Lenobia's Vow

CHAPTER SIX

Dawn could not come soon enough for Lenobia. Finally, when the sky through her porthole began to blush, Lenobia could wait no longer. She almost sprinted to the door, pausing only because Marie Madeleine’s voice warned, “Have a care, child. Do not remain too long with the horses. Staying out of the Bishop’s sight means you are staying out of his mind as well.”

“I will be careful, Sister,” Lenobia assured her before disappearing into the hallway. She did watch for the sunrise, though her thoughts were already belowdecks, and before the orange disc had fully broken free of the watery horizon, Lenobia was hurrying silently but quickly down the stairs.

Martin was already there, sitting on a bale of hay, facing the direction from which she usually came into the cargo hold. The grays whinnied at her, which made her smile, and then she looked at Martin, and her smile faded.

The first thing she noticed was that he hadn’t brought her a bacon and cheese sandwich. The next thing she noticed was the absence of expression on his face. Even his eyes seemed darker and subdued. Suddenly he was a stranger.

“What do I call you?” His voice was as emotionless as his face.

She ignored his strangeness and the awful feeling it gave her in the pit of her stomach, and spoke to him as if he were asking her which brush to use on the horses, like nothing at all was amiss. “Lenobia is my name, but I like it when you call me cherie.”

“You lie to me, you.” His tone stopped her pretense and she felt the first chill of rejection pass through her body.

“Not on purpose. I did not lie to you on purpose.” Her eyes begged him to understand.

“A lie still a lie,” he said.

“All right. You want to know the truth?”

“Can you tell it?”

She felt as if he had slapped her. “I thought you knew me.”

“I thought I did, too. And I thought you trusted me. Maybe I was wrong twice.”

“I do trust you. The reason I did not tell you I was pretending to be Cecile was because when I was with you, I was the real me. There was no pretense between us. There was just you and me and the horses.” She blinked back her tears and took a few steps toward him. “I would not lie to you, Martin. Yesterday was the first time you called me by her name, called me Cecile. Remember how quickly I left?” He nodded. “It was because I did not know what to do. It was then that I remembered I was supposed to be pretending to be someone else, even with you.” There was a long silence, and then he asked, “Would you have ever told me?”

Lenobia didn’t hesitate. She spoke from her heart to his. “Yes. I would have told you my secret when I told you I loved you.”

His face reanimated and he closed the few feet that separated them. “No, cherie. You cannot love me.”

“Cannot? I already do.”

“It is impossible.” Martin reached out, took her hand, and lifted it gently. Then he raised his own arm until the two were side by side, flesh to flesh. “You see the difference, you?”

“No,” she said softly, gazing down at their arms—their bodies. “All I see is you.”

“Look with your eyes and not your heart. See what others will see!”

“Others? Why do we care what they will see?”

“The world matters, perhaps more than you understand, cherie.”

She met his gaze. “So you care more for what others think than for what we feel, you and I?”

“You do not understand.”

“I understand enough! I understand how I feel when we are together. What more is there to understand?”

“Much, much more.” He dropped her hand and turned, walking quickly to the stall to stand beside one of the watching grays.

She spoke to his back. “I said I would not lie to you. Can you say the same to me?”

“I will not lie to you,” he said, without turning to look at her.

“Do you love me? Tell me the truth, Martin, please.”

“The truth? What difference does the truth make in a world like this?”

“It makes all the difference to me,” she said.

He turned and she saw that his cheeks were wet with silent tears. “I love you, cherie. It feels like it will kill me, but I love you.”

Her heart felt as if it were flying as she moved to his side and slipped her hand within his. “I am no longer betrothed to Thinton de Silegne,” she said, reaching up to brush the tears from his face.

He cupped his hand over hers and pressed it to his cheek. “But they will find someone new for you. Someone who cares more about your beauty than your name.” As he spoke he grimaced as if the words hurt him.

“You! Why can it not be you? I am a bastard—surely a bastard can marry a Creole.”

Martin laughed humorously. “Oui, cherie. A bastard can marry a Creole, if that bastard be black. If she be white, they cannot marry.”

“Then I do not care about being married! I only care about being with you.”

“You are so young,” he said softly.

“So are you. You cannot be twenty yet.”

“I be twenty-one next month, cherie. But inside I am old, and I know even love can not change the world—at least not in time for us.”

“It has to. I am going to make it.”

“You know what they do to you, this world you think love can change? They find out you love me, you give yourself to me, they hang you, or worse. They rape you and then hang you.”

“I will fight them. To be with you I will stand against the world.”

“I don’ want that for you! Cherie, I will not be the cause of harm to come against you!”

Lenobia stepped back, away from his touch. “My maman told me that I must be brave. I must become a girl who was dead so that I could live a life without fear. So I did that terrible thing I did not want to do—I lied and tried to take on the name, the life, of someone else.” As she spoke, it was as if a wise mother were whispering to her, guiding her thoughts and her words. “I was afraid, so afraid, Martin. But I knew I had to be brave for her, and then somehow that changed and I became brave for me. Now I want to be brave for you, for us.”

“That not brave, cherie,” he said, his olive eyes sad, his shoulders slumped. “That just young. You and me—our love belong to a different time, a different place.”

“Then you deny us?”

“My heart cannot, but my mind—he say keep her safe, don’ let the world destroy her.” He took a step toward her, but Lenobia wrapped her arms around herself and stepped back from him. He shook his head sadly. “You should have babies, cherie. Babies that don’ have to pretend to be white. I think you know a little what it like to pretend, don’t you?”

“Here is what I know—that I would rather pretend a thousand times over than deny my love for you. Yes, I am young, but I am old enough to know that one-sided love can never work.” When he said nothing, she wiped the back of her wrist angrily across her face, sweeping away her tears, and continued, “I should leave and not come back and spend the rest of the voyage anywhere but down here.”

“Oui, cherie. You should.”

“Is that what you want?”

“No, fool that I am. It is not what I want.”

“Well, then, we are both fools.” She walked past him and picked up one of the curry brushes. “I am going to groom the grays. Then I will feed them. Then I will return to my quarters and wait until tomorrow’s dawn calls me free. Then I will do the same thing all over again.” She moved into the stall and began brushing the nearest gray.

Still outside the stall, he watched her with olive eyes that she thought looked sad and very, very old. “You are brave, Lenobia. And strong. And good. When you are a woman grown, you will stand against the darkness in the world. I know this when I look into your storm-cloud eyes. But, ma belle, choose battles you can win without losing your heart and your soul.”

“Martin, I stopped being a girl when I stepped into Cecile’s shoes. I am a woman grown. I wish you understood that.”

He sighed and nodded. “You right. I know you a woman, but I not the only one who knows this. Cherie, I heard talk today from the Commodore’s servants. That Bishop, he don’ keep his eyes from you all during dinner.”

“Sister Marie Madeleine and I have already spoken of it. I am going to stay out of his sight as much as possible.” She met his gaze. “You do not need to worry about me. I have been avoiding the Bishop and men like him for the past two years.”

“From what I see, there are not many men like the Bishop. I feel something bad follows him. His bakas, I think it turn against him.”

“Bakas? What is that?” Lenobia paused in grooming the gray and leaned against the big horse’s side while Martin explained.

“Think of a bakas like a soul catcher, and it catch two kind of souls—high and low. Balance is best for a bakas. We all have good and bad in us, cherie. But if the wearer is out of balance—if he do evil, then the bakas turn against him and there is darkness set free, terrible to behold.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“My maman, she come from Haiti, along with many of my father’s slaves. It the old religion that they follow. They raised me. I follow it.” He shrugged and smiled at her wide-eyed expression. “I think we all come from the same place—we all go back there someday, too. Just lots of different names for that place because there are so many different kinds of people.”

“But the Bishop is a Catholic priest. How could he know about an old religion from Haiti?”

“Cherie, you don’ have to be told about a thing to feel it—to know it. Bakas are real, and sometimes they find the wearer. That ruby he wear around his neck—that a bakas if I ever see one.”

“The ruby is a cross, Martin.”

“It also a bakas, and one that has turned to bad, cherie.”

Lenobia shivered. “He frightens me, Martin. He always has.”

Martin strode over to her and reached under his shirt, pulling out a long piece of slender leather tied to a small leather pouch that had been dyed a beautiful sapphire blue. He pulled it from around his neck and put it around hers. “This gris-gris protect you, cherie.”

Lenobia fingered the little pouch. “What is in it?”

“I wear it ’most my whole life and I don’ know for certain. I know there thirteen small things in it. Before she die, my maman she make it for me to protect me. It worked for me.” Martin took the pouch from her fingers. Looking deeply in her eyes, he raised it to his lips and kissed it. “Now it work for you.” Then slowly, deliberately, he hooked one finger on the fabric in the front of her bodice and pulled gently so that the shift came away from her skin. He dropped the little bag within, where it lay against her breast, just above her mother’s rosary. “Wear it close to your heart, cherie, and the power of my maman’s people will never be far from you.”

His nearness made it hard for her to breathe and when he released her, Lenobia thought she felt the warmth of his kiss through the little jewel-colored pouch.

“If you give me your mother’s protection, then I have to replace it with my mother’s.” She took the rosary beads from around her neck and held them out to him.

He smiled and bent so she could put them on him. He lifted a bead and studied it. “Carved wooden roses. You know what my maman’s people use rose oil for, cherie?”

“No.” She still felt breathless at his closeness and at the intensity of his gaze.

“Rose oil make potent love spells,” he said, the corners of his lips lifting. “You trying to bespell me, cherie?”

“Maybe,” Lenobia said, their gazes locking and holding.

Then the gelding butted her playfully and stamped one large hoof, impatient that his grooming hadn’t been completed.

Martin’s laugh broke the tension that had been building between them. “I think I have competition for your favors. The grays, they not share you.”

“Jealous boy,” Lenobia murmured, turning to hug the gelding’s wide neck and retrieve the curry brush from the sawdust on the ground.

Still chuckling softly, Martin fetched the wide, wooden comb and got to work on the other gray’s mane and tail.

“What story for you today, cherie?”

“Tell me about the horses on your father’s plantation,” she said. “You started to a few days ago and never finished.”

While Martin talked about Rillieux’s specialty, a new breed of horse that could run a quarter mile with such speed they were being compared to winged Pegasus, Lenobia let her mind wander. We have two more weeks left in the voyage. He already loves me. She pressed her hand against her breast, feeling the warmth of his mother’s gris-gris. If we stand together, we’ll be brave enough to stand against the world.

Lenobia felt hopeful and so very alive as she climbed the stairs from the cargo hold to the hallway that led to her quarters. Martin had filled her head with stories of his father’s amazing horses, and somewhere in the middle of his tales she’d had a wonderful idea: perhaps she and Martin could stay in New Orleans only as long as it took to earn enough money to purchase a young stallion from Rillieux. Then they could take their wingless Pegasus and go west with him and find a place where they wouldn’t be judged by the color of their skin, and could settle down and breed beautiful, swift horses. And children, her thoughts whispered to her, lots of beautiful brown-skinned children just like Martin.

She would ask Marie Madeleine to help her find employment, maybe even something in the Ursuline nuns’ kitchen. Everyone needed a scullery maid who could bake delicious bread—and Lenobia had learned that skill from the Baron’s host of talented French chefs.

“Your smile makes you even more lovely, Lenobia.”

She hadn’t heard him enter the hallway, but he was suddenly there, blocking her way. Lenobia’s hand went up to touch the leather thong hidden under her chemise. She thought about Martin and the power of his mother’s protection, raised her chin, and met the Bishop’s gaze.

“Excusez moi, Father,” she said coldly. “I must get back to Sister Marie Madeleine. She will be at her morning prayers, and I would very much like to join her.”

“Surely you are not angry with me about yesterday. You must realize what a shock it was to realize your deception.” As the Bishop spoke, he stroked the ruby cross. Lenobia watched him carefully, thinking how odd it was that it seemed to flash and shine even in the dim light of the passageway.

“I would not dare to be angry with you, Father. I only wish to return to our good Sister.”

He stepped closer to her. “I have a proposal for you, and when you hear it you will know that with the great honor I pay you, you can dare much more than anger.”

“I am sorry, Father. I do not know what you could mean,” she said, trying to sidle around him.

“Do you not, ma petite de bas? I look in those eyes of yours and I see many things.”

Lenobia’s anger at what he was calling her overrode her fear. “My name is Lenobia Whitehall. I am not your bastard!” She hurled the words at him.

His smile was terrible. Suddenly his arms snaked out, one hand on either side of Lenobia, pinning her against the wall. The sleeves of his purple robe were like curtains, veiling her from the real world. He was so tall that the ruby crucifix dangled in front of her eyes and for a moment she thought she saw flames within its glistening depths.

Then he spoke, and her world narrowed to the stench of his breath and the heat of his body.

“When I am finished with you, you will be anything I desire you to be—bastard, whore, lover, daughter. Anything. But do not give in too easily, ma petite de bas. I like a struggle.”

“Father, there you are! How fortuitous that I should find you so close to our quarters. Could you please help me? I thought moving the Holy Mother would be simply done, but I either underestimated her weight or overestimated my strength.”

The Bishop stepped back, releasing Lenobia. She sprinted down the hallway to the nun, who was not looking at them at all. Instead she was struggling to drag a large painted stone statue of Mary from the doorway of their room out into the hall. As Lenobia reached her, the nun glanced up and said, “Lenobia, good. Please get the altar candle and the incense brazier. We will be saying the Marian litanies, as well as the Little Office of the Virgin, on deck today and for the next few days until we reach port in New Orleans.”

“Few days? You are mistaken, Sister,” the Bishop said condescendingly. “We have at least two more weeks remaining in our voyage.”

Marie Madeleine straightened from wrestling with the statue and rubbed the small of her back as she gave the Bishop a cold look that completely belied her offhanded manner and the coincidence of interrupting his abuse of Lenobia. “Days,” she said sternly. “I just spoke to the Commodore. The squall put us ahead of schedule. We will be in New Orleans in three or four days. It will be lovely for us all to be on land again, will it not? I will be especially pleased to introduce you to our Mother Superior and tell her what a safe and pleasant voyage we all have had thanks to your protection. You do know how well she is thought of in the city, do you not, Bishop de Beaumont?”

There was a long silence and then the Bishop said, “Oh, yes, Sister. I know that and much, much more.”

Then the priest bent and lifted the heavy statue as if it were made of feathers rather than stone, and carried it above deck.

“Did he harm you?” Marie Madeleine whispered quickly as soon as he was out of sight.

“No,” Lenobia said shakily. “But he wants to.”

The nun nodded grimly. “Get the candle and incense. Wake the other girls and tell them to come up for prayers. Then stay close to me. You will have to forgo your solitary dawn trips. It simply is not safe. Thankfully, we only have a few short days. Then you will be at the convent and beyond his reach.” The nun squeezed her hand before following the Bishop to the upper deck, leaving Lenobia alone and utterly brokenhearted.