Natchez Flame (34 page)

He turned to Patience, who stood trembling, her face so pale it appeared almost translucent. “Go get your mother. Tell her Charity has been hurt and she’s to get a doctor.” The child spun and raced out of the room. Priscilla could hear her terrible sobs, but still she didn’t move.

“I need bandages, Priscilla!” Brendan shouted, but the room had changed, grown distant and distorted, and the circle of blood seeped toward her. The walls of the room were red now, the curtains, and the carpets. They were closing in on her—just like they had before.

“Goddamn it, Priscilla!”

She should move, she knew, do whatever it was he wanted, but the blood was running toward her, and his voice sounded very far away. She heard the sound of running feet, looked across at Brendan, saw his mouth moving, but couldn’t hear his words. When she looked again, it wasn’t Brendan she saw but her father. Wounded and dying. Lying in the big brass bed, a woman she had never seen lying naked and silent beside him covered with blood.

No, Mama! No Mama! Mama, I’m so scared!

Go away, Priscilla. Go away from this place and never come back.
Her mother walked back into the bloody bedchamber, the pistol still gripped in her hand. Her eyes looked bleak and lifeless. She closed the door in Priscilla’s face as if she weren’t there.

Mama?
Priscilla jumped when her mother fired the gun. She heard a heavy thud, then nothing but silence. With trembling fingers, she turned the brass doorknob and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Her mother lay at the foot of the bed, as bloody as her father and the woman who lay beside him. Priscilla turned and ran.

Just as she did now.

She thought she heard someone calling out to her, but she couldn’t be sure. It didn’t really matter—she had to get away.

Just like before.

She would run until the hurting stopped, until her blood-red vision cleared. She would run until she couldn’t remember the way her father had looked with his chest blown open, the way the woman had looked on the blood-soaked sheets beside him. The way her mother had looked in the crimson pool on the floor.

Priscilla ran until her sides ached and her legs burned. Her hair had come loose from its pins and hung wildly around her shoulders. Branches scratched her cheeks and tore her dress. Still she ran on. Twice she fell, but hardly noticed the mud that coated her skirts, just got up and kept going.

When she couldn’t take another weary step, when her legs refused to hold her up, she sank down on the ground beneath a moss-hung oak, her heavy breathing broken only by her sobs.

How long she sat there, she didn’t know, but only a half dome of orange flamed the horizon and the evening had started to chill. Priscilla leaned back against the trunk of the oak. She felt burned out. And empty clear to her soul. She’d stopped crying; she had no more tears.

Another hour passed before she had emptied her mind completely, had drained her heart of all emotion, and recovered herself enough to start back toward the house.

Back to poor little Charily, lying there dead on the floor.

Dear God in heaven.

Her stomach rolled and the bile rose up in her throat. Brendan’s pistol had killed her, taken Sue
Alice’s precious little girl just as a gun had killed her mother and father. She thought of the Indian she had shot in the back of the wagon, saw his bloody face, and closed her eyes against the terrible image. She felt sick inside and nearly as dead as the child on the floor.

As darkness surrounded her and the chill seeped into her bones, Priscilla walked back the way she had come. The numbness she felt stayed with her, blotting some of the pain and allowing her to function. She made a couple of wrong turns, but corrected her path until the lights of Evergreen blazed ahead of her. She didn’t want to go back at all, but she had nowhere else to go.

She started for the front door, looked down at her ragged and muddy appearance, turned and walked to the house in the rear. It took all her resolve to go into the bloody parlor. But she fixed her eyes on the door to the bedchamber, walked in and closed the door. In minutes, she had straightened her hair, pulling it back into a severe knot at the back of her neck, and put on a clean brown gingham dress.

Back through the parlor, staring straight ahead, she walked out of the house toward the lights of the main house glowing across the garden. Until tonight she had never noticed how dark and cold it was on the path in between.

Pausing at the back door, Priscilla drew in a shaky breath, pulled it open and walked inside. Servants she knew but now couldn’t seem to recall worked silently in the drawing room, but no one else was downstairs.

“Where are they?” she asked remotely.

“Upstairs, ma’am.”

She climbed the stairs on weary legs that would barely hold her up, but finally she made it. Spotting Brendan’s tall frame in the cluster of people outside a chamber door, she moved in that direction.

“Priscilla!” He broke away from the others and strode toward her, taking her cold hands in his warm ones. “Where in God’s name have you been?” His eyes assessed her red and puffy eyes, the grayish hue of her skin. “You’d better sit down.” He tried to guide her toward a chair in the hallway, but she pulled away.

“I’ve got to go to Sue Alice. Where is she?”

“She’s in the room with Charity.”

Priscilla nodded and started in that direction, but Brendan stopped her.

“You can’t go in, the doctor’s working over her. He wants as little disturbance as he can get.”

That cut through her shell. “Working over her? I don’t understand. Charity’s dead.”

Brendan shook his head. “The bullet went into her chest. She’s in critical condition, but—”

Priscilla whimpered and sagged against him. His hard arm went around her, the only thing holding her up. “She’s still alive?”

“Yes. You’d better sit down, Sill.”

She shook her head, pulled away, and started for the door.

Brendan caught both her arms and forced her to face him. “You can’t go in, Sill. The doctor says we have to wait.”

It took a moment for his words to sink in. She raised her eyes from his chest to his face. “This is all
your fault—you and your arsenal of weapons. The gun was yours. If you hadn’t—”

Chris Bannerman cut off her words. “You’re wrong, Priscilla. “My guns were in that case, too. It could just as easily have been one of mine.”

She swallowed hard. “Then the fault is mine. I should have stayed with them, kept a closer watch.”

“The children are old enough to play in their own home. You were only a little ways behind. You couldn’t have known they’d seen Brendan put away the key.”

He cleared his throat, but his voice still came out gruff. “If you’re determined to place the blame on someone’s shoulders, place it on mine. I’ve spent hours teaching my son to value and respect firearms, but never once have I spoken to the twins. I thought, because they were girls, it wasn’t necessary. If I had seen to their education as I did Matthew’s, Charity wouldn’t be lying in there now.” He looked older than he had just hours ago, but there was strength in his expression, and a determined force of will.

Priscilla didn’t know what to say. “How … how is she?” she finally asked.

“Too soon to tell.” Chris glanced toward the closed bedchamber door. On the opposite side, a man’s and a woman’s voice, speaking in hushed tones, seeped out into the hallway. “We’ll know more in the morning. In the meantime, all we can do is pray.”

And so they did.

Brendan had grown silent at Priscilla’s accusation, and she remained in a state of exhausted numbness. But each of them prayed throughout the endless hours of the night. In the morning when the door
swung open and the short balding doctor stepped into the passage, they roused their weary bones and went to meet him.

“The prognosis is good,” the doctor said. “She’s a strong little girl, and we’ve taken every precaution to prevent infection. I’ve given her laudanum; given a dose to Sue Alice as well, and one to poor little Patience. They’ll sleep for a while.” He looked Priscilla up and down. “It appears you could use a draught yourself, my dear.”

“That’s a good idea,” Brendan agreed.

“No. I’m fine, really I am. I just need a little rest.”

“Then I suggest you get it,” the doctor said.

“Chris has moved your things into the guest room,” Brendan told her. “I’ll be staying in the room next door.”

Priscilla felt a wave of relief. She dreaded returning to the guest house. And she needed some time alone, needed a chance to think things through. Excusing herself, she made her way down the hall, entered her bedchamber, and silently closed the door.

“Priscilla is taking this nearly as hard as Sue Alice,” Chris said, staring after her.

“She loves children. She feels very close to yours.”

“I think it’s more than that. Something’s not right, Bren. If I were you, I’d keep an eye on her.”

Brendan released a weary breath. “She wants to be alone, she’s made that perfectly clear.” He hadn’t missed her look of relief that they would be sleeping apart. He hadn’t missed her scathing accusation that he was to blame, either.

Chris glanced at Priscilla’s door, then back to
Brendan, whose face looked tense and strained. “I meant what I said about the gun. This wasn’t your fault, Bren, any more than it was Patience’s or Priscilla’s. It was an accident, one which—with God’s help—we’ll all survive. Years ago, when my father turned over that wagon and it cut off my arm, he hated himself. Nearly drank himself to death before it was through. That was an accident, just like this. God’s will, Brendan, nothing more.”

Brendan mustered a tired, faint smile. “Thanks, Chris.”

“How is she, Doctor Seely?” Priscilla stood outside the bedchamber door as she had off and on throughout the day, anxiously awaiting the balding doctor’s words.

He removed the pince-nez spectacles from the end of his blunt nose, looked up at her, and smiled. “She’s over the worst of it.” Chris and Sue Alice had gone in over an hour ago, but Brendan and Priscilla waited outside in the hall. “Starting tomorrow she can have visitors—not so many as to tire her, but enough to keep up her spirits.”

“Thank God,” Priscilla said softly.

“Thanks, Doctor Seely.” Brendan shook the doctor’s thin hand.

“You’d best be saving your thanks for the good Lord. He had more to do with it than I did.”

Brendan smiled. “We’ll do that.”

They both went in and stood by the bed, looking down at Charity’s sleeping figure. “Why don’t you let me sit with her a while?” Priscilla asked Sue Alice.

“I want to be here in case she wakes up,” Sue Alice said, but she looked tired and badly in need of sleep.

“I promise I’ll wake you the moment she stirs.”

“She’s out of the woods,” Chris said. “It’s you we’ve got to worry about now.”

His wife smiled wanly. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Come on.” Chris took her hand. “I think a little rest would do us both a world of good.” He led her from the room and closed the door behind them.

“Would you like me to sit with you?” Brendan asked.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ll be just fine.”

“If you get tired, I’ll be right down the hall.” Brendan watched her a moment, then quietly left the room.

After that, Priscilla spent hours by the little girl’s side, spelling Sue Alice and telling Charity stories. Patience often sat with them, holding onto her sister’s hand. Priscilla worried about the other twin as much as she did Charity, who was recovering remarkably well.

Priscilla spent a great deal of time with both of the girls, but to Brendan she said little. He had moved back into the bachelor quarters but she had remained in the house.

“I don’t like it, Priscilla. What if someone discovers who you are and tells Egan?”

“I’ll stay in my room whenever someone comes. I-I’m just not ready to go back out there.”

She wasn’t ready. In fact, he thought, Priscilla seemed glad for the distance it put between them.

Several times he had tried to start conversations, but she had found one excuse after another to end them before they got started. Then one night after supper, he stopped her on the way up the stairs.

“It’s a lovely evening, Priscilla. Why don’t we go for a walk in the garden?”

“I need to check on Charity.”

“Sue Alice is up there, and we need to talk.”

Brendan thought she might refuse, then with a look of resignation, she nodded.

Outside the full moon glistened on the leaves of a spreading magnolia as they strolled along a path in the garden. Brendan laced Priscilla’s arm through his but it rested there limply, and her eyes looked cloudy and far away.

“I know this has been hard on you,” he said, drawing her into the shadows beneath the tree. “But Charity is going to be fine, and it’s time things got back to normal.”

Priscilla looked up at him. “Normal? What makes you think things will ever be normal again?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You saw what happened to me. When I saw Charity lying there in all of that blood, I panicked. I couldn’t even move. What would have happened if that child had been ours? What would have happened if we were living in some wilderness in Texas and you hadn’t been there? I couldn’t handle it, Brendan. If it hadn’t been for you, God knows what might have happened.”