It’s sad news that our neighbor to the east, Mr. Berringer, has been overrun. We’ve taken in twenty of the Negroes who lived on his land and a nasty old overseer named Duncan. I have a feeling that Duncan is not going to last here in Rose Hill. I must say that it is curious that so many of these men who subscribed wholeheartedly to the peculiar institution are turning shambler.
When I come to, Sheriff Snyder and Bill have me by either arm and are dragging me through the dirt of the street. I try fighting, but that punch from the sheriff has me seeing stars and I’m no match for two grown men.
I’m tied to the whipping post in front of the sheriff’s office.
I try to climb to my feet, struggling against the ropes, alarm and a powerful headache both clanging in my head, but there’s no getting free. I’m dizzy, but whether it’s from taking a hit or the combination of exhaustion and hunger there’s no telling, but I fully recognize that I am not in a very good place.
Next to me comes a low chuckle. Bill is leaning against the pole, whittling and whistling, looking like he ain’t got a care in the world.
“You think you’re smart, doncha? Told ya you were going to learn some manners here. And it looks like the sheriff is just about ready to dispatch that lesson.”
“Bill.” The voice behind me is raspy. “Go round up the flock. They’ve slept enough, and this sermon requires sinners.”
“Yessir,” Bill says. He moves off, and the preacher shuffles nearer.
“Now, I know what you’re thinking, Jane. You’re scared, and that’s natural. You’re wondering how you ended up here, if there wasn’t some kind of thing you could’ve done differently to avoid this whole mess.”
My heart pounds, loud enough that I’m sure he can hear it. I can’t see him, so when his breath tickles my ear, the scent of him filling my nose, I flinch.
“The reality is that you couldn’t do anything. This is all as God wills it to be. In the wake of the punishment laid down by the Lord are His laws laid bare. All His creations are not equal, but we are all His children, all with our place. The rapture, such as it is, is here, on earth. The white man ascends; his dark counterparts are His servants, laying the stones in the pathway to Heaven. That we ever thought otherwise, that we once entertained the notion of equality for all of God’s children on earth, that we fought and killed one another over it . . . well, we know how that turned out.”
He rests a hand on my shoulder, patting it affectionately, and his touch nauseates me. “This punishment will be brutal, my dear, but your mortal flesh will bear it, because it must. Take comfort that in reaffirming His order we give Him thanks.”
He backs away and coughs, the sound wet and phlegmy. “Trust in the Lord and He will guide you through this hardship.”
From behind me comes the sound of footsteps and murmurs. I try to twist and see who it is, but I cannot turn that far around.
Under my shirt, my penny has gone to ice.
“Oh, don’t worry, girly. You’re gonna have quite the audience,” Bill says, back from rousing the patrols. “The sheriff is a fair man, but he knows an instigator when he sees one. No different than dogs, really. And every now and then you just get a bad dog. Maybe it’s poor breeding, maybe it’s poor training. Only thing you can do is punish him and hope he learns who his master is. And if not, well . . . sometimes you’ve just got to put a bad dog down.”
His footsteps echo on the wooden boards of the walkway as they move away from me, and I test my bonds to see if there’s any way to wriggle free. Panic digs its broken fingernails into my soul.
I remember the day I’d asked Auntie Aggie what it was like back before the shamblers walked, back before the war. “It was bad then, Janie. A different kind of bad, but bad all the same. I once saw a man whipped to death for stealing a loaf of bread from the mistress’s kitchen. Not your momma, mind you, but the missus that came before her. Overseer took the skin clean off of him till there wasn’t nothing but meat left. So don’t let nobody tell you any different about the old days. Life is hard now, nothing but suffering, but some kinds of suffering is easier to bear than others.”
I’d never asked her again about the bad old days, but now, with my hands secured to the whipping post, I wish I had.
Behind me the sounds of footfalls and murmuring rises, and this time when I crane my neck around I get a glimpse of the crowd, gathering in the first bit of sunlight. Right now it’s mostly Negroes, a few drovers mixed in here and there. I don’t recognize many of the faces and I figure it must be the night crews. I stop straining against the bonds securing my hands, since there ain’t no use to it and all I’m doing is giving myself a fine rope burn.
After what feels like hours but is actually only a few minutes someone exclaims, “Jane, what are you doing?” I twist as far as I can. Behind me Ida stares with wide eyes. “I told you not to get caught!” Her voice carries all the fear and panic eating at my middle, and I squeeze my eyes shut like I can somehow hide from what comes next.
But I can’t.
I’ve never been scared of death. Everyone dies, and I don’t like wasting energy fretting about certitudes, but Aunt Aggie’s words keep echoing through my brain: whipped to death, took the skin clean off. The fear is so powerful that I can’t do anything but stare straight ahead, gaze locked on the wooden post in front of me.
Behind me someone clears his throat. “Listen up, y’all. The sheriff has a few words to say.”
Boots echo on the boardwalk in front of me, stopping just a little off to the side. I look up, and the sheriff squints down at me. His expression is blank, but there’s a glint of something in his eye. Satisfaction? I turn my gaze back to the wood post in front of me.
“Summerland is a place of laws and order, and I am the long arm of that law. Our goal here is not the glorification of the individual but to create a harmonious community that can serve as a model to the chaos of those cities in the east. Just as the Israelites left Egypt for the promise of a better life, so have all of you. But for that harmony to be achieved, each of us must know his place. You don’t let a dog pretend to be a horse, and the same it must be with our dark cousins. There is a natural order to things, as the pastor tells us, and when that order is not obeyed, disaster rides hard on its heels.”
There’s no comment from the crowd, no murmur of dissent, no valiant objections on my behalf. The only sound is of someone coughing far off. I know that if I’m going to say anything, this might be my last chance. People deserve to know about the danger festering underground. “You have to listen to me! Back in town, these men have built a—”
A crack comes across my jaw, hard enough to shake my brain something terrible, and Bill steps back, shaking his hand and cursing. Blood fills my mouth, and I fall silent. It’s no use. The sheriff continues.
“This darkie broke curfew. That transgression calls for a minimum of twenty lashes. It gives me no pleasure to hand down this punishment, but hand it down I will.”
I half expect him to start praying, but thankfully I am spared that blasphemy. Someone, likely Bill again, steps close to me, and I jerk in surprise as the back of my shirt is grabbed. There’s a tearing sound, and then a gasp as my garment is torn in half. I roll my shoulders forward, suddenly modest. The air is warm on my bare back, and my breath comes in short pants, my embarrassment almost overriding my fear.
“What’s this?” Bill asks, leaning close. He reaches down the front of my shirt, and I jerk away from him, fearful that he’s reaching for my bosoms. Instead his hand comes up with my penny. He yanks the cord hard enough to break the leather thong. “Don’t think you’ll be needing this,” he says, his breath hot and rank on my cheek.
The sheriff steps down from the boardwalk into the hard-packed dirt of the street, standing behind me. I can almost see him slowly uncoiling the whip at his side, relishing the drama and anxiety of the crowd.
“Bill, would you be so kind as to keep the count?”
“Of course, Sheriff.” The satisfaction in his voice makes me long to put a bullet in him.
The whip whistles through the air before it carves agony across my back. I inhale sharply and arch away from the pain, my chest slamming into the post.
“One.”
The second lash comes too quickly, stealing my air and making my muscles tighten.
“Two.”
The whip comes round again, and I’m trying to think of something else, trying to be anywhere else, but I am bound to my cursed flesh, and tears make their way down my cheeks as the whip tears into my back again, and again, and again.
“Three.”
“Four.”
“Five.”
“Five.”
My heart nearly stutters to a stop when Bill counts five twice in a row. My back is a fiery mess of agony, and when the whip comes across again a sob tears out of me.
“Six.”
I’m shaking from the pain, delirious with it. With each crack of the whip I make a new promise to the Lord Almighty. “I will never lie again if this stops.” Crack. “I will dedicate my life to your good works.” Crack. Either the good Lord is unimpressed with my offerings, or he thinks I deserve this, just as the preacher told me.
Bill has just counted off the eleventh lash when the crowd behind me begins murmuring. I can’t think, the pain robbing me of whatever wit I possess. I’m crying and muttering, half-mad with the pain. Nine more lashes, and that’s if Bill keeps the count correctly. Somehow, I know he won’t. He’s enjoying this as much as the sheriff.
“Stop, please, stop!”
Katherine’s voice is unmistakable, and at first I think my ears are deceiving me. But the sheriff pauses and says, “Miss Deveraux, this is no place for you. You should go back to your home. What brings you here?”
“I did,” comes another voice. “You’re killing her Attendant, and she has a right to know that since the girl has been in her employ.”
“Gideon, you are not the law in this town.” There’s tightness to the sheriff’s voice, but I’m too relieved that the whip has ceased its torment for the moment to analyze why he would even listen to Mr. Gideon in the first place.
“Sheriff, it is said that the man who exercises compassion is the wisest of all. I’m urging you to be a wise man. It’s obvious that the girl won’t survive much more. And neither will this town. You’ve done enough.”
“Gideon—”
“Please, Sheriff,” Katherine pleads, a tremor in her voice. “Jane is a bit headstrong, but she is also an excellent companion. I’ve become fond of her, and I would be heartbroken if she were to come to any more harm. Please let her go. Show her mercy.”
Behind me the sheriff sighs. “Miss Deveraux, you are a kind girl, but law and order must be upheld.”
“‘And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.’ That’s Exodus, chapter twenty-one, verse twenty. I’m certain this isn’t what the good pastor meant to happen. There is no doubt that Jane broke the rules, as she is known to do from time to time. But she is suffering greatly, and as she’s my servant, my soul would bear the burden of her misfortune. Please, Sheriff,” Katherine says, her voice choked with emotion. I know without even looking at her that her face is probably streaked with tears, her light eyes too bright. “Have mercy.”
There’s a pause, and the sound of my labored breath fills my ears, heartbeat keeping time to the seconds ticking by.
After too long the sheriff says, “You are right, of course. Compassion is critical in a leader.”
“Yes, Sheriff. No one doubts your word is law.”
My hands are suddenly released, and when I try to stand I stumble. Katherine is there to help me, and when she turns me around two things strike me at once.
The first is the sadness and anger warring on Mr. Gideon’s face as he watches me. His jaw is tight and his fists are clenched. Whether these emotions are about me being whipped or because he just don’t like the sheriff, I don’t know.
The second thing that strikes me is the way the sheriff is looking in my direction. It’s a soft kind of look, the way one would watch a baby or a bunny, full of wonder and interest. At first I can’t figure why the man would look at me in such an indulgent way, but then I realize that he ain’t looking at me. He’s looking at Katherine.
And just like that, the plan I’ve been struggling to come up with for weeks explodes in my brain like a stick of dynamite with a too-short fuse.
Katherine half carries, half drags me past the assembled crowd. I lift my head just long enough to see Cora give me a smug look, and I know at that moment she’s the reason the sheriff caught me in the first place. The Duchess comes over, worry on her face.
“You bring her to my room, I’ll help you get her cleaned up.”
“Jane doesn’t belong in a whorehouse,” Katherine says, as muttonheaded as ever.
“Her bosoms are hanging out for the world to see and she won’t make it to the proper side of town,” the Duchess snaps back.
“She’s right,” Mr. Gideon says. “I’ll bring by some salve. Let the Duchess take her. You’re going to have to contend with Pastor Snyder.”
Katherine sighs. “Fine. Take good care of her. I’ll be by later.”
Then it’s just me and the Duchess and the endless walk to the whorehouse. Every movement sends agony singing across my back. My skin is hot and aching, and I fight to keep from sobbing. I ain’t successful, though.
We enter the house of ill repute, heading straight for the Duchess’s room, which is on the first floor. She helps me sit on the edge of the bed, and I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees, and groan.
“Until Mr. Gideon comes by with his concoction, there ain’t much I can do for your . . .” She trails off.
“Thank you.”
“There’s no need for thanks. This is wrong. Everything about this place is wrong.” A slight brogue has appeared in the Duchess’s voice and when I glance up at her, tears stream freely down her cheeks.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
A bark of laughter escapes from her. “Here you are flayed within an inch of your life and you’re asking after me.”
I sigh. “Sometimes it’s easier to think about other folks’ small hurts than your big ones.”
She sits next to me on the bed, sniffling. “I was married before I came here. Leopold. He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, skin like it had been kissed by the night. We thought we’d be safe if we could just get far enough away.” Her gaze goes distant, her face twisted with the memory of some distant horror. “You can never get far enough away from people like the preacher.”
I half laugh. “I suppose so. And the sheriff.”
“The two of them are peas in a pod, but the sheriff is only following his daddy’s lead. He’s mean, but he isn’t smart enough to run this town on his own.”
The uneven sound of boots on the wooden floor makes me raise my head, and Mr. Gideon stands in the doorway with a small pot of something and his eyes averted in deference to my modesty. Not that it much matters now. I reckon nearly all of Summerland had a chance to spy my bosoms had they cared to.
“I shall take care of this,” the Duchess says, rising and plucking the jar of salve out of Mr. Gideon’s hand. Behind him stands Nessie, the colored girl who braided my hair, with a steaming bowl of water and a cloth.
“Thought you might need this,” she says in a low voice. She sets the water on a nearby table.
The small kindness warms. “Thank you,” I say. “Could I trouble you for a glass of water?”
“Of course,” Nessie says before disappearing from the room, Mr. Gideon stepping aside to let her go.
He clears his throat. “Jane, the sheriff has agreed to allow you a day of rest from your patrol. Katherine has asked him to give you back over to her supervision, but I’m not sure she’ll get her wish. It’s doubtful the preacher will allow it.” He hovers in the doorway uncertainly, and a glance at his face reveals a worried expression.
“What’s wrong, tinkerer?” I ask, my voice rough from the pain of my back.
“This isn’t right,” he says, as though he ain’t quite sure what else to say.
The Duchess pushes the edges of my shirt aside and begins to clean my wounds. I can’t help but cry out in pain, eyes watering from the agony.
“No, this ain’t right,” the Duchess finally says after a few heartbeats. I’m too befuddled from the whipping to think proper, my entire existence narrowing to the screaming of my back. “The question, Professor, is what exactly you plan to do about it?”
From the doorway comes a heavy sigh. “I told you that patience is required for things like this.”
“I’m running out of patience, Gideon. So is most everyone else. We’re starving. The Negroes are ill-treated, and there are undead within the boundaries. I know that pretty little lass of yours has been working on the men, but even a face as pretty as hers isn’t going to end all this suffering.”
“I know this, Maeve. What can I do about it? What is there to do? What can be done that we haven’t tried before?”
“The preacher is an unassailable mountain,” I mutter. “He relies on the sheriff to enforce his will. We need to get someone on our side in with him; someone who can control him. Someone who can help put the sheriff in a compromising position, one that he doesn’t anticipate, so we can use that opportunity to take him down.”
The Duchess pauses in her ministrations. “We’ve tried that before. He beat the poor girl something fierce, nearly killed her,” she says, low enough that the tinkerer doesn’t hear.
“Not sex—love,” I say, panting as the Duchess goes back to cleaning my wounds. “The sheriff is not a man laid low by something as banal as carnal pleasures. But the sheriff is a man who knew love once, who fell for a good woman. That hole in his heart is the doorway to our freedom.”
“So what exactly are you saying?” Mr. Gideon removes his glasses and wipes them clean.
“You heard the sheriff out there with that nonsense about the Israelites. He really did come here for a better life, just like everyone else who got on a train by choice. The promise of something more. And what did he get in return? To watch the woman he loved get eaten. If we want to take down the sheriff, we need to dangle bait that he cannot resist. A woman who can give what he once had with his wife and who can help him elevate his social status. A girl of good breeding—that’s what the sheriff will fall for. He’s a man that pretends to greatness and at the same time aches for love. He would crumple under the attention of a true lady. And once he does, we get rid of him.”
“You talking about murder?” the Duchess asks.
“It ain’t murder if a man gets turned.”
She snorts, dropping the rag into the bowl of water with a wet plop. “And I suppose you plan on dangling your companion on that hook.”
“I saw how he was looking at her. He’s already half in love,” I say.
“It’s not a bad idea,” Mr. Gideon says. I look up just long enough to take in his expression, his eyes sparking with intelligence, his lips pursed in thought. My heart flops like a trout on a riverbank.
Here’s a thing about me: I have always been a complete and utter muttonhead for a clever boy, even when I’m half delirious with pain.
“Yes,” I say, closing my eyes and sucking in a sharp breath as the Duchess uses a light touch to spread the salve over my back. “Just imagine if the sheriff knew all about Miss Deveraux’s tragic past.”
“What tragic past?” Mr. Gideon asks.
I swallow drily, and Nessie appears just then. She hands me the glass of water and I drink it down before I tell my tale. I’m counting on knowing Katherine. If I’m right, she hasn’t told anyone about where she came from, but rather distracted them with small talk. It’s been her modus operandi since I met her, and old habits die hard.
“Did you know she is actually one of the Chesters, of Chester County, Virginia? She ended up in Baltimore nearly destitute because her stepmother is a dastardly woman.” The lie darn near spins itself. “Her father passed quite unexpectedly, and Miss Deveraux’s stepmother sent her up north to live with cousins. Only, her cousins were quite savagely attacked and murdered by the undead. Family by the name of Edgar. The mayor of Baltimore took pity on her and invited her to stay in his own house until she could contact her relatives. But, well, Old Blunderbuss took a shine to her, and the missus wasn’t about to have that. So here she is, the proverbial Moses in the basket.” The burning in my back settles into a steady throb, the salve the tinkerer brought actually helping.
A strange look has come over Gideon’s face and his lips twitch as though he’s fighting back a smile. “That is quite a tale, Miss McKeene,” he says.
“Weren’t no tale. It’s the God’s honest truth. Miss Deveraux is as tragic as poor Ophelia.”
“Ophelia?” he asks.
“Yes, from Hamlet. Ain’t you never read Shakespeare?”
“Oh, I have. I’m just surprised you have.”
“You shouldn’t jump to conclusions about people, Mr. Gideon. I contain multitudes.”
Nessie slips out of the room as quietly as she appeared, and from the look on her face I know that the story of Katherine Deveraux will be on every drover’s lips by nightfall.
The Duchess stands and shoos Gideon away. “You need to get going, so I can help Miss McKeene get presentable.”
There’s a discreet cough from next to the door. “Of course, of course. Well, thank you for the information, Miss McKeene. I’m willing to bet that the sheriff would be horrified to discover how shoddily the world has treated a lady of Miss Deveraux’s caliber. He’ll want to see to her comfort personally, I’d wager.”
Gideon’s uneven gait echoes down the hall, and after the door closes the Duchess stands over me. “Remind me never to play poker with you.”
I allow myself a small smile before standing. The Duchess helps me to pull on a clean shirt. I ain’t sure that I can trust her, but there ain’t been much kindness since I got to Summerland, and I’ve yet to see the Duchess on the dispensing end of any cruelty. “Why you helping me, anyway? It can’t just be because of your long-lost love.”
The small smile she wears is wiped from her face. “Let’s just say that I got some stains on my soul that I wouldn’t mind getting scrubbed clean.”
“And you think helping a Negro girl is going to do that?”
“I think being the kindest person I have the wherewithal to be is going to do that.”
I nod and think of Lily. I hope she’s safe this morning. “Think you can get your hands on some laudanum?”
The Duchess smirks. “Do shamblers have yellow eyes?”
“We’re going to need some, the stronger the better. And a bottle of wine, the finest available in this place.”
“How soon?” she asks as I finish getting dressed. I lie facedown on her bed, pillowing my head on my arms, completely drained in the aftermath of a hellish morning.
“If everything goes as planned, soon. But let’s aim for the end of the month. Two weeks,” I say, before finally giving in to my exhaustion.