The Witchery, page 34
I listened at the trap: nothing. And so I pushed upon it, slowly, slowly, but dared not look behind me to where the light fell upon the trembling twins. From its far side, I shut the trap, smoothed the green rug over its outline, and even took care to replace those shards of pottery and pieces of silverware I’d displaced.
I’d hurry, yes indeed; for my objectives were few: Somehow I had to let Asmodei and Calixto know where we were; I wanted, too, to see what damage had been done to our home, the witchery in particular; and finally, I would shove aside Sebastiana’s bed, pry up the floorboard beneath it, and retrieve that strongbox that held the larger part of our wealth: specie, assorted deeds, jewelry, et cetera. If events progressed from bad, very bad to worse, and we had to escape, we’d need what wealth we had.
Daring to peer from the same window through which I’d looked at dawn—for I’d gone to my room to retrieve a robe of some sort and my spectacles, sorry but nonetheless necessary—I saw…nothing at all. Stillness. The islanders were either engaged in the defense of the island or had hidden. Or been killed. Indeed, there lay sweet Sarah Trevor, limbs splayed, turned to those odd angles that tell of a sudden, disquieting death. Another body lay beside Sarah’s: either her sister’s or mother’s: a reddish caul—the result of her having been partially scalped?—concealed the face, and so I cannot name her. But both women died, that I know. And blessed it seemed, somehow, that Dr. Trevor lay slain a story above; for how might a father survive the sight I saw, and that further truth we’d learn: Timothy Trevor, poor Timothy Trevor, waylaid midway through the piazza, had hidden away in a small cistern set above the smithy, and when later that building was burned, he’d been too fearful to come from it; and so had boiled.
…I’d gone up to the witchery first…. Ruination; such that, not knowing what I could save, I let it all lie, hoping we’d be able to set it aright in time; for never, never did I think we’d lose our island to the Indians, for once and forever. Moreover: I saw that the Indians had explored the witchery with…intent; which is to say they’d unscrewed jars they might otherwise have smashed, untied burlap bags they might otherwise have cut, et cetera; all of which told of their imminent return. They might not find the armory they’d sought, but here was something else altogether…. And lest they come to discover memourning the loss of our atelier, I left it, climbing first to the cupola; wherein I found Dr. Trevor’s body badly used, indeed in a state I shan’t endeavor to describe, save to say its aura was already showing silver. Unsteady as I was, I stilled myself and managed somehow to step over the body, push open a blood-splattered windowpane, and affix to the sill a length of blue, azure blue cloth: a sleeve torn from off a dress of Sebastiana’s. In setting out that pennant, I hoped to convey thoughts of our sister to those who’d know it for what it was; and who then—how I hoped it!—would understand my plan, the only plan open to us; for already lesser buildings at the island’s edge were burning.
Coming down from the cupola—wherein I’d become light-headed, unable now to discern the silver of Dr. Trevor’s soul from the indrifting smoke—I passed through the witchery and closed the door; for thusly had I found it. But then, impulsively, I pried from the door the graven paddle head with which the men had gifted us in happier times. Why? I might have said I’d sought it for protection; but, in truth, I may somehow have known that we’d never return to Indian Key…. And indeed, none of us would. The island would be lost.
Housman and his wife—coming downstairs to find militiamen and Indians warring in their parlor—had stolen out their back door in their nightclothes, and made their way off the end of their L-shaped peer, their two dogs in pursuit. These latter Housman had had to drown, lest their barking betray them all. And eventually the couple waded and swam to Tea Table Key; whereon Jacob Housman sat shoreside, watching as his island burned, watching, too, as the Indians sent shot at the slow-coming navy, shot fired from those same six-pounders he’d long ago bolted to the wharf behind his warehouse for his empire’s defense.
…Thusly accoutred, carrying naught but a paddle head and a strongbox, I clambered back down into the kraal; and never had I been so happy to see Asmodei, who stood therein, the water risen to his waist and to the twins’ shoulders. I asked, wordlessly, What of the island?
“Lost,” said he.
“And…” I began; but Léopoldine spared me, whispering:
“Calixto!” And pointing to the end of the pier, where he clung to a pile behind which, half-hidden, the larger of our two boats bobbed.
…Sebastiana, I’d meant to convey with the pennant. Had the men seen it and perceived my plan? I did not know, not then. In fact, Asmodei had; and so he’d returned home, relinquishing the hotel to the hostiles who’d already taken the warehouse; but Calixto had not, and yet he’d struck upon the same plan: We’d sneak away as we had two nights prior, all five of us, alive; albeit soon to be adrift.
Part Four
Rubedo
Chapter Twenty-nine
…how came I thus, how here?
—MILTON, Paradise Lost
IF WAR IS MERELY A SCORE—AS SO OFTEN IT SEEMS—A matter of we VERSUS they, then let me say that we lost seven souls in the attack on Indian Key whilst they, the Spanish Indians, would lose ten; when, within a few months, ninety-odd soldiers under the command of Colonel William Harney—himself a survivor of the Indian attack upon the Caloosahatchee outpost—stole into the Never-Glade, to the Indian encampment.
This avenging corps was led by a slave of our late acquaintance, name of John, though Housman had called him Neptune; for the bondman feared the sea and would only work the wharf, where he was the first man to meet every returning crew. Neptune, along with a slave woman of the Trevor household and her two children, had been taken from Indian Key by the Indians. Perhaps they’d gone willingly: Many slaves did so, finding more fairness amidst the redmen than the white. Perhaps not. Regardless, Neptune either left or escaped alone, and eventually made his way back to Housman in Key West; whereupon the latter brokered him, as guide, to Colonel Harney…. Enfin, the corps in their canoes found the Indians; and in the battle, or ambush, which ensued, the Indians lost five warriors—Chakaika amongst them—to bullet and blade, and five more to the noose when the soldiers’ canoes were deemed too unsteady for the taking of captives.
After the raid—through the end of ’41, and into ’42—naval forces in the keys were doubled; and soon the fleet’s six hundred or so men had rousted all but the most resolute of the Indians from the southern swamps. The rest of their tribesmen had been murdered or removed. Thusly did the Seminole Wars come to an end, first by deed and later by decree; and those with a far greater claim on the land than the whitemen lost it.
…So, too, did we several hundred settlers upon Indian Key suffer and disperse, a goodly number of us going north, whilst others—both the hardier folk, such as Housman, and the lost folk like us—sailed south to Key West, there to start anew.
History holds that the defense of Indian Key was a failure. In truth, it was a farce.
Some of the escapees—amongst whom we numbered, yes, though I do not refer to our party; for we, by paddle and sail, and consensus, went into the Straits and thence to Key West, declining the offer of a captain whose schooner we met at sea and who offered to put us ashore at Cape Florida, where we might await a steamer that would take us to St. Augustine—…escapees other than us, I mean to say, had hied to a navy schooner anchored off Tea Table Key; and there they apprised a midshipman of what already was being referred to as the massacre.
This lesser officer, whose duty it was to nurse the naval ill, determined to launch a counterattack with the aid of his dozen charges, six of whom were sick, and six of whom were sick unto death. A barge was manned, and to its thwarts were tied two four-pounder carriage guns; but when finally this barge was poled within striking distance of the hostile-held warehouse and fired—which shots we had heard with hope—the guns recoiled and rolled into the sea. At this turn of events the midshipman wondered if it wasn’t the wiser course to return to his schooner, and protect it from the savages; who surely would come. But the Indians did not come. Instead, they stayed to sack the key, sailing off later that day in low-riding canoes laden with loot…. And oft have I wondered what the Indians took from the witchery. Or did they burn the house and all it held, as they had the hotel, the warehouses, and even the wharves? I do not know, and so cannot say; for the Wheel of the Year began to spin, and quickly so, upon our unexpected departure from Indian Key, and I never bothered to back-conjure such details as these.
But yes, up it all went, in smoke; and down went Housman, unto ruin. Within the month he’d quit his key for good; and shortly thereafter, with the Northern Law and his creditors descending, he was forced to sell, at auction, all he’d been able to salvage. About this he was not happy, not at all; and lest you wonder how I know this, let me say he told us so. Indeed, with Sebastiana gone, Housman felt free to loose upon us a stream of invective so blue, so bitter, so laced with accusation as to…Enfin, I’d not have minded as much if he’d not calumniated us in public, and upon a day when we were all so hopeful and happy; for, of we five, only Calixto had ever been to an auction before.
And the more Housman railed against Cal, against us, the higher we bid for pieces of his seized estate; till finally we were the owners of a quite sizable schooner—one hundred and twenty tons, she was, seventy-seven feet of Jamaican dogwood and mastic trim, measured stem to stern—as well as three slaves and assorted housewares.
The housewares—crystal, silver, furnishings, and such—we needed.
The slaves we freed, of course. Two—a couple—sailed north with letters of manumission, whilst the third—a stout woman of middle age whose bill of sale said she’d been “seasoned” in the Bahamas, and whose name was Euphemia—chose to stay with us; and happily so. She, our sweet Euphemia, was well paid to do all we could not: She oversaw those who cleaned both our newly bought house on Front Street as well as the cabin—wherein she lived—and kitchen behind it, from whence she came to us twice daily, at noontime and supper, bearing dishes delighted in by all but me (being of ever-diminishing appetite) and Asmodei (who angered our cook, disdaining as he did her liberal use of spice).
As for the schooner, well…It was pricey, yes; mais hélas, a plan had had to be made.
…In the strongbox I’d retrieved from beneath Sebastiana’s bed I found a sapphire the size of a thrush’s egg, and rubies so numerous we might well have spared some for Luc to skip as stones. Too, there were jewels not in their raw state but arranged: jewelry, in a word. I was surprised to see Sebastiana had carried these with her from Ravndal, first to Rome and thence Cuba, but not so Asmodei. He said our sister had carried her jewels with her wherever she went, not as a miser might, but rather as a woman would, a woman to whom memory mattered; for amongst the lot were rings that had been gifted to her straight from the fingers of kings, as well as the daintier digits of her onetime patroness, Marie Antoinette. And the rubies alone, as sold by Calixto in New Orleans, whence he ventured with letters of introduction from me to the witch Eugénie—letters that (as ever) solicited news of the Duchess, but told, too, of all that had happened of late, and wherein I excused my absence, which was owing, said I, to the twins (“Can you conceive of it?” I asked of Eugénie, adding with a wink-in-ink, “Apparently, I could!”)—…the rubies alone, I say, financed the schooner (bought at six percent off for cash, merci bien).
Once we’d agreed upon our plan, it came to seem Sebastiana’s legacy: With her money—a monstrous sum as compared to mine—and with her memories, she staked us to a new start.
So: We’d really no choice but to buy all that would establish us as wreckers. Wreckers, of all things! (I was, yes, the last to assent to said plan.) And if Housman cursed us, so be it. Of course, we—Léopoldine and I—could have met his curses with those of the sisterly sort, but we did not. Leastways, I did not. As for Leo, well…Though she denied it then and denies it still, she, embarrassed as she was at the auction by Housman—and angry, too, such that her Eye turned and she had to bury her face in my bosom (cold comfort, that) lest it be seen—may well have cursed our former keeper; for, within a half year, humbled to dust, and whilst working a wreck on equal terms with men who’d once been his hirelings, Housman was crushed between two rolling boats and buried at sea, sans cérémonie.
Understand: We’d not sailed from the burning key blithely. No indeed. There’d been trembling, there’d been tears; and, too, we feared we’d be seen and pursued by the Indians. And indeed we were espied, and shot at—blessed be, we’d already rowed beyond the range of their rifles. Luc worried, then, that we’d be fired upon by the commandeered cannons at wharf’s end; but evidently we in our launch were deemed unworthy, a waste of shot. Neither did the Indians set out after us in their canoes; and for this I was doubly grateful, as, in trying to assuage Léopoldine’s fears that the canoes would come, I had said they would not.
“And how do you know that?” she asked, holding tightly to a crying Luc. There was both sarcasm and defiance in her tone, and curiosity, too: She wondered how I knew. Had I seen, or rather Seen, future events as I spoke of them?
When I confessed that I had not, well, then Leo turned truly defiant, asking what good were our gifts—hers and mine—if we refused to use them? Here she referred, of course, to divination, or sisterly Sight, of which both S. and I had warned her (despite, or rather due to Leo’s talents for same, which far outstripped ours, even then). “Is it not so,” she asked at sea, when we’d been silent some time, having already set our southerly course, “is it not true to say we might have drawn down visions of…of that?” And lest anyone—myself or the three males, intent upon our every word—mistake her meaning, she pointed with the whole of her arm, flinging it back toward our former home on the now smoldering key.
“I suppose so,” said I, weakly.
“Then why, why did we not do it?”
For this I’d no answer (fear seeming an insufficient response). And when I turned to Calixto and Asmodei, they turned away in silence, the former seeming sympathetic, the latter not. They, too, wondered why we hadn’t divined an attack in which we might well have lost our lives; especially seeing as how there’d been rumors and suspicions, the lot of which had resulted from Work we’d done unwisely: Sebastiana’s sloppy conferral unto the Summerland.
As we sailed on that day in silence, northbound vessels sailing past us to the site of the attack—we waved to say that yes, we’d escaped, and yes, we were well—I sat astern wondering why the future, or rather the Sighting of it, frightened me so. And it was true: We might well have been four, or three, or two in our boat, rather than five…. Could anything worse than that ever eventuate from a bit of Sight?
If more was said of divination that day, I cannot recall the converse; but in the days and weeks to come, I returned to Léopoldine’s question, driven both by my wonderment and her sullenness, which endured to the point of distraction and ended only when finally I summoned the family to say, to swear that thenceforth I’d watch for such dangers, do my best to See them before they came to pass. At this I heard huzzahs, none louder than Léopoldine’s; for of course she assumed that she’d be let to divine as well.
She was not. Not at first…Whereupon her sullenness resumed, and she showed me her Eye with insistence.
“She is thirteen, at most,” I protested to the men when they came to me as one to petition on her behalf, and ostensibly so; in point of fact they’d already begun to conceive of a marriage most fruitful: Commerce betrothed to Craft.
“She is strong, H.,” said Calixto; by which he meant many things: Léopoldine was strong, and less inclined to fright than I; she’d a talent that would have out, one way or another; and, finally, as witch, as woman, she’d not let herself be coddled much longer.
To some or all of which Asmodei assented by saying, too pointedly, “Let her work. She is a stronger witch than you…. Sebastiana always said so.”
“Do not presume to sway me,” said I, heatedly, “by setting words in the mouth of my dead sister!” And I stormed from our house—not literally, no: It was the lot of…a different witch to be allied to the weather—and I walked up and down Caroline Street. (And if I’d already acceded to the family’s request and divined our future, surely I’d have Seen that Caroline was the same street on which we’d build our present home, the whole of which we refer to as the Witchery.) After this pacing of the street, I returned home, once again convened the four, and amended my announcement of some days prior, promising that not only would Léopoldine and I use the Sight together to ensure the family’s safety, but we’d work it toward our betterment as well. En bref, our profit.
Whereupon there followed more huzzahs and hugs; which I took greedily, supposing (rightly) that they’d stall when I went on to say, as then I did:
“However, I have one condition.”
“Speak!” hissed Asmodei; for already the sun had set, and he was deep in his cups: Unable to sleep since the loss of his love, he’d redoubled his drinking such that now he sloshed away his nights—first with simple rum, and later that absinthe he decocted himself—and slept away his days.
“However…” I resumed, “I’ve a condition to which you all must agree.”
