Ever My Love: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 2) (9 page)

“Praise the Lawd,” Lena interjected.

“I’ll look in again before I leave,” Gabriel promised. He
followed Marianne out and walked alongside her on the way to Sylvie’s cabin.

“You’re to be congratulated, Miss Johnston. Those were
ferocious bites that young man sustained.”

“He’s going to live, isn’t he?”

Gabriel nodded. “I believe he will recover very well, except
for walking. That tearing of the left Achilles tendon will never heal properly.
Add to that the toe missing on his right, his gait will be awkward in the
extreme.” They walked a few steps. “His hands will be badly scarred, but he should
have adequate use of them.”

“I’ll have to find a task he can do,” Marianne thought
aloud.

Gabriel glanced at her. Many plantations sold off anyone who
didn’t carry his weight. “Yes, he needs to be useful.”

They came again to where the dogs were chained. One of them
stood, then growled and bared its teeth at them. The other dog joined in, both
of them snarling and straining against their chains.

“They were not to have been on the place,” Marianne said,
her voice husky, broken. “I’d already told the overseer. And now…”

“Yes.”

They moved on toward the cabin where Sylvie lay, and then
Gabriel stopped. “Miss Johnston, what I propose to do with Sylvie will be most
unpleasant. You need not assist if you prefer not to.”

“I will do whatever you require.”

He studied her a moment. No evidence of hysterical heroics,
no hesitation. Here was a woman to be reckoned with. She might have made a
doctor, had she been born male.

Sylvie was deeply asleep from the draught of laudanum.
Gabriel asked everyone but the mother to leave the cabin. To her, he gave the
task of holding Sylvie still should she rouse or twist in her sleep.

He began by bathing the child’s abdomen with witch hazel.
From his bag he retrieved the scalpel he kept sharper than any razor he’d ever
used for shaving. The sun coming in through the window glinted on it, and
Gabriel noticed Irene’s eyes fix on the blade.

“Perhaps you had better look only at Sylvie’s face,” he
advised her. “Or out the window.”

He checked that Marianne had at hand the absorbent cloths
and the witch hazel to cleanse the wound once he’d drained it. “Ready?” She
nodded, and he began.

The punctures had nearly closed of themselves with so much
pressure around and under them. Gabriel chose the point nearest Sylvie’s navel
and gently touched the scalpel to the skin. A thin line of red appeared, and he
pressed just slightly harder. The blade reached through the layers of the
epidermis, through the muscle, and – pus welled up around the knife, nearly foaming
to escape the cavity too small for its mass.

He let it flow, mopping the purulence as fast as it emerged.
The matter decreased to an ooze and Gabriel gently pressed the abdomen to expel
more.

Not a pretty sight, this. Sylvie’s mother Irene had taken
his advice at the first cut and kept her gaze out the window. Miss Johnston, he
noted with admiration, though her hands were as gory as his, held up well.

He removed a hollow glass rod from his medical kit. Perhaps
ten inches long, it was in effect a straw. He wiped it with a fresh cloth, then
inserted one end of it into the wound. Gently, a finger at the ready to put
over the hole, Gabriel sucked at the pus remaining inside Sylvie.

As Gabriel lifted the rod and emptied its contents into yet
another rag, he glanced at Marianne’s face, noted the tinge of green around her
mouth. “It isn’t necessary for you to observe this procedure closely, Miss
Johnston. Perhaps you’d like to cleanse your hands. We’ll soon be ready to wash
the area and close the wound.”

“I’ll be fine,” she murmured.

Gabriel finished his machinations, and Marianne once more
assisted him. They closed the wound and dressed it.

“Irene?” Marianne said. Sylvie’s mother’s body was rigid and
she had not once taken her eyes from the window. “It’s all over.”

With a huge exhalation, Irene bent over Sylvie, and Gabriel
touched her shoulder.

“There won’t be so much pain, now,” he told her.

“She gone be well, doctor?” Irene said through her tears.
“You make her so she be well?”

Gabriel looked at Marianne. Surely she understood. The
child’s body was corrupted; she’d seen it for herself.

“She’ll sleep until late this afternoon, I think,” Gabriel
told the mother.

“I’ll send Pearl to sit with you, Irene. The doctor and I
will return in a while. Dr. Chamard, please. Let me show you where you may
wash.”

Gabriel accompanied Marianne to the house where she turned
him over to Charles with instructions to take very good care of the doctor.

In her room, Marianne moved as if she were half asleep. She
untied her apron and rolled it into a ball to keep it from soiling anything
else.

“No, Freddie,” she told her pup when he began to sniff it.
She lifted him to her lap and let him lick her face until at last she smiled a
little. She stroked his silky hair and caressed him. He was the only comfort
she knew when she was lonely. Or frightened. And she was very frightened. How
could Sylvie live with such a wound inside her body?

Hannah bustled in and bullied Marianne into undressing. She
made her a bath, adding a palm full of rose petals to scent the water. Once
Marianne had sunk into the tub, Hannah scrubbed her until she was rosy, yet
still Marianne did not relax. Instead, she lost the lethargy of fatigue and
horror with which she’d entered the room, and as her energy returned, she
burned to do something.

Dr. Chamard had done all there was to be done for Sylvie and
Peter at present. What remained was to insure nothing like this ever happened
again.

Hannah held up two frocks. “You going back down dere?” she
asked. Marianne nodded. “Den you wear dis one,” she decided.

Marianne truly didn’t care. She hurried Hannah with the
buttons, brushed her own hair and put it up out of her way without fuss.
Downstairs, she inquired whether Dr. Chamard was ready for breakfast.

“He’s on the veranda, Miss Marianne,” Charles informed her.
“I give him a glass of lemonade to start him off.”

“And Mr. Adam? And our other guests?’

“They’s all out to the pond with they fishing poles. Been
gone since sunrise.”

Not a one of them had bothered to stop in the quarters to
see how the child did. Her anger, that shapeless force pressing on her heart,
grew to encompass her brother and Yves. But not Marcel, she thought. He’d
volunteered to fetch the doctor, and that had cost him a night’s sleep.

“Mr. Chamard,” Charles said, “he ask bout de little girl dis
morning ’fore he went off.”

Yes. Marcel, she assumed, at least Marcel cares.

“The doctor and I will have breakfast on the terrace, please.
And send word I’d like to see Mr. McNaught in an hour.”

“Remember, he gone for yesterday and today,” Charles said.
“He over to the other farm checking the cane.”

And left the slaves to catch his brutes and chain them.
Where is McNaught keeping those dogs? She marched toward the terrace. He
certainly has not dispersed them as I ordered. No wonder the man doesn’t listen
to me when Adam plays right into this Men Know Best foolishness.

She greeted Dr. Chamard with as much of the gracious hostess
demeanor as she could muster. They breakfasted on melon, fresh trout, corn
grits, and plenty of dark coffee. And discovered in each other a kindred
spirit. Marianne asked him every question she’d had for months, even years,
from the medical books she’d read, the doctoring she’d done. No topic was too
indelicate for the two of them to discuss over fresh beignets and strawberry
preserves.

They talked again of the possibilities for Peter’s working
life, what he could do and what he could not with his maimed extremities.
Marianne traced a design in the tablecloth. She surely could trust this man.
His own mother had been a slave, and the story was this Cleo Tassin had been
educated right alongside her mistress, Miss Josephine.

“I was thinking I might teach Peter to read.”

Gabriel Chamard raised an eyebrow. “You would teach a slave
to read?”

“You think it wrong? Too difficult?”

“Neither,” he said. “Your neighbors would not approve,
however.”

She smiled at him. “I do not intend to inform them.”

With breakfast and coffee in her, hope returned. Surely the
doctor’s ministrations would save Sylvie. As they walked back to the quarters,
Marianne held up a sugary beignet she’d brought from their table. “I may be
able to coax a smile from her with this.”

They were in the shade of the pecan grove when the sound of
keening, high and long and desolate, filled the air. Marianne seized the
doctor’s sleeve. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, and she felt her
blood turn cold.

Marianne lifted her skirts and ran pell mell through the trees,
down the path, and into the crowd gathered at the cabin door. Inside, Irene lay
across the bed, her arms draped over Sylvie’s lifeless little body. Sobs had
overtaken her and drained her, but in a moment, she raised and again wailed her
grief to the rafters.

Marianne stared at Sylvie. She’d never get used to seeing
death, never. The body so obviously an empty vessel, the vital spark gone, and
yet the features the same.

Marianne began to tremble, then to shake. Vaguely she knew
the doctor took her arm, drew her out of the stifling cabin.

Once outside, Marianne shook him off and began to run.
Through the pecan trees, over the lawn and across the veranda. Her intention
was a mere picture in her mind, words unnecessary for an aim so elemental. In
Father’s study, she fumbled with the ever-present keys from her pocket. Once
she had the gun case open, she grabbed Father’s shotgun, broke it and loaded
two shells, then snapped it shut.

Charles appeared in the study door. “Miss Marianne, what you
doing? Here, let me take dat from you.”

She brushed past him without explaining. She wasn’t yielding
the shotgun to anyone. She marched back to the quarters, unaware of the tears
that flowed over her face and to the looks of alarm from the people gathered in
the alleyway.

At the thrashing post, the murderous dogs, made mad by the
sounds of grief, pulled at their chains, snapping and snarling.

Trembling, her face flushed, her eyes the color of steel,
Marianne stopped ten feet away, raised the heavy shotgun, and aimed. She pulled
both triggers at once.

The impact knocked her backwards onto the ground. The roar
seemed to come from everywhere, its echo going on and on.

Gabriel knelt beside her. The doctor didn’t immediately try
to raise her, but let her breathe, let her realize it was done. When she was
ready, she let him help her stand. The shaking was gone. She was steady and
calm again. She didn’t look at the dogs.

Father’s shotgun lay in the dirt. She’d have to clean it
now. She bent over to pick it up. Father didn’t tolerate careless treatment of
his firearms. She wondered if she remembered how to break it down and put it
back together.

Strange, the silence. Maybe her hearing was gone from the
roar of the blast. The people watched her. With McNaught away, they had come in
from the fields, those who were close in, when they heard the death wails.

Gabriel Chamard handed her over to Charles, who’d followed
her from the house. “Come on, honey. I take you home.”

Marianne let him take her arm and lead her away. She cradled
the shotgun. Is this how Father told me to carry a gun? She couldn’t remember.
It didn’t matter. It was empty now. Like Sylvie’s body.

Yves Chamard didn’t like fishing. Too damned idle, sitting
with a line in the water, waiting for some action. And they’d been out here
since just after dawn. He’d seen a gator in the bayou a while back, but he
didn’t have his gun with him.

He glanced at his brother. Marcel had the gift of stillness.
What did he think about during the hours he was content simply to sit and muse?
Probably writing a poem. Yves could guess what Adam thought about. He hadn’t
spoken of Nicolette since they left the lake, but he’d obviously fallen hard
for her. My little sister, knocking them down like flies. But Adam Johnston was
not the man for her, Yves thought. My brother’s cousin, a friend of sort, but
not the man for her. But would she know that?

A fish tugged at his line and then leapt from the water.
“About damn time,” he muttered. He worked the pole, let the fish fight as long
as it would, and then pulled in a fine bass. “Two pounds, what do you think?”

“If you say so,” Adam teased. He put the catch in the keel
with the others. “What say we fry some fish before we head back?”

Marcel grinned. “Who’s going to clean them?”

Yves hated cleaning fish. But it was his turn. “Anybody
bring meal? A pan?”

“Yep.”

“Oil?”

“Yes, that too. Get to it,” Adam said.

The gentlemen saw to themselves this morning. Free from the
constraints the presence of women required, they’d left their frock coats at
home and were comfortable in collarless cotton shirts with the sleeves rolled
up. Yves gutted and scaled their half a dozen catch, his the biggest, he noted
with satisfaction. He smiled at himself. Still trying to outdo his big brother.

Adam gathered the wood and built a fire. Marcel, by
consensus, was the best cook, so he dredged the fish and slipped them into the
hot oil.

Breakfast over, the sun was up high enough to punish them
with the heat, and they gathered their gear to head back. But Yves had another
motive for having come out this morning. He wanted to know where McNaught had
moved the pack of hounds.

Marcel had told him all about the little girl and about
going after Gabe. Clearly, the overseer had not taken care of the dogs.