by Rita Woods
Now, remembering, Margot tugged nervously at her hair.
“Do you remember…?” began Veronique.
“Enough, oie,” cried Margot. She’d had enough remembering. Each memory twisted the knot in her stomach tighter. “You’re a goose. With all this foolishness. And if Grandmere catches you lazing about on these stairs…”
A movement on the landing above them caught her eye. They both looked up, and there stood their grandmother, silent, wreathed in light from the round landing window.
“I am almost done here, Grandmere,” said Margot pulling the pail closer. “And Vee was just…”
She stopped abruptly. Grandmere was not looking at them. Her attention was riveted elsewhere. The old woman descended the stairs, stepping absently over her youngest granddaughter.
“Grandmere?”
Their grandmother strode across the still-damp marble floor as if she hadn’t heard, and flung open the front door.
“Come,” she snapped.
Frowning, Margot glanced at her sister, who shrugged.
The two girls sprinted after their grandmother, who stood at the edge of the wide porch staring down the drive.
“Grandmere?” Veronique reached a hand toward her grandmother, then pulled it back.
The old woman was trembling. Margot followed her gaze, but except for a wild pheasant pecking in the dirt, the drive was empty. She felt her sister’s hand clutching the back of her blouse.
“It comes,” whispered Fortuna Rousse. “It comes now.”
“Grandmere. Come in,” pleaded Margot. A blade of fear pressed itself between her shoulder blades. Sunlight poured onto the porch, and yet she felt frozen to the bone. “There is nothing out here. Come in now. I will put on fresh coffee.”
“Shush,” said Grandmere.
The three slaves stood in silence, waiting, time having seemed to slow to a standstill in the thick bayou air.
Margot couldn’t bear it, the stillness, the crushing sense of dread. The beating of her own heart. She opened her mouth to say those words, to say that there was work to be done, to ask what they were doing standing there like statues in the sun. But before she could speak, she felt Veronique stiffen beside her, saw Grandmere step from the porch, her hands clasped tight over her heart.
And now, Margot could feel it—through the soles of her feet—the faintest vibration. Could feel it before she could hear it.
Horses. Moving fast.
Someone was coming.
Veronique fumbled for her hand and Margot grabbed it, holding tight.
“Mère Vierge,” whispered Grandmere. “Sweet Virgin, help us.”
And then, Catherine Hannigan’s barouche hove into view.
Girard, James Hannigan’s groom, valet, jack-of-all-trades, sat high in the driver’s seat, his waistcoat flying wild behind him, his caramel-colored face gray with road dust. They could just barely make out the huddled figures behind him. The large carriage swung wide, and Grandmere crossed herself, muttering a prayer, as one of the back wheels caught in the gravel that marked the edge of the drive, skidding into the sloping grass on the far side. The horses, eyes wild, heads thrown back, seemed to stumble as the barouche pitched crazily from side to side. For a moment, it looked as if Girard might be hurled from his seat, as if the carriage itself might go over. But Girard fought for control until the horses finally regained their footing, and dragged the carriage back onto the drive.
“Miss Fortuna! Miss Fortuna!”
Margot heard the desperation in Girard’s voice as he screamed for her grandmother. Yanking hard on the reins, he stopped the carriage less than a foot from the old woman, before tumbling from the seat.
“Miss Fortuna, hurry.”
Grandmere shot her granddaughters a look, a silent command to follow. Veronique moved to her side, but Margot stood fixed at the edge of the porch, staring openmouthed at the barouche. As wide and long as a boat, the black metal carriage gleamed in the sun. It had been imported all the way from Paris as a gift from James Hannigan to his wife. Catherine Hannigan rode it to the theater, to the balls, to her grandmother’s house in the Vieux Carré. It was fancy and expensive and completely unsuited for the rutted, unpaved country roads that ran between Far Water and New Orleans.
“Margot, allez!”
Her grandmother’s voice yanked her from the porch and she hurried forward. Three feet away, she skidded to a stop once again. The oldest Hannigan child, thirteen-year-old Marie, was already standing in the drive. Thin and pale, eyes pinched closed, her mouth open in a silent scream. Inside the carriage, ten-year-old Lily lay sprawled, half on, half off the forward-facing seat, her lavender silk dress covered in black vomit. She had soiled herself as well—Margot could smell it from where she stood—but the girl was beyond caring. Her blue eyes were open and she stared unblinking, unseeing at the hot, blue sky.
But it was the sight of the mistress that froze Margot in her tracks. Catherine Hannigan had clearly gone mad. She was crouched on the floor of the barouche, her skirt up past her knees, legs spread wide, as if preparing to give birth. Her red hair was tangled, stray tendrils plastered against her forehead. Her blue eyes, so like her daughter’s, were wide, crazed. She was shrieking, making high-pitched, unintelligible sounds. In her arms was her youngest child, Alexander. He was wrapped, head to toe, in a pink coverlet, but one hand had come free, and Margot could see that his skin was the color of cooked butter.
“Miss Catherine, give him to me,” Grandmere was saying. “You got to give the boy to me now.”
Catherine Hannigan drew back her teeth and snarled, spit flying from her chapped lips. Margot flinched. Her grandmother did not.
“Come, mistress,” pleaded Grandmere. “It’s going to be alright now. But I got to take that baby. Let me take him so I can tend to him, oui?”
The white woman blinked and seemed to see the old slave woman for the first time.
“Fortuna,” she whimpered. She grabbed Grandmere’s wrist. “Save my baby. Save my son.”
“I make no promises, mistress. But you give him to me and I swear I try.”
“No!” Catherine Hannigan screamed.
The word ricocheted off the house, the trees, fracturing the air. Veronique cried out. Marie Hannigan gripped the barouche and silently shook.
“No,” screeched the mistress again. “You will promise me. You save my baby. You can do that. I know you can do that. Don’t think I don’t know what you are. Don’t think I don’t know what you can do. You save my baby. Do you hear me? You save my baby or else.”
Bile rose in Margot’s throat and she locked eyes with her sister.
“Mistress,” said their grandmother, her voice still calm. “You give me le petit.”
The white woman clutched the bundle that was her son to her chest, the yellowed hand flopping limply against her thigh, then, with a sob, finally released the child to Grandmere’s waiting arms.
Grandmere whirled from the carriage, her face hard, the dying boy pressed against her.
“Put the carriage away and take … Miss Lily to the root cellar,” she commanded Girard.
“Veronique, you get the mistress and Miss Marie into the house and cooled down. Margot, come with me now. I need you.”
Margot tasted the bile once again climbing into her throat. Her grandmother turned to look at her.
“Ma petite,” she said. “You come now. We must try and save this baby’s life. Before it is too late.”
With a last look at the dead girl in the carriage, Margot followed her grandmother into the house.
4
They carried the boy behind the main house to the small, stone building that was their kitchen and laid him on the little wooden table.
The sight of the boy laying limp and lifeless where just hours before they’d taken their coffee and biscuits caused Margot’s stomach to clench. She clamped her teeth together, fighting a sudden wave of nausea.
Grandmere gently touched the girl’s face. “Breathe, ché
re.”
Margot nodded, reassured by the rough feel of her grandmother’s hand against her skin. Grandmere would make it alright.
“Watch him close, yes?” instructed Grandmere. “I need to gather some things.”
Margot nodded once again as the old woman disappeared through the kitchen door. She gazed at the boy. He was short for his age, thin, like his mother and sisters. But while his sisters had the pale skin and red hair of their mother, Alexander was dark like his father.
He was a lighthearted, chatty child who teased his sisters, made up riddles, and loved to go riding with Girard. Now, he lay on the kitchen table, eyes closed, lips blue and crusted with the same black vomit as his dead sister, and only his fast, shallow breathing showed that he was still alive.
Margot took a hesitant step closer and swallowed hard, the sound loud in her ears. Standing over the boy, she reached out a hand, then pulled it back, not quite able to bring herself to touch him. Not yet.
Mistress Catherine had said that she’d known what they could do, known what they were. But she didn’t. Not really. She believed that Grandmere had a sort of healing magic, the same magic that brought about what she called “Fortuna’s visions.” Mistress Hannigan had prayed about it, she said, and she didn’t believe, as her husband did, that what Grandmere could do was evil. It had come to her in her prayers that Grandmere was a gift to her from God. It was part of the reason that she had agreed to free Margot and Veronique on their eighteenth birthdays: as an offering. She wouldn’t free Grandmere—oh, she would never do that; Grandmere was much too valuable—but she could free the girls. It was only right, she’d said.
But the mistress had no idea.
Grandmere was a healer. But there was nothing mystical, nothing magical about what she could do. She had a way with plants: knew which ones could temper a fever, which could draw out infection.
The boy twitched on the table. A bubble of black vomit formed at the corner of his mouth, and Margot hissed in disgust.
It wasn’t Grandmere that had the magic. It was her.
Most of the time, the poultices and teas Grandmere made from the plants and herbs that grew along river and deep in the bayou were enough to soothe a colicky baby or settle the mistress’ nerves. But there were times—when a wagon wheel ran across Girard’s foot, when a local teamster’s leg wound festered and poisoned his blood—when Grandmere’s herbs weren’t enough.
And then Margot would use her touch.
She wasn’t a healer. Not exactly. But when she laid her hand on someone, she could feel the things that were wrong inside of them, feel them deep inside herself, like a reflection in a mirror. Their pain was not her pain, any more than a reflection was actually her face, but she could feel it, study it in all its details. When Girard’s foot had broken, she’d run a finger along his swollen ankle and was suddenly aware of every bone, every nerve, in her own foot. She knew the size and place of the fracture, could feel the other slave’s pain vibrating deep inside her flesh. Grandmere had made a special plaster for him, and now, months later, he barely limped.
She stepped closer to the table to study the boy. She had known Alexander since the day of his birth. He was a sweet child, and she loved him in the twisted, complicated way of slave to master.
Warily, she laid a finger lightly at the boy’s throat. She winced. His skin was like chilled cowhide. She felt the fever feasting on his organs, digesting the boy from the inside out. Felt the effort each breath cost him. He was far gone, and neither she nor her grandmother had the power to raise the dead. She pressed her hand against his forehead, taking shallow breaths, repulsed by the meaty stench of decay that mingled with his sweat. She forced herself to hold still, to search for the thing that was most wrong inside him. Alexander was dreaming: of hot-breathed monsters, of blood. The hallucinations twisted and warped, terrifying his fevered five-year-old mind, and Margot felt an answering vibration inside her own head. The boy had not much left in him.
“Chére?”
Margot started. Her grandmother stood in the doorway, a wooden bowl of water in one hand, herbs tied with rough twine in the other. Under the stench of vomit and rot, Margot smelled lavender. They locked eyes, her grandmother’s unspoken question writ clear on her broad face. Could he be saved?
With a nearly imperceptible shrug, Margot bent over the boy and pressed her hands tightly against his shoulders. His pulse was sluggish, stuttering beneath her palm. She held herself motionless, feeling the struggling rhythm in her palm, feeling it in her own chest. Her heart searched for his, found it, grabbed hold. She felt the boy’s heart spasm, then … beat by beat, begin to speed up, settle down, until it had matched itself to hers.
The little boy exhaled and Margot caught his breath in her mouth, tasting death on her tongue.
Grandmere whispered. “Hold now, chére. Keep him bound here with the living.”
As if from a great distance, she felt Grandmere slip a reed down Alexander’s throat, spooning meadowsweet-laced water into him, the wintergreen scent mixing with their body odors, felt the weight of the cooling linens against her skin as they were drawn over the boy. As her grandmother worked, Margot held fast to him, riding his nightmares with him, reaching out when the linens needed changing. Time passed unnoticed until, finally, the fever had retreated to a small, hard thing in the center of the boy. She focused all her concentration there, drawing it toward her like a magnet draws a nail. She saw it, felt it: the heart strengthening, the bleeding slowed. Felt death’s hold on the boy loosen, then give way.
And then Grandmere was there, easing her down against the cool brick wall, brushing cool water against her face.
“C’est très bon, chére,” Grandmere whispered. “It is good, child.”
Turning, she went to the boy who was now whimpering on the table.
“Child, drink this tea. It will make you strong.” Grandmere was pleading with the boy, trying to get him to sip from a little china teacup, but the boy pulled away, shaking his head and crying for his mother. Margot looked up. Alexander’s dark hair stood in stiff spikes around his head, and though his skin still glowed a sickly yellow, his eyes were bright and he looked strong as he struggled against her grandmother.
“Maman,” wailed the child. “Fortuna, I want my maman!”
Grandmere hefted the boy into her strong arms. “Come. We take you to your mama, then to your bed, oui?”
Still gripping the boy, she turned to look at her granddaughter. “Rest, petit. Tout va bien. The mistress will be out of her mind with sorrow about Miss Lily, but seeing the boy will help some. I will come back as soon as I can and we will have our coffee, yes?” She smiled. “Everything will be alright, chére.”
And then she was gone, holding tight to the still-wailing Alexander.
Margot laid her head against the cool bricks and closed her eyes. She didn’t have visions. Not like Grandmere. But she’d seen the monsters inside Alexander’s head, felt what he felt.
She’d felt the thickness of the Hannigan’s bedroom rug beneath her feet. Smelled the bittersweet smoke of her master’s cigar.
And there’d been something else as well.
A smell.
A terrible smell.
She’d walked inside Alexander’s head as he entered that room, dark, the drapes drawn, even though it was late morning.
Master James, laying there on the bed. Still, so still.
That smell, that bad smell, growing stronger.
Margot clenched her eyes tight, her mouth open in a silent, agonized scream.
James Hannigan lay in a pool of vomit, eyes open, his last view in this life the red velvet ceiling of the Prytania Street bedroom.
She screamed because she understood, even if little Alexander was too young to, that her master had finally been caught by the saffron scourge after all. And nothing would ever be alright again.
5
Margot stood on the oriental rug that ran the length of the back hall, listening as the house b
reathed around her. Deep in the walls, the old timbers creaked, as the stone foundation settled itself into the damp Louisiana soil.
The Hannigan house was in mourning.
For three days, James Hannigan had lain in the bedroom of his mansion, alone, his body swelling, bloating in the heat. There had been no one to bury him. In that hot, hellish summer, there had been too many bodies stacking up in the streets and sewers and parks of New Orleans. Too many bodies and too few gravediggers. In death, not even his money could buy him a swift burial.
A business partner—a cattleman from Texas—who owed Hannigan a favor had finally rented a dray and hired four freedmen to go to the Prytania Street mansion. There, they had wrapped the stinking, leaking corpse in an oil cloth and carried it to Lafayette Cemetery. One of the freedmen, an old, mixed-blood Indian named Cale, had dabbed sweet oil on the dead man’s forehead, whispered a prayer into his ear. Then the freedmen had rolled the body into a shallow grave—hoping that someone would come to build a proper crypt before the rains came—and hurried away.
A week later, word had arrived at Far Water of the burial.
It would be ten more weeks before the epidemic would finally begin to burn itself out, and what was left of the family could return to the city.
They’d been back in New Orleans over a month now, and though the dying outside the door had slowly ground to a stop, inside the mansion, the echoes still sounded, searing to ash the life Margot and her sister had known.
“I am going out.”
Margot started as Catherine Hannigan brushed past her in the dim hallway.
“Mistress, wait,” she cried.
Her mistress stopped, only half turning as she pulled on a pair of black riding gloves. “What is it?’
Her voice was sharp, the tone with which she said everything these days … when she spoke at all. Margot hesitated. Her mistress looked up, a deep line of displeasure creasing the space between her brows. In the months since the deaths of her husband and daughter, her pale skin had become nearly translucent, her face all hard, sharp angles.
