Rafe (27 page)

She had dared, after all. The pride of accomplishment overwhelmed her and she sat back weakly, letting the realization creep into her slowly. She had dared! She would dare more. She rose quickly and wrapped a dressing gown about her sleeping attire before she stepped into the hall in time to see the door to Ezra's room open and Julie quietly back out. The girl wore a simple garment of cotton barely long enough to conceal her hips. Once in the hall she stooped to put on slippers. The smock lifted to reveal her buttocks, crisscrossed with bruises and welts. Micara audibly cleared her throat. Julie spun about, obviously startled. Seeing who it was, the mulatto girl recoiled against the wall, expecting the slap that was sure to follow.

Micara smiled at her. “Dear Julie,” she said softly. “Come here.”

The girl blinked in disbelief. “Ma'am?”

“Come here. I shan't hurt you.” Julie walked slowly toward her. “You're such an attentive slut. And really quite lovely. Why, almost white. Almost”

“Yes'm.”

Micara continued in sweet tones, as if truly affectionate toward Ezra's chosen bed partner. “The other day I noticed you coming out of the room downstairs. The room we've set aside for Ezra's pitbuck nigger. Several times, in fact.”

“Yes'm. Ah went in ta see if'n he be aw'right.”

“Your duty lies upstairs. I suspect there's more to your visit than concern for his health. We did not purchase you to service our studs. If service is what you wish, however, perhaps we could manage to turn loose some of the field hands with you for a few hours.”

Julie held her own. “Mistuh Clayton, he doan 'low me to go near no field han's.”

“I'm sure they'd love to have a chance to express their feelings for the nice little house nigger who pleasures the master they all love so dearly. Wouldn't they be fun? I can imagine how gently they would treat you.”

For the first time in a long while Julie was suddenly afraid of her master's wife. Micara seemed very changed. Very capable. The girl had noticed a gradual change over the past week, but this was the first time it had been so visibly demonstrated. She nodded, her hands clenching the fabric of her shift. “Ma'am, Ah.…”

“Keep away from that room,” Micara ordered harshly, the words hissing through her teeth. “I'm certain Ezra pumps away at you enough to keep you from scheming for even more seed, doesn't he? I imagine my dear husband would be more than a little displeased should he discover you in … that room.”

Julie cringed at the very suggestion. “Miz Clayton, dat nigger was sleepin' ever' time Ah went in dere. Ah promise. Nuffin' happen. Ah'm a good girl an' do jes' lahk Mistuh Clayton tell me.”

“Yes. You are a good girl. For as long as you do as you're told. Is that understood?”

“Yes'm,” she answered meekly, anxious to be away.

“Very well. Run to your room and put some clothes on. I find it most unseemly to have a naked little pickaninny traipsing up and down my halls.”

“Yes'm.” The girl hurried to her room, a closed-off alcove at the far end of the house.

Micara watched her go, a grim smile of satisfaction on her face, then went to listen at her daughter's bedroom door. Not hearing anything she decided Crissa still slept. Better and better. She would be the first downstairs, the first to.… She heard footsteps, and suddenly apprehensive, hurried back to her room, leaving the door open a crack to see Crissa as she went into her bedroom. The door opened and shut. She frowned slightly at her temerity. Silly goose! To be frightened in her own house. What would John Fitzman say about that?

Very well. She had faltered, but not fallen. A moment of weakness, to be sure, but nothing irretrievable, and no one would know. She returned to her dressing table, let the dressing gown slip from her shoulders, then stepped out of her sleeping gown as well. She ran her hands over her stomach and up to cup her breasts. Forty-one years old. Her waist had thickened with age but not unpleasantly so. She could still give—and take—pleasure. The sound of a door closing across the hall alerted her to faint footsteps as Ezra passed by and descended the stairs. Micara rushed to her wardrobe and selected a dress suitable for the early hour. She was going to join Ezra at breakfast, for the first time in over two years.

His manservant bowed, placed a platter of ham in front of him. Ezra shoved his cup over. The young man bowed again and took the cup into the kitchen, returning immediately with a new cup, full and steaming hot. Ezra ate hungrily, listening with pleasure to the sound of the slaves heading for the fields. Satisfaction famished him. And he was satisfied. He had met all challenges and met them well. Patrick's threat had been removed. Duggins had been sent packing along with that foolish Statton fellow. And Rafe had won, beaten Beaumarchant, but not without a sufficiently demoralizing mauling by the Cajun. He'd never be the same, Ezra was certain. He would have to watch his bets from now on, of course. Win with his other pitbucks and begin wagering smaller amounts on Rafe. Perhaps even bet against him once in awhile and make sure the word got back to the compound, got back to Rafe and the other pitbucks.

Three weeks he'd kept that nigger under his roof. No telling how much longer he'd need before mending enough to fight again. But no matter. The process had begun and Ezra was not one to begrudge a dying man a little time to think over his coming death. He'd see Rafe was in the pit again before he was really ready. His spirits would erode even as his strength returned. And Ezra had the rest of the summer and fall to fight the giant black, to wear him down until he grovelled before his final foe, knowing he would never live long enough to taste his freedom.

Ezra anticipated watching him break, watching the hatred Rafe had flung in his master's face turn to supplication, to pleas for a mercy the lord of Freedom could never know and certainly never grant.

Suddenly his reverie was shattered and he paused with a cup of coffee halfway to his mouth, paused and slowly replaced the cup in its saucer. Micara seated herself across the table from him, relishing every moment of her husband's obvious surprise and discomfort. “Good morning, Ezra.”

“Micara.…”

“Surprised? I'll have some ham and tea with cream, thank you. There … there.… What a lovely morning! Did you see how beautiful the sky is?”

Ezra peered at her suspiciously, uneasy at what he saw and heard. Micara was different. Too different. He experienced a vague, unsettling pang of fear but quickly suppressed it. So she had risen early, applied some rouge to her cheeks. Nothing to get overly excited about.

“Did you pass a pleasant evening, Ezra?”

“I slept well. Always do,” he responded gruffly, anxious to be away from the table.

“The rain cools the evenings so. And the breeze! Last night was almost pleasant, don't you think? Odd. Last July was such a stifling time.”

He nodded, trying to figure her out. What did she think she was doing? He liked this less and less.

“Are you sure you slept well?” Micara asked, her voice taking on a tone of anxious concern.

“Yes, damn it.”

“I only ask because your eyes look a bit puffy. Perhaps you forgot to open your window and your room was too stuffy.”

“It was a night like any other,” he answered roughly. A new tactic was needed. Shock. “Perhaps a little better. Julie invented a few new tricks. Nothing like a high yellow nigger wench for new tricks. They were delightful.” He watched her face. That should have devastated her. She only smiled—an infernal idiot's grin, he called it—and poured her tea. Perhaps her senses had finally and totally left her, drowned in a vast sea of sherry and laudanum. Only there was a secretive confidence beneath this new placidity. His breakfast but partially completed, he slid his chair back and stood.

“You'll forgive me, Micara, but there are many things to which I must attend today. I shall be fighting Dingo in Natchitoches Saturday night and arrangements must be made in time to leave Thursday morning. The little nigger is proving to be a popular fighter.”

“Why of course. I'll stay here with Crissa. We'll have a lovely time. And don't worry about Freedom. I'm sure I'll be able to look after things while you're away.”

Ezra halted in the doorway, spun about as if to speak, then faltered, at a loss for words. Micara was already intently involved with her breakfast. He watched her a moment more, brooding and puzzled over her behavior, then silently left.

Only when he was gone did Micara dare smile. She had won her first victory in over three years. She was determined there would be more. Many more.

13

Jagged shards of lightning tore the storm-darkened afternoon sky and though the rain ceased during the night, rolling tides of thunder threatened ominously until near first light. The previous day had been one of seemingly endless periods of sleep drifting one into the other. Crissa had not returned to see him and Rafe felt strangely disappointed and relieved at the same time. His solitary day had been broken only twice by the entrance of a manservant bringing him platters of food. He ate heartily each time, only dimly aware of what he was eating and how badly his body needed sustenance, how diminished was his strength.

Thursday morning brought a change. Sun streamed through the curtains over the window and brightened the small room. Rafe awoke fully aware of who and where he was, feeling rested and eager to be off his back. Then he thought of the pit and looked at his bandaged hand. Old Chulem had been wrong. They'd need more than a Beaumarchant if they wanted to kill him. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood slowly, swayed for a second and fell back panting for breath, pain stitching his side. When the ceiling stopped whirling, he cursed softly and tried again. This time he made it with the help of the night table and the steadying influence of the wall. Taking one small cautious step after the other he traversed the small room and stood in front of the window. With his right hand he pushed the pane of glass. It stuck for a moment then slid upward with a loud, protesting squeak. A slight breeze ruffled the curtains, causing a delicate, whispering feminine sound he'd not heard for many years. The sound might have been insignificant to most, but not to a man who had spent four years waking to the hoarse cries of the guards, the stifling, harsh interior of the compound with its brutal inmates and equally vicious keepers.

He leaned against the wall, sniffed at the clean, summer morning smells and almost slept again, half dreaming of home. A home. The concept was murky, barely discernible. Only a dim idea of what the word meant. Curtains ruffling in the wind, strong honest labor, the sound of a man-child's laughter and a woman, one woman, the same woman at the end of every day.

Suddenly he began to tear at his bandaged left hand. This room, the smells, the bed, the dream, all lulled him from reality. The only reality. Why fool himself? The pit was home, was labor, love, hate, laughter, tears and even mother and wife. There was no other home. The cloth came away easily, sticking only in spots where blood or medication had seeped through and dried. He stopped at the inner bandage, then peeled it away as well, holding up his hand to the uncompromising sunlight. Softened, the skin was tender and shrivelled from being bandaged for so long. A gnarled, lumpish knob of tender flesh covered the nub of the severed joint. For a moment he wondered where his little finger was, if one of the guards had stolen it from the floor of the pit for a keepsake. Maybe Ezra Clayton himself kept it as a macabre memento.

The memory of pain swept over him and he relived the horrible mockery of the blurred faces above him and the agony of grinding teeth and the lipless smile, the burning, laughing eyes and finally his own blood welling from Beaumarchant's mouth as his mangled hand fell to his side. The shame of hot tears upon his cheek. His tears.…

He pulled himself erect with a shudder. “The past is to be seen through cold eyes,” his father had told him. “Do not exult, do not weep. Learn.” The remaining fingers and thumb felt stiff and painful when he flexed them, but flex them he did. Pain the teacher. He had learned more of pain than he ever thought he'd know, and from the pain, unsurpassed hate exploding into rage. Rafe had experienced a bloodlust that lay unsuspected in his character. His other battles had been won with cool, efficient action, not maddened, indiscriminate fury. The thought made him shudder. If Jomo or any of the others had been down there with him he would surely have killed them as well, even had they been fighting with him. Worse, had he been conscious, he would have clawed his way up the walls of the pit to wreak havoc on those above until he was shot down like a dog.

Rafe always pictured himself superior to the other pitbucks. He spoke better and had learned to read. But the blood-fury that came over him was not of a superior man, but rather of a rabid beast ready to kill the deserving and undeserving alike. Beaumarchant deserved death, he knew. Cat's tale of how the field slaves lived in mortal fear of the Cajun's indiscriminate killings was proof enough. But Beaumarchant's death was not the point. The point was how he had died—how Rafe had killed him—through unthinking, mindless rage. The thought was sobering, for how then could Rafe consider himself more a man than Beaumarchant or anyone else? Why should men not fear Rafe as a wild animal? How many black men had died at Beaumarchant's hands? Any more than at Rafe's?

“How many dark faces have I seen at the point of my machete?” Rafe asked himself quietly. “As many as I've seen watchin' me out of my dreams. I killed them so I could be free, just like they would a' killed me if they could a'.”

But even as he spoke the words, he knew he was only hoping to exonerate himself from the guilt that had settled on him during the past weeks of feverish delirium and recovery. A man couldn't control his thoughts, laid up like he was. What thoughts? Could a man think while he slept? There had been too much time to dream, and the faces had come to him from the mist, each one accusing, each one a moldering symbol of his hunger to be free at any expense. He sought freedom, but would he ever be free from their faces? And the faces to come?