Evermore: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 3) (24 page)

Just after dawn she woke with a start, her heart thumping.
She sat up, listening. A gate squeaked outside. She got up and put her eye to
the gap in the shutters. Her gate was ajar.

She looked wildly around the dim room. Her gaze caught on a
gleam of light from the dressing table. The scissors. She grasped them in her
right hand. In her left, she grabbed a heavy brass candlestick.

At the top of the stairs, she listened. Nothing. She crept
down, avoiding the squeaky step third from the bottom. Silently, she stepped
into the hallway and listened again. Voices, whispering. They’d got into the courtyard.
No one would see them. Maybe no one would hear them. She was on her own.

Nicolette marched toward the back door, pounding her bare
feet on the boards. At the top of her voice, she hollered, “Get the shotgun,
Papa! There’s vermin in the courtyard!”

She scraped a chair across the floor, banged the candlestick
against a door jamb, making as much noise as she could. “Jeremy!” she called.
“Get that machete you brought from upriver!”

She held her breath and listened again. Rapid footsteps
crossed the bricks out back, growing fainter.

Had they really gone? Or were they playing the same game she
was? She swallowed bile, determined not to throw up.

She tightened her sweaty grip on the candlestick, its
decorative ridge digging into her fingers. She waited, she listened, until sun
rays crept through the back window shutters. A mockingbird took up his day’s
work, trilling in the crape myrtle at the corner of the yard.

They were gone.

With trembling hand, Nicolette put the candlestick down.
Carefully, painfully, she unbent her cramped fingers from the holes of the
scissors handle. She was fine. Just frightened. Just weak in the knees.

Tonight, she’d have a gun. If they came back, she’d shoot
them in the heart.

Dressing for work, Nicolette dabbed concealer on the shadows
under her eyes. Then, with a light stroke, she rouged her cheeks. Lastly she
applied a dusting of fine powder over all. She wasn’t trying to look glamorous;
she simply wanted to appear as if she had slept the previous night.

She had her hand on the latch when she paused and ran back
up the stairs. She grabbed the brass candlestick off her dressing table and put
it in a shopping bag. With the candlestick in hand, ready to wield it through
the cloth bag, she opened the back door.

The crape myrtle, the banana tree, the lemon tree, the
cistern, the cast iron table. Nothing had changed. Maman’s spiky exotic cactus
still threatened all comers in its barrel near the outhouse. Everything was as
it should be.

Nicolette relaxed her grip on the candlestick and examined
the back door, thick cypress boards girded with iron hardware. The blue paint
around the latch was scratched and one deeper gouge showed where a chisel must
have slipped.

They wouldn’t have got in this way even if they’d broken the
metal latch. Inside, there were stanchions either side of that door and a stout
cypress board for a barricade. But the window would be easy. The shutters,
meant to protect the glass window from storm winds, would be little trouble for
a man with a chisel. If she’d been the one trying to break in, she’d have
chosen the window. Maybe, next time, they would too.

But next time, she’d have a gun.

The candlestick in its bag, Nicolette strode down Pauger
Street, alert for watching eyes, for shadowy alleys, for following footsteps.
As she neared the Mint on Esplanade, she relaxed. No one would accost her on a
busy street filled with soldiers and tradesmen.

After a twenty-minute walk up Decatur, she arrived at the
Custom House to find Simpson and Wallace in a dither.

“The mail packet came in an hour ago. Big action going on in
Virginia,” Wallace said.

“Harper’s Ferry,” Simpson said. “Ever heard of it?”

“John Brown’s raid?”

“The very one. Rebs attacked last week.”

“Do we know who won?”

Finn walked in, Major Farrow behind him. “Not yet, we
don’t.”

“Stand aside, lad.” Hursh upended the atlas he carried under
his arm and spread it open on the desk. As he flipped through, looking for the
Virginia pages, he said, “Miss Chamard, should you like to see where the battle
rages?”

Finn opened his arm to include her. She stepped into its
arc, only a little sure he wouldn’t, in his thoughtlessly improper way, lay it
over her shoulder. She leaned over the book as the major traced the path of the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad westward to Harper’s Ferry where it crossed the
Potomac River.

“So the Rebels want to blow up this bridge?”

“Or take it. You may know from Brown’s attack in ’59,
there’s a Federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. Damned near indefensible, too,
sitting in a bowl with higher ground all round.”

“Who’s in command?” Finn asked.

“Miles.”

“Dixon Miles?”

“The same.”

Finn and the major exchanged grim looks.

“You have no confidence in this commander?” Nicolette asked.

Hurshel Farrow mimed a man tossing
back a glass of whiskey.

The three of them looked silently at the brown shading of
the map indicating the mountains surrounding the river town. Even Nicolette
could see it would be hard for the Federals to withstand attacks from above.

They waited all day, sending Wallace and then Simpson down
to the docks on the hope that another mail packet would sail into port. None
did, and they were left only with the morning’s news that Colonel Miles’ rifle
volleys had held off a first Confederate assault led by Major General Jackson.

Word had traveled all over New Orleans by mid-day. Hursh
Farrow’s atlas was not the only one in town. Confederate sympathizers would be
assessing the likelihood of Rebel success. They’d be riled up, their favorite
ol’ Stonewall Jackson sure to be victorious.

At quitting time, Finn leaned over Nicolette, his palm
flattened on her desk, creating a sphere of intimacy, an oasis only they two
inhabited. His hand was sun-browned. A sprinkling of dark hair adorned each
finger. His nails were square cut, probably with his pocket knife, she thought.
He had no time for niceties like manicures. And yet, a fine hand. She wanted to
bring that hand to her cheek.

“Miss Chamard, sunset’s in an hour,” Finn said, his voice
pitched only for her. She nodded and looked to where Simpson and Wallace manned
their keypads, where Major Farrow pored over dispatches.

“Is that big fellow coming for you?”

“William? No. He’s with the Guard, miles from here.”

“The town’s going to be in an uproar again.” He straightened,
breaking the circle of their familiarity. “Major, I will see Miss Chamard home
and be back within the hour.”

Hursh raised an eyebrow, then quirked a smile at Finn and
nodded toward the door.

Nicolette collected her purse and umbrella. Finn met her at
the door with hat and sword and they entered the hallway.

A lieutenant, flushed in the face, barreled toward them.
“All officers, Captain. Briefing room. Now.” He stuck his head in the door to
the communications room and repeated the message to Hursh.

“Damn.” Finn took her hand. He rubbed his thumb across her
knuckles in that unconscious sensual habit of his. Nicolette drew in a breath
and held it. He had no sense of decorum at all, sometimes. No gentleman of
Louisiana would ever presume such familiarity. But Finn demolished that barrier
of propriety every time he touched her. And she loved that, too.

Hursh strode past them on the way to the briefing. “Sorry,
love,” he said to her. “Come on, me boy. The General awaits.”

“Wallace will take you home.” Finn stepped back to the
doorway. “Wallace!”

“Finn!” Hursh called from down the hall.

Finn squeezed Nicolette’s hand and hurried after the major.

Wallace came to the door. “What?” he called after Finn.

If Finn had been able to take her home, she would have
postponed buying the gun to have that half hour with him. But he couldn’t, and
she needed to buy that gun. She did not want to argue about it nor discuss it
with anyone. She would not endanger Lucinda and the children by going to her
house, and Cleo and Pierre were still upriver at the farm. She was on her own.

“I believe, Mr. Wallace, the captain means for you to rush
any new dispatches directly to the briefing room.”

“Right-o,” he said.

Nicolette exited the back of the Custom House and walked
quickly down the street toward the dusty-windowed gun shop she’d passed a
hundred times. She was glad she hadn’t told Finn about the chicken blood on her
front stoop or the men at her back door. He couldn’t stand guard over her every
night. It would be impossibly improper, and he had his duties. She would buy
this gun, and she would be perfectly safe.

As she approached the shop, her steps faltered. Would the
shopkeeper sell her a gun? He would know from her tignon, from her being on the
street alone this time of the day, that she was a couleur
libre.

She could take off her tignon, but she had no bonnet with
her. And if some hard-hearted white man, or woman, saw her uncovering her hair,
she’d be called out for violating the law that required the tignon in the first
place. She certainly did not want that kind of attention.

She picked up her pace again. She was an actress, wasn’t
she? She would brazen her way to a gun with sheer force of presence. That, and
the shine and jingle of silver coins.

A single lantern glowed inside the shop. Nicolette entered
to the tinkling of a bell.

“Mademoiselle,” the shrunken, yellow man greeted her. He
eyed her from head to toe, assaying the intricacy of
her folded headscarf and the quality of her dress, finally lingering on her
primly concealed bosom. Nicolette had no doubt he took her for a rich man’s
plaçée. She knew from Lucinda’s confidences that being a white man’s mistress
inevitably brought unwelcome advances. Men of a lower sort mistakenly assumed a
kept woman’s virtue was easier than that of women who were lawfully wedded.

Nicolette smiled at the gunsmith. “
Bon soir
,
monsieur. I wish to buy a gun.”

“A pretty thing like you?” He flashed brown teeth at her in
a mocking leer. “What you want with a gun?”

As easily as donning a cloak, she wrapped herself in the
coquettish persona she assumed on stage. If the ugly little man required her to
flirt before he sold her a gun, she’d flirt.

The gunsmith, once she’d assured him with fluttering
eyelashes that she was aware of his virile aura, got down to business. He first
offered her the smallest Derringer, but she insisted the rats in her courtyard
would scoff at such a dainty gun. She wanted a big, powerful weapon.

“How about that one?” she said, pointing to a sixteen inch
Colt in the case.

He let her hold it, but he warned her, “
Chère
, that gun weighs near five
pounds. She kick you into last week, you try to fire her.”

Nicolette was aware guns had a kick. She stretched her arm
out and imagined aiming the Colt at an intruder’s chest. She could not hold the
nine inch barrel steady.

“See? You listen to me,
ma
chère
. A Colt Walker, she too much gun for you.”

Finally, she settled on a ’51 two pound Navy revolver with a
five and a half inch barrel. She bought a half box of .44 bullets, assuring the
gunsmith she did not require his instruction in firing it. She could load it
and she could point it.

Once she was home, Nicolette unwrapped her package and laid
the pistol on the parlor table. Lantern light gleamed on the polished walnut grip,
on the blue barrel. She gripped her weapon, pointing it at the back window. No
man would ever lay a hand on her again without her blowing a hole in his chest.

She loaded the pistol.

Now, let them come. She was ready.

“Stonewall Jackson’s got them socked in at Harper’s
Ferry, Deborah Ann.” Mr. Presswood rubbed his hands together in satisfaction.
“By nightfall, I wager they’ll have taken it away from the damned Yanks.”

Dutifully, Deborah Ann got out the Virginia map and let Father
show her exactly where Harper’s Ferry was and explain to her why it was
strategically important. She understood, but she simply couldn’t bring herself
to celebrate, or bemoan, every battle of the entire damned war.

She’d had no word from Marcel in weeks. Not a word. The war
had not yet come to the Lafourche country where he played soldier up and down
the bayou. Why on earth could he not find a moment to write his wife? He had no
regard for how she suffered, waiting, waiting, waiting. Not just for Marcel,
but for some nameless something. Something, somewhere, was going to happen to
her. It was going to change everything. And it was going to be dreadful.

She’d cut short her stay at Evermore. She couldn’t sleep
there, not after she saw how the darkies had changed. During the long moonless
nights, a candle burning at her bedside, she imagined a horde of blacks
climbing in her window, setting fire to the house, committing every kind of
atrocity against her. And her blameless. She’d never mistreated a black, not in
her entire life.

When she boarded the
Rachel
at the dock that last morning at
Evermore, the house slaves again lined up to see her off. Now she could see
behind the smiling masks. The lips might curve, but there was no warmth in
those black eyes. Not even Clementine had cared that she was leaving, not
really.

Father didn’t know yet. When she’d arrived home, she
reported the numbers of runaways and Mr. Thompson’s accounts about the crops.
But not what she’d seen in those cold eyes. Even if the South won this hateful
war, Evermore could not be the same place, not ever again. Not for her, not for
any of them.