Ever My Love: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 2) (27 page)

After breakfast, Mr. Chamard left to visit Mr. Tadman. Miss
Marianne sipped coffee. Pearl stayed in the kitchen and made biscuits for the
cook. She couldn’t possibly sit still. Work was the only way she knew to make
the time pass.

Finally, oh finally, the innkeeper came for her. Her
mistress was waiting for her outside, he said. Mr. Chamard had their four
horses, Miss Marianne was mounted, they were ready to go.

The Forks-of-the-Road, not more than a mile east of town,
was far enough out to give the townspeople some reassurance that the cholera
and other diseases that plagued the weakened transient population would be
contained, yet close enough in to be convenient for those buying and selling
slaves. This market was second only to New Orleans in this part of the world.
Thousands and thousands of enslaved souls entered the wide gates and passed out
again, still enslaved.

Pearl trembled at sight of the dreaded place. All her life
she’d heard stories about being sent to the market, about being stripped and
touched and probed by strangers who saw you as another ox or horse or mule to
labor in their fields. She imagined a dark cloud of fear and hopelessness hovering
overhead.

A carriage and several saddle-horses clustered around the
entrance to the rough wooden building showed Pearl they were not the first to
arrive. She shook off the gloom that had gripped her. Luke was inside, and she
had come to claim him. She slid off her horse and hurriedly tied it to a rail.

Mr. Chamard dismounted and called her to him.

“Pearl, this impatience won’t do. These traders smell
eagerness like it was cinnamon on toast. You’ll just drive the price up, and we
have only a limited check from my friend. You understand?”

Chamard looked up at Miss Marianne. “Maybe she should stay
out here with you. I think that would be best.”

“No, Mr. Chamard,” Pearl said. “I goin in. I has to see him.
You might not know him. I goin in.” She wanted to grab the master’s sleeve. She
wanted to plead, to beg, to cry. “I’ll be quiet. I will be.”

Her mistress and the master decided, exchanging looks over
her head. Miss Marianne, still on her horse, nodded. “Let her go in, I think.”
She began to dismount and Mr. Chamard held her waist to help her down. Dat man
in love with Missy. I see it every time he touch her.

“I should like you to stay out here,” Mr. Chamard said to
Missy.

Miss Marianne took a moment to think about it. “My father,
and I myself, profit from slavery. I don’t have the right not to look at what
it does to people.”

Mr. Chamard nodded. He held his arm out for her, and Pearl
followed along behind them.

The soul drivers expected early morning buyers. They’d
already arranged their chattel in a semi-circle in the court yard. In order to
entice buyers, the brokers had dressed every slave in new clothes. The male
slaves stood with cheap new hats in their hands, perfectly still, prepared to be
inspected. Equally impassive, the women, some of them with small children
clinging to their skirts, faced them across the yard.

When the trader in a fine gray top hat tooted a whistle, the
slaves began to parade within the confines of the yard.

“Step lively, there, damn you,” the slaver called out. He
blew the whistle again and the men and women picked up their pace until they
were trotting. At the third whistle, they slowed down and resumed their places
around the quadrangle.

The man in the top hat came over to Mr. Chamard and
introduced himself. Harvey Fox. That blond boy’s father.

Pearl found Luke, the fourth man down from where Pearl
stood. His shoulders strained the seams of the thin black cotton coat, and the
trousers hardly came to his ankles. His jaw muscles bulged as he stared at the
far wall of the enclosure, and she knew he was holding himself in.

Her heart pounded so she couldn’t hear what Mr. Chamard said
to the trader, couldn’t hear what the trader said back. She tried to keep her
eyes on the ground, tried not to show Mr. Fox her soul lived in the breast of
the fourth man from the end.

Other buyers ahead of them were walking along the lines,
stopping to examine this or that one more closely. Mr. Chamard and Mr. Fox
moved away and conferenced in voices pitched for privacy.

Closer to her at the end of the women’s line, an elderly
lady perused the potential maids, her black silk skirt so wide she seemed to
float rather than walk on concealed feet. Pearl watched her to keep from gazing
at Luke.

With her parasol, the old woman lifted the skirt of a girl
of perhaps fifteen. “Virgin, do you think?” she asked the trader escorting her.
Pearl thought the girl’s face might have been made of wood, but the trader
barely bothered to conceal his smirk.

“Yes, ma’am. Her last owner vouchsafed she was untouched.”

“Hm,” she said. “She has a sour look about her, and I don’t
care for that scar under her chin.”

The lady walked on to stop in front of a woman of perhaps
twenty. The boy she held wrapped his arms around his mama’s neck as the lady
looked them over. A little girl, maybe four years old, clung to the mother’s
skirt, watching the lady with big, bright eyes. “A pretty child,” the old woman
announced.

Pearl’s attention shifted when a gentleman in a bottle-green
coat stopped in front of Luke. She nearly cried out, but Mr. Chamard turned
slightly to give her a look, and she tightened her mouth.

The gentleman used his riding crop to pull Luke’s chin down.
“Good teeth, mostly,” he said. “Stick your tongue out. All right. Let me see
your hands.”

Luke did all he was told, his eyes fastened on the wall some
forty feet away. Please, God, don let Luke lose hisself.

“Are you of a pliant disposition?” the gentleman asked.

“What dat mean?” Pearl whispered. Miss Marianne frowned at
her to be silent.

“Are you content with your life? I don’t want to invest in a
slave who’s going to be running off every chance he gets.”

Now Luke looked at the man. Looked him in the eye.

The man in the green jacket stepped back. He shook his head
and muttered. “Not a good risk, I shouldn’t think.” He moved on.

At last Mr. Chamard began to amble down the line of men. He
stopped at number two for a moment, looked him up and down as the other buyers
had done. Then he moved on and stood before Luke.

“Feel this fellow’s arm,” Mr. Fox said, inviting Yves to
inspect Luke as if he were a piece of livestock. He tapped Luke’s thigh with
his whip handle. “See that? Solid muscle.”

Mr. Chamard didn’t say, I’ll take this one. He didn’t give
any indication he was even particularly interested in Luke. He’s jest trying to
be smart, tha’s all. He won leave Luke here. He done got de money dis morning.
Still, Pearl could hardly breathe.

Don look at me, Luke. You look at me, I gon throw myself on
you. She kept close behind Miss Marianne’s skirt, trying not to let her heart
show in her face.

Mr. Chamard walked on, and Pearl thought she might faint at
Luke’s feet. How he pass on by? She wanted to grab the mister, to haul him
back. Miss Marianne saved her from yelling out by grabbing hold of her arm.
“Patience,” she whispered.

I got to have faith, Pearl reminded herself. Dey gon do it,
dey is.

Mr. Chamard hesitated as if he were considering. Then he
strolled back up the line. He tapped Luke on the chest. “I believe this one
will do well enough.”

The courtyard erupted in wails and shrieks.  “My baby!” The
young mother the old woman had been inspecting was shouting and crying and
struggling with the trader who tried to take her littlest one away from her.
The silk-clad lady stepped back, her handkerchief at her mouth.

Another trader rushed over, uncoiling his whip as he went.
The older child screamed, the younger one clung to his mother and shrieked in
panic. The whip caught the mother across her forehead and blood spurted. The
next strike cut her back.

Pearl sank to her knees. “Don’t hit dat chile! Lawd, don let
em hit dose children,” she cried out.

The slaver pulling on the toddler yanked him from his
mother’s arms, and the woman attacked him with all her strength, scratching and
clawing and kicking. The other man’s whip lashed her again and again, but she
wouldn’t stop. Finally a third man grabbed her and wrestled her to the ground.

Mr. Fox hurried to escort the old gentlewoman from the
scene. “Oh dear,” she said as she leaned heavily on the man’s arm. “Such a
fuss. And I so generously agreed to take the older child.” She wiped her eyes
with her lace handkerchief. “I do hope this doesn’t show an ungrateful nature
on her part.”

“She’ll be over it in a day or two,” Mr. Fox said. “They
don’t feel as much as white folks, you know.”

“I suppose you’re right.” The old woman looked back at her
new slave being hauled kicking and wailing from the courtyard. “I really
couldn’t abide to have a little one around. Not with my nerves.”

The man with the whip carried the little girl away under his
arm like a bag of potatoes. That child too fought to be free, but she had no
chance.

That left the toddler, abandoned in the dust of the square.
He cried as loud as a child can cry whose mother has been torn from him, but
the slave women in the row behind him might have been deaf. They were statues.
They were stones.

Pearl dashed across the yard. She grabbed the little one and
held him tight, daring anyone to take him from her. The traders paid her no
mind, but Mr. Chamard and Miss Marianne strode to her side.

“Pearl, what are you doing?” Mr. Chamard hissed.

Pearl glared at him. “I’s taking dis chile. Nobody else want
him. I’s taking him.”

“They won’t let you have this child, Pearl,” Miss Marianne
said over the baby’s screams.

“Nobody else want him.”

Miss Marianne looked to Mr. Chamard.

She telling him wid her eyes to give me dis chile. Pearl
held the screaming boy against her and rocked him. “Sh, sh, sh,” she whispered.
She make him do it. He a rich man, rich enough to buy Luke.

Yves shook his head at Marianne. “I don’t know. I’ll talk to
him.” He met Mr. Fox coming from the holding cells where the mother and child
were being restrained. They stopped in the center of the court yard and talked
in low voices.

Pearl crooned and petted the child as she watched the men.
They would look at her, look at Luke. One would shake his head, the other would
gesture with a hand. If God love His children, I get dis baby.

The red-faced boy nearly strangled with sobbing, and Pearl
soothed him the best she could. Miss Marianne stood beside her, her hands
clenched and hardly moving. Dat Mr. Chamard, he do it for her, he will. Dis
baby mine.

At last, the men shook hands. Yves came back and took Miss
Marianne’s arm. “He’s yours, Pearl. Let’s get out of here.”

Thank you, God. Thank you, Jesus, Pearl prayed, hurrying
behind the two kindest people on God’s earth.

Pearl followed Yves and Marianne out the gate to their
horses.

“Stay here,” Yves said. “I have papers to sign.” Before he
left them, he unsaddled the fourth horse and took the saddle with him.

Pearl sat down under the tree with the baby, who’d begun to
snuffle instead of wailing.

“A baby for a saddle,” Miss Marianne said.

Pearl thought her mistress was about to break. “Sit down,
Missy.” Pearl pulled at her skirt for her to sit and Marianne sank down on the
grass next to Pearl.

“God in heaven,” Marianne muttered and leaned her head
against the tree.

The baby’s snuffles changed to dry heaving hiccups. “Now,
you jest hiccupping. Dat’s nothing, is it?” Pearl talked to him, telling him
how good life was going to be. He so little. He forget his mama in a few weeks.
Den I be Mama, and Luke be his daddy.

 Luke came out striding behind his new owner. He lost
weight, but he look good. He not sick. Pearl hopped up, so happy, so grateful,
her smile promising him everything he’d ever wanted. But Luke wouldn’t look at
her. He scowled, and kept his eyes on the ground.

Why he not smiling? she thought, her spirits sinking. Pride,
dat what pulling him down. He ain’t freed hisself. Men gots dere pride. She
patted the little one’s back. He get over it. He gone be dis babe’s daddy.

“You ride bareback?” Yves said.

Luke nodded, his face closed and sullen. With a fluid
motion, he was on the horse’s back. Pearl knew he’d never been on a horse, with
saddle or without, but he was strong. He’d hold on.

Simone threw a chemise on top of the items in her satchel,
ignoring her sister Musette’s protests. She rummaged in her top drawer for her
pin money and stuffed it into her reticule, which she fastened into a hidden
pocket of her traveling skirt.

“You’ll disgrace yourself and everyone in the family,”
Musette harped. “What about Ariane and me? We’ll be ruined, too, you know.”

Simone scrambled in her jewelry box looking for the most
expensive pieces. Finally she threw them all into a velvet bag and tossed them
into the satchel. “Do you have any money?”

“Money? Didn’t you hear anything I said?”

“Musette. This isn’t about how many beaus will ask you to
dance at some ball. This is about Gabriel.”

Musette sat heavily on the bed. “I have eight dollars
saved.”

“Go get it, please.” Simone added Musette’s money to her
own, kissed her sister, then fastened the satchel and headed for the back
courtyard where Elbow John held her horse.

“Simone.” Josie was waiting for her on the back gallery. 
“Do reconsider, sweetheart. His brothers and his father will bring him home.
You’ve no need to expose yourself like this.”

“Maman, I can’t bear it here another day.” She kissed her
mother’s cheek. “Thank you, Maman, for not forbidding it.”

Josie smiled. “You would have gone anyway.”