North and South: The North and South Trilogy (73 page)

“Just an errand, Mr. Smith.”

“Out here? Don’t nobody live out here but a few ignorant niggers. Sure you ain’t lost?”

Madeline shook her head. Smith looked unconvinced. He glanced at Nancy in an unfriendly way. “Ain’t safe for white women to be on the roads, what with half the nigger population always mutterin’ about revolt. Would you like me to ride along with you?”

“No, thank you, we’ll be perfectly all right. Good day.”

Rebuffed and mightily puzzled, Smith scowled, touched his hat brim, and cantered off.

Madeline waited about five minutes, then called Ashton from her hiding place. Her heart was racing. She feared the whole plot would now come to light somehow.

Well, the damage was done. They might as well go ahead.

Inside the ramshackle cabin, Ashton was moaning, though as yet nothing had happened. Madeline sat on the small porch in Aunt Belle’s rocker, exhausted by the strain of the afternoon.

The stringy old octoroon woman listened to the outcries of her patient and puffed her clay pipe. “Soon as it’s over and she’s resting, we’ll fix pallets for you and Nancy inside.”

“That’ll be fine, Aunt Belle. Thank you.”

“I want you to know”—she pointed at Madeline with the stem of her pipe—“I’m helping her strictly because it was you who asked. That girl mistreats her people.”

“I know she does. She and I have never been close, but I felt I had to help her. She didn’t know where to turn.”

“Don’t make a habit of riskin’ your skin over her kind. She’s a mean, spoiled crybaby, not fit to kiss your hem.”

Madeline smiled in a weary way. Aunt Belle went inside. The door closed.

The sight of the midwife sent Ashton into another fit of fearful moaning. The old woman exclaimed, “Nancy, grab that bottle of corn and pour some down her throat. And you, missy—you shut your mouth and lie still, or I’ll send you back up the road to have your bastard whether you want it or not.”

Ashton’s complaints subsided. Madeline slumped in the chair, trying to relax. She couldn’t. She kept remembering the suspicious eyes of Watt Smith.

As they drove back to the crossroads next day, Ashton swooned several times. Madeline felt the girl was putting on because she thought she should. Pete met them with the other buggy. They saw Ashton into it, then started home. Ashton had barely remembered to offer a feeble smile and a halfhearted word of thanks.

Yesterday’s storm had strewn the roads with branches and palmetto fronds. Madeline found the grounds of Resolute equally littered. She must get a crew to work to clean up the debris. But not today. Tomorrow would be plenty of—

“Miz Madeline!” Nancy’s urgent whisper jerked her out of her tired reverie. She looked up and saw Justin stride from the house. His face looked thunderous.

“I heard you were searching for Charleston upriver,” he said. “Did you forget where it was?”

Panic and confusion churned in her. Watt Smith must have ridden by to say he had seen her on a remote road where no respectable white woman belonged. Any conscientious man would have done the same thing. She had almost expected it of Smith and yet had hidden the fact from herself.

“Justin—”

The word trailed off. She was too stunned and weary to think up a lie.

Nancy and Pete shot terrified glances at each other. Justin strode to the chaise, grabbed Madeline’s arm, and dragged her out. She quailed, unable to believe he could smile at a time like this. He was enjoying her entrapment.

“Where have you been?” He jerked her wrist, hurting her. “Fitting me with a set of horns?”

“Justin, for God’s sake, you mustn’t say such things in front of—
oh!”

Tears sprang to her eyes; he had pulled her arm again, hard. He thrust his face close to hers.

“Have you been whoring behind my back? We’ll soon find out.” He hauled her into the house.

“I’ll ask you once again. Where were you?”

“Don’t do this, Justin. I wasn’t betraying you, as you call it. I’d never do such a thing. I gave you my pledge the day we married.”

She retreated in front of him as she spoke. He followed her across the bedroom, his manure-flecked boots thumping softly, steadily. A small tripod stand bearing a vase stood in his path. He picked up the tripod and threw it over his shoulder. The stand clattered. The vase broke.

“Then where were you?”

“On a—a private errand. Woman’s business.” Desperately frightened, she didn’t know what else to say.

“I must have a better answer than that.” His hand shot out, clamping on her wrist again. “A truthful answer.”

“Let go of me. Stop hurting me or I’ll scream the house down.”

Unexpectedly, he was amused. He released her and stepped back. “Go ahead. No one will pay any attention, except maybe that nigger slut you’re so thick with. I’m going to take care of her, too, don’t you worry.”

A new, sharper fear drove through Madeline then. Though she was frightened, she knew she could hold out against his questions almost indefinitely. But if poor Nancy were dragged into it—

“You needn’t look so alarmed, my dear.” His tone was pleasant, conversational. “I won’t injure you physically. I’d never leave so much as the smallest mark on you. It would be bad for appearances. Besides, you’re a lady, or you’re supposed to be. Whippings and similar methods of persuasion are for niggers. I’ll try them on your wench tonight. On the buck, too. Meantime, I shall continue to ask you politely for an answer.”

In spite of herself, she began to cry. She hated the weakness that brought on the tears. That weakness sprang from tension, exhaustion, and fear. Somehow she couldn’t control it.

“I gave you an answer, Justin. I didn’t betray you. I never would.”

A long, aggrieved sigh. “My dear, that isn’t acceptable. I shall have to leave you in this room until you come to your senses.”

“Leave me—?”

Belatedly, understanding widened her eyes. Like an animal fleeing for its life, she ran past him toward the door. She almost reached it. Her fingers stretched to within inches of the polished brass knob. Then his hand swooped in. He seized her wrist and flung her back across the room. She cried out, struck the bed, and sprawled.

“You have deeply offended me with your lies and disobedience. This time I shall not limit your confinement to a day and a night. Good-bye, my dear.”

“Justin!”

She wrenched the knob back and forth and managed to open the door half an inch. But he was stronger; he pulled it shut from the other side. She sank down in a heap at the sound of the lock shooting home.

Once outside, Justin stopped smiling and allowed his true emotion, rage, to show itself. What he had just decreed as punishment—imprisonment for at least a week—was a mere palliative. Madeline had defied him for years with her books and her unfeminine opinions. This latest escapade was merely the culmination of her revolt. A revolt fostered by his tolerance—

His weakness.

That situation would change, he vowed to himself as he stormed downstairs. He began screaming at the house men to fetch Nancy and Pete. They couldn’t be found.

An hour later, he realized they had run off. His wild rage grew wilder. He dispatched a boy to Francis’s house with instructions that a patrol be organized immediately. A patrol that would shoot the fugitives on sight.

They were glimpsed only once, two days later, crossing the Savannah River on a ferry. Somehow they had obtained forged passes. No one questioned their right to travel, and no one in the neighborhood of Resolute ever saw them again.

How long had she been locked up? Three days? No, four, she thought.

There was no way to find out what had happened to Nancy and Pete. She feared they had been tortured or killed. Light-headed, she was barely able to recall why she was worried about them. She slept during the day and roamed her room—her cage—at night. Outside the shuttered windows on the piazza, a man stood guard around the clock. Once a day, about sunrise, two house blacks came to the door. One kept watch while the other slid her day’s allotment of food inside. It consisted of three half slices of coarse brown bread. With them was a shallow bowl of water. During the few seconds the door was open, the slaves gave her swift, sorrowing looks, but they dared not say anything aloud.

She was permitted no water for washing. Each day she used a little from the shallow bowl. Even so, she soon began to smell. On the third day, while she slept, someone slipped in and emptied her brimming slops jar. By then her quarters had acquired the odor of a barn.

What did it matter? As each hour went by, she was less aware of her surroundings. Strange ringings in her ears distracted her. Strange lights, purple or fiery white, danced in the corners of the room—

Or were they in her head?

“Orry. Orry, why didn’t you come sooner?”

She saw him standing by the door, holding out his right hand while his eyes grieved. Thankfully, she rushed toward him. The instant she touched his hand, he vanished.

She started to cry. Some small, calm voice in the well of her soul said,
How ashamed your father would be if he saw this.

She didn’t care. She was sick, spent, terrified. Her sobs soon changed to screaming.

“A nourishing meal—that’s what she needs.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Justin said in a solicitous tone, “but we’ve tried all week to persuade her to eat. She refuses.”

Justin and the physician looked at each other, their expressions the picture of sympathy and concern. Only their eyes communicated their true feelings.

Madeline saw that but failed to grasp its significance. She was semiconscious, lying in bed with her dark hair tangled on her shoulders and her eyes huge, childlike. Her face was the color of flour.

“Oh, I’m not surprised,” the doctor said with a sagacious nod. “That is a frequent symptom of nervous prostration.” He was a rotund, elegantly dressed man whose cheeks had the glossy look of success. His name was Lonzo Sapp.

“Fortunately,” he continued, “modern medicine can prescribe a treatment which is usually successful. Bed rest. Plenty of hot tea, then food when she feels better. I also want you to give her a generous dose of a special celery tonic once a day.”

“Celery tonic,” Justin repeated. “Is it your own formulation?”

Dr. Sapp nodded. “The base is wine vinegar, but the therapeutic ingredient is pulped celery.”

The physician leaned over the bed and brushed a lock of hair from Madeline’s brow. Her skin glistened in the light of the candles in a branched holder at the bedside. Smoothing and patting the hair above her brow, he resembled a kind father as he said, “If you can hear me, Mrs. LaMotte, I want you to know that you can soon be yourself again. Do you want that?”

Her thick, dry tongue inched over her cracked lower lip. She made no sound, staring at the doctor with tortured eyes that she closed briefly to signify assent.

“Then you must follow my regimen to the letter. It was your husband who summoned me from Charleston. He’s deeply worried about you. I have reassured him, but recovery is in your hands alone. Will you do everything I ask?”

“Y-yes.”

Justin bent and planted a gentle kiss on her cheek. He felt much better, having found a remedy for the rebelliousness that had plagued their marriage. The remedy was also a way of repaying her for cuckolding him. He was positive she had done so last week and might have been doing so for years. She certainly went off by herself often enough.

By locking her up and starving her, he had broken all her defenses except one. Had that fallen, she would have confessed freely, would have told him where she had gone and with whom.

At first his failure to gain that information had driven him wild with anger. Then, seeing that she would ultimately defeat him, he turned her silence around and transformed it into a benefit. If he learned the name of her lover, he would probably be humiliated. Suppose it was some white trash tradesman or mechanic. Some nigger. Ignorance was preferable. Or so he said to himself on one level of his mind. On another, he conceived a new and permanent hatred of his wife.

But no sign of it showed as he straightened up beside the bed. Before coming in he had doused himself liberally with a cinnamonny skin tonic; she and the room smelled abominable. That could end now. He strode to the shutters and flung them back.

Cool night air gusted in, stirring the candles. Her eyes shone with gratitude. “She’ll be herself when she regains her strength,” Sapp assured him as they left. “It’s weakness which causes her disorientation.”

The doctor closed the bedroom door, glanced up and down the hall, and continued in a low voice, “After a week, she should be accustomed to the tonic. Not suspicious of it. You can then substitute the formulation we discussed.”

“The one containing the laudanum.”

“A small dose only. Nothing harmful, you understand. Just enough to keep her calm and agreeable.”

They strolled toward the head of the stairs. Dr. Sapp continued, “Should we wish to discontinue the tonic, there are other ways for her to receive the medication. Tinctured opium is a dark, sweetish liquid, but it can be baked into cookies, or employed to baste certain meats, or mixed with wine vinegar and poured over greens. What I’m saying is, the treatment is eminently flexible. Of course, if you’ve read de Quincey, you know there will be symptoms. Fatigue. Constipation. Possibly signs of premature aging. The symptoms are easily attributable to other causes, however. The stress and strain of daily living,” he said with a shrug. “She need never know that she’s receiving laudanum.”

“That is good news,” Justin declared with the fervency of a man who had stayed up all night and at last saw a prospect of rest. A sad smile settled on his face. “I’ve been so worried about her.”

“Naturally.”

“I want to do everything possible to soothe her nerves and restore her peace of mind.”

“An admirable goal.”

“So she won’t embarrass herself—or the family.”

“I quite understand,” murmured Dr. Sapp, his smile as thin as that of his host.

“One more question, Doctor. How long can the treatment be continued?”

“Why, if you’re happy with the results—a year. Two years. Indefinitely.”