Evermore: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 3) (11 page)

“Thibodeaux. Maybe we can keep the Union from getting as far
as Houma.”

They talked strategy, trying to outguess Butler. If they
lost Lafourche Parish, it would be a heavy blow to The Cause.

Marcel lit one of his father’s Cuban cigars. “I saw Cleo
yesterday.”

Cleo was a delicate subject with Papa. She had been his for
so long, he’d been incredulous, and hurt, when she married this Pierre LaFitte.
Papa would not ask about her, but he drank in whatever information his sons and
daughter would give him.

“She’s well.” Marcel eyed his father, wondering how much to
tell him. He softened his voice. “I think she’s happy, Papa.”

Bertrand grunted and ground his cigar butt on the railing.

To lighten the moment, Marcel reported on his baby sister.
“Nicolette, on the other hand, is ready to horsewhip me for putting on the
uniform.”

“She’s a spitfire, isn’t she? Always on the lookout for
injustice.”

“She’s quick to find it, too, Papa.”

“Hers is an uncompromising soul. Don’t know where she gets
it.”

After a quiet moment, Bertrand asked, “How many men they got
working the foundry?”

They talked till the mosquitoes drove them inside to the
study where bouquets of dried tansy deterred the biters. A tansy-loving moth
flirted with the lantern.

Marcel opened a leather satchel. “These are the papers. I’ve
already signed them with Monsieur Marchand as
witness, but I want to go over them with you.”

He laid out the first pages. “This is the ownership papers
for the foundry. If the South loses, the matter will be moot. But if we win,
the foundry goes to you.”

“If we win?”

Marcel met his father’s eyes. “You’re so confident?”

Bertrand tapped his fingers a moment. “As long as we have
Vicksburg, we’re strong here in the west. But confident? Hopeful? Not the same
as seeing the future, is it?”

Marcel opened another packet. “These pages divide my
remaining assets. The race horses, the town house, the carriage, the portfolio,
my share of Cherleu. Yves gets a third. Gabe and Nicolette split a third. The
last third is for Lucinda and the boys.”

“A third?”

“Yes,” Marcel said firmly. “A third.”

“Very generous.”

Marcel stared at his father a moment. Papa had loved Cleo,
that had always been apparent, even when Marcel was a boy. He’d provided for
her, as much as she would let him. If it had not been for Maman, would Papa not
have given Cleo and the children a third of his worldly goods, for love’s sake?

“This is important to me, Papa.”

Bertrand met his eyes. “I understand.”

“And she’ll need more than money. I want you to look after
her. See about her.”

Bertrand’s gaze returned to the documents. Was he thinking
about Cleo and their babes? The years she wouldn’t let him contribute a
picayune, so determined was she to be her own woman, not a rich man’s plaçée?

“If Yves were here, or Gabe, I wouldn’t ask you -- ”

“Marcel, I will be honored to take care of Lucinda and your
sons.”

Marcel stretched his arm across the table to grasp his
father’s hand. “Thank you, Papa.”

“And Miss Presswood?” Bertrand asked.

“Ah.” Marcel hadn’t thought about it. “I’ll gather a few
keepsakes for her. Valentine will know where they are.”

“Good.” Bertrand reached for the bell. “With that grisly
business over, let’s have a bottle of wine.”

Val delivered a bottle of Bordeaux on a silver
platter. The cut-class crystal picked up the flickering light as he placed the
tray on the desk. Bertrand reached for the bottle, but he stopped at Val’s
uncharacteristic stance. The boy had pulled himself to attention and stared off
into the middle distance like a soldier on report.

Marcel hid his smile. He knew what was coming. Papa doted on
Val. When Marcel and Yves had reached their adolescence, they’d been sent to
school at St. Charles College south of Opelousas, the best school in the state.
Marcel had come home for the summer to find the big eyed toddler ensconced on
Papa’s knee, Papa shelling boiled peanuts for him.

“You wish to say something, Val?”

“I been talking -- ”

“ ‘I have been,’” Marcel interrupted.

“I have been talking to mon père,
Monsieur Chamard. He say--”

“’He says.’”

“He says I can go with Monsieur Marcel tomorrow.”

“He does, does he?” Bertrand answered. “Your daddy making
the decisions around here now?”

In truth, Marcel realized, Valentine did make a lot of the
decisions “around here.” But Val hadn’t yet learned the art of subtlety his
father had mastered.

Val shifted his black eyes from Bertrand to Marcel and back.
“I only meant, Monsieur, that mon père thinks it’s a
good idea. For me to take care of Monsieur Marcel when he’s in the field.”

Bertrand gave Val the eye, but the boy held his gaze.
Bertrand puffed up his chest and hollered. “Valentine!”

When Valentine stepped into the room, he said solemnly, “You
bellow for me, sir?”

Marcel hid a smirk as his father glared at Valentine.

“What did you tell Val about running off to war?” Bertrand
demanded.

“The same as we been telling him. He has to stay here, work
on that stack of books he got kicked under the bed.”

Marcel watched Val’s righteousness override his
embarrassment at being caught out.

“Monsieur Marcel needs me. I have to go.” He looked at the
three stony faces and his courage flared higher. “I’m not a boy!”

“Val.” Bertrand skewered him with his eyes. “You ever lie to
me again, I will take the whip to you. Personally.”

Val’s slender jaws worked as he struggled to swallow his
anger.

“Val!” Valentine spoke quietly, but the command was there.

Finally Val dipped his head. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

Marcel almost felt sorry for the boy. “Go get my kit ready.
I’m leaving first light.”

Val’s bowed head raised enough to look at Marcel with hope
in his eyes.

“I’m going alone,” Marcel said as firmly as he knew how.

Val slunk away to see to the packing. Each man in the room
shook his head. They all saw a scrawny kid, too young to know how young he was.
Yet each man remembered how it had burned to be treated like a child when you
were not yet a man.

“He get over it,” Valentine said.

Marcel drained his glass of very fine wine. “I need to get
to bed, Papa. You be up in the morning?”

Bertrand nodded. “Good night, son.”

Dark clouds delayed sunrise. By the time Marcel dressed and
gathered his gear, the heavens opened. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled
down the river. Valentine fetched an oiled slicker for Marcel to wear over the
uniform and oiled canvas to wrap his biscuits and bacon. Time to go.

Marcel embraced his father.

“Take care of yourself,” Bertrand said.

His papa’s eyes were moist, and Marcel worried for him. Yves
and Gabe two thousand miles away, and now he was leaving too. But Papa would
have Valentine. And Val. And Madame Josephine next door at Toulouse. Their old
friendship seemed to be deepening, the best he could tell.

On the gallery, Valentine hugged him hard. “You take care of
yourself, Captain. We all wants you back here in one piece.”

Marcel entered the onslaught of wind and rain. Val, clad in his
own poncho, held Hercule’s lines. Rain dripped off
Val’s nose, over his sullen mouth. There’d be no friendly goodbye coming from
him this morning.

Marcel took the reins. “Apply yourself, Val. See how many of
those books you get read before I come home. I’ll give you a coin for every one
you can answer three questions about.”

Lightning bleached the air. The live oak thirty feet away
burst into flames. Shock waves stunned them into a trembling tableau of horse,
boy, and man.

The next instant Hercule reared on his hind legs, pulling
the reins from Marcel’s hand.

Val lunged for the lines.

The horse came down hard, his hoof catching the instep of
Marcel’s boot. Marcel went down.

The horse bolted, Val still hanging on to the reins.

Bertrand rushed down the steps into the deluge to help
Marcel. Valentine ran after his boy.

Hercule reached the river road and kept going. Val had sense
enough to let go the reins before the horse dragged the pants, and the skin,
off his legs. He was pulling himself out of the mud when his daddy got to him.

Val and Valentine ran through the downpour back toward their
masters. Over the roar of the burning tree and the sheeting rain, Bertrand
shouted, “Get him inside. Damned horse stomped his foot.”

They set him down on the horsehair sofa, rivulets running
off all of them. The wet wouldn’t harm the sofa, but Marcel spared a thought
for the Parisian rose-patterned carpet they were muddying. If Maman were alive,
she’d have palpitations over these muddy streaks, as soon as she’d had her
palpitations over his foot.

Bertrand sent for Bella, the cook and also the best nurse
they had on the place. Dripping wet, she arrived with clean rags and her needle
and thread.

Valentine was unlacing Marcel’s boot. “Lemme
do dat,” Bella said.

Thunder shook the window panes. The flaming oak tree outside
crackled. Valentine closed the shutters and lit a lantern before the storm
pushed its way right into the house.

“We gone need a fire in here,” Bella told him. “M’sieu
Marcel gone get a chill, he so wet.”

Valentine nodded at Val to get a fire started.

Marcel grit his teeth as Bella worked the boot over his
foot. He gripped the sofa arm with one wet hand and a glass of rum with the
other. He wouldn’t have been surprised if a torrent of blood drained out of the
boot, but there was only a red crescent on his stocking.

The hoof had come down so that the outer rim curved with the
base of his toes. That’s where the blood oozed out. Already the foot was blue
and swelling. He’d never get his boot back on.

Bella unrolled the heavy wool sock until his foot was
revealed. “Won’t need no stitches.” Gently she felt of his ankle, his instep,
and each toe. “See can you move ’em youself.”

Marcel sucked air through his teeth as he flexed his toes.
They all worked, at least until the swelling immobilized them. The hoof had
pushed his foot into the mud instead of breaking it.

“Dese bones still good then,” Bella pronounced. “But you
gone have to stay off this foot a spell.”

Heedless of the muddied carpet, Bella opened a tin of
turpentine and set it down on a wool and silk rose. She stuffed a strip of
white linen in the turpentine, then tied that soaked strip over the first clean
bandage she’d applied. She bound his foot till it was cushioned top and bottom,
and propped it on a tufted leather chair.

That done, the company contemplated the disaster that was
Marcel’s foot. The storm should have kept him home; the foot certainly would.

“Bella, you make me an oil-cloth boot to go over all this
wrapping?”

“Sho, I can do that,” she said,
raising her voice over the noise of the storm. “Won’t take me no time.”

“Val, go with her. Take the boot and see if you can seal the
cut with wax.”

That left Valentine, Bertrand and Marcel in the room, all
three silently focused on the bandaged foot.

Finally Marcel said what they were all thinking. “I can’t
wait on this foot, Papa.”

“Don’t want me to send word to General Mouton?”

Marcel shook his head. “My men are already in Thibodeaux.”

“You cain’t get around on you own with that foot like it is,”
Valentine said.

Marcel looked at his father. Then at Val’s father.

“I’ll go fix the boy’s kit.” Valentine left the room with a
heavy tread. Papa went to search the closets for a pair of Yves’ larger cast
off boots that might fit over the swelling in a few days.

Rain beat on the roof and hurled itself against the
shutters. Even with the windows closed, the lantern flickered. Marcel sipped
the rum judiciously. He’d be a damn fool to ride in this storm half drunk. And
where was Hercule? By now, he could have run half way to Donaldsonville.

Bella came in with the oversized canvas bootie over her arm,
Val dripping wet behind her.

“Old Ben got Hercule back,” Val reported. “You still want to
ride him?”

Marcel winced as Bella drew the bootie up over his bandaged
foot. “He’ll do. Most any horse would bolt with lightning coming down on his
head.” He stood up tentatively, his nurse hovering. “Thank you, Bella. Your
boot will serve very well.”

She smiled broadly.

“Go on back to the cabin and get some dry clothes on, crawl
under a quilt. You’ll catch your death, you don’t get warmed up.”

She rewarded him with a quick curtsy, something she seldom
bothered with.

Alone with Val, Marcel eyed the boy. He was not any more
cheerful than he’d been out in the storm holding on to the bay’s reins.

Marcel took out his watch. “It is now eight o’clock. I want
you back here at quarter past, packed and ready to travel.”

One second for the meaning to penetrate Val’s grievances.
The next second, his face lit. Third second, he was racing through the house to
the little room he shared with his father.

Twelve past eight, Val reported to Marcel. “Ready, Michie Marcel!”

“Monsieur, not ‘michie.’”

On the gallery, the men said their goodbyes again. Smoke
wisped from the ruined tree, the flames extinguished by the downpour. The
thunder and lightning had moved upriver, and the rain had reduced itself to a
steady, lighter fall.

Marcel paused before he left the porch. “Valentine,
I’ll do everything under God’s blue sky to keep him safe.”

“I know you will, Michie. Keep you
both safe, hear?”

Finn discovered that rain in New Orleans was a mixed
blessing. During the actual shower, he’d open his collar a little to feel the
coolness on his neck and breathe in the scented air. The magnolias, the
jasmine, the very earth perfumed the air. Then the sun reasserted itself. The
wet streets steamed. The heavy air smothered him.