Tindall fired the pistol at Andrew, discharging it at a distance of no more than ten feet. Andrew was thrown back and fell at once to the ground, striking hard and flat and with sudden force. He landed not like a living man but a lifeless weight.
I found my voice and let out a scream as I dropped my torch and rushed to Andrew, ignoring now the murderous Tindall. That Andrew was struck need not mean his end. He was young and strong and resilient. It is what I told myself, but it was all deceit. Even from a distance I saw the ball had struck his heart, and I believe he was dead before he fell. He lay there, eyes wide and lifeless. I reached him and knelt. I cradled his head in my arms, I stroked his hair, I called out to heaven, though heaven would not answer. I felt a heat upon my skin, and though I did not look up, I knew it was the cabin, awash in flames I had not troubled myself to extinguish.
Tindall knew he was in danger now, and he acted quickly. He climbed onto his horse and rode off. Dalton fired his rifle after him, but he had no clear shot. I hardly heard the crack of the weapon, the cries of anguish around me.
What did I lose that day? It pains me now to speak of it, for I lost everything. I lost my darling Andrew, who wanted only that I should live the life of my innermost desires. I lost his child, which died inside me, though I know not if it was from Hendry’s violence or from my shock at the events that unfolded. I lost my freedom, for Tindall put it about at once that I had murdered Hendry in cold blood and sought to murder the colonel too. And though it sounded trivial in my own ears, I lost my novel, taken by the flames that scorched my cabin. This too I lost-my innocence, for I had killed a man, and I could not regret doing so. Surely that made me into someone I was not before.
Everything I had desired and dreamed of and wanted in life was taken from me. Can it be wondered that I set myself against my enemies, and if my enemies were the first men in the nation itself, can I be blamed for seeking justice? The shape of that justice was not formed until later, and not formed alone, but even as I sat with my beloved husband’s body in my arms, the ghost of it was there, haunting me from the spectral realm of notions not yet conceived.
Ethan Saunders
I had considered it a possibility that I might see her-not a realistic possibility, but within the realm of the conceivable. Yet, upon seeing her, I could not imagine a response other than to stand frozen, staring, then to look away, then to stare. Her gown, sky blue with swirling yellow designs, revealed her still-marvelous figure to advantage, having a low neckline and sleeves to just above her elbows, exposing her fine white skin. Her pale blond hair was piled high in the fashion, and atop it rested a prim little cap with yellow feathers stretching upward, a blue ribbon, which matched the gown itself, billowing down.
I had seen her in fine dresses before, of course, though when she had been younger they had been less stiff, less formal; they had been the simple if elegant dresses of a lovely girl, not complex fabric cages of European origin. Then she’d been a soft and charming young lady, a foot still planted in girlhood, but now she had turned into a woman, stony and commanding in her beauty.
Lavien walked toward them, came within ten feet, and then turned back to me. “I’ll not speak to him here,” he said.
“Why not?”
“It cannot be done here. For now, it is enough that he is returned. If he were in hiding, he would not have come to this house. Pearson is back, and that is all that matters. If you will excuse me.” Lavien hurried off, careful, it seemed to me, to avoid being seen by the Pearsons. Across the room, he approached Hamilton and whispered in his ear.
This could not long hold my attention, not while Cynthia was in the room. She did not see me. Jacob Pearson, however, did. He looked up and met my gaze, and turned, most desirous of speaking to his wife. It had been many years since I’d seen him, but I had no difficulty in recognizing him. He was perhaps six or seven years older than myself, though the years had been more unkind to him than I flatter myself they had been to me. His hair had turned white, and lines had exploded around his eyes. Deep crevices had formed in his cheeks, and his teeth were yellow-those he still had. For all that, he retained some of the rugged handsomeness he had possessed a decade earlier, and though he was clearly Cynthia’s senior, the two of them together did not have the comical aspect of some couples in which the husband is significantly older than the wife.
Pearson looked at me, and there was something cloudy in his brown eyes, bloodshot and tired-looking. I watched while he pretended not to have noticed me and reached out with his hand-thick with veins and unusually large-to grasp Cynthia’s arm, digging into her flesh with his yellow fingernails. I saw her white flesh turn whiter and then red. She blanched, closed her eyes for a moment, and then nodded very briefly.
I was too far away to hear what he said, but I could see from the cruel shape of his lips that he said terrible things. I knew too that his soul was tainted with a blackness that frightened me. It is easy to look at the man who has married the woman you love and see only evil, but this was not simple prejudice. I knew what I looked at, and I hated it.
I was stepping up before I knew it, and I understood at once that had I not caught myself, had I not reestablished communication with my own mind, I would have strode forward and pushed him down. For an instant I imagined the room full of politicians and dignitaries would delight in seeing this man fall to humiliating injury, yet I realized at once that to find pleasure in this scene a man would have to know that Pearson was a fiend. To the uninformed, it might appear as though I simply delighted in knocking men over, and in such circumstances the world would no doubt turn against me.
Before either of them saw me approaching, I turned away. I grabbed a glass of wine from a passing servant and drank it down angrily. Then I went to do what I did best: I would set things in motion.
Think you it is easy to get a well-known and beautiful woman alone, away from her husband, at so public a gathering? Think you that, in the company of dozens of guests and nearly as many gossipy servants, a man can just pull such a woman aside into a private closet? It would not be easy for any ordinary man-at least I suspect it would not. I cannot say how ordinary men go about their business.
Here is how I went about mine: I had Leonidas request one of Mrs. Bingham’s servants to inform Mrs. Pearson that the lady was needed most urgently in the library. It would work, I thought. All would be protected by a buffer of supposed Negro ignorance, each servant claiming to believe that he or she had only passed along what was believed to be true.
I sent the message and went to the library to await the arrival of the lady. I stood by the fire, leafing through a volume on the late war, until the doors opened and a troubled-looking Cynthia Pearson rushed inside.
Upon seeing me, she was struck still and silent. Then she opened her mouth and would no doubt have called out her surprise, but recalled the doors were open. Instead of saying something, she closed the doors. I believe it was good that she did so. It gave her time to think, or perhaps it gave her time to cease thinking and allow her heart, and the memory of past emotions, to, if not eclipse, then at least take the stage along with other more reptilian designs.
“My dear God,” she said.
With the door closed, she took three or four purposeful steps toward me but stopped well short of the usual conversational distance. She folded her hands before me, as though she were about to sing an Italian aria. “I was told I was required for an urgent matter.”
“You have been told the truth,” I said.
Cynthia’s blue eyes flashed something meaningful, though I knew not what, and she turned away from me. She strode purposefully toward the doors. Before pulling them open, she turned back to me. “I asked you not to contact me. I begged you not to. You cannot have been invited to this house. Anne would never have asked you without informing me. You must go.”