Through the Storm (37 page)
Sable understood Bridget’s reasoning, she just couldn’t condone it. “This whole mess has caused me quite a bit of misery. The major thought I was guilty of treason.”
“Well, you weren’t.”
Sable looked at Raimond, whose whole demeanor conveyed his irritation.
“What are you doing here at the party?” he asked Bridget.
“My husband and I are here for the Radical Convention. He and Henri Vincent are well acquainted.”
The convention would be bringing together many of the South’s Black leaders and White radicals for the purpose of throwing their weight behind the Republican Party.
Bridget asked, “Are the two of you acquainted with Mr. Vincent also?”
Sable explained, “The ball is being given by Raimond’s mother. This is her home.”
“Isn’t that something? Your family is well respected in my husband’s circle.”
“Glad to hear it,” Raimond said.
“When did you marry?” Sable asked.
“About six weeks ago.”
“To whom?”
“He’s a minister named Clive Day. He has a small church outside Boston.”
“A minister?” Sable asked skeptically.
“Yes, and if he finds out about my past, it will kill him. Please, don’t tell him.”
Sable had never seen Bridget look so serious. Her impassioned plea made Sable think Bridget might actu
ally care for her minister husband. “Do you love him?” she asked.
“Yes. For the first time in my life, I’m in love, Fontaine, and I don’t want to mess it up. Not when I’m attempting to put my past behind me. I do missionary work now, hold Bible classes for the church ladies. I’m not ashamed of my past, but if it comes to light, he’ll bear the shame, and I couldn’t live with that.”
Sable could see that Raimond viewed Bridget with a jaundiced eye, but she asked him anyway, “Does anyone have to know? I mean, you said yourself that Baker’s comrade was apprehended before he could cause any harm with Sherman’s plans. Can’t we just let it lie?”
Raimond knew he would never be able to deny her anything. He’d move the Sphinx into her dressing room if she asked. The fact that he had not believed Sable’s claim of innocence did not sit well with him. “How do I know she’s telling the truth? This minister husband may not even exist.”
Sable hoped Bridget hadn’t been lying because if she was, Sable planned on boxing her ears right there and then. “If we meet him, will that put your doubts to rest?” she asked. When he didn’t reply, she said, “Bridget, let’s go find this minister of yours and maybe afterward we can all go on with our lives.”
Back inside, the heat and humidity had gotten worse, and there seemed to be even more people in the thick crowd. It took the three of them several minutes to find Reverend Day. He was much older than Sable had expected, but the warmth in his eyes as Bridget walked up spoke volumes about his feelings for her.
Bridget said to him, “Darling, I’d like you to meet some old friends of mine, Raimond and Sable LeVeq.”
He shook Raimond’s hand. “LeVeq, huh? Are you a member of the lovely Juliana’s family?”
“Yes, sir, she’s my mother.”
“Ah, I am pleased to meet you.”
“And I’m pleased to meet you. Bridget tells us you’re a minister up in Boston?”
“Yes, and Bridget is a perfect minister’s wife. What she sees in an old goat like me, I’ll never know, but I’m glad she does. She’s as faithful to me as my Bible.”
Sable looked to Raimond as they spoke for a few more moments. Finally Raimond bowed. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
As she and Raimond waded back through the throng, Sable shouted over the din, “Well, what are you going to do?”
“You already know the answer to that. If I send Bridget to the authorities and break that old man’s heart, I’ll never sleep peacefully again.”
His words made Sable love him even more.
While the ball continued downstairs, Sable and Raimond went upstairs to tuck the children into bed. In Phillipe’s old room, they found them dressed in their night clothes, seated at the feet of Hester and Galeno Vachon, engrossed in listening to an adventure story Galeno was telling.
At their entrance, Hester looked up. The children turned too and upon seeing their parents began to clamor for attention.
Galeno said, “I was just telling them the exciting tale of the fabled Black Daniel.”
“The Black Daniel was the cleverest slave stealer ever,” Hazel pronounced.
“Oh really?” Raimond drawled. “The way I heard it, the Black Daniel had an even more clever best friend who had to save the Daniel time and time again, because he kept getting into scrapes he couldn’t get out of.”
Galeno shook his head. “Nope, I never heard that.”
Chuckling, Sable headed the children to the beds Juliana’s staff had moved into the room. Cullen had his own bed, but the girls were sharing.
After good-night kisses were exchanged by everyone but Cullen, who refused to accept such affection, the
adults turned down the lights and left the children to their dreams.
As they walked down the hallway, Galeno said, “Hester and I wanted to say good-bye to them now because we won’t have an opportunity in the morning.”
At first light, they’d be heading back north to Michigan. It saddened Sable to know they were leaving. She hadn’t gotten to know Hester the way she would have liked, but hoped that lack would be remedied in the future.
Hester added, “We wanted to say our good-byes to everyone else tonight as well. If I wait for morning, I know I’ll cry all the way home.”
Galeno eased her against his side. “She cries at the drop of a hat whenever she’s carrying, so we’re hoping by doing it this way, she won’t upset herself so much.”
Sable had gone absolutely still. Her head was buzzing with a thought so overwhelming she had to force herself to pay attention to what everyone was saying. Of late she’d been crying over the most trivial matters too. Could it be because she was carrying a child? She left the thought for now, but vowed to ask Juliana for the name of a doctor.
Raimond and Galeno embraced each other tightly. When they parted, neither seemed ashamed of the tears in their eyes.
Raimond said, “Godspeed,
mon frere
.”
“
Adieu
,” Galeno replied softly.
He bowed a farewell to Sable and escorted his wife away.
Sable turned to her silent husband. “The two of you care very much for one another.”
“He is my brother and I am his.”
“Well, we must plan to go north and visit them soon.”
With lingering sadness in his eyes, Raimond said, “How about we escape this madness and I take you home?”
“If that is what you wish, Raimond, that is what we will do.”
“Good. Then let’s go find the buggy. We’ll come back for the brood in the morning.”
They’d journeyed about halfway home when Sable asked, “Are you still saddened by Galen’s leaving?”
Buggy reins in hand, Raimond shrugged. “I am fine. I will miss him, is all.”
And he would, greatly.
“You need cheering up.”
He turned to her with the first smile she’d seen on his face since they’d left the ball. “Oh, really? You have something in mind?”
She grinned. “It’s a magic trick.”
“What type of magic trick?”
She slid over on the bench so they sat side by side, and replied to his question in soft, mysterious tones. “It’s a mystical, magical trick that can make things grow right before your very eyes.”
He chuckled at her play. “What types of things—specifically?”
“Specifically? This…”
She passed her hand slowly and possessively over her favorite part of his male anatomy and felt the flesh quicken to life. Holding him, she pointed out in a sultry whisper, “See…I told you…”
Raimond just about ran the horses off the road. Her warm, wandering hand made desire burst over his senses like an exploding shell. “You need a keeper…do you know that?”
“The queen doesn’t like it when her knight is sad, so it is her desire that he be given something else to
discuss
.”
Raimond felt her seductively undoing the placket on his pants. In a voice that hovered between shock and delight, he asked, “What are you doing…?”
“Freeing my knight so he can be happy again. Your
queen demands that you drive…Pay no attention to what she is doing…”
Raimond tried to obey the royal directive, but as the
discussion
continued, the reins slid unnoticed from his hands and the horses came to a stop.
His head fell back against the seat as her warm mouth took him in and then slowly, slowly eased away. After a few moments of that, he growled and forced her to sit upright. “You should be in jail!”
Sable licked her lips contentedly. “That didn’t make you happy?”
“So happy, I want to drag you over to the side of the road, Mrs. Wanton LeVeq.”
“Too many insects.”
He grinned. “Just wait until I get you home.”
“I’ll try, but it had better be quickly.”
Raimond headed the horses up the road at a full gallop. “Is Mrs. Vine home?”
“No, I gave her the evening off. I gave
everyone
the evening off.”
“Good!”
They stumbled into the house, fondling, kissing, and ripping away their clothes. He made her ride him right there in the middle of the soft Persian rug that had been put down only that morning. Then he took her into the kitchen to introduce her to a counter they’d previously discussed. When she screamed her release, he groaned right after her, and the sounds of their love echoed throughout their home.
L
ouisiana’s long-anticipated Radical Convention convened two days later. Raimond had been chosen as a member of the state’s delegation and was appointed to the committee that would draw up the convention’s closing declaration. Sable and Juliana took the children to hear some of the speakers, but most days they left them in Mrs. Vine’s care and joined the hundreds of other observers in the gallery. Speaker after speaker, representatives from all across the South, stepped up to the podium to demand eloquently that Blacks of all backgrounds be given the rights promised by the Constitution. The name of Lincoln was invoked many times over and the name of his successor damned.
President Andrew Johnson had not halted his pardoning of Rebel leaders and supporters. Even those who’d been termed traitors less than six months ago now had only to write to the former slave-holding president to receive absolution. Many Confederate military officers and government officials were now back in power as judges, political appointees, and local sheriffs, and they were using their positions to further accelerate the disenfranchisement of the freed slaves. Their policies and attitudes seemed to reflect the words expressed by the
Cincinnati Enquirer
at the close of the war: “Slavery is dead, the negro is not, there is the misfortune.”
But most members of the race had absolutely no intention of accepting such sentiments quietly. In response to the political reversals threatening postwar progress, societies dedicated to the pursuit of civil rights were forming all over the South, bringing together freedmen, White radicals, Black soldiers, and the Black elite to ensure that the race’s voice was heard.
The debates of the Radical Convention did not always go smoothly, as the delegates tried to settle on a position document. At many of the Black conventions, and this one was no exception, most of the leadership positions were held by mulatto and free elite Blacks. Some freedmen resented what they saw as an overrepresentation by the two classes and verbally aired their discontent. One delegate from Tennessee wondered publicly why the convention was even called a Black convention when there were so few true Blacks in attendance. He didn’t care to have mixed-blood men—some of whom he described as “White as the editor of the
New York Herald
”—determining his political future. As he sat down there was a smattering of applause and a hail of derisive catcalls.
Sable didn’t favor either side, and as the debate around the issue continued for the next four hours, she felt they were squandering time that could be better spent addressing the crisis facing the race.
Some of the delegates apparently shared her view, and chastised their colleagues for fiddling while Rome burned. They pointed out that Blacks from all walks of life were playing active parts in the quest for civil rights, not just the free, mulatto, and freedmen. In Mississippi where only a handful of free Blacks had resided before the war, the leadership was made up of Black army vets and their extended families. In Georgia and Alabama, Black ministers were more often the organizers and leaders.
Henri Vincent summed up the day’s debate by sagely pointing out, “Free or freed, it hardly matters. We’re
all in this boat together, and we may as well accustom ourselves to rowing as one.”
He received a standing ovation.
Juliana had opened her home to the convention members, and over the course of the five days, it became Black Radical headquarters. Assisted by Sable and the wives of several other Louisiana delegates, she hosted teas, dinners, and luncheons. The delegates seemed to enjoy the opportunity to relax away from the debates, and even at midnight, the LeVeq door was open and the coffee hot.
Sable met many prominent men of all races in Juliana’s parlor, one of the most memorable being the famous war veteran Robert Smalls, whose daring commandeering of a Confederate warship had to be one of the most exciting escape-from-slavery tales she’d ever heard. Smalls, now active in South Carolina politics and a delegate to the convention, told his story to Juliana and Sable one afternoon as they sat on the front porch during a convention recess.
“I’d been a slave working the Charleston waterfront for about ten years when the masters sent me to work on a steamer called the
Planter
,” he told them. “That was in April of ’62. Before the war the
Planter
hauled cotton. She could hold up to fourteen hundred bales.”
“A large ship,” Juliana said knowingly.