Property (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Valerie Martin

  But I had scarcely closed my eyes when my drifting thoughts were focused upon the sound of whispering. At first it seemed to be coming from my pillow. One voice, then another, then a pause. I turned onto my back and lay still, listening. There was nothing. From far off I heard a horse’s hooves approaching the corner, turning off toward the Place d’Armes. I closed my eyes. At once the whispering began again. The voice was urgent this time. Was it a man or a woman? No matter how I concentrated, I couldn’t make out one word. It was coming from the floor. After a pause the other voice answered at some length. I sat up in the bed. Was it the floor or the wall? This one sounded like a woman. She was vexed, insistent. I slipped out of the bed and knelt on the bare floor. The voice stopped; there was no answer. A minute passed in which I heard only my own breathing. Just as I decided to get back into the bed, the second voice—I thought it must be a man—began again, lowered, placating, attempting to calm the first. It was coming from the wall, of course. There was a narrow alley between the cottage and the larger town house next door. Yet I was sure the sound was rising up through the boards between my knees. The space beneath the house was open on that side, but it was low, a man would have to crouch to get in there. Whisper, whisper. At length I made out the word “afraid,” and another word repeated, which was either “never” or “better.” I dropped onto my hands and pressed my ear against the floor. At once the voice fell silent.

  I’m going mad, I thought.

  Part III

  Insurrection

  I HOPED MY husband would be occupied with his roofing project and I might at least have the leisure to change from my traveling clothes without seeing him, but as soon as we made the last turn into the drive there he was, stamping up and down on the porch, waving a walking stick which he clearly did not require. He was shouting at Mr. Sutter, who sat astride his horse. In the next moment this gentleman tore off at a gallop, charging past us without a word as if pursued by the devil. My husband came to the steps to attend our arrival.

  He was wearing a rumpled white suit without a cravat, riding boots, and an oversized planter’s hat that squashed his red hair into a clump above his eyebrows. The sight of him was like a door slamming in my face. I even heard the catch of the latch, though perhaps it was only Sarah’s baby swallowing hard. Sarah had made a paste of corn bread in her palm and was feeding the child from her fingertips. The creature couldn’t seem to get enough of it. I noticed two white teeth coming in to its lower jaw. As I watched, it smacked its lips and gave me an absurdly cheerful grin. It would find little to be happy about in being weaned, I thought, and Sarah’s long face told me she thought so too.

  The driver reined in the horses and the rocking of the carriage smoothed out as they slowed to a walk. We were close enough for my husband to take off his hat and wave it at us. “I just want to turn around and go back,” I said to no one. Sarah stuffed a last bit of paste into the baby’s mouth and brushed the remains off over the side of the carriage. We came to a halt, the driver leaped from his seat, and in a moment we stood in the dirt facing one another. The welcome-home scene. Only let it be brief, I thought.

  “Thank heaven you are safe,” my husband exclaimed, relieving me of my traveling case. “I have been worried half to death.” Sarah pulled down the sack of Mother’s linens and slipped past us into the house. The slave’s blessing, I thought, forever exempt from the duties of greeting. “I’m safe enough,” I said to my husband. “But I’m very tired. If you don’t mind, I’ll go straight to my room and rest until supper.”

  “Of course,” he said, shadowing me up the steps and through the door in a kind of anxious, ridiculous dance. “But I must inform you of the report I have just received from Mr. Sutter. A group of runaways has organized at Pass Manchac. Their plan is to march downriver picking up recruits along the way. They mean to join another group at Donaldsonville. They have called in the militia there. I’m surprised you weren’t warned by patrols on the road. Mr. Sutter said a slave at Overton informed the overseer of the plot yesterday. The revolt is planned for this very night.”

  “And this informer is a free man today,” I snapped. “Doesn’t it ever occur to anyone that these plots only exist in the brains of malcontents who have realized they can get their freedom by scaring us out of our wits!”

  This silenced him long enough for me to get to the stairs. I went up to my room without further comment and found Sarah unpacking, the baby already asleep in its crate. “Leave that,” I said. “Go and tell Delphine to make me a tisane; my head is splitting.” As she went out, I collapsed in the rocking chair. I fell to thinking of my husband’s remark about the militia. Indeed we had seen no patrols, no other carriage to speak of. We saw one negro riding a mule and another leading a goat by a bit of rope. The epidemic was over in the city, the weather was fine, yet mile after mile the river road was empty and still. Had this rumor so engaged the population that they were afraid to move?

  If there really was a conspiracy north of us, and they intended to meet up with cohorts in Donaldsonville, they would have to cross the river. And how would they do this? The narrowest stretch and the most reliable ferry was just south of our property. Did they plan to commandeer the ferry?

  Sarah came in with the tray, which she set on the side table. I watched her back as she poured out the tea and stirred in the sugar. It struck me that she knew more about this story than I did, that she and Delphine could probably name the informer as well as the leader of the runaways. When she brought me the cup, I studied her face, her lowered eyes, her expressionless mouth. She was feeling sullen, I concluded.

  “He’ll be locking us up tonight, I gather,” I said, taking the cup, my eyes still on her face. She gave me a sudden penetrating look, then turned away. I drank my tea. A blade of anxiety sliced through the pain in my head, laying it open and raw. In Sarah’s look I had read the same question I had in my own mind: How much do you know?

  WHAT DID WE eat that night? It seems a place to start. There was a gumbo, but what kind? It was the last pleasurable moment; Sarah lifting the lid of the tureen, and the delicious aroma filling the room. My aunt’s cook, Ines, had served it often enough in the town, but in my opinion, no one made it better than Delphine. Was it chicken? After that there was another course and another, but what?

  My husband droned on about the crop, as he thought it unwise to discuss the threat of a revolt before the servants, though there was only Sarah. He must have pictured Sarah telling Delphine or Rose, who would tell some passing hand, and thus it would make its way to the quarter, as if every negro in fifty miles didn’t already know all about it.

  I drank a good deal of wine. Sarah lit the lamps and served the coffee. The room seemed smoky to me, airless. When Sarah went out, my husband got up and bolted the shutters on the casements, which made it seem like a prison. “I’d like a glass of port,” I said. My husband suggested that he had a good bottle in his office. I followed him there.

  “Will you be joining the patrol?” I asked as he poured out a tablespoon of port.

  “Not at first,” he said. “They’ll be starting near the Pass and pushing down this way.” He held the glass out to me.

  “I’d like a little more than that, if you don’t mind,” I said.

  He looked puzzled, then took my meaning. “I know these conspiracies must be torture to your nerves,” he said, filling the glass.

  “On the contrary,” I said. “It gives me something to think about besides my sewing.”

  He ignored this remark. “In truth, I’m reluctant to leave the house. I can’t trust anyone to stand guard. If the informant told the truth, this plot has infiltrated every quarter from Pointe Coupée to the city on both sides of the river.” He opened his cabinet and took down two pistols.

  “With the militia called out, they can have no chance of success,” I observed. “What do they possibly hope to accomplish?”

  “They just want to murder as many of us as they can,” he said. “They don’t thin
k further than that.”

  I sipped my port, thinking of them gathered around their fires of an evening, their rude passions inflamed by the wild talk of some preacher, planning how best to kill us all. And it wasn’t just the field hands. In New Orleans, I had heard of an American lady who discovered her maid attempting to poison the entire household by lacing the sugar with arsenic. What benefit would her mistress’s demise be to her, since she would only be sold again, perhaps to a more severe mistress? It puzzled me. “I suppose it is just the numbers,” I said.

  My husband cast me a questioning look, distracted by the business of tamping powder into one of his pistols.

  “It is because they outnumber us so,” I explained. “They don’t understand why they can’t do whatever they please.”

  “It is because they are fiendish brutes,” my husband said.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Perhaps you are right,” I said.

  He laid the pistol down and gave me his attention. “There is another matter I wish to speak with you about, Manon. Will you hear me out?”

  My inheritance, I thought. I was about to find out how he planned to squander my father’s money. “I’m at your convenience,” I said.

  He raised one leg so that he was half-sitting on the end of his desk. “While you were away, I thought a greal deal of you. More than I do when you are here.”

  “ ‘Absence makes . . .’ ” I waved my hand at the rest.

  “It wasn’t that. It was that I knew, if you could have your own way, you would never return.”

  This straightforward statement of the simple truth took me by surprise. I set my glass on the side table and drew in a breath. The opportunity for honest exchange between us was rare, and I determined to take advantage of it to advance a plan, a dream, really, that I had formulated on the long drive back from town. “No,” I said. “If it were not my obligation I would never return here.”

  He narrowed his eyes as if my confession pained him, though it couldn’t have been unexpected, as he’d just remarked upon his certainty of my preference. “Isn’t there some way we can close this rift between us and live as husband and wife?” he pleaded.

  Clearly he imagined there was something he could say that would persuade me to invite him into my bedroom, an idea that had no appeal to me at all. “No,” I said.

  He studied me a moment, evidently mystified by my coldness. “It’s that simple, is it?” he said.

  “It is, yes,” I said. “But as you’ve brought up this ‘rift,’ as you call it, I do have a proposition regarding it.”

  “I am willing to hear it,” he said.

  “What I propose is that we agree to spend more time apart. Now that I have my mother’s house, I could stay in town for the season. I will have to have a cook, as Peek is gone, and I would take Sarah with me, so you might do as Mother so often advised you and buy a proper butler.”

  “I thought the loss of your mother might soften your heart toward me,” he said. “I see it has had the opposite effect.”

  “I am orphaned,” I said. “Who will defend my interests if I don’t defend them myself?”

  “I will never agree to your proposal,” he said.

  I expected this response, had indeed planned for it, holding my high card to my chest like a proper gambler. “And if I were to leave Sarah here,” I said. “What then?”

  He brought his hand to his chin and began pulling at his mustache, his eyes fixed on me with resolute puzzlement. He could see it. He would have Sarah to himself and I would be gone. He mulled it over with the same expression he gave the menu on those rare occasions when we had dined at restaurants together; the prospect of making the wrong choice vexed him sorely. “You are my wife,” he declared at last.

  “That is my misfortune,” I said.

  He stood up, returning his attention to his pistols. “I don’t see that we can afford to keep your mother’s house,” he said. “I plan to have my lawyer seek out a buyer for it.”

  My resolution failed me and my eyes filled with useless tears. “No,” I said. “I won’t consent to that.”

  He smiled indulgently, turning his pistol over in his hands. “Well,” he said. “Don’t cry, Manon. We will discuss the matter. There’s plenty of time.”

  “It’s my house,” I protested.

  He didn’t bother to answer this assertion, thereby making me more conscious of how hollow it was. I dried my eyes against my sleeve.

  “I suppose we should first see if we can get through this night without incident,” he said. “I want you and Sarah to stay in your room, but leave the door open. I plan to pass the night on the couch on the landing. I want to be able to hear you should you call for help.”

  This struck me as an idiotic plan, but I felt too defeated to object. I finished off the port and stood up, not surprised that I was dizzy. My husband came to my side and tried to take my arm, but I pulled away brusquely. He followed me a few steps, then fell back. “I have work to finish here,” he said, as if I were interested in his plans. “I will come up when I have made sure the kitchen is locked.”

  I dragged myself up the stairs. In my room I found Sarah spreading Mother’s shawl out on her mattress. The baby lay on its stomach near her feet, trying to crawl but getting nowhere. At least that one will be gone soon, I thought. I went to the window and looked out into the darkness. It was cool, clear. There was a damp breeze from the north that made me pull my own shawl tight over my chest. I should close the window before I go to bed, I thought, or put on another blanket. I considered this trivial question for a few moments as I leaned on my elbows looking out at the stars. There was a gibbous moon. How fine it would be to walk out under the trees, but that, of course, was unthinkable. “I don’t see any signs of an uprising out here,” I said to amuse myself.

  I glanced back at Sarah, who was on her knees, looking up at me, her eyebrows knit as if I’d addressed her in a language she didn’t understand. I turned back to the night, chiding myself for having spoken facetiously. The truth was that at that moment I wanted nothing more than to pour out the tale of my unhappiness to someone who loved me, but there was no such person. He’s going to sell my house, I thought, and I’ll be trapped here until I die. I scanned the roots of the tree, recalling the night I’d seen a man there looking back at me. I’d told no one, partly from a wish that my silence might result in difficulty for my husband, partly from fear that he would seize on the information to increase his hysterical vigilance. My little circuit, I thought, from hope to fear and back again.

  I heard a night bird cry and an answering call from near the kitchen. A dim light suffused the air in that direction; Delphine was awake, locked in there with Walter and Rose. He would turn the dogs loose outside before he came up. The quarter was under a strict curfew: no man, woman, or child would dare show his face until morning. All night the master would stride about his citadel, pointing his pistols at insects, breezes, and mice, and in the morning we would have breakfast as usual.

  Another blanket, I decided. It was chilly and there were no mosquitoes. I would sleep without the bar. I turned to tell Sarah to take a blanket from the armoire. She was wrapping the baby tightly in her shawl. This struck me as curious. She passed a fold over its head so that it looked like an Indian baby such as I have seen in the market in town, attached to its mother’s back by a leather strap. A papoose. That was what they called them. My eye fell upon the welcome sight of the blue bottle containing my sleeping tincture and I took a few steps to the table. I detected a motion at the doorway and turned to see what it was.

  High against the jamb, the upper part of a black face with only one eye showing peered in at me. In the same moment I saw it, it slipped away, leaving me unsure of my own eyes. My thoughts scattered in every direction, seeking some reasonable explanation: my husband had decided to take a trustworthy guard into the house after all, or this was a messenger with important news from town. My body had no such fatuous doubts. The blood that rushed to my brain left my
knees weak and my head as clear as a street swept by a hurricane. The event we all feared most had begun and there was to be no escape from it. I slumped against the bed, opened my mouth, but no sound came out. Sarah got up, cradling the bundle she had made of her baby. She went to the window. When I looked back at the doorway, there was the single eye again, watching me.

  “Sarah?” I said softly, turning slowly, cautiously, to the window. She was leaning out, holding the baby close to her chest, looking first one way, then the other. Soundlessly she held the bundle out over the sill and dropped it. I listened for the thump, the cry, but there was nothing.

  What did it mean? She turned from the window, her eyes wide, looking past me at the apparition in the doorway. She saw it too. My mind was not made easier by this revelation. I turned back, still clinging to the bedpost, though I felt my strength returning. The face was there, a little more of it now, a bit of the nose and cheek. How long did he intend to spy upon us in this absurd fashion. “What are you doing here?” I asked. How calm my voice was!