Ever My Love
Copyright © 2007 by Gretchen Craig
Chapter 1
Scared he'd lose sight of his brother in the night, Peter followed close on John Man's heels. They were in new territory now, miles beyond the boundaries of the Johnston plantation.
John Man reached a hand behind him and Peter stopped. "You hear that?" John Man whispered.
Hounds. Peter grabbed his brother's arm. "John, what we gone do?"
"Likely they's two, three mile away yet. Keep you head."
They ran, the dark pressing in on them. Then the fear pushed them faster and they thrashed through the brush, heedless of the noise they made -- the hounds followed their scent, not their clamor.
They struggled up a hill and the woods ended. Headstones gleamed in the moonlight and Peter trembled, dreading the white shadows of ghosts emerging from the graves.
"This way," John Man said, turning right to skirt the cemetery.
Peter's breath came ragged and shallow. "They's louder," he gasped. He could hardly breathe, his chest was so tight.
John Man paused. The hounds were closing in. He stared at the heavens, at the cold, indifferent moon. "We not gon' outrun them dogs."
"John, they tear us up, they get us."
"I ain't going back, Petie. They axe my foot, I go back again."
Peter clutched at his brother, the fear sucking at his courage. "I's scared, John."
"Petie, let 'em catch you, take you home to Grandmama. Hear? Climb up dat sycamore so the dogs don't get you 'fore the men come up behind 'em."
"Don't leave me, John."
John Man pried Peter's fingers loose. "You ain't a man yet, they don't be too hard on you."
"They thrash me, John."
John Man gave him a shove. "Petie, get up dere, now. I's going on."
John Man ran. Peter climbed. Higher and higher up the trunk, the branches smaller and thinner. Dey stop to catch me, dat give John time. Peter kept climbing.
His heart began to steady, his breath to slow. He'd be safe once the men caught up with the dogs to hold them off. Then he'd climb down, go back to Grandmama. After the man cut him with the whip, she'd tend him.
The tree top bent over from his weight. Peter scrabbled for a better handhold, grabbed onto a branch. It snapped, and he grasped at the next one. He missed, his body now tipping further out, away from the bole. Hands seizing on outer twigs, Peter crashed down and down through the leaves. He bounced when he hit the ground, the breath knocked out of him.
He tried to suck air, but his lungs were stunned. Keep you head. It come back. Wait for it. At last, air. He gulped it in, and sound returned to his starved brain. The hounds were coming. He ran headlong through the gravestones, too frightened to heed the ghostly rising vapors.
John Man had run east, like they'd planned. He'd go the other way, find another tree. Hurry. They coming.
Nothing but brush now as he ran down the hill. Too late to turn back to the trees.
Peter plunged into briars. The baying of the hounds so close now, so close. Thorns clawed at him, cutting and slicing and snagging as he scrambled for the swamp. No thought of the briars, nor of the snakes and gators in the bayou, he knew only flight.
Moongleam on water. He threw himself into the black soup. Too shallow. Running, thrashing and splashing, giving himself away. Panic had him, and he couldn't stop, couldn't think.
A quick look over his shoulder. The dogs roiling the water now, their eyes gleaming yellow in the moonlight. That dream, he lived the dream that haunted him since childhood, his legs churning but going nowhere.
They were on him. The lead hound dragged him down for the others to snap and snarl and tear at. Slashes, gnawing, crunching as teeth found bone. His brain shut off the pain -- but not the horror, the terrible keen knowing as teeth ripped at his clothes, at his flesh.
Over the growling and snapping, Peter heard his own scream, far away, high and without end.
By the time the men caught up to the dogs, Peter's blood thickened the dark water and he had ceased to struggle.
Warm hands pulled him out of the water and laid him on the ground in a circle of lamplight. A man with a shotgun over his shoulder nudged him with his boot. "You boys may as well take him on back. See if somebody wants to try sewing him up, but I reckon it won't do no good."
Two black men, barefoot and ragged as Peter, knelt down. One of them took off his filthy rough shirt and wrapped it around Peter's neck before they lifted him.
"Let's see can we catch us the other'n," the lantern-holder said. "The bloodhound'll pick him up 'fore the blue ticks, whatcha bet."
Marianne Johnston rose easily at first light. Not for her the drowsy mornings waiting for coffee to be brought to her in her rose-silk canopied bed. She had too much to do, and much of it was best done before the sun burned off the morning mist.
Freddie, Marianne's tiny King Charles spaniel, bounded from the foot of the bed to demand a kiss, then jumped to the floor and carried off one of Marianne's satin slippers before her feet hit the floor.
After a merry romp retrieving her slipper, Marianne gave her long hair a quick brush and pinned it any which way. She had already pulled on her gardening skirt with the big pockets when she heard the commotion outside.
Throwing her blouse on, she opened the balcony door and leaned out. A cluster of slaves knotted around a spot below her. When someone shifted, Marianne saw the bloody mess they tended. They'd come for her.
She tied her shoes, pulled her medical bag from a shelf - "Stay, Freddie" -- ran down the grand staircase, through the polished parlor, and out to the courtyard.
"What happened?" she called, still running.
Pearl, a slender young woman with delicate features and big doe eyes, righted the rag on her head with a trembling hand. "Dogs got him, Miss Marianne. But he still breathing."
Pearl stepped aside so she could see the boy's mangled flesh. Marianne crossed herself and closed her eyes. Dear God, help me. She breathed deeply, opened her eyes.
Little Annie, the house's favorite, stood gaping. "Go tell Evette we'll need hot water, Annie, and to clear off her big table. Run on." To Pearl, she said, "We'll wash him in the cookhouse."
Marianne had sewn up gashes and applied poultices among the slaves since she was thirteen, but this poor boy - she had never seen such wounds.
When did we start setting dogs on our people? she thought.
She and Pearl kept pace with the men carrying Peter. Whenever Marianne needed an extra hand for nursing, it was always Pearl she sent for. Pearl had gentle hands, and she didn't carry on at the sight and smell of blood.
Marianne wiped at the boy's face. "Who is it?"
"It be Peter, Miss Marianne."
Not one of them she knew. He couldn't be more than fourteen, and he'd tried to run. The awful risks they take, she thought. His head lolled when they put him down. He'd lost so much blood, she doubted he'd ever regain consciousness.
She and Pearl bathed him first with warm water, then with witch hazel. Marianne watched to see if he felt the sting on his wounds, but he neither blinked nor groaned. Better he was out now, anyway, while she worked on him. Lacerations all over his body, from ears to ankles, even chunks of flesh torn clean away. And they said he'd been in the bayou. He'd have fever for sure.
Marianne set hot pads on the puncture wounds so they would bleed and cleanse themselves. The rips and gashes she cleaned herself with witch hazel, making sure there was no debris in them. They were ghastly, but not deep.
From a vial in her bag, she dribbled sweet oil on a length of black silk thread and set to work with her needle. With sure hands, she began with Peter's ear, nearly torn from his head. "Was he alone?" she asked.
"He run wid his brother, John Man."
Marianne didn't ask any more. If they caught John Man, she'd hear of it soon enough.
Evette and her helpers worked around the grisly tableau. There were people to feed, bread and corn and beans to cook, whether Peter lay on the big table or not. The aroma of salt pork and beans, soon to be carted out to the fields, mingled with the smells of blood and witch hazel.
While Pearl kept hot compresses on the punctures, Marianne sewed the other wounds. After an hour, Evette handed the mistress a tin cup of sweet coffee and she drank it down. Marianne paused long enough to dab the sweat from her face, then picked up her needle.
Another gash, and she was finished with the sutures. She packed a poultice of crushed pewterwort stems around each puncture wound, which she left unsewn. The other wounds she covered with comfrey poultices.
Marianne plunged her arms to the elbow in the bucket of warm water Evette had ready for her. Only then did she realize she'd forgotten her canvas apron. Her maid Hannah would shake her head -- another skirt and blouse ruined.
Peter cried out, still not really conscious, and clawed at the poultice on his neck. Marianne took his hands to quiet him. At least he showed some strength. Only God knows if he will survive.
With Pearl's help Marianne wrapped Peter in linen so that he seemed more bandage than boy. Then she said a silent prayer as the men carefully moved him to a stretcher to take him to his cabin. "Stay with him, Pearl. I'll come down in a while."
Drained, Marianne retreated to her room where she pulled off her clothes and slipped into her peignoir. Freddie wanted to explore the bloodstained heap, but Marianne pulled him into her lap. She could have cried, from nerves and pity for the boy, but Marianne believed tears had little use in this world. She nuzzled Freddie's soft fur and took comfort in his adoring kisses, holding him close until he wiggled to be let loose.
While she waited for Hannah to heat a bath, she sat at the rosewood desk, which Hannah had graced with a crystal bowl filled with gardenias. Freddie settled in, his tiny mug on her foot, and Marianne opened her medical log. Writing the particulars of the morning's surgery helped her put some distance between her feelings and that poor boy. Next she pulled her leather-bound journal to her and dipped her pen again.
During her sixteenth year, Marianne had gone to finishing school in New York. Everyone was reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Marianne cried her way through it, horrified. A terrible, heartbreaking story. But slavery wasn't like that, not in reality. She knew no one like that Legree, no one so desperate as Eliza. Yet the city had been full of men and women preaching in strident voices on street corners, filling churches and halls with their ringing indictments of slaveholding. Earnestly, passionately, the abolitionists reasoned and railed against slavery and the evil men who profited from it. They were very convincing, except that her own father profited from it, and so then did she, and everyone she knew back home.
Certainly Father was a good man. Marianne's father's friends, some of whom owned more than two hundred slaves, were good men. These people in the East, all her Southern friends assured her, they simply don't understand the Southern way of life. Her friends must be right. Slavery was not a simple thing. The truth was much more complicated than the abolitionists claimed.
Thus with the innate human capacity to hold two conflicting ideas at once, Marianne returned to Louisiana, where life resumed its comfortable rhythms. Magnolias was a happy plantation, she was sure of it. Father was good to his slaves. She herself ministered to them, wormed their children, treated their ear aches, and brewed the potions that cured their fevers.
And so Marianne filled her journal with the many ways her family took care to run a compassionate plantation. Yet, as she matured to a woman of twenty, doubts increasingly nagged her. The ringing voices of those stirring abolitionist orators Julia Ward Howe and Henry Stanton lingered in her mind; the pages of her journal reflected her growing unease.
And now - here was Peter.
Bathed and dressed, Marianne ate a hurried and solitary dinner. At Hannah's insistence, she donned cuff guards and a heavy apron. She checked her pocket for the Keys to the Realm, as she called them, and took the path through the garden to her personal storeroom. Here she had herbs drying from the rafters, pots of salve and the makings for more, and her well-used mortar and pestle.
She chose the bark and leaves of the willow to grind small enough for an infusion; willow tea would do well to fight the fever she knew would come. She cut down more witch hazel leaves and ground them to a powder which she mixed with lard to make a greasy salve. Peter was going to require quantities of both. Reaching overhead, she untied a bundle of comfrey, then shredded and pounded the roots and leaves into a gluey mass to use for additional poultices.
With her pots of medicinals, Marianne walked down to the quarters. The reek of witch hazel and pewterwort coming through the open door led her to the cabin.
Pearl sat on the only stool, fanning the flies from Peter's face.
"Has he wakened?"
"Yes'm, he in and out."
Marianne put her hand to Peter's forehead. Already he was hot to the touch. "Who are his people?"
"He old Lena's youngest grandbaby."
Marianne nodded, but in truth, she didn't know which one Lena was. Nor what had happened to Peter's mother. She felt ashamed of herself for not knowing, but there were so many slaves on the place.
"I reckon she know Petie caught by now," Pearl said, "but de overseer, he don't let her come."
Marianne's mouth tightened. That was cruel, to keep the woman away. With Father in Saratoga and her brother Adam at the Lake, she'd have to deal with Mr. McNaught herself. Well, she'd handle him. Later.
She handed Pearl the pot of crushed willow bark. "Tell Evette to make a tea out of this, let it steep a good while. Then go on to the house and ask Charles to bring me paper and pen."
While Marianne waited for the aged Charles, who'd been in charge of the house even when Father was young, Marianne unwrapped the bloody bandage on Peter's maimed foot and washed the wound again. Peter groaned and opened his eyes.
"Lie still," she told him. With the witch hazel salve rubbed into a gauzy cloth, she layered the bandage over the flesh to stop the oozing. Then she tied linen strips round and round his foot. There'd be no flies lighting on these wounds if she could help it.
Charles came in, elegant as always in his butler's livery. She wrote a note, much more polite than she felt, asking Mr. McNaught to send Lena in from the field to sit with her grandson. That taken care of, she cooled Peter's hot skin with astringent until Pearl returned with the willow bark tea.
Marianne lifted Peter's head and held the tea to his lips. He sputtered at the evil taste. "I know it's foul, but you need to drink it all," she told him.
To Pearl she said, "You can clean up now. Then go on back to the kitchen. I'll stay until Lena comes."
Pearl left Miss Marianne with her hand on Peter's forehead. She a good mistress, Pearl thought. Petie have a chance of living through dis wid her tending him.
Pearl still wore Peter's blood on her hands and arms and dress. At the well, the sand at her feet turned pink as she washed. My Luke, she thought. I make sure he see how Petie all chewed up. John Man all de time talking, make it sound easy to get away. Now maybe Luke think on it some mo. She checked her nails were clean. Till I gives him a baby. A baby on de way, he stay put here wid me.
Pearl drew another bucket and took it to her and Luke's cabin. When had she ever been alone in the middle of a day? Sunlight through the window caught the dust motes and cast shadows in the corners. She stilled herself to listen to the quiet house. The peace bled the tension from her shoulders. A body could rest, alone, with nothing to hand. If Luke could rest like dis, find a little peace in de day, he not be so ready to run.
She stripped off the faded gray sack dress and sluiced the cold water over her belly, as flat now as the day she and Luke first loved each other. Lord, I needs a chile, she reminded Him.
Every day she drank the concoction Mammy Lewis made for her. Squaw vine and chaste berries, dandelion and nettle leaves - "It shore to give you a baby," Mammy promised her. But her flow came just the same.
How long Luke gone stick wid me widout no chile? He say he gone stick, but mens wants babies much as womens do. She tilted her head as if she could see through the roof to God's domain. Lord, don forget me down here praying for a baby. She crossed herself the way she'd seen Miss Marianne do, and the master's wife had done it too back before she died. Maybe that made the prayers stronger.
Pearl pulled on the only other dress she had, threadbare and too tight across the shoulders, but it would do while the other one soaked. She hurried on to her work in the cookhouse.
In the other cabin, Marianne put her fingers to Peter's throat where the pulse pumped under the brown skin. Should it be that fast? She pressed her own throat until she found the pulse. Peter's vein throbbed so much faster, she was sure it couldn't be good for him. She roused him and held the cup to his lips. She'd added peppermint to sweeten the bitter willow brew, but he still grimaced at the taste. "I'll try some honey in the next batch," she promised him. "Go back to sleep."
She checked each bandage to be sure blood wasn't still oozing from his wounds. His limbs were so thin. She wiped his face. Thick dark lashes curled against his cheek, fine brows arched across a smooth high forehead. A handsome boy, this Peter. Or he had been. She wondered what he was like. Did he sing in the evenings with the others? Did he make jokes and tell stories? Did he follow some girl around and pick daisies for her? She dabbed the healing salve on his dry lips and wished she knew more medicine. She'd re-read The Mistress's Essential Medical Book and see if there was another remedy she should try.
This poor boy won't run away again, not with his legs and foot like they are. But his brother's still out there. God protect him.
Why had these two run now? This new man, she thought. McNaught. He was too harsh. She didn't remember having any runaways when Mr. Smythe had been in charge. But abolition was in the air; the slaves were bound to be roused. And who can blame them?
Marianne dipped her cloth into a pan of water and wiped the heat away from Peter's brow. There can't be, there mustn't be, any more boys brought home like this.
But Father wouldn't listen to her. He loved her and spoiled her, but he took no counsel from his daughter. How could she do anything more?
Ever My Love