“I am right beside you.”
“I am happy here. But I shall miss you, Father.”
“And I you.”
“Sometimes I cannot remember what Mother looked like. I cannot see her in my head. Only in my dreams.”
“But you feel her in your heart, aye?”
“In my heart ...” He yawned and turned over again. “Always.”
Blinded by tears as much as the heavy darkness around them, Xander drew the boy nearer into the curve of his large frame.
His desire to hurry and return to Rose-n-Vale ebbed.
The day of Father’s burial was fraught with wind and heat lightning. The river roiled and tossed, lapping at both shores with foamy spray, the water not tranquil blue but churlish brown. At dawn Selah rose with the rest of the household, intent on taking the shallop to James Towne. But when she stood too suddenly and nearly fainted, her mother was quick to remind her she was unfit to travel and the physic had forbidden it. Widow Brodie would accompany Candace overland in a wagon driven by Rose-n-Vale’s indentures.
Mindful of the solemnity of the day, Selah sat in the parlor, dozing and reading by turns. The mantel clock seemed to stand still. Widow Brodie had brought her a basket of books—fairy tales and Shakespeare’s sonnets. These she could manage with one hand. Her sewing remained untouched, the garden with its colorful squash and late corn all but abandoned. Gradually the wind waned by suppertime, a meal mostly untouched. When her mother returned at dusk, she said little.
Selah greeted her with an embrace, alarmed by her washed-out pallor.
“I am going to retire, Daughter. I’ll share details about your father’s interment later. Please tell Izella I shan’t be having supper.”
The days following left Selah feeling a prisoner to four walls. Bereft of both Father and Shay, their days assumed a hollow emptiness naught could mend. Visitors had ceased, and Laurent was summoned to another shire to treat an outbreak of some malady there. Izella was at work in the kitchen, and the musketeer was down by the river’s edge. Thus the cage of Selah’s grief cracked open and sent her tiptoeing out of doors while her mother sat napping near a window, her mending in her lap.
Unable to saddle the mare, she rode without, though it took all her strength to mount the block and gain the horse’s broad back. Winded and in pain, she slowly made her way into the sunlit brilliance of the afternoon toward Rose-n-Vale.
Even from a distance, the main house brought her to tears. Xander’s absence was keenly felt, especially here. Just this morn Mother had prayed again for his return, a new lament in her tone that bespoke a fear something might have befallen him. What would he say when he learned all that had befallen them? Would he suspect Laurent as she did?
Dashing a hand across her damp cheeks, she rode along the borders of Renick land. Striking was in progress, a great many hands removing the dried leaf onto waiting wagon beds for the sweating and sorting to follow. Riding alone, her arm in a sling, was sure to draw notice or comment. Still, she pressed forward toward Laurent’s newly awarded acreage.Never had she come here. She had no wish to visit it now, yet something drove her past her trepidation.
Oh, Father, you are not coming back. But Lord willing, I can do something about Watseka.
The sight of so many Africans clearing the land of trees and stumps to prepare for future planting was a sore sight. Fieldwork never ceased but for the harshest winter snows. In the distance were a few outbuildings and an unfinished barn. ’Twas said Laurent’s previous tobacco in a small plot near James Towne had succumbed to mold, a complete ruination. Was this why he continued to ply his trade as physic?
Tobacco cultivation, even by a crop master’s exacting standards, was chancy, always one step away from disaster. Many had failed while Xander succeeded, his Trinidad seed well established, his brand with its bow and arrow above a sheaf of tobacco leaveswell known. Yet tobacco was not her preoccupation this day.
Thunder sent a shudder through her. The scent of rain pervaded everything. Lost in thought, she’d failed to heed the weather. She veered into a stand of ash trees, her gaze never settling. Where had Watseka been taken? What if she had been not just taken but killed, her body hidden in the woods and hastily buried? Hatred ran high in Virginia. Selah had tried to shut out the violence of the past, but it was part of their New World tapestry, each bloodred thread vivid and unforgotten. What could she, a lone woman, do?
Never had a separation seemed more an eternity. She didn’t just miss Xander. She ached for him. Only he could set things right. He had the clout and cunning that she, a wounded woman with little voice, did not. The longer he delayed, the greater the threat to Watseka. To them all.
As the first warm drops began to fall, so did more tears, intermingling with the rain dripping off her hat brim. Weary of horseback, she slid off the mare and dropped to her knees in the weeds. Too late did she realize she had no mounting block to help her back into the saddle. ’Twould be a long, wet walk home. Cradling her slow-to-heal arm, she prayed yet another broken prayer amid the wood’s noises around her.
35
Xander’s return to the white world was far faster without Oceanus. Whereas he’d been cautious with the five-year-old by his side—aye, five, as his birthday had just passed—he now pushed himself to his own seasoned limits. Their parting had gone easier than expected, their goodbyes brief if heartfelt. Xander had swept Oceanus up in a bearish embrace, their first, with none of the awkwardness that had marred their affection before.
“You must tell my father I am missing him and will be glad to don English garments and return to merchanting.” Shay’s infectious grin warmed Xander like the sun on his back. “And kindly tell my mother I miss her beef steak pie. And Selah her teasing.”
“I shall.” Xander hoisted his knapsack onto one shoulder, considerably lighter than when he’d come.
“Have no fear about Oceanus. I will keep special watch over him. Already he’s taken to their ways faster than I when I first came.”
Kneeling, Xander prayed over his son just the same. Forprotection. Favor. Their future reunion. Oceanus and Shay then waved at him till he stepped beyond their sight.
Though he’d been twice Oceanus’s age when he’d gone to live with the Powhatans, he recalled his own internal shift as his English mind grappled with that of the Naturals, his slow shedding of his regard of them as savage and the English superior. Each had much to learn from the other, if they would. Mayhap then the New World would be less fraught with warfare.
The day wore on, endless ruminations keeping him company as the landscape changed and challenged him. He slid down a rocky cliffside that nearly poked holes in his moccasins, then paused to drink from a mossy spring. Thirst slaked, he filled his sweat-stained hat to the brim before returning it to his head. The deluge of cold water did him good. To the east, pewter thunderheads amassed like cannonballs, snuffing the sun and promising rain.
