The incident had set the seal on Catherine’s resolve to be gone, one way or another.
The first consideration of leaving, however, was money, something she saw little of. There had been no mention of payment for the duties she performed. Mrs. Harrelson seemed to feel that bed and board should be sufficient recompense for the time being, with the vague intimation of reward when Catherine had had enough of drudgery and prudery. Confronted with the problem, her benefactress was sympathetic, but Mrs. Harrelson’s only answer was a mild suggestion that Catherine might take an occasional paying customer.
Catherine recognized both the guile and the miserliness in the proposal. Neither came as a surprise. The guile had been present from the beginning; the penny-pinching had made itself apparent gradually. Nothing upset Betsy Harrelson like the loss of money, nothing brought quicker reprisal followed by dismissal than someone withholding from her what she considered her due. Her greed was obsessive. It was the one thing about which, for all her pretense to good breeding, she failed to be either tolerant or objective.
Now she cocked her brass-gold head on one side, her sherry-brown gaze on the stiff lines of Catherine’s face. “The idea is still distasteful to you, isn’t it, after all this time. If I didn’t know better I would say you had never known a man — or no more than one. After the second what does it matter — two men or twenty?”
The color mounted to Catherine’s face then drained away again. She said nothing.
“Oh, I see — I am a fool. But you know, I feel I have been more than a little misled.”
“Not intentionally,” Catherine said at last.
“Perhaps not, but you must have realized that when a woman runs away with a man one assumes there is an urgent physical need which is satisfied at the first opportunity. If not, one might as well stay with the husband.”
“There is more than one reason for leaving.”
“I was speaking of the usual case,” Mrs. Harrelson said with an irritable wave of her hand.
“Mine was not usual then.”
A frown flitted across the woman’s face, then she allowed a low chuckle to escape her smooth, rounded throat. “Next you will be saying you were in love with your husband. Come, now, Catherine. Let’s be sensible. I have had several inquiries for you already. There is something about you — even seen from a distance — which stirs men’s minds — and thus their — emotions. You could so easily be rich, if you would but try.”
Catherine, clasping her hands together, stared unseeing toward the window where dry brown leaves drifted past from the trees that hid the back entrance to the house. There had been frost that morning but there was no fire in Mrs. Harrelson’s opulent bedchamber. Wood, bought from the woodhauler, was not cheap. Men lingered longer in warm rooms, therefore fires were not lit in the bedchambers until dark.
At last Catherine said, “I have no need for riches.”
“Don’t you,” she answered, acid lacing the words. “You will think differently as you grow older, I assure you. But the choice is yours. In your place I would waste no time in making it.”
The woman picked up a mirror and a pot of pomade, a sign that Catherine was dismissed. She hesitated momentarily, curious to know the names of the men who had asked after her. That might be to show too great an interest, however. It was unlikely they wanted her for any other than the obvious purpose. Quietly, she let herself out into the hall.
Had there been a threat in that controlled voice, a hint that Mrs. Harrelson’s careful patience was growing short? It was not often that her will was flouted. What would her reaction be if Catherine continued to resist her persuasion?
These matters troubled the surface of Catherine’s mind, but they were trivialities, scattered thoughts which did not distract her from a deeper agitation. It was impossible. She could not be such a fool. Love? Pride refused to countenance the idea. Love was an adolescent fancy, the affliction of poets and madmen. Love was reserved for God, the church, and one’s children; it was not an embarrassment to be inflicted upon a husband, never upon a husband.
Why, then, would she stand with a pillow in her arms, inhaling the scent of fresh linens, caught by a memory of Rafael drawing her gently across warm sheets to lie within the curve of his body? Why would she lie at night staring into the dark with slow curling fingers in a trance of sleepless yearning? Give it a name, call it passion, awakened desire. But explain, then, this deep welling desolation of salt-savored pain, like a fount of unshed tears?
It was a peculiar brand of honor that had held her inviolate for love of a man who would never touch her again. Perhaps the cure would be to — embrace the vocation Mrs. Harrelson was pressing upon her, to seek in other men’s arms some assuagement for this anguish.
A week of indecision passed unnoticed. On the evening of the seventh day Catherine was moving down the hall leading from the rented rooms to the section given over to meaner and more shameless pleasure when she heard a hail behind her. She turned, then her head came up and her nostrils flared. She would have swung around again but that might have looked as if she were running.
“Catherine, it is you,” Wesley Martin said, a look of sadistic glee lighting his pale eyes. “I thought there could not be two women in Natchez to fit your description.”
“I am flattered,” Catherine said with obvious untruth. “Since you have satisfied your curiosity, you must excuse me.”
“Not so fast, my girl,” he said, touching her arm with damp fingers. “There is still a matter to be thrashed out between us.”
Catherine shook him off. “I know of none.”
“Don’t you? I could prompt your memory, with the utmost enjoyment, here in the middle of the floor, but the dirt would be hard on my knees — and I prefer to prolong the reminder. You have much to answer for.”
“Indeed. I believe, however, that I must disappoint you,” Catherine replied, moving off again.
“I think not,” he disagreed, following leisurely. “I am not without influence here, you know. For a price I could have you drugged and laid naked in my bed.”
Catherine whirled to give him the lie but the gloating assurance in his tight grin stopped the words in her mouth. She stared at him, unblinking, while the noise of a squeeze-box and Jew’s harp from the parlor beside them dinned in her head.
“That frightens you, doesn’t it, the idea of lying helpless, exposed to me, mine to use as I please, how I please? On second thought, Catherine, I think I would rather you were obstinate.”
“You may rest assured on that score,” she told him, forcing a hard scorn into her voice. “But perhaps you should give a thought to what Helene will say when I tell her of your activities and your threats.”
“My wife will say nothing. She is as helpless as you, my dear. She may believe you, having some experience of my methods, or she may not, since you lack credence, if I may say so, coming from the house of the fair Cyprian, Betsy Harrelson.” He shrugged. “Tattle if you must. It will avail you not at all.”
He probably spoke the truth. If Helene had a large family, a father, brothers, to support her and exact the respect due to her, it might have been different. There was only her mother, her sisters, and an assortment of cousins, and they were many miles away.
Catherine’s head came up. “It seems I have no one to depend on except myself. You will remember then that I am not without strength. If ever you have me in your grasp you had best kill me, for I promise you a reckoning in steel!”
“Magnificent,” he applauded in heavy irony. “I have grown tired of suet pudding in my bed. A ration of pepper will not come amiss. And have no fear that I have forgotten your whore’s weapon. I intend to make you regret leaving your mark on my backside. My initials carved into yours should suffice—”
A rage of revulsion trembled along Catherine’s nerves. She wanted to fling his words back in his teeth but her chaotic thoughts could form no phrase scathing enough, vicious enough, to satisfy her. Her breasts rose and fell in her agi
tation, and his enjoyment of the spectacle, and his obvious reaction beneath skintight pantaloons, gave her a near paroxysm of disgust.
Without conscious intent, her hand reached for the knob of the door to the front parlor of the house. It turned and she stepped across the threshold with Wesley Martin moving in behind her.
The girls, ranged about the room in their thin, décolleté gowns, turned toward her with surprise and alarm, forgetting the men beside them, so unusual was it for her to appear. Surveying them one by one, Catherine’s gaze settled on a sullen-faced girl with soft brown hair whose maquillage, skillfully applied by Catherine, concealed dark circles under her eyes caused by the fear that she had contracted the trench pox.
“Sophia,” Catherine said clearly. “Mr. Martin has need of your services.”
Wesley Martin wanted to deny it, but under that battery of eyes alight with ribald amusement at the public exposure of his problem, his assurance deserted him. He only stood, face flushed, while Sophia came toward him.
Catherine waited until Sophia had taken his arm and drawn him free of the door, then she shut it firmly upon their audience. A smile of encouragement for Sophia, and she stepped around them, walking swiftly away down the hall.
But even as she went a familiar face in that room of preoccupied men and women tugged at her memory. It was an intense face under a shock of lank, black hair. The man had been leaning against the wall, one foot thrust out before him, as if the leg was stiff. He had straightened as Catherine appeared, and taken a halting step toward her, ignoring the restraining hand of the girl beside him. Shock had smoothed his features so that Catherine could not bring them fully to mind, but in his eyes had blazed an expression she had dreaded for many a long day.
It was recognition.
21
Sunday was a quiet day. It was kept that way by Mrs. Harrelson more as a practical measure than as a form of respect. Rest was necessary to all who labored, except, of course, for those who brought in no return.
Catherine was counting the bottles in the liquor cabinet, listing those which needed replenishing, when Betsy Harrelson approached her. Catherine raised her brows. It was seldom the woman penetrated to her own kitchen, much less to this dark and dingy corner.
“You needn’t look so stunned, I haven’t come to help. I have an addition for you.” With an expansive gesture, Mrs. Harrelson indicated the bottles she carried by their necks in one hand. “One of our noble fellows has seen fit to reward us with champagne. We must see if among us we can remember what we did to deserve it.”
Was there a faint slur to her words, an unfocused look to her eyes? The level in one of the bottles she held hovered near half empty. It was not a lot for someone of Mrs. Harrelson’s capacity, but she had slept through luncheon as well as breakfast. It was possible she was a trifle mellow.
Catherine took the full bottles from her and began pushing them into the rack. “Was it anyone I know?” she asked carefully.
“I don’t think. ‘Twas a wee little man with an Irish accent who fancies himself a connoisseur of wine and women. Randy little goat. Likes girls taller than he is, which aren’t too hard to supply. He saw you last night in the parlor. Since you have ventured that far, maybe next time you can earn our champagne for us?”
Without looking at her, Catherine replied, “I don’t think so. In fact, Mrs. Harrelson, I am afraid I will have to leave you.”
She expected the woman to ask why, and she had ready the tale of the young man with the limp. She had placed him at last. He was the deckhand of the keelboat captain called Bull March who had tried to trick her into his berth. The captain could cause a lot of trouble for her, and for Betsy Harrelson, if he decided to turn his river boatmen loose on the house.
But Mrs. Harrelson did not speak. Glancing at her, Catherine saw a high color mantling her cheeks that might or might not have been from the champagne.
“I am grateful for the charity you have shown me—”
“Are you?” Mrs. Harrelson interrupted. “I’d have thought you would have been glad to repay me with the kind of service I ask of you instead of words — but no matter. One can’t always win. Let me wish you good fortune. I’m sure we will all miss you and the many kindnesses you are always doing for us. You were our ray of sunshine, our prop and mainstay. How we shall go on without you, I don’t know.”
Maudlin sentiment was not at all like Betsy Harrelson, then neither was drinking without a customer to pay double for the tipple.
Catching Catherine’s veiled look at the half-empty bottle remaining in her hand, Mrs. Harrelson called over her shoulder to a scullery maid, “Bring two glasses. I want to drink a toast with Catherine, the only woman I ever knew who might have taken my place.”
There was no graceful way to refuse, Catherine saw. She could count herself lucky to get off so lightly. And so she smiled and accepted the dubious compliment along with the brimming glass of tiny golden bubbles.
It was a potent elixir, true enough. Catherine felt her head begin to float while Betsy Harrelson stood smiling and asking what she would do and where she would go. When the glass fell from her numb fingers with a tinkling crash Catherine was only dimly aware of the sound. Through blurring vision, she saw Mrs. Harrelson start toward her, smiling, smiling, her rounded arms outstretched. Their scented, silken strength caught at her and dragged her resisting into the dark.
~ ~ ~
A fool. A fool of extravagant pride, a paragon of trusting stupidity, unfit to fend for a child, much less herself. Self-castigation did not relieve the ache spearing into her head, nor bring the comforting light to the dark space around her. It did prove she was not to be always a dullard with a brain trussed up, like her body, by a bawd’s potion.
An error, allowing herself to trust the beneficence of a procuress. Such a one’s loyalty was, of necessity, singular. Money was undoubtedly the touchstone. Put to the test of jasper, Betsy Harrelson had shown dross, impure metal. To put it succinctly, she was a slut.
How much had she been paid to persuade her to drink tainted champagne? Except for conceit, what good did it do to ask?
Lying still, she discovered a circumstance which would have been obvious to her earlier but for the sensation of moving seas inside her head. She was on a boat, a craft rocking gently on the current’s drift, swinging at its mooring. She could hear the hollow lapping of wavelets against the hull. Beneath her was the hard, rough bedding and narrow width of a berth.
Why would Wesley Martin have her put on a boat? Even if Mrs. Harrelson had wanted her removed from her house — an unlikely event — it was not reasonable that the Sybarite in the man would have allowed him to choose such unstable and cramped surroundings.
Where was he? It was not like him to postpone his pleasure.
Perhaps he had not postponed—
No. Her careful movements brought no discomfort. They brought instead the realization that she was not bound. A coarse sheet, tightly wrapped, confined her. Her apron and her gown of dark gray linen were gone, also her knife whose hilt curved so sweetly to the palm of her hand. She had been left the redeeming modesty of her chemise.
The last was not according to Wesley’s plan. It had more the look of Betsy Harrelson’s nip-cheese ways, a repossessing of the garments she had provided.
Like a chance intruder, the thin face of the limping man flitted across her groping mind. Was it accident or intent which had brought her to a riverboat so soon after seeing him? Was he the bellwether leading her once more to his master, the captain of the three red turkey feathers. Bull March?
In sudden revolt against restraint, Catherine threw off the sheet and swung her feet to the floor. She encountered slippers under the edge of the berth, neatly paired. Silence was more important than comfort. She left them there, raising herself with caution, afraid of a noisy collision in the lightless cabin.
A table impeded her progress to the far wall. She managed to skirt the edge without upsetting either of the two chairs pulled u
p to it. The contours of a leather-bound chest exercised her imagination farther along, and then the rough lumber of the door with its crossbar was beneath her fingers.
With a slow and steady pressure, she pushed up on the bar. It did not move. Again.
She made the third effort before her questing fingers discerned that the crossbar was nailed into place. Above it was a metal latch of simple yet effective design which gave her no trouble. To be thorough she reached higher, running the palm of her hand along the frame edge.
Her movements slowed. The door was warped, the reason for the bracing crossbar.
A swinging door that could not be barred. The splutter of thunder and stab of lightning. Voices raised in Rabelaisian disrespect. The captain.
The captain. It was satisfactory as an explanation, if not reassuring. It went well with the positive fact that, despite the released latch, the door would not open.
Muffled sound heralded change. The pound of feet sent tremors through the boat’s hewn timbers. The swing and bump of mooring ceased. There was a quickening, then a millrace roll as the rushing river took them. Downstream. Down past Cypress Bend and Alhambra and the shanty boat of Aunt Em and Jonathan in its sluggish backwater. Past the crescent-shaped port of New Orleans — past hope and fear and the spectre of ancient forbiddance of the taking of one’s own life, past all this and out to sea, as quickly, as cleanly, as possible.
The rattle of a bolt being drawn outside was a warning. Catherine pressed herself against the wall beside the door. The panel swung inward, silhouetting the broad-shouldered form of a man before the dim sheen of half-hidden stars.
Catherine did not stop to admire. She slid like released satin around the door jamb, her eyes straining for the gutter of night-black waves, her breath caught already in defense against the chill of the water.
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