by India Millar
“No. He wants me to be his mistress in return for forgetting the debt.” I spoke brutally, expecting her to recoil in horror.
“So? What did you expect? You could do a lot worse than Abe Olders. He’s a wealthy man, and flashy enough with his money. He wouldn’t bother you too much, his wife would see to that.”
Her tone was so eager, I stared at her in disbelief.
“You want me to agree to be that man’s mistress? After Simon? Have you forgotten your son already?”
“My son? My son is dead.” She raised those old, old hands and pulled her veil back. Only her eyes were alive in a face that was seamed with pain. “All I have left is the plantation. Would you take that away from me as well? If you do, I will die.”
I believed her. I closed my eyes and shook my head.
“I can’t do it, Mama Simone,” I said wearily. “I can’t sell myself to that man, no matter what. I’m sorry. I can’t expect you to understand what it would be like for me.”
“Can’t you?” Her voice struck like the flick of a whip. I opened my eyes and stared at her in surprise. “I understand, believe me. Do you think I was always old and dry and useless?”
I raised my hand to calm her, but Mama Simone was having none of it. She leaned forward, her face thrust toward me.
“Listen to me. Martin Beaumont started courting me when I was fourteen. He told me then that he was going to marry me and that I had better get used to the idea. He told all the other young men the same thing, and they listened to him and kept away from me. He had a reputation for being handy with his fists in those days, so it wasn’t surprising. My mama and papa encouraged him, in spite of the fact that he was much older than me. After all, he had High Grove. He was a catch, Mama told me. The best I was ever going to get.”
Shades of Auntie! I looked at Mama Simone with new respect.
“He used to have me visit here. That was no hardship, I loved the place. But I didn’t love what Martin did to me. He would take me for walks outside and back me up to a tree. Feel my breasts and slide his hand up my skirt, grope at my private parts. As if that wasn’t bad enough, after a while he would take his member out and make me play with it. Told me if I told my mama about it he would beat me. As if I was going to say a word to anybody! I was so embarrassed, I would have died first. I tried to think up excuses why I didn’t want to visit, but Mama insisted.”
She paused, her filmy eyes staring into the past. For the first time, I felt something for my mother-in-law. Not love. It was too late for that. But respect. And sympathy.
“But you still married him?” I asked.
“What choice did I have? Martin told me I was going to be his wife. My parents looked on it as a given fact and were happy about it. What voice did I have in the matter? I was a child!” Her voice rose in shrill anger. “Anyway, I thought it would be better when we were married.”
“Was it?”
“Was it hell as like.” The profanity surprised me. I had never heard the mildest of curses come from Mama's lips. “He married me the day after my sixteenth birthday. Brought me here as mistress of the house. He drank so much at the wedding dinner, I thought—truth to tell, I prayed—he might be incapable. But it wasn’t so. As soon as the last guest had gone, he took me by the arm and marched me upstairs. I was shaking so hard I missed one of the steps. If his grip hadn’t been so fierce, I would have fallen. I may be wrong, but I’ve always been sure in my own mind that William was conceived on my wedding night.”
My shock must have shown plainly on my face. Mama Simone smiled without humor at my surprise.
“Surprised you, have I? Wait until I get there. Martin dragged me down to his bedroom. Mae—William’s mother—was already there, sitting on the truckle bed. Naked as a jaybird she was. She smiled when we came in and stood up and stretched as though she belonged there. Martin called something to her and she sat down again. Bewildered and terrified as I was, I could see her watching us. I think that gave me a little courage.
“‘What’s she doing here, Martin?’ I demanded.
“He looked at me as if I were mad.
“‘Where the hell else would she be?’ he asked. ‘Do you think I’m going to throw her out just because you’re here?’
“I was frozen with shock, but I was determined not to let Martin’s whore see me afeared, no matter what. Martin looked at me for a moment, absolutely gloating, and then picked me up and threw me onto the bed. Mama had taken great care to explain to me what was going to happen to me on my bridal night. She had told me I should undress behind the screen and put my nightdress on. If I was slow and careful about it, she said Martin would be between the sheets before I had finished. He would, she said, probably be as nervous as I was. I wasn’t to worry too much. That the first time would probably be over and done with very quickly. It wouldn’t be very nice, but things would get better when I got used to being a married lady.
“She was wrong. I hadn’t finished bouncing into the feather mattress before Martin was on me. He would have torn my dress off my body if it hadn’t been so carefully sewn. As it was, he got tired of trying after a few seconds and just bundled it up around my waist. He shoved his hand in my private parts and then fumbled with his buttons and the next thing I knew he was laying on top of me and his member was pushing at me and shoving until he found his way in. I screeched with pain and he threw his head back and laughed. The more I screamed, the more he obviously loved it. Mama was right about one thing, at least. It didn’t last long. Martin gave a final great shove that I thought had torn me in two and then rolled off me.
“But if I thought that was the end of the humiliation, I was not just naïve, I was stupid. I was determined not to cry. I blinked back the tears, shuffling as far away from him as I could get. My eyes were bleary, but I still saw my new husband lean on his elbow and pat the bed at the side of him. Mae was up off the truckle bed and at his side like a shot. She threw me a glance of utter triumph and then wrapped her arms around Martin, kissing him and licking his face like a puppy dog. Martin ignored me, but it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had ordered me to watch. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. She did things to him I would never have believed a woman could. Her hands and tongue were everywhere. And now and then, she spared me a glance and I saw her grin with pure malice.”
Mama Simone stopped, panting to get her breath. Her face had turned ashy grey and her lips were white. I thought her heart might truly be giving way at last.
“Mama, do you want your cordial? Shall I shout for Suzanna to bring it for you?”
“No. Let me finish. All these years I’ve told nobody about this. Not even Simon. How could I tell him what his father was like? How I hated him?” She was talking to herself, I thought. But I was wrong. Her eyes moved to my face and I was pinned by her gaze as surely as a butterfly caught by a lizard. “I couldn’t tell anybody how he humiliated me. Every night, Mae was there. Sometimes he forced himself on me while she watched. And I could see she was criticizing my performance. That she knew I couldn’t give my husband a fraction of the pleasure that she did. Sometimes he didn’t bother with me at all and just took her on the truckle bed. Quite often he slept there at her side. I know he thought he was tormenting me when he did that, and I made sure he never knew how happy it made me to be alone in that great bed.”
I swallowed my nausea. That great bed where Simon had made love to me, time after time. He didn’t know, I protested to myself. It didn’t matter. If I had known when I had loved my husband, it would have mattered. Now I thought of him with only a quiet sadness for things that might have been and I felt sick for Mama rather than myself.
“Why are you telling me?”
“Because you’ll understand. I feel that in my bones. You’ve suffered, haven’t you? You know what men—even the best of them—are capable of.” She took a deep breath and I put my hands out in front of me. No. Stop now. I don’t want to hear what you’re going to say. I’m free, at last. Don’t try and
chain me again! But she went on, relentlessly. “The only thing that stopped me from killing myself years ago was love of High Grove. Love of the house, the gardens. Love of the smell of the tobacco, drying in the sun. Love of the rhythms of it all. I cajoled Martin into planting the peach arch. Got him to decorate the house in the best style. To buy only the very best furniture from the best shops. When people commented on how charming High Grove was, he loved it. When Mae birthed William barely nine months after my wedding night, and it was obvious he was a fine, healthy child, even Martin must have felt a tad guilty. I persuaded him to keep the boy about the house, and over the years I used him to grind that guilt into Martin. I lost two babies, you know,” she added sadly. “I miscarried the first quite early. It was years before I conceived again, and Martin was sure this one was going to be a boy. He was over the moon, but it was all his fault I lost it. He’d refused to have anything to do with me, in case I miscarried again. He confined his lust to Mae. She was happy enough about it, and so was I. But she died about two months or so before my baby was due. She caught a fever and was gone in days. I knew what was going to happen straight away. I begged Martin to take another slave to his bed, but he wouldn’t. He’d got it into his head that it would be unlucky if he did, so he kept himself to me. It didn’t matter, I was relieved beyond belief to find he only expected me to pleasure him with my hands. But it didn’t last. He came home one night after a card game with his cronies, roaring drunk. Shouted he had waited long enough and he was going to have me, by God! God had nothing at all to do with it. He used me appallingly, and my baby started the next morning. He was too young to survive. He lived long enough for us to have him christened, but that was it. We named him Martin, after his father.
“There was no one to replace Mae after that. My husband said he was going to have an heir, and he did his best to make sure he did. Night after night at me. Every night the same. But still no baby. It was my fault, he said. I didn’t spend when he came to me, and everybody knew it was impossible for a woman to get with child if she didn’t enjoy it. In the end, I started to play act. Panted and moaned just like Mae had, pretended I loved what he was forcing me to do. It had nothing to do with it, of course, but I did catch on again. And this time, Martin took his lusts elsewhere. From my first missed monthly, he moved into another bedroom. Summoned whichever slave girl he fancied to his bed and left me alone. And eventually, my lovely Simon was gifted to me. Martin kept to the other room after that, with his colored gals, so there were no more babies for me. But it didn’t matter. I had Simon and I had High Grove. I gave thanks on my knees every day for my good fortune.” She nodded slowly. “And now, I’ve lost my son. And High Grove is going to be taken from me as well.”
I waited, expecting her to tell me yet again that it was my fault. I wished she had. Naked hatred would have given me the strength to argue, to tell her I wasn’t going to give myself to Abe Olders, or anybody else for that matter.
“Please. I’m begging you, as my daughter. The only thing I have left in this world is High Grove. Please, don’t allow that man to take my home away from me. I’m an old woman, I know I don’t have long left for this world. Please, tolerate him for my sake. When I’m dead, you can walk away. But not yet. Please.”
I thought of my own mother giving me away to an unknown future when I was nothing but a child myself. Of my own dear daughter, who in my turn I had abandoned. The hot tears flowed down my cheeks and dripped off my chin. Mama Simone fell to her knees and shuffled across the carpet to me. Her hand gripped mine and she leaned forward, resting her forehead on mine. Our bitter tears mingled and became one.
I put my arms around her shoulders and felt the brittle bones beneath my hands.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice as tremulous as paper blown by the wind. “It won’t be for long. I know I haven’t got that much time left on this earth. God will smile on you, I promise.”
I thought of Olders’s red face and his powerful hands and I wept again. For myself this time.
But what option did I have? Live with Olders or live with my conscience.
At that moment, I hated Simon for bringing me here.
Thirty-Six
Only if I peep through my
Fingers, may I stare straight at
The brightest sunlight.
“Is it raining?”
A silly question, but I was barely awake, and at first I thought I was still dreaming.
I rubbed my eyes, trying to focus. I had never expected to sleep. Certainly not quickly and deeply. But exhausted as I was from the horrors of that day, I was unconscious as soon as I had pulled the sheet around my shoulders.
And now William was leaning over me, shaking me gently. He was dripping wet, so wet that the sleeve of my sleeping robe was soaked beneath his hand.
I shook my head, trying to dislodge sleep from my mind.
“William? What is it? Has something happened? Is it Mama Simone?”
I spoke louder than I had intended, and William put his finger quickly in front of his mouth to silence me.
“Shush, ma’am,” he whispered. “It’s not Mistress Simone, no. Will you come with me? I need your help.”
The stark fear in William’s face urged me out of the bed. I tugged the belt on my sleeping robe tight and followed him out of my room. I was bewildered. Strangely, the thing that still worried me most was the fact that he was soaking wet. I glanced out of the window and saw the night was clear. Suddenly, a great horror came upon me. I was sure the plantation—even perhaps the house—was on fire, and William was wet from trying to douse the flames. But there was no smell of burning, no flickering of flames.
“Ma’am, please!” I had stopped to sniff and look, and William’s agonized voice urged me forward.
I was frightened. But I trusted William and I knew he would never have disturbed me except for something very serious, so I went with him. Oscar gamboled at my side, delighted by this new game. I patted him to keep him quiet.
William led me down the main staircase and out the kitchen door. I hung back, wanting to ask what was happening, but he shook his head urgently and tugged me forward. But not far.
Just around the corner, in the backyard, he stopped so suddenly I nearly walked into him. Oscar whimpered and William cuffed him gently around his ears. I heard myself make a very similar noise and wondered hysterically if William was going to hit me as well.
Callum was half-lying, half-propped against the wall. He put his hand up to greet me, but the effort was clearly too much as it fell back with a thump. In the clear moonlight I saw that, like William, he was wet. In that bright, unforgiving light I also saw a spreading puddle of black around him.
I fell to my knees, catching him as he began to slide down the wall.
“Callum? What’s happened? William? What’s he doing here? What’s happened to him?”
He was a dead weight and I could barely hold him upright. William hunkered down beside me and together we managed to haul him back up.
“I’m sorry.” William glanced across at me. “There was nowhere else I could take him where he’d be sure of being safe. He didn’t want me to bring him here. It’s my fault, not his.”
Somewhere in the deep of my mind, I registered the startling change in William’s manner. Then Callum moaned and I pushed the thought aside.
“I don’t understand. But never mind for the minute. We have to get him inside so I can take a look at him. Can we carry him between us?”
“I guess so.” William bent and flung Callum’s arm around his shoulders. “Ready? Pull together.”
We dragged him to his feet. William was very strong, taking most of the weight. I leaned into Callum, and between us we managed to drag him inside.
“Can we get him upstairs?” William asked urgently. “Nobody going to see him there. We need to get his clothes off him. I’ll throw them into the hogs to leave no trace. And I got to wash away that blood from the wall. Can I leave him with you?”
>
I nodded. In the midst of my confusion, all I could think of was that Callum was badly hurt. Everything else could wait. Between us—with Oscar hampering every step of the way—we got him up to my bedroom and laid him on the truckle bed. It was easier than trying to haul him onto the bed proper, but I hated the thought of him lying there, where Mae and William’s father had once enjoyed each other’s bodies while Mama Simone was forced to watch.
William disappeared at once. Bewildered, I moved like a sleepwalker to the washbasin and wrung out a towel in water. Only then did I realize I had no idea where Callum was hurt. He seemed to be covered in watery blood. I started at his face and worked my way down. When I got to his legs, I found the wound and moaned out loud.
His left thigh looked as though the flesh had been ripped away by giant teeth. Within seconds, the towel was bloody and soaked through. I ran and rinsed it and wiped again, and again and again. When the flow of blood finally eased, I tugged Callum’s clothes off, bundling them into one of my old silk shawls. Naked in the moonlight, it seemed to me that his body was so white, he could have no blood left in him.
I was shivering with shock and fear by the time William came back to us.
“You done real well,” he said approvingly. “He needs to stay here for a while. Can you handle that?”
I stared at William incredulously. I had a naked, bleeding man in my bedroom in the middle of the night. I had no idea what had happened to him, not even how badly he was actually hurt. It was all so bizarre, I wondered for a moment if I was still asleep and dreaming. Then Oscar licked my hand with his warm, wet tongue and I knew I was awake. I took a deep breath.
“What’s happened, William? Tell me now,” I demanded.
“He got caught in a man trap.” Callum, caught in a man trap? How? Why? My mouth opened but no words came out. “He was real lucky. I saw the glint of it and dived at him. I was just a bit too late, but at least it just got the flesh and not his bone. We’d have had no chance if he’d broken his leg.”
