Always & Forever: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 1) (38 page)

In the house, Cleo tended to Madame. She wondered if she had
had another stroke, for Madame seldom bothered to try to speak any more, and
the light in her eyes seemed to dim with every passing week. Cleo resumed her
long walks while her patient slept the afternoons away, Laurie sitting nearby
with mending in her lap.

The smoke from Cherleu indicated Monsieur Chamard’s cane was
cut. He hadn’t visited Toulouse since June when the financial world, and
Josie’s hopes, had collapsed. Today, as Cleo walked along a winding path
through the plantation, she pictured the warm brown eyes that had looked into
hers after LeBrec assaulted her the first time. A fork in the path veered south
toward Cherleu, and Cleo took it.

The smell of scorched sugar spread through the wooded strip
between Toulouse and Cherleu. Cleo could see the flickering orange of low
flames in the nearest field, and the fire drew her to it. She stopped at the
edge of the trees to watch the burning, and on the other side of the fire,
perhaps fifty yards from her, sat Monsieur Chamard on his roan stallion.

He seemed bemused as he watched the flames, and she stared
at him. Cleo wondered if he had forgotten Josie already. And what of me, she
thought. Has he lost interest in me as well?

Bertrand wakened from his reverie, raised his head and
looked directly at Cleo across the burning field. She held his eyes a moment,
and then she turned back into the woods.

The days of harvest passed. Josie met the interest payments,
but Monsieur Moncrieff sent word she would have to begin paying toward the
principal or he would be forced to foreclose. “Never,” Josie breathed. “I’ll
find a way.” In the late hours, she concocted scheme after scheme to raise
money only to see them as pointless, even absurd, in the morning.

Cleo felt shut out from the business of the plantation. She
might have been some help to Josie, but Josie didn’t confide in her, didn’t ask
her to share the burden of worry. Instead, Cleo mourned Remy, cared for
Grand-mère, and ran the house. Toulouse belonged to Josie, not to a bastard
slave girl.

Cleo bore her grief differently than Josie had. She knew the
peace of having been loved, entirely and surely. She had no doubts, no torments
of there being something intrinsically unworthy about her. Her dream of a life
with Remy, as free man and free woman, seemed very distant, and she had not
found the heart to dream another dream. But the sap ran strong in her, and she
felt herself ready, waiting, for life to begin again.

An hour before sunset, a shawl over her shoulders, Cleo
wandered along the levee, watching the dark water flowing. All those months
when fear of LeBrec had kept her house-bound, Cleo had yearned for the solitude
and solace of the outdoors.

A river boat churned past, and Cleo waved to one of the
colored men, an old man with white hair, who’d shouted a cheery hello. The
noise of the paddle wheel covered the clomp of horse hooves on the road until a
dark horse and rider emerged from the shadows. Cleo recognized Monsieur
Chamard’s roan and then the man himself.

When he drew near, he pulled the horse over and stopped. On
the raised ground of the levee, Cleo stood perhaps three feet higher than
Chamard, and he had to remove his hat to look up at her.

Neither spoke for a moment. Then Chamard said softly,
“Bonsoir, Cleo.”

When he had been Josie’s suitor, Cleo had avoided eye
contact with him, but not any longer. “
Bonsoir
, Monsieur.”

Chamard dismounted, climbed to where Cleo stood. They didn’t
speak. He put his hand behind her waist and drew her to him. For a long while,
he simply held her. Then Cleo raised her face for his kiss.

A cold winter wind blew the day Cleo first experienced
morning sickness. Josie might have known nothing of it except that it took Cleo
by surprise as she rose from her low bed in Josie’s room. She barely made it to
the wash basin, and Josie hurried to hold Cleo’s hair back as she heaved.

Maybe Cleo had eaten something that disagreed with her, Josie
suggested. But then it happened again the next morning, and the next. Cleo was
pregnant.

“So the worm fern didn’t work.” Josie slapped her hand on
the table. “And now you carry that man’s child.” She reached for the medical
book. “Cleo, there are other remedies in here. You won’t have to have this
baby.”

Cleo didn’t want any of Josie’s remedies. She had nothing of
her own in this life, and even if it had been LeBrec’s offspring, she would
want it. But she had counted the days. It wasn’t LeBrec’s.

“A sin. You know it’d be a sin,” Cleo said.

“Not when it was rape. Father Philippe will ask God to
forgive us.”

Cleo shook her head. If it’s a boy, she thought, I’ll name
him Gabriel, like Remy and I had planned.

“Cleo, you can’t want that man’s child.”

“It’s my child. This is my baby, Josie. Just mine.”

And so the months went by, Cleo taking on that distracted
air of mothers-to-be, as of someone listening to a small voice no one else
could hear. She met Chamard often in a small cabin at the back of Cherleu, and
he delighted in pressing his ear against her swollen belly to hear the faint
heart beat. However much he might accept the child, though, Cleo secretly
claimed it wholly for herself.

Winter passed, and spring. The scent of magnolia blossoms
weighted the air, the bees buzzed around the roses, and the cane grew in the
fields.

Josie made the minimum payments to satisfy Monsieur
Moncrieff by selling much of the timber in the back woods of the plantation.
There was a limit to how much could be cut, however, and so Josie still paced
and schemed.

Rain and sun favored the lower Mississippi day after day.
Without the fear and dread LeBrec had inspired, the slaves followed Old Sam and
labored heartily in the communal garden. They had corn enough for the coming
year as well as a little surplus to sell. They had beans to dry, peaches and
guavas, berries and cucumbers to preserve.

In mid-June, Josie observed the anniversary of the last time
she’d seen Bertrand. She was quiet all morning. At noon, she wandered out to
the river road, not even a hat to shelter her from the freckling sun, and
stared southward toward Cherleu. The road might have been a path of briers and
thorns for all she would have traveled it. And yet, she thought. After a
moment, she shook her head and returned to the house.

Josie expected Cleo to birth her baby any day. It had been
ten months since LeBrec had left the place, yet she showed no signs of imminent
delivery. Josie perused the worn book of remedies for encouraging the onset of
labor, but when she broached the idea to Louella, the cook only laughed. “Dem
chil’rens come when dey’s ready. Sometimes dey’s born wid long fingernails and
hair enough to tie in rags. No need fo us to do nothin’.”

Cleo herself seemed unconcerned. She moved more awkwardly,
had more trouble getting out of a chair, and she minded the heat terribly, but
she sang under her breath through the long days. She loved to take Laurie’s or
Louella’s hand and lay it on her belly to feel the baby kick. Once she’d done
the same with Grand-mère.

She laid her dust cloth down and smiled. “Here, Madame. Feel
this.”

She watched the old woman’s twisted face and kept
Grand-mère’s hand on her tight abdomen to feel a kick, and then another.

“Louella says it’s sure to be a boy, he kicks so hard,” Cleo
said.

Grand-mère agreed. “Sss boy,” she said. Then Grand-mère sat
back in her chair, her eyes hard and shrewd.

“Ooos?” she said.

Cleo stood very still.    

Grand-mère pointed at Cleo’s belly and said again, “Ooos?”

“You remember, Madame,” Cleo said, as if Madame ever forgot
anything. “In the fall – the overseer? That’s why Josie told him to get off the
place.”

“I. mem ber,” Grand-mère said. “Ver…well.”

She knows it’s a lie, Cleo thought. She knows everything,
just like she always did even if she can’t speak. She picked up her dust cloth
and busied herself.

It was late in August when Cleo swayed out to the front
gallery after lunch with a tray of lemonade for Josie and Madame. She stopped
suddenly, her eyes wide, and water gushed from between her legs. Josie jumped
up and took the tray.

Cleo’s face went pale with the first contraction. “God, that
hurts,” she breathed when it eased.

“Laurie, go tell Louella it’s time,” Josie said. “Then run
on for Ursaline.”

Josie sat Cleo in a chair and then hurried to her room to
strip the sheets off her own bed. Over the mattress she laid the oiled canvas
she’d put by for this moment and spread old sheets over it for comfort.
Whose
baby was this, after all?
Josie wondered. She’d finally understood too many
months had passed for it to be the overseer’s child.
Cleo must have found
some comfort with one of the men in the quarters. That was good. Cleo needed
someone after losing Remy
. Josie tied the braided cloth rope to the
bedstead for Cleo to pull on, then rushed back to the porch to fetch her.

“Did you have another contraction?”

“Not yet.”

Josie helped Cleo into the bed. She’d hardly lain back when
the next contraction rolled over her. She groaned.

Josie looked out the window, hoping to see Ursaline on her
way. She’d read the pages on birthing babies, but book-learning didn’t seem
enough. She wanted Ursaline here, and fast.

Louella hustled in first, a big smile on her face. “We gone
have us a baby in de house again. Nothin’ livens up a house like a baby.”

Ursaline arrived at last, her bag of herbs in hand. She had
Louella brew a tea to ease Cleo’s pain, arranged the sheets for easy access to
the baby, and periodically prodded and poked. Josie, she insisted, might stay
if she wished, but she would sit in the corner out of the way. Josie sat.

Cleo labored through the afternoon. As the sun went down,
the pains came faster and harder. Her hair hung in sweat-soaked tendrils around
her face, and she began to pant with every contraction.

“It’s acomin’,” Ursaline said. “Louella, you keep dat
blanket at de ready.”

Josie hovered at the head of the bedstead, too excited to
sit in the corner. She wiped Cleo’s face and made soothing sounds as Cleo gave
another mighty push.

“It’s a boy,” Ursaline announced, and held him up for all to
see.

The baby let out an indignant wail, and Cleo laughed and
cried at once. Ursaline handed him to Louella to wipe clean and swaddle while
she tended to Cleo.

Josie plumped Cleo’s pillows so she could see better, and
then Cleo said, “Give him to me, Louella.”

Cleo unwrapped the swaddling enough to hold one tiny hand in
her own. A perfect little hand, five perfect fingers curling around hers.
“Gabriel,” she said softly.

The baby had a fine thatch of straight black hair on his
head, and Josie leaned in for a better look. “He’s so red,” she said. “But look
at his eyes. He’s looking right at me.” She laughed and ran a finger over the
soft cheek.

Ursaline mixed another potion to curb Cleo’s bleeding and
fed it to her by the spoonful over the next hour. Cleo finally fell asleep, and
after Louella had given Gabriel a better washing, Josie held her arms out for
him. There hadn’t been a happy day in that household for a long time. Josie
rocked and sang to Cleo’s baby, his hand curled around her finger this time.

In the next weeks, Josie fell in love again. Gabriel smiled
when she rocked him, she was sure of it. Louella always said, “Dat’s jus’ gas,
Mam’zelle. Dat baby don’ know nothin bout smiling yet.” But Josie knew he
smiled for her.

Cleo regained her strength quickly. She was generous in her
happiness, and often laid Gabriel in Grand-mère’s lap, careful to support his
head herself. Grand-mère patted his little tummy and cooed to him. As soon as
she was on her feet, Cleo resumed her chores and cared for little Gabriel as
well. When he wasn’t feeding at her breast, she carried him in a sling across
her back or in the front if her task allowed it. When Josie wanted to hold him,
Cleo regretted letting him go, but not because she begrudged Josie his company.
She simply hated to be without him for a moment.

She learned to share him gladly, though, as Josie clearly
loved him too. Who else would listen when Cleo wanted to describe the moment
when Gabriel discovered his thumb, how he shook his rattle, how he turned his
head to listen to the mockingbird outside the window. And Josie exclaimed, too,
when she had had him for an hour, over the miracles Gabriel had accomplished.

Cleo felt she had a friend, and a sister, again. She and
Josie spoke more often now of Grand-mère than they had, of Toulouse, of the
garden, and of how Gabriel would grow tall and handsome.

Josie spent most of the day dealing with the plantation,
consulting with Old Sam about the work to be done, keeping the accounts,
watching the weather. Cleo began to take an interest in the nursing to be done
among the slaves. She studied the old book of medicinals and relieved Josie of
seeing to the sickness in the quarters. All the coldness, the distance between
them, seemed to have never been.

When the September heat peaked, everyone moved as little as
possible. In the fields, men and women still toiled to keep the weeds out of
the cane, but in the house, they kept all the windows and doors open for the
river breeze to sweep through.

Josie had spent the day on her horse, reviewing the fields,
checking the progress of each crew at work in the hot sun. Another bill was due
the bank in ten days, and Josie had yet to accumulate the full amount. In the
afternoon, her eyes strained from squinting in the bright light, her head
aching, Josie retreated to the house.

“Come catch the river breeze on the front gallery,” Cleo
told her. “I’ve got a pitcher of water out there; that’s what you need.”