Ever My Love: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 2) (16 page)

Gabriel kicked as the man tried to get the rope around him,
sending him overboard, though he grabbed hold of the side of the boat before
the river took him. Gabriel seized the other man by the ankle and yanked. The
raft man fell, hitting his head on the oarlock, and he was out cold. The odds
were better now. Gabriel was up and poised to lunge –

The pistol fired. Gabriel kept coming. The pistol fired
again, and this time he was thrown back to the bottom of the boat, hardly aware
he’d been shot.

A cold steel barrel ground into Gabriel’s cheek. The pistol
man grinned. “You got any more fight in you, I’ll have to kill you. Monroe
won’t say nothing about it neither.”

Gabriel lay still. They had him, for now.

The rowboat was taking on water from the pistol shot having
gone through the bottom. George and Hunter were quickly trussed. Next the men
double-roped Gabriel and shoved him into their own boat. They kicked the
rowboat off. It’d likely sink before the current pushed it ashore.

Back at the raft, more men took them aboard. Two kept
pistols on him as Gabriel tied a handkerchief around his upper arm where the
ball had gone clean through the muscle. Thank God it missed the bone. When he
was finished, they cuffed his hands.

A rougher lot of men Gabriel had never seen. The slaves
along the back edge of the flatboat were subdued, cowed by the rafters’ violence,
actual and threatened. With chains threaded through the ankle and wrist
shackles they wore, they sat with their hands between their knees, their heads
bowed. The women did not dare make eye contact with any of the rafters, fearing
they’d be taken from amongst the other slaves to relieve what was no more than
an itch to these brutes.

A lanky rafter, dressed in torn jeans and a stained canvas
vest over his calico shirt, chewed on his cigar. With a pistol hanging loosely
from his hand, he ambled over to examine his latest catch. He kicked at
Gabriel’s fine boots. “What you got here, Wilson?”

“He talks pretty as he looks, Monroe. Reckon we’s among our
betters.”

Monroe took the cigar out of his mouth. “S’at so. What’s
your name, fella?”

Gabriel’s hands were bound and he struggled to stand. Wilson
shoved him back to his knees. Gabriel was so angry he truly saw these men
through a red haze. Keep your head, he told himself, his teeth so tightly
clamped they ached. They can’t take a white man – and that’s what they think I
am. Handle it with your wits, not your fists, Chamard.

His knees might be on the deck, but he straightened his back
and looked in the man’s startling yellow eyes, as flat and depthless as a
reptile’s. “I am Dr. Gabriel Chamard. My father is Bertrand Chamard of Cherleu
Plantation. My aunt is Josephine DeBlieux of Toulouse. These men belong to
Madame DeBlieux, and she will not tolerate their mistreatment.”

Monroe seemed not at all anxious about the lady’s
displeasure. He walked around Gabriel, looking him over. “Fine looking fellow,”
he announced to his men. “I seen his type before. Real pretty.”

Standing behind, he spat the juice from his chawed cigar
onto the top of Gabriel’s head. The brown sludge began to ooze into his ear and
Gabriel’s gorge rose, but he would not give this man the satisfaction of
gagging.

“Look at that hair,” Monroe said, walking back around to the
front of him. “Got a little curl to it, don’t it?” He used the barrel of his
pistol to raise Gabriel’s chin. “And got them real shiny dark eyes.

“Know what makes a man that pretty, boys?” He had their
attention. “If he got a white daddy and a real pretty brown mama. That what you
come from, pretty boy?”

Gabriel tossed his head to release his chin from the pistol.
“I am no slave, sir. You would do well to release me and these two men.”

“Ooh, he do talk nice,” the one called Wilson said. “Don’t
reckon he’s much use to us, though, Monroe. Ain’t nobody gone buy a white man.”

Quick as a shot, Monroe snaked an arm around Wilson’s neck
and half choked him. “What you think I been telling you? He ain’t white. He got
enough blood in him to make him look white, but a haircut and a few days in the
Luzianne sun fix that.”

He shoved Wilson away. “Chain him up with the rest. We’ll
have us a lesson in sun browning. If he don’t darken up, well, all the worse
for him.”

The raftsmen hauled the three captives to the back of the
flatboat where the others were chained together. “Take the shirt off the fancy
one,” Monroe hollered across the deck.

The men added Gabriel and Hunter to the chains running
through the shackles. The wrist chain reached its length and no amount of
crowding would stretch it to include George’s iron bracelet.

“He ain’t going nowhere, anyhow,” a gap-toothed white man
said. He pointed a finger at George. “Set there and don’t move.”

George seemed dazed. He trembled, but his eyes did not focus
when he looked at Gabriel.

The unfortunates hardly stirred throughout the blazing hot
day. Gabriel was glad there were no children among them. They could not have
taken the heat and the thirst. No telling what these men would do to a child
who fussed. Every man and woman suffered in silence, sweating until their
bodies had nothing left to sweat, and still no one brought them water.

The muddy river only four feet below him, Gabriel eyed it
warily. It shamed him to be scared of the water. He could swim quite well, in a
bayou, a lake, or a stream -- but the enormous mass of the river overwhelmed
him. As the hours wore on, however, with his skin burning and the sun sucking
the moisture from his mouth, the fear became a small thing. He imagined himself
plunging his scorched body into the river, drinking his fill before he drowned.

In the late afternoon, George broke. He heaved dry sobs, and
violent trembling shook his body. Likely he has a wife and children on
Toulouse, Gabriel thought. And he might never seem them again. Gabriel reached
for George’s shoulder, and pulled two other sets of hands along with his own.
He dropped the hands back to their laps.

“George,” he rasped, his voice hoarse, his eyes watching the
idle raftsmen. “Hold on, man. They’ll be looking for us. Madame DeBlieux will
send out a hue and cry we’ve been taken. We’ll get home again.”

Hunter shook his head. “No, M’sieu. We be on de block in New
Orleans ’fore she know we not coming back.”

Gabriel darted an impatient look at him. “We have every
reason to hope. I am a freeman. I will take you home again.”

George did not hear, or did not listen. With despair stamped
on his features, he scooted toward the edge of the raft. Gabriel realized his
intention and tried to grab him, but the chains confounded him.

George, with bound hands, slipped over the side into the
Mississippi River.

Gabriel shouted. “Get a line! Man overboard! Get the boat!”
Two of the river men set their playing cards down and walked over to the edge
of the flatboat.

“Get a rope, somebody,” the one called Wilson said, not even
a suggestion of excitement in his voice. A man sauntered over to a supply of
coiled hemp and fumbled for the longest one. Meanwhile, his confederates
watched George flounder in the water ten feet, then twenty, then thirty feet
behind them.

“Save him, damn you!” Gabriel roared. He lunged to follow
George into the water – he could swim for both of them – but the human chain
held him on deck.

The rope man came back to the edge and began tying a lasso
to throw out. George, struggling now to stay afloat, sank below the water,
emerged with his hands stretched out toward the raft, then sank again for the
last time.

Wilson shifted the chaw in his cheek, spat a stream of
tobacco juice into the river, and ambled over to his cards.

Gabriel stared at the swallowing, devouring waves of the
Mississippi.

Marianne came in from a twilight stroll in the garden to be
met by Charles at the door.

“You have a visitor, Miss Marianne. Someone from Toulouse. A
Mr. Gale.”

She looked at him, puzzled. She knew Toulouse, of course.
The DeBlieux plantation just up river. Charles opened the sliding cypress doors
for her and she entered the parlor. A young man with sandy hair stood and made
a stiff half-bow.

“Miss Johnston,” he said. “I’m Robert Gale. Me and my
brother Andrew, we’re the overseers over to Toulouse.”

“Yes, Mr. Gale. Please sit down.”

“I come from Madame DeBlieux. She’s worried herself sick and
sent me over to find out when you seen her nephew last. That’d be Dr. Chamard,
Gabriel Chamard. See, Madame thought he’d be back with the family by Wednesday,
maybe Thursday latest. But here it is Friday night, and she ain’t heard from
him.”

“Mr. Gale, I’m sorry I have no news for you. Dr. Chamard has
not appeared here this week at all. Perhaps Dr. Chamard went to the Lake?”

“My brother Andrew’s gone down there to look for him. See,
the two slaves that was rowing the doctor across the river, they ain’t come
back either.”

Marianne stared at Mr. Gale. Tales of abducting slaves to
sell them were common enough. “Surely to God you don’t think they’ve met with
misfortune? Dr. Chamard looks like a gentleman, he is a gentleman. He’s a
freedman. No one would . . . ”

“No’m, I hope none of those river rats got him. But we’ll
see what Andrew finds out at the Lake. Likely they’s all playing cards and
enjoying theyselves.”

“You’ll let me know, immediately, please, Mr. Gale?”

“Yes’m. Soon’s I know something.”

Marianne offered the downstairs guestroom to Mr. Gale so
that he wouldn’t have to travel in the dark, but he declined. “I got a crew of
men at the dock. We’ll get on back across tonight.”

Marianne stood on the gallery watching the starlight on the
river, far too disturbed to go to bed. She admired Dr. Chamard very much. She
liked him; she hoped they could become friends. But there were so many ways a
man could go missing. Slavers could have got him. The river could have got him.

At the Lake, the very first morning after he’d arrived with
Yves and Marcel, Adam called on Nicolette Chamard. She received him cordially
though he had come without her brothers. She wore a dove gray morning gown with
blue ribbons on the bodice, a blue tignon on her head. Her gray eyes shone when
she told him good morning, how kind of him to call.

“Would you care to walk, before the heat claims the day?” he
invited.

“I would, Monsieur.” She nodded to her maid for her parasol
and accepted Adam’s arm. The maid trailing behind them, they took the crushed
oyster shell path along the lake shore, the mixed pines, magnolias, and oaks
shading them.

Adam and Nicolette fell into step and quickly discovered a
compatibility of temperament and taste. On not every topic did they agree, but
every subject engaged them. They hardly noticed when they reached the end of
the path and turned back toward Nicolette’s cottage, so intent were they on
their dispute about the merits of dramatic plays versus opera.

At the foot of her raised porch, Adam offered his arm to
help her mount the stairs. She accepted, and he dared to place his hand over
hers. Nicolette smiled at him.

“May I see you tonight? After your performance? We could
have supper.”

“Yves and Marcel have asked me, Mr. Johnston. Could you not
join us?”

Yves appeared in the doorway, as stern a look on his face as
Adam had ever seen. “Come in, Nicolette,” he said. “You too, Johnston.”

Adam bristled. “Miss Chamard and I merely –.”

“Gabriel is missing.”

The family – Cleo and Pierre, Nicolette, Yves and Marcel --
gathered in Cleo’s cottage. Yves made Adam and Mr. Gale welcome as well. They
would need every head and every body to find Gabriel.

They first dealt with the possibility that the small boat
might have been lost to the river. Steamboat pilots constantly watched for
shoals and currents and changes in the color of the water. Surely they would
see a rowboat in time to avoid it. Yet a big boat ran over a smaller one only a
while back, Pierre reminded them.

Cleo, barely holding herself together, shuddered. “Gabriel
doesn’t like the river,” she said, as much to herself as to the others.

“Maman, that happened in a rainstorm,” Nicolette reminded
her. “Mr. Gale said the river was clear that day.”

Cleo nodded, her hands clasped together in her lap. Pierre
wrapped his arm through hers and squeezed her knotted fists.

“They were to have traveled from Toulouse to Magnolias, one
dock to the other,” Marcel said. “No need, I think, to consider brigands on the
road. River rats seem to me the most likely culprits. Two prime slaves at the
oars, and no one armed. Or did Gabriel carry his pistol?”

“Madame DeBlieux thought of that. She had me look for his
pistol up to Chateau Chanson,” Mr. Gale said. “It was in the drawer by the
bed.”

“They’d have been easy pickings if a crew of slavers
happened by.”

The thought hung in the air for a moment. “I think we should
split up,” Yves suggested. “Marcel and Adam, down to New Orleans. The stolen
slaves will surely show up at one of the markets, maybe even at the Exchange.
If Gabriel, or the slaves, turn up there, you’ll be on the spot.”

“I reckon I ought to go with them,” Mr. Gale said. “Hunter
and George are my men. I can recognize them, testify they belong to Toulouse.”

“And you?” Marcel asked Yves.

“If they have trouble selling Gabe in New Orleans, they
might take him upriver. The market at Natchez is the biggest one between New
Orleans and Virginia.”

“Perhaps I should go with you,” Adam said, “rather than you
searching on your own.”

Someone knocked on the front door and Cleo’s maid let in a
boy of perhaps sixteen. “Uncle Andrew?”

Mr. Gale, the co-overseer from Toulouse, stood up. “You
bring news, Larry?”