by Lynn Shurr
When Laura turned, she saw the master of the chateau standing in the hallway and still watching her with concern. Robert LeBlanc did not need one more thing to worry about, she thought. Passing the unsmiling portraits of Aurelien and Camille LeBlanc, she placed one hand on the shoulder of their descendant, looked into those bittersweet brown eyes and said, “I do love this outfit, and you were right about the color. Thank you for your kindness. I have been very ungracious.”
She kissed him lightly on the cheek and before his reaction could register, she turned and called over her shoulder, “But I do need more clothes. I am off to buy out Helen’s Boutique.” She sailed out the door certain she had acted perfectly normal even if her life was falling apart.
Only later, when she placed her purchases in Caroline LeBlanc’s massive armoire did the void threaten to engulf her again. The large house sat as quiet as a creaky old place could. Dinner had been rushed, really just leftovers from lunch, as Miss Lilliane wanted to attend six o’clock Mass and Angelle agitated to go trick-or-treating. No costume had been planned since the child was supposed to be in New Orleans with her mother. At last, Pearl took the girl to her own room and decked her in ropes of cheap beads, tied scarves around her small waist and black curls and made up her pale face as a gypsy dancer with bright red lipstick, black penciled eyebrows and thick mascara. Satisfied and toting a huge shopping bag donated by Laura, Angelle went to wait in the truck for her father to begin the night of Halloween.
“You’ll be all right alone, Laura?” Robert asked.
“Pearl is here. She’ll come into town with me for the bonfire. Tell Dr. Bourgeois I don’t need a babysitter if you see him.”
“Now that sounds like Laura Dickinson, liberated woman.” He blessed her with a grin well worth receiving.
“Oh, go trick-or-treating and save a chocolate bar for me.”
She shut him out of her room, but she could hear his deep laughter in the hall. When the masculine sound of him vanished and the new clothes hung in closet, she began to cry, a night and day’s worth of accumulated tears sinking into the lovely cathedral window quilt on the antique bed.
Chapter Eleven
Laura arrived just before the starting time of the program. She could not quite face the sympathy and curiosity of half of Chapelle. The bonfire blazed on the green under the careful supervision of Chief Fontenot and his assistant. Its scent covered the charred odor from the ruins of Domengeaux’s store, and its light drew youngsters like moths. Some arrived still swathed in homemade costumes of bed sheets and old shirts stuffed with straw. Others came encased in plastic cartoon characters bought at the Dollar Store. The crackle of the fire and of candy wrappers filled the tepid night air.
Oldsters in light sweaters had moved aluminum lawn chairs under the oaks after Mass ended. Black parents shoved their small children toward good seats on the grass before the fire then faded back into the shadows to listen at a distance to tales they already knew.
Laura introduced herself and opened the program with the story of Will-o-the-wisp, the blacksmith so mean the Devil gave him a coal to start a little Hell of his own. She felt as if she glowed like the flames at her back, the aura of the fire and the color of her blouse reflecting redly on her face and hands. She set the stage and gave way to Father Ardoin, a contrast of black and white, his face like the full moon in the October sky, his glasses small shining stars in the flickering light. With relish, the priest told the one about the traveling preacher in the haunted house. Hands trembling and familiar face grotesque with imaginary fright, he evoked laughter from the children and smiles from the parents. The little ones clapped when he ended.
All fell silent as Tante Lu made her way to the fire. Its diminishing flames yellowed her face to the hue of old ivory. Father Ardoin placed a rocking chair and seated the old woman who had wrapped her sparse white hair in a red bandanna as if recreating a scene from another time—black woman, red tignon, yellow firelight. Rocking slowly and beginning softly, she told the tale of the loup-garou, the werewolf. This story, it happened right here in this parish about seventy years ago—for true.
“There was this rich planter, name of Grayson Darby, who loved a black girl, name of Mary. Each night she came to him along the cane field road and each night returned the same way to her cabin. Now, Grayson Darby warned her not to come to him on nights with a full moon because a full moon brought out the evil in men. Mary, she thought he was just ashamed ’cause she wasn’t a white, and he thought the nightriders might come and make an example of them both. Or maybe, Grayson feared his beloved sister would see her walking the road in the bright moonlight and figure out that they was meeting. That girl, Mary, though, had lots of spirit, and she was determined to go to her lover whenever she wanted. So, one full moon night, she set out along the cane field road.”
Tante Lu threw back her head and howled over and over. Small children fled back into the crowd to hug their parents’ legs, and older children shivered with anticipation. Adolescent boys took advantage of the howls to place their arms around their dates and pull them tight against their sides.
“The field hands found Mary’s body in the morning, savaged, the throat torn open by a wild animal. Crazy with grief, her lover took his dogs out the next evening to track the beast.” Tante Lu sent another series of howls ululating off the church walls.
“When they didn’t return, a search party organized to find Grayson’s body. They found Darby unconscious among the torn bodies of his hounds, blood in puddles everywhere. He could not remember what had attacked him.
“On the next rainy night with the still nearly full moon peeking in and out of the clouds, Mary’s brother, who had tried to keep the lovers apart, died in his own cabin, bitten all over by big fangs. There were no footprints in the mud by the open window, just the pad marks of a huge dog, a loup-garou everyone said. A werewolf had done the deed. Well, pretty soon everyone who had any silver was melting it down to make bullets against the loup-garou since that is the only way you can kill one—in the heart with a silver bullet. Grayson Darby made some himself to hunt the critter down. Now his sister was a mighty religious woman and said God would protect them, but Grayson locked her in the house the night he went to kill the loup-garou.”
Tante Lu howled again, but this time, it came out long and sad. “Grayson’s sister heard only one shot late that night, and in the morning when the servants came and let her out, she found her brother dead on the cane road. He had put a silver bullet through his own heart. After that, no one else was killed by the loup-garou. That family is gone now. The sister entered a convent to pray for Grayson’s soul. I nursed her on her deathbed, and it’s she who told me the story—but me, I remember those murders well.”
The crowd thinned slowly as children became sleepy or scared and were carried home by their parents, but the adolescents drew closer to the fire and waited for more. Tante Lu began a second story.
Leaning against an oak on the green, Laura could see the ruins of her apartment. She had lived there such a short time and yet impressions of the place stayed in her mind—of sitting by the window on these autumn nights listening to the low whispers of boys, the nervous laughter of girls beneath the trees. These old live oaks were made for lovers with low-slung branches to recline against and thick evergreen canopies touching the ground to form private nooks in their shadows. Over by the fire, Tante Lu spun a tale of supernatural love.
Laura half listened to the old woman, half listened to her own body, so empty, so bereft. She recognized him, despite the darkness, as soon as he stepped from the crowd and came toward her. “What are you doing way back here?” he asked. “Tante Lil took Pearl and Angelle home a little while ago, but Pearl asked me to watch out for you. She didn’t like the look in your eyes when you drove here.”
“I’m fine.” Laura’s voice quavered and she turned her face deeper into the shadows.
“You’re crying.”
With a touch of his hand, Robert LeBlanc tur
ned her face back toward a sliver of moonlight coming through the branches. “Don’t do this. Be the woman who took a tough job in a strange place despite Tante Lil. Be the one who Vivien can’t grind into the dirt. I want that woman. I’d give her back all she lost and more.”
He placed his lips against her partly open mouth, licked the salty tears from the rim and deepened the kiss. He pressed her pliant body between the hardness of his and the rough bark of the tree. Tonight with the rush of the festivities, the man who should shave twice a day hadn’t, and the abrasive texture of his beard rasped seductively against the skin of her cheek. So male, so close, for a moment she could not recall her dead husband’s name or face. When she did, he felt the change—the stiffness of her body pulling away from the trunk of the tree, the turning of her head, the closing of her lips.
“I’ll wait until that woman comes back,” he said and left her alone beneath the tree in that little sliver of moonlight. She recognized the sound of the engine when he started his old truck and returned to Chateau Camille.
Out on the green, the fire died to embers. Other elderly folks had taken Tante Lu’s place by the coals and swapped yarns. Father Ardoin helped the old woman to his car for the drive back to Nebo. The youth of Chapelle, paired off, lay together beneath low slung branches. Laura tripped over one couple as she stumbled toward the fire.
“Hey, lady, watch where you’re going,” the annoyed boy shouted in a voice that cracked at the end of the sentence.
Back on the green, Chief Fontenot and his assistant killed the embers of the bonfire with a fire hose. She thanked them and the remnants of the crowd for coming and drove out to the Chateau, alone and chilled by the night air.
Chapter Twelve
Even though wide awake and glad she had bought the modest blue cotton nightgown instead of sleeping in the nude, Laura had no desire to rise and get dressed when Angelle tiptoed into her room at seven a.m. to invite the houseguest to attend Mass. Her head throbbed against the old down pillows, and she wanted nothing more than to put one over her face and spend the rest of day hiding from Robert LeBlanc and his attention, a difficult trick since she lived in the man’s home.
Angelle, who had taken her first communion not too long ago and still took her religion seriously, appeared to ponder the state of Laura’s eternal soul before capitulating. “I guess it’s okay. My daddy never goes to Mass, and he’s not going to hell, he says.”
Between Angelle’s farewell benediction and the sound of the Lincoln heading down the drive toward Chapelle, Laura dozed. When the old house stood quiet on Sunday morning, she rose and slipped on the matching blue robe that buttoned securely beneath her chin and tied tightly around her waist and made her way toward the kitchen to brew some coffee as an antidote for her headache. She ran straight into Pearl.
The sideboard held a pitcher of orange juice, croissants in a basket and a caddy of butter and jelly. The housekeeper plugged in a hotplate holding a carafe of the strong and bitter coffee that made all other coffees taste like dishwater after one developed an immunity to—or an addiction for—it.
“We’ll have eggs and grits when Miss Lilliane and the child get back from Mass. Mr. Bob is out in the barn checking on the cattle,” the housekeeper said.
“Please.” Laura snatched the full cup of liquid caffeine Pearl held out to her. Sadly it was too hot to gulp. She took one cautious sip and asked, “Mr. LeBlanc never goes to Mass?”
“Never. There isn’t much place in the Church for a divorced man. He can’t take the sacraments, you know, and Mr. Bob, he refused to get an annulment. Said he wasn’t paying the Church to declare his daughter illegitimate.”
The screen door on the kitchen entrance slammed. Laura seized an unbuttered croissant and the cup of black coffee and fled the dining area, saying to Pearl as she passed through the doorway that she felt ill and would eat the roll in bed. Then, she worried her excuse would bring Robert LeBlanc into her bedroom to check on her condition.
As she heard the master of the house ask Pearl for coffee, Laura bypassed her own room. She slipped quietly up the wide stairs at the front of the hall and entered the old library, the only place offering sanctuary on a floor of deserted rooms. At first, she sat on the edge of the antique desk and sipped the coffee. Then, nibbling on the croissant, she paced the bookshelves. They held mostly old legal texts, some in cracked brown leather bindings as old as the desk, others dating back only half a dozen years in a cheaper modern paper format.
She crossed the room to where the books shifted from non-fiction to novels. Nearer to the sunny gallery a few pieces of wicker furniture gathered dust and aging novels crammed the shelves, some true collector’s items like the improbable romances of Emma Southworth, others, like the original Nancy Drew books, of great nostalgic value, no better or worse than the pop fiction being written for young girls today, but certainly more innocent. Clearly, the LeBlanc women of several generations had claimed this corner of the library for their own, escaping into novels from their trying, or boring, everyday lives.
The topmost shelves of this corner, well beyond the reach of small children and the view of the casual browser, held perhaps twenty small tan leather volumes without author or title on their spines. With stained covers the books looked much handled. Laura tipped the first of the set off the shelf. A small metal clasp with a tiny keyhole guarded the contents, but either broken or aged beyond use, the lock opened easily when Laura nudged it with a fingernail.
A fine feminine hand had embossed the first yellowed page in brown ink—The Diary of Caroline Montleon LeBlanc, 1851, Written in hope of informing future generations about the customs of our times. The volume did exactly that. The words chattered gaily about wedding plans: lengths of sprigged silk purchased and lists of nuptial gifts received, each with a small check beside it to indicate that a “gracious note of appreciation” had been sent by the bride.
Laura pulled the wicker chair toward the window and settled into the musty cushions to retreat for a while into a more untroubled time. The diary read like a travel guide to the antebellum homes along the Mississippi and the Teche, although many of these were gone now, lost to war, decay and fire. But in those times, the mansions had held the relatives and friends of the Montleons and the LeBlancs. The bridal couple lingered six weeks with the most congenial company and two weeks or less at the homes of those presumably less cordial. No hint of what had shortened some of the visits ever crept into the descriptions of endless evening balls, daily picnics and afternoons of horse racing.
Laura skimmed through the diary, skipping over passages that seemed repetitious or where the ink had faded enough to make reading a strain. She contrasted the contents to her own simple chapel wedding and brief honeymoon. She and David had been so eager to get on with the real things in life, creating careers, establishing a home and family. If Laura had kept a diary of those brief months, David’s name would have been on each page and the contents too personal to be used to inform future generations.
Caroline mentioned her husband only occasionally. “Adrien seems to be always the victor at the horse races, both on and off the race course,” or “Adrien danced with each and every lady, charming even those matrons who watch from their chairs aside the dance floor.” At the end of the volume, the bride adopted a more personal tone, describing her triumphal entry into Chateau Camille upon the newlyweds’ return from a year of post-nuptial visiting.
With the LeBlanc field hands and servants lining the roadside for several miles, a holiday having been declared by their master, Caroline entered the mansion “where I was immediately taken to the chamber of Mama LeBlanc who has not been well. I confided to her that I believed myself to be with child and have suffered so little indisposition that I may still be of use to her and Papa LeBlanc in running the plantation despite my condition. Indeed, I feel full of well-being and do not fear what is to come in the least. Mama Leblanc assures me the same midwife who brought Adrien safely into the world after so many fru
itless deliveries is still among the servants and will assist me in ways known only to her. Above all things, Mama LeBlanc wishes for many grandchildren and does not want to burden me with duties in my delicate condition. Above all things, I have told her, I wish to be of use to Chateau Camille where already I feel quite secure.”
Laura closed the first volume and repositioned her chair in order to stretch for another. She suspected the bride was about to experience some motherin-law trouble. At the same time, Laura wished she felt secure beneath the roof of Chateau Camille, peopled as it was with a hostile aunt, a distant servant, an impetuous child and a sexually attractive man. She could hear his heavy tread in the hall below. The sound of his presence and the memory of his kiss last evening made her want to both hide behind the library draperies and rush down the stairs to be near him. She chose to remain hidden with the diary still in her hands and recently stirred memories of David still in her heart.
Robert LeBlanc’s deep voice penetrated to her hideout. Anger made it echo in the stairwell.
“Why wasn’t Angelle with you in New Orleans?…Couldn’t find her! Why the hell didn’t you send Thurston, Vivien?…Didn’t like Laura’s attitude. Yes, Laura. She’s staying with us since Domengeaux’s burnt to the ground and almost took Angelle with it. Well, how could you know when you were on your way back to New Orleans? Go to hell Vivien! I only called to say that you can tell your parents if they want to see their grandchild they must come in person.” He slammed the receiver so hard its bell rang once in protest. Then, he left in a rage of slamming doors.
Leaning over the antique desk and peering through the window with its tiny ornamental balcony overlooking the rear gardens, Laura watched the angry man cut through the flower beds, taking a direct line to the barns as if he could not tolerate the convoluted pathways. Laura returned to the bookshelves. She wanted to select a second volume of the diaries to steady herself after being caught in the reverberations of Robert’s explosion. She desired a retreat into the past when life was lived with grace and the demands made upon women were predictable and preordained, but through the French doors on the other side of the room, she saw the black Lincoln nose like a turning whale into the drive. Reluctantly, she shelved the first volume, replaced her chair and went down to dress for breakfast.
