The Healing

Chapter 25





Two days later Granada and Polly stood on the hospital porch watching the drama unfold at the great house. Moments before the master’s carriage had pulled up to the back stairs and halted. Trunks and bags were lashed to the roof. Now Master Ben stood stiffly in the drive, holding open the carriage door.

Slowly the mistress emerged from the house, two housemaids flanking her as they descended the steps. She was wearing a heavy black dress and her face was dark behind a veil.

Granada shuddered.

“You seen all this before, ain’t you?” Polly asked.

Granada nodded weakly. “The dream,” she answered.

“You know more than you saying,” Polly accused.

Yes, Granada could have said more. But why should she? If she spilled all her secrets, then Polly and Silas would both have her hide. And it wouldn’t get Mistress Amanda back.

After the fire, the mistress couldn’t be calmed. She paced the room screaming in pain, crying out to both the living and the dead. Aunt Sylvie raced back to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of laudanum, Old Silas following a few steps behind.

Lizzie and Granada held Mistress Amanda down while Aunt Sylvie spooned the medicine carefully past the woman’s blistered lips. After a few minutes, she calmed enough for Sylvie to treat her tender spots with a thick coating of lard. It seemed to Granada that the only place on Mistress Amanda’s body that had not gotten a blistering were the bottoms of her feet and her backside. But it was her head that gave Granada a fright.

When Sylvie was done, she told the maids to drape all the upstairs mirrors, saving the mistress the additional pain of catching the grisly sight of her frizzled head and swollen, oozing eyes.

All the while they helped tend the mistress, Granada felt Silas’s eyes on her. When she stepped away from the bed, he spoke, low enough so that only she could hear, “You knew.”

“I dreamed—” But she stopped, not knowing how to explain. She looked down at her feet.

“Some of these burns look awful bad,” Aunt Sylvie called out from the bedside. “I reckon you best go fetch Polly.”

Grateful for an errand that would get her away from Silas’s questioning, Granada turned toward the door. But Silas grabbed her arm, holding her tight.

“Sylvie, let’s not go mixing that woman up in the family’s affairs,” he said. “Master won’t abide a slave woman doctoring on his wife. You know how he is.”

“Look at her, Silas!” Sylvie cried. “Eyes swelling shut and her face turning red as an Indian. And her hair, my Lord!” she cried. “Stubble and scalp. We got to do something! Master Ben will kill me.”

Silas released Granada to take his wife by the shoulders. “You can keep lard on her face as good as Polly Shine,” he said firmly, looking hard into her eyes. “And you know which flour barrel you hid the laudanum in. Nothing she can do, you can’t do better.”

Aunt Sylvie nodded, but with little conviction. Granada wasn’t so sure, either. She had seen Polly heal all kinds of wounds, including the burns of those clearing the forests. But Silas kept offering his arguments, sounding calm and reasonable and very wise.

“Besides,” he continued, “by tomorrow, that prideful woman will have it spread across the countryside how she saved Master Ben’s wife. Everybody, slave and master, will know how far Mistress Amanda has fallen. How do you think the master will like his business gossiped about that way?”

Aunt Sylvie shook her head. “No, I … I reckon not.”

“For all we know,” he said, looking now at Granada, “that old woman put a hex on the mistress. You ever think of that?”

Granada had wondered the same thing.

Silas put his arm around Sylvie’s shoulder and pulled her close. He said in her ear, “Now don’t you worry. I’ll tell you exactly what to do.”

Silas had it all worked out. He told Aunt Sylvie to meet Master Ben at the stables upon his return—before he had a chance to see his wife. “Don’t beat the devil around the bush, Sylvie. Tell him everything that happened, straight-out. And don’t let him talk to anyone else,” Silas said. “Then you tell him something else.”

Silas glanced over at Granada, as if surprised she was still there. He studied her for a moment. “Maybe I ought not be talking in front of the girl,” he said. “You going to carry this back to Polly?”

Granada shook her head. Polly wouldn’t want to hear anything about the mistress, anyway.

Then Silas asked another question, one she had not expected. “You still wanting back in the house with the mistress?”

“You can get me back in?” Granada asked tentatively.

“Depends,” he said. “To get you back where you belong, we need to get rid of Polly first. You ready to go against Polly? You ready to tell me what she’s been up to?”

She studied his expression hard, to see the truth in it, wanting to believe. He smiled an all-knowing old man’s smile at her. Granada nodded.

“Then tell me something now. Show me I can trust you.”

Granada’s heart pounded in her ears.

“Well,” Granada stammered. “She’s always speaking bad about Master Ben. Says one day soon, ain’t going to be no more masters. No more slaves. Says one day, we’ll all go to a place she calls Freedomland.”

It didn’t sound like much, but when she finished speaking her face burned hot.

Old Silas seemed satisfied. “Good. From now on you tell me everything she does. Slip off to my cabin when she’s looking the other way. I’ll get you back in with the mistress where you belong.”

Silas had turned back to his wife. “Sylvie, tell the master Old Silas himself saw how bad off the mistress was. Tell him it nearly broke my heart. Then tell him how I got down on my knees asking the Lord’s mercy for him and his mistress. Tell him just like that. You understand?” he asked. “Tell him I’m in my cabin, all broke up over it.”

“I do like you say, Old Silas.”

“And one more thing. Most important of all. Make sure he knows Little Lord was in the room. That the mistress tried to kill his only child.”

“But I don’t think she—” Sylvie caught herself and then nodded.

“Good. Don’t let anybody get to him before me. If you do like I say, then everything will be all right.”

He smiled at Sylvie now and winked. “It’s as plain as my big toe, Sylvie. Remember?” he said, chuckling. “Master Ben’s pain’s about to overtake his pride. He’s got no one else to turn to. He’ll be needing me now.”

An hour later found Granada sitting outside Mistress Amanda’s window on the gallery, one eye watching the levee road and the other on the mistress, drugged and resting uneasily in her bed. Aunt Sylvie sat at the bedside. Her lips were in constant motion, rehearsing what Old Silas had told her to say.

When the dust cloud rose on the horizon, Granada signaled Aunt Sylvie, who shot out of her chair and made haste for the stables.

Granada watched as Sylvie walked hesitantly up to the master while Chester led the stallion to the barn. Master Ben stood stone-still, letting her speak without interruption. When she had finished, he didn’t open his mouth.

He finally took several heavy steps over to the stable gate. From there he looked up at the house, staring in Granada’s direction. Little Lord had stepped out onto the gallery. The boy and the father were watching each other, neither making a motion or even a gesture of recognition.

The master nodded to himself, and then walked through the stable gate, passed under the sprawling limbs of the oak, his shoulders slumped, and before even going to see his wife, he headed straight to Silas’s cabin. He stayed there for well over two hours.

Granada didn’t understand everything that had transpired, especially the complexities of Silas’s plan, but she could see with her own eyes the results. As Polly and Granada stood watching on the hospital porch, the master helped his unsteady wife into the carriage.

Granada heard a child’s scream and looked up at the top of the stairs. There Little Lord struggled to free himself from Lizzie’s grasp, trying to get to his mother. But even when he bit into Lizzie’s arm, she would not release the boy.

Lizzie was gazing unflinchingly at the carriage with her one good eye, and then she grinned. It was the same gratified smirk she wore the day of the fire.

Granada’s heart sank. All she had wanted was to be back with Little Lord and the mistress. That was the bargain she thought she had struck. But somehow it all got turned upside down. Everybody got what they wanted but her. Lizzie, Polly, Silas—they got rid of the mistress. And it was Granada who helped them do it.

As she watched the carriage retreat into the distance, trailing a cloud of dust, Granada remembered Polly’s words from the dream: “The cord been cut betwixt you and her!”

Polly had been right. A thread had been broken, the one that linked Granada to the mistress and to the only place where the girl had ever felt she belonged.