Staying would not have been the best arrangement, she had to admit. There had been several guests who were sleeping over, and they had left Fanny counting on her fingers as it was. Catherine would have suspected Rafael of objecting to spending what was left of the night in a room made uncomfortable by the snores of other men, if it had not been for Solange. The girl had never recovered her poise after her unfortunate start. The idea of prolonging their stay had sent her into near hysteria.
There was little need for their side lanterns. A full moon shone down, turning the Spanish moss hanging from the trees to silver-gilt plumage. In its glow Rafael took on the look of some mythical horseman cast in metal, condemned to ride on forever into the night. There was no movement in that moonlit silence. No wind stirred the trees; the shadows beneath them lay dark and still. No prowling night creatures with shining eyes crossed their path. Their coachman, oppressed by the quiet, drove without outcry, and the sound of the carriage was a loud, unnatural clatter.
Inside, there was the smell of dust and the grass crushed by their wheels — and something else — the sweetly sour fragrance of honeysuckle, as pervading and nauseous as any found growing on a graveyard fence.
Then came the hooting of an owl, a long drawn hunting cry. Catherine knew a fleeting relief until Solange sat up, her eyes glistening, round, in the dimness.
“An owl. The night cry of an owl means a death before morning.”
Madame Thibeaut sat like an image, staring out a slit in the curtain as if she had not heard.
“Don’t be silly,” Catherine said bracingly. “Owls are night creatures. When else would you hear one?”
“I’ve heard it said all my life.”
“Superstition, nothing more.”
“Superstitions start from something. Night creatures know secrets day ones don’t. They can sense when death is near.”
Catherine made her voice as quiet, as calm, as she could manage. “Don’t upset yourself, Solange. We will be home soon.”
The girl glanced at her, then slowly subsided. Catherine did not relax until she saw the bulk of Alhambra looming up with the river gleaming before it.
When the coach rolled to a stop, Ali jumped down, let down the step, and opened the door. Madame Thibeaut was first out. She waited to see Solange alight, then started up the steps.
Rafael dismounted and tied his reins to the rear of the carriage. He paused a moment to give the coachman instructions concerning the care of his horse before following Catherine and Ali.
The house was dark, but Catherine had expected no less in their disorganized household. She had left candles and a tinder box on the table in the hallway against such an eventuality. She opened her mouth to call to Madame Thibeaut, at the head of an arm of the stairs, to tell her so, when the front door swung open. There was a great orange blossom of fire, a deafening report, and the companion was hurled backward, crashing into Solange, carrying her with her down the steps.
A gun, Catherine thought, standing stupidly staring for a shocked instant. Then hard hands dragged her down.
“Stay there,” Rafael hissed, his words drowned as Ali fired the charge in his fowling piece from beside them. She was left alone as the two men charged up the stairs, Rafael drawing his dress sword as he ran.
The night erupted with hideous yells as a stream of brown bodies streaked with white paint came from the house. Armed with sticks and axes, hoes and crude rakes, they formed a ring around Rafael, held at bay only by the flickering point of his steel. A lunge, a grunt, and the blade glittered red while a man fell. The hand of a slave wielding a hoe was severed at the wrist and the man skewered when he stopped to clutch the stump. From nowhere Ali brought forth a knife with a wicked half-moon blade, dropping his useless muzzle-loaded gun. The smell of blood, warm and sickeningly fresh, assailed the air. An unearthly scream of horror bubbled and died as a man was disemboweled with a twisting motion of Ali’s wrist.
That cry broke the attack. Two men on the outskirts of the fray bolted, leaving the high porch with flying leaps into space. Another fled down the steps, passing Catherine with his eyes wide and staring, as if he did not see her. One by one those who fought on were pressed back, pouring blood from a half-dozen cuts, leaving a slippery trail through which Rafael and Ali followed relentlessly, stepping over the bodies of the slain.
Suddenly it was over. There was a wild rush for the other arm of the stairs. Catherine thought for a moment Rafael would follow, then he dropped the point of his sword and turned away.
Rising slowly to her feet, Catherine spared a glance for Madame Thibeaut sprawled halfway down the steps. A great hole, with the blood already turning black, gaped in her chest. Her eyes were wide and staring in death, frozen in an ageless expression of disbelief. Beneath her lay Solange, her chest rising and falling, but with her eyes closed in a merciful unconsciousness.
Catherine looked up to tell Rafael. A flutter of movement in the open door caught her eye. There was the glint of an upraised knife, and a figure launched itself at her husband.
“Rafael! Behind you,” she cried.
He had already transferred his sword to his left hand, as he moved toward Catherine and Solange. It was Ali who whirled, catching the blade on his forearm, bringing his own knife up in a continuous swing.
Abruptly he checked. The assailant, thrown off balance, went down in a flurry of skirts, falling heavily in the gore on the gallery.
Catherine mounted the steps without conscious thought, her hand reaching out to clutch Rafael’s arm as if to stay his blow. “India,” she breathed, her gaze fastened on the enraged, half-crazed black eyes of the woman struggling in Ali’s arms on the floor. “Oh, India.”
~ ~ ~
Catherine got to her feet as Rafael entered the door of the study. His face tightened when he saw her, then he closed the door firmly behind him and moved into the room.
“You wanted something, chérie?” he asked pleasantly as he tossed his riding crop on his desk and sat down.
There was a trace of hardness in her voice when she spoke. “I went down to the quarters just now.”
“I see.”
“I’m sure you do. They were driving stakes, four of them, and digging a hole—”
“Catherine—”
“A hole for India’s belly, Rafael. And four stakes to tie her arms and legs to.”
“She must be restrained. There is less chance of her coming to harm in that position.”
“You will kill her! It is inhuman. Even if she withstands the whipping, she will never survive the indignity! But to tie a woman big with child down and beat her — I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it!” A shudder of such intense revulsion ran over her that she swung around, her hands moving over the goose flesh on her arms.
“Catherine, listen to me,” Rafael said, coming to stand close behind her. “India is a renegade. She sent for these men, men she had been communicating with in the woods. She helped them arm themselves and let them into the house so they could kill us. For such a crime the penalty under any other master would be death by flogging, after which, her head would be struck off and put up on a pole as a warning. And this regardless of the child she carries. Compared to that, isn’t fifty lashes, twenty-five today, twenty-five a week from today, more humane?”
“She will lose the child.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“Couldn’t you wait?”
“Two months? And encourage the rest of the restless element in the quarters to join the rabble in the swamp? Impossible.”
“Why?” she demanded, turning to face him, her amber eyes dark with despair. “Do you hold life so cheap? Does Ali’s child mean nothing to you?”
His face was hard, his voice deliberate when he answered. “Do you think I spare your India so much for her own sake, the daughter of the man who killed my father, a woman who has the death of another upon her conscience? Or had you forgotten Madame Thibeaut as soon as she was buried? Convenient, but it does not say m
uch for your humanity, Catherine.”
“You — you knew about India, about her father? Then — why did you have her here?”
There was irony in his smile. “You begged so prettily, ma chérie.”
So she had, for Ali’s sake. He had been so enthusiastic — at first. Then he had changed. Had he discovered India’s secret, and seen the danger of having her in the house? In the end nothing might have come of it, if it had not been for the interference of Solange and Madame Thibeaut.
“I did not know — then,” she said, with a helpless gesture. “I only discovered it yesterday, before we left for Cypress Bend.”
“I am to believe that without question, of course?”
Catherine met his black gaze with a startled expression. “It is the truth.”
Rafael made no comment, nor did his eyes waver. Catherine would not be the first to look away. The moment stretched taut between them, then he swung on his heel. “Your pardon,” he said brusquely. “If you will excuse me?”
“Rafael — Rafe, please—” There was no encouragement in the broad back he kept turned to her, but she continued. “Couldn’t you release India, let her go away with Ali, far away, perhaps back to the desert?”
He was quiet so long that Catherine grew hopeful, then he shook his head. “If it was only myself, I would consider it. But it isn’t. The life of every man, woman, and child along the river, everyone who lives in contact with slaves, may depend on my decision. We live always one breath away from the holocaust of rebellion. Compared to what could happen, the affair last night was no more than a fencing match.”
“Killing India will prevent this?”
“I think, Catherine, that you are deliberately refusing to understand. Hasn’t it occurred to you that you could have been killed, mutilated — and worse — for all India cared? A few minutes more of waiting, a little less determination to obliterate Solange’s companion, and we would have been trapped like rats in the hallway. And from there, what? Cypress Bend, the Trepagnier place, a general uprising? It is all too likely.”
“It didn’t happen,” she said, her face pale, but her mouth set in a stubborn line.
“And it won’t, not if I can prevent it.”
What could she say against such grim purpose? He was convinced he was right, and, she had to admit, he did have reason. But that did not prevent her sick horror at the thought of what was going to take place later that afternoon.
It was possible her presence would have the effect of moderating the punishment to be meted out. With this in mind, she made her way toward the square at the end of the quarters street at the appointed time.
The sun slanted through the trees, throwing the dark shadows of the cabins across the road. Because of the whipping, the hands had already been called in from the fields, driving the plow mules and oxen before them. The smell of dust and horse dung hung in the air with the reek of honeysuckle. It was warm, though not unbearably so. Gnats hovered in clouds, and yellow butterflies tentatively investigated the purple head of a nettle. That only the night before they had been in danger of a bloody death seemed as impossible as looking back upon a bad dream, until she saw the blank faces of their people like so many brown masks.
They stood in stolid patience, the slaves, arms folded, elaborately at rest, waiting for the start of the rare show they had been ordered out to watch. A sullen fatalism was a part of their attitude, but there was something more, something that remained hidden. Their gaze passed over Catherine. To force some sign of recognition, some change of expression, she would have spoken, then she realized that their attention was focused behind her.
Turning, she saw India with her hands tied before her, walking between a pair of husky field hands. Her bearing spoke of pride, of dignity, her face mirrored nothing but a quiet scorn. Following her were Ali and Rafael, the latter on horseback. Catherine’s husband rode with a casual grace, but she was conscious of the alertness beneath his manner and the unaccustomed presence, during the day, of the sword strapped about his waist.
She stared longer, however, at the whip coiled over Ali’s shoulder. Surely he did not intend to use it? Rafael could not be so unfeeling as to give such an order, nor Ali so lacking in free will as to accept it. Then as Ali singled her out of the gathering, as she saw the black suffering in his eyes, she knew she was wrong.
India was forced to her knees and the ropes tied about her ankles. A spasm crossed her face, but she made no protest as she was stretched over the hole in the ground and her wrists fastened to the other two poles. A woman stepped forward with a knife to slit the back of her dress and draw it aside. A shiver ran over Catherine at the thought of blows on that bare copper back, though she knew it was better not to have shreds of material forced into the skin.
Staring into the distance, the muscles of his jaws standing out in cords, Ali shook out the long whip of plaited leather. The two field hands stepped back. Rafael raised his hand. When complete silence moved over the crowd, he let it drop.
Slowly, as if he had to force himself, Ali’s arm went back. He drew a deep breath, and the whip slashed downward. The muscles of India’s back jumped, her hands curled into fists, but she made no sound. Again and again the whip cracked, no two blows landing in the same place. On the fifth blow India closed her eyes, writhing, straining against the ropes, on the seventh a grunt of pain escaped her clenched teeth, on the twelfth she went suddenly limp, unconscious.
Still the blows fell. Sweat beaded on Ali’s forehead, running into his eyes, streaming with salt tears down his face. His lips were drawn back over his teeth and his chest heaved.
Blood began to ooze in thin runnels from several of the lacerations. Catherine swallowed against a rising sickness, counting in her mind. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. “God,” she whispered. “Please, God.”
“Enough,” Rafael said quietly.
The word brought a collective sigh of held breath from the crowd. Catherine sent her husband a glance, noting without interest the paleness underneath the bronze of his face.
“No, no!”
The scream came from Solange who had crept unnoticed into the forefront. Rushing at Ali, she grabbed the whip from his hand and began to strike clumsily at India. “Kill her! I want her to die! She killed Madame Ti. She killed my Madame Ti!”
Rafael slid from his horse. In a single stride he reached his sister, spun her around, and twisted the whip from her grasp.
Solange, nursing her fingers, stared at her brother. “She killed my Madame Ti,” she whispered, and crumpled into his arms.
The sobs of Solange Navarro racked the air. Rafael stared at Catherine a brief moment over the form of his sister, then he swung around and walked away, carrying the girl toward the big house.
Indecision gripped Catherine as she stared after him. The Indian girl at her feet began to moan.
“Cut her loose,” she ordered curtly, turning to the task at hand, “and someone bring a blanket.”
They returned India to the jail. There seemed nothing else to do, nowhere else to take her, and it was clean, at least. The latter point was important, for they had not reached the small building before India began to turn her head from side to side and Catherine saw the ominous contracting of her belly into a hard mound.
As they laid her upon the narrow cot that passed for a bed, Catherine felt a presence near her. It was Ali, reaching out to brace India on her side with a rolled blanket in the only position which would not be painful to her.
“Send the others away,” Catherine murmured. Rafael’s valet obeyed.
When they had gone the two of them stood staring down at the mass of angry red stripes and weals, of cuts and torn flesh that was India’s back.
“Why, Ali?” Catherine whispered. “Why?”
He understood her as quickly as always. “Why did I ply the lash? Who better, Madame? I could depend on no one else to treat her as carefully.”
“You mean — it was your idea? Oh, Ali.”
“A prerequ
isite of love, Madame,” he said with a smile that trembled with sadness, “to give pain — and to spare it.”
They cleaned India’s back, spreading a soothing salve over it and tying a layer of bandage into place. She lay without moving, allowing them to tend her. When they were done, she turned slightly, opening her eyes to stare at them with dull apathy. Kneeling beside her, Ali took her hand. She made no move to resist, nor did she acknowledge his presence by even the tightening of a nerve. Refined by pain, her face held a strange, stark beauty. It was a beauty of line and plane and texture, like that of a graven image with empty, staring eyes.
Abruptly the mask she wore crumpled and her hand gripped convulsively. India twisted upon the bed, though no sound came from her lips.
“The baby—” Ali whispered. Catherine could only nod her head.
Night crept in, gathering as silently as the people who came to keep vigil as they learned what was happening inside. A whale oil lantern was brought, cloths, steaming water, cold water, food, drink.
With the heat of the lantern in that small, enclosed space, the air soon became stifling. The puffs of cooling night air that came in at the high window were mere irritants in their tantalizing freshness. Perspiration soaked their clothing and dampened their hair as they worked with India, holding her hands so she could pull against them, trying to keep her from tossing on the bed and hurting herself. There was fever rising in her body. Catherine wrung cloths in cool water to place upon her forehead, and sponged her body again and again.
As India’s eyes glazed, rolling backward in her head, Catherine found herself wishing she would cry out, curse, scream — anything to break that terrible stoic endurance. She did not. Her lips swelled and bled, the palms of her hands were cut by her nails, but she uttered not a sound. Nor would she help herself. She ignored Catherine’s instructions, letting the pain tear through her in its ebb and flow.
The moon had climbed above the tops of the trees when India’s child struggled feet first into the world. It was a boy, a tiny, perfect man-child. For a shattering moment while she cleared his throat of mucus Catherine thought he would not breathe, then his cry broke the panting stillness. He was anointed by her tears as she cleaned his face, wrapped him in a piece of sacking, and passed him to Ali. He took him gingerly, awkward as all men are with their firstborn.
Love and Adventure Collection - Part 1 (Love and Adventure Boxed Sets) Page 70