Darkwater (6 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jennifer woke with a strange sense of unfamiliarity. She did not know where she was or why, and it gave her an eerie sensation of disjointedness.

As sleep fell away from her and she sat up looking around, she realized she was in Alicia's room. Alicia's “spell” had lasted well into the night. Each time Jennifer made as if to go, thinking that Alicia was at last asleep, the older woman sat up, crying and begging Jennifer not to leave her.

“You don't know what nightmares I have,” she sobbed. “It's that girl, she sends them, I know she does. I just know it. I used to sleep like an angel and now I dare not close my eyes or the demons are here tormenting me.”

So Jennifer had stayed, sitting in the chair by the bed, and at last they had both slept. Now it was morning, the pale sunlight filtering through the curtains, making motes of dust dance in the golden stream.

Jennifer stood and stretched. She felt stiff from sleeping in the unaccustomed position, in the hard chair. She looked down at Alicia, now deep asleep. In repose she looked so much younger, so gentle and...yes, even angelic. It was hard to imagine that face, which looked pretty when still, could become so ugly and twisted with anger and violent passion.

Suddenly Jennifer felt the need to be away from here, away from this emotion charged room, away from this troubled woman, away from her own troubled thoughts, even. She let herself quietly out of the room, moving noiselessly along the hall, to the back door.

Outside it was cool with the night's lingering coolness. The day's heat was just beginning to descend, like a warm blanket. The grass was still damp with dew and she lifted her skirt slightly to spare the hem. The magnolia trees dripped with their fragrant blossoms and a lark greeted the day with joyous song.

The house and the entire plantation, with the sweeping green lawns and the wide, carefully cultivated fields of cotton and cane, looked as if they had been dropped from above, into the very heart of the bayou. They had been wrested from the swamp and the swamp stood vigilantly nearby, as if waiting to reclaim them.

“Hello,” a voice said behind her. She turned to find Liza standing nearby.

“What are you doing out so early?” Jennifer asked.

“I was about to ask you the same thing. I always get up early. There's no one to yell at me and tell me I'm doing everything wrong.”

Jennifer felt a wave of sympathy for this girl, a mere child, actually, who had somehow become the object of an emotional tug-of-war between a man and his wife. If only she had been able to establish a friendship with the girl—but Liza had steadfastly held her at arm's length, although there was no open antagonism between them. The fact was, Liza had no interest in anyone but Walter. For Liza none of the others, herself included, really existed.

Jennifer's brow wrinkled with thought. “Yes, I can understand the need to be alone sometimes,” she said. “I feel that myself. That's what I am doing out so early.”

“When I want to be by myself, I go into the bayou.”

Jennifer glanced past her, at the swamp forest that here edged its way almost up to the house. The thick trees with their lush growth provided a green wall that blocked any view of the swamp. She had an impression of vividly colored flowers and exotic blossoms, of hanging moss and thick vines like snakes, and tall marsh grass. It looked dark and luxuriant and mysterious.

“Isn't it dangerous to wander into the swamp?”

“Not if you stay on the paths. If you follow that path right there,” Liza pointed to a worn trail that went past the outbuildings, “and when it forks, stay to the right, it will bring you back here directly. It's a very pretty walk.”

Jennifer suddenly felt the desire to surrender herself to that green darkness. “Would you like to walk with me?”

“No, you go ahead. You did say you wanted to be alone, didn't you?”

Although she had not said that exactly, it was true, Jennifer did feel like being alone. She was surprised at Liza's perception.

“Yes, I think I do,” she said aloud. “If anyone asks, I will be back soon.”

She set out following the path as Liza had indicated, walking at a leisurely pace. Once she glanced back over her shoulder and saw Liza still standing in the same spot, staring after her. She waved, and Liza waved back.

A moment later, the swamp had swallowed her up.

* * * * * * *

From the window of the kitchen, a worried Bess watched Jennifer disappear into the swamp.

“That's not good,” she said to herself, giving her head a shake. “That is no place for her.”

For a moment she wondered if she should say something to someone else in the house—Mr. Walter, for instance.

She liked the new girl. Like everyone else, Bess had to suffer Alicia's sharp tongue from time to time, but with a difference. The others could say something back if they wanted. Not that they ever did, but they knew that they could. It rankled with Bess to still be treated like a slave—like the Deres had never treated their slaves. And by a woman who had no right.

But the new girl had stood up for her. Alicia had spoken sharp to her one day when the lunch Bess had brought in was not as hot as she seemed to think it ought to be.

“You're stupid, that's the trouble,” Alicia had almost shouted at her. “No white person would serve food this way.”

“I've never noticed that any race had a monopoly on stupidity,” Jennifer had said, very quietly but very cuttingly.

“Wait until you have spent a little more time with our blacks,” Alice said scornfully.

“They are no longer ‘your' blacks,” Jennifer said. “They are free now.”

To Bess's surprise, Alicia had said nothing in reply and had concentrated instead on eating the soup that a minute before had been too cold for her. Of course, Bess herself said nothing but she had admired the new girl for standing up to Alicia, as the others usually did not.

Now, she wondered why she was going into the swamp, but she was in the process of making candles and if she stopped the wax would harden and she would have to start over.

She decided to see if Miss Jennifer did not get back all right, and if she didn't return by the time Bess was finished with her candles, then she would tell someone else.

* * * * * * *

It was amazing, Jennifer thought, how very thick the growth was. Certainly there was nothing like this in the woods of Tennessee. It was daylight outside but in here it was nearly dark.

The thick trees blotted out the sun and created a gloom that was warm and damp and musty smelling. The leaves stirred and rustled, move by unfelt breezes or perhaps by the movements of birds and animals, and all about was thick vegetation and profuse flowers such as she had never seen before, and the huge trunks of trees entwined with clinging vines.

The path that she followed, however, was wide and worn smooth, and easy to follow. She looked to the right and down, and realized that only a few feet from the path the land swooped downward and was covered with water that gleamed darkly in the semi-gloom and was thick with tall grasses.

A careless traveler could wander from the path and suddenly be in water knee-deep or even deeper. There was no telling how deep that water was, nor what lay beneath the brackish surface.

She thought of traveling this path at night. For that you would need a sure knowledge of the lay of the land. Certainly now she would be careful to stay on the path.
Once she thought she heard someone call and she paused to listen, but it did not come again and she decided she had imagined it. Or maybe it had been a bird, she told herself, and went on.

She came to a fork in the path, with a trail going off in each direction. “Stay to the right,” Liza had told her. She veered to the right.

This path was narrow and not as well worn. In places the grasses and the vines clung to her skirt, and the low hanging branches ran leafy fingers across her cheek.

I won't go much further, she told herself. She felt confident that she was in no danger of getting lost. Liza had told her quite clearly that the path would eventually lead her back, but she did not want to face too long a walk home.

The walk had served one purpose, though. She felt calmer than before, her troubled thoughts at last settled into some sort of observable pattern. Here in the swamp, cut off from the sight of other people, from any sound of civilization, she felt truly alone and as if her problems were distant. She could face them now with ease and she took her thoughts out as she would take clothes from a trunk, shaking them and holding them at arm's length to examine them.

What a strange situation she had walked into. Driven by necessity, she had come to this little backwater town expecting to be nurse to an ill woman. Instead she found herself part time companion to a woman who, so far as she could see, had nothing wrong with her physically but who was insanely possessive of her husband.

But was she being quite fair? For the most part, Alicia's problems seemed to be more hysteria than anything else, but at other times, it did seem as if she were in actual pain. Or could the mind simply play that kind of trick on the body. She wasn't educated enough to know the answer to that.

As for Walter...if only her heartbeat did not quicken when their eyes met. If only she did not thrill so to the sight of him, to the sound of his voice. He was only a man, after all, and not the first one she had ever met. She'd had a beau, whom she had fully intended to marry, had he only come back from the war.

And there was another soldier, a gallant young defender of the Confederacy, who had come back and she had dressed his physical wounds and tried to salve the other, deeper ones.

And a Northerner briefly, arrogant, cocksure...but what did any of that matter now? She was here, and Walter Dere was married, however unhappily.

Did she only imagine that light she saw in his eyes when he looked at her? Or did he feel something for her, too?

“And if he does?” she asked herself crossly, speaking aloud because there was no one here to overhear, “what of that? What good could ever come of it?”

Perhaps she ought to go away from here, leave Darkwater and the temptation that he had come to represent. This was not what she had bargained for in coming here. There was nothing here for her but increasing confusion and perhaps, if she did not guard her thoughts and her actions very carefully, if she should ever give in to the wild desire that had begun to tremble within her at the mere sight of him—why then there would be shame and great unhappiness for everyone.

It was no use to tell herself how it had all come about, how this had happened to her. Her loneliness after her mother's death, her feeling of desolation. Caring for her mother these last few years had left her no time for romance. Perhaps, looking back, she would have been wiser to have become that Northerner's mistress as he had so obviously wanted. Money would not then have been the problem it had become for her, that had driven her here.

All of that was behind her, though. She was hundreds of miles from home, with no ties, no responsibilities except to herself. She had met a man, handsome, soft-spoken, intelligent, charming. A man who shared her love of books, with whom she could discuss things. A man of strength and purpose. For the first time she felt the desire to be able to lean on someone else, she on whom others had always leaned. Suddenly she wanted to be a woman, and belong to a man. She was tired of being strong, of being wise, and most especially of being independent.

It would never do, though. She could never give in to the urge she had begun to feel, to put herself in his arms, to lean her head against his powerful chest, and abandon herself to his will, however briefly. They were wicked thoughts, but she could not help thinking them.

Suddenly the path she had been following widened and she came into a clearing. Here the trees did not meet overhead. She could see the sky, blue and deep, and the hot sunlight fell in a golden cascade. A dragonfly darted past her face, gleaming green and silver.

She paused for a moment, and was surprised to discover she was not alone. Since entering the swamp she had seen no one nor even heard the sound of a voice, so it was something of a shock to see a woman standing not far away. She was withered and very old looking and barefoot, her toes with their long, yellowed nails looking like the talons of some bird of prey. Her gray hair was tied up in a bandanna, the way the blacks used to do at home and her dress was little more than a rag.

At the moment she was bent over with her back to Jennifer, gathering some sort of herb from beneath a spreading tree. She had not yet become aware of Jennifer's presence. Had she been able to, Jennifer would have gone on without intruding, but the path went directly by where the old crone was kneeling.

“Good morning,” Jennifer said to be polite.

The reaction to her simple greeting was swift and startling. The woman leapt about with amazing agility for one so obviously old. It was plain that the unexpected sound of a voice had alarmed her, but what was especially surprising to Jennifer was that the woman seemed angered as well. The look she gave Jennifer was threatening.

“Who are you?” she demanded, her eyes gleaming with a dark light. “What are you doing here?”

“Why, I....” Jennifer was so astonished by this unfriendly behavior that for a moment she could not think what to say. “I am Jennifer Hale. I am from Darkwater, and I was just taking a walk....”

“You were spying on me,” the old woman said in a savage whisper. “You were trying to see what herbs I pick for my potion.”

“No.” Jennifer was not only bewildered but actually frightened by the woman's wild manner. “I was quite surprised to see you here, in fact. I thought I was alone, you see, and then when I saw you....”

“I've warned everyone.” She came closer with a threatening look on her face. “Warned them and warned them. My secrets are my own. No one can steal them from me. I'll kill anyone who tries to steal them.”