Ever My Love: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 2) (23 page)

Yves towered over her. “Absolutely not. Joseph has never
been on a horse, and I doubt Pearl has. I’m in a hurry.”

“Pearl?”

Pearl smoothed her apron. “I can ride.”

Yves looked at the ceiling and then at Marianne. “Pearl is
injured.”

“No, I’s all right,” Pearl said. “You brother, he a good
man, Mr. Yves. He need our hep, den I goin wid Missy.”

“Her daddy was a stable boy where she come from,” Joseph
volunteered. “She know horses.”

Marianne stepped closer to Yves, so close her skirt brushed
the toes of his boots. “Your brother is ill. And injured. You don’t know what
to do for him, but I do. I’m going with you.”

She could stare him down, if that’s what it took. She tilted
her head back and fixed him with her eye. With a little frustration and maybe a
little anger thrown in, Yves’ irises were greener than she’d ever seen them.

“It’s raining,” he said. “Hard.”

“Eleanor will loan me a slicker.”

“There’s no side saddle.”

“Then I’ll ride astride.” She said it as if she had often
ridden in that disreputable pose with her legs spread apart. She felt her face
heat up, but she silently dared him to be the first to turn away.

When his eyes dropped to her mouth, she knew she’d win.

Yves blinked and shook his head. “I’m leaving now.” He
headed for the door.

“I’ll just get my bonnet. Pearl.”

Eleanor, who stood not six feet away watching the contest,
snatched up the bundle of food she’d prepared and handed it to Yves on his way
out. As he stomped off the porch into the rain, she threw leftover biscuits, boiled
corn, apples, and a slab of ham in a flour sack, then grabbed her own slicker
from its hook. “Hurry up. You’ll need him to help you with the saddle.”

Marianne took three dollars from her reticule and handed
them to Eleanor. “For your friend Mr. Pendergast to please take Joseph home.”

“All right,” Eleanor said. “Eb will see to it. Pearl, child,
hold on. There’s another slicker in the chest.”

Marianne draped the slicker over her head. She was half way
across the yard when she remembered Father’s shotgun, the little tote with the
ammunition in it, and her medical bag.  Joseph met her at the door with them,
and she splashed back through the yard and into the barn where Yves was
saddling his horse. Eb was busying himself mending tackle.

“I’ll take one of those men’s horses,” Marianne announced.

“Then you’ll saddle it yourself.”

She’d never saddled a horse. “Well, how hard can it be?” she
muttered.

She set her things in a pile of clean straw, chose a saddle
from the rack, and heaved it. She staggered only a little from its weight, and
headed for the nearest of the dead men’s horses.

Marianne opened the half door of the stall and thought Now
what? A bridle hung on a peg. She set the saddle back on the rack, pulled the
bridle down and offered it to the mare. The horse deliberately raised its head
out of her reach. She looked around. No stool. The horse lowered its head and
she tried again, but the mare had been teasing her. It jerked its head up just
as she thought she was about to slide the bridle in place.

If she were to look around and see a smirk on Yves Chamard’s
face, she’d shoot him. She would. She glanced his way but he had his back to
her. She remembered a trick she’d seen Father use on an unruly colt. She held
her fist out, fingers down, inviting the mare to discover whether she had an
apple or a carrot. By the time the horse knew her hand was empty, it was
bridled. There. She could do this.

Pearl ran in with a slicker and an old bonnet of Eleanor’s.
“I do dat fo you, Miss Marianne.”

“You take that gelding, all right? I can do this.”

Marianne left the stall to retrieve the saddle, ready to
meet Yves’ amused disdain with her chin up, but he was not smiling. He pulled
the slicker on, mounted his horse, and looked down at her. “Stay here,
Marianne.” He spurred the horse and rode out.

Marianne clamped her jaw and crossed her arms. That lasted
no more than a heartbeat. She picked up the saddle and lugged it toward the
stall again.

“Going to need a blanket under that,” Eb mentioned.

Back to the rack with the saddle. She found a blanket and
proceeded with her clumsy attempts. No more than minutes later, she had the
mare saddled. She tied her bag onto the pommel and led the mare to the mounting
block. She was about to put her foot in the stirrup when she realized the
shotgun still lay in the straw. Retrieved that, and climbed back on the block.

Pearl had the gelding saddled and ready to go.

Now Ebenezer moved. “Hold on.”

A little miffed Eb hadn’t helped her, she still would be
glad of a hand up.

“Doubt you’ve got her cinched. She’s likely blown up her
stomach, and then you end up with a loose saddle and a seat in the mud.”

He pushed the stirrup out of his way and recinched the
saddle. Then he stood there and looked Marianne in the eye. “You know what
you’re doing?”

Did she? There was certain discomfort ahead of her. Danger?
Perhaps that too. But she had the shotgun. Scandal? Well, Pearl was coming, and
how could her reputation suffer if no one knew about it? And who would know?
Only those who loved Gabriel and wanted him home safe. She could help.

She nodded to Ebenezer. “Yes, I do. He needs me.”

“Yves?”

She swallowed. “I meant Dr. Chamard, of course.”

Eb held out cupped hands for her foot, lifted her up and
helped her settle her feet in the stirrups. “You’ll find it’s a better ride
sitting like this, Miss Marianne.” He slipped her shotgun in the saddle sheath.
“Just remember to keep your knees tight, and you’ll have a firm seat.”

Marianne watched Pearl mount. She had no idea how sore Pearl
was, down there, but Pearl didn’t wince when she sat in the saddle. “You all
right?”

“Yes’m. Riding wid a saddle, I feeling mighty grand.”

Relieved, Marianne held her hand down to shake Ebenezer’s.
“Thank you, Eb.”

“Just don’t tell Chamard I helped you.” He grinned and
slapped the mare’s flank to get her moving.

Marianne and Pearl entered the rain and took the road west
back toward the river. In this mud, they shouldn’t have any trouble following
Yves’ horse, and he wasn’t much more than ten minutes ahead of them. Marianne
spurred the mare on, amazed at how much more secure she felt without a ladies’
side saddle under her. She pressed both feet into the stirrups and hurried on.

Gabriel stewed in his own sweat in a shed of some sort. No
windows, one door, but the boards were so shrunken that sunlight beamed through
in broad swaths, revealing dancing dust motes. He knew there were pigs nearby;
the stench told him that when he was conscious enough to register it.

The woman kicked the door open and came in with a pan and a
jug. A halo of white hair surrounded her face, and he remembered thinking an
angel had come to take him. How many days ago was that? Now he saw the
weathered skin, the sunken age-bleached eyes, the nearly toothless mouth.

“You awake again,” she said. “That’s a good sign, a good
sign.”

Gabriel struggled to sit up, but he was as weak as a
new-born pup. The woman set the food and drink on the dirt floor and bent over
to heave him to a sitting position.

“Can’t drink lying down, no sir,” she muttered to herself.
“Got to get him fed, he going to be any use.”

“What’s your name?” Gabe rasped.

“What? You talking, are you?”

Gabriel reached for the jug. Sweet cool well water. He drank
it all, then lay down again on the filthy coarse blanket that had been his
pallet all the days he’d been here.

The old woman accidentally bumped against Gabriel’s
destroyed foot, and his eyes rolled up with the pain. He held his breath, and
she pounded him once on the chest.

“You breathe, damn you. You’re no use to me dead.”

He gasped and sweat broke out on his forehead. The fever had
left him, but he was far from well.

She sat down next to him and shoved a pan of cornbread
closer. “You need to eat.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Who are you?”

She sucked on a brown tooth and shifted the lump of tobacco
in her bottom lip. “Ginny. They used to call me Ginny.”

“I am Gabriel Chamard. Dr. Gabriel Chamard.”

Ginny didn’t seem interested. “I’m calling you Caleb. That’s
a good Bible name.”

Was the woman simple-minded? “Dr. Gabriel Chamard.”

She leaned over to inspect his foot, and Gabriel said,
“Please. Don’t touch it.” It was hugely swollen still, purple-black, the skin
split in three places.

“I’m not much for doctoring, myself,” she said. “You a real
doctor?”

“Yes. I am.”

“Well, what you want me to do with this foot?”

“Do you know plants? Medicinal herbs?”

“Got a patch of yarrow growing behind the house. Brought it
with me from Pennsylvania when I come out here.” She scratched behind her ear
and brought forth something that she squeezed between her finger and her
thumbnail.

“Seen maypop vines growing all out in the woods. Real
pretty. Purple flowers, sometimes reaching the treetops. Some people call it
passion flower. I call it maypop. It’s good for this and that.”

“Please. Would you make an infusion for me? Use the maypop.
And with the yarrow, a poultice to put on my foot?”

Ginny sighed. “Have to feed the hog. If I have time, I’ll
see about it.” She placed her hands flat on the ground and then pressed her weight
into them in order to ease up off her bottom. Once she was on her feet, she
shook some of the newer dust streaks from her skirt. Gabriel stared at her
feet. They were thick-skinned with blackened, grimy creases around the soles.
Her nails were yellowed talons, and the skin was stained red from the
Mississippi clay. And yet they were small feet, even delicate-boned. Feet that
had known the narrowing of shoes, the squeezing bunion-producing tightness of
ladies’ boots.

“I got work to do. You eat, Caleb.”

The least disturbance of Gabriel’s foot sent pain racing up
his leg like lightning, hot and searing. As long as he lay still, the pain was
bearable, so he lay very still. The tool shed must have been a smokehouse once.
The ceiling was sooty, and the faint smell of hickory smoke lingered.

The gray rat who shared his meals crept across the packed
dirt floor to the tin pan, and Gabriel gladly yielded the dry corn pone. He
knew he had to eat, but he could hardly swallow the stuff. “This pan’s all
yours, Rat.”

He still slept most of the time, but now that he’d survived
the fever, he had the strength to think. Lucky, he kept thinking. He was lucky
Monroe and his men hadn’t killed him when they couldn’t sell him in New
Orleans, or Natchez either. Lucky the old woman had found him and managed to
get him into the shed out of the sun. If she hadn’t, if she hadn’t kept feeding
him water . . . well, he’d have died.

And he still might. He hardly dared to look at his foot.
Raising his head and shoulders was an effort, and he dreaded what he might see.
If the healing didn’t progress, there’d be gangrene. He lifted his head and
looked down the length of his body. The foot was so swollen his toes looked
half their length. Splits where his skin had burst from the swelling were angry
red. A fly found the raw wounds and flitted and lit, flitted and lit. If the
old woman, if Ginny made the yarrow compress, it would at least keep the flies
off.

He lay back, exhausted from even that minor effort. Whatever
the fever had been, it had drained him of his strength. He distracted himself
from the pain by thinking of Simone, always of Simone. She’s playing her piano,
right this minute.  She has her hair pulled back behind her ears, the way I
like it. Images of her in the candlelight of his bedroom, her hair loose over
her bare breasts, tactile memories of her hands on his body, of her mouth on
his – he could have wept for wanting her. I will survive. I will go home. I’ll
marry Simone, and we’ll move away. Wherever Simone wants to go. France, Italy,
Egypt. I don’t care.

He woke at dusk to the squawking of chickens. Ginny must be
collecting eggs, or maybe a fox was after them. He tried to sit up, to scoot
toward the wall so he could lean against it. The effort fatigued him, and
moving his foot was unbelievably painful.

He would eat now if there were anything to eat. The rat had
left him nothing, however, not even a crumb. Gabriel resolved to eat every
morsel Ginny brought from now on. He would eat all he could and force the rest
down. He needed his strength, and the sooner the better.

Ginny did not return to the shed that night. In the morning,
Gabriel woke to her kicking the shed door open. She carried a bushel basket
inside and set it down. “What you want first? Feeding or doctoring?”

He pulled himself up to lean against the wall. “Food,
please, Ginny.”

She handed him a bowl of black-eyed peas, stewed okra, and
her usual over-baked corn pone. There was fatback in the peas and he ate that
first. The more he ate, the more he wanted.

“Well, I’m glad you’re eating, Caleb. Thought I was going to
bury you yet.”

“Ginny,” Gabriel said gently, “my name is Chamard. Gabriel
Chamard.”

“I like Caleb.” She unpacked the rest of the things from the
basket. “This here is the poultice I made out of the yarrow. Hope I did it
right. And this,” she said as she pulled out a gray jug, “is the brew from the
maypop. My old man used to swear it killed the pain in his hip. Maybe it did.”

She handed him the small jug and he sipped at it. He
hoped she knew the difference between maypop and belladonna.

Ginny examined his foot, careful not to touch it. She
wrinkled her nose and stroked her chin a moment. Then she plopped the poultice
onto his foot, none too gently. He lost his breath a moment from the pain, but
she didn’t notice. She tied the poultice on with what looked like old leather
reins.