Always & Forever: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 1) (34 page)

“You must be so tired, Dr. Benet. After you’ve eaten, you
can rest. I hope you will stay with us a few days.”

“Until tomorrow, at least. Then we shall see, Josephine.”

After his dinner, Dr. Benet looked in on his patient, who
was sleeping, and then retired to the
garçonnière
for a nap.

Josie pulled a rocking chair into Grand-mère’s bedroom to
keep watch while Cleo worked in the dining room. The sounds of the plates and
glasses being cleared faded, and Josie fell asleep in her chair.

Laurie tugged at her sleeve. “Wake up, Mam’zelle,” she
whispered. “Mam’zelle, you gots to wake up.”

Josie straightened in her chair. “What is it?”

“Cleo say M’sieur LeBrec at the door. She say should he come
in?”

“I’ll see him in the parlor,” Josie said.

The overseer stood in the middle of the room, his rough work
boots planted awkwardly on the woven mats that covered the cypress floor in the
summers. He held his hat in his hand and looked out of place among the fine
furnishings of the parlor.

“Monsieur LeBrec,” Josie said.

“I got word about Madame Tassin. How is she?”

“Not well, thank you, but we hope she will improve.”

“Well, it’s just, we got this building going on. The new
sugar refinery, you know. And we’re going to need more timber.”

The man twisted his hat, and Josie waited. What did he want
her to do about timber? The woods were full of trees. Take some men and cut
them down, she thought.

“Madame said cut down them two acres, but she didn’t say cut
no more than that. Maybe she rather buy timber from somebody else’s woods and
keep hers growing.”

“I see.” Did she detect a whiff of alcohol? It was hard to
tell when the man had been working in the sun all day and stank of sweat and
horse.

“I thought maybe you might ask her what she want me to do.
Cut, or buy?”

“Can’t this wait until my grandmother is well?”

“I don’t know, Mademoiselle. She want this refinery finished
in good time for the cane harvest this fall. We got a lot of building to do
yet.”

Josie considered the figures she’d added in the ledger. She
didn’t dare incur more debt, but she would have to make a decision.

“Then, Monsieur, I want you to harvest the timber you need
from the back acres,” she said.

“All right, then. I’ll get a crew out there this afternoon.
Good day to you, Mademoiselle.”

He clomped out of the parlor and through the dining room to
leave by the back gallery. Josie followed in his odorous wake to the water
carafe in the dining room, and so she saw through the French doors when LeBrec
veered from the gallery stairs to where Cleo was shaking out the table cloth
over the railing.

When Cleo whipped around to face him, LeBrec reached a hand
out and grabbed her breast. Cleo dropped the cloth and was reaching into her
pocket with one hand and shoving his arm away with the other.

Josie stepped onto the gallery. At sound of her footsteps,
LeBrec backed off. Cleo’s face was flushed and hard. Josie had never seen a
face so furious.

“You got a sassy girl here, Mademoiselle. She need taking
down,” LeBrec said.

Did he think she had not understood what she’d seen? Josie
hoped he could read the contempt she felt for him. She spoke firmly and surely.
“Monsieur LeBrec, you will not touch my house slave again.”

LeBrec held both palms out, as if to soften her temper. “I
was just trying to have a little discipline around here, Mademoiselle, but if
that’s the way you want it.” He backed toward the staircase, his hands still
up. “So be it.”

He turned and clattered down the stairs and swaggered across
the courtyard without looking back.

The two young women stood very still and quiet, and then
Josie said, “This has happened before?”

Cleo looked at her a moment before she answered. Would Josie
really help her, more than to just say ‘Stay in the house’?

“It’s happened before.”

“He can’t treat you like that,” Josie said.

Did Josie think she’d be safe now, just because she had told
LeBrec to leave her alone? A
nd if he doesn’t? What will you do, Josie? Will
you fire him? Will you have him cut, the way he cut Remy?
Much as she wanted
to believe Josie could protect her, she knew what LeBrec would think of a young
mistress’s warning.

Josie saw the doubt in Cleo’s eyes. She remembered when
Phanor had told her LeBrec was after Cleo. She hadn’t listened. She hadn’t
believed such an awful thing could go on under her grandmother’s watchful eyes.
But Grand-mère had not been herself since Papa died. I should have listened.
I
should have paid more attention.

“I’m not going to let him hurt you, Cleo,” Josie said.

Cleo nodded. At least Josie cared. “Louella killed a
chicken. She has a pot of broth ready for Madame.”

Josie nodded and returned to her grandmother’s bedside.

That evening, the priest showed up at last, travel worn and
weary. He had been on the mule most of the day, and welcomed the tall drink of
water Cleo fetched him. Thank heavens all signs of Ursaline’s
voudon
had
been swept up. Grand-mère still held the baby gator head, but she again slipped
it under her hip out of the priest’s notice.

Father Philippe put on his dirty wrinkled surplice and
performed the last rites for Madame Emmeline. Just in case. 

Josie prayed earnestly for her grandmother’s recovery, and
though her condition changed very little over the next three weeks, Grand-mère
held on. Dr. Benet visited as he was able, and one afternoon he arrived with a
rolling chair tied on to the back of his carriage.

He and Elbow John toted it to the bedroom. Josie, Cleo, and
Laurie gathered round to admire the new chair.

“Here we are, Emmeline,” the doctor said. “It doesn’t do for
you to lie abed day and night. You need to get the blood moving.”

Grand-mère eyed the contraption with a frown pulling down
both sides of her twisted mouth. She uttered a string of garbled words and
gestured emphatically. Not even Cleo, who understood Grand-mère better than
anyone else, caught all the words, but her tone sufficiently carried her
intent.

“Now, no fussing,” Dr. Benet said. “Cleo, hold the brake.
John, you take her good side, and I’ll support the left. Ready?”

Before Grand-mère could protest further, they had her in the
chair. She immediately slumped to the left.

“We’ll need to tie her in, I think, Josephine.”

“Of course.” Josie quickly brought a broad blue satin sash
from her chifferobe. “Will this do?”

Once Josie had secured her grandmother with the sash, Dr.
Benet said, “Emmeline, you’ve been in this room too long. It would oppress
anyone’s spirits. We’ll take the air on the gallery, if you please, John.”

John rolled the chair, and Dr. Benet showed him and Cleo how
to set the brake. Josie fussed at Grand-mère’s neckline, adjusting the muslin
scarf around her neck.

“Get your fan, Laurie,” Josie directed.

Amid all the ado, the steamboat whistle from down river
announced the mail boat’s approach. Elbow John hurried down to the dock to
collect it.

Every day Josie had waited for the mail boat. She’d had no
word, no word at all, from Bertrand these three weeks. He’d not returned to
Cherleu, she’d heard that from Elbow John. She’d taken to watching the river
anxiously, listening for the mail whistle. Even if it weren’t proper, Josie had
determined she would write to him if he didn’t come back to her soon.

Cleo left them to retrieve the mailbag from Elbow John, and
Josie brought the little fold-down table from the parlor to set next to
Grand-mère’s chair. When Cleo returned, Josie opened the mail bag and sorted
through the letters from Tante Marguerite, Abigail Johnston, their solicitor in
New Orleans, even one from her cousin Violette.

“Oh, Grand-mère,” Josie said. “At last. Here’s a letter from
Bertrand.” She looked at it a moment longer, puzzled. “It’s addressed only to
you.”

Grand-mère spoke and nodded her head. Cleo interpreted.
“Open it, she said.”

Josie released the wax seal with her thumbnail and opened
the letter. “July 14, 1837,” Josie read. “My dear Emmeline, I know you are as
aware as anyone in Louisiana what the situation here in New Orleans is. I count
on your understanding, though I do not hope for your approval, when I tell you
I have had to make certain sacrifices to maintain my solvency. It pains me to
injure our friendship, and to deprive myself of your granddaughter’s
companionship, but there is no other way to save Cherleu. I am . . .” Josie
dropped the letter.

Cleo picked it up and continued: “I am to wed Abigail
Johnston at the end of the month. Please explain this to Josephine. I am too
much the coward to see her again. Yours with great regret, Bertrand Chamard.”

Josie sat numbly in her chair staring at nothing. Dr. Benet
touched his pocket where he kept a vial of smelling salts, expecting Josie to
erupt, or cry, or collapse – something besides this silent stillness.

Josie stood up as if unsure of her footing, but still she
made no sound. She barely registered the tear trickling down her grandmother’s cheek;
her own eyes were dry. With quiet dignity, she left everyone on the gallery and
retired to her room.

The following days, Josie rarely spoke. Cleo urged her to
eat and persistently set a cup of tea at her elbow. Dr. Benet recommended
several glasses of wine before retiring each night, but even that did not keep
Josie from wandering through the house in the dark.

Josie fulfilled her responsibilities in sitting with
Grand-mère and in consulting her, with Cleo’s help, about orders for Monsieur
Lebrec. Otherwise, she might have been a ghost.

She avoided speaking with Cleo about anything more personal
than whether to kill another chicken for supper. Her clothes began to hang on
her, her complexion paled, and her eyes became deep and secretive.

Josie’s entire comprehension of the world had shifted. The
aunts had gossiped with great relish about men and women who had been
unfaithful, and Josie had not forgotten her father’s sin with Bibi while still
visiting her mother’s bed. But to be betrayed herself – that had not been in
Josie’s future. She had expected nothing but joy and fulfillment with a man who
loved her and wanted her. Had Bertrand ever loved her at all? Or had he merely
wanted to add Toulouse to his own plantation, to double the size of his acreage.

And yet each time he had touched her, kissed her, she was
sure she’d known his heart. She saw the color of his eyes everywhere, in the
brandy Dr. Benet drank in the evening, in the tea in her cup, in the polished
mahogany of the dining table. His laugh came to her in the river breeze. The
dress she’d worn when last she’d seen him still hinted at the scent of his
cigar.

She relived every moment they had been together since the
night the lightning struck the tree outside her bedroom window. She remembered
now how, in the light from the flaming tree, he had looked at her, and at Cleo,
two girls in their nightgowns. She should have realized that look was not one a
gentleman would allow himself.

Deep in the night, she lit a fire in the parlor in spite of
the sweltering heat. When the blaze was bright and hot, she tore the pages from
her journal, one at a time, and fed them into the flames. Every sheet had been
filled with girlish, foolish hopes and dreams, too many of them about love and
kisses, about adoring Bertrand Chamard. She watched the pages curl, then catch,
then spiral up the chimney as smoke.

How many breaths must she draw, how many beats of her heart
must she endure in this pain. Long lonely years stretched ahead of her. She saw
herself brittle, dry, barren, and old. Life would be too long.

“Them two younguns aren’t much use as yet, anyway,” LeBrec
said. “But I figured you’d want to know we got sickness in the quarters.”

“Whose children are they?” Josie asked.

LeBrec smirked. “They’s too many of the little bastards
running loose for me to pay mind to whose is whose. Begging your pardon,
Mademoiselle.”

Josie bristled. “Mr. Gale knew every soul on this
plantation, and managed to know who belonged to whom, Monsieur. If you wish to
manage as successfully as he did, I suggest you do ‘pay mind to whose is
whose.’”

The smile lingered on LeBrec’s red lips though his eyes
narrowed. Josie suspected he’d thought life would be easier with Grand-mère
laid low, but he was finding out otherwise.

Josie’s encounters with LeBrec in the weeks after Bertrand’s
letter were the only moments that roused her. Her dreams of love and marriage
shattered, Josie encased her inner life in a bitter, brittle shell. She spent
her hours in isolation, however many people were in the house with her. She sat
with her grandmother, spoke with Cleo about her care, with Louella about the
menu, but she was only vaguely aware that the cane continued to grow in the
fields, that life moved on around her.

LeBrec, however, had stretched her awareness to include the
rest of the plantation. The man himself disgusted Josie though he made a good
appearance, she’d give him that. He evidently pleased his wife, for she kept
his coat brushed and provided a fresh shirt each morning. Still, however much
he might satisfy Madame LeBrec, Josie found his arrogance unfounded and
irritating. She had observed a man’s pride was often disproportional to his
feeling of self-worth, and she found his posturing ridiculous.

It seemed, too, that the peace of Toulouse had vanished
under LeBrec’s direction. When Mr. Gale had been overseer, lashings were rare.
Now, Cleo insisted on telling her, this one had been whipped, and on another
day, that one had had the lash. The new stocks, Cleo reported, had someone
fastened in, head, hands, and feet, every day.