The Third Mrs. Galway by Deirdre Sinnott

Author:Deirdre Sinnott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

IN THE DAYS AFTER the slave catchers had searched the property, it was as if three different fortresses had been erected in the house. Only necessary words were spoken across their borders.

Maggie ruled in the kitchen and her bedroom. From all appearances, she went about her normal duties. But most of her focus was on the two people in her room behind the locked door. She slept on the floor while Imari and Joe shared her bed. For their sakes, she partially ceded the care of Augustin to the doctor. All the curtains at the back of the house were drawn day and night. People with nothing to hide did not keep their windows obscured. That in itself was an admission of guilt, but it could not be helped. In her opinion, the woman was much too close to giving birth to be moved.

Imari had submitted to Maggie’s ministering and gained strength, but was still in much discomfort. Twenty-three lead balls had been removed from her body. After having poultices of comfrey leaves applied to each and every wound, and cleanings with the cook’s own witch hazel solution, her injuries had scabbed over, but remained very tender. The unborn child clung to life, giving Imari a daily reminder of its commitment to be born with hiccups and kicks that stretched the long bird shot wounds across her stomach. She and Maggie talked for hours. In the quiet times, when Maggie was at her work, Imari obsessed about her missing husband, imagining him hurt, or sold, or dead. Occasionally she had feverish visions of him coming toward her, finally catching up.

Joe paced the small bedroom feeling like a cat stuck in a tree whose lone view was of a pack of barking dogs. His only relief from his confinement was sleep. But if Maggie and his mother were talking, he closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, and listened to everything they said—learning much with every conversation.

Augustin stayed in the library, floating between the intensity of his pain and the depth of his opium-induced oblivion. Maggie told him that “Job” refused to come back to work. No new boy would be hired, she said. “I’ll take care a everything. Like always.”

“That is what I prefer,” he replied.

Dr. McCooke kept Augustin supplied with medicine, and himself with alcohol. During the days, he sipped from crystal glassware or, while about town, took small nips from his brand-new silver flask. Evenings he drank his fill promising that come morning, he would abstain. But at sunrise his shaking hands would betray him and he’d keep at the spirits despite his best intentions. He often escaped the house and went downtown to restock, with Galway’s money in his pocket. A sliver of his mind wondered if having this much access to liquor was ruining him. The ghost of poor Miss Duphorne of Albany fluttered at the edge of his consciousness, but he turned his thoughts away before she fully materialized. At the house, he seemed to keep his distance from Maggie and Helen.

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