Drum (33 page)

Drum, locked in his room, knew that if the girl laid hands on Alix nothing in the world would save her. He eased himself out of the window, hung by his fingers from the ledge and dropped to the flagging below. His legs withstood the shock and he ran to Calinda. In her frenzy she would not listen to him. Brandishing the stick, with threats to kill Alix, she tried to keep him off, but Drum made a dive, caught her aroimd the ankles and threw her to the groimd. Grabbing the chair leg from her hand he sat on her chest, trying to quiet her.

Alix, about to settle herself in bed for the night, had heard the commotion. She came out on the balcony, her face white, her hands trembling.

"Get rid of that little bitch," she shouted. "Shoot her! I heard her threaten me. She was going to kill me."

"No, madame, no!" Drum was pleading for Calinda. "She didn't mean it. She was just upset because we were separated. She'll be good now." He slapped Calinda across the face. "Shut up, gal," he whispered, "if you want to live."

"Call the police, Rachel! Call the police!" Alix was quite: unaware that Rachel was beyond calling. "Have them take this murderess to the whips. Fifty lashes, no a hvmdredl That will teach her,"

"Please, madame." Drum held his hand over Calinda's mouth. "She's all right now. She'll be a good girl. I'll take her back to her room now. Please, madame."

Alix disappeared from the railing and Drum saw the white

blob of her nightdress descending the stairs. He whispered to Calinda. "Don't say a word. Let me talk her out of this, For the love of God, shut up!" He removed his hand from her mouth and stood up, pulling her up with him.

"Where's Rachel?" Alix demanded. Then she saw the dark mass of Rachel's dress on the stones and it set her oflE again.

"She's killed Rachel. Oh my God! Rachel! You'll suffer for this, girl. Rachel!" Alix' screams not only brought out the girls from the second- and third-floor rooms to hang over the balconies but penetrated Rachel's unconsciousness to rouse her. She struggled to her feet and managed to get to Alix's side.

"I'm all right, madame! Quite all right. Do go upstairs and get the girls back into their rooms. Drum and I will attend to Calinda." She laid a reassuring hand on Alix' arm.

But Alix was not to be reassured. She had long itched to punish Calinda for her insolence and independent airs. Now was the time to punish her, now and right here on the spot No use sending her tomorrow to the public whipping post next to the stocks in the Place d'Armes. Right now and right here! She looked up at the rows of faces dimly seen above the railings.

"Toinette, Roselle, Titine, Renee-Rose!" Alix called the strongest and tallest girls in her house. "Down here!" She waited for them to come tripping down the stairs.

"Toinette, Renee-Rose, take hold of one of the bitch's arms. Titine, Roselle, take the other." She waited until they grabbed Calinda, and managed to hold her. "Rachel, get my whip."

Drum relinquished Calmda unwillingly to Alix' authority. Now that the inevitability of punishment had become a reality, the girl ceased to struggle and dimibly accepted her captivity. In a moment Rachel appeared with a light coachman's whip which she handed to Alix but Alix merely indicated Drum with a nod of her head in his direction.

"Fifty lashes," she said. "It's not a heavy whip but lay it on well. Drum."

"I can't, madame." Drum could not scar the flesh he loved so much.

"You'd better"—Alix was grim—"because if you don't she'll go to the Place d'Armes tomorrow and you along with her. She'll find the lash of Olympe a lot stronger than this plaything and so will you, Drum. I've pampered you two

niggers long enough. Time you both learned that you're slaves. Lay it on, Drum, and don't hold it back."

He didn't dare to disobey her. He knew that Calinda would suffer far more from the heavy lash of the public whip wielded by the brut, Olympe. He waited till the four girls got a more secure hold on Calinda's wrists, and spread her arms straight out. He raised the whip. It cut through the air and although he had tried not to put the full force of his strength into it, it stung Calinda's back and she screamed.

"One," Alix counted, "and put more force into it than that. Drum."

One by one, with a short respite after each ten. Drum brought down the whip fifty times. The black skin of Calinda's back turned red, then broke. When Drum had finished, the whip was slippery with blood.

After the last stroke, Alix commanded the girls to release Calinda and the girl fell to the flagging. Like a mother hen with her flock, Alix sent them upstairs ahead of her. Rachel and Drum were left alone with the sobbing Calinda, for the other female slaves had hidden in their rooms, fearful that Alix' anger would include them in the punishment.

Drum gathered the whimpering girl in his arms and carried her up to the room they had always shared and laid her gently on the bed. Rachel appeared with a candle, warm water and soft cloths and washed the blood from Calinda's back. Gently she spread a healing ointment over the lacerated skin and bandaged it.

"Carry her downstairs. Drum."

"Not tonight, matnan. Tonight will not matter. Madame need never know."

"No, Drum, tonight will not matter, and if necessary I shall lie for you in the morning." She leaned over and touched Calinda on the shoulder where the black skin gleamed above the white bandage. "I think you have learned one thing tonight, Calinda. Madame is your mistress and you are her slave. And so are you, Drum, and so am I. Nothing we have is our own, not even our bodies. Love is not for slaves. From now on remember that. Tonight you can stay together. But after tonight do not cross Madame again. You, Drum, become the fighting man that Madame wants and you, Calinda, relinquish Drum for six nights and be glad that you can have him on the seventh." She walked out and closed the door behind her, but she did not slip the bolt in place.

Drum gathered Calinda into his arms, tenderly and without urgency. They both needed comfort. Before this night, they had been two exuberant young animals, glorying in each other. Tonight they were fully aware that they were mere chattels—slaves. Tonight they needed the physical contact of each other in order to share each other's suffering, rhe bodily suffering of Calinda was no greater than the mental suffering of Drum. It was a suffering that drew them closer together than ever before and it was during those liours that Drum's son was conceived—not in the wild frenzy of animal lust which they had formerly enjoyed but in a quiet soothing consolation that released their minds and bodies and let them feel they were not animals but human beings.

The sereno, the lone watchman who paraded the night streets of New Orleans, was announcing the hour. He called out the morning hour of five. Exhausted, satiated and sorrowing. Drum gathered Calinda up like a child and deposited her, sleeping, on the pallet on the floor in the little room off the kitchen. Then he climbed the steps back to his room and stretched out alone on the sheets that were still warm from her body.

His thoughts were bitter. He was Madame's slave. She wanted him to fight. He would learn more about fighting than any other man in New Orleans. He'd be better than Big Jenuny. He'd vanquish every man pitted against him. Outwardly he would be a model slave, obedient and cheerful and uncomplaining. In that way he could protect himself and Calinda. But inside he would be ruled by one abiding and overpowering passion. He would hate the big, soft, white woman sleeping in her big, soft, white bed. Mon Dieu, how he would hate her! But, he would be smart. She would never know how much he hated her until that one supreme moment when—just how it would happen he did not know —^he would tell her. Aie! He would tell her.

chapter liii

At ten o'clock the next morning, with no traces—at leasl none which were apparent—of the sleepless night he had spent, Drum was again at Sailor Jem's, having run all the way alongside Dominique You's carriage instead of riding up with the coachman. He arrived panting and dripping with sweal but Jemmy gave him only time to strip off his wet shin before they started to work, using, as before, the waller garden behind the house. Dominique sat on the bench an< watched, absorbing the theories that Drum learned by actioi and storing them in his mind so that he himself could coaci Drum.

And so, for many mornings, Drum came to Jemmy's hous( and for many afternoons he drove outside the city witl Dominique. When they reached the outskirts, he got dowi from the carriage and ran beside it along the country roadi If they were seen by any of Dominique's acquaintances, h told them that he was exercising Drum's wounded leg bii gave no hint he was being trained as a fighter. To supple ment his runs in the country, Drum jumped rope and lifta heavy weights until the calves of his legs rounded out and hi thighs swelled with strength.

In the weeks that followed, he learned many things. H learned how to stand with his left foot forward, angled t give him greater resistance to another man's blows, anchcH ing his huge body to the floor so that he could not be easil' toppled over. He learned a complicated system of footwork more involved and more intricate than any jigging dance He practiced to be always in balance, his feet planted firml' on the ground, braced against the blow he might xmexpect edly receive at any minute. Even when his two feet seeme< to be dancing, there was always one big foot whose sol was firmly braced so that he would not be knocked dowr

He learned to protect his head with his left shoulder, keep ing it always below the muscular protection of that shoul

jer, for, as Jemmy explained, the head was the most vul-lerable spot. It was the one part of his anatomy which was lot protected by a heavy padding of muscles. Where the skin was stretched tautly over the bone the blows were not cushioned by a layer of flesh, and took effect immediately. Femmy stressed the fact that he must protect his eyes above ill else, and always watch his opponent. He must learn to inticipate his opponent's next move by such small signs as he glance of the other man's eyes, or a tensing of a mus-;le preparatory to striking a blow.

Drum learned the power of a straight quick jab with his X)werful left, either to the body or to a vulnerable part of he face, such as between the eyes, on the nose or landing m the lips to split them open like a ripe tomato. He sensed he psychological advantage of making his adversary bleed, "or it not only frightened him and produced visible evidence hat he was hurt but gave the audience something to cheer ibout. Then, it was advantageous if he could land a blow so hat the other's forehead would be cut and the blood would im down into his eyes to blind him. When using his right, Drum learned to put the full force of his shoulder and back nuscles behind it, striking his opponent's body, whenever )ossible, directly over the heart with such a force that it vould cause that already overworked organ to deviate in ts mathematical regularity and possibly stop beating en-irely.

At the same time. Drum learned to defend himself, never )verreachng himself, so that he would lose his balance, and dways endeavoring to keep his own body away from the )lows of his opponent. He developed a flexibihty of body so hat no matter how tightly he was clutched in the viselike pip of another's arms, he could wiggle out of the grasp, expanding and contracting his muscles so that he could ilither out of any hold like a snake. To aid him in doing this nore effectively, he kept his body oiled so that even after vashing himself, a residue of oil would remain in his pores, :eeping his skin glossy and slippery.

Finally, from Jemmy who had learned to fight before the Marquis of Queensberry, then not yet bom, had turned )ugilisra into a gentleman's sport—in those brutal days when wo men faced each other, bare-knuckled and stripped to the vaist, with nothing barred, to fight until one was a battered X)rpse or well might be—Drum learned to kill his opponent f he could win by no other method. The noble Marquis of

I

Queensberry did not rule the slave fights m New Orlean^ and they were far more savage than fights had ever been ii England. For one slave to kill another in a fight was noi murder, so Drum learned lethal techniques. He was taughlj the spots on the body where pressure could be exerted U kill a man—a finger driven like a steel nail through the eyej the edge of a hand slammed against a man's windpipe; i blow with all his enormous strength to the solar plexus and the gripping, pulling, tearing motion that would strip ot a man's genitals and leave a gaping, bleeding hole in hi groin.

All these things Drum learned in those long weeks o work, sweat and exhaustion until he finally felt himself be come a fighting machine—a highly complex instrumec whose mind had become devoid of almost every thought es cept that of the ability to use his whole body to destro another's. Trained to this peak, it became increasingly necej sary for him to fight and test his new ability, for Jemm was aware that nothing proved a man's own superiorit more than a complete victory over another. It engendere confidence, inflated his ego and added a strut of sel importance to his walk.

So Dominique You announced to the young bloods < New Orleans that Madame's Drum was ready to fight agai and that his leg was completely healed. Immediately Lazai LeToscan, whose man had lost the last fight to Drun brought forth another, whom he had been keeping in n serve for just this annoimcement. Lazare's man was a powc ful yoimg Fullah somewhere between eighteen and twent He was a big fellow, tall but a bit on the rangy sidi Until the day Lazare had purchased him—Shaving seen hii working in the fields of a neighboring plantation and beii immediately impressed by his enormous physique—^he ha been nothing but a canefield worker. LeToscan had matchi him with several of the slaves on his plantation and tl fellow had won mainly through an instinctive use of bru force. He had a gentle disposition, but if his master cor manded him to fight, he fought, obeying the order as u; questioningly as he would if he were told to cut cane.

The night came when Drum and the Fullah boy face each other, their bodies gleaming like bronze statues in tl flambeaux-lighted covutyard of Alix' house. Once again, AH from her vantage point on the second-floor balcony, held tJ bets, her lap overflowing with banknotes, gold and silve