Elysium: The Plantation Series Book IV (21 page)

Musette had spied a bump
in the road ahead and squinted. "What is that?" she’d said.

Cicero jerked the horses
to a stop and leapt out of the wagon. "Lord, Miss Musette," Carrie
Ann cried. "That’s a body."

Musette approached
cautiously, afraid it was a dead body, and ashamed of herself for not rushing
forward to see for herself.

"She’s alive!"
Cicero shouted.

Musette rushed on, Carrie
Ann at her heels. The woman was folded in on herself, her skirts spread around
her. Cicero knelt and gently turned her over.

"Oh no. Oh no. It’s
Fanny Brown," Carrie Ann said.

Her face was swollen. Her
bodice was ripped and her petticoat was stained.

Musette knelt close to
her and took her hand. "Fanny, can you hear me?"

Fanny didn’t even look at
her, at any of them. "I think she’s in shock," Musette said.

"I reckon you right,"
Cicero said and picked Fanny up out of the dirt.

The three of them had
gotten Fanny into the carriage and taken her to the nearest home, which was
Alistair Whiteaker’s.

Musette sat by the bed,
wondering how long it would take for Thomas to get here. She had hated Fanny
Brown, but this was heartbreaking. She seemed so young, so small, lying there
in the bed. Everything ahead of her – a woman of accomplishment, to be married
to an extraordinary man – a future full of promise. Who knew how this would
change everything? She couldn’t hate her, not anymore.

She got up to stare out
the window at the setting sun and thought, But why should it change everything?
Fanny had done nothing wrong. Musette couldn’t believe Thomas, not Thomas
Bickell, would turn from a woman he loved because she’d been raped.

She looked back at the
still form under the sheet and found Fanny trembling. She strode the few steps
to the bed. "Are you cold, Fanny?" She pulled up the counterpane and
tucked it under Fanny’s chin. "I could ring for another cup of hot coffee.
Would you like that? Fanny?"

Fanny shook her head and
closed her eyes. Musette understood Fanny had no family, but she had Thomas,
and she’d have Rachel and Peep, and little Dawn. "Fanny, Major Whiteaker
has gone to Garvey  Bickell’s. Thomas is coming for you."

Fanny shook her head
violently. "No!"

That was the first word
she’d spoken since they’d found her crumpled on the road.

"Not Thomas. Don’t
let Thomas in here."

Musette straightened up
and sighed. "I’m sorry," she murmured. "I truly am, Fanny."
She sat on the edge of the bed and took Fanny’s hand.

"Everything will be
all right. In the long run, everything will be all right. I’m sure of it."
She squeezed Fanny’s hand and because Fanny didn’t pull away, she stayed on the
bed and didn’t let go.

Thomas strode into the
guest room to see Musette on the bed holding Fanny’s hand, but Fanny
immediately turned away and struggled to pull the covers over her head.

But not before he saw --
her entire face was swollen, her eyes blackened, her lip torn. Thomas reeled,
the rage so strong in him that for a moment everything went black.

It took a few seconds for
Musette to get out of his way, and he took that time to calm himself. No need
to scare her. "Fanny." He put his hand on her shoulder.

She stiffened.

"Fanny, it’s me."
Gently he tugged at the sheet.

"Go away, Thomas."

He knelt at the side of
the bed. "I’m not going away, Fanny. Mama’s here, and Daddy. We’re taking
you back with us."

Fanny clutched the sheet,
pulling it tightly over her head.

Rachel touched his
shoulder. "Let me do this, son. You go on downstairs. I’ll call you when I
need you."

Outside the bedroom,
Musette waited for him. "I’m sorry, Thomas."

He nodded, hardly seeing
her. He waited in the hallway with his father and felt about as useful as a
broken wheel. At first he heard his mother’s voice murmuring, soothing. Then he
heard a single wail from Fanny and whirled around to go in, but his daddy
stopped him.

"She don’t want you
in there now. Just wait. Give her time."

Rachel called out, "Peep.
Get me a basin of water."

"I’ll get it,"
Musette said.

Thomas paced. Alistair Whiteaker
came in from the stables and put his hand on his shoulder. "Come downstairs.
We’ll have a brandy while we wait."

Thomas sat in Major
Whiteaker’s study, sick with helplessness, the cut glass snifter forgotten in
his hand.

Finally, Rachel came to
the door. "Let’s get her home. I can’t do more until I got my needle and
my ointments."

Thomas’s stomach flipped
over when she said needle. Where did Fanny need stitches?

Fanny stood behind
Rachel, wrapped in a blanket, her head bent. Thomas rushed to her so she could
lean against him, but she drew back.

"Fanny?" he
said softly. She wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t even raise her head. He didn’t
know what she was feeling -- what man could? -- but he knew she was hurting. He
put his arm around her shoulder and kept it there even as she stiffened. She
didn’t have to look at him if she didn’t want to, but he wouldn’t let her push
him away.

Alistair sent three men
with lanterns to escort them all the way back home.

When they got there,
Fanny stumbled getting out of the wagon. Thomas caught her up and carried her
in. Her weight pulled at his bayonet wound, but he didn’t care. She wasn’t
fighting him, and he thought that was a good sign.

"I made up the bed
in Thomas’s room, Rachel," Lily said. "And there’s hot water on the
stove."

Thomas carried her
through the kitchen to his room where the window was open and the breezes
brought in the smell of roses planted on the side of the house. He set her down
gently and pushed the hair off her forehead.

Fanny put her hands over
her face. "Go away, Thomas. Please."

He bent over and kissed
the fingers covering her bruised eyes. "I will, Fanny, for now."

Lily and his mother
crowded him out then with basins and water and clothes and the bottle of
whiskey and the sewing basket. "Go on, son."

He waited in the kitchen
with his father and Mr. Bickell. Nobody had a thing to say. They sat with their
hands on the table, each lost in his own thoughts.

When Rachel came into the
kitchen, Thomas jumped up.

"No, Thomas. She
doesn’t want to see you tonight. Let her sleep. Tomorrow is soon enough."

"Mama, I just want
to – "

"No, son. Leave her
be."

Thomas looked to his
father. Peep nodded. "Let her alone tonight, son."

"I’ll stay with her,
Thomas. If she wakes in the night, I’ll be right there."

Mr. Bickell stood and
stretched his neck. "Rachel, where you putting Lily tonight?"

"Miss Lily gone
sleep in our bed. Peep, you put up that old cot in Mr. Bickell’s room for you
to sleep on."

"All right. I’ll see
to it."

Thomas made himself a
pallet in the hallway outside the room where Fanny lay. He didn’t sleep much,
but not because the floor was hard and the hallway airless. When his Mama came
out of the room to see to breakfast, Thomas played possum. When he heard her
rattling around in the kitchen, he opened the door carefully and slipped in.

Fanny was lying in a
shaft of early morning light. The window was open, the curtains moving gently
in the breeze.

Fanny clapped her hands
over her face. "Go away. I told you. Please."

Thomas knelt next to the
bed and gently pried a hand away from her face. She tried to tug free, but he
didn’t let go. "Fanny. It’s me. Why do you think you have to hide from me?"

"You know why."

"I admit I’ve seen
you looking prettier than you do right now." That attempt to lighten the
mood fell flat.

"I’m not talking
about my face." Her voice was so low he had to bend closer to hear her.

Thomas took both her
hands in his. "I won’t pretend I don’t know what you mean, Fanny, but
listen to me. It doesn’t matter. I’m still going to ask you to marry me."

She stared at him from
her swollen eyes. "You were going to ask me to marry you?"

"Didn’t you figure
that out? And there is no past tense to it, Fanny. I am going to ask you to
marry me. Soon as the election is over in September."

"Thomas, I might be
. . . I could be . . . "

He’d already thought of
the worst. No, if Fanny had died, that would be the worst. But it could happen
– Fanny could be pregnant. It had taken him most of the night to get the bile
out of his throat thinking she might have to carry a white man’s child. She
didn’t have a single bit of family left in this world, but Fanny would not have
to raise a child alone.

"You might be
carrying a baby, I know. Well, if you are, then our first child’s going to be a
little white-skinned savage. We’ll have to fuss at him to eat his peas just
like we will the rest of the children we’ll have together. He’ll be a child
with a mama and a daddy who love him."

Fanny began to cry and he
gathered her into his arms. "Scootch over so I can hold you." They
lay side by side in that patch of sunlight, Thomas still except for the
occasional kiss to the top of her head. After Fanny fell asleep, Thomas couldn’t
keep the fear from creeping in.

He’d made a hell of a
promise just now. Raise the child of some man who’d raped Fanny? He’d have to
grow a bigger heart, that’s all there was to it. Just as Fanny wouldn’t be the
first black woman to bear a white child she didn’t want, he wouldn’t be the
first black man to find room in his heart for the poor child that nobody,
nobody
else, wanted.

Thomas closed the curtain
so the sun wouldn’t beat down on Fanny and eased off the bed, careful not to
wake her. He could hear Cabel and Reynard in the kitchen, waiting for him. They
had to ride to the south end of the parish today where he’d talk and shake
hands and talk some more. Only four more weeks.

He came home about dusk,
sweaty, itchy, and grimy. He didn’t care about that though and went straight to
Fanny’s room.

"Hi," he said.

"Hello, Thomas."

He stood there a moment,
uncertain, because there was no welcome in her face. He stepped into the room. "Are
you in pain?"

She turned her face to
the window. "A little."

He pulled the chair up to
the bedside. "You want Mama to get you something? She probably got some
laudanum, or something."

"I don’t want
anything."

Her hand remained inert
in his.

"Fanny?"

He’d thought they were
all right when he left this morning. He’d told her they’d be married, they’d
raise a white child if they needed to. What else could she want from him?

"I’m tired, Thomas."
She scrunched down in the bed and turned toward the wall.

"Fanny?"

When she didn’t answer
him, he bit his lip. He had no idea what to do now.

"I’ll check on you
later, then."

Rachel had him a plate
waiting when he went to the kitchen. "You gone be traveling in the dark
again, son. I don’t like that."

"Mama, I’m not
leaving Fanny tonight."

His mother looked at Peep
sitting at the table with a piece of pie in front of him. "It’s all right,
Mother," Peep said. "Cabel and Reynard out in the barn, and we armed
like we ready to fight off a whole army. He can stay one more night."

"Wash up, then, son,
and eat your dinner."

He came back scrubbed and
hungry and sat down across from Peep.

"Tell me where all
you been, who you talked to," Peep said.

Thomas pulled out his
list of plantations and farms and together they checked off the ones he’d
visited today. They talked over the questions people were asking, totted up the
numbers of voters they could expect on election day.

"Word is, Daddy,
that if you think you got a hundred votes promised to you, you better cut that
about in half because people don’t go to the polls like they say they will, or
they get sick, or the mule throws a shoe."

"Half? That can’t be
right."

"I hope it isn’t. We
got more black people in these two parishes than white. If we can just get them
to the polls, we’ll beat Percy Randolph."

It was getting late.
Frederick should have left town much earlier
to walk all the way back before dark. But he didn’t really want to see Lily.
She looked at him like he was some kind of insect that crawled out from under a
rock. He didn’t deserve that. Why, he hadn’t said a word to her about braining
him over the head so hard he’d had a fierce headache for days and his ears had
rung for weeks.

"Oh no no no,"
she’d said when she saw him, like she’d seen a ghost.

Maybe she’d thought she
killed him. He hadn’t thought of that. And then didn’t waste any time snagging
herself another man. Alistair Fucking Whiteaker.

So, he decided, this
would be the second night he didn’t go home. Let her think about that.

He wrinkled his nose.
He’d slept in his clothes last night in the hotel across the street. Didn’t
matter in the River Queen Saloon whether he smelled or not – the whole place
smelled of spilt liquor, cigars, and working men.

"Deal me in,"
he said as he took his seat at Juliana’s table. Poker went on around the clock here.
He kept his hand in the game and sipped James Pepper whiskey.

He’d thought the liquor would
settle him down, but it only burned deep in his gut. That damned Southern blue-blood
and his money. The gall of the man, trying to buy Lily and Maddie from him.
What kind of man did he think he was?

And Lily. She’d probably
put him up to it. What had happened to her? She used to be so sweet. Biddable,
that’s what she’d been when he married her. And back when Maddie was small,
there’d been nothing too good for her husband – she’d actually said those words
to him. And cooked him his favorite meals, kissed him when he came in after
working all day, sang while she washed the dishes.

Frederick’s heart
squeezed for a moment. It hadn’t been like that in a long time.

She’d changed, Lily had,
that’s what the problem was.

"Card, Mr. Palmer?"
Juliana said. He eyed her through the cigar smoke, pretty as a picture in her
red satin dress, her bosom hardly covered by the black lace of the bodice.

"Two," he said
and looked over his new cards.

He wasn’t blameless, he supposed,
but it does something to a man to have his livelihood pulled out from under
him. The company should have seen it coming, the orders for shoes drying up
with the war over. They should have made provisions for him, one of their top
salesmen to the U. S. Army.

He’d drunk too much, he’d
admit it. But dammit, Lily was his wife. She knew he was upset about taking a
cut in pay, damn near laid off completely. "You’re drunk," she’d say
and get all stiff when he touched her.

"You win again, Mr.
Palmer." Juliana gave him a smile and a wink as she shuffled the cards for
the next deal.

"You’re pretty good
with those cards, Miss Juliana," he said.

She raised her eyebrows
at him. "I’m pretty good at lots of things."

He laughed. He had no
doubt she was as professional upstairs in the little bedrooms as she was here
at the poker table.

After a couple more
hands, Juliana stretched her arms overhead, displaying her bosom to good
effect. "That’s it for me, gentlemen," she said. "Thank you for
such challenging play." She smiled at every man at the table and pushed
her chair back.

As she passed behind
Frederick’s chair, she leaned in to his ear. "You played enough, Mr.
Palmer? I’m mighty thirsty."

What could it hurt to buy
the lady a drink? He had a pocket full of money from selling the house; he
could afford to be generous.

They sat at a little
table in the corner where they could hear each other over the usual din of men
happy in their cups.

"Let’s get
acquainted," she said as he sat down.

"I thought I knew
you pretty well," he said, giving her bosom a look.

She laughed. "Not as
well as I’d like. There’s more to me than a red satin dress, however little it
leaves to the imagination."

Frederick held two
fingers up to the bartender.

"You’ve certainly
stimulated my imagination."

"Any time you want the
real thing, Mr. Palmer," she said, her voice the sultriest thing he’d ever
heard.

"Let’s just have a
drink," he said. "Get acquainted, like you said." He was not a
whoring kind of man. Never had been. But it would serve Lily right, looking at
him like he was a bug. And turning Maddie against him, too.

"I’ll tell you
something, you tell me something," Juliana said.

"All right. Tell me
something."

She leaned in as if she
had a great secret to share. "I’m going to California," she whispered
in his ear." She sat back and added in a normal voice, "Soon as I get
enough money."

He leaned forward in his
chair, his eyes on hers.

"I got a friend in
San Francisco," she said, "wrote me there ain’t enough bars in town
for all the men pouring in with money in their pockets. I aim to start my own
place."

"What do you know
about running a bar?"

"I been around bars
all my life. I know everything I need to know and then some."

She smiled at the
bartender when he brought their drinks. He gave her a wink and retreated to the
bar.

"Now you. Tell me
something."

"I’d rather hear
about your bar."

Juliana beamed at him. A
genuine smile this time. "All right. What would you like to know?"

He didn’t know where to
start. He wanted to know everything. Could she run all the gambling tables, did
she know all the games, all the tricks? Would she keep girls for the rooms
upstairs? And how much money did it take to buy a saloon and stock it with
every kind of whiskey.

"You talking about a
bar like this one?" he asked.

She looked around. "The
River Queen ain’t a bad place. I can do better though." She waved a hand
in front of her face. "At least keep the place aired out."

They’d finished their
third drink when Juliana stood and held out her hand. He followed her up the
stairs into one of the little rooms.