Always & Forever: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 1) (25 page)

She crawled into Josie’s bed and huddled under the covers.
Cleo hadn’t slept in Josie’s bed since the summertime when Josie was visiting
Abigail Johnston. But now she needed comfort, and she felt closer to Josie with
her head on Josie’s pillow.

Cleo stared big-eyed into the dark until daylight crept
through the window. Then she got up and twisted the crystal knob of the door
into the room where Madame Celine had died. She hesitated in the doorway. The
quiet seemed heavier in there. The room smelled of dust, and a black drape
still covered the big mirror. In the dim grayness, the four-poster bed, covered
by the gossamer of mosquito netting, seemed to hover in the shadows.

Cleo stared at the faint outline of pillows on the bed. Was
there an indentation on the pillow where the dead woman’s head had lain?

Cleo breathed deeply. She mustn’t let her imagination pull
her into the mumbo-jumbo of the slaves. Most of them were ignorant and foolish,
and they saw evil and dread everywhere. Ursaline, fully recovered from the
cholera, continued to feed them voodoo tales and kept them on the lookout for
signs from the other world. Cleo knew the tales, but she knew enough, too, that
they were mostly just that. Stories and nonsense. Cleo was confident God didn’t
hold with messages that depended on chicken feet and fresh blood.

She touched the
benitier
on the door jamb and crossed
herself, then entered the room and walked softly to Madame Celine’s dresser.
She found a dried-up pot of rouge, a jar of rancid face cream, and a box of
pale ivory powder. The spoiled cream turned her stomach, but she took the box
of powder back to Josie’s room.

Cleo’s skin was lighter than any other slave’s on the place,
even lighter than Thibault’s, but her
café au lait
color was far darker
than Celine’s fair skin had been. The powder did nothing to conceal the black
bruises and the red abrasions. The light dusting made her swollen nose look
even bigger, and in the end, she washed it off. There would be no disguising
the beating she’d taken.

At breakfast, Madame Emmeline sat down at the table,
accepted her coffee from Cleo and reached for the cream. She stirred the cup
absently as Cleo served her the blood pudding and sausage Louella had brought
over. Presently, Emmeline asked for the jelly. When Cleo set it down at her
elbow, Emmeline glanced up.

Madame put both hands on the table and stared at Cleo’s
battered face. Cleo dropped her eyes and endured the inspection, waiting to
hear what Madame would say. Madame might demand an explanation, might punish
her. That she should punish LeBrec occurred to Cleo, but she knew it would not
happen.

After a very long moment, Madame finally spoke. “I told you
to stay in the house.”

Cleo nodded and kept her eyes down.

Madame Emmeline shoved her breakfast away. She shook her
head. “Stay in the house, Cleo.”

“Yes, Madame. I will.” Cleo looked into Madame’s face. The
only other time she’d seen pain in her grandmother’s eyes was during the days
after the flood, when they had both lost their loved ones. Yes, Madame did care
for her; it was there, in her eyes.

The moment was short. Madame Emmeline stood up. “I’ll have
my coffee in the office.”

Cleo spent the morning cleaning the same floors she’d
cleaned yesterday. With only little Laurie, Madame, and herself in the house,
there was not much work to be done. Today, though, the routine was soothing,
and Cleo gladly dusted the parlor and swept the galleries front and back. She
asked Madame’s permission, and then let in the mid-day light to dust and polish
Madame Celine’s bedroom. There was no indentation on the pillow, no eeriness
with the fresh wind blowing in from the open window. Cleo tied the mosquito
nettings up from around the bed and ran her hand over the satin coverlet. No
trace of Celine in the room at all, only what one’s mind put there.

Late that morning, at the expected time, Monsieur Bertrand
Chamard rode up the alley of oaks from the river road. Cleo saw him from the
window as she was closing up Madame Celine’s room. Monsieur was an observant
man, and he would notice her bruises immediately.

She retreated to Josie’s room and hoped Madame would not
send for her. Surely Laurie was old enough to help in the dining room. She
listened to Elbow John and Thibault greet Monsieur in the courtyard below her
windows. Then, when he climbed the back gallery stairs, she waited to see if
Laurie would answer his knock.

At last Laurie opened the door to him and invited him
inside. A little later, Cleo heard Louella in the dining room with Laurie
preparing to serve dinner. Madame had excused her then.

She lay down on Josie’s bed. As long as she had stayed busy,
the pain had been bearable, but now her face -- eye, nose, and jaw -- throbbed.
After Madame and Monsieur had dined, she would ask Louella for some of the
tafia
she kept in the cookhouse. It was nothing like as smooth as the wine she served
Madame, but it would dull the pain.

When she heard Madame and Monsieur settling in the parlor
after dinner, she opened the bedroom door that opened into the dining room.
Louella was clearing the dishes from the table when Cleo entered.

“Law,
chérie
, you no need to be up. You get back in
de bed.”

“It hurts, Louella. Will you bring me some
tafia
?”

“I tole you dis mawnin you need a piece o’ beefsteak on dat
bruise, Cleo. De sooner you get de swelling down, the sooner you can see dat
Remy. He already know ‘bout Boots lying dead in the grove. Won’t do no good me
keeping my mout shut, you don’t get dat face looking right.”

“They gave Boots a good burial? A real grave?”

“Elbow John see to it hisself, Old Sam bein’ in de field
already.”

Louella maneuvered Cleo into the chair in the corner next to
the big buffet. She took a glass down from the cabinet and filled it from the
decanter. “You drink dis. You don’ want no
tafia
when you got de good
wine right here. Madame don’ care and won’t know neither. I comin’ back wif de
beefsteak, and you gone sit right dere.”

Louella left with a tray of dishes, and Cleo leaned her head
against the chair back. She closed her eyes for a moment, but then the door
from the parlor opened and Bertrand Chamard stepped in to fetch the wine
decanter.

Cleo stood up quickly to leave, but when Chamard saw her, he
stopped dead in front of her chair. She could only stand there.

“My God, Cleo.”

He touched her swollen cheek with his finger. The compassion
in his eyes nearly undid her, and tears welled. She dropped her eyes so he
couldn’t see her embarrassment, or how moved she was at his kindness.

Chamard glanced over his shoulder toward the parlor and
spoke quietly.

“Who did this to you?”

Cleo shook her head. She moved to get past him, but Bertrand
blocked her way.

He stood very close. The scent of his wool jacket, of his
tobacco, of the man himself seemed to pull her to him.

“Please, Monsieur,” she said.

Bertrand hesitated. He touched her face again very gently;
then he stepped aside. Cleo brushed past him and hurried back to the bedroom.

When Bertrand returned to Madame Emmeline with the decanter,
he poured them each another glass of wine. He pondered whether to mention
Cleo’s evident beating, and decided he would be straining their friendship to
intrude into Emmeline’s household affairs.

They talked instead of the market activity and the
reputations of several brokers in New Orleans they both knew. But Bertrand was
unsettled. He couldn’t forget Cleo’s poor discolored face or the look of
resignation in her eyes. He wanted to smash whoever had done this to her.

He considered for a moment that it might have been Emmeline
herself who had beaten Cleo, but these were not the marks from a woman, however
furious she might have been. It had been a man who attacked Cleo. There were
precedents enough in cane country for Bertrand to realize it must have been the
overseer. His hands itched to give LeBrec back what he’d done to Cleo.

He excused himself early from Emmeline’s parlor, pleading
the threatening clouds in the west.

“Laurie,” Madame said, “go tell Elbow John to bring
Monsieur’s horse from the barn.”

“No need, Emmeline. I’ll get it myself.”

“Of course not, Bertrand. Laurie is to go out to bring
LeBrec to me anyway. I sent word to him that I would see him this afternoon.
Run along, Laurie.”

“Trouble?” Bertrand ventured.

Emmeline looked at him. “I believe you saw Cleo in the
dining room after dinner.”

“I did. She’s had a very bad beating.”

“Yes, she has. But she knew to stay out of his way. She
didn’t listen to me.”

“Can I help in any -- ?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Emmeline said and handed him his
hat.

As Bertrand crossed the yard to his horse, LeBrec sauntered
toward him on his way to the house. Bertrand took the reins from Thibault and
said, “Run on, now, Tio.”

LeBrec’s left hand was bandaged tightly, the whole hand. Red
scratches ran the length of one cheek, and there was a deep gouge near his eye.
Every mark proved Cleo had not yielded submissively, and Bertrand applauded her.

“How do you do, Monsieur Chamard,” LeBrec said.

Bertrand reached a hand out and grabbed the man’s arm. “I
have an interest in this girl, LeBrec,” he said. “If I see another mark on her
…”

There was no conviction in LeBrec’s voice when he spoke.
“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about.” Bertrand saw fear in the
overseer’s eyes. It was no surprise the man was a coward. “Don’t touch her
again,” Bertrand said. He turned his back on the overseer and mounted his
horse.

As Bertrand rode past the house, he looked up at the bedroom
Cleo had retreated to. The curtains moved, and he knew she’d watched him with
LeBrec.

Phanor’s new life presented him with long hours and new
challenges, but he greeted each day with a happy heart. Being Monsieur
Cherleu’s wine merchant meant he had to learn which ships traversed the
Atlantic the quickest, which captains could be trusted to deliver a shipment
intact, which season roiled the ocean and thus the wine. He introduced himself
to the bosses on the wharves, to
major domos
in the best restaurants and
clubs, and to riverboat entrepreneurs who delivered to the plantations along
the Mississippi.

Phanor’s palate was innocent, and at first he hardly
discerned the difference between a sweet white wine and a dry one. When he met
with his customers at the various restaurants and clubs, the buyers inevitably
wanted to discuss the bouquet, the body, the length of the wine. Phanor felt
they were speaking another language, and he determined to cure his ignorance.

At the famous restaurant
Les Trois Frères
on the Rue
Dauphine, Phanor cultivated the friendship of Jean Paul Rouquier, the chief
wine steward. Jean Paul loved wine, and he loved to talk about it.

“This now, Phanor, observe. You see the wine’s robe is
golden.”

“Its robe?”

“
Oui
. Its robe is rather a golden hue. Before we even
inhale its bouquet, we expect an older, fuller flavor. The deeper the color of
the
vin blanc
, the more it has aged. Now, my friend, gently move your
glass, like so.”

Phanor swirled the wine in the fine crystal glass as Jean
Paul demonstrated. Then he sipped.

“
Non, non
. Not yet. You must not hurry it. This is
not a young wine to be guzzled with one’s sausage and rice. Now. Breathe in the
bouquet.” Jean Paul closed his eyes and inhaled. “Ah. Tell me, Phanor, what do
you smell?”

“Flowers,” he said.

“Very good, Phanor,” Jean Paul said. “Now we will explore
the
arome de bouche
. Take only a sip, that’s right. Now purse your lips
together, like so. Breathe a little air over your tongue and roll the wine
around in your mouth.”

Phanor closed his eyes and breathed in the taste. He smiled
in pleasure.

Jean Paul said, “Soon, my friend, you will be a
connoisseur
of wine, and you will be after my job.”

Phanor raised his glass to Jean Paul. “You have nothing to
fear from me. I am only a country Cajun, and I always will be. But I thank you
for making me less the bumpkin than I was.
A votre santé.
”

Those first months in New Orleans, Phanor relished the
city’s hustle and bustle, every corner offering new sights and sounds. Phanor
was conscious of a new life with new possibilities. He would not have to be a
poor man living on the edge of the swamps. He might be a man of New Orleans, a
man of taste and fashion.

With his first earnings, more money than he or his papa had
ever seen at one time, Phanor bought bolts of cotton to send to his sister. She
would make clothes for herself and little Nicholas. For his father and
brother-in-law, he bought tobacco and pipes of polished brier.

Then Phanor began to think of his own appearance. He met
with respectable merchants nearly every day, and he had become aware of how
rough he looked. So it was that when he met Josie in the park with the
américains
,
he was dressed in a fine bottle-green jacket and buff trousers. His hat sported
a green ribbon, and his black boots shone.

He hadn’t been surprised to see Josie in Jackson Square. He
had looked for her on every street every day since he had learned she was in
New Orleans. Phanor’s sister Lalie could read and write a little, and she had
sent him a letter. Nicholas had taken his first steps alone, Papa had the
rheumatism, the neighbors on Toulouse had nearly rebuilt everything swept away
by the flood.

“They caught that runaway,” Lalie wrote, “the one you know.”
Worse luck, Remy, Phanor thought. He hoped they went easy on him.