Chapter Text
Shady Belle, July 1899
The house didn’t breathe right. But then again, neither did he.
Rooms sat hollow where the wallpaper curled into dead bark. A cradle in one corner, cracked through the base, spindles slant. The chair next to it with dust ruts in the seat, the percher long forgotten.
Echoes upstairs sounded too slow to be company, followed by somebody spitting off the rail.
Arthur moved slow through the hallway, shoulder brushing the wall when his hip caught the sideboard. He didn’t wince. Just kept walking with the floorboards keeping score.
Last time he walked halls this wide, there’d been polish on the banisters. Curtains that moved with the breeze. Her perfume stayed longer than her voice. That weren’t this house, nothing here smelt living.
The stairs dipped underfoot, it weren’t the wood that gave but his leg. Something in it never came back right, not since the pit. He didn’t limp, but he carried it all the same. There was no rush to him. Whatever Dutch had to say, it wouldn’t sound better for hearing it sooner.
The bayou pressed up against the air, thick as old stew left too long. Spanish moss hung down the carcass like dead fingers both slack and desperate. A hard squawk out out from the cane, the kind a bird gives when it sees a predator. It weren’t no song, just old and mean as swamp instinct.
He reached the porch and rolled a cigarette, thumb stiff where it had near been split in the O’Driscoll hole. That felt like a lifetime ago, hell, everything did these days. It had been long enough for the bruises to fade to a jaundiced yellow but no where near long enough for the ache to fade.
Everything stuck to him. Sweet rot clinging where soap used to be. He couldn’t scrub this place off if he tried.
But Jack was safe. Brontë gave him back like a dog he’d grown bored of. Abigail held on as though she meant to never let go again as John stood off, a shadow with too many thoughts. Least he was grateful all the same.
When Jack crossed that stone, lace collar and eyes too big with talk of all his new shiny toys, for a second, the world in Arthur’s head stilled.
But, didn’t matter so much that the boy was back. Should never have been gone. And Dutch… Dutch was talking about dreams and futures as if none of them had anything but.
Arthur didn’t much believe in futures anymore.
He sat down on the edge of the step, elbows on his knees. The match slipped twice before it caught and then the cigarette burnt faster than he could smoke it anyway. He didn’t dwell on it.
The swamp shimmered out in front of him, green and gold and full of things that didn’t like to be seen. Something big moved in the shallows. Probably a gator. Could have been a ghost.
He didn’t care.
Behind him, the house creaked, like a saddle bearing the mark of too many miles. He didn’t trust houses that remembered things. Clemens Point had been soft, made of trees and river hush. This place was stone and phantoms. It held its own type of presence, one that took notes and stashed them, waiting to throw them right back when it hurt the most. Almost felt superstitious to think so but then again, he had been closer to death than any man ought to be for too long.
His thumb brushed the frayed edge of the matchbook as if fire might answer questions better than men ever had. The thing was old, label half peeled. He didn’t remember where it came from. Just something picked up by accident and never let go.
The smoke trailed out through his nose. Even the flies seemed to think twice in air that was thick enough to chew. He flicked the stub into the dirt and stood, joints stiff.
As he turned the front window, it threw back his own shape, hollowed out and hunched. For a second, he didn’t recognise it. He walked into the house without further thought.
Whatever they’d tried to etch out, the house kept hold. It’d buried worse things than them. At the landing, he paused, one hand on the banister, gaze trailing through the corridor that was laid out like a rifle barrel. Carpet had been trampled down to the thread. Nothing walks that hard without running from something. Bullet holes stared back at him. No one bothered to patch them, even the walls didn’t get second chances.
And as everywhere else in this godforsaken land, the swamp found its way in. Dutch kept to the far room, the one with a window looking out over the morass. Dutch’s plans had a smell now, like the decay had come for him too. He called the room his vantage, though what he saw out there was anyone’s guess.
The steps didn’t take as much as Arthur thought. Just the kind of foolishness that ended with Dutch looking pleased.
Light came in low through the drawn curtain, catching on the brass of the gramophone and the edges of books where pages were turned too many times.
The music, as always, was something foreign, arched like a cavalry funeral without the gunfire. All strings and swelling redemption, the kind of thing Dutch always chose. He’d heard it before. A kind of music that thought it meant something. Dutch sure did.
He stood beside the decanter, not drinking yet, just letting the brandy catch the light. One hand rested on the mantle as though he’d been posed that way, wrist slack with his cigar waiting for instruction. Like even moving might spoil the picture he had of himself.
‘Son,' he said, barely turning. 'You look like hell.'
Arthur didn’t rise to it. Just stepped in proper, boots dull against the rug.
'Don’t reckon I’m meant to look like much else.'
'Oh, come now. Jack is home. We’re back in the good graces of Saint Denis society. You should feel... rejuvenated. Even John is smiling.'
Rejuvenated. Dutch always did have words full of shine. Arthur glanced toward the window. He didn’t want their grace. Didn’t want their society neither.
'Feels like the same damn rot to me.'
'Faith, Arthur,' Dutch said, moving toward the gramophone to lift the needle with patience that only let the silence fill in too quick. 'You see mud. I see a foundation.'
Arthur stayed quiet.
Dutch poured two fingers of brandy, one glass outstretched. Arthur let it hang there.
'Bronte’s invited us to a little gathering. Mayor Lemieux’s garden party. Thursday next. A proper affair - champagne, oysters, all that civilised nonsense.'
Arthur crossed his arms, sweat slick underneath the cotton of his shirt, clinging to bruises that would mar him long after they all forgot. He smelt as bad as he looked. Hell, they all did.
‘And what exactly are we pretendin’ to be?’
‘Visionaries,’ Dutch said, eyes glinting.
Let Dutch have his vision. Arthur just stood there, skin crawling under the heat and nothing worth saying.
A slow hum from the gramophone needle trembled, as if it might play without being touched. Dust hung in the beam of windowlight, thick as chimney soot. A fly banged itself dumb into the glass, frantic and pointless, its fat little body desperate to break the pane. The smallest splattered of blood marked the filth covered window. Arthur’s eyes followed it. Pointless thing. Still hadn’t figured the window didn’t give.
‘But we need someone to sell that vision. To do that, we need trust. Faces they’ll listen to.’ Dutch added, swirling the brandy without drinking. Arthur watched the light move through the glass. The swirl didn’t stop, just kept turning all neat, as if Dutch figured truth lived somewhere in the bottom of it.
‘I’ve seen it, Arthur. What we are. What we could be. I look at Jack and I see it still. A world that don’t own us.’
Arthur felt it. The part where Dutch didn’t ask. It was written for him, whether he wanted it or not. A coat someone else had worn too long. Still warm with their sweat, but none of it his. He’d done this before - worn what Dutch handed him and called it purpose. Rode out under another man’s name and another man’s cause, just to keep the illusion of movement. And lately, it had begun to chafe.
‘We need someone with a polished tongue and a pretty history.’
One second they were talking about freedom. The next, about selling it back dressed in pearls and borrowed smiles. Dutch said it the way he always did, with the surety of a man who believed the world should agree.
‘She’s still the best we’ve got.’
He said it like it cost Arthur nothing. Like she weren’t flesh.
Flesh he’d steadied with his hands once, when that alone might’ve been enough to keep her. Flesh that beaded in the summer sun when she forgot to pretend she were someone else. But now she was a name on a list, a pawn in the pitch. Same as any other woman left behind when men got hungry enough. He knew it before Dutch even spoke it.
‘Miss Edwards.’
He should’ve said something then. Called it madness. Stood his ground. But his mouth wouldn’t open, not for that. It wasn’t her name that stopped him. It was whose mouth it came from. He just stood there and let it happen, same as always. The fly kept at it. Arthur held tight to his arm. For what, he didn’t know. Something he lost. Or let go.
He didn’t see her - not fully. Telling himself it was a choice. It was just the edge of memory, the way her hair caught in the light, the honeysuckle smell behind her ears. Didn’t matter how deep you buried it. Some things got good at climbing.
‘That ain’t a good idea,’ he said finally, no conviction. Just empty.
He knew what she’d see, if she looked at him now. A face she used to trust. Now just another order passed along. Whatever warmth she had for him had burnt out clean, rightly so. And if he went to her now, he reckoned she’d see right through. As if he’d already gone.
‘No?’ Dutch still hadn’t touched his drink.
Arthur could just see beyond the porch below them through the murk stained glass. A cane on its outer edge bowed in the heat. Languid. One patch flattened as though something heavy had bedded down with no intention of standing straight.
That was the stillness he craved. Sweet as a promise. Used to mean something, moments like that. Standing on the edge of a bluff. Sitting saddleback at first light, no town, wind at your back. The smell of sage and horsesweat, flower dust on the air. And that feeling in your gut. Low and real. The kind a grown man got when the whole sky opened up for him. When the land might carry your name for a while. That it might never let you go.
He didn’t feel like that now.
Just Dutch, watching the curl of smoke like that it might spell out the next good lie.
‘Because from where I’m standing,’ Dutch went on, ‘Even Hosea let her finish. That ought to tell you something. Way she came in camp, you’d think we were lucky just to hear her speak.’
Arthur let him carry on, way he always did. Just watched the same fly beat itself dumb against the pane. It hadn’t stopped. Neither had Dutch.
The humidity was inescapable. A keen of the old south. Nothing other than heat crept through the shutters. It clung to him in a way that never sat, just soaked into his skull. Thoughts didn’t move so well in that.
‘If she’s got that much to say about our choices,’ Dutch continued, ‘then that’s exactly why we need her. Nothing sells a cause like conviction. Let her do what she does best.’
‘Don’t use her like that.’
Dutch had already said it. Words that had no right to be in the room. All laid out for the man behind the gramophone and cigars.
She weren't a story to sell. A trinket to parade for favour. Amelia had walked into camp for Arthur. Not a cause, not a plan or faith. Not for Dutch neither. But that was all known and worn though it were something that Dutch had earnt. That she was his to use. It weren’t a bargain he was sure he could make.
He’d taken enough from her. Left her standing with the worst parts of him still in her hands. Arthur didn’t know what he’d say if he saw her again. Only that it was far beyond reach, where no good words ever grew.
Dutch set the bottle down with care, like the words he’d said were too solid to spill.
‘She’s an asset,’ he said. ‘And one who can walk into that garden and have men like Brontë eating out of her palm.’
Dutch weren’t counting on her charm. He was counting on Arthur’s. Not that he’d call it that, just knew them well enough to pull at what might still be standing between them. If she said yes, it’d be on his voice, not Dutch’s. Another ask made heavier by who delivered it. Another reason to hate him, and rightly so. Dressing it in lace didn’t make it any less true.
Arthur just looked at Dutch, then the floor. Like it weren’t already a risk, putting her back out there. He could see how it’d go. Men watching her too long. Women not saying a thing but shifting in their chairs. She weren’t made for rooms like that anymore. Not after all she had built, just to be marched back in, wearing the same weight they always gave to women like her because he asked nicely.
‘Speak to her. Don’t. That part’s on you. But this is a door only she can open. And you know it.’
Arthur turned without answer. Walked slow, each step stripping something out of the air. Boots hit wood with nothing but echoes.
The fly didn’t stir. Just sat there on the sill, exhausted, wings twitching slow, like its fight had turned quiet. Arthur looked once. Kept walking. Some fights lived quiet. He pressed the door with the heel of his hand. It gave with the kind of drag that came from damp wood and years of swamp air sunk into the grain.
The hallway kept the heat like punishment. Boards swollen, air thick with pipe ash and old sweat. Arthur moved slow, shoulder brushing bowed plaster, hand steady on the rail.
He would do it, he would see her, beg and plead. It was a sickness, he was sure. The part he kept separate, for her and of her. And now it was just another order, another betrayal he would make her carry.
He didn’t take the porch step two at a time like he used to. Didn’t take it at all, in fact, skirted down the side where the ground sloped gentler. Just habit now. He reached the outside and it felt like trying to breathe through an old rag left out in rain. His knees barked with each step, stiff from nights slept wrong and days sat worse. He moved slow across the yard, boots sinking a little in the mud that never dried.
Vines pulled at the house's walls. It crept up into brick that would be felt for longer than he would care for, planks rattled in a way that only felt apathy. One shutter had fallen halfway off its hinge, flapping lazy when the breeze came through.
He swatted at a mosquito and missed, an egret flailed in the reeds down in the bank. With neck bent sharp, wings beat against the tangle. White feathers slick with mud brushed against the green. Even the clever ones got took out here.
He passed the old pump that no longer worked, kept going past where the grass broke. Made for the old gazebo by the waterline. It had half a roof and two legs that leant like they’d give in the next hard rain. It was good enough.
A single ghost orchid poke through the decayed base boards. It was a pale thing. Looked near dead, but it held.
And so he sat. Didn’t lean back, just planted both elbows on his knees.
Dutch always talked like things could be built clean from rot. Like all you needed was a suit and a speech and someone willing to smile for the cause. Arthur could see it already. Champagne glasses, Brontë puffed up in velvet, the air thick with garden perfume and foreign words. And her.
She’d move through it like she’d done it before. Chin high, no need to fake civility. The kind of woman who made men think she was listening, even when she wasn’t.
Arthur had seen it up close. Knew how her smile held, just long enough to be remembered. A kind of grace that didn’t know it was dangerous. But that wasn’t the truth of why he loved her. He’d caught himself watching her too long, more times than he cared to count. And it weren’t just the way she walked, or spoke, or carried herself like the room might rise or fall depending on her say so.
It was something else. Something he never found the words for, and maybe didn’t want to.
Goddamn Brontë wouldn’t stand a chance.
He didn’t want her in it. In any of this. It weren't her world and he knew the kinds of things men asked of women with mouths like hers. She wasn’t built for the kind of ruin Dutch brought with him.
He rolled a cigarette, hands working out of habit more than want. Lit it, smoke pushing slow against the bayou air. He drew on it and held it too long before giving a spluttered cough.
He said to himself that he'd refuse. Wouldn't give Dutch's notion the time of day. That was the story anyhow.
But Dutch was right. He knew it. Didn’t mean he had to like it.
The house behind him was full of voices that quieted when he got too near. Eyes unsure whether to meet his with hollowed pity. It was hidden in the laughter that never quite reached the porch. He felt it all the same. Like he’d come back wrong and they knew it before he did. Out here in the swamp was where he found his place.
In the glass he sometimes caught his own figure and it struck him strange. Shoulders bent, eyes carved into something that only war could find. Whatever had filled him once was in a grave he should have long been.
A footstep crunched somewhere behind him. The gait was too steady for one of the boys. No clatter, no spit. Just the quiet tread of someone who never needed to be anywhere he wasn’t.
He flicked ash off the cigarette. Let the quiet sit.
‘You always did find the ugliest places to think,’ Hosea said.
Arthur didn’t answer. He watched a dragonfly stutter over the cane, then veer off sudden, like it caught itself heading the wrong way.
Hosea sat in the space next to him, knees cracking like dried twigs. There was a part of him that felt Hosea could turn it on and off as he pleased, from ailing old wise mentor to the calculated tactician he saw in a shoot out. His face kept less years than most, for all he’d seen and all he’d buried. A constant weight earnt by lasting longer than he ought.
Arthur felt the pull in his own scars. The years had rode him just as hard but age ain’t something that was bestowed often. They said it was for the fortunate. Hosea wore the truth of it, same as him.
‘Suppose this means Dutch gave you the pitch,’ he said, voice easy but not soft.
‘You already know he did.’ Smoke poured from Arthur’s nose as he lit another smoke, barely stubbing out the first.
‘Mmm.’ Hosea mirrored his stance, elbows on knees. ‘Did he lead with oysters or garden lights this time?’
‘He mentioned her.’
That held between them. Longer than it needed to.
‘Figured he might,’ Hosea said, shrewd eyes gazing over the water. ‘He always knows where to press.’
They sat out there long enough for the shade to grow short, the gazebo boards giving now and then. The water holding the sun like a mirror that wouldn’t give.
It soaked into the kind of silence men kept when they didn’t mean to talk, and both of them knew how to keep it. It weren’t the silence of comfort or ease, but the kind you’d expect from two men who’d lived too long among schemes that never stayed put.
Arthur sat without cheer, still enough that he might have grown roots. The sun bit at him and he let it, same as a man too used to pain to mind.
‘She wrote to me,’ Hosea said after a while. ‘Few weeks back.’
Arthur let his gaze rest on the far bank where the cypress roots curled up like fists. The light hit them wrong at this hour, long and mean. It didn’t offer comfort. His elbows dug tighter into his knees, held there like penance. It weren’t the kind of news that surprised him. Not after the way Dutch had said her name, like a coin he meant to spend. Still, it hit harder than it should have. Like hearing her voice in a place it didn’t belong.
He thought about that letter. How she’d held the pen. What she’d worn. If her hand had shook. If she’d hesitated before she named him in ink. He didn’t know what stung more, that she wrote at all, or that she hadn’t sent it to him.
He tried to picture her sitting down to write it. Couldn’t. Not clearly. All he saw was the look on her face when she told him to leave. How final it felt.
She’d reached out. But she hadn’t reached for him.
There weren’t no blame in him left. For her or himself. Not even the world that brought them together. Just an acceptance that made him not want to look any deeper.
He stayed quiet all the same. Because he didn’t trust what might come out if he didn’t.
‘She hoped you were back on your feet. Asked if you had the sense to stay there.’ There was no judgement in it. Just the kind of dry truth Hosea always favoured.
Arthur gave a short nod, like it might count for something. He thought about what he’d say to her if he were someone else. Someone who hadn’t lied or left. Maybe it was just something simple, a truth spoken plain, that might’ve kept it.
She’d seen enough pain, about all he was good for. Maybe he could’ve told her he still carried her voice in the back of his head, with every choice and step he made.
‘A woman like that don’t write easy,’ Hosea said, after a while. ‘And she sure as hell don’t write twice.’
He used to love riding into the estate at dusk. The calmness, the order. The way Amelia’s voice softened when the day wore down, like even her defiance had edges worn smooth by the hour. He used to think maybe he’d earnt that softness. Now he wasn’t so sure.
He couldn’t tell what part of him still belonged to her, and what part had just learnt to miss the idea.
There’d been a hundred chances to turn back to her, and he’d walked past every one, always thinking that it weren’t the right time. And now, sitting there with the world rotting gentle around him, he wondered if that kind of time could ever belong to a man like him.
The light caught on the bayou like tarnish on brass.
‘She ain’t waiting. But if you mean to meet her, make sure it ain’t the man who walked back half dead.’
Almost felt prophetic, same as weather rolling in. He saw it for what it was, and it came all the same. He didn’t know what he’d say to her. Didn’t know if saying anything would matter.
There was an irony to it, the way Dutch felt sure she’d agree and take back a man she threatened to kill on sight. He didn’t doubt for a second that she’d do it too. Arthur had seen men turn reckless, scared, even roused by the thought of blood. Women carried their convictions differently, that much he knew were true.
He didn’t know what she had written but hoped it was as if some piece of him still made sense. As if the man she’d held onto was still inside all this meat and ruin.
But Dutch looked at her and saw use. Something to put between him and the world long enough to sell the story. Didn’t matter what Dutch wanted. Arthur knew he’d hand it over, if it meant she kept clear of the muck. But that never worked out in his line of work.
Truth was, it weren’t just her he was afraid to face.
It was himself. What was left of him. And whether he was ever worth the ink.