“You act as if you knew him, Grandmother. You aren’t that old. He died in 1825, didn’t he?”
“Yes. The first time, anyway.”
“What?”
With a sigh of exasperation, Grandmother Margaret raised her hands. “No more questions now. I will tell you what you want to know. Just be patient and stop interrupting me. I’ll tell you about the first time I met our ancestor and the many times I heard his wife—well, one of his wives—crying in the halls as she looked for her lost treasure. I don’t care that you don’t believe anything I say. I have to tell those who come after me, including you, lovely Anne. Now let me talk.”
Anne’s voice shook as she replied, “I did not mean to upset you. Please go on, Margaret. I am listening. Just remember to look in the camera and talk as if you were talking to an old friend.”
Margaret took a sip of water and set the glass beside her on the table. She clasped her hands and faced the camera directly, and it was a powerful thing to see her face full-on. I could plainly see that once upon a time, she had been a lovely woman. Even at her advanced age, she was quite handsome.
“Here is the story of Chase Dufresne, the second master of Sugar Hill, and his left-hand wife, Susanna Serene Dufresne…”
Chapter Thirteen
Susanna Serene Dufresne
Three months married, and I had seen my dear Chase only a dozen times. I stared down at the silver ring. The jewels flashed in the sunlight: a ruby red heart and three diamonds. A token of his love, and a tangible promise that we would always be together. But we weren’t.
Something was happening.
Chase had become a frenzied man of late. Now that his father allowed him to oversee the finances, that was all Chase wanted to do. He came home ranting about this and that, hoping I would also be excited about the sudden spike in sugar profits, but I had nothing to offer him in conversation. Eventually, he would sigh as if I were the stupidest thing in the world, and we would make love before he left again, traveling back to Mobile or to the waterfront for an extended stay.
I knew the separation wore on him too. His desire for me never waned. In fact, after these extended times apart, it grew to a fevered pitch. We were happy when we were together, or so I believed, but the time in between those brief interludes was torturous.
Workmen hammered and banged in the house at all hours of the night and day. Thankfully, I did not yet have children. If I had, I could have used that as an excuse to cease the ridiculous late-night construction. It was old Mister Dufresne that ordered cabinets built here, closets installed there. It seemed that whatever idea struck him, he did it. There was no end to his planned improvements. The constant chaos threatened to drive me mad, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Not at all.
At night when I lay in my bed by myself, I heard whispers in the walls, unintelligible whispers, and sometimes soft, pitiful crying. The first time I heard it, I went through the house, certain that someone was in need of help. That was when I noticed the sound following me. Wherever I went, the whispers came with me. And I was cold, so cold, even during the hottest nights. No matter how hard I prayed, it would not stop. After the prayers failed, I burned red candles in the windows, trying to keep the voices out. This was a trick I learned from Sulli, the voodoo queen of the Ramparts, but even this brought me no relief. I did other things too, like arrange white stones at the entrance to my bedroom, but some servant always moved them. They didn’t believe me when I told them that something horrible lived at Sugar Hill. But then again, I had no friends here.
One horrible night, when the air didn’t move and the house was full of shadows, the voice came again. It was soft at first, and I did my best to pretend I didn’t hear. Perhaps it will go away. When I didn’t run in fear, it began to whimper and cry. And just when I thought it had left to return to the darkness from whence it came, I heard the voice close by now. The female voice spoke clearly. It was so full of hatred that it nearly made my heart stop.
“Placée, placée…leave here, placée…quitte cette, placée…”
My eyes flew open, and I jumped out of bed. The spirit’s breath filled my ear, hot and moist and evil. I fell, tripping over my own feet, and crawled to the far wall near the door of my room. Flattening my back against the wall, I watched as my bed began to rattle and shake. This was impossible! Not possible! Four grown men had been required to move the bed into the room. Now a pair of invisible hands, the hands of an angry spirit that knew I was a placée, that hated me, shook the heavy furniture as if it were a piece of paper.
I screamed and cried for Chase, although I knew he was not at Sugar Hill. Once again, he would not rescue me. Then the bed fell to the floor with a thud, shaking the lamps on the side tables. A flash of lightning crashed across the sky and illuminated the room with purple light. And I could see what I had not seen before: a woman dressed in black standing in the corner of the room, her white hair unbound, her face obscured by the unusual darkness. Although I could not see her eyes, they bored into my soul with absolute malice. Again I felt the powerful evil directed at me. I screamed, lightning flashed once more, and she was gone. I heard footsteps running down the hall. I assumed it was Iona or Joseph, for they were the only servants in the house that night. Then the footsteps stopped outside my door.
“Iona? Is that you?” I practically screamed, but no one answered. Cold filled the room; the humidity and heat vanished as if someone had opened a window to escape. I heard a sound beside me, a scratching like fingernails on metal. I glanced to my right, afraid of what I would see there. Just above my shoulder, a hand was reaching for me. The nails were black as if whatever it was had crawled out of the bowels of the earth. The gnarled hand was as real as my own, and it lightly touched my shoulder. I screamed and screamed again. The hand drew back into the wall, and finally, my bedroom door opened and Iona came running in.
“Miss Susanna! What is it? Lord, help us! What is it?”
I fell into her arms, and she led me from the room. “There is something in this house, Iona. Something horrible! I can’t stay here!”
“You can’t leave, miss. What would the master say? You wait right here. I’ll pour you a drink. That will soothe your nerves.” And I did drink, but it did not bring me the relief I sought.
I wouldn’t return to that room until Chase came home.
For now, I stayed in the Green Room, a corner room where there were only two walls and many windows. I had Joseph wash one of the friendlier hunting dogs. I called the animal Tricky, and he kept me company during the evenings. When Chase came home and I had to take my place by his side in the master bed, Tricky deserted me, preferring to roam outside rather than endure the hateful whispers. I didn’t blame him. I didn’t want to be there either.
I saw her many times, even when Chase was home, but as long as he lay next to me, she did not approach or reach for me. She whispered her cruel words: “Leave here, placée.” Soon I began to realize who my hated specter must be. The white hair and the tall figure were the same as the woman pictured in the Dufresne family portrait.
My nighttime visitor was none other than Chase’s mother, Rose Dufresne. So unhappy was she that she’d come back from the grave to express her displeasure. When I was fully convinced, I told Chase all that had happened. How she pursued me when he was gone. How she reached for me with hatred. At first, he took my words seriously, or at least I thought he had, but he soon tired of my “stories.”
“If you want me to stay home more, this isn’t the way to do it, my love. Please don’t upset yourself so. Why don’t you come to the waterfront with me? I would like to have the company.”
I had refused, but not because I didn’t want to be with my husband. I simply couldn’t leave. Etienne reminded me constantly that if I wanted to claim Sugar Hill for my children, then I would need to stay in the house. “Only a fool would leave here. Look at this place. Let the right-hand wife have Thorn Hill. It is nothing compared to this. He has put you here, and here you will
stay. Now stop with all this nonsense about ghosts and such. If I need to, I’ll call Sulli to come see. Will that make you feel better?”
“Yes, Mother Etienne.” I had endured the rest of her visit without speaking about it again. We sat in the garden parlor and talked about other things. Iona brought the tea in, and Etienne remarked on the beauty of the china pattern, my blue silk dress, and the latest gifts my husband gave me. She left feeling she’d accomplished something. I felt just as miserable as I had before she arrived. Or worse.
Sometimes I let myself believe that I had imagined it all. It would be better to be mad, wouldn’t it? That would be acceptable. Much more acceptable than believing that my dead mother-in-law wanted me out of her house. I knew she was the one who stalked me, no matter what anyone else suggested. Rose Dufresne hated me, and yet she’d never known me. How unfair!
Time passed. Long stretches of time would pass, and she would not appear. I would immerse myself in daily tasks like sewing on a new pillow or practicing my music on the elegant Chickering grand piano my husband had given me for my birthday. Time flew when I played, and often I would look up from the bench to see the sun disappearing over the water. It always filled me with dread, for I knew I might have to endure a long, dark night and the fierce whispering of a ghost. And still, I alone heard these things. I questioned the servants from time to time, but to no avail. Iona, Lemuel, and Joseph heard nothing. They knew nothing, or at least that was what they told me.
I spent much time out of the house on my garden swing, trying to fly as high as I could, or rowing in the small boat on the pond near the house. Anywhere but in Sugar Hill. Instead of a palace of dreams, it had become my prison. None of my neighbors came to call on me. I was a quadroon, after all. Even Chase’s friends did not visit unless he was home, and he rarely was anymore. I began to suspect the worst.
Sugar Hill had been such a lovely place when I first arrived, a place where my dreams would come true. I’d loved the elegant sideboards in the dining room, the polished silver frames scattered throughout the house. I’d loved the feel of the plush carpet under my bare feet, the angel statues in the second-story hallway, the Mirror Room. What was there not to love? I had a golden husband, with a mane of golden hair and a face that angels would weep over. We would have many sons. No daughters, but many sons. I told myself that every day. Of all the girls in Belle Fontaine, all the ladies at the Quadroon Ball, I had been the one Chase wanted. I had felt so fortunate then. But it had been a fantasy, and I had been fantasy’s fool.
I also had an inexplicable fear that somehow this would all come to an end, and quickly. Perhaps one day Chase would wake up and want to take a white wife, a right-hand wife. Perhaps he would die, or I would. I couldn’t discern the future, not like Sulli, but I feared my fate. I felt that it would be horrible.
Each day that fear grew stronger, and sometimes it made me cry. I would sit in the garden parlor on my patterned settee and cry like one of those wailing women who’d come sit in the back of the little white church in the outskirts of the Ramparts. What if I had to go back there? Even thinking about returning to those crowded, stinking streets, the shotgun houses with the spitting pedestrians and neglected children, made me ill. If I thought about it, I would retch until I could not retch any more. How many times had Chase found me in such a state? Each time he would rush in and comfort me, but I could not express to him my many worries. And still, the endless construction continued. The hammering, the pounding, the crashing of things beyond my sight heightened my terror. How could Chase understand what it was like to be hated so fiercely by a ghost? Yet hated I was by many, including the dead.
Today, I shook my head as I checked my hair in the mirror. None of those thoughts today. Today was a happy day. It would be full of warmth and sweet air and sunshine.
Before I met my husband, I had never been on a boat, but now I found sailing to be pure bliss. In Chase’s absence this last time, his cousin Ambrose made himself available for my service. Such a sweet, amiable man who thought of nothing but my comfort. I felt grateful to call him my friend.
We had a day on the lake planned, and I had even talked Iona into preparing a small meal for our lunch together. With wide, disapproving eyes she acquiesced to my request, but it was clear she thought I was making a mistake. I did not consult her in the matter, and her opinion neither concerned nor amused me. We were like a family, the three of us, Ambrose, Chase and I. Also, Etienne would come to see me tonight. She wouldn’t be convinced that I was not yet pregnant unless she visited me herself. The servants at Sugar Hill hated her, as did I, but I had no power over her. No way to forbid her access to my most personal matters.
How angry Chase gets every time she comes, for he remembers what I told him! Our first daughter belongs to Etienne.
She needed another Serene, one to take my place, for that was how she lived. She turned us out, married us off, and did the whole thing all over again. And to think, once upon a time I had believed the woman truly loved me. All children are fools, aren’t they? Maybe I would never have any. Of course, in some marriages to placées, the husband did sometimes revoke his wife’s freedom if she displeased him in any way.
My Chase would never do that! He loves me!
My heart railed against that possible future. Surely he would never put me away or make me a slave. He was the best of husbands.
“Ah, there you are, Susanna. How lovely you look in lavender. Seeing you in purple reminds me of the night you were the Belle of the Ball. You charmed us all, my dear.”
I was sure it was the heat, but my face flushed at the compliment. Ambrose put one hand over his heart and offered me the other. We stood on the small pier for a moment, smiling at one another. He was as handsome as his cousin, but his features were fiercely dark and passionate. Where Chase was golden, Ambrose was like a dark flame with expressive eyes, dark hair, and a sometimes-dark mood. On every occasion, he dressed up. I had never seen him wearing just a shirt and trousers, as Chase liked to do when he was home for a few days. Which was rare as of late!
Ambrose had a polished decorum that proved to the world he was deserving of his Dufresne name, even though many of the house staff whispered about his parentage behind his back. He didn’t seem to care, and I admired him tremendously for his disdain for their opinions. But then I was raised with one basic commandment: please others. Ambrose’s philosophy was quite different: he lived to please himself. That simultaneously stirred and frightened me. As the rumors swirled about him, he’d carefully roll and smoke cigarettes, such a novelty for our Belle Fontaine society. He shunned pipes, saying they were accessories for old men. Despite his insistence on thinking for himself, the thing I liked the most about Ambrose was his ability to fit in wherever he went. Most people seemed not to care that he never went to church, that he drank wine with breakfast and that he held political views different from most in the local society. Ambrose appeared to be the exception to every rule, and he was quite comfortable with it.
Occasionally, he accompanied me to the Ramparts because he said it amused him. I hated going, but it was a necessity. The white shops of Belle Fontaine were closed to me, despite the fact that I was the wife of Chase Dufresne. Etienne encouraged me to mention it to my husband, but I would not. I didn’t want to inconvenience him with such things. I could buy whatever I liked in the Ramparts if I was willing to endure the sneers and stares of those who were different from me.
The Ramparts began as a collection of homes that overlooked the bay, a collection of quiet sentinels watching the slave ships cruise in and out of the waters every week. Out of necessity, the place quickly became a small town. Now it was where the quadroons and their privileged families lived before they married white men or owned their own businesses. I thought about opening a business, but Chase talked me out of it. He insisted that I be home with his children and act as the mistress of Sugar Hill. But mistress to whom? He seemed oblivious to the fact that local society shunned me.
; Many women would swoon at the opportunities given to me, but I harbored rebellion in my heart. Now that I knew Ambrose’s views, I regretted my hasty agreement, but it was too late now to renegotiate. Or at least, I felt it was. I would have to learn to live with the lot I had been given. I reminded myself that in spite of the uncomfortable situation at the plantation, I had a good life. If only I could give Chase a son. That would secure my place forever.
“After you, my lady,” Ambrose said with a smile as he offered me his hand. “I believe this ship is for you.”
“This is hardly a ship, Ambrose.” My stomach turned at the comparison. The only ships I had ever seen were harbingers of death and suffering.
“Nevertheless, come join me aboard. Let us find a wind to carry us to a faraway land. Well, at least as far as the center of the pond. I have a hankering to go fishing today. I have everything we need already, including your wonderful lunch. Come now, be a good girl and step lightly into the boat.” I hopped aboard and then froze, laughing as the boat wobbled under me.
“It’s meant for floating on, not waltzing, my lady.”
I carefully took my seat. “Why do you insist on calling me that? Call me Susanna or Serene, Ambrose.”
“No, you will always be ‘my lady,’ like Lancelot’s Guinevere.”
“Oh? Who are they? Are they from this county?”
He laughed as he sat in the boat. Was he mocking me? “Don’t tell me you have never heard of King Arthur!”
“Is he the king of England?”
“Dear heavens, no. Let me guess, literature wasn’t a part of your early education?” He picked up the oar and pitched his hat between us.
“Of course, I have read many books.” I didn’t add that I didn’t really enjoy the activity, for it seemed so important to him. I pushed open my parasol to protect my skin from the sun’s harsh rays and my face from his eyes. It did little good. Although we were new friends, he knew me.
The Hauntings Of Sugar Hill: The Complete Series Page 12