“Land’s sakes a-mercy, Belle Boyd!” Martha Jonias groaned, rolling her eyes and gazing toward the ceiling as if in search of guidance and strength from the heavens. Framed by tightly curled hair that had become grizzled by the passing of many years, her normally pleasant and intelligent-looking black face showed a mixture of annoyance and resignation. Just under six feet in height, she looked almost as broad and round as she was long, yet the bulk was not formed by flabby fat. In addition to being firmly filled, the spotless white frock she was wearing had its sleeves rolled up to show well-muscled arms. “I surely don’t know what I’m going to do with you. Almost your eighteenth birthday and still playing fool games like going a-hunting riding astride ’n’ dressed as a man, for shame. Then coming home looking like you’d been rolled on by a hoss, which you nearly was.”
“I’ve a full week to go before my birthday gets here, Auntie Mattie,” replied the girl who had caused so much surprise for the first-time visitor to her father’s Baton Royale Manor plantation a short while earlier. As the result of long experience, she showed no surprise over the extent of the woman’s knowledge of what had taken place during the hunt. “Anyway, it will probably be the last time I get a chance to ride to hounds at night. From now on it will be by daylight—” The strongly emphasized word was accompanied by a shudder redolent of distaste. “Sidesaddle, all dainty and proper at that, but nowhere nearly so much fun.”
Because of Ole Silver Lightning having treed and the three horses being shaken up by the fall, Vincent Boyd had decided there would not be any more hunting and the guests had gone with Joe Lassiter to return and attend to the needs of the muck ponies they had borrowed. She and her father had brought theirs to the mansion, but the head groom—who did not trust the task to anybody else, including his well-liked master and the daughter of the house, despite having taught her to be competent in that important part of the equestrian arts, even when they were only muck ponies and not what he regarded as being real bloodstock—had taken charge of them.
Knowing that the horse she had ridden for the hunt was in the best possible hands and would receive every care—or she would have insisted upon attending to its needs personally— the girl had sneaked into rather than just entered the house to which she would one day become the owner, according to her parents, without being asked by anyone what had taken place during the hunt. Given the connivance of her little colored maid, always a willing supporter in anything she did, she took a hot bath. Feeling sure her behavior would not be regarded with approval, she hoped to complete and change into more conventional attire before the woman who had been her nurse from the day she was born discovered she was on the premises. As had been the case so many times in the past when she had sought to conceal misbehavior from “Auntie Mattie,” the attempt was not entirely successful. She had finished her ablutions uninterrupted, but found the old Negro woman waiting with obvious disapproval when she emerged from the bathroom.
If the young man who had come down from the horse and almost descended upon her had been able to see Belle Boyd at that moment, he would have been left with no doubts whatsoever with regard to her sex. She had just returned from the bathroom next door to the sitting room of her living quarters on the first floor of the mansion, her coal-black hair drawn tightly and bunched into a bun at the back of her head. In addition to her face being radiantly beautiful, albeit with more of a tan than was considered socially acceptable for one of her class and age, it had a suggestion of strength of will and intelligence beyond average. What was more, displayed because all she had on were white cotton pantalets—the ankle-long legs trimmed by blue lace—and heelless white slippers, the rest of her bodily contours ideally supplemented her features.
Five feet seven in height, the girl was far from flat-chested or skinny despite being slender. In fact, being so firm that the dark brown nipples were slightly uptilted, her breasts were well developed for her age. Although not sufficiently to qualify as being “hourglass” in lines, her torso slimmed at the waist and opened out to curvaceous buttocks. Well-defined muscles showed in her arms, and the graceful ease with which she moved suggested that the same applied to her lower limbs. All in all, she exuded a sense of controlled power and of being in an excellent physical condition that was not a common trait— or even considered necessary by the more conventional of their peers—for members of her sex and age in the Southern states.
Some aspects of the room in which the conversation was taking place gave indications of how unconventional was Belle’s upbringing and outlook. Its four-poster bed, the dressing table, wardrobe, and most of the other furniture and fittings were such as might have been expected in any wealthy Southern household. However, there were intimations that its occupant did not conform strictly to the conventional dictates Southron society expected of a well-bred and correctly raised young woman.
One wall was lined with full-length mirrors, to which was fitted the kind of horizontal wooden rail used in ballet schools to not only allow limbering up and other exercises to be performed, but to let the one doing so see what was taking place. As it had never been intended to help her attain a professional career in even that highly regarded and generally considered respectable section of the theater, such a fitment just qualified as being socially acceptable. Less so was the well-polished walnut box on the mantelpiece; it held a magnificent matched brace of dueling pistols bearing the name of the renowned master gunmaker Elijah Manton & Son of London, England, along with a powder flask, bullet mold, and other items necessary for their loading and maintenance. Nor were the pair of equally well-made epee de combat from the same illustrious source, surmounted by a fencing mask, which formed a gleaming cross on the wall above the fireplace, any more in keeping with convention. At the other side of the room stood a dressmaker’s dummy in the shape of a full-size female head and torso, which was balanced upon a rounded base instead of the more usual flat stand. However, as it was not intended to be used for any kind of commercial purpose, it would just pass muster as being permissible.
“Fun!” sniffed Auntie Mattie, knowing the reason for—if never having approved of—her unconventional upbringing. iii “Your poppa allus wanted a son, and you’ve done everything you can to give him one, what with riding astride, shooting, fencing, ’n’ all the rest.”
“Oh, come on, now,” the girl requested with a smile. “I’ve never shirked my dancing lessons.”
“You for surely never did, at that,” Aunty Mattie admitted, but clearly with more reservation than approbation. “Only, it wasn’t for dancing you took to ’em so good ’n’ regular.”
While the elderly Negress was speaking, Belle commenced a series of swiftly executed pirouettes that would not have disgraced many a professional ballet dancer. However, as she had deliberately elected to go in that direction, they were culminated by the delivery of a high kick that sent the sole of her left foot against the chin of the dressmaker’s dummy and caused it to be rocked over. What was more, as it was pivoted erect again by its counterweighted base, she twirled gracefully and sent her other heel into the stomach area with equal rapidity, power, and precision.
“I’ve always believed a lady should know how to take care of herself in certain conditions,” the girl remarked as she strolled with carefully assumed nonchalance toward the dressing table after having displayed an ability that any connoisseur of the art of French foot and fist boxing known as savate would have considered to be faultless in its execution.
“That’s what the menfolks are for,” Auntie Mattie declared. “They just natural’ has to be good for something.”
“I certainly hope it’s for something a lot more than just that” Belle remarked as she sat down.
“What you say, gal!” Auntie Mattie protested, her always expressive face registering even greater disapproval than previously, although there was a faint twinkle suggestive of amusement in her eyes. “Was you younger, I’d have to wash your mouth out with soap and water for coming out with such talk. It all comes of you sitting ‘round a fire out in the piney woods listening to them gentlemen you’re with a-talking things a proper-raised young lady shouldn’t understand, much less hear, while they’s waiting for them fool hound dogs to find something to go chasing after.”
“I always cover my ears when they start,” Belle asserted. “Like I’ve been taught is the proper thing for a young lady to do.”
“A proper-raised young lady wouldn’t be out there anyways,” Auntie Mattie countered. “Now get to putting on something more covering than you’ve got on now. Unless your daddy ’n’ them’s changed for the better right recent, which I don’t reckon’s likely to have happened, those gentlemen you’ve been out lollygagging in the piney woods with’ll be coming ‘round to have some food and do some bragging about their doings tonight’s soon’s they’ve finished tending to those fool muck ponies of Joe Lassiter’s they’ve been using. Which, right now, you’re not dressed fitten for mixed company, much’s I conclude those young gentlemen’s you’ve been out with’d like to see you this way.”
“Yes’m,” the girl responded immediately, for while she might tease the elderly Negress—whom she gave an affection bettered only by that accorded to her parents—she would never have thought of disobeying.
“And there’s something else for you to keep in mind, young lady,” Auntie Mattie announced as Belle took the sleeveless white cotton chemise her maid had left on the dressing table and started to don it. Although it would not have been discernible to anybody who did not know her so well as did her ward, her voice had taken on a note of deadly serious warning as she watched what was being done. “Don’t you go off running those two fool hound dogs of your’n on your lonesome in the piney woods at night for a spell.”
“Am I getting too old for that too?” the girl could not resist inquiring, despite having noticed the change of timbre in the elderly woman’s voice.
“There’s more to it than just that, although it’d be more’n enough most times,” Auntie Mattie answered in the same soberly cautionary fashion. “There’s a couple of those fancy-spouting Yankee ‘unfortunates’ going ‘round stirring up all that poor white trash’s hangs about here ’n’ there along the river by spouting off’s how rich folks shouldn’t be let stay rich ’n’ should ought to be made to share out all they’ve got with everybody else.”
‘There’s always somebody, especially Yankee ‘unfortunates’ spouting off along those lines,” Belle said tolerantly and without showing the slightest suggestion of embarrassment, even though she was aware of what was implied by the emphasized word when used in such a fashion. “And, human nature being what it is, they’ll always find somebody willing to listen.”
“That’s not the only thing they’re spouting off about, what I’ve been told,” the elderly woman claimed. “They’re saying’s how all us colored folks should ought to be set free.”
“That’s getting said more and more frequently these days,” Belle pointed out, but was paying greater attention to what she was told. “Especially by Yankee ‘unfortunates’ of the kind I figure this pair to be.”
“Then why don’t they mind their own business?” Auntie Mattie demanded with all-too-obviously sincere indignation. “What my cousin Tildy-Mae from down to the Thatcher place allows her son’s told her, I for sure don’t want setting free.”
“Would he be the son who ran away?” Belle asked.
“He for sure would,” the elderly woman confirmed, and her disapproval was apparent. “Do you mind him? A scrawny, shiftless no-account.”
“I believe I do,” the girl answered. “Aunt Margaret said he was a bright boy and took to learning all the schooling she and Momma give to all the children much better than most of them.”
“Oh, he learned all right, for all the good it did him,” Auntie Mattie conceded grudgingly. “But that’s what getting all this book learning does for young’n’s like him. He got to saying he wanted to be free ’n’ wound up by getting himself took north on what they call the Underground Railroad, whichever in the world that might be. Only, when he got there, it didn’t pan out the way I reckon he’d been led to expect.”
“What went wrong?”
“’Cording to a letter he sent down to his momma ’n’ my Tobias had to read for her seeing’s how she can’t, up north’s not the promised land it’s made out to be. He found’s how he had to pay for his living place ’n’ food, which he’d never had to do afore in his whole life. Top of that, he allows the white working folks up there’s allus saying and getting mean over how they reckon us colored folks’s go north’re taking jobs they should have cheaper than they would. He reckons’s how he wished he stayed to home where he didn’t get nothing like that.”
“I’ve heard things aren’t anywhere near to what the Yankee ‘unfortunates’ and their like claim it will be when colored folk get taken north,” Belle admitted, having read accounts that appeared in newspapers of rioting by white people in northern cities as a protest against the problems caused at their level of society by the arrival of Negroes in search of freedom.
“They for sure ain’t ’cording to what that shiftless son of Cousin Tildy-Mae’s allows,” Auntie Mattie affirmed. “I reckon, happen he could, he’d get that ole Underground Railroad to fetch him right on back home again.” Then she gave a shrug as if considering that nothing else needed to be said on the subject of her clearly less-than-favorite nephew. “Anyways, you bear in mind what I told you about staying clear of the piney woods after dark.”
“Don’t I always bear everything you tell me in mind?” Belle challenged.
“Just so long’s how it’s something you wants to take heed of,” the elderly woman replied dryly, but once again grew serious. “Only this time, honey, I want you to do it.”
“I will,” the girl promised, and as she had rarely seen or heard her former nurse and present mentor behave in such a grave manner, meant what she said.
Even as Belle was making the promise, suddenly sounds originating from outside at ground level came through the window of the room that she had opened on arriving as an aid to keeping it cool.
Going by what she heard and deduced, the girl felt certain that the noises boded nothing good.
Having been sleeping on the front porch as usual, first one and then the other of Belle’s bluetick coonhounds, which were trained to hunt solely for raccoon and opossum, began to give the kind of quizzical barking that always greeted people on arrival. However, this comparatively friendly behavior was followed by the roaring growls that precluded the attitude of merely announcing the coming of visitors. She knew such a reaction was unlikely to take place if the followers of the hunt were coming, particularly as Joe Lassiter—who was well known to Bugle and Blue, having bred and trained them as a birthday present for her—would be with them.
Even as the girl exchanged a glance with Auntie Mattie and concluded that the same thoughts were assailing both of them, there was an even greater cause for the alarm both were experiencing.
Two shots sounded, and in the wake of each, one and then the other of the blueticks gave screaming yelps indicative of having sustained a very serious—perhaps even fatal—injury.
Before Belle could reach the window to look out and investigate the reason for her hounds’ being shot, there were shouts uttered by numerous masculine voices and the sound of running feet drawing rapidly closer.
Because of what had preceded the latest development, the girl realized the speakers were definitely hostile in their reason for paying the visit.
Next came a crashing that implied that the front entrance to the mansion had been burst open.
The latest extremely worrying noise was followed by a yell of alarm that Belle and Auntie Mattie identified as coming from the latter’s husband, who was the butler and majordomo for the Boyd family.