Elysium: The Plantation Series Book IV (26 page)

The first day back,
Alistair arranged for his wagons and horses and mules to be available on
election day. No one on his place would miss it for lack of transportation. He
checked in with his steward. The surveillance he kept on the school house –
they’d run off a couple of kids intent on smearing eggs on the windows, but
they were just mischief-makers. His mother had sent a request for a dozen
laying hens to be sent to her cousin’s estate on the Cane River. And on it
went. There simply had not been time for him to ride to the Bickells to see
Lily. He was relieved, actually. He wanted somebody else, Frederick himself, he
hoped, to tell her she could have her divorce. Give her a chance to get used to
the idea before he presented himself. Truth was, he feared she’d turn from him,
and it ate into his gut like acid.

The next morning, he
spent an hour with his steward and most of the rest of the day working on his
account books. The railway and steam ship investments, the costs of growing
cane and paying laborers, of maintaining the buildings on the place . . .
running his own financial empire was complicated, yet he kept his hand in every
endeavor.

Which meant that it had
been five days since he’d shoved the documents across the table for Palmer to
sign. If Lily had learned of it, she’d be wondering what was keeping him, for
good or bad. So he bathed, shaved, and dressed as if he were going to one of
his mother’s at-homes in New Orleans.

Everyone, black and
white, was at the dining table when he arrived. Garvey pushed his chair back. "Alistair,"
he said, sticking his hand out for a shake. Thomas, too, stood to shake his
hand. "Sir."

Rachel pulled out a chair
for him over his protestations that he would wait in the sitting room. "No,
sir. You come on and eat. I got fried chicken tonight and you know you don’t
want to miss that."

Fanny got silverware and
a napkin for him from the sideboard and smiled at him. Maddie announced, "Major
Whiteaker, you have to meet Rebecca. Say ‘how do you do, Major Whiteaker,’"
she told her doll, and then pretended her lips did not move at all as Rebecca
greeted him.

"Very well, Miss
Rebecca. And Miss Maddie, how do you do?"

Maddie’s smile made the
whole sorry week worthwhile. "Very fine, thank you."

So everyone was glad to
see him but Lily. He glanced at her as Rachel filled his plate with enough food
for three men. Lily feigned great interest in buttering a biscuit.

"How are you, Mrs.
Palmer?" he said formally.

She glanced at him. "Well,
thank you."

The frost in her voice
told him she knew her husband had taken the money. She knew she would have her
divorce. And it hadn’t made her happy.

Garvey took up the
conversation. "We were talking about the election before you came in,
Alistair. That does not surprise you, I’m sure. Fanny thinks the women should
have the vote, too."

"Do you indeed,
Fanny?"

Lily wore the calico
dress with the tiny yellow flowers and it looked looser than it had the last
time he’d seen her in it, and she had shadows under her eyes. Grieving, as
Beauchamp had suggested?

"Yes, sir,"
Fanny avowed. "Women have the same brains God gave men. We have the same
right to be heard as men. Give us the vote, and you’ll see less corruption,
less – "

"Fanny, you can’t
just assert there would be less corruption," Thomas argued. "You have
no evidence . . ."

Alistair did not follow
the debate. He watched Lily very carefully not look at him. She nibbled the
biscuit, she rearranged the peas and okra on her plate, and she dabbed at her
mouth with her napkin, never once raising her eyes from the table.

He managed to eat enough
to satisfy Rachel and waited an interminable time for dinner to be over. He had
to talk to Lily alone.

"What do you think, Major?"
Fanny appealed to him. "Can women think as well as men?"

"Now Fanny, you’re
putting the man on the spot," Garvey said.

Alistair smiled. "It’s
all right, Garvey. I did not spend all those years at my mother’s knee without
learning the answer to that one. Miss Brown: some women can think every bit as
well as some men."

"Oh! That’s
treacherous!" Fanny exclaimed. "You might as well . . ."

Alistair couldn’t hold
his attention on the argument and let the conversation flow on without him.
Lily sat across and down one place from where he sat.

"Lily," he said
softly.

Her head came up
suddenly, as if he’d shouted her name. She fastened her gaze on his, but he
could only say again, "Lily."

Maddie tugged at his
sleeve. "Major Whiteaker, did you know that Rebecca speaks three
languages?"

From the corner of his
eye, he saw Lily’s head was down again.

"Three languages
indeed? Let me guess, Portuguese, Slovakian, and Chinese?"

Maddie’s response was
typical little-girl delight. She giggled, "No, silly. English, French, and
Cajun."

When Rachel brought out
the lane cake, Lily murmured something and excused herself, her shoes tapping
rapidly across the floor. Alistair didn’t even say excuse me but strode out of
the room after her.

She pushed through the
front door and was across the yard when Alistair leapt off the porch after her.
"Lily!"

She started running.

He caught up to her and
whirled her around by the arm. "Lily!"

She tugged free and
marched away from him.

He matched her stride. "Lily,
can’t you even talk to me?"

She looked like she was
about to run again. He took hold of her arm. "Stop. Please, Lily."

She turned her back to
him and covered her face with her hands.

"You’re sorry about
the divorce."

"No!" She
turned to him, her face scrunched up and crying. "I mean yes. No, I’m not
sorry. But it’s all wrong now. How can we -- this is awful. You shouldn’t have
– I wanted him to take it, but we shouldn’t have – "

Then it was as he’d
feared. She’d decided she couldn’t stomach what an offer like that had done to
her husband. She couldn’t stomach Alistair for offering it.

"I’m sorry."

She wiped at her nose. "Do
you know he gave me five hundred dollars of your money?" She laughed, the
tears still spilling out. "He caught me just like the last time – isn’t
that funny?" She tried to laugh again. "I was packing, so Maddie and
I could run again, only this time he wasn’t angry. He looked . . . Alistair, he
looked like he’d been kicked in the stomach."

"But you don’t have
to leave now." Surely to God she wouldn’t leave now.

"Oh, Alistair. It’s
no good. How can I – "

"Because you think
-- you think I believe that I bought you."

"Didn’t you?"

He shook his head over
and over. "No, Lily. I never meant that."

"You had to have
thought that," she said angrily.

"No. All I bought
was your freedom so that if you did . . ." He had a hard time taking the
next breath. "If you did choose me, you’d . . . you could marry me."
He felt like weeping himself.

She stared at him a long
time, her eyes red and swollen. He raised a hand to touch her but she shook her
head and gazed at the ground.

He felt his breath hitch.
He imagined himself dropping to his knees and begging, but it wouldn’t help.
She had turned against him.

He reached into his
pocket for the document and handed it to her. "Maddie is legally yours.
You’re free, Lily. Free of both of us."

Alistair hardly knew how
he got from Lily to his horse, how he managed to ride home. His only awareness
was of the black hole in his chest.

Alistair stood with Fanny
Brown when she rang the brass bell calling the children to school. She had lost
weight, but the light was back in her eyes. She was going to be all right.

The older children told
him good morning, the younger ones went tearing past him full of high spirits
on this first day of the new school year.

"How do you handle a
room bursting with all that energy?" Alistair asked her. "I don’t
believe I’d have the courage."

Fanny laughed. "See
this?" she said and pointed to her face. In an instant, her smile turned
into a hard stare. "Haven’t met the child yet can stand up to The Look."

Alistair gave an exaggerated
shudder. "A mighty weapon indeed." He put his hand on her shoulder. "I’ll
leave you to it then. Let me know if you need anything."

He mounted his horse and
rode through the plantation. The cane was puny this year, all up and down the
river. Just had not been enough rain. Some planters were likely going to go
under. They didn’t have the capital to withstand a poor harvest on top of
having to adjust to paying wages and trying to recover from the damages the war
inflicted. His plantation certainly would not show a profit again this year.

He looked up at the sky.
Another blistering hot day with not a cloud to tease a little hope that it
would rain. He could hold out for a while yet, but eventually, he’d have to do
some hard figuring. Which cost more, financially and spiritually, to let the
place continue to bleed money, or to lay off all these laborers and let the
fields lie fallow?

From an easy amble, his mare
suddenly screamed. Alistair heard the crack of a rifle at the same moment he
saw his horse’s mane blossom red. He clamped his knees tight to keep from
falling off when she reared, and pulled her in a tight circle to keep her from
bolting.

He bent over her neck,
blood wetting his cheek, and rode her for the cover of the windbreak. For all
he knew he was riding right into the shooter’s line of sight, but he thought
the sound had come from the west. Once in safety among the trees, he slid off
and tended to his mare.

The blood was flowing,
but not pumping. The wound was just on the crest of her neck, in the soft flesh
the mane grew from. "It’ll be fine, Maisie. It’s just a flesh wound,"
he said, stroking her neck, cooing softly. "Hurts though, doesn’t it. You
must wonder what the heck happened out there." Maisie was a two year old
and so had not lived through the war, had not been trained to charge into a
battle with artillery roaring and guns blasting. "Poor Maisie," he
crooned. "A bad way to start the day isn’t it, sweetheart."

The horse gave one last
mighty shudder and settled down. Alistair tied the reins to a tree branch and
crept to the edge of the thicket, his pistol cocked. Mostly, he saw green, the
cane thick in the fields if not as tall as it ought to be. Nothing to hear but
the rustle of all those stalks swaying in the breeze. Not even the birds stirred.

Whoever had shot at him
was long gone. Probably. The man was certainly no marksman. Alistair quickly
calculated who he’d made an enemy of. Every Yankee in the Union, to start with.
But that was over. Frederick Palmer, certainly, though Ed Young said he’d seen
the man board the steam ship with Juliana.

Meanwhile, Alistair felt
trapped in this little copse of sweet gum. A braver, bolder man might mount his
horse and go about his business. Alistair chose to wait a while. He’d like to
be steadier in his mind before he stuck his nose out and made a nice target of
himself again.

Pistol in hand, he
reassured Maisie he wouldn’t be long and threaded his way through the trees,
all his soldier’s instincts on full alert. He circled the ten acres of this
particular field, sometimes darting from one copse to the other. His steward had
the workers in the western fields this week, and there was not another soul out
here.

On his way back to
Maisie, he spotted where the rifleman had stood among the trees. There were
boot tracks, high-heeled like the Texans wore. And there was the bullet casing.
Alistair turned it over in his hand. Careless assassin who leaves evidence like
that. Of course, it was very little evidence. Lots of men wore Texas boots. Jacques
Valmar, for instance. And lots of men had rifles.

Not a lot of men,
however, wanted to kill Alistair.

Could it be Valmar? The
man was deranged if he had reappeared where he’d already created so much havoc.
Maybe committed other crimes Alistair didn’t know about. The man was going to
get himself killed.

Alistair thought about
who and how that might be done. The most satisfying way, to Alistair’s
thinking, would be to beat the man to death with his bare fists, then to toss
his body into the swamp for the alligators to enjoy. Some people just needed
killing.

But it was clear Valmar
was not part of the continuing disruptions to the campaign. Cross burnings,
harassment, intimidation – all that had persisted in Valmar’s absence. For
people who spouted a lot of rhetoric about their rights, the White Camellia had
little respect for anyone else’s.

Back at the house,
Alistair turned Maisie over to the head stableman, a man who’d been on the
place since Alistair’s childhood. "I’ll take good care of her, I will,"
Horace said.

Alistair washed the blood
off his hands and arms at the pump and went inside to find Peter Kresky waiting
in his parlor.

"Pete. I’m sorry to
have kept you waiting. I see you’ve been taken care of," he said,
motioning to the coffee cups and a platter of seed cakes.

"Very well taken
care of, Whiteaker," Kresky said, rising to shake his hand.

They settled into their
chairs and Alistair poured himself a cup of coffee, luke-warm now.

"I’ve been reading
the paper while I waited for you. The price of sugar has fallen another point
this week. It’s those farmers in Europe distilling sugar from beets. Who ever
heard the like, eh?"

"I hear it tastes
about the same as cane sugar."

"Does it? I can’t
imagine. Do you suppose it’s as white as cane?"

"I haven’t
considered. Interesting question."

"My nephew’s back
east, in Raleigh. I’ll have him buy a pound and see what it’s like. The ladies
would probably be tickled with pink sugar if that’s what it is."

Alistair smiled. "I
expect you’re right."

They commiserated with
one another about the poor cane season this year, about the competition from
Europe and Cuba. About trying to make a profit when they had to pay wages, "outrageous"
wages, according to Kresky.

"They want the
wages, then they want me to supply them with pigs and mules for their personal
use, then they want me to pay to feed their pigs and mules. They got no sense
of fairness, no sense of how an economy works."

"It’s an adjustment,
for everybody."

"The damned
Republicans in Washington would rather see all us planters ruined than stand up
to the Negroes. We’re going to have to take care of ourselves down here."

Ah, Alistair thought.
Here it comes.

"Some of us plan to
do just that. We were hoping you’d join us, Alistair.

"In busting up
rallies, you mean? Intimidating people not to vote, or to vote Democratic when
it’s against their own self-interest?"

"That’s what it’s
going to take, my friend, to get this state back on its feet."

"I presume you’re
talking about the White Camellia."

"Yes, I am, by God. We
need you. You’re an important man hereabouts. People listen to you. You need to
be speaking out, against the Freedmen’s Bureau, to start with. Their policies
do nothing but stir up false hope among the Negroes. Keep them expecting more
than they can ever have. The black man cannot have the vote. He cannot run this
state. He simply is not equipped to understand the complexities of government –
hell, he doesn’t even understand dollars and cents, much less does he possess
the intellect required for higher levels of thinking."

Alistair crossed his legs
comfortably. He had heard all these arguments before. "I don’t agree, Pete.
The Negro is ignorant, I grant you. But that is not the same thing as having no
capacity to think."

"Yes, yes, I’m aware
of your little experiment with the school. All well and good if some of them
learn to read and write. It’ll help them to read their wage contracts and so
forth. I have no objection to that. But that’s a long way from being able to
think like a white man. They aren’t bred to it, and that’s a fact."

There really was no point
in debating this with Kresky. Alistair would not change the man’s mind. And he
had other things to do with his time.

"Let me make myself
clear, Pete. I want this – " He waved his hand vaguely, as if to include
all of the South. "All of this, wages, freedom, education for the Negroes,
I want all of this to work. Slavery had its time. It’s over. We need to move
on, see what it takes to live together, peaceably and maybe more important to
your way of thinking, profitably."

Pete sat back in his
chair as if he were affronted. "It won’t work, Alistair. It can’t work."

"You mean you won’t
let it work," Alistair retorted. He stood up, finished with this
discussion.

Pete rose to his feet,
too. "Look, you can’t stop the white man from setting things right. It’s
got to be done. We want you with us, but if you persist in these fanciful
notions of equality, you will regret it."

Alistair heaved a sigh. "Pete,
how many years have we known each other? It saddens me to hear you threaten me."

Pete gave him a
belligerent glare. "You choose to take it as a threat. I merely prophesy. We
are not thugs, Alistair. I leave the door open. A man needs friends when times
are unsettled. You think about it, you’ll see it’s in your best interest."

Alistair had said all he
wanted to. "Let me show you out, Pete."

The look on Kresky’s face
indicated he felt the insult. "I can see myself out, thank you."

Alistair wondered if he’d
soon have a burning cross on his front lawn.

Alistair had a new appreciation
for how much courage Thomas Bickell possessed as he watched him continue with
the campaign. In spite of having his rallies disrupted, of being harassed and
maligned, of being thwarted at every opportunity, he persevered.

He wondered if there were
something else he could be doing to help. He’d talk to Chamard. He was more
closely involved with Thomas, being neighbors with Garvey.

After picking at the
chicken and dumplings his cook set before him for noon dinner, wondering what
she could be thinking cooking something this hot and this heavy when the heat
was so bad all the chickens hid underneath their coop with limp feathers, he
wondered what Rachel served today – something light, he bet, like cucumbers and
tomatoes with some of that vinegar dressing she made.

He closed his eyes at the
image of Lily sitting at the table, Maddie at her side, talking, eating, maybe
laughing. He didn’t think Lily would feel like laughing. She was too hurt. Hard
to sort out what hurt her the most – Palmer giving her up, being dishonorable
enough to take the money? Or was it because he, Alistair, had dishonored both
Lily and Palmer by offering the money in the first place. And then finding
Palmer in a weak moment and pressing him to sign those papers.

He was not proud of himself.
But what else could he do? For Lily’s sake, he couldn’t let Palmer take Maddie
away from her. And for his own sake, he couldn’t let him force Lily to stay
with him. She deserved better. Better than Palmer, and better than himself.

He shoved his plate away
and went for his hat.

In the stable he checked
on Maisie. Horace had cleaned her wound and slathered it with ointment. She was
enjoying a bag of oats, munching in the shade of her stall, a nice breeze
coming through the barn. He gave her a neck a pat and saddled up Raven, his
young stallion. An indulgence, a horse like this, too temperamental and finely
made to be much use pulling a wagon or a plow, but he’d bought him on a whim
last winter after he’d deposited his dividends from his railroad interests. His
best friend, Marcel Chamard, had been with him and had wickedly urged him on.
Alistair didn’t have a lot of whims, and yielding to this one had been a great
pleasure.

He rode Raven past the
fields where his laborers worked and noticed two of the mules wore old straw
hats somebody had poked ear holes in. A day like this, he could see the need
for it, but Raven – he would not inflict such an indignity on a horse like
Raven. He would die of shame, Raven would. But he took it easy on the ride to
Cherleu, the sweat rolling down the hollow in his back.

Chamard offered him cool
barley water and a cigar. The river breeze freshened the air on the front gallery,
and Alistair took his hat off, wiping his forehead with his shirt sleeve.

"How are things with
the campaign?" he asked.

Chamard drew on his
cigar. "Fairly quiet. You heard somebody took a shot at Thomas a while
back. He took it as a warning, not a serious attempt. Just the one shot. He’s
easy enough to kill, he figures, if that’s what they intended."

"Me, too, as a
matter of fact." Alistair told him about this morning’s rifle bullet
grazing Maisie’s nape. "Found boot prints, high-heeled, and a bullet
casing."

Chamard thought about
that, Valmar on his mind, Alistair had no doubt. "Not proof though."

"Nope. Not proof."

Alistair poured himself
another glass of barley water. "Got home from that little adventure to
find Pete Kresky in my parlor."

"Let me guess. He
extended an invitation to become a Knight of the White Camellia."

"He been to see you,
too?"

"Sure."

Alistair grinned at him. "I
bet you told him what a worthy endeavor he was engaged in and that you would
seriously consider joining."