Ever My Love: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 2) (19 page)

Marianne swallowed. They were asking her to actively
participate in helping slaves escape. Not just pretending not to know, as with
Luke, not simply keeping McNaught occupied to give Luke a chance to get farther
on. Actually conniving, planning, and plotting. This was against the law. And
the law included even the privileged daughters of wealthy white planters. What
would become of her, of her family, if she were caught aiding escaped slaves?
She could hardly imagine how awful it could be. Jail? A trial? All Father’s
friends turning their backs on the Johnstons? Prison?

“Joseph, I can’t . . .” No one spoke. They simply gazed at her.
Even Joseph did not attempt to persuade her.

“If I were ever caught . . .” Marianne stood in the center of
the room, her hands clasped in front of her. Her eyes lit on the boy’s. He sat
in the corner where the candle light barely reached him, staring at her.

“What did the little boy do?” she whispered to the still
faces.

“Clem spill a bucket of molasses he was carrying,” his
mother said, her voice thick with anger and with fear for her child.

The candle flickered, the chimney whistled in the wind. No
one stirred.

Marianne closed her eyes, but she could still feel theirs
boring into her. Deeper into her than she had ever looked herself. What did they
see? A comfortable white lady in a fine dress, with shoes on her feet, with
ribbons in her hair? A woman who would not mistreat a slave, but who would
stand aside and let another owner whip a child for spilling molasses?

Did they see a coward?

She could leave the cabin. She could walk back through the
pecan grove and into the house, climb the stairs to her rose-brocaded room and
shut the door. Hannah would help her undress, unlace her boots and pull off her
silk stockings. She could lay her head on the feather pillow and close her
eyes. Somehow, tomorrow these people would be gone. It would not be her
problem. She might never hear of them again, might not ever know whether they
were caught, whether the boy’s back healed or was torn open again by an
overseer with a tipped whip.

“It won’t work,” she said at last. “Mr. McNaught is too
suspicious since Luke ran. I’ll have to go with you.”

While it was still dark, Joseph moved the family into a
wagon in the barn. Pearl and Evette met them there with a spinning wheel from
the weaving house. With a tarp over the escapees, baskets of flax and cotton
and the spinner strategically placed, they waited for daylight.

Back at the house, Marianne told Charles she would be
leaving at dawn to visit Martha Madison half a day’s drive upriver. The
Madisons were small farmers compared to the Johnstons, but she and Martha had
known each other all their lives. They were friends. As for taking a wagon
instead of the carriage – Martha had lost her spinning wheel in a small fire,
and Magnolias had more of the essential devices than it needed. That would be
the story.

Should McNaught inquire where the wagon and two of his
slaves were, Charles would explain. Not that it was any of the overseer’s
business, which no doubt Charles would imply in that practiced disdainful way
only he could effect without reproach. The plan should work. She really would
deliver an unexpected and unwanted spinning wheel to Martha after they’d helped
the escapees.

Just before daylight then, Marianne left her room. She wore
her second-best traveling costume, the blue one with the black braid, the skirt
supported by multiple crinolines instead of a hoop. Trying to maneuver a hoop
would be a nuisance sitting in a wagon all day. Her bonnet matched, of course,
and covered the tidy bun she’d made of her hair. If she hadn’t been in a rush,
she’d have left her pearl earrings in her jewelry case. Traveling was a dusty,
dirty endeavor, and pearls were better suited to the confines of the house.
When she realized she hadn’t changed them, however, she was half way down the
stairs and chose to hurry on.

No one stirred in the house yet. She stopped in Father’s
den, unlocked the gun case, and chose the same shotgun she’d used on the
murderous dogs. Several times she’d waked in the nights since then, the sound
and recoil of the gun stunning her even in sleep. She had not looked at the
dogs lying dead in the dust. Even so, an image of their bloody carcasses
disturbed her dreams.

Carrying the heavy shotgun, Marianne let herself out of the
house. The dew-soaked grass darkened the hem of her dress, and she could barely
see her way in the pre-dawn gloom. She joined the others in the barn just as
McNaught rang the big bell calling the slaves to gather in the yard. From the
bell stand, he wouldn’t see them driving out.

They traveled the river road north to the sawmill, then
turned off toward the interior. Marianne sat on the buckboard next to Joseph,
the shotgun at her feet. The desperate family lay under a tarp among the
baskets and the spinning wheel. Pearl sat in the back with a bucket of water
and a bottle of Marianne’s brew to ease the mama’s and the boy’s pain.

“You’ve been this way before?” Marianne said.

“No’m. De shepherd, he know de way and he tell me.”

“Who is this shepherd, Joseph?”

He looked at her and smiled. “I not gon’ tell you dat,
Missy.”

“Is it someone I know?”

Joseph clucked at the two mules. “Get a move on, boys.”
Marianne looked to Pearl. She would know, but Pearl smiled at her too. They
weren’t going to tell her. She couldn’t decide whether it was funny or
infuriating. She was, after all, involved in this up to her neck. But they both
seemed to enjoy their little game, and she let it go.

Mid-morning, a farmer driving a wagon full of melons
approached, and Marianne tensed. She checked that Pearl had covered the people
in the back and then plastered a smile on her face. “Good morning to you,” she
said to the farmer. He tipped his hat, wished the lady good morning in return,
and drove on by.

Another traveler on horseback passed by without a friendly
word, rather rudely in fact, without having so much as glanced at the lumpy
cargo in the back of the wagon. They encountered a few more travelers, and each
time Marianne breathed more easily; she and her freight evidently appeared
unremarkable.

Late in the afternoon, all of them wilted from the sun and
sore from riding on hard boards with no springs, they stopped under the shade
of a live oak. Marianne had Pearl stand in the road to keep watch so the three
escapees could stand up and move their limbs.

Marianne pulled Joseph aside. “How much further? There are
only a few more hours of daylight.”

“I don rightly know just how far it be. I just knows to look
for de house on dis road. It white, two winders in front, wid four magnolias in
a row side de house. I reckon it was a nearer ride for de shepherd on his
horse. Dese mules be old and slow.”

Marianne imagined they would have delivered their cargo and
arrived at Martha’s by nightfall. She hadn’t reckoned on spending the night in
the wagon. Weren’t there brigands on this road? Highwaymen who’d knock you on
the head and take whatever they could get from you? She felt vulnerable and a
little frightened at the thought. She wished Yves were here.

That caught her up short. Yves Chamard? She didn't need Yves
Chamard. Just because he had that air of competence or confidence or whatever
it was. Arrogance, more like. She didn’t need a protector anyway. She was quite
capable of defending herself and the others with her shotgun. And with her tongue.
She was no shrinking violet.

Besides, if she wanted a champion, she’d choose Marcel. She
certainly would.

The rest of the weary, steamy afternoon, she reminded
herself of all the things she didn’t like about Yves Chamard. Mocking eyes, for
one thing. All that restless energy. Marcel lowered himself onto a settee with
grace and ease, as if he would be happy to repose on a brocade sofa
indefinitely. Yves sat, even sat quite still, but there was that air about him
of constant readiness for action.

He does have a manliness about him, and naturally she, well, she
felt that. And he kissed nicely. Very nicely. All right, his kisses are
fantastic. Her palm of its own accord reminded her of his taking her hand, of
stroking it. Twice he had presumed to take her hand. And how was it that such a
simple thing could light her whole being? The image came to her of Yves’ mouth,
the little scar running into the lip, coming closer and closer before he kissed
her the first time. She closed her eyes.

Yes, she admitted it. He excited her. But he condescended and he was
insensitive. He was all wrong.

A group of horsemen came up from behind them. Marianne
turned at the sound of their horses’ hooves on the hard packed road. There were
four of them, all armed with rifles and pistols. All of them rode good mounts,
though their persons were unshaved and grimy. As they passed the wagon, they
tipped their hats and wished Marianne a good afternoon.

They did nothing offensive nor even suggestive, but Marianne
was uneasy. What kind of men traveled with shackles? She’d spotted them
dangling from a saddle bag on two of the men’s mounts. She glanced at Joseph,
and his tight mouth told her he’d spotted the irons too. She picked up the
shotgun at her feet and loaded it. Then she laid it across her lap.

It was nearly dark and still no house flanked by four
magnolias. Few houses at all on this road, in fact, though they had passed half
a dozen farms with bare-board houses, some of them little more than shacks.
This was not plantation land back in here. People were poorer and did their own
labor.

Marianne made her mind up to it. They were going to have to
spend the night in the woods. The mosquitoes might eat them alive, and the
bears and cats of the forest – well, it was silly to worry about them. There
were six people in this wagon. An animal would have to be rabid to approach so
many.  But it was August. Rabid animals more often appeared in late summer. No.
She dismissed the thought. She had better save her worrying for the two legged
predators, like those four men on horseback.

With perhaps twenty minutes of daylight left, they came to
another farm. A white house, two front windows, four magnolias alongside.

“I reckon this be it,” Joseph said. He began to tch to the
mules to turn in, but Marianne grabbed his arm.

“Drive on by,” she hissed.

Four horses, still burdened with saddles and saddle bags,
drank from the trough at the rail. Those same four men, she was sure, were
stopped here.

“You right. Dey no quilt hanging out.”

Marianne didn’t know what he meant.

“De quilt, sometimes it have a north star on it, sometime
another pattern. It hanging out, there be a slave’s friend in de house. Dis de
place, but dere no quilt.”

Half a mile down the road, the twilight forced her to make a
decision. The moon wouldn’t be up for a couple of hours, Joseph said. And
Marianne didn’t dare go back to the safe house. It wasn’t safe, she was sure of
it.

Marianne pointed to a field lane and Joseph hawed the mules
off the main road and through a stand of corn. The stalks, nearly six feet
tall, rustled in the slight breeze. Once on the other side of the crop, they
were shielded from the main road. No one knew they were there. They’d light no
fire, make no noise.

Pearl pulled the tarp off the runaways. They sat up, stiff
and sore and thirsty. She ladled out the rest of the water in the bucket for
them and Joseph and herself. “Dis yours, Miss Marianne.” She handed forward the
second canteen of water designated for Marianne. Along with a food bundle,
Evette had sent along separate water for the mistress of the plantation.

Joseph unhooked the mules, led them to an open pasture
beyond the corn, and hobbled them. As far as he could tell in the gloaming,
they’d not be seen from the road.

Elvin helped Clem and Pearl out of the wagon. The three of
them walked around the clearing to restore their circulation. Bess sat on the
back edge of the wagon and Marianne felt of her ankle. The swelling was as
tight as it had been last night. It was going to be a long time healing, and
Bess certainly could not walk on it. Perhaps not for weeks yet. How would she
ever make it to freedom? Marianne wondered.

In the dark, they ate the last of the food Evette had packed
them. Then they settled in, Pearl and Joseph and the three runaways sharing the
bed of the wagon. In deference to the mistress, they insisted Marianne should
sleep on the bench seat, where she was possibly even more uncomfortable than
the other members of the party.

She could not sleep. The tension would not leave her body.
What kind of men carried shackles with them? Bounty hunters did. Did they know
what house that was? Did they have some idea runaways used this route?

The moon rose. It was one of those nights she could
practically have read outdoors it was so bright. Trying not to wake anyone, she
climbed down from the buckboard, but Joseph raised his head.

“Where you goin?”

“Just over to the bushes,” she whispered.

Once she’d finished in the bushes, she looked back at the
weathered wagon in the moonlight. If it weren’t for the corn growing between it
and the road, they’d be perfectly visible and entirely vulnerable.

She couldn’t bear to lie down on that hard seat again.
Instead, she walked around the corn. Keeping to the moon shadows, she followed
the road back toward the house.

She found a vantage in the deep shade of a tree to watch. A
gauzy curtain billowed in and out with the breeze. But there were no lights, no
sounds.

She didn't know what she thought she’d see. She checked the ascent
of the moon. It would be bright the rest of the night, she figured. She should
try to get some sleep. In the early morning, she would creep back here and
watch until the four horsemen left.