Through the Storm (45 page)

Raimond, still gazing down at his beautiful daughter, heard the paper rattling as Sable removed it from the box, then there was only silence. He whispered to his
daughter, “Your mama is speechless,
petite
Desiré. Listen, can you hear it?”

Sable was speechless, indeed, for in the velvet-lined box lay Mahti’s bracelet, cleaned, polished, and gleaming. She looked into his love-filled eyes and her heart pounded. “I don’t know what to say…”

“It was all I had of you after you left the camp. I’ve been meaning to return it to you, and now seemed an appropriate time. You can pass it on to your daughter.”

He came over and held out his hand. “May I?”

She could feel the tears running down her face as she handed him the bracelet and let him slip it on her wrist. She then let herself be enfolded in his arms. Just as Mahti’s prophecy had come true about Morse, so had Araminta’s dream about the sea chest and the bracelet. In her dream the sun had come out when Raimond placed the bracelet on her wrist, and Sable did feel as if she were being bathed by its warm rays. Feeling the Old Queens smiling down, she whispered, “I love you so.”

“I love you more,” he said thickly. “After Morse took you, I realized I’d never told you how much I love you or how much I enjoy waking up and seeing your smile. I love you, Sable LeVeq.”

He drew back and held her eyes. “I also never asked your forgiveness for not believing your story about Baker.”

“You couldn’t be sure, I know.”

“I know this—I will love you for an eternity.”

Sable basked in his strong, loving embrace and vowed, “I will love you for an eternity as well.”

Author’s Note

T
he story of Sable and Raimond grew from three sources of inspiration, the first being my desire to highlight the triumphs and tragedies of the tumultuous years immediately following the Civil War. The second inspiration rose from reading a book by William D. Pierson titled,
Black Legacy: America’s Hidden Heritage
. One chapter highlighted enslaved African royals. Although there were only a few snippets on queens, they were more than enough to get my imagination running. The third inspiration came from my fans. If you wrote to me and requested, or in some cases demanded, a story featuring Raymond LeVeq from
Indigo
as the hero, raise your hand. Out of the hundreds of letters I received after the publication of
Indigo
, nine out of ten wanted Raymond to have his own book. I changed the spelling of his name from the Americanized Raymond to the proper French Raimond. I hope you don’t mind.

Although I featured only one verse of “The Song of the Black Republicans,” the other five verses can be found in
The Black Press, 1827-1890
, edited by Martin E. Dann. According to Mr. Dann, the “song” was printed only in
The Black Republican
, another of New Orleans’s Black newspapers. He could not determine how widely it was sung.

Below is a list of books I suggest you try for further reading.

Cornish, Dudley Taylor.
The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865
. W.W. Norton. New York. 1966.

Foner, Eric.
Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution. 1863-1877
. Harper and Row. New York. 1988.

Gehman, Mary.
Free People of Color of New Orleans
. Margaret Media. New Orleans. 1994.

Glatthaar, Joseph T.
Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers
. Free Press. New York. 1990.

Hollandsworth, James G.
The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience During the Civil War
. Louisiana State University Press. Baton Rouge. 1995.

McPherson, James M.
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
. Oxford University Press. New York. 1988.

Pierson, William D.
Black Legacy: America’s Hidden Heritage
. University of Massachusetts Press. Amherst. 1993.

Quarles, Benjamin.
The Negro in the Civil War
. Da Capo Press. New York. 1953.

Stampp, Kenneth.
The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877
. Vintage Books. New York. 1965.

Sterling, Dorothy A., ed.
The Trouble They Seen: The Story of Reconstruction in the Words of African-Americans
. Da Capo Press. New York. 1994.

Sterling, Dorothy A., ed.
We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century
. W.W. Norton. New York. 1984.

I want to thank the following individuals for their help and support:

Cecilia Oh, my new editor—welcome aboard. Ellen E. and Nancy Y., thanks so very much. Darcy and James Barker not only took me into their home
on a book-signing trip to Cleveland, but fed me and treated me like family. Bless you both for your big hearts. Special thanks to Kelly Ferjutz for her TLC; Sandra Z. Harris of Birmingham, Alabama, for the great phone calls; Ladies in Line for the fan club and their unflagging faith; Catina Colston, who reads my books at a U.S. base in Turkey; and Leontyne Thomas, my number one fan in Trinidad-Tobago.

For anyone interested in joining the
only official
fan club, please contact: Beverly Jenkins Fan Club, c/o Ladies in Line Productions, P.O. Box 252862, West Bloomfield, Michigan 48325 for more information. Everyone else may continue to write to me in care of my post office box: P.O. Box 1893, Belleville, Michigan 48112.

In closing, let me give a shout out to all of the hundreds upon hundreds of you who’ve taken the time to drop me a line. I do appreciate it.

Stay strong and keep reading. Until next time.

Peace,

About the Author

BEVERLY JENKINS
grew up in Detroit. Her passion for romance and African-American history have her hard at work on her sixth novel for Avon Books. She enjoys hearing from fans. Please send your letters to:
Beverly Jenkins
P.O. Box 1893
Belleville, MI 48112

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Avon Books by
Beverly Jenkins

A
LWAYS AND
F
OREVER

B
EFORE THE
D
AWN

A C
HANCE AT
L
OVE

N
IGHT
S
ONG

T
HE
T
AMING OF
J
ESSI
R
OSE

T
HROUGH THE
S
TORM

T
OPAZ

Coming Soon

T
HE
E
DGE OF
M
IDNIGHT

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THROUGH THE STORM
. Copyright © 1998 by Beverly Jenkins. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

ePub edition February 2007 ISBN 9780061754098

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Georgia, 1864 When house slave Sable Fontaine was growing up in the mansion that was her home, it had taken fifteen male slaves to care for the rolling green lawns surrounding the estate. Under the watchful eye of the head gardener, an equal number of young slaves had trimmed the trees and sculpted the shrubs. They’d planted lush, fragrant flowers every spring, adding color and beauty to the genteel, pastoral surroundings, and every year the sprawling white house had been freshly painted so that its stately columns anchoring the wide front porch stood like monuments gleaming in the Georgia sun. Now the Fontaine lawns and gardens were overgrown with weeds. No one had trimmed the shrubs or trees in three seasons, and the lush flowers hadn’t been planted for years. The house hadn’t been painted either, and it gleamed no more. Because of Mr. Lincoln’s war, no slaves could be spared to perform such inconsequential tasks. Everyone was too bent upon survival. When the conflict began

Chapter 1

Chapter 2 Staying off the road, Sable used the trees and thick underbrush lining the roadway to shield her passage. Thigh-high weeds snagged her skirts, and in some places she had to push aside low-hanging branches. The ground proved to be rocky and uneven as she crossed streams and followed the hilly terrain of the vast Fontaine land, but she kept pace, intent upon placing as much distance between herself and her past as possible. Grief accompanied her like a companion, and on long, lonely stretches of the trek she let it have its head. At times she cried so hard, she couldn’t see, and her heart ached as it never had before. By the time the sun climbed directly overhead, she’d been walking for hours. Hot and weary, she finally surrendered, admitting the need for rest. She took a seat against the trunk of a sheltering tree, ate part of a yam she found wrapped in the canvas bag, then spent a moment surveying the other contents. There was a skin from which she took a small sip of water,

Chapter 2

Chapter 3 Major Raimond LeVeq put down his pen and stretched wearily. He’d been doing paperwork for most of the day and was tired. Because no one in the local Union command had the time, or in some cases the desire, to deal with the ever increasing numbers of contrabands arriving daily, it had been left to him. He was in charge of what the army had loosely dubbed contraband liaison. General Benjamin Butler had recommended him for the post, and he now reported to Colonel John Eaton, tapped by Grant in 1862 to be superintendent of contraband for the Mississippi Valley. Raimond had joined the fight as a member of the famed First Louisiana Native Guard, whose ranks were successors of the highly decorated regiment of free Blacks who had helped Andrew Jackson repel the British during the War of 1812. He’d been transferred to this Georgia camp less than a month ago. Helping contrabands bridge the transition to freedom had not been his reason for going to war, but he knew conditions here would