“Oh, thank you, Lord,” Reva said. “That I lived to see this day.”
That’s where Galilee had gotten her quickness and her grit.
The two old people stood there for a long moment, amazed they’d got vengeance for their daughter.
When Reva and Hosea could move, they made their slow way out onto the landing. Reva handed my gun back as she passed. “Can you two do me a favor?” I said. “My friend Eli is around here somewhere. Last I saw him, he was cutting down the hung man. Can you watch the front in case someone else comes? I’ll need to know. I have to go up to the attic.”
“Yes, we’ll sit on the front porch,” Hosea said, his arm around his wife. “Won’t no one surprise you.” He and Reva started down, step by step.
I figured Eli would have been startled by the shot and come a-running, but he didn’t show. I didn’t like that.
After a moment of waiting, I went up the attic stairs. They were broad. The servants could carry big things up or down. But the boards were plain, no carpet or rail, and the stairs were steeper.
There wasn’t a handrail. I hugged the left wall, carried one of my guns in my right hand. I kept my eyes focused upward. I was wavering on the edge of something, scared I’d fall. I’d seen a woman walk a wire once, strung between the grocery store and the jail. It had made a big impression.
The attic door was open. Light came through the unshuttered windows. Dust motes floated around lazily in the glow.
I mashed myself against the wall, staring in. There was no movement in my range of vision, but there was a corner of the attic I couldn’t see. As silently as I could, I stepped across the landing and scanned the other side. Nothing.
It occurred to me, way too late, that I should have questioned Holden Ballard about the chest, how he’d gotten it. Too late now. And he wouldn’t have told the truth, anyway.
I took a small breath and stepped into the room. And stopped dead.
In Texoma, we used everything till it broke. When it broke, we used the parts. But I saw that in Dixie, people like the Ballards put all their broken or outdated stuff into the attic. They thrust the smaller stuff against the walls where the roof was the lowest. The bigger stuff was in the middle. The room was jam-packed.
I felt helpless for a minute. Then I recalled the size of the crate. The chest could not be much smaller than the crate. It had only slid around inside a very little. So I set to searching. All the stuff in the attic blocked the light.
Since I needed all the help I could get (Where was Eli?) I pulled the string dangling from the lightbulb in the middle of the room, the point where the ceiling was highest. Then there was light, but there were also deeper shadows. And for a minute, the bulb rocked back and forth, and it looked like everything was moving, just a little.
I had to make myself stand still. I wanted to get out of this damn house. I took a deep breath and set my jaw.
Chairs, both grand and plain. A chest of drawers… or two. Old trunks, very dusty and square. A long, cracked mirror with its own stand. A battered bookcase, two children’s desks.
I realized I was gasping for air, and made myself still my breathing. What was wrong with me? I was looking at old furniture! Then I caught up with my sense and glanced down at the floor. Two sets of footprints, both man-size, approaching one particular spot and returning. Both sets of tracks led to and away from a big sheet of canvas draped over a group of things. I carefully placed my own feet by the prints and that was where I ended up, just as I’d suspected. I flipped back the canvas sheet, and there, pushed up against a discarded wardrobe, was the chest. It was the only thing that wasn’t dusty.
There was a half-dried puddle of blood in front of it. I thought instantly of the dead man on the couch downstairs. Who could have killed him? Holden put the trunk up in the attic before Harriet had gotten to him with her knife, which had been yesterday. This blood was fairly fresh, and the man on the sofa hadn’t been lingering long. That kind of wound, you don’t last more than a couple of hours.
Holden had not killed the man on the sofa. I tried hard to figure it out. But my brain was a tangle.
I knelt to deal with the lock on the trunk. But the lid opened with my first pull. I was looking down at a mess of cloth. Maybe once it had been fine stuff, and I could tell it had been blue. Now it was rotted. There were wads of it on either side, and what looked to be a single fold in the middle. I lifted it as careful as I could.
And there was Moses the Black.
Over the bones lay what had once been a short sword. There was blood on it. I caught my breath in a gasp.
The bones were ancient, but I could tell they’d been those of a big man.
Jammed in beside the bones was some kind of paper. It might once have been a Bible. Or almost anything. I reached in and touched a leg bone with one fingertip. This man had been a real person before he’d been a saint. He’d been a killer, like me.
I felt very strange. I made myself stand up. I had to push off a vanity table with a broken drawer. I propped myself against it. Something else was in the attic with me, and it was not happy.
“I don’t want to steal your remains. I want to take them to the people in town who need you to lead them.” I was talking to a chest full of ancient bones, but it didn’t feel strange.
Next thing I knew, the bones and sword were gone and a man was standing between me and the trunk. He was big and very dark. I didn’t know when I’d sunk to my knees, but I had a terrible hard time not bowing my head.
“Who are you?” he said.
If thunder could talk, its voice would be like his. Though this man—this saint—had died in Africa, I guess one language is universal. The language of death.
“Moses,” I said, struggling because my lips were numb. “I’m one of the guards who brought your chest to Dixie, as a…” I struggled with how to say it. “As an inspiration for the black people here. They’re treated a lot like slaves.”
I forced my chin up. I looked into his terrible face. Something inside me relaxed. He was a fighter. I was a fighter.
Moses had long black hair mixed with gray, and a full beard. I didn’t know if he’d straightened it somehow, or if his hair was naturally less curly than I was used to seeing on black people. Though a robe or tunic covered his chest and his legs to the knees, on visible skin he had scars from here to glory. Sword and knife wounds, looked like.
“Your bones were stolen from my crew,” I said. “I was the only one able to look for you.”
“Talking a lot,” Moses the Black said.
I looked up at him sharply. I thought something you should never think about a saint. “I figured you might want to know why you were so far from Africa,” I said in a real pointed way.
“There is no home for me anymore,” he said, in a way I decided was a bit more civil. And a little sad.
“Your home is everywhere,” I said. “You’re a saint.”
It was like a bass drum laughed. Boom, boom, boom, low and slow. “I am? Whose misguided choice was that?”
“The Russian church,” I said.
He looked at me blankly.
“That came after you died.” It didn’t seem polite to mention his death, but I figured he was used to it.
“I stayed,” Moses the Black said, as if he’d just remembered. “I stayed when the marauders were coming. Live by the sword, die by the sword.”