The Amethyst Heart Read online

  But Warren had given him a different perspective on the Almighty’s view of slavery, quoting verses from the very same Bible about slaves being faithful to their masters and content with their lot in life. Silas could barely tolerate Robert Warren’s smug presence anymore or listen to his superior attitudes when he spoke about “my nigras.” Yet every time Silas went to the big house, he came away confused and frustrated. Who was right about God—the slaves, who trusted that the Lord loved them and would set them free, or the slave owners, who justified their tyranny over the Negroes with well-selected scriptures?

  Silas didn’t know. And until he knew, he couldn’t take the risk of accepting a God who might turn out to be as self-righteous and despotic as Colonel Robert Henry Warren, Esquire.

  “We’s gonna have a service after dinner,” Middie said. “You want to join us, you’s welcome. Shepherd’s gonna preach, and there’ll be some real good singin’.”

  “Thanks, Middie,” Silas answered absently. “I’ll think about it. But I’ve got something to do first.” He picked up his medical bag. “A while ago, you were talking to somebody called Pearl. Celie says she’s going to help with the birthing, and I need to talk to her.”

  Middie let out a huge sigh, and her broad face filled with an expression of sheer admiration. “That Pearl—she’s some girl, I tell you. You right, Massah Doctor, it’s high time you met her.” She jerked her head in the direction of the cabin. “I think she’s ’round back, talking to Booker and Celie.”

  Silas made his way around the workers, marveling at the design of his new house. In the back, more framing jutted out from the original cabin, forming a large dining room and attached kitchen. Next to what would eventually be a back porch, Booker stood with Celie, blocking Silas’s view of the third person.

  He approached, and Booker turned. “Massah Doctor! Just the man I’s lookin’ for. This here is Pearl—she’s the one going to help you and Middie with Celie’s deliverin’.”

  Silas’s gaze locked onto the face, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak.

  “Doctor Noble,” the young woman said, coming toward him and extending her hand. “I’ve heard so much about you; it’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I’m Pearl Avery.”

  She shook his hand with a firm, solid grasp, not the dead-fish finger-grip of most Southern belles. This was a woman confident in her own abilities, sure of herself.

  And she was white.

  “Mrs.—Mrs. Avery,” he finally managed. “Well. You’re not what I expected, not at all.”

  She threw back her head and laughed. “I imagine not. And it’s Miss Avery, not Mrs. But please, call me Pearl.”

  Silas knew he was staring, but he couldn’t stop himself. Pearl Avery was not only white, she was unlike any woman he had ever seen in his life. She wore men’s trousers, rolled up at the cuffs, sturdy boots, and a blue chambray shirt that matched her eyes. Her hair, long and wavy, was a soft shade of brown, pulled back into a kind of horse’s tail at the nape of her neck. Her skin was tanned to a glowing bronze, and a streak of soot marked her chin.

  “You’re the Pearl I’ve been hearing so much about?” he blurted out.

  “I’m afraid so.” She smiled crookedly, and a single dimple creased her left cheek. “I hope I haven’t invaded your territory.”

  “Not at all,” he managed. “Lily would have lost that foot to gangrene if you hadn’t tended to it right away. But—”

  “But who am I, and what am I doing here?” she supplied. “Well actually, Dr. Noble, this is not the first time we’ve met. My father is Harmon Avery, owner of Avery’s Lumber. You came in with Booker to order supplies for your house.”

  “Yes.” Silas sorted frantically through his memory, trying to recall. There had been a young woman behind the counter, but he hadn’t paid her much mind. Booker had handled the order, and he had simply waited, woefully ignorant about anything that concerned construction. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I don’t remember.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to. You looked a little . . . well, lost.”

  Silas’s first reaction was to take offense at this veiled denigration of his manhood, but he stifled the impulse. She was right. He had been lost. Totally out of his area of expertise. He uttered a short laugh. “Well, Miss Avery, I see you’ve got my number.”

  “Pearl,” she corrected for the second time. “And when I found out you were the new doctor, I didn’t expect you to know much about manual labor.”

  Silas liked her immediately, this audacious young woman who spoke her mind so freely. But he had many questions about her.

  “I suppose you want to know why I’ve been around here doctoring your patients,” she said, as if she’d read his mind. “My mother died a few years back. Shortly afterwards, my father and his brother inherited some timberland in Cambridge County. They had both worked in the timber business as a young boys in Upstate New York, but never thought they’d have the opportunity to own their own mill. Then the inheritance came through—from an uncle we barely knew—so they both took a chance, and here we are, starting a new life. I had some medical training up north, and I wanted a change, too, so I joined him. I keep the company’s books and do what I can to help when somebody needs emergency attention.”

  Silas turned to Booker. “So why, if there was a nurse already here, was Colonel Warren so insistent that this county needed a doctor?”

  Booker stared at him. “Pearl’s a woman,” he said, as if the answer should be obvious. “None of the plantation owners is gonna let a woman touch them, not if they’re dying. Besides, she’s a Yankee woman.”

  “Well, I come from up north, too. I’m from Baltimore.”

  “Maryland’s a border state,” Pearl interjected. “Apparently people in your neck of the woods haven’t read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or if they did, decided to keep quiet about it.”

  Silas considered her words. It was true, Maryland was divided on the issue of slavery. He knew that some people in the state owned slaves, but he had never had to face the reality of slavery personally, as he had here in Mississippi. And Pearl was right in her assumption—most of his family, and those in their social circles, did keep their opinions to themselves. His father had often commented that he wished those wild-eyed revolutionaries would just shut their mouths and quit stirring up trouble.

  Silas had never met an abolitionist—at least not that he knew of. If Pearl Avery was one, she didn’t fit the picture his father had painted. Not in the least.

  “Pearl’s been helping us out for some time, now,” Booker added. “She’s a fine woman, a godly woman—”

  “But I’m not a doctor,” Pearl interrupted. “These people need you. We all do. And if you’re willing, I’d be honored to assist you in any way I can.”

  Silas’s mind barely registered the words, so taken was he with the modulated tones of her low-pitched voice. Like honey. Like silk. Like . . .

  “Oh,” he said, recovering his composure. “Certainly, Miss Avery—ah, Pearl. I’d appreciate your help. Between the slaves and the plantation owners, I’ve got my hands full.”

  A clanging sound arrested his attention.

  “That’ll be Middie, callin’ us all to dinner.” Booker grinned at Silas. “Reckon you and Pearl ought to join us.”

  “I—I reckon so,” Silas stammered.

  Pearl caught Silas’s glance and winked boldly at him. “Why thank you, kind sir,” she said in her best imitation of a Southern accent. She took his arm and batted her eyelashes at him. “I’d be downright delighted.”

  9

  Death and Life Are in the Hands of the Lord

  Later that night, Silas sat at the table in his cabin, poring over Pearl Avery’s copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel had been released the year before, and already, Pearl told him, had sold over three hundred thousand copies. No wonder people were up in arms about slavery. Yet here he was, on a slave plantation in Mississippi, and he had never seen the extreme
horrors Stowe described in her book. Colonel Warren was firm—he believed in discipline. But he always made a point of boasting about how fair he was to his nigras, how well he treated them. Maybe Stowe had exaggerated the situation to make a point; or maybe there were just a few plantations—certainly not the majority—where slaves were treated with viciousness and cruelty.

  But for all his rationalization, Silas could not rid his mind of images he had seen with his own eyes. Warren’s refusal to relieve Celie from her heavy duties during the final months of her pregnancy. The festering infection in Lily’s foot, which surely would have gone untreated had it been up to Robert Warren. The sneering overseer, Otis Tilson, who rode his horse through the fields, flailing his whip at any slave who seemed to be lagging behind. And most of all, the sad, haunted look that filled Booker’s countenance in unguarded moments, an expression that, for all the man’s hope and faith, communicated the unbearable burden of perpetual enslavement.

  Silas laid the book aside and rubbed his eyes. This wasn’t at all what he had expected when he responded to Robert Warren’s invitation to come and serve as a physician in Cambridge County. He had always considered himself a moderate man, a man more interested in the wellness of the individual human being than in politics or social action. He was a healer, not an activist. Moral enigmas wearied his mind and confused his heart. And he hadn’t the faintest idea how to sort all this out.

  “Massah Doctor!” Booker’s voice boomed through the closed door. “Massah Doctor!”

  Instantly alert, Silas slung his coat around his shoulders, grabbed his medical bag, and threw the door open. “What’s wrong, Booker?”

  “Massah Robert says to bring you up to the big house right now!”

  “Do you know what’s wrong?”

  “Naw suh. He jus’ says come, and quick!”

  By the time they reached the circular driveway in front of the plantation house, a crowd had gathered—Olivia Warren, surrounded by a bevy of weeping house servants. One of the slaves, a light-skinned girl of perhaps seventeen, ran toward the buckboard pointing and shouting.

  “They’s at the barn, Massah Doctor!” she screamed. “Hurry!”

  Booker jerked the horses around and careened down the dirt road that led to the barn and stables. He pulled to a stop so fast it made Silas’s neck pop.

  “Come on, come on!” someone called.

  Dozens of slaves stood milling around the barn door, and Silas had to shove them aside to get in. When he finally entered, the scene spread out before him revolted him, and for a moment he thought he was going to retch.

  There was blood everywhere.

  A black man lay sprawled on his side in the straw, a big, muscular man with skin as dark as pitch. But that was as far as the identification went. His face, what was left of it, was beaten beyond recognition. His back and shoulders had been whipped to a bloody pulp, and his right foot was—well, gone.

  Beside him stood Otis Tilson, the overseer, with a whip in one hand and a bloody ax in the other. Robert Warren stood to one side, his face averted, his skin pale as paper, even in the yellow light of the two lamps hanging from opposite stalls.

  Silas ran to the man and knelt beside him. Puddled blood seeped into the knees of his trousers, and he felt the warm wetness oozing onto his skin.

  “What happened here?” He craned his neck and looked up at Warren.

  Otis Tilson answered. “Runaway,” he spat out, raising the ax as if that was all the explanation Silas needed. “Guess he ain’t gonna run no more.”

  Silas jerked a pressure bandage out of his bag and applied it to the stump. The ax had severed an artery, and blood was pumping like a fountain. “He’s not going to do anything anymore,” he muttered.

  Robert Warren came to life and grabbed Silas by the shoulder. “You’ve got to save him. He’s my best horse trainer.”

  “Marcus?” Silas choked out. Marcus was Lily’s man, a big bear of a fellow with a kind and gentle soul. He would never have run away and left Lily alone.

  “He weren’t runnin’,” one of the bystanders muttered.

  Tilson stepped forward and raised his whip. “You keep your mouth shut, Nigger,” he snarled. “’Less you want double of what that boy got.”

  “But he weren’t!” the young slave protested. “I saw it all. He was just disagreein’ with you about how to break that new stallion, and you lit into him.”

  Warren moved closer to Tilson and narrowed his eyes. “Is that right, Otis?”

  Tilson spat at the master’s feet. “He had it comin’. That buck’s been trouble since the day you bought him.”

  “Shut up, both of you!” Silas snapped. “Get me a blanket.”

  Warren motioned to one of the slaves, who retrieved a horse blanket from the tack room and spread it on the bloody straw. Gently, Silas turned Marcus over onto his back. “Hold that pressure bandage in place—tight!” The slave complied, turning his eyes away from the gushing of blood.

  Marcus’s eyes fluttered open. “Massah Doctor?”

  Silas knelt beside Marcus and cradled the man’s head in one arm. “I’m here, Marcus. I’m going to take care of you.”

  Marcus shook his head slowly from side to side. “Ain’t no use, suh.”

  “Don’t talk that way, Marcus. I need you to fight.” Tears sprang up in Silas’s eyes.

  “I know it’s my time. I ain’t afraid.” His breath came in ragged gasps. “Tell Lily . . . I loves her.”

  Then, with one final rattle as his last breath escaped, Marcus’s big head lolled against Silas’s shoulder.

  Silas looked up. “You can let go of the bandage now,” he sighed. “It’s over.”

  Colonel Warren, his eyes blazing with fury, moved toward Tilson until they were nose to nose. For a minute Silas thought that the master was going to kill the overseer, or at least fire him for this unnecessary cruelty. Instead, Warren said, “I paid a hundred dollars at auction for that buck, Otis. Don’t expect any salary until I get it back.”

  Tilson was about to protest when a small Negro boy ran into the barn, panting and out of breath. For a minute he just stood there, his eyes wide and white as he took in the carnage, and then he pulled frantically on Silas’s bloody sleeve. “Massah Doctor, Middie says you gotta come now! Celie’s havin’ her baby!”

  With the help of three other slaves, Booker wrapped Marcus’s body in the horse blanket and hurriedly loaded it into the buckboard. “Come on!” he yelled.

  Silas started for the rig, but Otis Tilson’s hand grabbed his arm. He looked down at the filthy paw, brown with Marcus’s dried blood, and then up into the sneering face.

  “Just a minute,” the overseer snapped. “You ain’t done yet.”

  “Thanks to you, he’s dead,” Silas shot back. “My work here is finished.”

  “Naw it ain’t. Remember why you was hired, sonny boy. I got this big boil”—he pointed to his backside—“and it really bothers me when I’m in the saddle.” He gave a leering grin, showing a mouthful of crooked, tobacco-stained teeth.

  Silas narrowed his eyes, jerked the ax from Tilson’s hand, and threw it on the ground at his feet. “Lance it yourself,” he snapped. “And swing hard.”

  Silas looked at his pocket watch. It was nearly four in the morning; Celie had been in labor for more than seven hours. The coolness of the night air came in on a breeze through the open window of the cabin. Still, sweat covered the girl’s body and fear filled her eyes.

  “It’s going to be all right, Celie. Just hang on.” Silas had waited as long as he could, hoping the baby would turn, but to no avail. If he didn’t do something immediately, he might lose them both.

  “Pearl, get up there beside her head and hold her hand.” Pearl moved into position, and Silas squatted between Celie’s knees. “I need the lamp closer.”

  Middie moved the lamp to the floor beside Silas. “Now, Celie, your baby is coming out feet first. This is going to hurt, but I’m going to try to turn it so that it can be born
headfirst. When the next contraction comes, don’t push, no matter what. Take shallow breaths—pant like a dog—but don’t push. All right?”

  Celie nodded and gripped Pearl’s hand.

  The contraction came. “I can see a foot!” Silas shouted. He reached in and slid his hand along the leg, gently pushing on the baby’s bottom to try and turn it around. In some far distant place, he could hear Middie praying and, even farther away, the sound of mourners singing: “I want to meet my Jesus. . . .”

  Dear God, he pleaded silently, we’ve had enough death tonight.

  Suddenly he felt a movement, an almost imperceptible shift, and the baby turned in the womb and righted itself. “All right, now, Celie, push!”

  Celie pushed. The crown of a head appeared, covered with downy black hair. One shoulder, then the next, and—

  “God, no,” Silas muttered under his breath. The infant’s face had a bluish cast, and the umbilical cord twined around its neck like a serpent. “Celie, stop pushing if you can.” He reached with trembling fingers and released the cord. “Now!”

  The child—a boy—slid out into the lamplight, slippery as a river rock, and just as lifeless. As soon as he was free, Silas grabbed him by the ankles and swatted his bottom. Nothing. Frantic, Silas laid him on the blanket between Celie’s feet and cleared his mouth, then began compressing his tiny chest. A motion—a heave—and, finally, a squall loud enough to be heard all the way up to the big house.

  Silas picked up the infant, cut and tied the cord, and wrapped him in a small blanket. “Atta boy.” He lifted his eyes toward the soot-stained beams of the cabin. “Thank you.”

  Despite her exhaustion, Celie raised her head and laughed. “He all right, Doctah Silas?”

  “He’s just fine,” Silas choked out. “Got a good set of lungs, once we got them working.”

  Silas laid the baby on Celie’s chest and watched as she inspected him. “He’s beautiful,” she murmured. “But ain’t he a little pale?”