Part 4 (2/2)

Mam Rose's thin shoulders hunched. ”I'm not stayin' here do the pen break and them big turtles git loose. Don't aim to have one of them climbing up.”

Mrs. Pryor slammed the trapdoor back in place. ”That's hardly likely to happen, Mam Rose, as you well know. And the sooner you get to mopping the better-all of you.”

Seeing Persis' puzzlement she explained. ”That is a fresh-water cistern down there. And part of it's a bathhouse. There's a stake side pen between it and the ca.n.a.l where we generally keep a supply of turtles. Turtle soup is excellent, if a little rich.”

”You mean this house sits out over part of a pond?” Persis asked.

”Yes. It was channeled from the spring on purpose for protection against Indian raids. One could even escape that way into the ca.n.a.l by going through the turtle pond.”

Persis could see the advantage of a supply of water, though she suspected it might be brackish and un-drinkable if the overflow of the seaward ca.n.a.l rose in it. But swimming through a pond of turtles to escape a raid-it sounded like the wildest kind of fantasy. Yet Mrs. Pryor apparently accepted the idea as an added advantage of the house.

”The whole house is not over water,” Mrs. Pryor must have caught some of her unease, ”just the kitchen. Captain Leverett when he built used the Key method of mounting the house on heavy stakes driven well into the mound. The building, as I said, may s.h.i.+ft a little-and it has-but it cannot be ripped loose. And hereabout it is only good reasoning to have another exit in case of trouble. There have been several ma.s.sacres on Keys in the past and people have learned to take precautions. The cistern is filled by the rain troughs-it may rise and then run off into the ca.n.a.l. We wedge the door here when that happens.”

Persis tried to imagine a cellar, or what would have been a cellar in any proper house, filled with swirling water, including turtles. All she gained from that was a personal belief it was all a part of the barbaric wrecker life with which she need not concern herself. Turtles! She had seen some of the monsters turned over on their backs, their scaled limbs pawing futilely, and she had felt deeply sorry for the poor creatures, having thereafter no wish to taste the much vaunted soup.

As she backed a little away from the trapdoor she was startled by a crescendo of knocks from the outer door. Someone out there was beating almost frenziedly on the panel. Mrs. Pryor glanced around, and put down the lantern.

”Come!” she beckoned both Persis and Molly to join her. ”It will like as not take the three of us-”

With one hand on the latch-bar, the housekeeper gestured for them to take position behind her, as if she feared she might be sent flying inward when she opened the door.

”Ready-” Mrs. Pryor warned during a short lull. Persis saw Molly brace herself and did likewise. Then the door, freed of its fastening, burst inward.

Persis, drenched by the incoming rain, cried out. From hair to shoes she was almost instantly as wet as if she had fallen into the cistern below. And so violent was the a.s.sault of water and wind she could hardly take a breath, gasping like a newly landed fish.

But the fury of the storm swept in someone else. Persis was only aware of a crouching figure who was blown, or rushed near the hearth. Then she gave all the strength she could muster to aid Mrs. Pryor and Molly in, once more shutting and securing the door.

They forced it closed, leaving runnels of rain, even bits of torn leaves on the floor. When the bolts at top and bottom were again set Mrs. Pryor stood for a long moment breathing deeply, her round face red under the draggle of her soaked and wind-twisted cap and hair. Molly's hands were at her breast, which rose and fell with the deep gusts she drew into and expelled from her laboring lungs.

Only Persis turned to see who had come out of the storm. She shrank back, m.u.f.fling a scream only in time. That-that thing-crouched by the hearth hardly looked human!

There were long dark sticks of legs, arms as thin, ending in hands like the claws of some huge predatory bird. And the rest of the body was covered with water-slimed leather, some of that in tatters, topped by a s.h.i.+rt so stained as to be nearly as dark as the leather. But it was the head-now swung around toward the girl- In color it was as dark brown as the wretched rags of the s.h.i.+rt, and it bore no resemblance to any living creature. How could it? With those great upstanding ears like those of a bat, while the eyes were only deep holes not even showing a flicker of life within them. The nose was merely a raised lump in which Persis saw no nostrils, but the mouth was round, pursed, stuck outward from the surface as if this monster sought fiercely to suck at something.

Mrs. Pryor came away from the door. There was no dismay on the housekeeper's face as she stooped to pick up the lantern and set it once more on the table.

”Ill weather, Askra,” she commented.

The tattered, mud-smeared creature out of the storm stood up stiffly, as if her joints were racked by rheumatism. Now Persis could see a tangle of coa.r.s.e gray hair on her shoulders, rain-wet into loops which dripped on the floor.

She grunted and reached both bird-claw hands to the back of her head, fumbled there for a moment or two, and then that awful, unnatural face fell forward, lying, still held by a cord, to hang like a bib on her flat breast.

The newcomer was dark skinned, but her features were totally unlike those of the black servants. Instead she had a large, high-bridged nose jutting forward to overhang her mouth and chin, while her forehead slanted back in a way to accent the nose even more.

Persis had seen Indians in the North, the broken remnants of the once proud and feared Six Nations. But this very old woman was very different from those. For all her ragged and filthy clothing she carried herself as if she were mistress here. And she said nothing as she brushed back the matted elf locks of her hair. Her eyes slid past Mrs. Pryor and she did not answer the other's comment. Instead she looked directly at Persis.

Try as she might to break that steady locking of gaze the girl could not move her eyes, nor turn away her head. The other held her in a kind of trance by some force of personality, as if she could so reach directly into the captive's mind and read every thought lying there.

”Rockets!” That cry brought an abrupt end to their confrontation.

Lydia stood in the doorway from the hall. Her cloak was plastered to her body, streams of water ran from it.

”We saw rockets!” she repeated. ”There's a wreck on the reef!”

6.

Persis paced the hallway back and forth. She could not sit still, nor could she control the vivid pictures her imagination painted of what might be happening out there, beyond the walls of the house which shuddered under every lash of the wind. Lydia was strung up to a high rate of excitement, but even she did not again seek the dangerous walk on the roof, only chattered faster and faster about other storms and what had resulted from them. She had shed the dripping cloak and now sat on the bottom step of the stair talking, always talking. Until Persis wanted to cover her ears as Molly had done.

She grew so tired with her pacing that at last she was driven to a chair in the dining room where three candles made very small pools of light, and shadows hung over their shoulders like baneful beasts about to seize their prey. As Mrs. Pryor had warned, the food was cold- bread, jam, slices of cured ham, with not even a cup of comforting tea to wash it down.

Lydia still speculated on the prizes which such high seas offered-she seemed to have no thought in her head of lives which might be lost on those vessels caught in the full turbulence of the storm. But she was silenced completely when the crystals in the unlit chandelier over them gave a sudden sharp tinkle, clas.h.i.+ng prism against prism, and the very floor under them appeared to s.h.i.+ft.

Persis noted that Lydia's hand, resting on the table, closed in a tight grip on the edge of the board, her nails cutting into the heavy linen of the cloth which covered it.

But that lurch of the house was followed by a calm and Persis relaxed a little until Mrs. Pryor came in, herding Sukie before her, examining each windowsill for signs of a betraying trickle of water.

”Is-is it over?” Persis asked.

”Laws, no, Miss. This is the center-what they call 'the eye'-when that pa.s.ses over we'll again have wind.” There was something steadying about Mrs. Pryor, as if no torrent of rain, no fury of gale could beset her. As Persis had done she changed into dry clothing and reordered her old-fas.h.i.+oned coiffure, looking her usual self.

But the news she had brought was certainly not encouraging and Persis instinctively braced herself for a return of the fury. She had even lost all idea of time; it seemed to her that the fury had lasted forever. Was it night, morning-? However, tired as she was, she could not have crawled into bed with that rage of elements outside.

Then the blow did start again, even as the housekeeper had predicted, and went on for what seemed like hours and hours, never letting them go. Lydia stopped talking at last. Persis had barely listened to her chatter when the second hard a.s.sault began. Sometimes she could not hear anyway, only see the other's lips moving. They sat in the parlor, a single wavering candle flame between them. Once or twice there came such a crash that Persis was sure a part of the house had been beaten in. But she had regained enough of her own stubborn courage so that she refused to let Lydia see how stark her fear was.

What of the s.h.i.+ps out there? The Arrow had been brought to the wharf so that its repairs could be more easily estimated. But with this second battering it might be left in a far worse state. Captain Leverett was on the open sea-daring his s.h.i.+p-and his life with those of his men. The rockets Lydia had sighted- would those who had fired them be as lucky as they of the Arrow had been?

Persis discovered Lydia was watching her closely, with some of the same searching which had been used by the tattered hag who had sought shelter in the kitchen hours earlier.

”Glad you aren't out there?” Lydia's lips shaped a hint of a smile. ”The Arrow would never have lasted through this-and probably Crewe would not have dared to steer too close to the reef to help-not in this storm. And Crewe is the best wrecker on the Keys.”

Persis did not want to think about the Arrow, she wished she could erase the sounds of the storm as well.

”How did he become a wrecker?” Persis asked.

Lydia pouted. ”Because he is so stubborn. He has had his master's papers since he was eighteen; our father was an Indies merchant in the Canton Trade. He wanted Crewe to go in with him but Crewe had to have the sea. So he ran away on one of the China clippers. He was only twelve but he had the same stubborn temper even then!” She laughed. ”He still does-hotter than h.e.l.l, Ralph says-only he keeps it all inside. But when he lets go-” She made a gesture which suggested the scattering of bits of emotion. ”Anyway, he is a natural-born seaman, and he worked hard. Then he got in with Palmer Briggs-”

Persis gave a start which she was sure that the sharp-eyed Lydia did not miss. Palmer Briggs was well known in New York-too well known and for the worst of reasons.

”Oh, Crewe never commanded a slaver.” Lydia's chin lifted a fraction. ”Only sc.u.m takes out one of those. But Palmer was interested in wrecking. He'd lost a couple of slave s.h.i.+ps to the Navy and they were downright suspicious of anything he sent to sea. So he made a deal with Crewe-to try the Keys and see how it worked. Only right after that Palmer Briggs did fail, in fact he went bankrupt. And Crewe bought the s.h.i.+p somehow from the trustees who took over to settle affairs.

”Then he came down here and purchased this Key, from the widow of Sancho Mendoza who held it by Spanish law. He thought that the Key West men were working together to get rid of those they did not like. And they certainly had no time for Crewe. He's beat them to too many wrecks and made first deals with the captains. This house-he brought s.h.i.+ps' carpenters in from the islands to build it.” She looked around with pride.

”When my father died, Crewe had me go to school in Charleston in the Carolinas-” She made a face. ”Don't do this, a lady never thinks of that, and all the rest!” Her voice made clear her opinion of the school. ”I kept begging him to bring me here. What a fool I was!”

Her expression was set now. ”I didn't know, you see, just what it would mean being shut away on this-this desert! There was a girl from Key West at school-Sallie Mathews-and she had made life there sound so exciting. But there's nothing to do here. And I don't see how Crewe ever expects me to get married. Married to who- Dr. Veering? He's near old enough to be my father, and besides all he can think of are his plants. And the rescued people from the s.h.i.+ps-they stay only long enough to get pa.s.sage away. I might just as well be buried!”

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