Property (Vintage Contemporaries) (15 page)

“Not at first,” he said. “They’ll be starting near the Pass and pushing down this way.” He held the glass out to me.

“I’d like a little more than that, if you don’t mind,” I said.

He looked puzzled, then took my meaning. “I know these conspiracies must be torture to your nerves,” he said, filling the glass.

“On the contrary,” I said. “It gives me something to think about besides my sewing.”

He ignored this remark. “In truth, I’m reluctant to leave the house. I can’t trust anyone to stand guard. If the informant told the truth, this plot has infiltrated every quarter from Pointe Coupée to the city on both sides of the river.” He opened his cabinet and took down two pistols.

“With the militia called out, they can have no chance of success,” I observed. “What do they possibly hope to accomplish?”

“They just want to murder as many of us as they can,” he said. “They don’t think further than that.”

I sipped my port, thinking of them gathered around their fires of an evening, their rude passions inflamed by the wild talk of some preacher, planning how best to kill us all. And it wasn’t just the field hands. In New Orleans, I had heard of an American lady who discovered her maid attempting to poison the entire household by lacing the sugar with arsenic. What benefit would her mistress’s demise be to her, since she would only be sold again, perhaps to a more severe mistress? It puzzled me. “I suppose it is just the numbers,” I said.

My husband cast me a questioning look, distracted by the business of tamping powder into one of his pistols.

“It is because they outnumber us so,” I explained. “They don’t understand why they can’t do whatever they please.”

“It is because they are fiendish brutes,” my husband said.

I raised my eyebrows. “Perhaps you are right,” I said.

He laid the pistol down and gave me his attention. “There is another matter I wish to speak with you about, Manon. Will you hear me out?”

My inheritance, I thought. I was about to find out how he planned to squander my father’s money. “I’m at your convenience,” I said.

He raised one leg so that he was half-sitting on the end of his desk. “While you were away, I thought a greal deal of you. More than I do when you are here.”

“ ‘Absence makes . . .’ ” I waved my hand at the rest.

“It wasn’t that. It was that I knew, if you could have your own way, you would never return.”

This straightforward statement of the simple truth took me by surprise. I set my glass on the side table and drew in a breath. The opportunity for honest exchange between us was rare, and I determined to take advantage of it to advance a plan, a dream, really, that I had formulated on the long drive back from town. “No,” I said. “If it were not my obligation I would never return here.”

He narrowed his eyes as if my confession pained him, though it couldn’t have been unexpected, as he’d just remarked upon his certainty of my preference. “Isn’t there some way we can close this rift between us and live as husband and wife?” he pleaded.

Clearly he imagined there was something he could say that would persuade me to invite him into my bedroom, an idea that had no appeal to me at all. “No,” I said.

He studied me a moment, evidently mystified by my coldness. “It’s that simple, is it?” he said.

“It is, yes,” I said. “But as you’ve brought up this ‘rift,’ as you call it, I do have a proposition regarding it.”

“I am willing to hear it,” he said.

“What I propose is that we agree to spend more time apart. Now that I have my mother’s house, I could stay in town for the season. I will have to have a cook, as Peek is gone, and I would take Sarah with me, so you might do as Mother so often advised you and buy a proper butler.”

“I thought the loss of your mother might soften your heart toward me,” he said. “I see it has had the opposite effect.”

“I am orphaned,” I said. “Who will defend my interests if I don’t defend them myself?”

“I will never agree to your proposal,” he said.

I expected this response, had indeed planned for it, holding my high card to my chest like a proper gambler. “And if I were to leave Sarah here,” I said. “What then?”

He brought his hand to his chin and began pulling at his mustache, his eyes fixed on me with resolute puzzlement. He could see it. He would have Sarah to himself and I would be gone. He mulled it over with the same expression he gave the menu on those rare occasions when we had dined at restaurants together; the prospect of making the wrong choice vexed him sorely. “You are my wife,” he declared at last.

“That is my misfortune,” I said.

He stood up, returning his attention to his pistols. “I don’t see that we can afford to keep your mother’s house,” he said. “I plan to have my lawyer seek out a buyer for it.”

My resolution failed me and my eyes filled with useless tears. “No,” I said. “I won’t consent to that.”

He smiled indulgently, turning his pistol over in his hands. “Well,” he said. “Don’t cry, Manon. We will discuss the matter. There’s plenty of time.”

“It’s
my
house,” I protested.

He didn’t bother to answer this assertion, thereby making me more conscious of how hollow it was. I dried my eyes against my sleeve.

“I suppose we should first see if we can get through this night without incident,” he said. “I want you and Sarah to stay in your room, but leave the door open. I plan to pass the night on the couch on the landing. I want to be able to hear you should you call for help.”

This struck me as an idiotic plan, but I felt too defeated to object. I finished off the port and stood up, not surprised that I was dizzy. My husband came to my side and tried to take my arm, but I pulled away brusquely. He followed me a few steps, then fell back. “I have work to finish here,” he said, as if I were interested in his plans. “I will come up when I have made sure the kitchen is locked.”

I dragged myself up the stairs. In my room I found Sarah spreading Mother’s shawl out on her mattress. The baby lay on its stomach near her feet, trying to crawl but getting nowhere. At least that one will be gone soon, I thought. I went to the window and looked out into the darkness. It was cool, clear. There was a damp breeze from the north that made me pull my own shawl tight over my chest. I should close the window before I go to bed, I thought, or put on another blanket. I considered this trivial question for a few moments as I leaned on my elbows looking out at the stars. There was a gibbous moon. How fine it would be to walk out under the trees, but that, of course, was unthinkable. “I don’t see any signs of an uprising out here,” I said to amuse myself.

I glanced back at Sarah, who was on her knees, looking up at me, her eyebrows knit as if I’d addressed her in a language she didn’t understand. I turned back to the night, chiding myself for having spoken facetiously. The truth was that at that moment I wanted nothing more than to pour out the tale of my unhappiness to someone who loved me, but there was no such person. He’s going to sell my house, I thought, and I’ll be trapped here until I die. I scanned the roots of the tree, recalling the night I’d seen a man there looking back at me. I’d told no one, partly from a wish that my silence might result in difficulty for my husband, partly from fear that he would seize on the information to increase his hysterical vigilance. My little circuit, I thought, from hope to fear and back again.

I heard a night bird cry and an answering call from near the kitchen. A dim light suffused the air in that direction; Delphine was awake, locked in there with Walter and Rose. He would turn the dogs loose outside before he came up. The quarter was under a strict curfew: no man, woman, or child would dare show his face until morning. All night the master would stride about his citadel, pointing his pistols at insects, breezes, and mice, and in the morning we would have breakfast as usual.

Another blanket, I decided. It was chilly and there were no mosquitoes. I would sleep without the bar. I turned to tell Sarah to take a blanket from the armoire. She was wrapping the baby tightly in her shawl. This struck me as curious. She passed a fold over its head so that it looked like an Indian baby such as I have seen in the market in town, attached to its mother’s back by a leather strap. A papoose. That was what they called them. My eye fell upon the welcome sight of the blue bottle containing my sleeping tincture and I took a few steps to the table. I detected a motion at the doorway and turned to see what it was.

High against the jamb, the upper part of a black face with only one eye showing peered in at me. In the same moment I saw it, it slipped away, leaving me unsure of my own eyes. My thoughts scattered in every direction, seeking some reasonable explanation: my husband had decided to take a trustworthy guard into the house after all, or this was a messenger with important news from town. My body had no such fatuous doubts. The blood that rushed to my brain left my knees weak and my head as clear as a street swept by a hurricane. The event we all feared most had begun and there was to be no escape from it. I slumped against the bed, opened my mouth, but no sound came out. Sarah got up, cradling the bundle she had made of her baby. She went to the window. When I looked back at the doorway, there was the single eye again, watching me.

“Sarah?” I said softly, turning slowly, cautiously, to the window. She was leaning out, holding the baby close to her chest, looking first one way, then the other. Soundlessly she held the bundle out over the sill and dropped it. I listened for the thump, the cry, but there was nothing.

What did it mean? She turned from the window, her eyes wide, looking past me at the apparition in the doorway. She saw it too. My mind was not made easier by this revelation. I turned back, still clinging to the bedpost, though I felt my strength returning. The face was there, a little more of it now, a bit of the nose and cheek. How long did he intend to spy upon us in this absurd fashion. “What are you doing here?” I asked. How calm my voice was!

For answer he stepped boldly into the doorway. He was a tall man, very black, dressed in a loose cotton shirt and rough breeches, no shoes. In one hand he held a cane cutter, in the other a butchering knife. He stood with his feet turned out, his shoulders slumped, and his eyes strangely unfocused, as if presenting himself for inspection. I didn’t think I had seen him before. He was a field hand, a runaway from somewhere, there would be no reasoning with him. And, indeed, no compelling argument sprang to my mind. Where was my husband with his pistols? His obsession had finally materialized, and he was nowhere to be found. It crossed my mind that he was already dead.

“He not alone,” Sarah said, and I replied, “No, I think not. Come and stand close to me.”

She moved to my side and there we stood, while the air grew thick with the inevitability of murder. We heard the first shot, a shout, then another shot. Our captor appeared unconcerned. Everything was still; only the curtain rustled in the breeze. All at once the scratching in the wall started up, loud and urgent, as if the silence was too much for the rodent to bear. I could hear Sarah’s shallow breathing next to me, and in my ear my own racing pulse. The man leaned back into the hall, looking toward the landing. A voice called up the stairs, “Bring them down.” He stepped back, motioning us into the hall with his cane knife.

My impulse was to run, but where? My husband had taken great care to lock the house, evidently sealing us in with our murderers. Sarah took up the lamp and preceded me out to the landing. Our captor followed closely, his shadow leaping up the wall in front of me so that I felt surrounded by him. At the landing he said, “Wait.” I stopped. Sarah turned back, and we both watched as he examined the spyglass. A cough drew my attention down to where the light from the dining room pooled at the foot of the stairs. Another man was there, smaller, blacker, holding a pistol at his side and smiling up at me. “Come down now, ladies,” he said. “And come slow.”

I rested my hand on the rail and went down, pausing at each step. Sarah came behind me, holding up the lamp so that I was outlined in light. My head was bursting with questions. Where was my husband? What had happened to Sarah’s baby? Was Delphine safe in the kitchen? How many men were there? How did they get in, and, above all, how could I escape? At the end of the hall I saw that the front door was open and a third man stood in the frame. He held a rifle against his shoulder and looked out at the darkness. The one who had spoken, whom I took to be their captain, stepped back to let me pass. “Just go right on in there,” he said, indicating the dining room. I did as he instructed and received a hard shock: there were four more of them. One was sprawled in a side chair, shirtless, while another knelt before him, wrapping a length of cloth around the seated man’s bleeding arm. They had opened all the shutters and casements. Another man, gripping a short knife, leaned in one doorway looking out while the last, armed with a sword, stood just outside the room looking in. Sarah passed me and set the lamp on the sideboard. More lamps were on the table, along with the remains of a ham and half a loaf of bread, thrown there without the bother of plates. They’d cut into the ham with their knives, leaving deep gashes in the wood. They’ve destroyed that table, I thought, which made me angry. My anger made me bold. I addressed their captain, who stood blocking the door. “Where is my husband?”

The captain came into the room, pulled out a chair, and sat down, giving me a rueful smile. “Thas just what I like to know,” he said. “He clipped my bird here”—he lifted his hand to the wounded man—“and run right out the front door.”