I stumbled to my feet as he picked up his mother's slender body, all limp in his arms, her lashes long against her cheeks.
"A big working? What do you mean, Nimshi?" I was frightened again. I remembered then the murmur of "voodoo, obeah, conjure" that had flickered through the slave quarter when she and Nimshi first arrived. "What happened in the stableyard? They didn't take a single horse. Said they weren't worth taking."
Nimshi smiled at me. "What they saw sure wasn't. Mother made sure of that, Miss Grace. Now, if you'll excuse me…" He carried her off the veranda, leaving me staring after him, trying to make sense of his words.
Just then Mr. James came running around the side of the house, breathless and perspiring. He'd been in the top field, and that was a long way for an old man like him to run. The expression on his face told me that he had feared the worst. Now he stared in astonishment at the foals cavorting about in the paddock, Jupiter leading the pack in their racing, and at the Yankee dust cloud barely visible down the Greensboro road. I decided then and there not to tell him what had happened. I didn't quite understand it but I thought I did. But this could not be classed as silly voodoo or obeah or conjure, which always dealt with black magic and death and evil things. What Zulei had done was good. Just as her salves and potions and poultices had been good, helping people. She had just helped us save the only valuable items left to Majpoor, our horses. I wasn't about to question this major miracle.
Considering that the Yankees found Sultan too poor to steal from us, it was gratifying when the colt foal that service produced was one of the best ever born at Majpoor. He was his sire's spit and image, a deep liver chestnut that was very like the dull brass of Sultan's hide, with three white socks, a well-placed white blaze on his forehead, and superb conformation. He was up and nursing his dam fifteen minutes after his birth, strong and energetic enough to kick anyone trying to come near and dry off his fuzzy foal coat.
Nimshi called him Wazir and the name was so appropriate that it stuck. It was a splendid homecoming surprise for Lachlan, though he had a sad surprise for us: he lacked half an arm and was deeply embittered by all he had seen of North Carolina as he made his way home. Amazingly enough, Lachlan still had my own dear Cotton, who was very much indeed a rack of bones, walking short from a saber slice on his left rear, with hooves split from lack of care and a hole on his once full neck where a Yankee miniй ball had plowed through it. Lachlan had only a blanket for a saddle but their return was a minor miracle for me.
I saved my tears until my exhausted brother had been fed and tucked in his bed. Then I cried my heart out in the stable, while Zulei comforted me and Nimshi hand-fed old Cotton.
"You've been brave so long, Miss Grace," Zulei said, stroking my hair. "Major Lachlan needs only rest here at Majpoor."
"He needs good nourishing food, beef broth, meat, butter, cream, and we haven't so much as a chicken or an egg for him." I wept afresh at my inability to care for my dearest and only brother now that he had finally come home. "Rabbit's good eating," Nimshi said, "and there're deer in the woods if you know where to look. Don't you worry."
I saw the look that passed between mother and son, but they often exchanged speaking glances and I was too woebegone to pay much heed.
The next day I rode Dido while Lachlan took my Jupiter about the place. He was amazed that we had saved anything, much less the bales of cotton we had hidden in the woods.
"That was Zulei's idea. We couldn't sell it, she said, but we could save it. Wars don't last forever and the English would buy Majpoor cotton."
Lachlan regarded me as if I'd turned green. "Zulei's idea? How could Mr. James allow a slave to…"
"Mr. James can't keep two thoughts together in his head, Lachie," I said, for I'd've thought my brother would have seen how vague the old overseer was. "Nimshi figured out where to hide Sultan and the others, and he and Big Josie see to what planting we've done. Majpoor would be a ruin if it hadn't been for Zulei and Nimshi."
Lachlan didn't reply to my heated defense but I knew it gave him much to think about, and I lost no opportunity to point out other ruses, contrived by either Zulei or Nimshi - like the kitchen garden hidden behind used banks of old manure on one side and thorn thickets on the other. Zulei's idea. I've often thought that the sight of the three-year-olds in the paddock were all that saved his sanity. By the time we walked back into the stableyard, Nimshi had finished gutting a fine stag.
That night, Lachlan made a fine meal of the venison, washing it down with moonshine, procured by Big Josie from who knew where. After that, Lachlan seemed to drink rather more than I thought a gentleman should. Every morning Zulei had to force one of her remedies down his throat.
"He feels the phantom pain," Zulei told me, "of the hand they amputated. That happens."
"Can't you make it go away, Zulei?" It was wrong of me, I know, to wish for another miracle from her, but how could I have known then just how much these years had cost her in strength; how often she had clouded the avenue so that deserters didn't find their way to our house or cavalry see the true form of Majpoor's horses, or even see me young, innocent, and vulnerable.
As I clutched at her arm, Zulei gave me a long piercing look; the expression in her eyes going from anguish, to deep sorrow, to such resolution that I was ashamed of my momentary weakness.
"I'm sorry, Zulei," I said. "How could you have a salve to heal a hand that's not there. And I know we've no laudanum left so that corn liquor will have to do to cut the pain." We used the last of Mama's supply when one of the field hands had nearly severed the calf of his leg with a cane knife.
Lachlan tried, though, with white lips and pain-racked eyes, to take up plantation duties. He told me how brave and resourceful I had been to keep everything going as well as I had. I repeated that I'd had help from Zulei and Nimshi and he gave me an odd look. But it was so good to have my brother back that I scarcely noticed anything other than my joy at having one Langhorn spared by the terrible conflict. As a mark of that joy, I willingly gave him Jupiter to ride - until Cotton was restored, I told him with a laugh, though we both knew Cotton's working days were over. But having a fine horse between his legs did Lachlan the world of good. Until darkness fell and he had to wrestle with the phantom pain again.
Often I would see Nimshi supporting my brother up the stairs to his room in the small hours of the night. I would see Zulei ascending them in the morning with the tisane to cure his hangover. She looked as worn as Lachlan.
Then those occasions dwindled and, at my tentative inquiry, Lachlan muttered something about an itch being an improvement over an ache. He began to take a real hold of the management, consulting with Nimshi and Big Josie. Mr. James was relegated to sitting on his porch and swinging, seeming not to notice the passing hours. I assigned one of our older women to tend to his needs and see he ate.
Many of our people had drifted off once conditions at Majpoor deteriorated, but, some months, we could barely feed those who remained. Lachlan organized the loyal ones who had stayed with us, and planted what seed we had. He and Nimshi took two geldings in to Greensboro to sell, and although there were few people able to buy anything, he did get some gold, though most of the sale price was our Confederate legal tender, which few of the Greensboro merchants would accept. The gold bought flour, mealy though it was, and machine oil and other things we could not make ourselves.
The next week we found Sultan dead in his box. Three days later the news of Robert's death reached us. The following week we learned of Appomattox. Lachlan sat in Papa's study and drank himself stupid.