It was a familiar sensation breaching that black pool again, feeling the numbness, then the chill, and then the warmth coaxing you back to groggy reality. As her eyes fluttered open, she almost expected to see Abel lurking by the fireplace, stoking it to keep her warm. When her eyes focused, they rolled around to take in the white plaster room. Yet it was not the same empty room as Abel’s, rife with cobwebs, peeling walls and piles of discarded clothing.
The room was clean, whitewashed, and decorated with a mirror over a desk cluttered with parchment and boxes of quills. Every available corner but the bed was taken up by sets of pine bookshelves stuffed with colorful hardcovers. She recognized it all immediately. It was her own room back home in Washington. The light of day through the windows filled the room with a warm, golden glow, and for the first time, she felt relaxed. She tried to think back to before, to the woods, to the shot, to the house, to Abel, but it all felt distant, vague, all a dream.
Things came flooding back—broken thoughts, sights, sounds…pain. She lifted a hand to her head, and her dull fingers cringed back as they brushed the bandage on the side of her head. She felt the wrapping beneath her jaw and over her head like someone with a toothache. Craning her neck up, she turned her gaze to the window and glimpsed the ripe apple trees of her father’s orchard outside. Craning her head forward and propping up on an elbow, she thew back the sheets and saw her foot bound up and elevated on a pair of pillows. She was wearing one of her nightgowns, and she felt fresh despite her bruises and sore ankle.
Craning back her head, she tried to call out, but what came out was more of a croak. She swallowed, cleared her throat, licked her lips, and tried again. “Hello!” Her voice was hoarse, but she managed to cry out. In seconds, she heard the tramp of feet quickly upstairs, and before long, the family servant, Miss Rachel, was bustling in.
“Oh, thank God, Miss Ada! You ain’t been awake for two days!” gasped Rachel, rushing forward and propping Ada upright against her pillow. She was a slender, middle-aged woman in a checkered dress, apron, and neckerchief who had known Ada since she was a baby. She pressed the back of her hand to Ada’s forehead and cheeks. “I’mma tell your mamma you awake, miss, and then I’ll fetch the doctor. So, you just hold on here.”
“Rachel,” Ada gripped the old woman’s sleeve. “Some water first, please.”
Rachel quickly fetched a mug and pitcher, poured Ada a glass of water, and set the pitcher on the bedside table. She helped hold it for her as the girl guzzled it eagerly down. When she set it aside, she looked down at her and spoke soothingly, “How ya feeling, child?”
“Throat’s a bit sore…but better,” croaked Ada. “My foot’s sore too.”
“I daresay so after you been walking around on a sprained ankle in the woods for two days.” Rachel shook her head. “Thank God that shot barely missed you.”
“Shot?” Ada asked groggily, her hand brushing the bandages again.
“Mm-hm. Two young fellas out with that posse. They was looking for the man that dun shot that poor Van Buren boy, Lord rest his soul.”
Ada felt her stomach shoot to her throat. “And Cora? And Peter? What of them?”
Rachel put a hand on Ada’s arm. “Oh, don’t you worry, miss. They come back safe enough, but poor Miss Cora, she got a fever like you, but something fierce.”
Ada swallowed bitterly, feeling sick to her stomach. She hardly heard Rachel hurrying out of the room and downstairs to get her breakfast and possibly to bring her mother or father. She felt like drifting off again, but instead of sleep, a heaviness weighed down on her, sinking her like lead into the mattress. The very air felt heavy with the humidity. Before long, she heard the hurried tramp of multiple pairs of feet up the stairs, and soon her mother came rushing in.
Alice Blackwood (formerly Alice Albrecht) was a fair-haired, blue-eyed beauty even nearing middle age as she was. While she spoke fluent English with as clear an accent as the most cultured aristocrat, she had a habit of falling back into her native German during periods of extreme emotional duress or periodic moodiness. Ada’s father would sometimes lead his daughter away by the shoulder when she couldn’t find her mother, murmuring that she was “making a German spectacle of herself.”
Well, Alice Blackwood was certainly living up to that spectacle. She fell upon her daughter’s bed and embraced her, near to tears and babbling in German.
“Mir geht’s gut, Mama. Mir geht’s gut,” Ada assured her with some of the sparse German she had picked up. “Mein Fu? tut nur ein bisschen weh.”
“Oh! Mein armes M?dchen!” Her mother relaxed her grip a bit and moved around to make sure she didn’t sit against the sprained ankle. “We thought at first the storm had carried you off. Then, when poor Cora came home and told us about that madman, mein Gott!” She brushed a lock of hair from Ada’s face and caressed her cheek. “I cannot imagine how it must’ve been, running cold, terrified, and with a sprained ankle!”
Rachel brought up hot soup, and Ada was doted upon, receiving news of the town, her father, and home as she ate. A few minutes later, Amanda opened the bedroom door for the barrel-chested doctor, Thomas Baird.
“Good morning, Ada.” His voice had a deep rumble to it like a bear, but his red cheeks and good-natured smile accentuated by the slick, handlebar mustache, gave him a grandfatherly appearance. He set his bag next to the bed, pulled up a chair, and rolled his sleeves up to the elbows of his bulky forearms. “How are we today? You had quite the sprain yesterday.”
“Just sore,” Ada rasped, “and my ankle still hurts.”
“Hmm,” mused the doctor, feeling her forehead with the back of his hand. “Open your mouth for me, dear.” He took her gently by the jaw and squinted into her mouth. Then he leaned over, plucked a long, wooden stethoscope from the bag, and leaned in to listen. “Breathe in, please.” When she took in a deep, raspy breath, he hm’d again. Then, after shifting positions and trying again twice more, he sat upright, took out his pocket watch, and checked her pulse. “A slight fever, some sore throat, but pulse appears normal. No chills, young miss?”
Ada shook her head.
“Just your throat and ankle then?”
She nodded again.
“Well, I will prescribe some Sappington’s pills to stave off any malaria. For the cough, I suggest some cowslip tea, and for the fever, a steady diet of chicken soup.” He smiled down at her. “For the ankle, we need only balance your humors.” He put a comforting hand on her wrist. “I’m going to perform a little bloodletting, my dear. Unpleasant, I know, but it will keep the swelling down and draw off that inflammation.” He made quick work of it, but that made it no less unpleasant.
Ada bit her lip and did not cry out when he cut her. Before she knew it, it was over, and he was binding her foot up again.
“There, now, that’s a good girl. Nothing to it, eh?” He smiled assuring at her. “Now, the rest is very simple. We’ll keep this leg elevated for, oh, two days to a week, depending on when the inflammation subsides. For five minutes, four times a day, you must pour cold water over your ankle to reduce heat and tension. I’ll give some embrocation and poultices to your mother for the pain and lingering soreness.” He stood and bowed to Mrs. Blackwood.
“Thank you, Doctor.” Ada’s mother clasped his hands. “Would you like some wine or coffee in the parlor?”
“Ah, coffee would be wonderful, Mrs. Blackwood. I must leave soon after, though. I’m due to call on Mrs. Cain in an hour.”
Ada listened to their footsteps fading back downstairs and leaned back with a sigh to stare up at the whitewashed ceiling. She thought for a while, staring at nothing, and soon realized she could not sleep again despite her weariness.
The mind, after all, is not still in sleep, but chugs on at a steady pace, shuffling disparate images, sounds, and fragmented memories to lull us into peaceful repose. An empty mind is a train without fuel, and the eyes remain open receptacles, straining to catch every drop of something, anything, to keep it going.
She finally opened the drawer of her bedside table and fished around until she plucked out a small, blue book—Walpole’s Castle of Otranto. She turned it over in her hand for a while. Then, she slipped it back into the drawer, fished around some more, and withdrew a small, red notebook and two pencils. With a sigh, she propped herself up on her pillow, and soon the only sound was the faint scratching of pencil on parchment.
Beyond the flooded fields of her family plantation, Washington was a town as active as it had ever been, and yet also as silent as if the whole place had been washed away in the storm. It was a day to restock, rebuild, and reenforce. The water had gone down some, but still lay about ankle-deep or just below the knee in some places. The land was choked up with clouds of mosquitos and flies, and the flood lines could be seen as high as four feet along the sides of buildings.
Planks were laid between buildings, and people lined the sides of buildings, scraping off the muck left behind. Businessmen stood on the porches of their establishments shoveling off refuse or stripped the interiors of the buildings down to studs. Smoke filled the air as some families burned ruined mattresses while they hung bedding and rugs to dry. The smell of algae and wet wood dominated, and the further you went, the more the pungent stench of death contributed, where the bloated corpses of cows and chickens had to be dragged from the water. Merchants like Cy Hoxey were tallying up lost inventory, and already, court sessions were being arranged to resolve flood-related disputes or to extend or deny credit.
Cy was sorting through boxes and tossing refuse. He and his boy carried supplies upstairs and scraped muck off the walls into buckets. When the product most at risk was brought topside, he sent his boy upstairs to mind the counter. He waited until the footsteps faded away before creeping to where he had arranged a stack of new crates. He hauled a couple of crates off each other and squinted down at them. Shaking his head, he fished in his vest pocket until he produced a match, which he struck off the edge of the crate. Cupping a hand around the tiny flame, he leaned in and grinned at the sight of a notch in the center of the lid. In the store above, one could hardly hear the groan of a crowbar.
In the world above, a tension hung over Washington—a tension only exacerbated by the rank pools of brackish water, the floating corpses of drowned beasts, and the thick fog of mosquitoes. It was the gathering of a new storm—one whose eye was centered squarely on the cabin of Dr. Baird, the temporary tomb of Willem Van Buren. In any other instance, this bullet and body would have been just a needle in a haystack, lost for weeks or maybe even months when the floodwaters at last receded and some poor unfortunate happened upon him on a hunt.
Had the Van Buren boy been discovered drowned or crushed by a tree, the atmosphere would merely have been one of somber reflection. A town together may bear up a tragedy just as it may bear itself up from the face of imminent disaster. As an uncle or son might be expected to fill the shoes of a fallen head of a household or to help, comfort, or even compensate a family member in time of loss, so a neighbor would be expected to lend his labors, his sympathies, and prayers to another more unfortunate. That Willem Van Buren was borne down by lead and not by waves, however, made a great noise. That noise was a cacophony that drowned out all comfort and consolation in deafening silence. Every man looked to his own labors with naught but a side glance for his neighbor.
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The clatter and splash of galloping hooves interrupted the quiet drudgery, and a trio of riders parted the street traffic like the Red Sea. Their long duster overcoats billowed behind them like sails, and their black bolero hats tilted low over their noses. They made no call to the pedestrians to make way or shout ill news to the sleepy building like Paul Revere. Yet their presence caused every man to pause in his labors and stare long after them. Perhaps it was the snowy Sabino horses they mounted that so captured their attention. The trio pulled up and dismounted before The Royal Oak, tethering their horses to a hitching rail out front before swaggering in. Their leader, the man who introduced himself as Joshua Hadley, was alcalde for the Washington Municipality who had ridden from his prairie home nearly twenty miles northeast to offer assistance.
Hadley stepped down from his horse and tucked his top hat beneath one arm. He was a roughly middle-aged specimen whose blue, fitted frock coat over a white waistcoat and stiff cravat gave him the stiff appearance of a wind-up toy or gaudy automaton. He was greeted by the town’s founder, John W. Hall, who had brought Reverend Kenney along for the discussion. The whole time Hadley spoke to them, he stood, feet planted firmly in place, and only turned and bent slightly at the waist occasionally to indicate who he spoke to.
To any who might recognize him, Hadley’s arrival might spell good or ill tidings for the denizens of Washington. There was a desire for aid in the shadow of the hurricane, and there was a desire to uncover the murder of Willem Van Buren, but there was also a desire to avoid further wearing on the frayed nerves of the citizenry. To this end, Hadley stifled any further remark with a raised hand and directed his hosts to show him into the tavern. Yet inside, upon being recognized by besotted constituents, he promptly received a flood of queries and disputes from the harried farmers, stockmen, and traders. He could only wave a polite and assuring hand to them as he followed his hosts upstairs, that he would arrange to examine their cases by appointment. “Endeavor to persevere, friends,” he bade them with an encouraging shake of his gloved fist. “Restitution is come in good time.” There were those who proffered their emphatic anxieties over Karankawa attacks amidst the disaster, but these too he patted down with a soothing wave of his hands, assuring them that the assistance of minutemen recruited by Colonel Austin as empresario was already being arranged. A call went out to gather the prominent landowners and officials of Washington to confer with the alcalde so that measures could be taken to bring aid and reconstruction.
One figure was absent, and that was Gabriel Blackwood. Blackwood had remained at the harbor office even after receiving news of the alcalde. Upon determining that he had properly greased the wheels of his operation and prepared an itinerary, he gave it over to his business partner, Andrew Hall, and made tracks for home. He quickly gathered his papers, locked his desk and office, saddled his horse, and trotted homeward through the thoroughfare.
He wondered if he might intercept the good doctor on his way. Earlier that day, he had received word of Ada’s discovery and near-fatal mischance. In his anxiety and relief, he had put off much of his morning’s operations to look after her until urgent pleas from Mr. Hall at last extricated him from his daughter’s bedside. He tried to comfort himself that she was alive and home, but his thoughts ever turned to the fear, the awful worry, the horror of the Van Buren boy’s death, the remorse and fury at his daughter’s suffering. When he cleared the town proper, he spurred his horse into a gallop, determined to be there for his daughter when she awoke. His eyes strained through the trees as if trying to snag and pull the house towards him, feeling all the while as if the road were stretching beneath his horse’s hooves until it felt his home could be a whole county away. He didn’t know why, but when the peak of his house came into view, he half expected a distant shout and the rushing forward of wailing women blubbering news his brain intentionally beclouded. The worst was at the forefront of his mind, but he dared not acknowledge it. He swallowed it down and forced it to the pit of his stomach where it could fester like an ulcer. He consigned the psychology to the biological impulses of an overwrought nervous system, an undercooked meal, or poor sleep. For the sake of his nerves, he must convince himself there was more of gravy than of grave about his anxieties.
The sound reached his ears moments before he saw it—the sound of hooves ahead. Rounding a corner, he glimpsed the back view of an Appaloosa trotting beneath the shade of the arching tree canopy. He spurred his horse forward, and when the rider glanced back at him, he recognized immediately the face of Felix Collins.
Felix drew his horse across the path and hailed Blackwood, who was forced to rein in his own horse. “Mister Blackwood! Forgive my impertinence, sir, but—”
“Collins, I owe you a great debt for bringing my daughter safely home,” interrupted Blackwood patiently, “but my duties for today are to be reserved for my family and my daughter.”
“I understand, sir, but…”
“I am not ignorant of your travails, Collins, but my first duty is to my family. Surely, in light of this disaster, all our duties must be to ourselves and our own?”
“Sir, please, I understand and would never wish to trouble you so in these circumstances,” pleaded Felix. “Yet even you saw fit to make time to ensure the stability of your operations. Everyone needs help now, Blackwood, and in this flood, I’m doing all I can to stay afloat.”
“I understand.” Blackwood spoke to him like a parent attempting to calm an unruly child. “We are all suffering in the wake of this flood. It has disrupted all business, and I am perfectly willing to lend any aid to the best of my ability. Yet you understand that without your brother’s consent as a co-owner of your father’s business I can pursue no further negotiations.”
“Sir,” Felix’s voice was grave. “What must I do? Without the benefits of a joint partnership, our business is losing money and resources by the day. We all must rebuild. Yet how am I to do so? I have no connections, no suppliers, only local clients, and they cannot lend a hand in replenishing my stock or receiving aid from San Antonio de Bexar or San Felipe de Austin. I have to draw from the land, and what can it give me now?”
Blackwood bit his lip and gazed up with a sigh. When he spoke again, his voice was firm yet reassuring. “We can speak tomorrow. I’ll put a meeting in for seven thirty, and we can discuss aid and, perhaps, connecting you with one of my suppliers in Brazoria. Tomorrow, Felix.
Felix looked relieved and then sheepish, shifting around in his saddle. “Then, sir, with your permission…I have but one more request.”
Blackwood sighed. “What is it, Felix?”
“May I come and…proffer my well wishes and my…apologies to your daughter?”
“We already settled that. No one blames you…”
“Nevertheless,” Felix cut in, “I should like the opportunity to proffer my apologies to her as well and to see that she is alright. I feel I owe her that.”
Blackwood studied him for a moment. Then his gaze softened, and he nodded. “That is kind of you, Felix. If we may forgo further discussion of business for the day, then I would welcome you as a neighbor, as a guest, in my house.”
Blackwood continued on with Felix, keeping pace with his appaloosa down the long drive and finally to the porch, where his slave Abram rushed forward to take his horse’s reins. When Abram told him Ada was awake, he quickly dismounted and rushed inside with Felix keeping a respectable pace behind him.
Ada was sitting up in her bed, leaning back against a pile of pillows with her copy of Castle of Otranto in her hands. When she heard her father enter from the landing, she beamed at him and quickly dropped the book next to her. When he embraced her, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her face into his shoulder, feeling home at last.
Blackwood felt the weight of the world fall off his shoulders as he held his daughter tight and brushed her red locks with a gentle hand. He had no words, no exclamation, no questions, but merely sat there rocking slightly back and forth and hugging his daughter tight. When his wife ascended the stairs to meet him, she looked warmly upon her husband, stood beside him, and placed her hand on his shoulder. After a moment, she turned and beckoned Felix to enter.
Felix crossed to the end of the bed and held his hat in his hands. “I am glad to see you safe, Miss Ada. I…wanted…as I told your father…I wanted to express my pleasure at seeing you alive and well and to extend to you my sincerest apologies.”
Ada cocked her head at him. “Apologize for what, Mr. Collins?”
Felix rubbed the back of his neck with a hand. “Well, there’s no nice way to put it…It was my shot that clipped you in the woods. Damn fool mistake. I saw those birds fly up and drew a bead on them, but, well, I’m afraid you stumbled out into my crossfire.”
“Then it sounds like the blame is mine, Mr. Collins.”
“No, ma’am. I wasn’t being careful. Too eager. I got startled when they flew up and was in a hurry to nail one of them.” He gave a short, exasperated sigh on his own behalf. “Hell, my…own brother had taken point in the hunt. My mistake could’ve just as easily got him killed.”
“Your brother was with you?”
“Yes ma’am. While we’re both proficient hunters in our own right, I’m afraid we never do well together.” He shrugged with an apologetic smile. “When news got around about the Van Buren boy’s murder, we developed a bit of a hair trigger. Not pleasant knowing there’s a madman loose in the woods.” He bowed his head. “Anyway, I’m awful sorry, miss. I’ll certainly be more careful from here on.”
Ada smiled. “I can’t say I’ve been any more careful than you, Mr. Collins. At least Barnabas Beasley could say he was sleepwalking. Me?” she grimaced. “My damn fool curiosity caused a lot more problems than an itchy trigger finger did.”
“Ada!” her mother protested. “You didn’t cause anything!”
“She’s right, miss,” agreed Felix. “No good will come from thinking that way.”
Ada touched his hand. “Then no good will come from you blaming yourself. You brought me home, Mr. Collins, and that’s all that matters.”
“Well, you’re right about one thing, miss.” Felix took her hand. “All that matters is you’re home and thank God for it.”
So, the family and Felix considered themselves reconciled, and when the room was left behind to permit Ada some rest, Blackwood even invited Felix to dinner sometime when things were in order again. Forging his path back home, Felix felt his spirits lifted, considering that he might have made a friend in the Blackwoods. Even trotting back through the ravaged thoroughfare, he felt almost euphoric, like he’d managed to get a new lease on life even as everything else collapsed around him. Gazing around at the drenched streets and somber faces of weary men cleaning out refuse, he felt suddenly that things didn’t look so hopeless. After all, they were alive, weren’t they? Well, for the most part. What he soon recognized was that it was not a sense of self-satisfaction in the face of communal tragedy, but a sense of hope, being no longer a man adrift and uncertain.
Not that he was one to lord his good fortune over others. For Felix Collins, good fortune had a sweeter taste when shared, and with his good fortune, he felt he could achieve anything. He drew up to the Royal Oak Tavern, tied off his horse, and swaggered in to where gloomy faces drooped over mugs of frothing beer. Slapping a handful of silver pesos onto the counter, he proclaimed loudly, “Bartender! A round for the house!”
That got the attention of the room, and bleary faces swung around to stare at him like Christ before the Twelve. Then mugs were raised in a cheer, and a crowd broke like a wave upon the bar.
“What’s the occasion, son?” hollered the bartender with a raised brow as he quickly filled orders.
“Only goodwill in trying times,” replied Felix, raising his own mug, “and a reminder that we’re all in this together!”
“Endeavor to persevere!” came a shout from the back, which was met with laughter and hurrahs. The bartender finally slid a mug over to Felix, who raised it first in salute and then to his lips.
Felix’s throat abruptly tightened, and his neck snapped back, spilling his beer over his shirt. He felt his body topple backwards and saw the world rolling past him amidst cries of surprise and confusion. His heels dug for purchase on the floor but kicked uselessly beneath him. Then he felt the sunlight on his face and a shove at his back that sent him careening down the stairs. He rolled over in the mud, nursing the impact on his ribs, and lifted his head to get his bearings. The world around him was spinning, and his hand jerked out impulsively to find some object to brace against. He heard the snap seconds before he felt the searing pain across his neck. He gasped and rolled over, clutching the back of his neck, and then felt the pain lash across his gut. He tried to get his bearings, but every effort to gather himself was interrupted by the stinging sensation on his body. The sounds of shouts reached his ears, and he glanced around to see. His body contorted into the dirt and writhed at the sting across his ear and cheek. No matter where he turned, the sting was there, snapping across his hands and limbs and neck until he curled into a fetal position. “For the love of God!” he managed to scream, feeling the lash in the crooks of his knees and across his knuckles.
The click of a pistol and a booming voice cut through the chaos. “Mister Collins! Drop that damn whip afore I flog you with it!”
Felix darted a gaze from behind his cringing arm to see his brother Thomas looming over him. Only it wasn’t Thomas. Not with those eyes. A feral wolf might have looked more human. What Felix saw in those unblinking eyes could not even be called fury. Fury was never so cold and lifeless, and yet wide with attention. He wished he could have seen a sign—the baring of his teeth, the crimson of his face, the throbbing of a vein in his neck. The gaze was not even accusing; merely alert and knowing. Were it not for the clenched fist around the black handle of the quirt raised above him, the attack could almost be called mechanical.
Thomas stared at his brother; the quirt frozen in midair above his head. He was pale as death, and his was set like stone. The whole time he stared, he never blinked once.
“I ain’t warning you again, son! Best drop that quirt, or we’ll see if a musket ball is big enough to knock some sense into that thick head of yours!” The sheriff stepped forward slowly.
Thomas’ fingers loosened one by one until the quirt was dangling between his thumb and forefinger. Finally, it splashed into the watery street, and the sheriff moved forward to restrain him while the whole town watched on in silence.
