Seven Shades of Evil, page 26
That, she had to admit.
“Speak to the others,” she said. “If they agree, you can take my place.”
Katherine took her time returning to the table while Miriam gave the other farmers her proposal. Chamberlin was mopping his face and waiting for his water. “Madam Herrald, you’re delaying the inevitable! I am in my element, and you are lost in the woods! Come on, let’s finish this!”
Lily arrived, surprisingly still wearing the same hat. Chamberlin took the glass and downed the water to the bottom. “All right,” he said, and gave his enormous gut a pat, “the third hand shall send you sobbing!”
“I am takin’ Mizz … I mean to say I am takin’ Katherine’s place,” came the voice from alongside.
Chamberlin looked at Miriam Lamb and his several chins dropped.
Miriam walked past Katherine and took the chair, then she leveled her gaze at her opponent and calmly said, “I am ready.”
The silence stretched so hard one might have heard a squeak in it.
“A fine joke!” Chamberlin exploded. “You’ve had your laugh, now take your seat, madam, and let’s get on with it!”
“Miriam is playing in my place,” Katherine said, which caused another uneasy length of silence.
“Brodine!” Chamberlin shouted as the beef-fed blood throbbed in his face. “Tell these people I will not proceed with this until Madam Herrald takes her seat! Tell them I will not sit across the table and be assailed by the smell of a savage!”
Larrimore was up again and striding forward. “There’s nothing in the agreement—which you have failed to honor—that prohibits Madam Herrald from appointing a player in her place!”
“I protest this indignity as much as does my client!” was Brodine’s answering squall. “He will not honor a slave at his gaming table!”
“Damn right I won’t! This is done!” Chamberlin started to heave himself up from his chair.
“Thrash it out all you please,” said Miriam, her voice soft yet still cutting through the tumult. “I suspect Mr. Chamberlin here is scairt to play me.”
Chamberlin stopped in mid-heave. He looked at her as one might regard a barnyard animal, his eyelids at half-mast and his head tilted back on his neck as if fearful of catching black. “What did you say?”
“I fancy you heard me.”
“I must be going mad, or the world is! Me playing Jingo with an African savage? Preposterous!”
“I don’t know what that means,” Miriam said, her expression placid and the lamplight glinting yellow in her eyes, “but I’m guessin’ it’s just another word for scairt.”
“She’s baiting you, sir!” said Brodine.
“If I was fishin’,” Miriam answered, “I don’t think a line ever made would be strong enough to land the crappie I’m lookin’ at.”
“By God, what impudence!” Chamberlin roared, but Katherine noted that he plunged himself back into his chair with such force it was a wonder the thing was not either shattered into sticks or driven three feet into the dirt. “All right, all right!” he said between gritted teeth. “If you wish to be trounced in the same fashion as I have trounced your slave-loving friend, then I am at your service—and God forbid anyone outside this barn ever repeats I said such a thing! Merrick, reshuffle the cards and lay down the castle! Let us hurry and get this vermin out of here!”
Ah! Katherine thought as she sat on the bale of hay Miriam had vacated. Chamberlin’s haste might well cloud his judgment. So perhaps already luck was in favor of the lamb versus the bull?
The first castle card was a club, the value to each player four. To Miriam was dealt the four of hearts, the six of diamonds, the eight of spades, and the six of clubs. Chamberlin received the king of diamonds, the eight of clubs, the nine of hearts, and the ace of spades. The abacus counted Miriam as ten and Chamberlin as fourteen.
In the following deal, the Mad Queen appeared, and the new castle card was the seven of hearts.
And so the game progressed through four more deals. When Miriam was ahead seventeen to six in diamonds, Chamberlin called Jingo with his ace. The next castle card was the eight of diamonds, giving Miriam the win with twenty-five.
She said nothing and showed no emotion, while Chamberlin leaned forward to examine the winning card as if that might change the result.
“Pah!” was Chamberlin’s following remark. And to Merrick: “Next hand!”
Merrick reshuffled the cards and presented the next castle card, the ace of hearts. Ten points to each player.
“Jingo!” said Miriam several deals later, when Chamberlin was ahead fifteen to five in spades. The following castle card was the king of hearts, and directly next dealt to Miriam was the Mad Queen, which changed the castle card to the six of diamonds.
And “Jingo!” once again from Miriam when Chamberlin had eighteen to her eight in diamonds. Thus, the game went on, back and forth, the Mad Queen appearing and changing the suit, the beads on the abacus rising and falling, and Chamberlin hollering “Jingo!” at one point so loudly it seemed the barn’s timbers trembled. Twenty minutes passed, with neither able to gain substantial advantage. Then at Miriam’s twelve to Chamberlin’s sixteen in clubs, she was dealt the Mad Queen. Merrick turned over a new castle card: the ten of clubs.
Miriam’s twenty-two to Chamberlin’s sixteen, and Katherine saw Miriam exhale her breath as Chamberlin slammed a fist down upon the table.
“Easy, sir,” cautioned Brodine from his bench. “It does not help to—”
“Shut your mouth!” Chamberlin had nearly screamed it. “When I want your advice, I shall ask for it!” His face had bloomed red again, and once more he used his handkerchief to blot away the sweat. “Damned hot in here!” he said to no one in particular. He glowered across the table at Miriam, who sat straight upright with a blank expression. “You’re cheating at this!” he said. “No one beats me at Jingo!”
“Sir!” said Larrimore. “Mind your tongue!”
“You go to Hell, you fop!” raged the ragged reply from a ragged throat. “Wait,” he told Merrick as the deck was shuffled again. “Wait, I must compose myself.”
“Are you delaying the inevitable?” Katherine asked from her hay bale. In truth, she was as amazed at Miriam’s turn of luck as anyone could be.
“And you!” he sneered. “Come here to stick your fancy nose in my business! Come here to prevent the further growth of this town and these colonies! Mark this dangerous woman well, my friends,” he said, addressing the representatives from Chamberlin’s Crossing. “Somehow she has taught this black slave how to cheat!”
“There’s no cheatin’,” said Miriam, her voice calm but firm. “And I am nobody’s slave.”
“You,” Chamberlin replied, leaning slightly forward with a shard of light glinting off his teeth, “will always be a slave. You just think you’re free. And right now, the Devil must be burning the bastard who set you loose.”
Before she had realized it, Katherine was on her feet. Her own face was flaming. Three paces and she was within striking distance. And strike she did, with an open hand across Chamberlin’s grinning face.
“Assault!” Brodine screeched, shooting up from the bench. “Pure and simple assault! You shall pay in court for this, madam!”
“I’ll show you an assault, you damned ass!” shouted Larrimore as he stood, and he raised his hand to give Brodine what he’d vowed.
“STOP!”
Larrimore’s hand froze.
Katherine stepped back from Chamberlin.
Chamberlin’s grin hitched and faded.
“Please stop,” said Lily, her eyes huge. “I just … I can’t stand fighting. No more fighting. Please.”
In the silence that followed, Miriam said, “We got one more hand to play.”
“Yes, we do!” Chamberlin fired back. He turned his face toward the other farmers in the assembly. “Does no one understand me but my lawyer and the citizens of my town? I’m not a bad man! I’m doing what I must for the future! The beef I raise and send to market will be a benefit to everyone, rich and poor alike! And the violence that was done … it was not my doing! It was done by an individual who lost all control and sense! Don’t you understand that?”
“One more hand,” said Miriam.
Katherine returned to her hay bale, her palm still stinging. Larrimore and Brodine sat down in what was obviously an uneasy truce, and Lily sat with her hands clenched tightly together.
“Deal,” Chamberlin told Merrick.
The first castle card of the fifth hand was the three of hearts. It was followed by the nine of clubs, the king of clubs, the six of hearts, and the four of diamonds to Miriam; then, to Chamberlin, the ten of hearts, the two of hearts, the jack of clubs, and the ace of diamonds.
Miriam’s ten to Chamberlin’s seventeen.
In the next deal: the ace of spades, the six of clubs, the nine of clubs, and the five of hearts to Miriam … to Chamberlin the ten of diamonds, the seven of clubs and … the Mad Queen.
“Turn it over,” Chamberlin said to Merrick, his voice tight.
The following castle card … the eight of hearts.
Katherine gave a small gasp.
Miriam’s sixteen to Chamberlin’s twenty-five.
Her luck had deserted her.
“I win.” Chamberlin’s voice was small. Then, louder: “I win!” He looked to Brodine. “I win!” he said, louder still, and he pulled himself up from his chair and slammed his fist down upon the table. “I am the winner!” he shouted. “By God, I have smashed you! Dare to take me on?” He swung his red-flushed and glistening face toward Katherine, his eyes bulging. His shout beat at the rafters. “There you are, madam! Are you satisfied now? I told you, didn’t I? Yes, I did! And now your money will be flying out of your—”
His shout stopped. He made a strangling sound. He clutched at the center of his chest with both hands, and Katherine saw his face go gray. He took one halting step not toward his wife but toward his lawyer, and as Brodine jumped up to help a client in true distress, Barton Chamberlin gave a rattling sound from deep in his throat and fell like a toppled tree, his eyes still wide in the tomb-gray face and his mouth twisted in a rictus.
At once, both Brodine and Larrimore were bending over him, and Katherine came forward. She saw Chamberlin’s body go into several convulsions that made the head snap back and forth. With a last shiver as if in winter’s grip the man was still. The others were on their feet as well, with Miriam coming up alongside Katherine and Merrick on the opposite side.
“Roll him over!” Brodine cried out to Larrimore, and together they got the bulk turned. The eyes still stared and the mouth yet grimaced. Brodine shook the body as best he could. “Mr. Chamberlin!” he shouted. “Mr. Chamberlin … wake up!” Then, to anyone: “A doctor! We need a doctor!”
Larrimore had his hand to Chamberlin’s chest. He put his other hand to the throat, searching for life.
“A doctor! Hurry, someone!” Brodine urged, and one of the town’s representatives ran out to get his horse.
Larrimore brought his hands away and leaned back, sitting down in the dirt. He said, “There is no need for a doctor.”
“What? What?” Brodine’s face had taken on its own shade of gray.
“Mr. Chamberlin,” said Larrimore, “is dead.”
“No! He can’t be! Mr. Chamberlin … please … wake up!” Brodine continued shaking the body until it seemed all the strength had left his arms and his resolve to awaken the deceased had also gone.
“Dead,” said Larrimore. “Dead as a post.”
There came a scream that nearly made Katherine jump out of her boots.
Lily was standing and had her hands to her face. Her body shuddered. The scream shrilled up again and changed in mid-shrill, and as Lily dropped her hands away from her face it could be seen that she wore a maniacal grin, and the scream redefined itself into a laugh that would have scared the skeleton crew into fleeing from the night. As the assembly watched in a kind of shocked fascination, the girl spun herself around and around as she laughed, and she flung her hat up into the air with such velocity the multicolored paper leaves flew off and whirled down like the onset of early autumn.
“Dear Jesus!” Brodine breathed. “She’s gone mad!”
“Someone, take her to the house!” Larrimore commanded. The other representative of the town took her arm and led her out of the barn, but she was still laughing all the way.
“My God, what a night!” Brodine was on his feet, staring down at the body. “He just … went so fast!”
Not so fast, Katherine thought. A lifetime of voracious appetites had finally caught up with the future Baron of Beef. Did she feel sympathy for the man? Perhaps as for any human she witnessed die before her eyes, and it was true that maybe beef was the future of the colonies, but Chamberlin’s stubbornness, callous disregard for those he felt beneath him, and the vile way of reaching his desires … not so much. His moment of triumph had burst something inside him, and that was the fact of it.
“I cain’t believe this,” said Miriam in a stunned voice at Katherine’s side. “I mean … I wanted to win, but … I didn’t wish him dead!”
“No one did. I can tell you that in a way Chamberlin killed himself, over time.” And she thought a lot of blood sausages and hunks of fat went into that death, as well.
“I must … I must think,” said Brodine. He aimed his gaze at Larrimore. “You realize Mr. Chamberlin won this contest, yes?”
“I understand he didn’t sign the agreement; therefore, it is null and void.”
“It is not! He won! The stipulation of his winning is that Madam Herrald pay for the squatters to immediately leave! We’ll take this to court if you disagree!”
“Is that so?” Larrimore’s eyebrows lifted. “Well, tell me, Thomas … who exactly is your client?”
Brodine gave a sputtering sound and seemed to be looking to the body for aid. None was offered.
“You might discuss the situation with the wife,” Larrimore suggested. “If Chamberlin left a will designating her as the property owner at his demise. Did he?”
There was no answer from Brodine, but it was answer enough.
“Ladies,” said Larrimore to Katherine and Miriam, “the contest being over, I think you two should depart. Thank you for coming,” he told the others. “Merrick, thank you for your sterling service.”
“What’s gonna happen now, sir?” one of the farmers asked. “We have to pack up and leave our land?”
“Do they, Thomas?” Larrimore asked.
“I don’t … I think … well … I suppose in time the estate will be put up for sale. As for the herd … the same.” He again stared down at the dead man, who stared back up into nothingness. “I told you to make out a will, didn’t I?”
“Let’s go.” Katherine took Miriam’s arm. Her last glance back showed her Brodine laying a horse blanket over Barton Chamberlin’s face.
They walked out of the barn toward Miriam’s wagon. A light summer’s rain had begun to fall, and the woman who had been a slave for most of her life stopped to lift her face to the sky.
“Good for my apples,” she said, and then she frowned toward the damp earth. “I just … it was an awful thing, wasn’t it?”
“It’s done.”
“Yes, but … awful, goin’ like that … like a candle just quick snuffed. Mr. Chamberlin … you have to say he built a nice bridge, didn’t he?”
“It should last for many years, and I wouldn’t doubt that it might become part of a new coach route, so Chamberlin’s Crossing might not have needed the beef herd to grow. Just the bridge. We’ll see.”
“You think Mr. Hutcheson will buy from me again, after this?”
“I think fresh apples, apple cider, and applejack hold more value than a dead man’s promises. And by the way, I want to take some of your applejack to the taverns in New York. I believe they’d be very interested in purchasing what you make.”
Miriam nodded, but Katherine could tell she was still troubled. “My luck,” she said. “You don’t think … it killed Mr. Chamberlin, do you?”
“No. What happened to Mr. Chamberlin was coming sooner or later. I can tell you that he was not a healthy person in his dining habits.”
“He should’ve et an apple every once in a while,” said Miriam.
“Yes,” Katherine said, and she put an arm around her friend as they walked to the wagon.
Upon returning to New York, Katherine sometimes had dreams of being on the farm with Miriam … of chopping wood, of feeding the chickens, of picking the apples by the basket in the orchard, and doing all the chores that had taken her from the life she knew and put her for a time closer to nature. In her dreams, she remembered the stillness of the forest and the songs of the birds, the warmth of the summer sun, the sweetness of the air … the very sensation of being alive.
She would have those dreams for the rest of her life.
And one other thing: she wondered if she might at some point stop by the house of Aurora Flinders, and find out if while Barton Chamberlin was gambling at the Fine Fellows, his wife, Lily, had come in not only to buy her three hundred and fourteenth hat but also some potion that … say … might aid in ridding vermin from a cattle farm? That added to a glass of water might be …
… a cleverly executed murder in front of more than a dozen unknowing witnesses?
Well … she would not visit that house, and she would never know.
She didn’t care to know.
With autumn just around the corner, it was time for some baked apples and a nice cup of crisp, smooth applejack.
The Pale Pipe Smoker
November 1703
One
At six by the candle-clock on the white stone mantel above a politely warming fireplace, Katherine Herrald quietly said to Minx Cutter, “There is our gentleman.”
