by Oak, B. B.
Tansy took the handbill and read aloud from it. “Absconded from my farm in Virginia, young Negro woman named Tansy . . .” She gave out a short laugh. “Since when does Prouty know a fancy word like absconded?”
“It means to have departed secretly.”
“I know what it means, Julia. I just didn’t think Prouty did. His aunt gave my sister and me a far better education than his pappy ever gave him. Poor boy had to leave off schooling to work the farm. Prouty isn’t stupid. Just ignorant. There is a difference, you know.” She continued to read. “About five feet seven inches in height, well made, skin smooth and without scars, dark bay in color . . .” Tansy rolled her eyes. “Leave it to Prouty to describe me as the color of his horse.” She read on. “Talks very proper, knows her letters and sums, very smart.” She smiled. “Leastways he allows me a brain.” She went back to reading. “Should Tansy return on her own I will forgive her.” She nodded. “I believe he would. He has a real forgiving nature.”
“What is there to forgive, Tansy?” I said. “You have done nothing wrong by taking what is rightfully yours—your own freedom.”
“But how can Prouty understand that?” Tansy said. “He was born a Southern white man, and he believes what he was taught to believe. Even so, he has a good heart. And he never so much as hurt a hair on my head.”
“Well, now he has put a bounty on your head. Read the last part, Tansy.”
“One hundred and fifty dollar reward will be paid for her delivery to me unharmed.” Tansy dropped the handbill. “Good Lord, that dang fool has gone plumb crazy.”
“Crazy like a fox,” I said. “Such a large sum as that will even tempt more than a few Northerners to start hunting for you.”
“But there is no way Prouty could have so much money unless he . . .” Tansy put her hands to her cheeks and shook her head. “I can’t believe he would sell his horse Belle. He loves that horse.”
The Meetinghouse steeple clock began ringing the hour, and neither of us spoke over the sound as it reverberated through the attic. Ten o’clock. Pelletier was scheduled to arrive in two hours.
“Are you all right, Julia?” Tansy said when the ringing stopped. “You sure don’t look it.”
I had not told Tansy of my husband’s impending visit, for I felt she had enough concerns without adding mine to them. In truth, I disliked talking about Pelletier to anyone, even Adam. Especially Adam! And Adam has never pressed me to learn more about him. We both have preferred to forget that my husband exists, or leastways pretend that he doesn’t. But soon Adam will be meeting him in the flesh. I should have known such a day was inevitable. The only way it could have been avoided is if Adam and I had removed ourselves across the continent, which had been our intention before Granny fell so ill.
I assured Tansy that I was fine although a now familiar wave of nausea swept over me. I hurriedly left the attic to avail myself of my chamber pot. Whilst on my knees I prayed that all would be well, and then I rinsed my mouth, washed my face, put on my bonnet, and went off to the Meetinghouse.
Attending Sunday service at the Meetinghouse has been my custom since returning to Plumford. I find the sermons are far less bleak than the ones I’d been forced to endure when I was a girl. The past minister used to expound on the depravity of man and the wrath of God, but the current one preaches about a God who is understanding of human foibles and forgiving of our transgressions. Today, however, I found little comfort in the good minister’s preaching. My mind was too troubled to attend to his words, and even as the congregation sang uplifting hymns I heard the Voice of Doom in my ear, chanting Pelletier is coming over and over again.
When morning service was over, I paused on the Meetinghouse steps to exchange pleasantries with Molly Munger and her parents. I considered telling Molly to forego her housekeeping duties until further notice but could not come up with a plausible explanation as to why. In the end I decided it would only arouse suspicions. Prouty had made it well known about town that he believed his slave to be hiding in the area and asking Molly to stay away from my house would be tantamount to admitting that I was hiding the fugitive there. Better to let Molly come as usual. If she heard movement in the attic, I would take her into my confidence. She is a kindhearted girl, and I believe she would welcome the chance to help me harbor a runaway slave. At the same time, Molly is young and garrulous, traits that are not conducive to keeping a secret. It was a worrisome situation indeed. Mr. and Mrs. Munger, meanwhile, expressed to me, not for the first time, how happy they were that I had taken Molly on as my housekeeper. Once again I told them that the pleasure was all mine and bid the Munger family Good Day.
As I walked back to the house through the Green, I noticed that a number of townspeople were waiting in line by Rusty’s wagon to have their likenesses taken. That in itself was not noteworthy, for they had been doing so all week. However, today was the Sabbath, the day when all manner of business or work was prohibited. Yet rather than object to the daguerreotype operation being open, there stood two of the town Selectmen and their families in line with the others. Our eminent First Selectman and Justice of the Peace Elijah Phyfe wasn’t there, but even he must have decided to turn a blind eye to this blatant violation of a blue law, for blind he’d have to be not to notice what was going on right in front of his big house overlooking the Green. Of course, town officials have ignored the breaking of an even more significant blue law for gener-ations. Although it is forbidden to consume or sell alcoholic beverages on the Sabbath, the Sun Tavern does so with impunity during the hours between the forenoon and the afternoon church services. Over the years so many men have gone from Meetinghouse to tavern and back again that a direct path has been worn across the Green. Custom, it seems, always trumps law.
I returned to the house to find Adam waiting in the parlor. He had gone to Tuttle Farm to care for Granny this morning, and I’d feared that he would be delayed there. I smiled at him with relief. His open and honest countenance had a determined set to it, and he exuded a confidence that always reassured me, even back when we were children. We had faced many a challenge and danger together, Adam and I, and had always managed to triumph. Surely we could face down Jacques Pelletier.
ADAM
Sunday, May 21
Although I could well understand Julia’s anxiety over her husband’s impending visit this afternoon, I myself welcomed it. I wanted things settled between us man to man, once and for all, the sooner the better. I even suggested to Julia that she wait in her chamber and let me deal with Pelletier alone, but she would not hear of it. So we both waited upon his arrival together in the parlor.
Julia was restless and would not stop pacing until I took her in my arms and stroked her back to help calm her. Just as she relaxed against me, comforted by my optimistic assurances, I heard someone shouting my name on the Green. I flung open the front door and identified myself to a panic-stricken young fellow in rough workman’s clothes. He implored me to come help his friend who was having so much difficulty breathing that he was near to dying. I gave Julia a parting kiss, fetched my bag, and hurried off with the youth to a boardinghouse down by the carding mill.
There I found an Irish millworker lying on the floor of his room desperately gasping for breath and holding his chest. I quickly checked his mouth and throat for obstructions and saw none. I then stripped off his shirt. There was considerable swelling on his left side behind his ribs, and I concluded that his trouble was empyema, a fluid build-up in the wall of the chest outside the lung that had become large enough to press on the lung and cause it to collapse.
“I must make a small puncture in your chest,” I told him and took out my scalpel.
His eyes widened in fear, and he shook his head.
“It is the only way to save your life, son.”
I felt with my finger for the space between the ribs above the greatest swelling—between the fifth and sixth rib on the left side—and with great care stabbed him in a shallow fashion so as to penetrate the pl
eural wall, but not into the lung beneath. I was rewarded with a spout of fluid that soaked my hands but instantly brought relief to the fellow, as I knew it would. I turned him onto his left side to allow the watery discharge to further drain. Once that pressure was removed, his lung, after fits and starts and much coughing, began to take in and expel air again. His eyes, a moment before wide with panic and the fear of death, filled with tears of relief. He gripped my arm tight and said something, I would guess in Gaelic, to thank me. I stayed an hour to allow time for the pleural cavity to drain as much as possible through the puncture. Then, after giving him a dose of laudanum, I wiped the perforation clean and sewed him up with catgut and left a slit with a bit of linen dipped in honey protruding from the wound to allow further drainage if necessary. Told him I would be back to remove the linen in a day. Washed my hands at the pump behind the boardinghouse and ran back to be with Julia. I hoped I had not missed Pelletier’s visit entirely.
JULIA
Sunday, May 21
After Adam was called away to help a patient, I continued my restless pacing in front of the parlor window as I awaited Jacques Pelletier. I glimpsed a private coach roll down the road on its way to the Sun Tavern, and a short time later I saw Jacques coming up the road on foot, no doubt directed to my house by Mawuli. It had been half a year since I’d laid eyes on my husband and the nearer he got, the more aged he looked. I discerned a slight hesitation in his stride, and he was using his silver-tipped cane more as a support than a fashion accessory now. He held his other hand in his waistcoat, a gesture he thought made him look dignified but that also gave him comfort when his stomach pained him. There was pain in his expression now, and I began to feel sorry for him until he glanced toward the window and I saw the fierceness of his gaze. I drew back as if he had pointed a firearm at me. When I opened the door to the sharp rap of his cane, I greeted him aloofly, but with supreme politeness, in keeping with his own manner toward me. His lips twisted into a semblance of a smile.
“My beloved spouse!” he said. He caught my hand and brought it to his lips. I tugged it from his grasp. His eyes flickered with malevolence, but his smile stayed in place. “How I have missed you, my darling.” As always, he spoke to me in English, for he cannot bear to hear my slight American accent when I speak French.
I did not challenge his lie that he had missed me. But neither did I respond with a lie of my own. “We are quite alone,” I told him. “We can be completely honest with each other.”
“You have always overrated honesty, Julia. You seem to be under the delusion that it is one of the cardinal virtues.”
I let his glibness roll over me and brought him to the parlor. He glanced around the room with an amused expression upon his haughty countenance. I suppose to him the dark mahogany claw-and-ball furniture, paneled walls painted dull ochre, and thin, faded Turkey carpet looked absurdly dowdy compared to the elegant gilded décor of his chateau in Cannes. “So this is the grand estate you inherited and left me for,” he said.
“I didn’t leave you for a house, Jacques.”
“No, of course not. You left me for a principle.” He made it sound like a taunt.
“Pray be seated,” I said.
He carefully placed his extremely tall hat upon the sofa and flipped out the tails of his coat before he sat down. He was dressed as tastefully as always, in an old-fashioned manner. The edges of his stand-up collar touched his sunken, clean-shaven cheeks, and the diamond in his stick pin winked at me from the folds of his carefully tied cravat. Jacques has a great affection for diamonds. And during the brief time he’d also had affection for me, he’d bestowed upon me a large diamond ring.
I sat across from him, at the edge of my chair, hands folded in my lap. I offered no refreshments. We both knew this was not a social call.
“I have always admired your good posture, Julia,” he told me, “if not your good intentions. Indeed, your goodness became most tedious to me, as did your prudishness.”
My heart rose on a small wave of hope. “If you find me so tedious, you must not wish for me to come back with you.”
“It has been my experience that all wives are tedious, my dear. It is in the very nature of the beast.”
Jacques had been widowed twice, without issue from either marriage. How sad he had looked when he’d told me this soon after we’d become acquainted onboard ship. He never mentioned that he had found his wives tedious. Or beastly. Indeed, he’d referred to them as heavenly angels keeping watch over him from above. And so I’d shared with him my own belief that my mother, whom I’d lost as a child, kept watch over me too. Monsieur Pelletier and I soon fell into the habit of strolling the deck together during the three-week voyage from Boston to France, and as my trust in him grew, I divulged more and more about myself. Eventually I even told him all about Adam and the curse of our close blood relation. How sympathetic Monsieur Pelletier was. How he admired me for leaving the young man I so loved so that he would be free to find love with another. Indeed, the old gentleman called me a saintly young woman, comparing me to Joan of Arc for my selfless action. He went so far as to inquire if I too was a virgin like St. Joan, and I saw no reason not to admit to my grandfatherly friend that I was. When he then proposed marriage to me, I tried not to show my astonishment, but refused him as kindly as I could. He graciously accepted my refusal, and upon landing we parted cordially.
I never thought I would see Monsieur Pelletier again, but a week later he found me at my father’s studio in Paris. My father had been hauled off to debtor’s prison, not for the first time. But this time he had contracted cholera in prison, and I feared he might not survive the ordeal. Monsieur Pelletier saved Papa’s life by paying off his debts to free him and then finding him proper medical treatment. I felt forever beholden to Monsieur Pelletier, and when he proposed marriage again I accepted. I reasoned that since I would never love any man but Adam, I might as well marry this lonely old gent who only wanted my devoted companionship and had my best interests at heart. I had misjudged Jacques Pelletier completely.
He now regarded me with his cold, clever eyes. I saw not a glimmer of affection in them. “Why aren’t you wearing the ring I gave you, Julia?”
“I sold it,” I told him forthrightly. Well, I was not completely forthright. In truth I had given the diamond ring to Mawuli to sell.
Jacques laughed. “How disappointed you must have been when you learned it was merely paste.”
Paste? But Mawuli had fetched a great deal of money for that ring, enough to pay for my passage back to America and then some. I said nothing, and a brief silence followed, whilst Jacques furtively stroked his stomach beneath his brocade waistcoat, never taking his scornful eyes off me.
“Is it not the custom here for married women to wear indoor caps, Julia?” he finally asked.
“Most do,” I allowed.
“But you do not. Are you trying to pass yourself off as still a maiden?”
“No, of course not. I just don’t care to wear a cap.”
“So do people here address you as Madame Pelletier?”
“Mrs. Pelletier actually.”
“Do you claim to be a widow?”
“No, Jacques. I have told no lies. Townspeople know I left a husband alive and well in France.”
“What else do they know about me?”
“Nothing. I have made it a point never to talk about my husband.”
“Well, now your husband has come to claim you like the lost piece of baggage that you are. I would have come sooner, but one thing after another prevented me from doing so. Initially it was my health. I fell very ill the day you ran off. And then the Monarchy was overthrown, and France was in chaos for months. Fortunately, I had made investments elsewhere. Even so, these have been extremely difficult months for me, times when a man needs his wife by his side. And where were you instead? Hiding from me in this little hamlet.”
“I was not hiding, Jacques. You knew exactly where I was. I wrote to you, and so did my law
yer.”
“Your lawyer is an imbecile. He has little grasp of French law. You are married to me in the eyes of the government and the church both, and such a marriage is indissoluble.”
“But you broke every vow!”
He gave me a weary look. “A man’s mistresses are his own concern, not his wife’s. And perhaps, if you had been more compliant in bed, I would not have needed to go elsewhere to satisfy my desires, ma femme.”
“Your desires were disgusting.”
Jacques shrugged. “I am getting on in years and need novel stimulations. Your duty as my wife was simply to obey my wishes. Instead, you bolted like a frightened filly.”
“I fulfilled my duty as best as I could and would have remained your wife despite my aversion to certain acts you requested.” I was grateful Adam was not present to hear this conversation. “But I could not stay with a man who has slave blood on his hands.”
Jacques raised his wrinkled, blue-veined hands and turned them over. “No blood, my dear. It was long washed away. I gave up the trade nearly twenty years ago.”
“But you did not give up the fortune you made from it.”
“Of course not. We have been over all this once already, so do not be tiresome, Julia.”
Six months ago I’d attended a soiree in Cannes and overheard talk that Jacques Pelletier had been a slaver. When I’d reported this to him, he’d given me one of his insufferable shrugs and replied that he saw no reason to deny it, since I’d most likely be hearing such rumors again. He went on to tell me the truth of his past. He’d been born into a Nantes seafaring family and had made a successful career for himself in the navy, becoming a frigate captain when he was only twenty-six. He’d left the navy, however, to captain a slave ship, for that was far more lucrative. Soon he’d made enough money to build his own ship, and for many years thereafter he’d transported captured Africans to the French colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe. On his last such voyage, right before the French government finally made slave trade a punishable crime in 1830, he’d purchased Mawuli in the African slave market, and in theory Jacques still owned him. Jacques had related all this to me in a nonchalant tone, and as he’d watched my horror grow, his mouth had twisted in a sardonic smile. I own you too, dear wife, he’d concluded. I left him a few days later, as soon as I’d secured enough money to pay for my passage home.