“Why, Madame Catherine, you still here?”
Catherine turned her head on her pillow, surveying the concerned surprise imprinted on that lined, brown face. “Shouldn’t I be?”
“Your maman, she say your mari, Monsieur Navarro, came for you last night to take you away with him.”
There was a pause. “Did she?” Catherine said when she could force words through her throat
Dédé nodded. “She was upset, her, that you would go into danger, and sad that there was nothing she could do to stop you.”
“I see. Then I must see if I can reassure her.”
“It would be a kindness, ma chérie.”
Catherine smiled. “I haven’t wished you a Happy New Year, Dédé. Your gift is on the dressing table.”
“Thank you, chérie — and a joyous New Year to you also.”
“Yes. Thank you,” Catherine replied without assurance.
She found her mother in bed almost lost among the letters, invitations, visiting cards, the foil wrappings of candy, bonbons, and dragees, and of New Year’s gifts. All went flying as Madame Mayfield saw her daughter on the threshold and screamed her name.
Entering the room, Catherine knelt and began to retrieve the papers and candies, handing them up to her mother. “It’s as Dédé said, then. You expected me to be gone. Why were you so certain?”
“You gave me such a start, child. But I can’t tell you how relieved — well, never mind. Why was I certain? I suppose because Rafael Navarro is a most persuasive man, and you are, whether you admit it or not, susceptible to his form of persuasion.”
“You knew he was here, waiting for me?”
“Oh yes. He came before I left the house. We had an interesting conversation before I had to be off. I was promised to Monsieur Marigny for whist, you know. I meant to warn you, truly I did, but I saw nothing of you anywhere, and the man is still your husband. I — hope nothing went wrong?”
“That depends on your point of view, Maman. Rafe discovered me in Giles’s arms.”
“Mon Dieu! And how does it go with the poor Americain?”
A smile curved Catherine’s mouth. “He goes very well, all in one piece.”
“Odd,” was her mother’s comment. “Does that mean, then, that you are to be free of Navarro?”
“By the civil divorce you discussed with Giles behind my back? I don’t know. As you can imagine, it was not a — calm — meeting.”
“No,” Yvonne Mayfield agreed reflectively, and popped a bonbon into her mouth.
Catherine reached for an almond dragee and began to unwrap it. “Dédé also said you were concerned that Rafe might be taking me into danger.”
“Yes. I had not really considered it, but Rafael seemed to feel it so himself that I was alerted.”
“What danger?”
“Why, from the slaves of course. They are still in ferment, more so even than when you were at Alhambra. They had been particularly upset by the recent freeing of all slaves of Indian extraction. It was folly to even think of involving you in that situation again, and I will concede that Navarro was reluctant to let you risk it, but his desire for your presence had, apparently, overcome his scruples.”
“He said that?” Catherine asked, rolling the pink candy-coated almond between her fingers.
“Not in so many words, but I am not a novice, ma chérie, at discerning a man’s motives.”
“Do you think, perhaps, the reason Rafe brought me to New Orleans was because of this danger at Alhambra?”
Caution tempered her mother’s agreement. “It is possible.”
“He didn’t say this was the reason?”
Madame Mayfield flung up her hands. “He spoke of his own stupidity and impatience and lack of faith. He questioned me about your attachment for him — as if I would know. Then he settled down with my best brandy to await your return.”
“What, precisely, did he want to know about my attachment?”
“I don’t remember his exact words. I think he wished in general to know your feelings about being abandoned here with me. Naturally I did my best to have him believe you were enjoying a life of gay dissipation. I don’t think he found that entirely to his liking.”
“No?” Catherine said encouragingly.
“On the other hand, I gained the impression he was not as surprised as one might have expected. It occurred to me that he may have had prior warning of your activities.”
Fanny, once, had given Rafe a warning. Could she, knowing the possible consequences for her brother, have done so again? Was she that impulsive, or that bitter? Would she have risked so much on so desperate a gamble?
~ ~ ~
Three days later Catherine found cause to reevaluate her opinion of Fanny. It was possible the girl had had no expectation of turning Rafe’s affections in her own direction. Her purpose may have been to gain the precise results she effected; to detach Giles from Catherine and encourage him to return east with her. On the fourth day of January, Fanny Barton, accompanied by her brother, at last took ship for the port of Boston.
Fanny and Giles. They left behind them a residue of differing emotion. Catherine could not, despite knowing what would surely have happened if Rafe had not been sent after her, rid herself of the feeling that Fanny had deceived and betrayed her. Notwithstanding her partisanship on that difficult trip upriver and afterward, Giles’s sister had shown herself to be Rafe’s friend, not Catherine’s. The things she had done were for his sake. That Fanny’s love for him had been unselfish, unreturned, did not make it more acceptable.
Guilt and self-reproach colored her feelings toward Giles. Hearing his brief but dignified good-bye was one of the most difficult things she had ever been called upon to endure. When he was gone she had sat for a long time alone. People cannot be held accountable for the love others give them unasked, she told herself. They cannot prevent it, cannot share or alleviate the pain it causes. They are only responsible for the love they themselves give. Such sophistry was not a satisfactory antidote to remorse.
It seemed possible that Rafe, learning of Giles’s departure, might pay her another visit. The days Catherine spent waiting at home were wasted. She learned quite by accident that he had returned to Alhambra, going straight from his meeting with her to his boat on the levee.
Having formed the habit of staying in, Catherine continued. When she had refused enough invitations, society, in its hectic forgetfulness, finally began to pass her by. She was left in isolation, and in isolation she found a commodity she had almost forgotten existed. Time. Time to collect herself, time to examine what had gone before, time to remember.
Snatches of conversation, half-heard, ignored, came back to her. A woman reciting a litany of her fears. A planter nervously planning to arm his home with a brass ship’s cannon. Servants, good, trusted ones, who had unaccountably run away. Travelers set upon and left maimed, savaged. Fowling pieces, ammunition, stolen. Tools missing. A child from the country complaining of drums, drums deep in the swamp. An old lady, dressed in the bright silks of Santo Domingo, telling monotonously of the death of her children and grandchildren in the uprising there, and of the drums beating like great unceasing hearts, their sound rolling down the mountainsides of Haiti.
And Marcus. “In the swamps I have discovered a contre-danse I prefer. It features the beat of drums.”
While Marcus was staying near Alhambra a group of blood mad slaves had nearly overrun the defenders of the house. Marcus, with much reason to hate Rafe, had spent a considerable amount of time in the swamps then. India had never named the leaders. It was assumed they were among the men killed but that need not be so. India had had plenty of opportunity to speak to Marcus. Indeed, once Catherine had seen a slave unrecognizable as belonging to Alhambra leaving the area where Marcus had been waiting, and India had explained the man’s presence away.
Now Marcus was in the country, haunting the swamps again and the smell and taste of insurrection was in the air once more.
“Haitian, I presume?” Giles had asked, querying Marcus’s flippant remark. He had continued with what had sounded like a warning. As a landowner, had he with Rafael, guessed at Marcus’s activities? Was the possibility of another full-scale uprising the reason why Giles had brought his sister to town — and stayed himself? Equally, was that why Rafe, a different breed of man, was staying near the plantation he had begun to bring back from the brink of ruin with his own sweat?
But if they knew Marcus was urging rebellion, why could he not be stopped? It followed that they were guessing only. It might have been Giles’s part to push Marcus into admitting his guilt, or to discover, if he could, the date set for the beginning of the blood-letting.
You are deranged, she told herself. Men of good family, like Marcus, do not, even in madness, set in motion forces which could result in the slaughtering of hundreds, even thousands, of innocent women and children, forces which could even threaten New Orleans itself. Still, she could not stop the turning of her mind or erase the conclusion she reached each time she came full circle. Insurrection was like a contagious disease, spreading with deadly quickness over a wide area. And since those who, by contagion, would become the enemy were already among them, there was little defense against it. Of the twenty-four thousand people living in the city, more than half were slaves. The element of surprise would increase the odds in the favor of those in revolt. The free men and women of color, because they were property owners, could probably be counted among the defenders, but there was no guarantee.
There had never been a major slave uprising in the Louisiana territory, not in the near hundred years of its history as a colony under flags of both France and Spain. Credit for the comparative peace most likely was due to the French Governor Bienville, who laid down a Bill of Rights for slaves through the promulgation of his famous Code Noir. The code provided for the proper feeding and clothing of the slaves, for care in time of sickness and old age, and prohibited shackles and torturing. Stricter rules were put in force during the Spanish Regime, especially after the revolt in Santo Domingo, but there had been a sincere effort to make the condition of the slaves bearable.
That there were inequities in the system could not be denied. Catherine was as familiar with them as she was with the inequities practiced against her own sex. Still, though it might be morally reprehensible for a stronger, more cultured society to enslave a weak and primitive one, that was the way of the world. That was the way it had been since the dawn of recorded history, that was the way it would continue until man discovered some other means of having his most backbreaking and monotonous tasks performed for him. Slaves were called hands — and that was their precise function. They were so many able hands to ease the labor and increase the productivity, and thereby the wealth, of a man. If they could also add to his comfort, so much the better. Until a substitute could be found for those extra hands, it was futile to revolt against the institution of slavery. Such a threat to the lives and livelihood of so many had only one answer. Death.
And India of Natchez Indian blood, plotting, dying in a rage of vengeful rebellion, while freedom for her people, her son, hovered so near. How many lives had turned in new directions because of that bitter irony? There was anguish in dwelling upon it, and yet, she could not stop.
“Catherine?”
“Yes, Maman?”
“Why are you lying here in the dark? Why haven’t you called for a light?”
“I was just thinking.”
“You have been so listless. Do you feel unwell?”
“Not particularly.” Nor did she feel particularly well.
“I hope you aren’t sickening with something.”
“No, Maman. I don’t think so.”
“Dinner is almost ready. Perhaps you will feel better when you have bathed your face and changed. Shall I send Dédé to you?”
“I don’t believe I will come down to dinner. Perhaps I could have a tray, something light.”
Standing in the doorway of Catherine’s room, Madame Mayfield’s face was in shadow. She drew in her breath with an audible sound, as if she would put a further question, then let it out in a sigh.
“I’m sure Dédé will bring a tray, but you will miss your visitors.”
“Visitors?”
“Yes. They are eating at the moment, but the eldest seemed anxious to speak to you as soon as possible.”
“Eating? Now?”
“In the kitchen. It is a man, a child, and a woman I took to be the child’s wet-nurse, some of Rafael’s people from Alhambra.”
Catherine raised herself on one elbow. “A man with the features of an Arabian, with a baby?”
“How did you know?”
“It could be no one else,” Catherine explained, throwing back the covers, searching for her slippers. With hands that trembled a little, she smoothed her hair. Why would Ali come? Had he brought a message for her? Or was something amiss at Alhambra?
“Don’t forget your shawl. You’ll catch a chill,” her mother said as she started from the room.
Catherine thanked her with an absent smile, flinging the triangle of Persian wool about her shoulders as she went.
Ali got to his feet as she hurried into the kitchen. On a pallet before the fireplace a child of about six months sat, solemnly trying to maneuver a cookie into his mouth. He was plump, with bright round eyes and a mass of soft black ringlets on his head. His nurse sat just behind him, steadying his back with her hand, watching him with quiet devotion. Catherine could not quite remember her name, but she smiled in recognition. She had been a maid of the Bartons, and had lost a child, a blue baby, a week before India was brought to bed.
“Maîtresse. It is good to look upon you again.”
The valet seemed grayer, but little changed otherwise. His bow was as deep, as respectful, as ever.
“And you, Ali. You have everything you need?”
“I have been treated most royally, Maîtresse, but I am done.”
“Tres bien. My mother says you were anxious to speak to me.”
“If it pleases you.”
Something in his stance conveyed the impression that he would prefer privacy. Catherine nodded. “Come with me, then.”
Gripping her hands together, she led the way to the petit salon. As he saw the room she intended, Ali stepped before her to open the door, then closed it gently behind them.
“You have a beautiful son, Ali.”
“Thank you. He is the joy of my existence. I am happy that he finds favor in your eyes, Madame Catherine, for I have brought him to you.”
The moon of my delight—
“What did you say?” Catherine asked in bewilderment. Her attention had wandered.
“I have brought my Rif to you. Give him shelter and the mantle of your gracious protection, and he is yours, to do with as you will.”
“I don’t understand, Ali. Where are you going?”
“I return to Alhambra and the Maître.”
“But, you speak as though — as though you expect never to see your son again.”
“Who can say, Maîtresse? These things are written, but only the eye of God can travel the page.”
“You must know I will watch over your son — and India’s — as I would my own, but you will have to explain to me why.”
“My loyalty to M’sieur Rafe goes beyond my love as a father, Maîtresse. I cannot allow him to face the danger that waits alone.”
“The danger from our people, as before.”
He inclined his head. “As you say, only a greater force.”
“So there will be two of you against them? Is that all? Can’t you alert the constables, the militia?”
“The constabulary is responsible only for the city. The militia requires names, dates, proof, before they will move. They will not believe, Madame. They say there has never been trouble, and for this reason there will never be any.”
“But you are certain they are wrong?”
“The signs are there for
those who can see them. The drums in the swamp spell killing, the hands leave their beds at night and return before dawn — if they return at all. The cook and the maids are sullen. The knives disappear from the kitchen, the hoes and scythes from the toolhouse. The dogs howl, the owls call, and the moon rises red.”
“Then if you are sure, why must you stay? Why can’t you — and your master — seek safety?”
“An Arab, Maîtresse, does not leave the desert to the jackals. More, there comes to men at times a stirring in the blood, the heart-singing glory of a necessary fight, well-fought. And last, there is the lust for the arms of death, if a man cannot have those of life.”
Catherine took a deep breath, her mouth tightening in a straight line. “What do you mean?”
“I think you know, Maîtresse. Though men will deny it, they seek to touch life in the arms of the women they love.”
“And for whom were you speaking?”
“For both, Maîtresse.”
“I don’t believe you. I’ve seen no proof that your Monsieur Rafe could not live well enough if he never saw me again.”
“You did not see him the night he thought you were drowned — or the day he knew you lived.”
— I caused to be raised a tomb in memory of my beloved wife—
“To speak of love is a difficult thing,” she said slowly, her eyes darkening, “but not impossible.”
“No, but first a man of pride must be able to hope for a return of his affection. Later there was danger here, and he knew your mettle. It was necessary to force you from him to keep you safe.”
“If it is as you say, then—” But what was there to object to? The depth of his concern?
She found that what she resented most was being once more denied a choice.
No, that was not true. The choice had been there. She had known it, she could have made it, if she had not been afraid to trust her instinct. It was fear, as Rafe had said, which had betrayed her. The fear of loving without return. Now it was too late.
Love and Adventure Collection - Part 1 (Love and Adventure Boxed Sets) Page 82