“Won’t he know the stickpin can’t prove his guilt?” Delta questioned.
Crazy Mary nodded. “But he will want to shut me up, sure. An’ he won’ know what proof I have of his guilt. That he mus’ bring himself to the bayou to discover before—”
“You mean he’ll come out here to kill you?” Delta questioned, aghast.
Crazy Mary grinned. “Don’ worry yourself, pichouette. He would be afraid to kill me because of my powers. An’ he will find it hard to engage others to do this foul deed for the same reason.”
“She will be guarded well,” Gabriel added.
“I tell you, by the time we finish with William Trainor,” the strange woman predicted, “tha’ man, he will be so confuse’ and frighten’ he’ll confess and not even know it, sure.”
The plan seemed awfully weak to Delta, but she held her tongue. Gabriel on the other hand appeared satisfied. He scraped back his chair. “Me, I’ll go find Pierre. Sooner we start, the sooner we finish.”
Brett rose. Pulling Delta’s chair back, he took her in his arms. “You’ll be safe here with Maman. We won’t be gone over a day or two.”
“Non,” Crazy Mary objected.
Brett cocked his head, waiting for his mother’s explanation.
“You Anatole, you aren’t takin’ yourself to Baton Rouge. Half the state is lookin’ for you, an’ the other half would turn you in for a bayou song. You mus’ hide till we’re sure Trainor is on his way.”
Brett opened his mouth to object, but Gabriel cut in. “I agree. Gaston and Carl can take you down the bayou to tha’ cabin on Fontaine’s chênière, unless they know a better place.”
Again Brett objected, but again he was overruled.
“Anatole,” his mother argued, “you will listen to your maman, oui? We can’t chance the troopers capturin’ you before we get Trainor to the bayou, non.”
“Listen to your maman,” Gabriel teased. “If you want to come out of this with your hide on, keep yourself low till we’re ready for you.” He grinned. “You, too, Delta. If you stay here, Trainor’s spies might get wise. You mus’ go into hidin’ with Anatole.”
Chapter Nineteen
They didn’t leave Crazy Mary’s cabin until dusk, having determined that to be the safest time for Brett to travel. As Gabriel put it, “Trainor’s men, they won’ wander aroun’ the swamps after dark, for fear the Zombi’ll swallow ’em up.”
In the hours remaining before dusk, Crazy Mary sacked the gris-gris, which, Brett explained, was “paraphernalia used in casting spells or warding off evil or illness or even in effecting white magic, such as warming the heart of a lover or persuading a stingy husband to spend his money.”
Delta tried to remain open-minded about these things, but so much hung in the balance—Brett’s life, their future. Whatever else witchcraft could or could not do, she prayed it would elicit a confession from William Trainor.
Crazy Mary bustled around the cabin preparing things Delta had never seen or heard of—black devil oil, conjure balls, and a mixture of herbs and oils she took from the little brown jars and placed in tiny black paper sacks. Once, she put them both to work: Brett, to making feather crosses; Delta, to writing William Trainor’s name on several scraps of paper.
“This piece of cloth—” Crazy Mary held up a scrap of material that was so brown it looked burnt, “—it has been soakin’ in bayou mud two weeks. Trainor, he will think it’s from a shroud.” She dropped the material in the sack, then added several other ingredients, naming each in succession—one dried lizard, the wings of a bat, the little finger of a—”
“Sh, Maman,” Brett interrupted. “Go easy on the details until Delta gets used to us.” He drew Delta close, holding her face in his hands, and kissed her tenderly. “You all right?”
She smiled. “I don’t care how strange it sounds if it works.”
Fortified by several bowls of Crazy Mary’s gumbo, Pierre and Gabriel prepared to leave for Baton Rouge carrying burlap sacks filled with the gris-gris.
“Save me some of tha’ gumbo,” Pierre told his sister-in-law. “I tol’ ever’body in Canada you make the best gumbo in Louisiana.” He turned to Brett. “You, Anatole, you keep yourself in hiding till someone comes for you.”
Brett agreed with qualifications. “Timing’s important, so be sure you come for us before Trainor gets here.”
“Oui.” Pierre glanced at Delta. “Both of you stay right here in Mary’s cabin till dusk, then keep yourselves on that chênière till someone comes.”
“Someone you recognize,” Gabriel added.
Brett grinned. “Get out of here, both of you. Let’s get this show started.”
The two men lingered a few moments longer, heightening Delta’s anxiety. Their reluctance to bid Brett farewell bespoke their concern for the outcome of this charade.
And that after all was what it amounted to. She thought perhaps she might relax if she knew more about Governor Trainor. How susceptible would he be to black magic? The plan was to draw him to the graves where he would expect to find evidence of his guilt.
But instead of hard evidence, he would find his gold stickpin … and Brett—or, Anatole Dupré—who, according to the plan, would elicit a confession from the governor. A simple plan. Far too simple. Delta worried over that.
When Crazy Mary showed them another little box in which she had placed Trainor’s stickpin, Delta began to tremble.
Brett pulled her to his chest and held her tightly while his mother explained, “This goes in a hole in the grave under a black candle. When Trainor comes to fin’ the evidence, we’ll catch him.”
A simple plan, Delta thought again. Too simple.
Watching Crazy Mary resume her task, Delta recalled Hollis mentioning witchcraft and Voodoos before she left St. Louis, and his comment that no one up there believed in such things.
Well, folks down here certainly believed in them. At least, she hoped they did, one person above all others—William Trainor.
While Brett helped his mother gather supplies to take to the chênière, they talked of the bayou, of who was still living, who had died, who had moved away, of how the trappers were faring, how her work was going. He was different from the man she had fallen in love with on the showboat, almost another person. No longer the sophisticated gambler whose speech was groomed for city ears, he spoke the dialect of the bayou, much of which Delta had trouble interpreting.
He didn’t laugh with total abandon again, nor did he again berate his mother for having kept this dreadful secret from him these ten long years. He seemed comfortable and very happy to be home in the bayou cabin with its strange furnishings and even stranger inhabitants. Reacclimating himself, he tried his hand at recalling names of the herbs that hung from the rafters in bunches, drying—sassafras roots and palmetto and arris and saffron.
Yes, she decided, this was a new man, or at least a side of the man she had not seen before. This was Anatole Dupré. Where was Brett Reall? Who was Brett Reall?
From time to time he drew her into the conversation, questioning her knowledge of various herbs and potions, explaining when she didn’t know the answer. At those times, when his eyes found hers, she saw Brett’s eyes, and when, on occasion, he passed her in search of some new thing with which to test her, he would plant a soft kiss on her lips.
With Brett’s lips.
Once Crazy Mary went out back with hatchet in hand. Delta watched from the window as the woman adroitly caught a chicken, laid it across the chopping block, and proceeded to chop off its head.
Brett came up behind Delta, enclosed her in a tight embrace, and nuzzled his head against hers, while together they watched his mother at her task.
“This must be worse than your most frightening nightmare,” he said.
She felt his arms around her, felt his breath against her cheek. Covering his arms with her own, she snuggled back against him. “It’s better than my best dream, being in your arms.” She turned in his embrace and looked into h
is earnest eyes.
His lips descended quickly, tenderly claiming hers, leaving her weak and trembling. She wondered whether it was desire or fear that weakened her most at this moment.
“What is the chênière where we’re to hide?” she asked.
“An island,” he responded, letting his lips drift over her face. His breath fluttered loose wisps of hair about her temples. “The word means oak. These inland islands take their name from the oak trees that struggle to grow on them. There’s a cabin, at least there used to be. It won’t be fancy. Likely it won’t even smell very good. It’s in muskrat country. Trappers use it in season, other times it’s abandoned.”
“We’ll be safe from the troopers there?”
He nodded, nipping kisses to her lips.
“And from the Pinkertons?”
“The Pinkertons?”
“They’re certain to have joined the search now that I’m gone,” she confessed. “Stuart will have wired Cameron, and Cameron wouldn’t sit around and let me disappear without conducting a search.” Her heart began to pound as this new fear took root and began to grow at an alarming rate. “I’ve led them right to you, Brett. How could I have been so foolish?”
“Without your help I’ve managed to get enough men after me to make life more than difficult. You haven’t done any harm. Except to yourself.” His eyes turned stony. He drew her to his chest and cradled her head in his hands.
Gabriel’s cousin, Carl, came at dusk, and they left with him, loaded with provisions Crazy Mary insisted on sending along.
“We aren’t going away for a week, Maman,” Brett objected, but he obligingly took the sacks of food and bedding and placed them in the bottom of the pirogue. Delta sat facing him, while he took the stern, picked up the pole, and shoved off, following Carl’s boat. Crazy Mary had stayed inside, hoping to draw less attention to their departure.
But when Delta saw the curtain flutter at the window, her stomach gripped in knots. Crazy Mary was watching for a last glimpse of her son, hoping—Delta was certain—that it would not be the last.
No one expected this scheme to work, she thought suddenly. Not Pierre or Gabriel. Not even the witch who was supposed to cast the magic spells.
They headed down the bayou, just the two of them in the pirogue. But they were not alone. Gabriel’s cousins escorted them in pirogues through the still, black waters, and Brett’s cousins guarded them from the forests to either side.
Fear coated her body with a sheen of sweat. She studied Brett through the shadowy mists. “What are our chances?” she whispered, afraid to speak louder.
He held her stare for such a long time she knew he interpreted her meaning, but when he spoke it was to lighten her mood. “For what, chère? A night alone in the bayou, us? Bien, I would say. Very, very good.”
The thrill his jesting raised along her spine was enough to alleviate some of her fear for this man, who had been her lover for months now in one guise or another. If they were to be set upon at any moment, she should at least savor the time they had left.
“That, Brett Reall, is a matter too serious to joke about.”
“Who’s joking?”
She glanced from side to side, taking in the pirogues of the LeBlanc men, then looking deeper into the forest where unseen eyes of Brett’s cousins, the Broussards, watched and protected them.
Brett chuckled. “They won’t remain at the chênière. Not if I have to skin and stretch each one of their hides myself.”
The full moon rose, filtering moonlight through the dense foliage above them, casting the lacy cypress leaves and dripping moss as eerie shadows across the pirogue.
Night sounds surrounded them, amplified by the darkness. Delta tried to relate the bird calls, the ka-roomps of bullfrogs, the sudden splashes in the water here and there to the trip she and Gabriel had taken through the bayou in daylight, but this journey seemed to be on another planet, so different was it from the other.
Brett stood silently at the rear of the small boat, moving it, guiding it with the force of his pole. He followed several yards behind Carl’s pirogue, which led the way. His quiet presence soothed her jitters to no more than a troubled flutter in the pit of her stomach. Anticipation of spending the night alone with him stirred in a small corner of her mind.
“Brett—” She had intended to ask him how much farther to the chênière, when another concern crossed her mind.
“What do I call you? Anatole sounds so strange, so unlike you.”
He chuckled. “I’ve gone by Brett so long I have trouble with anything else, too. Except for Gabriel and Pierre no one has called me by my given name in ten years.”
She watched his solid black form maneuver the boat through the still waters. “You’re Brett to me,” she said at length.
“Then that’s what you should call me, chère.”
“I will. Brett will be your ti’ name.”
The trip took an hour, more or less, and even that caused worry. Were they far enough from Crazy Mary’s cabin to be safe? Close enough to return in time to confront William Trainor, saying the governor fell for the ruse and ventured into the bayou?
When their pirogue nudged the bank beside Carl’s, Brett jumped out, pulled the boat to level ground, and reached for Delta. Moonlight cast its silver brilliance over the small island, giving it the appearance of a stage set whose outer limits were ringed by the darkness of the theater. She tried to identify something, anything as being familiar, from her own world, but except for the small cabin sitting on stumps, she didn’t see another familiar form.
“Where are all the oak trees?” she asked suddenly.
Beside her Brett chuckled. “Only the strong survive on a chênière. There may be a few oaks left, the survivors. You’ll see, come morning.”
Carl, along with Gaston who had by now anchored his own pirogue alongside the other two, helped Brett carry the supplies to the cabin. Carl came out holding his nose.
“Me, I’d sleep out here in the open,” he suggested. “No tellin’ what those trappers left behind.”
“Don’t light a fire,” Gaston cautioned. “Not at night so’s the light can be seen on shore, sure.”
“We’ll make pallets on the galerie,” Brett agreed. “Maman sent crab cakes and crawfish pie we can eat cold.”
Carl and Gaston left after reiterating Pierre and Gabriel’s warnings not to leave the island until someone they knew returned for them.
“Couple of days, your maman thinks,” Carl said.
“Don’t you go gettin’ impatient and take yourself away from here,” Gaston warned.
Standing on the galerie, Delta watched the two men shove their pirogues into the bayou waters and disappear into the darkness beyond the circle of moonlight. When she turned, Brett was staring at her.
The moon was in her eyes, casting him in silhouette like a black, lifeless statue.
“Do you want—?” he began.
“You know what I want,” she whispered, rushing to his arms, which came around her, crushing her to his lean, hard body, holding her against his racing heart. He covered her lips with his own.
He kissed her deeply, passionately, his desperation echoing hers. Finally he drew her face back and laved it with kisses.
“Now I know what real fear is,” she told him. “It was worse than any nightmare, thinking I might never see you again.” Her words called to mind her last nightmare, and she tightened her grip on him. “Except if you were dead. I thought you were—”
“Sh, chère.” He kissed her trembling lips. “We’re together now. We’ll be together forever.” Finally he released her. “We have two days before we see another person. Why don’t we eat and fix our pallet and then—” he nipped her lips, “—then we can get down to business.”
While Delta unpacked the basket of food, Brett shook out quilts his mother had sent. He spread them on the galerie floor close to the staircase leading to the grenier.
“Fortunate Maman prepared us to camp out. Sh
e must have seen the state of this cabin in a trance.” He shook out the mosquito netting, fastening it to the grenier stairs and the wall to form a tent above the mattress of quilts he had spread for them.
“She saw?” Delta questioned.
Straightening, he studied her.
“Do you think she really saw this cabin?” Delta asked again. “I mean, could she see … us?”
In two steps he reached her, taking her in his arms, laughing. “My modest chère. You don’t want my maman looking in on us?”
“I don’t want anybody looking in on us.”
He squeezed her to him. “Neither do I. To answer your question, no I don’t think she can see us. Not unless we’re standing right in front of her.” He kissed her. “But don’t tell her I said that.”
Delta laughed, but when Brett began to run his hands down her body, she sobered, looking out at the black wilderness surrounding them. “What about all those kinfolk of yours and Gabriel’s?”
Grinning seductively, his hands cupped her breasts. “Must have been some amorous muskrat trapper who built this place. Come morning you’ll see. The galerie fronts nothing but water as far as the eye can see.” His lips nipped kisses along her neck while he spoke. “Tonight you’ll have to trust me.” Moving his lips to hers, he mumbled, “Do you?”
She trembled with anticipation. “Oui.”
His hands left her breasts, tracing over her midriff, splaying across her belly. “Where’d you get this dress?”
“From one of Gabriel’s sisters,” she whispered, because her heart beat so furiously she could hardly speak.
“I like it.” His husky voice sent shivers down her spine.
“I thought you would, since it wasn’t designed by a demented monk.”
With a groan of satisfaction, he unfastened the button at her neck and stripped the dress over her head, his hands skimming her intimately in the process. Next he removed her slip and bloomers, leaving her trembling and nude and burning with want.
Sunrise Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Three Page 33