"I'm his wife. Let me through!"
Finally, they opened a way, and she fell on top of him, repeating his name, hoping it might calm him. He rolled his head from side to side, foam in the corners of his mouth. "Stop the bells — they're too loud — I can't stand it."
"What bells?"
"In the steeple," he shouted, his gaze flying up past her shoulder. "There — there."
"The bells are gone, Cooper." She started to shake his shoulders as he had shaken the sergeant. "They took the bells from St. Michael's months ago. They sent them to Columbia so the Yankees would never get hold of them."
His mouth opened and his eyes, too, for a moment's deranged recognition. He stared at her, then the steeple, then at her again. "But I hear them." The cry was like a child's. "I hear them, Judith —"
Groping for her hand, he stiffened suddenly. His eyes closed, and he went limp. His head fell sideways, cheek resting on the sidewalk.
"Cooper?"
99
Andy thought a branch had cracked until he heard the ball buzz past.
The shot came from the thickets on his left, the side of the road away from the Ashley. As he booted the mule with his worn field shoes, Andy tried to spot the person with the gun. The man stood up, well back in the shadowed undergrowth. He snugged a musket against the right shoulder of a uniform jacket of Union blue, worn open to show his black chest. The man's left eye closed while the right slitted down, taking aim. Recognition of the swollen, fat face struck Andy like a ram.
"Go, mule." He kicked the animal again.
The mule sped toward a bend in the road. Andy's pass danced on the piece of twine around his neck. The gun boomed, but the aim was bad. The ball sliced off palmetto fronds ten yards behind the fleeing mule and rider. Moments later, both were safely past the bend.
When Andy reached Mont Royal, he went straight to Meek's office. He found the overseer shuffling bills with a bewildered air, as if wondering which two or three to choose for payment with the plantation's dwindling supply of inflated currency. Dry-mouthed, Andy reported his worst news first.
"He was aiming to kill me, Mr. Meek. And he had two muskets. He couldn't have fired off the second round so fast if he had to reload."
Meek's eyes, watery and dismayed, met Andy's over the tops of his half spectacles. The job of trying to run the plantation with crops going to the government for less than full value and essential supplies scarce and the slaves disappearing one or two at a time had bowed his shoulders and furrowed his face. He looked ten years older than he had the day he arrived.
"You're sure it was Cuffey?"
"I wouldn't make a mistake about that face. It was him. I heard he was with that bad lot of runaways, but I didn't believe it till today. He was wearing a Yankee soldier's uniform, and he's fat as a spring toad. That bunch must eat mighty well."
He started to smile, but Meek's anger checked it. "They do. They're thieves. Who do you think carried off those six hens a week ago? Reckon we'd better prepare to give 'em a welcome if they come back. We need to mold some musket balls and inspect those two kegs of powder for dampness."
"I'll do it," Andy promised.
Meek pinched the top of his nose. "You haven't said anything about the curing salt."
Andy shook his head. "Isn't any to be had, Mr. Meek. I even went by Tradd Street in hopes of borrowing some from Mr. Cooper. No one was home. Least, no one answered. I knocked long and hard at the street gate. I'm mighty sorry to come back empty-handed."
"I know you did your best. Tomorrow you can ride over to Francis LaMotte's place. I hate begging favors from that conceited little rooster, but I heard he brought some salt from Wilmington when he came home on leave." He waved in a tired, absent way. "Thank you, Andy. I'm glad you didn't get hurt."
Leaving, Andy saw Meek pick up the Testament he kept on his desk. The overseer opened the book and bent over a page, his lips moving silently. His face had a desperate look. Well, no wonder, Andy thought as he walked down the path. A tense and dismal atmosphere pervaded the district and the plantation. On top of all the other problems, out in the marshes there was that band of runaways, thirty to fifty of them. Including Cuffey.
The swollen face sighting along the gun barrel stuck in Andy's mind as he approached the great house in search of Jane. The runaways left the marshes to steal food or kill and rob travelers unlucky enough to be caught alone on deserted back roads. Two white men from Ashley River plantations had been found dead last month. In January, the band had been seen building cook fires near the abandoned great house at Resolute, where Madeline had lived with Justin LaMotte. Shortly thereafter a blaze had leveled the place.
"Evening, Miss Clarissa," Andy said as he reached the front drive, Orry's mother didn't respond. Motionless on the piazza, she gazed down the lane of arching trees toward the road, her smile sweetly bewildered. She raised her right hand and brushed it past her face as if some of the ubiquitous low-country gnats were bothering her. Andy hadn't seen any this evening.
Shaking his head, he entered the house and followed the sound of hammering till he found Jane. She was helping a houseman nail strips of scrap wood over a downstairs window that had broken in a recent windstorm. Replacement glass couldn't be bought in Charleston, or good lumber either.
She smiled when she saw him, but his expression told her something was wrong. Drawing her aside, he reported the incident on the road, though he minimized the danger. "I'll bet that crazy Cuffey is just waiting to do mischief to this place. Maybe —" he lowered his voice to be certain the houseman wouldn't hear "— maybe we should go ahead and jump over the brooms and steal off together some night."
"No. I gave Miss Madeline my word that I'd stay. And I don't want to jump over the brooms. That's for slave weddings. You and I are going to be married as free people." Taking his hand, she pressed it tightly. "It won't be long. A year. Perhaps even less."
Affection warmed his eyes. "Well, I guess I'll still go along with that, since I haven't met any woman I fancy more than you. Yet."
She batted at his head, and he jumped away, laughing. He hoped the laughter helped hide his gloom. He was sure there'd be a visit from the renegade band one of these days. He was sure because Cuffey was part of it now.
That night he slept badly, dreaming of Cuffey's bloated face. In the morning, as he prepared to leave for Francis LaMotte's place, Philemon Meek took him aside and pushed a small revolver into his brown hand. "That's loaded. Make sure it's out of sight if you meet any white folks on the road. Hide it in the brush while you're on LaMotte's property. You could be hung for carrying it."
"You could be hung for giving it to me, Mr. Meek."
"I'll stand the risk. I'd hate to see something happen to you."
Andy's smile grew stiff. "Don't want to lose your number-one nigger?"
Angered, Meek said, "I don't want to lose a good man. Now get on your mule and get out of here before I boot your uppity backside."
Andy drew a long breath. "Sorry I said that. Old times doing the talking."
"I know."
They shook hands.
Whistling "Dixie's Land," Andy jogged down a dim, overgrown lane, a shortcut to Francis LaMotte's. Old Meek wasn't half bad, he was thinking just as he came upon something dark and misshapen, like a bundle of discarded clothing, in the center of the weedy track.
"Whoa, mule," he whispered. He sat listening. He heard bird cries, the small stirs and rustlings of the low-country forest, but nothing alarming. He climbed off the mule and walked slowly along the track with Meek's revolver in hand.