Always & Forever: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 1) (49 page)

Certainly Father was a good man. Marianne’s father’s
friends, some of whom owned more than two hundred slaves, were good men.
These
people in the East,
all her Southern friends assured her,
they simply
don’t understand the Southern way of life.
Her friends must be right.
Slavery was not a simple thing. The truth was much more complicated than the
abolitionists claimed.

Thus with the innate human capacity to hold two conflicting
ideas at once, Marianne returned to Louisiana, where life resumed its
comfortable rhythms. Magnolias was a happy plantation, she was sure of it.
Father was good to his slaves. She herself ministered to them, wormed their
children, treated their ear aches, and brewed the potions that cured their
fevers.

And so Marianne filled her journal with the many ways her
family took care to run a compassionate plantation. Yet, as she matured to a
woman of twenty, doubts increasingly nagged her. The ringing voices of those
stirring abolitionist orators Julia Ward Howe and Henry Stanton lingered in her
mind; the pages of her journal reflected her growing unease.

And now – here was Peter.

Bathed and dressed, Marianne ate a hurried and solitary
dinner. At Hannah’s insistence, she donned cuff guards and a heavy apron. She
checked her pocket for the Keys to the Realm, as she called them, and took the
path through the garden to her personal storeroom. Here she had herbs drying
from the rafters, pots of salve and the makings for more, and her well-used
mortar and pestle.

She chose the bark and leaves of the willow to grind small
enough for an infusion to fight the fever she knew would come. She cut down
more witch hazel leaves, ground them to a powder, and mixed it with lard to
make a greasy salve. Peter was going to require quantities of both. Reaching
overhead, she untied a bundle of comfrey, then shredded and pounded the roots
and leaves into a gluey mass to use for additional poultices.

With her pots of medicinals, Marianne walked down to the
quarters. The reek of witch hazel and pewterwort coming through the open door
led her to the cabin.

Pearl sat on the only stool, fanning the flies from Peter’s
face.

“Has he wakened?”

“Yes’m, he in and out.”

Marianne put her hand to Peter’s forehead. Already he was
hot to the touch. “Who are his people?”

“He old Lena’s youngest grandbaby.”

Marianne nodded, but in truth, she didn’t know which one
Lena was. Nor what had happened to Peter’s mother. She felt ashamed of herself
for not knowing, but there were so many slaves on the place.

“I reckon she know Petie caught by now,” Pearl said, “but de
overseer, he don’t let her come.”

Marianne’s mouth tightened. That was cruel, to keep the
woman away. With Father in Saratoga and her brother Adam at the Lake, she’d
have to deal with Mr. McNaught herself. Well, she’d handle him. Later.

She handed Pearl the pot of crushed willow bark. “Tell
Evette to make a tea out of this, let it steep a good while. Then go on to the
house and ask Charles to bring me paper and pen.”

While Marianne waited for the aged Charles, who’d been in
charge of the house even when Father was young, Marianne unwrapped the bloody
bandage on Peter’s maimed foot and washed the wound again. Peter groaned and
opened his eyes.

“Lie still,” she told him. With the witch hazel salve rubbed
into a gauzy cloth, she layered the bandage over the flesh to stop the oozing.
Then she tied linen strips round and round his foot. There’d be no flies
lighting on these wounds if she could help it.

Charles came in, elegant as always in his butler’s livery.
She wrote a note, much more polite than she felt, asking Mr. McNaught to send
Lena in from the field to sit with her grandson. That taken care of, she cooled
Peter’s hot skin with astringent until Pearl returned with the willow bark tea.

Marianne lifted Peter’s head and held the tea to his lips.
He sputtered at the evil taste. “I know it’s foul, but you need to drink it
all,” she told him.

To Pearl she said, “You can clean up now. Then go on back to
the kitchen. I’ll stay until Lena comes.”

Pearl left Miss Marianne with her hand on Peter’s forehead.
Petie
have a chance of living through dis wid her tending him,
she thought.

Pearl still wore Peter’s blood on her hands and arms and
dress. At the well, the sand at her feet turned pink as she washed.
I make
sure Luke see how Petie all chewed up. John Man all de time talking, make it
sound easy to get away. Now maybe Luke think on it some mo.
She checked her
nails were clean.
Till I gives him a baby. A baby on de way, he stay put
here wid me.

Pearl drew another bucket and took it to her and Luke’s
cabin. When had she ever been alone in the middle of a day? Sunlight through
the window caught the dust motes and cast shadows in the corners. She stilled
herself to listen to the quiet house. The peace bled the tension from her
shoulders. A body could rest, alone, with nothing to hand.
If Luke could
rest like dis, find a little peace in de day, he not be so ready to run.

She stripped off the faded gray sack dress and sluiced the
cold water over her belly, as flat now as the day she and Luke first loved each
other.
Lord, I needs a chile,
she reminded Him.

Every day she drank the concoction Mammy Lewis made for her.
Squaw vine and chaste berries, dandelion and nettle leaves – “It shore to give
you a baby,” Mammy promised her. But her flow came just the same.

How long Luke gone stick wid me widout no chile? He say
he gone stick, but mens wants babies much as womens do.
She tilted her head
as if she could see through the roof to God’s domain.
Lord, don forget me
down here praying for a baby.
She crossed herself the way she’d seen Miss
Marianne do, and the master’s wife had done it too back before she died. Maybe
that made the prayers stronger.

Pearl pulled on the only other dress she had, threadbare and
too tight across the shoulders, but it would do while the other one soaked. She
hurried on to her work in the cookhouse.

In the other cabin, Marianne put her fingers to Peter’s
throat where the pulse pumped under the brown skin. Should it be that fast? She
pressed her own throat until she found the pulse. Peter’s vein throbbed so much
faster, she was sure it couldn’t be good for him. She roused him and held the
cup to his lips. She’d added peppermint to sweeten the bitter willow brew, but
he still grimaced at the taste. “I’ll try some honey in the next batch,” she
promised him.  “Go back to sleep.”

She checked each bandage to be sure blood wasn’t still
oozing from his wounds. His limbs were so thin. She wiped his face. Thick dark
lashes curled against his cheek, fine brows arched across a smooth high
forehead. A handsome boy, this Peter. Or he had been. She wondered what he was
like. Did he sing in the evenings with the others? Did he make jokes and tell
stories? Did he follow some girl around and pick daisies for her? She dabbed
the healing salve on his dry lips and wished she knew more medicine. She’d
re-read
The Mistress’s Essential Medical Book
and see if there was
another remedy she should try.

This poor boy wouldn’t run away again, she thought. Not with
his legs and foot like they were. But his brother was still out there. God
protect him.

Why had these two run now? This new man, she thought.
McNaught. He was too harsh. She didn’t remember having any runaways when Mr.
Smythe had been in charge. But abolition was in the air; the slaves were bound
to be roused.
And who can blame them?

Marianne dipped her cloth into a pan of water and wiped the
heat away from Peter’s brow.
There can’t be, there mustn’t be, any more boys
brought home like this.

But Father wouldn’t listen to her. He loved her and spoiled
her, but he took no counsel from his daughter. How could she do anything more?

1. Sisters have complex relationships, but Cleo and Josie’s
relationship was much more complicated than most. Do you believe jealousy and
rivalry between siblings close in age is inevitable?  What about forgiveness? 
Could you forgive a sister who had hurt you the way Cleo and Josie hurt each
other? Or a sister whom you felt got more than her share of a father’s love?

2. It is hard to imagine that a woman today would endure what
Josie’s mother did, living in the same house with her husband’s lover and
illegitimate child. Worse than that, Celine was waited on and her own child
cared for by the “other woman.” Given the times, what do you think you might
have done in Celine’s situation? What were her options?

3. When Cleo first became lovers with Bertrand Chamard, Josie’s
break up with him was long in the past. Does this excuse her in your mind, or
do you still feel her relationship with the man Josie had loved was a betrayal?

4. Men and women fell in love and fought and disappointed each
other in the 1830s then just as now.  But they had different conventions and
rules than we do.  Which era do you think makes it easier for men and women to
be happy with each other?  Which era do you think emphasizes the best aspects
and provides the best chance of romantic love?

5. Some readers see Cleo’s continued relationship with Bertrand
Chamard after she has become a free woman as reliving her own mother Bibi’s
life as the mistress of a white man. How was her choice to be Bertrand’s lover
the same as or different from Bibi’s life?

6. Given that Josie was a child of her place and time, how do
you judge her as a slave owner? Does her having freed Cleo and Gabriel mitigate
her continuing to run Toulouse as a slave plantation? Where do you think
fiction’s attempt to understand a different sensibility than ours collides with
our own morality?

7. Did you feel that Josie accepted “second best” by marrying
Phanor when she had wanted to marry Bertrand Chamard?

If you’d like to share your discussion with the author, you
may be able to arrange a visit or a phone conference with your group.  In any
event, she’d love to hear your thoughts.  You can write to Gretchen through her website at
www.gretchencraig.com
.

Gretchen's award-winning novels, rich in memorable characters and historical detail, are profiled on her website at
www.gretchencraig.com
. Further details are available at her
Amazon Author Page
.
Gretchen also invites you to visit her blog at
glcraig.wordpress.com.