Always & Forever: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 1) (48 page)

“That’s right. Have you got a kiss for your sister?”

“I got lots of kisses. Dis here baby belongs to me now,
don’t he?”

Josie laughed. “You’re going to have to share him, Thibault.
Lots of us lay claim to this little boy.”

Josie looked at Cleo. “You ready?”

Cleo nodded. She took Gabriel back from Thibault, and the
two women walked up the alley to the big house. Grand-mère waited on the
gallery in her rolling chair. When Josie approached the stairs, Grand-mère
pushed Laurie away and tried to get up, but Josie hurried up the steps in time
to stop her.

“I’m here, Grand-mère. Don’t get up.” She took her
grandmother’s trembling hands and let Grand-mère gaze at her.

“Ishu?” Grand-mère said.

“I de only one dat understand her,” Laurie said. “She say,
is dat you?”

“It’s me, Grand-mère. And look who’s with me.”

Josie stood to the side and Cleo stepped in front of
Grand-mére. The faded eyes peered intently at Gabriel. He laid his head against
his maman’s breast and peeked at the old woman with the deep-set eyes.

“ S’mile?” Grand-mère reached for Gabriel. “S my ‘mile!” She
held her hands out. “My ‘mile!”

“She say he her Emile,” Laurie translated.

“I know,” Josie said.

Cleo’s face clouded up. She knelt down next to Grand-mére’s
chair. “Gabriel,” she said, “say ‘How do you do?’” He murmured the words and
allowed his great-grandmother to stroke his black hair.

 “S’mile,” she said again.

“Grand-mère,” Josie said, “You haven’t said hello to Cleo.”

Grand-mère stared at Cleo until at last the light of
recognition shone in her eyes. She held out a hand to stroke Cleo’s face. She
touched her hair as if to bless her, and Cleo let her tears fall unchecked.

Phanor joined them on the gallery. While Cleo moved away to
compose herself, he smiled at Grand-mère and bent over her hand. “Madame
Emmeline,” he said. “Good day to you.”

Grand-mère seemed confused. “ ‘sis?”

“It’s Phanor DeBlieux, Grand-mère.”

She stared at Phanor a good while, and then smiled at him
with her half-frozen face. “‘Day,” she said very clearly.

“I have something to tell you, Grand-mère.” Josie held her
hand out to Phanor, who took hers in his. “Phanor and I are married,
Grand-mère. I am Madame Phanor DeBlieux.”

They waited while Grand-mère worked it out. At last she
nodded emphatically. “‘S good,” she said.

Josie and Phanor lay in bed that night, listening to the
house settle and the crickets rub their legs together.

“I like this bed,” Phanor said. He idly pulled a curl of
Josie’s hair through his fingers.

“Better than ours?”

“In this bed, a man can stretch his legs out.”

“So that’s what you’re thinking about. Stretching your
legs?”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Whether our first son should be Phanor Emile Antoine or
Phanor Antoine Emile. What do you think?”

“I think we need to get to work making that baby before we
name him.”

Josie pushed the covers back. “That’s what I was thinking.”

Scared he’d lose sight of his brother in the night, Peter
followed close on John Man’s heels. They were in new territory now, miles
beyond the boundaries of the Johnston plantation.

John Man reached a hand behind him and Peter stopped. “You
hear that?” John Man whispered.

Hounds. Peter grabbed his brother’s arm. “John, what we gone
do?”

“Likely they’s two, three mile away yet. Keep you head.”

They ran, the dark pressing in on them. Then the fear pushed
them faster and they thrashed through the brush, heedless of the noise they
made -- the hounds followed their scent, not their clamor.

They struggled up a hill and the woods ended. Headstones
gleamed in the moonlight and Peter trembled, dreading the white shadows of
ghosts emerging from the graves.

“This way,” John Man said, turning right to skirt the
cemetery.

Peter’s breath came ragged and shallow. “They’s louder,” he
gasped. He could hardly breathe, his chest was so tight.

John Man paused. The hounds were closing in. He stared at
the heavens, at the cold, indifferent moon. “We not gon’ outrun them dogs.”

“John, they tear us up, they get us.”

“I ain’t going back, Petie. They axe my foot, I go back
again.”

Peter clutched at his brother, the fear sucking at his
courage. “I’s scared, John.”

“Petie, let ‘em catch you, take you home to Grandmama. Hear?
Climb up dat sycamore so the dogs don’t get you ‘fore the men come up behind
‘em.”

“Don’t leave me, John.”

John Man pried Peter’s fingers loose. “You ain’t a man yet,
they don’t be too hard on you.”

“They thrash me, John.”

John Man gave him a shove. “Petie, get up dere now. I’s
going on.”

John Man ran. Peter climbed. Higher and higher up the trunk,
the branches smaller and thinner.
Dey stop to catch me, dat give John time.
Peter kept climbing.

His heart began to steady, his breath to slow. He’d be safe
once the men caught up with the dogs to hold them off. Then he’d climb down, go
back to Grandmama. After the man cut him with the whip, she’d tend him.

The tree top bent over from his weight. Peter scrabbled for
a better handhold, grabbed onto a branch. It snapped, and he grasped at the
next one. He missed, his body now tipping further out, away from the bole.
Hands seizing on outer twigs, Peter crashed down and down through the leaves.
He bounced when he hit the ground, the breath knocked out of him.

He tried to suck air, but his lungs were stunned.
Keep
you head. It come back. Wait for it.
At last, air. He gulped it in, and
sound returned to his starved brain. The hounds were coming. He ran headlong
through the gravestones, too frightened to heed the ghostly rising vapors.

John Man had run east, like they’d planned. He’d go the
other way, find another tree. Hurry. They coming.

Nothing but brush now as he ran down the hill. Too late to
turn back to the trees. Peter plunged into briars. The baying of the hounds so
close now, so close. Thorns clawed at him, cutting and slicing and snagging as
he scrambled for the swamp. No thought of the briars nor of the snakes and
gators in the bayou, he knew only flight.

Moongleam on water. He threw himself into the black soup.
Too shallow. Running, thrashing and splashing, giving himself away. Panic had
him, and he couldn’t stop, couldn’t think.

A quick look over his shoulder. The dogs roiling the water
now, their eyes gleaming yellow in the moonlight. That dream, he lived the
dream that haunted him since childhood, his legs churning but going nowhere.

They were on him. The lead hound dragged him down for the
others to snap and snarl and tear at. Slashes, gnawing, crunching as teeth
found bone. His brain shut off the pain -- but not the horror, the terrible
knowing as teeth ripped at his clothes, at his flesh.

Over the growling and snapping, Peter heard his own scream,
far away, high and without end.

By the time the men caught up to the dogs, Peter’s blood
thickened the dark water and he had ceased to struggle.

Warm hands pulled him out of the water and laid him on the
ground in a circle of lamplight. A man with a shotgun over his shoulder nudged
him with his boot. “You boys may as well take him on back. See if somebody
wants to try sewing him up, but I reckon it won’t do no good.”

Two black men, barefoot and ragged as Peter, knelt down. One
of them took off his filthy rough shirt and wrapped it around Peter’s neck before
they lifted him.

“Let’s see can we catch us the other’n,” the lantern-holder
said. “The bloodhound’ll pick him up afore the blue ticks, whatcha bet.”

Marianne Johnston rose easily at first light. Not for her
the drowsy mornings waiting for coffee to be brought to her in her rose-silk
canopied bed. She had too much to do, and much of it was best done before the
sun burned off the morning mist.

Freddie, Marianne’s tiny King Charles spaniel, bounded from
the foot of the bed to demand a kiss, then jumped to the floor and carried off
one of Marianne’s satin slippers before her feet hit the floor.

After a merry romp retrieving her slipper, Marianne gave her
long hair a quick brush and pinned it any which way. She had already pulled on
her gardening skirt with the big pockets when she heard the commotion outside.

Throwing her blouse on, she opened the balcony door and
leaned out. A cluster of slaves knotted around a spot below her. When someone
shifted, Marianne saw the bloody mess they tended. They’d come for her.

She tied her shoes, pulled her medical bag from a shelf –
“Stay, Freddie” -- ran down the grand staircase, through the polished parlor,
and out to the courtyard.

“What happened?” she called, still running.

Pearl, a slender young woman with delicate features and big
doe eyes, righted the rag on her head with a trembling hand. “Dogs got him,
Miss Marianne. But he still breathing.”

Pearl stepped aside so she could see the boy’s mangled
flesh. Marianne crossed herself and closed her eyes.
Dear God, help me.
She breathed deeply, opened her eyes.

Little Annie, the house’s favorite, stood gaping. “Go tell
Evette we’ll need hot water, Annie, and to clear off her big table. Run on.” To
Pearl, she said, “We’ll wash him in the cookhouse.”

Marianne had sewn up gashes and applied poultices among the
slaves since she was thirteen, but this poor boy – she had never seen such
wounds.

When did we start setting dogs on our people? she thought.

She and Pearl kept pace with the men carrying Peter.
Whenever Marianne needed an extra hand for nursing, it was always Pearl she
sent for. Pearl had gentle hands, and she didn’t carry on at the sight and
smell of blood.

Marianne wiped at the boy’s face. “Who is it?”

“It be Peter, Miss Marianne.”

Not one of them she knew. He couldn’t be more than fourteen,
and he’d tried to run. The awful risks they take, she thought. His head lolled
when they put him down. He’d lost so much blood, she doubted he’d ever regain
consciousness.

She and Pearl bathed him first with warm water, then with
witch hazel. Marianne watched to see if he felt the sting on his wounds, but he
neither blinked nor groaned. Better he was out now, anyway, while she worked on
him. Lacerations all over his body, from ears to ankles, even chunks of flesh
torn clean away. And they said he’d been in the bayou. He’d have fever for
sure.

Marianne set hot pads on the puncture wounds so they would
bleed and cleanse themselves. The rips and gashes she cleaned herself with
witch hazel, making sure there was no debris in them. They were ghastly, but
not deep.

From a vial in her bag, she dribbled sweet oil on a length
of black silk thread and set to work with her needle. With sure hands, she
began with Peter’s ear, nearly torn from his head. “Was he alone?” she asked.

“He run wid his brother, John Man.”

Marianne didn’t ask any more. If they caught John Man, she’d
hear of it soon enough.

Evette and her helpers worked around the grisly tableau.
There were people to feed, bread and corn and beans to cook, whether Peter lay
on the big table or not. The aroma of salt pork and beans, soon to be carted
out to the fields, mingled with the smells of blood and witch hazel.

While Pearl kept hot compresses on the punctures, Marianne
sewed the other wounds. After an hour, Evette handed the mistress a tin cup of
sweet coffee and she drank it down. Marianne paused long enough to dab the
sweat from her face, then picked up her needle.

Another gash, and she was finished with the sutures. She
packed a poultice of crushed pewterwort stems around each puncture wound, which
she left unsewn. The other wounds she covered with comfrey poultices.

Marianne plunged her arms to the elbow in the bucket of warm
water Evette had ready for her. Only then did she realize she’d forgotten her
canvas apron. Her maid Hannah would shake her head -- another skirt and blouse
ruined.

Peter cried out, still not really conscious, and clawed at
the poultice on his neck. Marianne took his hands to quiet him. At least he
showed some strength. Only God knew if he would survive.

With Pearl’s help Marianne wrapped Peter in linen so that he
seemed more bandage than boy. Then she said a silent prayer as the men
carefully moved him to a stretcher to take him to his cabin. “Stay with him,
Pearl. I’ll come down in a while.”

Drained, Marianne retreated to her room where she pulled off
her clothes and slipped into her dressing gown. Freddie wanted to explore the
bloodstained heap, but Marianne pulled him into her lap. She could have cried,
from nerves and pity for the boy, but Marianne believed tears had little use in
this world. She nuzzled Freddie’s soft fur and took comfort in his adoring
kisses, holding him close until he wiggled to be let loose.

While she waited for Hannah to heat a bath, she sat at the
rosewood desk which Hannah had graced with a crystal bowl filled with
gardenias. Freddie settled in, his tiny mug on her foot, and Marianne opened
her medical log. Writing the particulars of the morning’s surgery helped her
put some distance between her feelings and that poor boy. Next she pulled her
leather-bound journal to her and dipped her pen again.

During her sixteenth year, Marianne had gone to finishing
school in New York. Everyone was reading
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
, and Marianne
cried her way through it, horrified. A terrible, heartbreaking story. But
slavery wasn’t like that, not in reality. She knew no one like that Legree, no
one so desperate as Eliza. Yet the city had been full of men and women
preaching in strident voices on street corners, filling churches and halls with
their ringing indictments of slaveholding. Earnestly, passionately, the
abolitionists reasoned and railed against slavery and the evil men who profited
from it. They were very convincing, except that her own father profited from
it, and so then did she, and everyone she knew back home.