Property (Vintage Contemporaries) (18 page)

O’Malley and his men busied themselves putting the house to rights. They picked up my husband’s body and moved it to the icehouse. Mr. Sutter was brought there too, wrapped in a blanket so none of the hands could see him, as it is well known that the sight of a dead overseer agitates the negroes. Two of the patrol stayed downstairs all night, prowling about ceaselessly, though there was no danger of the insurrectionists returning. After wrecking the house and taking off everything from flatware to footstools, as if they intended to set up a plantation of their own down the way, they had marched to the river road in time to run right into the patrol.

The chase was violent and protracted, much of it in the bottomland, where mud and the darkness complicated the outcome. One of the patrol was shot in the leg, another stabbed through the eye. Four of the negroes, including the captain, were shot dead, the other two were captured and trussed for hanging. The patrol had passed half the night in pursuit and spent the other half moving the captives downriver, where they were joined by a second patrol coming north who informed them that a battle was raging in Donaldsonville and all men called. It was not until morning that Mr. O’Malley recollected seeing my spoons gleaming in the mud and thought to investigate the Gaudet plantation.

When it was all over, they had captured fifty negroes; every one was shot or hanged in the next few days. Casualties among the planters were not heavy. There were a dozen injured and two murdered: my husband and his overseer, Mr. Sutter.

THE NEXT MORNING my aunt came up from town; she was followed by a mule-drawn cart containing two coffins sent from Chatterly by my brother-in-law, Charles Gaudet. This gentleman arrived with his son Edmund in the afternoon. I refused to see anyone, as I was too sick to leave my bed, so all the arrangements fell to my aunt, which suited everyone. She sent me her own maid, a capable nurse, who administered different medicines and fed me soup, tea, and custard. Though it hurt to eat, I was ravenous. All day I listened to the front door opening and closing, the drone of voices, at first subdued, but, as the rooms filled and my aunt served a buffet dinner with quantities of wine, gradually more lively, occasionally punctuated by laughter. My aunt looked in on me every hour to describe the progress of the funeral. All the planters for miles along the river attended, for even those who had disliked my husband, or scarcely made his acquaintance, understood the importance of standing at his graveside. In the afternoon they walked out to the cemetery for a brief ceremony, then came back to the house for more food and wine. I heard it all through a curtain of pain. Toward dark they began to drift away, and so did I, into a feverish sleep. When I woke it was morning and my aunt was sitting next to my bed with an envelope in her lap.

“How are you feeling, my dear?” she said.

There was an agreeable moment of clarity in which I knew that my husband was dead and buried, followed by a blast of pain so powerful it chased out every fact save itself. “Never worse,” I said.

“What can I give you?” She gestured to the table of medicines.

“Just a little water.”

She poured a glass and brought it to my lips. “Is the letter for me?” I said when I had swallowed a few sips.

“It is from Joel Borden. He particularly asked me to bring it to you.”

“Let me see it,” I said. My aunt proffered the envelope and I made an awkward business of opening it in my lap. I shook out the page and read:

My dearest Manon,

The enormity of your misfortune is so staggering I hardly know what words to write. First your dear mother, and now this horrible misfortune and loss. If I can be of any help to you in days to come, please call upon me. If not, I hope it will be some small comfort to you to receive the sympathy and affection of your devoted friend,

Joel

“This is so kind,” I said. Then the stabbing pain in my face reminded me of my injuries. I laid my palm against the bandage over my cheek. “What will I look like when my face is healed?”

“Dr. Landry is an excellent surgeon,” my aunt assured me. “He put twenty-seven stitches in my Ines’s forehead and there is barely a scar.”

“But my mouth,” I said, probing the spiky threads that ran from inside my lip to the base of my chin.

My aunt made no reply. Perhaps she thought me frivolous, though I doubt any woman can entertain the possibility of disfigurement with equanimity. I folded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope. I had to use my left hand to move my right hand into a useful position. What would look worse, I wondered, my face or my arm hanging limp at my side?

“Manon,” my aunt said, “where is Sarah?”

“She hasn’t come back?”

“No one has seen her.”

“Delphine must know.”

“No.”

I looked at my hand. There were three bruised marks just behind my thumb. “She bit me,” I said.

“Merciful heaven,” my aunt said.

“She took my husband’s horse and rode off. I begged her to let me get away, but she wouldn’t.”

“Then she has run away,” my aunt concluded.

“But where?” I exclaimed.

“She can’t have gotten far. She is probably hiding in town. It would surprise me if Mr. Roget didn’t know something of her whereabouts. I shall write to your uncle to make inquiries at once.”

My husband is dead, I thought. Why would she run now, when she was safe from him? It didn’t make sense.

“She has her baby with her,” I said.

“That will make it all the easier to find her.”

I could see her face again, her lips drawn back over her teeth, her eyes crazed and glowing in the torchlight as she pointed out my husband to his murderers and stood by until the blade had descended upon his neck.

“Yes,” I agreed. “We’ll find her.”

I SENT FOR Delphine to quiz her about Sarah, and to find out what she knew about that night. She said she had gone into the yard after supper to throw out the dishwater and when she came back she saw three of the runaways standing in the kitchen. So they were already in the house when I was speaking to my husband in his office. Delphine slipped out of the yard and crept along the back of the house to my window, where she threw pebbles until Sarah looked out. “I tole her what I seen,” Delphine said, “and she say for me to wait ’til she pass me her Nell, so I hid by the wall. Then she wrap up the chile and pass her down to me.”

“But I looked out then,” I said. “I didn’t see anyone.”

“I seen you, missus,” Delphine said. “But I was ’fraid to speak out and I figure Sarah tole you, so I stay still ’til she pass Nell down to me. Then I run ’roun the other side of the house and thas when the shots ring out. I hid in a bush ’til you was all running out on the lawn.”

“And you gave the baby back to Sarah.”

“Yes, missus,” she said. “She call to me, then I run back to the kitchen and lock myself in with Rose ’til you come.”

“Where do you think Sarah might have gone?” I asked, though I didn’t expect an honest answer. Delphine hung her head. “I don’ have no notion, missus,” she said.

“No matter,” I said confidently. “She won’t get far. If she hasn’t returned within the week I shall take out a notice in the journals, and that will bring the slave-catchers like flies to sugar.”

Delphine made no response. I considered the last information as good as delivered to Sarah’s ear. “Send Rose to me,” I said. “She’ll have to serve upstairs until Sarah is returned.”

MY FATHER WOULD never keep a runaway, but he never let one stay away either. If it took him six months and cost as much as the man was worth, he would gladly take the loss for the example it set the others to see a malcontent returned in shackles and straightway sold at market. He made sure all our negroes were informed of the proviso to the warranty, that whoever bought the man must know he had run away and could not be trusted, and that his value had been accordingly diminished. This policy resulted in a very low rate of absentees from our farm. Father deplored the laxity of his neighbors, who allowed a hand to disappear for two or three days at a time, always when the crop was in an urgent condition, then return to take his lashes and rejoin his companions with tales of his cleverness in eluding capture. Father wept with laughter when relating to us the policy of Mr. Hampton of Lafourche Parish, who administered a certain number of lashes for each day the slave went missing: fifteen for one day, thirty for two, etc. Father called this plan “the three-day furlough,” for it was revealed that most of Mr. Hampton’s regular runaways returned by midnight of the third day, which this gentleman cited as proof of the efficacy of his system.

House servants were another matter. I can remember only one instance of a runaway from our house. It happened just after the fearful insurrection downriver when I was a girl. We were never in any danger from it, but Father went to the city just afterward and on his return told us what an alarming state the countryside was in. Five hundred slaves had simply gone mad and marched down the river road toward New Orleans, banging drums and waving flags. They killed Major Andry’s son and wounded the major himself, set fire to mills and barns, raided the biggest houses. A stream of planters’ families in wagons and carts, having taken flight in whatever vehicle they could quickly find, preceded the rebels into town.

It took almost ten days to rout the negroes. The governor called out the militia and every patrol in fifty miles. It cost the state so much the treasury was bankrupted, and the reimbursements had to be paid in installments. Father told Mother, when he thought I was asleep, though I was listening breathlessly on the landing, that the heads of the leaders were strung up in the trees all along the river from New Orleans to Major Andry’s plantation, and many a planter took his negroes out to see this display.

That was when our housemaid Celeste disappeared. Father went back to the city and made inquiries until he learned that she had a brother among the insurrectionists. He was in fact one of the leaders. Father took a room in the hotel and spent several days following every rumor he could scare up. In the end he found Celeste hiding out in the restaurant kitchen where her mother worked as a cook. “You have comforted one another mightily,” Father told her, “but now it is time to come home.” She did not resist, returned to our house and stayed with us, always useful and even-tempered, until Father died.

I doubted that Sarah would be so tractable on her return. And if she made me spend much time or money tracking her down, I would not be so lenient.