Forty Weeks

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Forty Weeks - book excerpt

Prologue

Twelve-year-old Charlotte McCleod, Charlie to those who knew her well, stood shivering with fear and rage on the back of a buckboard, held in place by the firm hand of black-clad Reverend Talley.

Standing on a wooden crate beneath a colossal oak was Rebecca McCleod. The Reverend and his men had beaten her, stripped her naked, and shaved the golden curls from her head. Charlie had been shocked to see they’d shaved the golden triangle between her thighs as well.

Talley was the stern minister of the Church in the Hollow, who held sway over the small settlement of Fern Hollow, Tennessee. Everyone feared him. Charlie hated him.

Rebecca’s eyes only met those of her daughter once, but they conveyed a sense of defiance and prideCharlie knew well. Her mother had fought these men and wanted her to fight as well.

The Reverend stepped forward to address the gathered crowd of dirt-farmers from the Hallow. He pointed at Rebecca. “All of you know this cursed woman to be a witch,” he yelled in his deep, commanding voice and raised his hand that held his Bible above his head, “and God’s Holy Word commands us not to suffer a witch to live amongst us.”

Charlie stared at her mother, who stood with her shoulders squared and her bald head high. What was this man going to do to her?

“On Monday last,” the Reverend continued, “my young wife, Amelia informed me, to my great joy, that she finally carried my child.”

Charlie heard the murmuring of the crowd. She knew Amelia. The girl and her family had been neighbors. The Reverend had decided he wanted the pretty young girl and paid her father a handsome price to give his daughter over to him to be his new wife.

Amelia hadn’t wanted to be the tyrannical man’s wife, but her father couldn’t pass up the money the Reverend offered. It had broken Charlie’s heart to see her friend’s tears on her wedding day and the bruises she wore on her face and body in the weeks after.

The Reverend dug his fingers into Charlie’s shoulder as he went on. “The witch there, somehow enchanted my wife and lured her into her Godless home where she tore my child from her womb, causing my poor Amelia to perish in turn.”

Charlie wanted to scream. Amelia had come to them, begging for her mother to help rid her of the unwanted child in her belly. She refused to bear the child of that beast of a man. People in the Hollow knew Rebecca as a wise woman who could give a woman herbs to rid her of an unwanted child in her womb. Rebecca had warned Amelia the process would be painful and could even make her barren. Amelia had begged even harder. She didn’t want the Reverend’s child in her belly, and she never wanted another.

Rebecca had given Amelia the pennyroyal oil and sat with her through the excruciating hours while expelling the child from her womb.

“This witch stole my child, and in her hate of me and the God I revere, killed my poor wife.” His voice grew even louder. “For this, she must die.”

The Reverend nodded, and a man on horseback rode up to her mother and slipped a knotted rope around Rebecca’s neck. As he rode away, the rope tightened.

Reverend Talley bent to whisper in Charlie’s ear. “Watch close, child, or this will be your fate as well.”

Charlie’s eyes grew wide as she watched her struggling mother lifted off the box, gagging, twitching, and gasping for air. Her naked body rose above the cheering crowd and thrashed for minutes until it finally stopped with an expulsion of urine and feces that dripped onto the crate below.

Charlie wept and struggled in the Reverend’s strong hand. “In the name of our Lord,” he told the gawking crowd, “I claim this girl as my new wife. She is the witch’s get, but her father was a good, God-fearing soul. I know he would want his child taken into my care and taught to be a proper Christian woman.

“No, he wouldn’t,” Charlie gasped through her tears. “He’d kill you for what you did to my mama.”

William McCleod, a trapper, had taken his son Thomas and traveled to the Oregon Territory five years earlier with the promise to return for his wife and daughter when he’d established himself there. He hadn’t returned, and Rebecca and Charlie held little hope after so long that he ever would.

“Let me go,” Charlie screamed and struggled to get away from the man. “Amelia hated you and didn’t want your foul get in her belly.” She heard gasps from the people standing around the wagon. “She begged Mama to take it out of her womb and make her so that she couldn’t conceive again.”

Charlie saw looks of understanding on the faces of women. “She told me you beat her and forced yourself on her in the most unnatural ways when she didn’t want you to.”

The man shook Charlie and slapped her. “I intend to take you in every way also, little witch,” he mumbled into her ear, “and you’ll take it just like that little bitch, Amelia,and your witch mother did.”

The Reverend shoved Charlie aside into the arms of another man. “Lower the witch,” he yelled, and the man backed his horse until Rebecca’s body touched the soiled crate once more. The Reverend jumped from the wagon with a jug of kerosene in his hands and proceeded to pour it over Rebecca’s slumped body.

“The witch hunters in Europe knew how to destroy the festered soul of a witch,” he yelled as he took a torch from one of the men. “She cannot rise from Hell if her body is sent there in flames.” He touched the torch to Rebecca, and fire consumed her body.

Charlie screamed at the sight and slumped unconscious in the arms of the man holding her.

Charlie was startled awake with a bucket of cold water. The rope holding her mother in the air had burned through, and Rebecca now sprawled on the leaf-strewn ground, charred black and smoldering. More tears washed down Charlie’s face as the Reverend yanked her to her feet.

“I now take this poor Godless girl, Charlotte McCleod, as my wife,” he yelled. “My announcement makes it so and by consummating our union this night upon returning to my home.” He grinned at Charlie, and she wanted to vomit. “From this day forth, she shall be addressed as Charlotte Talley, my consummated wife.”

From out of the darkness, a man on horseback rode through the crowd and stopped at the wagon. “You can’t take her for your wife, Talley. She’s already mine.”

Charlotte heard gasps from those assembled on the ground below as she stared at the handsome Davis Byrde.

“What do you mean by she’s already yours?” Talley demanded. “The witch didn’t say anything about her belonging to another already.”

Davis glanced at the smoldering heap of flesh and bones on the ground. “Why should she? Charlotte and I consummated our betrothal weeks ago.”

Talley glared down at Charlie. “You’ve already allowed yourself to be sullied by this filthy half-breed bastard?”

Charlie glanced from the grinning young man on the horseback to the scowling Reverend and smiled. “Several times, actually.”

Charlie remembered Amelia telling her how Talley had ranted about prizing virginity in a girl and how he’d enjoyed taking hers.

The Reverend shoved Charlie away from him. “I denounce this trollop as a witch and a whore,” he screamed as Davis Byrde put his arms around Charlie’s waist and helped her onto his horse. “I command you all to shun her and this half-breed as fornicating sinners.”

Being shunned by the people who watched her mother hanged and then burned was fine with Charlie. She knew they wouldn’t shun Davis Byrde, though. His grandmother owned the largest farm in the county and employed a good many of them. Wayne and Sandra Byrde didn’t own slaves. They preferred to have paid hands on their farm, and Charlie had respected that.

Davis was the son of the couple’s daughter Melinda who’d been attacked by rogue Cherokees while she’d been out alone picking berries one day. She’d died in childbirth, but Sandra and Wayne had raised Davis, given him the Byrde name and everything that entailed. He would own the farm someday as their heir.

From that day forward, Davis Byrde had been Charlie’s hero—her knight in shining armor. She’d moved into a room in the Byrde house, and she and Davis had married four years later in a private ceremony in the parlor by a priest brought from Nashville.

Davis had joined the Confederacy at the beginning of the War and died in a battle near the end. Wayne had passed away not long after Davis had enlisted, leaving Sandra and Charlie to manage the farm.

Sandra died of grief after they received the letter that Davis had been lost at Vicksburg. That left Charlotte Byrde, a twenty-four-year-old widow, the sole owner of the Byrde property.

Some days, it was all she could do to go on alone.

Chapter One

Charlie was just sitting down to Sunday Supper when someone pounded on the front door. Who would be knocking on her door this late on a Sunday?

She opened it to find three shabbily dressed men. “May I help you?”

“Is this the home of Mrs. Sandra Davis Byrde?” the older of the three asked.

“It is,” she said, “but Grandmother Byrde passed away three years ago.”

The man licked his dry, chapped lips as he stared Charlie up and down, making her feel very uncomfortable. “And just who might you be? I never knew Aunt Byrdie had a granddaughter.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Clive Davis, Sandra’s nephew, and these fine young men are my sons, Vernon and Floyd Davis.” The two younger men nodded. Charlotte thought they might have been handsome had they bathed, shaved, and combed their hair.

“I’m Charlotte Byrde,” Charlie said, introducing herself formally to these strangers, and took the man’s hand. “I was married to Davis, Mrs. Byrde’s grandson.”

The man glanced over Charlie’s shoulder into the parlor. “Oh, yeah, and where is he?”

“Davis died in the war,” she replied.

“Is that so?” Clive said with an arched brow. “Well, then I reckon that makes us kin by marriage, Miss Charlotte.”

“And kin usually invites other kin inside,” Vernon spoke up from behind his father.

“Is that fried chicken I smell?” Floyd added. “It ain’t right to leave kin out on the porch and deny ‘em a meal if ya have one made. ‘T ain’t Christian, and you look to be a fine Christian woman.”

Charlie certainly wouldn’t claim that title, but she supposed she should invite these men inside if they were family of Grandmother Byrde’s. They made her uneasy, but they were Grandmother Byrde’s family. It wouldn’t be right to leave them out on the porch. Against her better judgment, Charlie opened the door and allowed the men inside.

“I was just getting ready to sit down to supper,” she said and motioned to follow her. “I hope there will be enough. I wasn’t expecting company.”

Clive stopped in front of the fireplace to stare up at the portrait of Sandra and William. “That’s my Aunt Byrdie, all right,” he said with a grin. “She was a right fine-lookin' woman in her day. It’s no wonder she caught the eye of ol’ William.”

Young, dark-haired Davis sat smiling on his grandfather’s knee, but the man made no mention of him. Floyd and Vernon glanced at the portrait but spent most of their time fondling the silver candlesticks on the mantle and the alabaster figurines.

“I’ll set more places at the table,” Charlie said to coax the men into the kitchen.

She took three more plates and cups from the china hutch and silver flatware from the velvet-lined box. She set everything out on the table, and the men dropped into seats. Charlie filled bowls with mashed potatoes, cream gravy, and sweet green peas. She’d made a large batch of biscuits, so she’d have plenty for the next day or two. She put them all on a platter and took them and the plate of chicken she’d fried to the table.

The three men didn’t wait for Charlie to sit before filling their plates and greedily shoving the food into their mouths. Charlie brought a pot of coffee to the table and filled their cups.

Charlie sat and began filling her plate. She did her best to ignore the slurping and smacking sounds of the men eating around her. She just wanted this meal over and these men out of her home.

“This is a right fine meal, Miss Charlotte,” Clive said with a leering grin as he slurped coffee from the delicate china cup that looked out of place in his rough hand. “Your mama did a right fine job with your education in the womanly arts.” He reached over with a greasy hand to finger the lace on her sleeve. “Did you make that dress, too, or do you have a servant woman here in the house to do that for you?”

Charlie pulled her arm away from the man. “I make my own clothes, sir,” she said. “I don’t have any house servants here on the farm. I’m perfectly capable of doing for myself.”

Clive grinned and turned to his sons. “The yard out front looks neat and trimmed. Is that your doin’ as well?”

Charlie sipped her coffee, wondering where the man was going with his questions. “I tend to the flowers and the kitchen garden,” she said,“but one of the farmhands take care of the yard for me.”

“You got niggers here, then?” Floyd asked, wiping grease from his mouth with the sleeve of his worn shirt.

“Lots of ‘em stayed on at their master’s expense after the emancipation,” Vernon said as he glanced around the tidy kitchen.

“William and Sandra never kept slaves here on their farm,” Charlie said as she forked up some potatoes covered with cream gravy. “All my hands here are paid. I have a few Negroes who work in the fields,” she said, “but they’re all paid and live in their own homes.”

Clive snorted. “Ol’ man Byrde always was a strange sort.” He shook his head. “I never understood his reckonin’ that niggers was humans like us white men when everyone knows they ain’t nothin’ but a sort of ape from them wilds in Africa, meant to slave on the land for us humans like mules and horses slave for us.”

Charlie refused to answer such a ridiculous statement. She didn’t know many Negroes, but the ones she did know had much better table manners than these three supposed men.

“It also confounded me some that he let Aunt Byrdie have the runnin’ of this place when women are inferior to men in the runnin’ of a business like this fine farm, and don’t have the head for figures and takin’ care of money.”

Charlie grinned to herself. “Grandmother Byrde did a fine job managing this farm after Grandfather Byrde died,” she protested. “She and I kept it turning a profit during the war when others, run by men, floundered and folded.”

“This used to be the Davis homestead,” Clive said in a cold tone. “Did you know that, Miss Charlotte?”

“Grandmother Byrde mentioned it once,” Charlie admitted. “She said her father willed it to her and William when he died and that they made many improvements over the years and expanded it.”

“You and Aunt Byrdie got the money for the crops sold?” Clive asked with a raised brow.

This man was making Charlie very uneasy now that the subject of money had come up.

“Why ain’t you got youngins?” Floyd asked. “You’re young and look to be healthy.”

Charlie’s eyes widened at the too-familiar question from the stranger. What gave him the right to ask such a question at her table?

“Davis and I were never blessed with children.” She refused to admit she had been pregnant three times but lost the children in the first three months after conception. It was something that shamed Charlie terribly, though Davis had never held it against her in any fashion. They’d planned on trying again after he returned from the War, but that would never happen now, and Charlie batted back the tears stinging her eyes.

“Our Davis kin is buried here on this land, and a Davis man should be livin’ here now.”

“Grandmother Byrde left the farm to Davis and me,” she said with an uneasy sigh. “But Davis died in the war, so it’s just me now.”

Clive snorted. “It’s a sin the old bat gave that half-breed little bastard our good family name. They shoulda strangled him and buried him with his little whore mother who spread her legs for red heathenslike she done.”

Charlie’s mouth fell open, and she dropped her fork into her plate. “I don’t think it was like that at all, sir. Those Indians attacked her and left Davis in her belly.”

“Is that a pie I see over there on the counter?” Vernon asked. “I’d sure like me a piece of pie with a little more coffee, girl.”

Charlie had enough of this. She stood. “I’m not your girl, sir, and I’m withdrawing my invitation.” She pointed toward the door. “I’d like you all to leave my house now.”

Clive burst to his feet and grabbed Charlie’s arm. “The way I see it, this house and farm are rightfully ours now as the Davis heirs to my Aunt Byrdie. Get my son his pie like he told ya to, woman.” He shoved Charlie toward the counter.

Charlie’s blood began to boil. This man had no right coming into her home and treating her this way after she’d shared her meal with him and his two sons. She picked up the blackberry pie, brought it back to the table, and dropped it in front of the smirking Vernon.

She returned to her seat and turned to Clive Davis. “This farm belonged to Sandra and William Byrde, sir. They willed it to their grandson Davis and me as his wife. If you’d like to contest that legal document in court,” Charlie grinned, looking at their shabby clothes, “You can hire a lawyer and do just that.” She stood again. “Now, I’d like you to please leave my home and take your sons with you.”

Neither Clive nor his sons stood. He sat in deep thought, staring up at Charlie while chewing the meat from a chicken leg. He grabbed Charlie’s wrist and yanked her back down into the chair. “I have me another thought on that matter. Me and my two fine sons here are all without wives at the moment.”

Charlie’s eyes darted to the two young men when they began to snicker. What was he going on about now?

“As I recall,” he continued, “in the eyes of the law in the fine state of Tennessee, a woman can’t rightfully hold property in her name.”

“I don’t believe that is true, sir, or Grandmother Byrde’s attorney wouldn’t have allowed her to put it in her will.”

Charlie felt her stomach beginning to turn. Grandmother Byrde’s attorney had warned her that if male Byrde relatives came forward, there could be trouble with the will. She’d assured him there were none, but she hadn’t given thought to Grandmother Byrde’s male relatives.

“Now, if you was to marry one of us fine Davis men and give us a male child to carry on the Davis name, then you could stay on here as the lady of the house.”

Vernon chuckled as he shoveled pie from the pan into his mouth. “If she can fuck as good as she can cook, I’ll marry up with her, Pa.”

Charlie’s eyes went wide, and her cheeks flamed at the young man’s vulgarity. Did this man actually think she would marry one of them and allow him to rut atop her every night until she conceived a child? It was ridiculous.

Charlie stood again to glare down at Clive Davis. “I suggest you hire an attorney, sir. I’d never countenance having any of you filth as a husband. Now, please leave my home. I fear my hospitality has run its course, and I’d like you all to go.”

Clive grinned up at her. “That’s just it, Miss Byrde,” he said in a calm and controlled voice, “this is our home, not yours, and we have no plans to leave it any time soon.”

Charlotte stepped back with rage boiling inside her, knocking over her chair. She wanted to hit this man with something. “Get out of my house,” she screamed.

As Charlie was about to reach for a butcher knife from the block on the counter, something hit the back of her head, and she fell into peaceful darkness.