“Nothing’s happened of late? Nothing out of the ordinary?” he pressed.
“Do ye not think I should have said at once?” she asked sharply. “No. I woke late one morning, and couldna hear her about my room. There was nay tea by my bed, and the fire had gone out; I could smell the ashes. I called for her, and there was no answer. Gone, she was—vanished without a trace.” She tilted her head toward him with a grim sort of “so there” expression.
I raised a brow at Jamie and touched the pocket I wore at my waist, containing the note. Ought we to tell her?
He nodded, and I drew the note from my pocket, unfolding it on the arm of her chair, as he explained.
Jocasta’s look of displeasure faded into one of puzzled astonishment.
“Whyever should she send for you, a nighean?” she asked, turning to me.
“I don’t know—perhaps she was with child?” I suggested. “Or had contracted a—disease of some sort?” I didn’t want to suggest syphilis openly, but it was a possibility. If Manfred had infected Mrs. Sylvie, and she had then passed the infection on to one or more of her customers in Cross Creek, who then had visited River Run . . . but that would mean, perhaps, that Phaedre had had some kind of relationship with a white man. That was something a slave woman would go to great lengths to keep secret.
Jocasta, no fool, was rapidly coming to similar conclusions, though her thoughts ran parallel to mine.
“A child, that would be no great matter,” she said, flicking a hand. “But if she had a lover . . . aye,” she said thoughtfully. “She might have gone off with a lover. But then, why send for you?”
Jamie was growing restive, impatient with so much unprovable speculation.
“Perhaps she might think ye meant to sell her, Aunt, if ye discovered such a thing?”
“To sell her?”
Jocasta broke out laughing. Not her usual social laughter, nor even the sound of genuine amusement; this was shocking—loud and crude, almost vicious in its hilarity. It was her brother Dougal’s laugh, and the blood ran momentarily cold in my veins.
I glanced at Jamie, to find him looking down at her, face gone blank. Not in puzzlement; it was the mask he wore to hide strong feeling. So he’d heard that grisly echo, too.
She seemed unable to stop. Her hands clutched the carved arms of her chair and she leaned forward, face turning red, gasping for breath between those unnerving deep guffaws.
Delilah rolled onto her belly and uttered a low “wuff” of unease, looking anxiously round, unsure what the matter was, but convinced that something wasn’t right. Samson had backed under the settee, growling.
Jamie reached out and took her by the shoulder—not gently.
“Be still, Aunt,” he said. “Ye’re frightening your wee dogs.”
She stopped, abruptly. There was no sound but the faint wheeze of her breathing, nearly as unnerving as the laughter. She sat still, bolt upright in her chair, hands on the arms, the blood ebbing slowly from her face and her eyes gone dark and bright, fixed as though on something that only she could see.
“Sell her,” she murmured, and her mouth creased as though the laughter were about to break out of her again. She didn’t laugh, though, but stood up suddenly. Samson yapped once, in astonishment.
“Come with me.”
She was through the door before either of us could say anything. Jamie lifted an eyebrow at me, but motioned me through the door before him.
She knew the house intimately; she made her way down the hall toward the door to the stables with no more than an occasional touch of the wall to keep her bearings, walking as fast as though she could see. Outside, though, she paused, feeling with one extended foot for the edge of the brick-laid path.
Jamie stepped up beside her and took her firmly by the elbow.
“Where d’ye wish to go?” he asked, a certain resignation in his tone.
“To the carriage barn.” The peculiar laughter had left her, but her face was still flushed, her strong chin lifted with an air of defiance. Who was she defying? I wondered.
The carriage barn was shadowed and tranquil, dust motes drifting gold in the stir of air from the opened doors. A wagon, a carriage, a sledge, and the elegant two-wheeled trap sat like large, placid beasts on the straw-covered floor. I glanced at Jamie, whose mouth curled slightly as he looked at me; we had taken temporary refuge in that carriage, during the chaos of Jocasta’s wedding to Duncan, almost four years before.
Jocasta paused in the doorway, one hand braced on the jamb and breathing deeply, as though orienting herself. She made no move to enter the barn herself, though, but instead nodded toward the depths of the building.
“Along the back wall, an mhic mo peather. There are boxes there; I want the large chest made of wickerwork, the one as high as your knee, with a rope tied round it.”
I had not really noticed during our earlier excursion into the carriage barn, but the back wall was stacked high with boxes, crates, and bundles, piled two and three deep. With such explicit direction, though, Jamie made short work of finding the desired container, and dragged it out into the light, covered with dust and bits of straw.
“Shall I carry it into the house for ye, Auntie?” he asked, rubbing a finger under a twitching nose.
She shook her head, stooping and feeling for the knot of the rope that bound it.
“No. I shallna have it the house. I swore I should not.”
“Let me.” I laid a hand on hers to still her fumbling, then took charge of the knot myself. Whoever had tied it had been thorough, but not skilled; I had it loose within a minute, and the catch undone.
The wicker chest was filled with pictures. Bundles of loose drawings, done in pencil, ink, and charcoal, neatly tied with faded ribbons of colored silk. Several bound sketchbooks. And a number of paintings: a few large unframed squares, and two smaller boxes of miniatures, all framed, stacked on edge like a deck of cards.
I heard Jocasta sigh, above me, and looked up. She stood still, eyes closed, and I could tell that she was inhaling deeply, breathing in the smell of the pictures—the smell of oils and charcoal, gesso, paper, canvas, linseed and turpentine, a full-bodied ghost that floated out of its wicker casket, transparently vivid against the background scents of straw and dust, wood and wicker.
Her fingers curled, thumb rubbing against the tips of her other fingers, unconsciously rolling a brush between them. I had seen Bree do that, now and then, looking at something she wanted to paint. Jocasta sighed again, then opened her eyes and knelt down beside me, reaching in to run her fingers lightly over the cache of buried art, searching.
“The oils,” she said. “Fetch those out.”
I had already taken out the boxes of miniatures. Jamie squatted on the other side of the casket, lifting the bundles of loose drawings and the sketchbooks, so that I could pull out the larger oils, laid on edge along the side of the container.
“A portrait,” she said, head on one side to listen to the flat, hollow sound as I laid each one against the side of the wicker box. “An old man.”
It was plain which one she meant. Two of the large canvases were landscapes, three, portraits. I recognized Farquard Campbell, much younger than his present age, and what must be a self-portrait of Jocasta herself, done perhaps twenty years before. I had no time to look at these, though, interesting as they were.
The third portrait looked to have been done much more recently than the others, and showed the effects of Jocasta’s failing eyesight.
The edges were blurred, the colors muddy, shapes just slightly distorted, so that the elderly gentleman who looked out of the clouded oil seemed somehow disturbing, as though he belonged to some race not quite human, in spite of the orthodoxy of his wig and high white stock.
He wore a black coat and waistcoat, old-fashioned in style, with the folds of a tartan plaid draped over his shoulder, caught up with a brooch whose golden gleam was echoed by the ornamental knurl atop the dirk the old man held, his fingers bent and gnarled with arthritis. I recognized that dirk.
“So that is Hector Cameron.” Jamie recognized it, too. He looked at the painting with fascination.
Jocasta reached out a hand, touching the surface of the paint as though to identify it by touch.
“Aye, that’s him,” she said dryly. “Never saw him in life, did ye, Nephew?”
Jamie shook his head.
“Once perhaps—but I was nay more than a babe at the time.” His gaze traced the old man’s features with deep interest, as though looking for clues to Hector Cameron’s character. Such clues were evident; the man’s force of personality fairly vibrated from the canvas.
He had strong bones, the man in the portrait, though the flesh hung from them in the infirmity of age. The eyes were still sharp, but one was half-closed—it might have been only a drooping eyelid caused by a small stroke, but the impression was that of an habitual manner of looking at the world; one eye always narrowed in cynical appraisal.
Jocasta was searching through the contents of the chest, fingers darting lightly here and there, like hunting moths. She touched one box of miniatures, and lifted it with a small grunt of satisfaction.
She ran a finger slowly along the edge of each miniature, and I saw that the frames were patterned differently; squares and ovals, smooth gilded wood, tarnished silver laid in a rope border, another studded with tiny rosettes. She found one she recognized, and plucked it from the box, handing it absently to me as she went back to her search.
The miniature was also of Hector Cameron—but this portrait done many years before the other. Dark wavy hair lay loose on his shoulders, a small ornamental braid down one side sporting two grouse’s feathers, in the ancient Highland style. The same solid bones were there, but the flesh was firm; he had been handsome, Hector Cameron.
It was an habitual expression; whether by inclination or accident of birth, the right eye was narrowed here, as well, though not as much as in the older portrait.
My scrutiny was interrupted by Jocasta, who laid a hand on my arm.
“Is this the lass?” she asked, thrusting another of the miniatures at me.
I took it, puzzled, and gasped when I turned it over. It was Phaedre, done when the girl was in her early teens. Her usual cap was missing; she wore a simple kerchief bound over her hair that threw the bones of her face into bold relief. Hector Cameron’s bones.
Jocasta nudged the box of paintings with her foot.
“Give those to your daughter, Nephew. Tell her to paint them over—it would be shame to waste the canvas.” Without waiting for response, she set off back toward the house alone, hesitating only briefly at the fork in the path, steering by scent and memory.
THERE WAS A PROFOUND silence in the wake of Jocasta’s departure, broken only by the singing of a mockingbird in a nearby pine.
“I will be damned,” Jamie said at last, taking his eyes off the figure of his aunt as she vanished into the house, alone. He didn’t look shocked, so much as deeply bemused. “Did the girl know, d’ye think?”
“Almost certainly,” I said. “The slaves would surely have known; some must have been here when she was born; they’d have told her, if she wasn’t quick enough to have worked it out herself—and I certainly think she is.”