front yard, the chair Carrie was sitting on topples over and disappears. William thinks of the women he has seen bleed to death giving birth, women who could not deliver their babies at all, women who labored until they died of exhaustion.

Please don’t take her from me
.

Is God hearing this? Does He exist? Is that His voice in the roaring of the blizzard? For a few more seconds, he stands on the porch as the storm turns him into a white statue. Then he shakes off the snow, stomps off his boots, and goes inside to help Alice/Edward come into the world.

 

 

 

 

 

S
ometimes, Carrie thinks, nature is merciful. Later, she remembers the warmth of the hot brick William put at her feet, the fire in the stove casting shadows on the walls, the pain coming in waves, but most of the day she gave birth to Teddy is a blank. She has a dim recollection of cursing, and crying, and screaming; of gripping William’s arm so hard she bruises it; of biting her lips and yelling that she will never have another child if she has to give up lovemaking for the rest of her life, but it all seems like a dream someone else dreamed.

The thing she remembers most clearly is Teddy actually being born, the relief of finally pushing him out into the world, the joy of hearing him cry and knowing he’s alive. She remembers taking him in her arms for the first time, feeling him wet and squirming against her, and loving him beyond reason from the first moment she holds him.

She even recalls looking up at William, saying, “Thank you,” and breaking into tears. William must have comforted her, taken the baby from her, washed him, bundled him up, given him back to her to hold. He must have told her he loved her, but she can’t remember any of this.

What comes next is the transition from ice to fire. In the midst of the fever, when she is out of her head and raving incoherently, she believes she is back in the hospital of the Casa de Misericórdia. She speaks to William in Portuguese, and when he hears this, he believes he’s going to lose her.

He does not panic, nor does he purge and bleed her as other doctors would have done. Instead, he sponges her down with alcohol, and persuades her to drink tea made from licorice root, thyme, and hyssop. Once, she swims up from the depths of the pit of fire she has been thrown into to find him bending over her.

“Is this childbed fever?” she asks him.

“Yes.”

“My mother died of it.”

“You won’t die, Carrie.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he says so firmly she believes him. Then she looks into his eyes and realizes he’s lying. “If I do die, will you take care of Teddy as if he were your own son?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t let Deacon take him?”

“Never.”

“I’m burning alive,” she says. “Put me out in the snow.” He refuses. For a while she is angry; then she forgets snow exists.

What dreams does she have during the time she hovers between life and death? Does Mae Seja come to comfort her? Does she see her mother? She remembers nothing. All she knows is that one morning she wakes to find herself lying in her own bed with Teddy nursing at her breast. Sunlight is streaming in through the windows. Most of the snow has melted, and the sky is so blue it looks like the petals of a giant cornflower.

She puts her hand on Teddy’s head.
My son,
she thinks. He is an unusually pretty baby: dark hair as fine as silk, red cheeks, a tiny straight nose, long eyelashes that would be the envy of any girl. Everything about him is small and perfect and compact right down to his tiny fingernails. His eyes are blue, but the color often changes. Will they turn green like Deacon’s?

Perhaps they will. She can see traces of Deacon in his face, but her son’s eyes will never be catlike and sly. Already they are rounder, softer. Teddy will laugh with his eyes. She and William will love him. He will be a happy child.

When she looks in his face, she sees not only herself. She sees her mother, her father, her grandparents. What a mystery children are. How many births did it take to produce this particular baby? How many centuries was he in the making?

In Mae Seja’s
quilombo
, people gave their babies names like
Iyabo,
which means
Mother Is Back
; or
Babatunji, Father Has Woken Up.
They not only believed children were the dead returning; they believed a child who died young would be reborn from the womb of the same mother. Teddy could be Willa come back to her. No wonder every religion has some way to bless children.

She kisses him on the forehead and whispers foolish, loving words in his ear.
I’ll bless him with the names of the Brazilian and African gods,
she thinks,
and then I’ll take him to church and have him christened.

But perhaps it’s not a good idea to mix gods, because two weeks later, she throws the
buzios
, and they tell her she’ll lose him. “Stupid, lying shells!” she cries. “What am I doing practicing witchcraft?” Gathering up the
buzios
, she carries them to the waste bucket and drops them in. They hit the bottom with a deafening rattle. She looks down to see if any have been chipped, but they all appear whole.

Suddenly she feels foolish. A handful of shells cannot predict the future. The messages she reads in them exist only in her imagination. Teddy is in no danger.

She tilts the bucket, fishes the
buzios
out, and stuffs them back into their bag. Going over to Teddy’s cradle, she picks him up and clasps him to her so tightly he begins to cry.

“I am never going to let anything hurt you!” she promises. “Do you hear me? I’ll never lose you. Never!”

Washington, D.C., July 1855

 

 

 

D
eacon Presgrove sits at the gaming table in Mrs. Springer’s parlor staring into a handsome face and eyes so cold they make his hands shake. The full lips, red cheeks, soft skin, and curly white-blond hair belong to Henry Clark. Deacon isn’t given to flights of imagination, but when he looks at Clark he can’t help but see bodies piling up in heaps.

Lily comes up behind him smelling of expensive French perfume. Reaching back, Deacon takes her hand in his. Maybe he takes it for courage; maybe he takes it because if Clark pulls a gun, he can heave Lily in front of him. He’s too spooked to figure out which.

“What do you want?” he asks.

Clark smiles. It is a charming smile, but Deacon, who has often used such smiles himself to great advantage, is not deceived. He looks at Clark’s even, white teeth and thinks
shark.

“Money,” Clark says.

“Why should I give you money?”

“Because you’re my friend.”

“I am?” Deacon’s cravat feels too tight. He starts to loosen it and then realizes Clark will take the gesture as a sign of weakness.

“We drank together. We whored together.” Clark’s smile broadens. “Remember that little quadroon beauty in Savannah? You kept putting whiskey on her nipples. Then you did something that set her screaming. Remember that? When her pimp came in and saw how you’d damaged his property, he decided to shoot you dead. But I saved your life. Remember?”

“I don’t remember anything. I was drunk.” A lie. Deacon remembers the whole incident all too well.

“I killed him,” Clark says. “Remember?”

“Yes,” Deacon admits, “you did.”

“In a nasty way.”

“Very nasty.” Deacon can feel circles of perspiration forming under his arms. “When I woke up the next day the memory of what you did to him was worse than my hangover.”

“I enjoyed it. I took out my pocket watch and timed his screaming. He set a new record.”

Deacon very much wants this conversation to end. He wishes he had a gun. Shooting Clark would be a public service, but maybe Clark would shoot him first. “How much do you want?”

“Don’t you want to know what I want the money for?”

“To keep quiet about the whore, I imagine.”

“You imagine wrong. When I heard your father speak in Savannah, he said Yankee abolitionists were taking over Kansas. ‘An abomination,’ he said. ‘Sodom and Gomorrah.’ That’s when it came to me. That’s when I found my calling.” Clark leans so close, Deacon can smell the whiskey on his breath. “Think of me as Christ in the wilderness; or if you’d rather, the Beast of Revelation.”

“You want money to go to Kansas?”

“Not just me. I want to lead my own band. Like Mangas Coloradas.”

In the last fifteen seconds, Clark has compared himself to the Beast of Revelation, an Apache chief, and Jesus Christ.
Clearly he is insane,
Deacon thinks. He clears his throat and tries to look as if such a thought never occurred to him.

“So if I sponsor you and your men, you’ll immediately head for the Kansas Territory?”
And put a thousand miles between us?

“I’ll come down on those free-soilers like the wolf on the fold.”

When a man with eyes like glass marbles sits across a poker table from you quoting Byron, it’s dangerous to bargain, but Deacon has never handed over money without getting something in return, and his mouth works before his brain has time to warn him of the risk he’s taking.”

“Find my wife.”

“Your wife?”

Deacon immediately regrets having spoken. Carrie threatened to shoot him if he came after her, and damned if she wouldn’t do it. Could he tell Clark to forget about her? No. If he does, Clark will think he’s weak and indecisive. Deacon decides that there is no use imagining what Clark will do to him if he appears vulnerable. Talking to the man is like having a conversation with a panther. You have to look him straight in the eye and act as if he’s the one who should be afraid. It’s a difficult role, but Deacon has played a lot of difficult roles in his time.

He wills his own eyes to turn to marbles. Perhaps they do; perhaps they don’t. He can’t tell without a mirror, but when he speaks, he hears the voice he used when he played Caligula.

“I have reason to believe my wife is in Kansas, but those abolitionist bastards are such a closed-mouth bunch they wouldn’t tell you the time if you showed them a watch. I’ve made numerous inquiries, but so far I haven’t been able to locate her.” He wonders if he should tell Clark about the child and decides against it. The less Clark knows about his personal life, the better. “I’ll give you a list of names she may be using, possible whereabouts, and so forth.”

“You want me to kill her?”

“For God’s sake no! I just want you to tell me where she is, and then I’ll go get her myself. You aren’t to hurt her or threaten her or even let her know you’re there. Just find out if she’s living in the Kansas Territory.”

“I think you should give me something extra for that.” Clark lifts his left hand and brushes his thumb and fingers together. Strong hands that could break a man’s neck so fast that—Deacon pushes the thought out of his mind. For a few seconds, Clark holds his hand in front of Deacon’s face, then swoops down and begins to paw through the pile of jewelry that lies next to the ashtray holding Deacon’s cigar.

“Your stake?”

“Yes.”

“Looks like you’re pressed for ready cash.”

“I’ll win everything back tonight and more.”

Clark picks up a silver bracelet, slips it on his wrist, and admires it. “What happened to that gold cigar case Nettie gave you?”

“It was stolen.”

Clark makes a clicking sound that might possibly be interpreted as sympathy but which is more likely disappointment. “I see two wedding rings here. Have you converted to Mormonism? If you have, I suggest you recant. I’ve always held that it’s easier to cheat on one wife than support two.”

“Both rings belonged to my late stepmother. My father gave her the large gold band. The smaller ring, the one studded with sapphires, came from her previous husband. She was a widow when my father married her.”

“
Was
, as in no longer with us?
Late
, as in
dead
?”

Deacon nods.

“My sympathies.” Clark picks up a gold ring guard and holds it to the light. “Are these real diamonds?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, I thought so. Well, if you don’t object, I think I’ll take all this as a down payment.”

“Help yourself.”

Clark scoops up the jewelry and stuffs it into his pocket. As he straightens up, his coat flares open revealing a fancy nickel-plated revolver with an ivory grip.

“I could use a drink,” he says.

Deacon turns to Lily. “Get us some whiskey,” he orders. Whatever Clark wants, he can have. There will be no more bargaining.

PART 5

John Brown