Astray (18 page)

“They always claim that, strangely enough,” remarks my mother, walking away. “One would think they might come up with something more plausible.”

The next day I’m in Tante Fanny’s room, at my lessons. There was no sign of Millie this morning, and I had to dress myself; the girl must be sulking. I’m supposed to be improving my spelling of verbs in the subjunctive mode, but my stomach is a rat’s nest, my dress is too tight, my head’s fit to split. I gaze out the window to the yard, where the trader’s saddling his mules. He has four nègres with him, their hands lashed to their saddles.

“Do sit down, child.”

“Just a minute, Tante—”

“Aimée, come back here!”

But I’m thudding along the gallery, down the stairs. I trip over my hem, and catch the railing. I’m in the yard, and the sun is piercing my eyes. “Maman!”

She turns, frowning. “Where is your sunhat, Aimée?”

I ignore that. “But Millie—what’s happening?”

“I suggest you use your powers of deduction.”

I throw a desperate look at the girl, bundled up on the last mule, her mute face striped with tears. “Have you sold her?
She didn’t do anything so very bad. I have the bracelet back safe. Maybe she only meant to borrow it.”

My mother sighs. “I won’t stand for thieving, or back-answers, and Millie has been guilty of both.”

“But Pa Philippe, and her mother—you can’t part her from them—”

Maman draws me aside, her arm like a cage around my back. “Aimée, I won’t stoop to dispute my methods with an impudent and sentimental girl, especially in front of strangers. Go back to your lesson.”

I open my mouth, to tell her that Millie didn’t steal the bracelet, exactly; that she thought I had promised it to her. But that would call for too much explanation, and what if Maman found out that I’ve been interrogating the nègres about private family business? I shut my mouth again. I don’t look at Millie; I can’t bear it. The trader whistles to his mules to start walking. I go back into the house. My head’s bursting from the sun; I have to keep my eyes squeezed shut.

“What is it, child?” asks Tante Fanny when I open the door. Her anger has turned to concern; it must be my face.

“I feel … weak.”

“Sit down on this sofa, then. Shall I ring for a glass of wine?”

Next thing I know, I’m flat on my back, choking. I feel so sick. I push Tante Fanny’s hand away. She stoppers her smelling salts. “My dear.”

“What—”

“You fainted.”

I feel oddly disappointed. I always thought it would be a luxuriant feeling—a surrendering of the spirit—but it turns out that fainting is just a sick sensation, and then you wake up.

“It’s very natural,” she says, with the ghost of a smile. “I believe you have become a woman today.”

I stare down at myself, but my shape hasn’t changed.

“Your petticoat’s a little stained,” she whispers, showing me the spots—some brown, some fresh scarlet—and suddenly I understand. “You should go to your room and ask Millie to show you what to do.”

At the mention of Millie, I put my hands over my face.

“Where did you get that?” asks Tante Fanny, in a changed voice. She reaches out to touch the bracelet that’s slipped out from beneath my sleeve. I flinch. “Aimée, where did you get that?”

“It was in a trunk, in the attic,” I confess. “I know it was Eliza’s. Can I ask you, how did she die?” My words astonish me as they spill out.

My aunt’s face contorts. I think perhaps she’s going to strike me. After a long minute, she says, “We killed her. Your uncle and I.”

My God. So Millie told the truth, and in return I’ve had her sold, banished from the sight of every face she knows in the world.

“Your cousin died for our pride, for our greed.” Tante Fanny puts her fingers around her throat. “She was perfect, but we couldn’t see it, because of the mote in our eyes.”

What is she talking about?

“You see, Aimée, when my darling daughter was about your age she developed some boutons.”

Pimples? What can pimples have to do with anything?

My aunt’s face is a mask of creases. “They weren’t so very bad, but they were the only defect in such a lovely face, they stood out terribly. I was going to take her to the local root doctor for an ointment, but your papa happened to know a famous skin specialist in Paris. I think he was glad of the excuse for a trip to his native country. And we knew that nothing in Louisiana could compare to France. So your papa accompanied us—Eliza and myself and your Oncle Louis—on the long voyage, and he introduced us to this doctor. For eight days”—Tante Fanny’s tone has taken on a biblical timbre—”the doctor gave the girl injections, and she bore it bravely. We waited for her face to become perfectly clear again—but instead she took a fever. We knew the doctor must have made some terrible mistake with his medicines. When Eliza died—” Here the voice cracks, and Tante Fanny lets out a sort of barking sob. “Your oncle wanted to kill the doctor; he drew his sword to run him through. But your papa, the peacemaker, persuaded us that it must have been the cholera or some other contagion. We tried to believe that; we each assured each other that we believed it. But when I looked at my lovely daughter in her coffin, at sixteen years old, I knew the truth as if God had spoken in my heart.”

She’s weeping so much now, her words are muffled. I wish I had a handkerchief for her.

“I knew that Eliza had died for a handful of pimples. Because in our vanity, our dreadful pride, we couldn’t accept
the least defect in our daughter. We were ungrateful, and she was taken from us, and all the years since, and all the years ahead allotted to me, will be expiation.”

The bracelet seems to burn me. I’ve managed to undo the catch. I pull it off, the little gold charms tinkling.

Tante Fanny wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “Throw that away. My curse on it, and on all glittering vanities,” she says hoarsely. “Get rid of it, Aimée, and thank God you’ll never be beautiful.”

Her words are like a blow to the ribs. But a moment later, I’m glad she said it. It’s better to know these things. Who’d want to spend a whole life hankering?

I go out of the room without a word. I can feel the blood welling, sticky on my thighs. But first I must do this. I fetch an old bottle from the kitchen, and a candle stub. I seal up the bracelet in its green translucent tomb, and go to the top of the levee, and throw it as far as I can into the Mississippi.

Vanitas

This imaginary reconstruction of the childhood of Aimée Locoul (1826–80) was inspired by a visit to the Laura Plantation (see www.lauraplantation.com) and Laura Locoul Gore’s
Memories of the Old Plantation Home
and
A Creole Family Album
(2000).

When Aimée grew up, she helped her mother run the estate before marrying an impoverished French aristocrat, Charles Ivan Flavien de Lobel de Mahy; they had three children and divided the rest of their lives between Louisiana and France.

HOPEWELL, NEW JERSEY

1776

THE HUNT

H
e’s fifteen, or thereabouts. He thought he would be home by Christmas. That was what they were told when they were given their red coats and shipped across the ocean to put down the rebs: that it wouldn’t take more than a couple of months. But it’s December already, and in New Jersey the snows are as dense as cake, and he thinks now that every soldier is told that:
home soon.
He wonders whether it’s ever been true.

If the boy were in a German regiment, he could speak his own tongue at least. None of the English have even heard of Anhalt-Zerbst, let alone his village. He’s never been to Hesse but his bunkmate says
you Hessians
anyway, or
you Bosch bastards.
Another points out that he’s a foot or two short of a full one, so they settle on Half-Bosch.

Not soon, then, but how much longer? The redcoats took hard losses at Fort Mercer but cleaned out Fort Lee at the end of November. The rats are in retreat, and it’s this regiment’s job to squeeze them out of New Jersey. There’s a line of the men of Hopewell outside the garrison every morning, wanting to sign allegiance papers—not that it proves much. Washington’s reb army couldn’t have held together
on its flight to Pennsylvania if this countryside weren’t riddled with traitors, making muskets and shot for the rebs, supplying them with cloth for their backs and salt for their meat.

Some of this regiment have wives near their time, others say their wives are too pretty to leave alone; they all gripe about the endlessness of this campaign. The boy has only his mother. In the night, under the blanket, he thinks of his bed at home in his village in Anhalt-Zerbst and the way the fir tips tap against his window, and he weeps till he shakes. His bunkmate mutters, “Give that little worm of yours a rest.”

Filthy talk is how they pass the time. In the freezing rains of December there’s nothing to do but wait.

Then one day the skies clear. The land around Hopewell is as hard as a drum. “Good hunting weather,” somebody says.

So the hunt is what they call it. The major isn’t happy, but the captain only shakes his head and tells him,
The men must have a bit of fun.

Houghton and Byrne and Williams and the boy start at a farmhouse on the edge of town. Muskets at the ready in case they flush out any rebs. The boy’s stomach is tight, as on the verge of battle. Nobody answers the door until Byrne smashes the fanlight with his bayonet. Then they hear running feet, and the bar lifting. Byrne grabs the maid by her skirts but Williams says, “Hold hard, man. Where’s your mistress, eh? Where’s everybody hiding?”

She shakes her head, already sobbing.

The boy edges to one side.

“Where are you off to, Half-Bosch?”

“Search the house?”

“That’s a lad,” says Houghton, undoing his buttons one by one.

Upstairs the corridors are silent, except for the creakings his steps make. Far below him he can hear dull voices, then screaming that stops all at once. The boy peers into each room, taking his time. What will he do if he finds the ladies?
Yankee whores, reb whores.

He goes down the back stairs. In the kitchen he eats a pickle from a jar; it’s weaker than his mother’s, it hardly tastes at all. He strokes the grain of an old settle, reads a sampler on the wall:
Her Price Is Above Rubies.

Something clinks. He follows the small sound into the pantry, which seems to be empty, until he opens a small door and finds a girl crouching in the meat safe. Her hands fly to her ears.

“Monkey,” he says under his breath.

“That’s hardly civil!”

He points. “Hands on ears? Like the monkey in the picture.”

She lowers her hands reluctantly. “Which picture?” Pale ears jut through her gleaming hair.

Like a pixie, he thinks. “Hear no bad.”

“Oh, hear no evil, I see.” She’s crawling out and standing up, taller than he was expecting. A shiny apron, the kind that’s just for show; a locket on a ribbon. “You’re not English,” she says accusingly.

“Nein.”
He only slips when he’s flustered.

“A mercenary!” Like something rotten in her mouth. The
boy must be looking blank, because she explains: “You serve for pay, for money.”

“No money,” he tells her. “I get my coat. Boots. Rations.”

Which reminds him to examine the shelves. He finds a basket, grabs some jars, a cake in paper, the first dark bottle his hand falls on.

“Then, what brings you all the way to New Jersey?” she asks, close behind him.

“My prince sold me. To the redcoats.” He crams three more bottles in on top of the cake.

“How could he sell you, when you’re as white as me?” scoffs the girl. And then, “That’s my aunt’s best cherry brandy you’re stealing.”

“Requisitioning,” he says, tripping over the English syllables.

“Half-Bosch!” The voice is Byrne’s, faint but getting nearer.

The boy shoots out of the pantry with his basket. “Drink,” he roars, “I found drink.” He doesn’t have time to look back.

He thinks about her, though. That night, in the barracks, when men are swapping dirty stories, and Williams and Houghton and Byrne are going on and on about the maid at the deserted farm—the boy pretends the brandy has put him to sleep. He squeezes his eyes shut and thinks of those pearly, sticking-out ears.

There’s a rumor going round that Washington’s reb army will melt away on New Year’s Day, when the terms of service for most of his recruits come to an end. The boy tries to imagine being home for the spring planting.

The next day the hunt is on again. The redcoats trawl through Hopewell. There are scarlet ribbons on almost every door by now, but ribbon’s cheap; it says loyalty without proving it. They knock on every door, and shout, “Bring out your females!” The boy stands guard outside the surgery while the others are inside with the doctor’s wife and daughter. After half an hour, Williams sticks his head out the window to say, “Come on it, Half-Bosch, time we made a man of you.”

He pulls a face. “Still sick from the damn brandy.”

Williams grins and bangs the window shut so hard that an icicle falls like a spear.

“Let’s go back to the farm,” Houghton proposes that night. “I hate the thought of leaving a single maidenhead in the fucking State of New Jersey.”

Williams laughs so hard he coughs.

In morning the fields crack like glass under the soldiers’ boots. The boy doesn’t want to be walking this way again, and he wants it more than anything. They get there in half an hour, and this time they go round to the back door: a stealth attack.

But the place is deserted; no sign of the maid even. The three Englishmen troop upstairs, and the boy heads for the pantry.

The girl’s there, as he knew she’d be. She has some cheese for him; it’s surprisingly strong. He finds himself telling her about the day he cut a purse from a gentleman’s belt, back in Anhalt-Zerbst.

“I knew you were a thief.”