Evermore: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 3) (21 page)

With a good day’s haul in the wagon, Marcel and his men
turned around to head down the bayou. All along the river road, Marcel tried to
see what Dix must have seen. The growing cane. The complacent planters. The scarcity
of Confederate presence. Little to discourage the Yanks, and much to entice
them.

The humid, heated, lazy river breeze barely stirred the
grass, offering no relief at all. What they needed was a stiff wind off the
Gulf, but barring a tropical storm, they’d have to endure another oppressive
afternoon of bold flies tormenting them and the horses.

At Poitier’s lane, Marcel turned in. Idly, he wondered if
Alistair would have refilled his ever-present flask before he came to talk to
Dix tonight. Maybe if they poured half of it down Dix’s throat, they’d soften
up that hard head.

They passed the quarters, the fruit orchards, the garden,
the cane fields. Saddle leather creaked and crickets whirred in the
undergrowth, the incidental noises emphasizing how quiet the afternoon was, how
still the air.

Not a single sound of a busy camp reached him. An uneasiness
crept up Marcel’s spine. No twittering of birds, no flittering of the brilliant
cardinals that usually darted across the lane. A lone buzzard circled overhead
in the hot gray sky.

Ahead, a long arm of live oak reached across the far end of
the lane. From bright sunlight, Marcel eyed the deep shadow under the tree.
What was that?

Slowly, as the horse ambled closer, Marcel made out
something hanging down from the limb. Odd, there in the middle of the lane. A
flash of yellow, turning. The drying belly of a gator hide?

Pain exploded in Marcel’s chest. His heart clenched, his
lungs turned to cold hard marble.

He spurred his horse the last fifty yards, a deafening roar
in his ears.

He wrenched the reins under the swaying body. The horse
reared, wheeling to stop itself.

Marcel reached up, grabbed Dix’s legs, pushing with all his
strength to relieve the tension in the rope. He screamed for help, struggling
to keep his horse in position, to carry Dix’s weight.

His men on horseback surrounded him, sharing the weight,
steadying his horse.

“A knife,” he demanded, “goddammit, a knife.”

Someone climbed on his saddle, leapt onto the arching
branch, and severed the rope.

As the body fell into his lap, the empurpled face, the
bloated lips wisped across Marcel’s cheek in a final brother’s kiss.

A wordless cry tore from Marcel’s chest, scattering the
birds, shocking the horses and the men. He clasped Dix to his breast, the body
limp and cold. His golden curls smelled of the sun, his stained yellow pants of
piss.

Someone led Marcel’s horse, Marcel still clutching Dix’s
body, trembling fingers closing the lids over Sunshine’s befogged, vacant blue
eyes.

Hands reached up, took Dix away from him.

Marcel slumped in his saddle, lost in a dark mindless grief.
Slowly, the marble of his lungs softened, pulling air into his chest. The
muscle of his heart, bruised and sore, slowed and the pulsing roar in his ears
receded.

Marcel looked around him as a man whose sight is newly
restored. Two men were with Dix, laying his body out, putting a handkerchief
over his ruined face.

The others watched Marcel, their faces grave and uncertain.
Except for two men. Nelson stared at the inert figure on the ground. Smythe
pared his nails with a knife.

A terrible silent calm enveloped Marcel. He swung his leg
over, slowly, almost trance-like, and dismounted. He felt strangely tall,
strangely large, as if his arms were muscled thick as tree trunks, his legs as
long and tough as fence rails.

He stood in front of Smythe, aware of the knife, aware of
every blond hair on Smythe’s knuckles.

“You dishonorable cur. You hanged Dix Weber.”

Unresponsive to the insult, Smythe swiped his knife blade
against his pant leg, then twisted it into the ready position.

“The man was a spy. You thought so yourself, Captain, else
you wouldn’t have tied him up. ’Sides, he tried to escape.”

“Tied up in the middle of camp, twenty men around him.”

“That’s right.”

Marcel’s fist caught Smythe in the center of his chest All
the breath in him whooshed out. The knife dropped to the dirt.

Without hurry, Marcel grabbed him by his shirt front and
punched him in the jaw. Smythe flailed at him, no air in his lungs, no strength
in his arms.

Marcel shoved him against the tree trunk, held him there
with his left, flattened Smythe’s nose with his
right.

Through the red haze of his own fiercely pulsing blood,
Marcel dimly saw the man hold his hands up to protect his face, saw the blood
gushing over his mouth. He shifted his assault to Smythe’s
belly, both fists punishing him, striving to burst the liver, the bladder, the
gut.

Strong hands pulled at him, men shouted in his ear. He
shrugged them off. They persisted, dragging him away. He whirled and threw a
fist into his sergeant’s face. Two more leapt on him, hauling him down.

They piled on him, forcing him to breathe, to settle.

The weight of his men ground him into the earth. His lungs
slowed. The haze cleared. His mind focused. He’d just beat a man half to death.
Or maybe he’d killed him. He didn’t care, if he’d killed him.

He raised his head. “Let me up.”

The men untangled themselves. Someone held a hand out to
Marcel and helped him out of the dirt.

Over by the tree, two men tended to Smythe. Blood covered
his face, his arms, his shirt front.

Marcel staggered nearer. His legs didn’t want to hold his
weight, but he stayed upright. “Is he dead?”

“No, sir. He ain’t dead. Not yet, least-ways.”

“Where’s Nelson?”

Sergeant French, a bruise forming where Marcel had slugged
him, shoved Nelson ahead of him. “Caught him trying to run off.”

Marcel stumbled over to where Smythe lay and bent over. He
grabbed Smythe by his scraggly bloody beard and forced the man to look at him.

“I ever see you again . . . ” The world shifted for a
moment, and everything turned red. Marcel blinked his eyes and focused on Smythe’s misshapen face. “I ever see you again, I’ll kill
you.”

Marcel teetered backward. A man caught him, steadied him.

“Get them out of here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Marcel took a reeling step and stopped. “Confiscate their
horses.”

“Yes, sir.”

Strange how weak he felt. As if he were the one lying in his
own blood, his guts pummeled to mush. He put one foot in front of the other,
wavering on the way to his tent.

Sergeant French slung Marcel’s arm over his shoulder. “This
way, sir. You’ll want your cot now.”

Marcel held up his hand, warm with Smythe’s
blood. He didn’t like having Smythe’s blood on his
hand. He wiped it on his pants. “Where’s Val? I need a basin of water.”

“Your boy’s laid up, sir. I’ll see you get your water.”

Marcel drew himself up. “What’s wrong with Val?”

“Val’s one of the ones tried to stop Smythe, sir. The
lieutenant had him chained to his cot.”

The weakness in his legs left him. The steady thumping of
blood filled his ears. Val had never known chains. Had never even been whipped.

Marcel stepped away from the sergeant’s helping arm. “Where
is he?”

Sergeant French took him to the tent Val shared with another
slave. The late afternoon sun shone through the white canvas onto Val’s curled
form, illuminating the iron fetters heavy on his thin wrists. The grizzled
Negro dabbing at Val’s face with a wet cloth rose and made way for him.

Val’s left eye, already purple, was swollen shut. His lip was
split, his nose swollen, his jaw blackened. Marcel knelt by the cot, his eyes
cataloging the battering Val had taken.

“I’m sorry, Captain. I tried to stop him.”

Marcel picked up the cloth and carefully wiped at the blood
seeping from Val’s lip. “When we see your daddy, I can tell him you were a
brave man today.” A sudden cough of a laugh erupted from Marcel’s throat. “He’d
have my hide if he saw you like this.”

Val smiled enough to make the blood flow. Marcel touched the
cloth to his lip. “I’ll get these chains off you. Bring you something soft you
can get in your mouth.”

Val tried to raise himself, but the chain held him back.
“No, sir. I’ll bring you your supper, just like always. It’s my job.”

“Not tonight, Val. I’m taking care of you tonight.”

Marcel had Sergeant French move Val’s cot into his own tent.
The other slave bunked with someone else, leaving a tent free to shelter Dix’s
body.

Men fixed supper around their campfires, but no one ate
much. Some of them looked toward their captain’s tent and cursed under their
breath. Captain had no right beating a man half to death for doing what he
ought to have done in the first place. Others said the captain knew what he was
doing. Smythe deserved every fisted blow to the belly. The man never hear of a
trial before a hanging?

An hour before twilight, Alistair rode into camp.

Sergeant French told him what happened. Alistair walked
along the shoreline remembering Dix Weber. They’d known each other all their
lives, might have become old men together, telling tales about the war,
Alistair and Marcel and Sunshine.

When he was ready, he went into the tent where Sunshine’s
body lay. When Alistair was a boy, his father, a rough man, had forced him to
watch a hanging.
It’ll toughen the boy
up, make a man of him
, Father had told his protesting mother. Alistair even
yet revisited the scene in his nightmares. He knew what hanging did to a man’s
face. He didn’t lift the handkerchief covering Sunshine’s.

He sat a while. A last ray of sun pierced the gloomy tent
and lit a golden curl over Sunshine’s ear. Alistair’s numb reserve crumbled,
and he wept.

Spent, Alistair stepped into the dusk, fire flies flitting
through the camp. He knocked on Marcel’s fence pole and let himself in. A
kerosene lantern cast a yellow glow on Marcel’s boy sleeping in the second cot,
his face a mass of swollen bruises.

Marcel sat in his shirtsleeves, his dark hair wild, his eyes
the deepest black. The knuckles on the hand holding his pen were split and raw.
He was writing a letter.

“For his mother?”

Marcel nodded.

“You tell her the truth?”

“No.”

Alistair took the camp stool. He reached for Marcel’s horn
cup and poured a dose of healing bourbon from his replenished flask. Together,
they drank to Dix Weber.

Nicolette woke to sunlight slatted through her shutter,
setting the rose-washed walls aglow. Another day, the early September morning
blessedly cool.

She checked the clock. Plenty of time to make morning mass.
The house was quiet, Cleo and Pierre having gone upriver to oversee the small
harvest of their gardens.

She dressed, choosing a pale blue tignon to go with her gray
dress. William, at her insistence, was with the Guards at their barracks. No
one had accosted her in the weeks since the gang of boys had gone after her.
She could take care of herself on the way to the Custom House.

Nicolette opened her front door.

The coppery smell hit her before her eyes made sense of the
blood and feathers and chicken shit smeared all over her front stoop. She
recoiled, one hand at her mouth, the other slamming the door shut.

She fought to keep the bile down, her back pressed against
the door.

Just chicken feathers. Just chicken.

Her throat burned. Her heart beat against her ribs. She latched
the door, retreated to Maman’s parlor, and sank onto the wide-bottomed chair.

Just chicken blood. Like the voodoo queen used in Congo
Square.

Nicolette crossed herself. She and her maman were as
Catholic as Nicolette’s father, as devout as Tante Josie. Still, the voodoo was
powerful in New Orleans. She shook her head. This sloppy display on her stoop
was not true voodoo. A true voodoyen would acquire a
lock of Nicolette’s hair and burn it if she wanted to harm her. In spite of
herself, Nicolette thought of her hairbrush upstairs on the dresser. She would
not rush up there and pull the hair out of that brush. This was not an act of
voodoo. This was a white man’s warning.

She swiped at the useless tears on her face and calmed
herself. This was just meanness. Whoever it was had done no real harm. After
the Confederates’ great victory at the second Bull Run, the rebels in town were
emboldened, that’s all. Somebody knew she was a collaborator, and they were
punishing her. Scaring her. Well, she was not going to let them scare her into
quitting. She’d known there would be risk in working with the “enemy.” She was
a soldier, in her own way, and she had a job to do.

She tied an apron over her dress. In the courtyard she
filled a bucket from the cistern and took it to the front stoop where she
sluiced the mess into the gutter. Three buckets and a good scouring with the
straw broom and the stoop shone clean. By noon, the feathers would have dried
and blown away. The rest of the filth would roll toward the river with the next
rainstorm.

She was late now. She strode rapidly down Esplanade and up
Levee to arrive at the Custom House at twenty past eight. Determined to put the
morning’s fright out of her mind, she climbed the stairs with a quick step.

“Good morning, Mr. Wallace, Mr. Simpson,” she said.

“Morning, Miss.”

“No beignets?” Wallace said.

“No flour, Mr. Wallace. Not until a new shipment comes in.”

The day wore on. Nicolette’s key clacked out a rapid
incoming ratatat and she picked up her pencil. Adept
now, she penciled the message on her yellow pad:
Railroad trestle blown up north of Magnolia. No casualties. Train
diverted. Need timber to effect repairs
.

Thanks be to God. No tallying of killed, wounded, and
missing. As noon approached, she watched the clock. If the captain could get
away from his other duties, he’d take her to lunch. Five after twelve, and
there in the doorway, Captain Finnian McKee. He leaned in, freshly barbered, a
hand on either jamb.