The Bride of Texas (45 page)

She couldn’t — fortunately — imagine any other possibility
.

And he was the one who started it. Actually, it was started by a letter sent to old massa from Louisiana. The story — the horror, the bloody and costly triumph — spread through the plantation from a single source: Gideon, who, after old massa had read the letter, took it to young massa in the summer-house, where he sat over a big book smoking and copying things out. That was how they first heard the story of the costly triumph. She heard it all again late that night in Étienne’s room. That night he wasn’t naked on the bed, but was sitting in the armchair, smoking. He told her how the Negroes on the plantation of M. de Ribordeaux’s cousin in Louisiana had rebelled. Not all of them had, just eight. They took massa and his two overseers hostage, and massa, with a knife at his throat, gave them their freedom, all eight of them. He gave it to
them in writing, in black and white. They weren’t foolish enough to think that would be enough. It was more like insurance in case someone stopped them on the road before the word got out. Word wasn’t supposed to get out until morning, when the house niggers, who weren’t in on it, would start wondering why massa hadn’t come down to breakfast yet; the field niggers would assume the overseers had had too much to drink and were sleeping in. The men had stolen horses and intended to ride all night and all day through the woods until they reached the Underground Railroad. An itinerant abolitionist preacher had told them where to go. They picked an evening when the young massa had taken his sister and the plantation-owner’s wife to visit relatives in New Orleans. They tied up massa and the two overseers, gagged them, buried them in the hay, took several pistols from massa’s room, and set out. Their downfall was their need to stay together. They hid the pistols under their shirts, but eight well-dressed Negroes — like M. de Ribordeaux, the cousin didn’t treat his slaves badly — riding handsome plantation horses were rather conspicuous in the Louisiana countryside. Early the next morning, while massa and his two overseers were still bound and gagged in the hay, three white men on horseback stopped the eight of them. The manumission papers aroused even more suspicion. How could all eight of them have been granted freedom on the same day? The horses were obviously well bred, more likely to be found at the races than under nigger butts
.

“Hmm” — one of the riders spat on the ground — “everybody knows Ribordeaux’s crazy and spoils his niggers. But I can’t believe he’d have gone this far.”

The three riders agreed and the oldest, with a military-style moustache, turned to the runaways. “Okay, you’ll ride back with us and we’ll ask Mr. de Ribordeaux how much he had to drink last night.” And he waved in their faces the papers that had represented their hopes
.

The plan had failed and their only recourse was the pistols. Jim
and Luke pulled theirs out and shot the rider with the moustache; the other riders were quick on the draw and shot Jim and Luke. Two others reached for their weapons, but one fell off his horse with a bullet in his head, and the other spun around and managed to gallop away. The remaining four surrendered
.

The one who had escaped was picked up that evening by a posse of plantation-owners. He resisted but they shot the pistol out of his hand and clapped him behind bars along with the four who had surrendered, though in a separate cell. His fate was certain. One of the other four would share the gallows with him — the one who had started it
.

“What’s that?” she asked. She couldn’t let on that she had already heard the heroic story in the kitchen, so she simply asked him to define a word he had used to explain it all away. And she added — unable to keep the disbelief out of her voice — “Is that a sickness?”

“That’s right,” he replied uncertainly. “There’s a book about it, written by a physician, Dr. Samuel W. Cartwright. It’s a sickness of the mind. Drapetomania. After all, they had no reason to run away.”

She said nothing. She looked out the window at the lovely row of trees, and the cotton-fields beyond it rising slowly to the horizon, rimmed with beautiful woods. Beyond lay an even more beautiful world, at the end of the Underground Railroad
.

“Or did they?”

“I don’t know, massa.”

“Uncle Jean-Jacques is no fool. His overseers had instructions not to beat his slaves. Six of the eight could read and write. Three of them had learned a trade,” said young massa. His voice betrayed growing uncertainty
.

She said nothing
.

“Were they lacking anything?”

She shrugged
.

“Are you?” By the time he got to this point, he had lost all hope
of trusting his own beliefs. Because he would always know that the only way she could be a black countess was when he closed his eyes. She could never have what the black countess in Europe had — beautiful clothes, jewels, a carriage. The privilege to sometimes say no
.

“No,” she said softly
.

“So you see,” he said, but he knew she saw nothing. “Damn!” he swore, and stood up. He had his artificial leg by then. It was made of fine wood, and elegantly carved and polished, but it was artificial all the same. He turned to the window and lit a cigar
.

She asked, “Should I take off my clothes?”

Silence
.

“Massa?” she whispered
.

He turned. “Do you want to?”

“If you do, massa —”

“Do you?”

Oh, what do I want? To have what the black countess has, even if she were suddenly very poor. But in her clever mind she knew that Étienne was going through something his books didn’t explain, something they never dealt with, something that never came up over bourbon and cigars, something the worst gossip wouldn’t mention. Fool nigger-girl, she said to herself, but she couldn’t help it; she felt sorry for him. His dark, defeated silhouette against the window and the Texas sky. Despite everything, she pitied him. Silly nigger-girl
.

She nodded
.

Then she pulled her dress over her head, unlaced her corset; he tore his clothes off and unfastened his wooden leg; she climbed on the bed and sat back on her heels, waiting for him to lie down on his back. But he knelt beside her on his knee and, supported by his stump, he gently laid her down on her back and gently spread her legs. She embraced him
.

That night he was the slave
.

It wasn’t love she felt, just pity
.

“You were a silly nigger-girl,” Cyril said later
.

“You’d have been too,” Dinah said. “How was I to know your little sister was going to show up in Texas?”

That night Étienne told her everything — how he had collapsed with a bullet in his shin, but Lissieux had fallen too, beyond help; how he had to leave Paris, and his leg was given hasty treatment by the physician he’d brought along for just such an eventuality. He waited for his mistress in Rennes. She never showed up. He expected a letter from her, at least. They amputated the leg, then at last news arrived that she’d left for Cordoba, where she would be getting married. So it had just been a flirtation. She had only been pulling his leg. He hadn’t known then of a fiancé, who was now a bridegroom. Only then did he understand Lissieux’s remark, the remark he had taken as a mortal insult, not recognizing the truth in it. Now Lissieux was dead and the woman was in Cordoba. Gideon found out when the next ship was due to leave and they sailed for Galveston
.

Dinah didn’t love him, but she was rather fond of him, and besides, she found that he was the best at it. She tried it with young Ezekiel, mainly to see if massa was as good as she thought he was. He was. Now Ezekiel spent his nights howling outside her window but she refused to give in again, and when he tried to obtain by force what he felt entitled to (she was hanging out laundry behind the big house and Ezekiel had feigned a toothache and left the fields to find her) she kicked him in the groin, and he fell to the ground and whimpered in such pain that she was afraid she’d damaged him for good. She was relieved, a month later, when he got a silly field-nigger pregnant. Massa Étienne might be a virtuoso, but in this sphere it was she who was free and he who was the slave. In fact, as she would soon discover, he was a born slave. He started talking about a little house he had seen for sale in Austin, about the garden with a stable where he could put his horse
.

That was after old massa’s friend came to visit from Louisiana and brought along his daughter. About the same time, old massa would often, at dinner, raise the subject of a grandson and heir, whose appearance on the scene would not be unwelcome. The friend’s daughter, whose name was Scarlett, was pretty enough — quite lovely, in fact, except for her freckles. But in the evening, when they were assessing the situation in the kitchen, Beulah said white men liked freckles
.

And Benjamin said, “Pretty soon no more screwing for you, Dinah. Leastwise not twice a day and four times a night like now.”

“You sure don’t think much of us, Benjy. We ain’t a hundred years old like you,” she snapped at him
.

That was when Étienne started talking about a little house in Austin. Well, she said to herself, it could be worse
.

Then Mr. Carson came to call, and brought with him a foreign beauty with stunning blue eyes and a long braid she liked to play with. And her brother. Suddenly there were two slaves, and they weren’t both hers
.

Géza Mihalotzy

(illustration credit 5.1)

I
WAS SITTING
in the parlour working on my correspondence when Jasmine brought in a grey calling card.

“This lady wants to talk to you, Miz Tracy. She says she’s sorry to arrive unannounced, but she says you were friends years ago, in Liberty.”

The calling card read:

On the reverse, my visitor had added a handwritten note: “Maggie Rogers — remember me, you lucky girl?”

How could I forget Maggie’s exasperated outburst? “You dimwit!” she’d said, on an occasion when I had indeed displayed singular dimness of wit. No, you don’t forget moments like that.

“Don’t bother showing her in, I’ll go myself, Jasmine.” In the front hall stood a broomstick of a woman dressed in dark green velvet. She had a fat black handbag in one hand, a fat black book in the other. Her dark eyes stared at me out of unfathomed depths. She had rings under them the likes of which I had never seen. Maggie had never been a beauty, but a picture like this —

“Maggie, …” I breathed.

“Yes, it’s me, all right,” said my old friend.

I got my second shock when she sat down at the coffee table and put her book on it. It had a spine of pink leather (or something that looked like pink leather) and the title was in gilt lettering.… Good God!