Part 13 (1/2)
”It's by way of being her house of mysteries, isn't it?” said Bridget, sorting through the linen hamper.
”Her command post, if you like, where she plans the battle against the wicked dead every night. There's strange things goes on in there! Chanting all hours, and flashes of light , and sometimes screams to freeze the blood in you! She's a brave lady, the mistress. all for our Danny's sake, just to keep his dear heart beating.”
”I'm afraid he gets a little restless now and then,” said Annimae uncomfortably. ”He says that sometimes he doubts that there's any spirits at all.”
The mother and daughter were silent a moment, going about their tasks.
”Poor boy,” said Bridget at last. ”It's to be expected, with him growing up the way he has. Seeing is believing, sure, and he's never seen danger.”
”Do you believe in the spirits?” Annimae asked.
”Oh, yes, Ma'am,” said Gardenia quietly. ”Without a doubt.”
So the brief bright days blinked past, like images on nickelodeon screens, and the long fevered nights pa.s.sed in lazy ecstasy. The last of the summer fruit was garnered away in the vast cellars, with Bridget and her daughters carrying down tray after tray of gla.s.s jars full of preserves. The orchards were golden.
When the leaves began to fall, G.o.dfrey and G.o.dwin raked great red and yellow heaps that were set to smolder in the twilight, like incense.
There came an evening when Annimae was awakened at midnight, as she always was, by the summoning bell. Yet as its last reverberation died away, no customary calm flowed back like black water; instead there came a drumming, ten times louder than the desultory beat of hammers, a thundering music, and faint voices raised in song.
As she lay wondering why anyone would be drumming at this hour of the night, she felt Daniel sit up beside her.
”Listen!” he said eagerly. ”Don't you hear? They're dancing!”
”Is that all it is?” said Annimae, a little cross. The sound frightened her for some reason.
”It's their holiday. We must go watch,” said Daniel, and she felt him getting out of bed.
”We mustn't!” she cried. ”It's not safe for you, honey.”
”Oh, there's a safe way,” he said, sounding sly. She heard him open a cabinet and take something from a hanger. ”I go watch them every year. This year will be the best of all, because you're with me now. Don't be afraid, my darling.”
She heard him walk around to her side of the bed. ”Now, get up and come with me. I've put my shroud on, and I'll walk behind you all the way; and no one will see us, where we're going.”
So she slid from the bed and reached out, encountering a drape of gauze cloth. His hand came up through it and took hers rea.s.suringly, tugged her impatiently to the secret panel. So quickly they left the room that she had no time to pull on even a st.i.tch, and she blushed hot to find herself out in the corridor naked. Yet it was a hot night, and in any case much too dark to be seen.
”Fifty paces straight ahead, Annimae, and then turn left,” Daniel told her.
”Left? But I've never gone that way,” said Annimae.
”It's all right,” Daniel said, so for love's sake she followed his direction. She walked before him the whole way, though she kept tight hold of his hand through the shroud. Left and right and right again he directed her, through so many turns and up and down so many stairs she knew she'd never find her way back alone, even when they reached a place with windows where milky starlight glimmered through. The house was silent, the corridors all deserted. The drumming, however, grew louder, and the clapping and chanting more distinct.
”This is the earliest thing I can remember,” Annimae heard Daniel say. ”I woke up in the dark and was scared, and I tried to get out. How I stumbled over everything, in my shroud! I must have found the catch in the panel by accident, because the next thing I knew, there was the corridor stretching out ahead of me. It seemed as bright as stars, then. I followed after the music, just as we're doing now. And, look!
This is the window I found.”
They had come around a corner and entered a narrow pa.s.sage ending in a wall, wherein was set one little window in the shape of a keyhole. Daniel urged her toward it, pus.h.i.+ng gently She could see something bright flickering, reflecting from below along the beveled edges of the gla.s.s.
”My true love, I do believe somebody's lit a fire outside,” said Annimae.
”Yes! Don't be afraid. Look out, and I'll look over your shoulder,” said Daniel.
So Annimae bent and put her face to the gla.s.s, and peered down into a courtyard she had never before seen. There was indeed a fire, a bright bonfire in the center, with a column of smoke rising from it like a ghostly tree. Gathered all around it, swaying and writhing and tossing their heads, were all the servants. G.o.dfrey and G.o.dwin sat to one side, pounding out the beat of the dance on drums, and all their brothers and sisters kept time with their clapping hands, with their stamping feet. they were singing in a language Annimae had never heard, wild, joyful. Now and again someone would catch up an armful of autumn leaves and fling them on the blaze, and the column of smoke churned and seemed to grow solid for a moment.
The beat was infectious, enchanting. It roused desires in Annimae, and for the first time she felt shame and confusion. This was neither in fairy tales nor in the Bible. It did not seem right to feel her body moving so, almost against her will . Daniel, pressing hot behind her, was moving too.
”Oh, how I stared and stared,” said Daniel. ”And how I wanted to be down there with them! They never have to live in fear, as I do. they can dance in the light . How can I dance, in a shroud like this? Oh, Annimae, I want so badly to be free! Watch now, watch what happens.”
Annimae saw Gardenia filling her ap.r.o.n with leaves, to pitch a bushel of them on the fire. The flames dimmed momentarily, and when they roared up again she saw that two new dancers had joined the party.
Who was that black man, bigger than all the rest, waving his carved walking stick? How well he danced! The others fell back to the edges and he strutted, twirled, undulated around the fire. Now he was sinuous as a great snake, powerful as a river; now he was comic and suggestive. Annimae blushed to see him thrust his stick between his legs and rock his hips, and the stick rose up, and up, and he waved and waggled in it such a lewd way there were screams of laughter from the crowd. Even Daniel, behind her, chuckled.
Shocked as she was by that, Annimae was astounded to see a white girl down there at the edge of the fire, joining the black man in his dance. Who could she be? What kind of hoydenish creature would pull her skirt up like that and leap over the fire itself? Her hair was as bright as the flame, her face was fierce, her deportment mad as though she had never, ever had elderly aunts to tell her what ladies mustn't do. Oh! Now she had seized a bottle from one of the onlookers, and was drinking from it recklessly; now she spat, she sprayed liquor into the fire, and when the others all applauded she turned and sprayed them too.
Then the black man had slipped his arm around her. He pulled her in and the pace of the dance quickened. Round and round they went, orbiting the fire and each other, and the drumming of their heels drove Annimae almost to guilty frenzy. Rough and tender and insistent, the music pulsed. As she stared, she felt Daniel's hands move over her, and even through the shroud his touch drove her mad. She backed to him like a mare. He rose up like a stallion.
”You're my fire, Annimae,” moaned Daniel. ”You're my music, you're my dance. You're my eyes in the sunlight and my fever in the dark. We will escape this house, some day, my soul!”
It was all Annimae could do to cling to the windowsill, sobbing in pleasure and shame, and the drumbeats never slowed Though they did cease, much later. Annimae and Daniel made their unsteady way back through the black labyrinth, and slept very late the next day The next afternoon, Gardenia came to Annimae as she walked in the garden and said: ”If you please, Ma'am, there's two old ladies come to call on you .”
Annimae went at once inside, back through chambers she hadn't entered in months, out to the front of the house. There in a front parlor alarmingly full of the cold light of day sat Great-Aunt Merrion and Aunt Pugh, inspecting the underside of a vase through a pair of lorgnettes.
”Why, child, how pale you are!” cried Aunt Pugh, as Annimae kissed her cheek.
”How you do peer out of those spectacles, child!” said Great-Aunt Merrion, giving her a good long stare through her lorgnette. ”Far too much reading in sickrooms, I'll wager. Wifely duty is all very well, but you must think of yourself now and then.”
Annimae apologized for being pale, explaining that she had a headache, and wore the gla.s.ses against brightness. She bid Gardenia bring coffee for three, and poured as gracefully as she could when it came, though she still spiked a little.
The aunts graciously overlooked this and told her all the news from the almond ranch. Her father's investments had suddenly prospered, it seemed; the mortgages were all paid off, the servants all hired on again. Her father had once more the means to dress as a gentleman, and had bought a fine stable of racehorses. Why, they themselves had come to visit Annimae in a grand new coach-and-four! And all the merchants in town were once again respectful, deferential, as they ought always to have been to ladies of gentle birth.
But Great-Aunt Merrion and Aunt Pugh had heard certain loose talk in town, it seemed; and so they had known it was their duty to call on Annimae, and to inquire after her health and well-being.
They asked all manner of questions about Annimae's daily life, which Annimae fended off as best she might, for she knew it was dangerous to speak much of Daniel. Detecting this, the old ladies looked sidelong at each other and fell to a kind of indirect questioning that had never failed to produce results before.
Annimae was tired, she was still a little shaken and, perhaps, frightened by the violent delight of the previous evening. Her aunts, when all was said and done, had known her all her life. Somehow she let slip certain details, and the aunts pressed her for explanations, and so- ”Do you tell me you've never so much as seen your husband, child?” said Aunt Pugh, clutching at her heart.
”Good G.o.d Almighty!” Great-Aunt Merrion shook with horror. ”Miss Pugh, do you recollect what that Mrs. Delano said outside the milliner's?”
Aunt Pugh recollected, and promptly fainted dead away.
Annimae, terrified, would have rung for a servant at once; but Great- Aunt Merrion shot out a lace-mittened fist and caught her hand.
”Don't you ring for one of them” she whispered. She got up and closed the parlor door; then produced a vial of smelling salts from her handbag. Aunt Pugh came around remarkably quickly, and sat bolt upright.
”Child, we must break your heart, but it is for your own sake,” said Great-Aunt Merrion, leaning forward. ”I fear you have been obscenely deceived.”
She proceeded to relate what a Mrs. Delano had told her, which was: that she had a cousin who had known Mrs. Nightengale in Louisiana right after the Waw, when all her cares were first besetting her.
This cousin, who had an excellent memory was pretty sure that Mrs. Nightengale's baby had not merely been sick, it had in fact died. Moreover, there were stories that Mrs. Nightengale was much too familiar with her household staff, especially her coachman.