“You will not,” said her brother. “Singing some cavalry song here at our garden party! Stop it.”

He took his sister’s arm and they strolled away. The musicians tugged at their coat hems, snatched down their cuffs, and started out with the modestly lively tune called “The Glendy Burke.”

The back lawn filled up. Where had people hidden these light dresses and fashionable small hats, how had the men come by unworn suits of black and waistcoats in worked silk during the blockade and the two battles of Galveston? The listeners put down their cups of tea or glasses of lemonade and clapped for a moment and then went back to talking and gliding across the leveled grasses.

They went through all their modestly lively tunes very quickly and Simon said, “Let’s do them all again.”

That got them through the first hour and a half. By this time, they were wet with sweat and Damon wiped it from his brow with his sleeve; Simon opened his vest and shirt as far as he dared. The boy laid down his drum and disappeared into the crowd and came back with clean bar rags and handed them around. Doroteo wiped down his frets. It came on evening and the sea light was low and the grateful wind picked up off the Gulf to come rushing across the island and into the broad, elegant Strand. Much stronger beverages were being added to the men’s drinks and so nobody was leaving. Damon ate the pig-in-a-blanket from his coat pocket. The junior Pryor wandered up.

“Excellent, you are doing very well. Will you have a drink?”

“Thank you, no,” said Damon. He wiped his hands on a bar rag.

“What can I do for you?”

Simon thought, Keep those Union officers away from us, but he said, “We’re doing fine, much appreciated.” Then he said to the others, “I am going to play ‘La Savane’ in G-flat major, follow if you can.”

And he sailed out upon that particular sea with his bow leaping like a dolphin in the bow wave of a fast ship, into the four parts that he had learned at the cost of fifteen cents from a man named LaPlante there in Paducah, nearly two years ago, when Nathan Bedford Forrest stole all their horses and burned down their barn.

Everyone stopped to listen. Even in their excited, urgent talking, their news of the occupation, gossip of the sudden new alignments of loyalties and prestige, new sources of wealth, still they listened to the phrases of melody that somehow fitted together as constellations fit together far away in the deeps of space, shining over the Gulf.

Simon at last lowered his bow and when he looked up, he saw the Creole girl holding a tray of smoking brisket, staring at him enraptured. The tune had been for her and her lover far away in New Orleans, and in the garden cressets he could see that her eyes shone with wet. He smiled at her, laid his bow alongside his leg, and bent in a very slight bow.

Chapter Nine

With the onset of night, the moon rose out of the Gulf as if spying covertly on the world of ocean. People were scattering. The musicians began to open their instrument cases, take a small drink. As Simon returned from the facilities behind the kitchen building, buckling his belt, the thin cook stood in front of the kitchen water butt as if still guarding the wine she had dropped into it and said, “She wants to see you.” She nodded slowly, knowingly, at Simon’s surprise.

“Sorry, who?”

“Miss Pryor. She said she wants to show you that song.”

Simon straightened his coat. “What song?”

“She said ‘Red River Valley.’ In there.” The cook gestured toward a rear entrance to the house. Simon picked up his fiddle and bow and walked to it; the entrance way was, like the rest of the house, elegant. It was arched over with rustic-cut stone and a set of steps led upward, into an empty hall. One gaslight burned. Down at the end of the hall a doorway was open.

He watched her slow, reasoning gesture, a light tap at the air.

“No, he was right. I shouldn’t be singing cavalry songs.”

Miss Pryor put one hand on the keys but did not press them. Simon stood at the left side of the piano in a loose slant with his bow held straight down his leg. The fiddle was under his arm and the atmosphere in the drawing room was immobile as a lantern slide. The Gulf air seemed to have come to a halt at the tall open window. An oil lamp burned under a milky shade.

“Maybe not,” he said and waited. He had followed her invitation; it seemed this was a secret escapade that he might hear her sing “Red River Valley” after all but now this. She’d sent the message by the cook. The cook; take note. In his walk down the hall he felt the silence of the house, not as if it were empty, but as if someone stood silently behind one of the many doors, listening. He said, “You don’t have to sing it, Miss Pryor. You might single-note it on the keys.”

She lifted her bare shoulders. “I don’t really know where to start. I suppose . . .” She struck F. “No. Not there.” Her hair was a bright, clear brown. She sat at the piano bench and lifted her face to him. “What do you play, usually? You are very good.”

“What do I play.” Simon watched her tap her fingers on the keys, making no sound. “Why do you want to know?”

“Oh!” She snatched her hands down into her silk lap. “Well. Because you’re so accomplished and—that was rude.”

He bent his head briefly and said, “Yes, it was. Still.”

“Because there are so many places you could perform.” She doesn’t want to know what I usually play. “Or teach.” She gave him a broad smile and lifted one hand and shook down a bracelet. “You could, say, travel to cities other than this one. St. Louis? And teach.”

He moved his head against the constriction of the cravat and let several seconds pass like a bright wire hand on his personal clock that ticked away in silence. “Teach who?”

“Me.” She said it almost defiantly. He had been rude once and might be so again; with his thin refined face and pale damp skin and the deep eyes so guarded that he might have just been turned out of the spirit world for transgressions unknown. She had had contacts with the spirits and they had given her various permissions, certain promises. “We have to return to St. Louis shortly.”

“What is shortly?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know, just fairly soon I suppose.” She waved away dates, times, the hard data of the world. “We do chemicals.” Once again a lengthy consideration. “Pryor Chemical Company.”

And you want a pet violinist to play . . .

“To play some of the modern pieces. The ones that express lightness of heart, the finer emotions, perhaps yearning, such as those by the Italian composers. I like those. Do you know them?”

She was soft as down and he had not touched a woman in a long time, especially not one this delicate. Someone who took pains and care to attend to herself and her hands, carefully choose the right color of dress and have it made with a very low bodice. Off the shoulders.

“Which ones? For instance.” Simon touched the fiddle strings with his thumb, as if to silence them, as if they might be resonating to something in his body without his permission. “I’m in the dark here.” Not really.

“No, I don’t really know them. I should work at it more. I’m incurably lazy.”

He saw her bend forward to the sheet music on the piano and look at the notes searchingly and then sit back. All her movements were slow and her interest in music was minimal and her skin pink with the heat—her arms and her throat and the crease of her breasts in the low bodice. He turned away for a moment to settle himself, to feel the relief of being inside a house finely appointed with little note of war. All the windows unbroken and the walls unscarred. How had they managed it? One lonely bullet mark on the wood framing of a fanlight. Carpet somewhat worn. Candies bright as toys in dishes. Her dress new and fresh and so was she, so slow, slow as an infant with the same deep impenetrable self-absorption. He stood in the middle of rich textures and clean scents and polished wood flooring, white unstained walls and unbroken glassware. He tipped his head as if he were interested in what she was saying.

She was speaking of her brother and her father, her influence with them. How she could obtain a position for him as a music master. He listened to her spin one fantasy after another; he to take ship with them on the return to New Orleans and then upriver. They would stand together on the rail to watch the great river pass by.