by Rita Woods
Petal turned her round, pretty face toward Margot, her expression answering for her.
“What happens now?” asked Margot, an echo of the question she’d asked David Henry earlier.
Petal smiled but her eyes were hard. “This my home. I ain’t runnin’. Me. My babies. This our home, and I’m not about to let some yellow-bellied driver man scare me off … or carry me off.”
If she had not been so uneasy, Margot would have laughed. The pregnant woman looked barely able to walk, let alone able to take on a team of slave drivers. “What about … the Edge? Was it not supposed to stop this from happening? Keep out people like the slave catchers?”
Petal shifted the basket and stared into the fire. “I don’t know,” she answered at last. “It was good here. For a long time. Everything Mother Abigail promised. More. This…”
She shrugged and locked eyes with Margot. “Don’t matter. Let ’em come!”
She turned and glared in the direction of the cluster of cabins that rose up the hillside, seemingly deserted except for the thin plumes of smoke that drifted from their chimneys.
“Cowards!” she cried, nearly toppling herself over. Peas flew from her basket and scattered in the dirt, disappearing in the near darkness. She touched Margot’s wrist. “Folks got call to be scared, I grant you that, but this our home! We got lazy. Forgot who we are. What we can do. With Mother Abigail protectin’ us all the time. We took our freedom, ought to be willin’ to fight to keep it.”
Margot shook her head. “Fighting is not for everyone.”
Petal gave her a long look. “I s’pose. But sometimes you don’t get to choose.”
She turned and began a slow waddle toward the cabins halfway up the hill. “Cowards,” she muttered, waving off Margot’s assistance.
Alone by the fire, Margot nervously rubbed at the pain in her forehead.
Winter, Thomas, Mother Abigail, Louisa. She stood for a long moment, paralyzed by indecision. Shouldn’t she be doing something? Who should she ask? Her stomach growled and she was grateful for the sudden diversion of hunger.
A cast-iron skillet lay in the cooling ashes of the Central Fire. Lifting the lid, she saw to her relief that it contained not an animal’s head, but the remnants of potatoes and fried apples, the remains of Thomas’s quick, sad funeral repast. It was nearly cold but she ate it with relish, and the act of eating calmed her a bit. She washed the food down with scalding coffee and surveyed the area around her.
The Central Fire lay in a shallow bowl, narrow trails leading out from it like spokes on a wheel. One, she knew, led to the washing creek; another was the way back toward the cemetery, and ultimately to the mulberry clearing where she’d first stumbled into Remembrance. In the firelight it was impossible to see the trail that led up to the highlands, but she could track its course by the gentle meandering of the cottages up the hill.
It was a good place to make a home in freedom, she admitted. Fertile land to farm, good, clean water nearby, protected on three sides by rolling hills.
Veronique would have loved it here.
“Help.”
She jerked, sloshing coffee on her hem. She looked around wildly, even as she realized that no one was there. The word whispered in her ear so clearly. Veronique’s voice, Veronique’s breath against her skin.
She is dead! It was a dream!
But even as she thought this, the fine hairs on her neck stood on end, the skin along her shoulders prickled.
“Stop it! Arréte!” she whispered, unsure who she was talking to.
Margot shuddered and gulped more coffee, scalding her throat. She closed her eyes and crossed herself, and still the feeling of being watched, of not being alone, would not leave her. The sound of the funeral chant echoed in her head.
She stared into the cup, absently swirling the grounds left in the bottom. She felt dizzy with uncertainty.
I don’t know what to do.
Suddenly, against all reason, she was seized by the need to see the old priestess. She made her way slowly across the clearing toward Mother Abigail’s cabin, picking her way with only the fingernail moon to light her path. Once again, shadows seemed to flit in and among the trees just outside her line of vision, and she had the overwhelming sense that, if she could just turn her head fast enough, she might catch sight of her sister crouched among a tangle of wild rose.
“Merde! Imbecile!” she muttered. “You are losing your mind!”
A man stood guard at Mother Abigail’s door, a suet lamp guttering at his feet, a rifle in the crook of his arm. She advanced slowly, arms out.
“Hello,” she called softly. “It is I, Margot.”
As she moved into the small circle of light, she saw that the “man” was in fact a boy of ten or twelve. And that the rifle he was holding was nearly as tall as he was. His thin frame trembled, though it was impossible to tell if it was from the cold or fear.
He stepped forward at her approach, bony legs planted, and regarded her silently. The barrel of the gun was pointed toward the ground, but Margot felt the tension in him, the readiness to pull the trigger if it became necessary to defend his priestess.
“Hello,” she said again.
The boy nodded, but said nothing.
“I … I would like to see Mother Abigail, please.”
The boy shook his head. “Can’t,” he said, his voice surprisingly deep. “No one goes in.”
Margot cocked her head and smiled, trying to put him at ease. “How is she, then?”
The tiny Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as the boy swallowed nervously. He cut his eyes at the closed cabin door. “Don’t know. We waitin’ for Miss Louisa to come take a look at her.”
Margot flinched at the mention of the herbalist, and it was her turn to swallow nervously. Keeping her voice as even as possible, she said, “I could check on her, tend to her until … I might be able to help. I know a bit about … healing.”
The boy’s narrow spine stiffened, and she could see he was about to refuse her for the second time, when the cabin door swung open, startling them both. Josiah stood in the opening and fixed his peculiar eyes on the boy.
“Jesse, you go on now. I need to talk with Margot a bit,” he said.
As the boy’s mouth twisted in protest, the old man went on. “The other mens all gone, so I needs you to walk Remembrance. Make sure the womens is safe.”
“Yessir,” replied Jesse. He turned to go.
“Boy, take your lamp, ’fore you kill yourself.”
Jesse tucked the rifle under his arm and grabbed the lamp. With a last suspicious look at Margot, he began to move up into the hills that surrounded Remembrance.
They listened as he crashed through the brush, and after a moment Josiah chuckled. “That boy better than any guard dog. Make so much noise he scare off anything tryin’ to sneak up in here.”
He turned toward Margot and she bit her lip. His big frame sagged against the doorframe, his opaque eyes glowing a sickly yellow. He seemed, if anything, even more reduced than he had at the gravesite, his skin fitting poorly over his bones. Margot swallowed, tasting the fried apples and scalded coffee in the back of her throat.
“I been waitin’ for you,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
She blinked.
He stretched a hand in her direction but she drew her hands into her cloak. He smiled and dropped his hand.
“I’m lettin’ heat out,” he said, when she didn’t move.
She inhaled and stepped into the cabin. It was small and dim, and the smell nearly overwhelmed her: candle wax and woodsmoke and apples and old flesh. She shook her head to clear it, waiting for her eyes to adjust. There was some light, but the shutters were closed against the cold, and the tiny woodstove filled every corner with smoke.
Two wooden stools and a sort of rough chifforobe were the only pieces of furniture. Mother Abigail’s cloak hung on a wooden knob, a large covered basket on the floor underneath. Opposite the door, against the wall, the old woman lay on a raised palle
t. Only the barest movement of her chest showed that she still lived.
Margot’s heart stuttered as she stared at the priestess. Despite the coolness of the cabin, she felt hot and light-headed.
“I was waitin’ for you,” repeated Josiah from a gloomy corner, as if reading her mind.
“I do not understand you,” said Margot. She shifted to look at him. She felt damp sweat forming under her arms. “Waiting for me to what purpose?”
The old man shuffled toward the pallet. Turning toward her, he said, “I can’t answer that, girl, but from the moment you entered Remembrance, I knew you was supposed to be here. In this time. In this place.”
Margot felt behind her, ran a hand over the rough wall of the cabin. It was all real. She wasn’t dreaming.
“You are…?” she asked. “You are Babalawo?”
Again, an image of Grandmere flashed in her mind.
“A priest? Me?” Josiah threw his head back and laughed, his teeth unaccountably bright in the dimness, and for a moment he looked like the strong, vital man of just days before.
“No, girl!” he said, still chuckling. “I ain’t nothin’ like that! I got a little bit of … intuition and I got … a good sense about things, about folks. But nah! I ain’t nobody special.”
He was lying. She could see it as clearly as if the words were written in the air between them. Not a priest, non! But something else. Something of shadow, of spirit. Unconsciously, she took a step away from him.
“Louisa’s gone,” he said, seeming not to notice. “Didn’t nobody see, but the slavers took her, sure ’nough.” All traces of laughter had disappeared from Josiah’s face. Margot held her breath.
He was standing over her now, his eyes running thick, gummy tears. She shuddered, tried to back away, but the closed door was against her back and there was nowhere to go. Heat seemed to pour off Josiah in waves, burning her face, singeing her hair.
“What you come lookin’ for here?” he asked. Tobacco-sweet breath blew across her face. She shook her head. He was too close. She wanted to bring her hands up, to defend herself, but was terrified of touching him. But it didn’t matter, because he touched her.
“What you want here?” he whispered and laid his hands on her shoulders.
The room suddenly pulsed and spun out in front of her in a haze of purple and red. There was something wrong with this man. She felt the darkness, the danger lurking inside him. Not good. Not evil. Just there. The way the copperhead snakes that lived in the bayous of Louisiana were neither good nor evil, but deadly all the same, as was their nature.
She felt him inside of her; her arms and legs, her breath, her will no longer her own!
“Mary sainte, mère de Dieu,” she prayed. “Holy Mother, protect us.”
She tried to push him out, out of her mind, out of her body, but she was powerless. She tasted milk and honey and whiskey. He was not a single man but many, old and young. Like a cracked mirror, she could feel him reflected in each piece, each reflection just a bit different. She cried out, confused. She’d never felt anything like this before.
The world spun. She tasted vomit in her mouth and she forced it down. Locking her knees, she felt for the door behind her, but her hands were his hands, knuckles swollen and painful, the skin dark and loose, and they would not obey her. His man smell, his old man smell was in her nose, and she felt her skin sag even as his manhood seemed to rise between her legs. And there was nothing she could do.
And then she was on her knees at Mother Abigail’s side, her limbs and muscles hers and only hers.
“Sorcière!” she hissed, crossing herself. “Witch!”
But the old man barely looked at her, his face tired and blank. Beside her, Mother Abigail moaned softly. Margot studied her, keeping her body turned so she could still keep Josiah in view.
The old woman’s eyes were open, though they saw nothing. The left side of her face drooped like warm butter, a thin line of drool escaping her lips. Even without touching her, Margot knew at once what was wrong. A blood vessel had broken in the priestess’s head. She felt a faint echo of it in her own.
She felt hysterical laughter rising in her chest. She didn’t know what the old man expected her to do, but this woman was beyond her help. All anyone could do now was wait.
32
Winter
“What’s your name?”
Winter moaned. Her eyelids felt swollen, stuck together.
“My name’s Dixon. Dixon McHugh. Everybody just calls me Dix.”
She forced her eyes open and blinked slowly at him. Her mouth was dry. It hurt to swallow. The white boy squatted in the shadows, watching.
“You ain’t had no call to throw that food in my face like that,” he said. “You best not try that with Frank and them; they liable to beat you near to death.”
She turned her back on him, the chain on her leg rattling against the floor.
“Frank says that’s how it’s done when you catch slaves. That’s the big fella that busted in here yesterday. He says you have to do it, chain ’em, else a slave’s liable to run off.”
She turned her head and fixed him with a look, willing him to die, her nails digging into the soft meat of her palms. He flinched and looked away.
“You shouldn’a run off from your master, then we wouldn’t have to chain you,” he said, sounding uncertain. “Frank says it’s how it’s done.”
“I didn’t run off from anywhere. I’m not a slave,” hissed Winter, breaking her silence. “I was never a slave! You … you came into my home and kidnapped me!”
Dixon McHugh blinked rapidly. “Kidnap? I didn’t…”
“I am not a slave,” she repeated. It was hard for her to speak. Rage bunched the words up in her throat. “Everyone in Remem—!”
She stopped. She would never speak Remembrance’s name to this slaver.
“Everyone in my village is free,” she finished.
It was none of his business that nearly everyone in Remembrance once had been slaves. The boy was shaking his head. He looked, if it was possible, even paler than before. Winter watched him through narrowed eyes.
“What happened to your face?” she asked.
From where she sat, she could see a dark bruise running the length of the boy’s jaw and down into his soiled shirt collar. It hadn’t been there the day before. She was certain of that.
Dix stiffened and Winter inhaled sharply.
“I brought you supper,” he said, ignoring her question. “Frank says make sure you eat it. He says you won’t be worth nothin’ starved to death. Frank’s got a sour temper, case you ain’t noticed.”
“Dixon. Dix. You have to let me loose.” Winter took a deep breath. “I don’t belong to anybody but myself. I have to go home. Please let me go home.”
Her voice broke. “I am not a slave. I have never been a slave. You know this isn’t right. Deep down you know that, don’t you?”
The boy stared at the ground, not meeting her eyes. His thin shoulders drooped, and for a tiny moment, Winter had a glimmer of hope that he might actually let her go, would see this for the horrible mistake that it was. Then he sighed and looked up at her. His eyes glittered in the grimy light but his mouth was hard.
“I can’t do that, miss. Frank took me in. I got no one else.” He shook his head slowly from side to side. “’Sides, Frank said we’re only catchin’ slaves. Only slaves. Not free nigras. So I’m doin’ right. Returnin’ property. That’s all I’m doin’, followin’ the law. You tryn’a say everybody free where we got you. Well, you know that ain’t true, much as you might wish it, cause Frank got papers. He got proof who you all’s belong to or we wouldn’a been there.”
“He’s lying. Did you see the papers? There’s no such proof.”
Dixon hunched his shoulders as he put a sack on the barn floor where, with some effort, she might reach it. He watched her for a moment, the Adam’s apple bobbing nervously in his thin throat. “They took me in when I was in the most desperate way.
And … and I need that money … bad. I ain’t particular about no slave-holdin’ but the law’s the law. That’s all. It’s the law. Sorry, miss,” he mumbled and then he was gone.
“Sorry?” She leaped to her feet again, ignoring the pain in her swollen ankle. “Come back here, you no-account bootlicking cracker!” she screamed. “Let me loose from here, goddammit! Let me loose! Or you will be sorry, sorrier than you know!”
Winter thrashed and kicked, jerking at the chain that held her. She screamed curses and cried, kicking at the nearest horse stall until it splintered. No one came.
Finally, spent, she collapsed to the barn floor, sobbing softly, twisting a lock of hair round and round her finger. She lay curled in a ball motionless as the hours passed, numbed by the cold and her fear. When it had almost become too dark to see, the barn door opened again. This time she didn’t look up. What difference did it make what the boy brought her to eat? She wouldn’t eat. Couldn’t eat it.
“That was quite a little ruckus you kicked up in here this afternoon, gal.”
Winter cringed. Not the boy, Dixon, then.
“I’m-a let you have today as a freebie,” Frank went on. “But you tryin’ my patience. You gonna be fat and sassy by the time we get back to Kentucky if I have to strap you down and stuff food down your gullet myself. You worth way too much silver to die on us. Especially after us losin’ one of our best trackers catchin’ you.”
The memory of Josiah holding up his hand, of the horse flipping over, trapping the slaver beneath, flashed through her mind. She smiled bitterly.
“What you grinnin’ at, nigger?” screamed Frank. He rushed at her and she cried out, cowering against the stall wall.
“Frank!”
A white man she’d not seen before stood in the doorway, calmly smoking a pipe. “Leave the girl be,” he said.
Frank stopped in midflight and whirled on the man. “Colm…”
“Leave her be, Frank! You keep beatin’ on her and she won’t be worth a half cent at market, well-fed or no.”
The man stepped into the barn. “You’ll have to excuse my brother. He has no manners. Always a disappointment to our mother.”