lost ages ago, a key perhaps, or the final piece of a puzzle that had so long vexed and discomfited her. But there was something more, something in her manner, for she was smiling at me, not smiling upon me. Her manner had always been bizarre and unlike anything I had ever seen among the Quality. But this was different still, for there was nothing masterful nor certain, no dominance in her manner, only a deep pleasure, a satisfaction at some unseen goal having been attained.
“Do you know what has happened to you?” she asked. “Do you know where you are?”
There was the smell of spring potpourri—a sharp sweet mix of mint, thyme, and something else—a scent that could never be of Lockless, where a boyish spirit prevailed and didn’t allow for such things.
“Do you know how long you’ve been gone?” she asked.
I said nothing.
“Hiram,” she said. “Do you know who I am?”
“Miss Corrine,” I answered.
“No ‘Miss,’ ” she said, her joyous smile now relaxing into a look of confirmation. “Corrine. Only ever Corrine.”
The unnaturalness of the moment now expanded. I saw, looking over, that Hawkins was not standing in wait, as a tasking man should, but was seated right next to her with his posture upright and erect.
Again she asked, “Do you know where you are?”
“No,” I replied. “I don’t know how long I have been gone. I don’t know where I been gone to. I don’t even know why.”
“Hiram,” she said, “we are going to have an agreement, an understanding. I will be truthful with you. And in turn, you will do the same for me.”
Now she stared hard at me.
“You well know why you were sent away,” she said. “You ran, taking another with you. Surely by now you have guessed that we have intelligence greater than your own. I will tell you anything, but you must do me the same.”
I moved to sit up in the bed and felt a sharp pain in my back and legs. My feet were cracked and sore. I felt my face and found a knot above my left eye. And I remembered the nightly ordeal I had suffered, the hours spent in the pit.
“Yeah, we’re sorry about that. Had to be sure.” Hawkins now gave a look of acknowledgment and said, “Had some notions, but to be sure, had to carry you off.”
We’re sorry, he’d said, implying that Hawkins, a tasking man, had some power here, not just in this room but in all the hell that I had journeyed through for what had been, what, a month? Months?
“Hiram,” said Corrine. “You went into the Goose River with Maynard. No, you took Maynard into the Goose River. He had no choice in the thing. Perhaps you wanted this, but want or not, you killed a man, and in so doing, sent long-drawn plans to dust. For your impulse and desire, for your crime, great men must now reapportion their lives and whole armies of American justice are now in flight. You do not understand. But I think you shall, for it is my belief that in your wild thrashings there was a design, greater still than even our own.”
As she spoke, Corrine unhooked the pipe from the vase with her left hand, and with her right took the top off. The smell of tobacco now wafted out. She lit the pipe, pulled, and puffed out a plume of smoke. Then she handed the pipe to Hawkins, who relit, puffed, and handed the pipe back to her. White smoke fluttered up from them and hung like dust on the sunlight cutting through the window. I thought back to the last conference, in that low-lit parlor of Lockless, where her voice quavered and trembled, and I remembered how odd she was even then, how odd she’d always been, how she seemed to eschew the fashion of the moment for a Virginia of old, and how conspicuous and wrong it all really was. But now I saw the truth so suddenly I wondered how I had never seen it before. It was a lie, the whole thing was a lie, the tradition, the mourning, perhaps even the marriage itself.
I must have lost all my covert powers while away, for Corrine looked at me and laughed and said, “You are wondering how I did it, aren’t you?”
“I am,” I said.
“Yes, yes, I understand, I truly do,” she said. “It is a rare thing for any lord or lady of the estate to truly