Feast of All Saints (57 page)

“Then you approve?” Richard whispered.

“Of course I approve. But you’re sincere, aren’t you, really sincere when you say that your life is here?”

“I’ll be content with that life,” Richard said. “I’m content now.”

“Well,” Marcel rose slowly leaving the glass untouched. There was still time to go to school. “I don’t know whether you are simply more courageous than I am, Richard, or whether you’ve just had better luck. One way or the other I envy you.”

“Envy me, you?”

“You have a place in this world, Richard, a place where you truly belong.”

I
T WAS THE WEEK
before Christmas. Anna Bella sat at the marble top dresser in the only ball gown she had ever owned. The little parlor of the cottage glistened. Zurlina had just given the furniture a last dusting, and had beaten the art square before stretching it out on the waxed floor before the hearth. Decanters of bourbon and sherry stood on the sideboard with glasses in a shining row.

All of the furniture Anna Bella had chosen was light in feel, she preferred petit-point to damask, and had hung lace curtains with only a strip of velvet around each window at the edge. A Queen Anne table stood on tiptoe in the small dining room, already set with gold-edged china, and ornate sterling service and brand new napkins in their heavy rings.

Only the bed was out of scale to these small rooms, rearing its high mahogany back almost to the ceiling. The tester writhed with Cupids frolicking in scalloped garlands. It was a bride’s canopy, the sort made specially for the wedding night.

Now and then, when Zurlina opened the back door, a waft of supper came with the cold wind. Gumbo was simmering in the low slope-roofed kitchen, there was chicken roasted in the iron pot, two dozen oysters scrubbed and waiting to be opened, warm bread in baskets on the back of the stove. Zurlina would sleep in the room beside the kitchen for these next weeks until Vincent Dazincourt provided Anna Bella with slaves of her own. She was not happy with this at all, though Anna Bella had bought her an expensive brass bed. However, since Dazincourt had chosen Anna Bella, Zurlina had shown her a new begrudging respect.

“How long do you think he’ll stay?” Anna Bella asked, looking at herself in the mirror between a pair of candles. The hairdresser had very skillfully layered the waves along the side of her face. Madame Colette had come late in the afternoon to make the very last adjustments on this tight and perfectly fitted blue silk gown.

“He can stay as long as he wants to!” Zurlina said. “He can stay till Mardi Gras next year if he has a mind!” she laughed coldly, bending down to open the bottom drawer of the armoire. Anna Bella, through the mirror, saw her lift out the white nightgown to which she had so carefully sewn the intricate lace. There was a catch in her throat at the sight of it being laid across the bed.

“Now don’t you ring that bell unless he wants some supper,” Zurlina said. “You serve him the coffee yourself, and don’t you sit till he
tells you to sit, and remember just how he likes that coffee, and how he wants his bourbon, so you don’t ever have to ask him again. Now he just might not want any supper, he’s up at the boardinghouse now.”

“Oh, I hope not,” Anna Bella bit her lip. She couldn’t endure the thought of it, the long meal as if nothing were to happen afterwards. She had been living in the cottage for a week and she was sick with waiting.

However, her days had not been unpleasant. Old friends of Madame Elsie’s had come to visit her with gifts, and to her utter amazement Marie Ste. Marie had come, too. She had brought Anna Bella a very beautiful little lap
secrétaire
, inlaid with gold, apologizing for a broken edge saying it had been passed through many loving hands. Anna Bella had been delighted. The very next day she had used it to write a note to Marie in thanks. And Gabriella Roget had stopped in one afternoon with her mother to present Anna Bella with a silver dish for sweets.

In fact, it seemed all the world was abuzz with news of this alliance, people had complimented Madame Elsie on her shrewdness, and Dazincourt’s affections had cast Anna Bella in a new and somewhat flattering light. Women who hardly noticed her before nodded after Mass.

Zurlina poured a little perfume into the palm of her hand and massaged this gently into Anna Bella’s shoulders. Anna Bella seeing that thin haughty face in the mirror looked away.

“Don’t be anxious,” said the old woman. Still Anna Bella didn’t look at her. She didn’t want to hear any unkind words.

Zurlina took a tiny bit of cream on her fingers now and tilting Anna Bella’s head touched it to her eyelashes to make them seem darker, longer. Anna Bella held still patiently. “You are prettier than I thought,” said Zurlina, with a lift of her chin, “yes, very pretty indeed.”

Anna Bella’s large black eyes studied her, searching her face for some meanness.

“Everybody’s been very good to me,” she whispered.

The old woman snorted as if this were foolishness. She pulled a long pin out from her
tignon
and made some little adjustment with Anna Bella’s hair. “Be smart for once,” she said in Anna Bella’s ear. “Get that gloomy look off your face. Learn to smile! They’re jealous of you, all of them, you got what they want.” Zurlina picked up Anna Bella’s hand and slipped another gold ring, set with a pearl, on her finger. “Stop thinking about that Marcel Ste. Marie.”

“Oh, stop it,” Anna Bella went to pull away, she had known some meanness was coming.

“I heard you ask Michie Vincent if he could come and visit you, you’re a fool!” Zurlina said. Their eyes met through the mirror.

“What passes between Michie Vincent and me is my business,” Anna Bella said attempting to look hard, her lip quivering. “And if you don’t like what you hear, then don’t bend down by the keyhole.”

“I don’t have to bend down by any keyholes to know what that boy is up to,” Zurlina smiled. The candles below did not flatter her face, her eyes were too much in shadow, the expression was eerie. Anna Bella drew herself up, rubbing the backs of her arms.

“Seems to me you ought to build up that fire,” she whispered, eyeing Zurlina.

“It’s that Juliet,” said Zurlina in a dry whisper. “Night after night.” She gave a low hollow laugh. “He plays the good schoolboy by day and that man plays the good teacher. And then when Madame Cecile’s asleep, he slips down those stairs…”

“Stop it, I don’t believe anything you say.”

“…and up to that bedroom, night after night. Sometimes in the morning he goes, just before sunup, he has his own key to the gate.” Her wrinkled face was crimped with laughter. “They dine together, those three, alone in that house, just one big happy family,” she sneered, “and she has that boy to warm her bed, night after night.”

“That’s a lie,” Anna Bella whispered. “Michie Christophe wouldn’t let that happen. Michie Christophe’s one of the nicest men I ever knew.”

“Michie Christophe!” Zurlina snorted. “Michie Christophe! He can’t get that crazy woman in line. So he gives her the boy.” She shrugged.

Anna Bella shook her head.

“Did you think that boy wanted you?” Zurlina hissed.

Anna Bella’s eyes narrowed. She peered up at Zurlina through the mirror, saw the evil play of the candles on her cheeks. “You stop it!” Anna Bella said. “Don’t you say one more word to me about Marcel Ste. Marie!” she said.

But nothing changed in the woman’s smile.

Anna Bella rose abruptly, pushing the chair against her and went into the parlor alone. She lit the candles on the mantel, those on the sideboard, and took her place by the fire.

“You don’t know what you have, you!” Zurlina hovered in the doorway. “Don’t you be the fool and throw it away.”

Anna Bella turning her back said nothing. It had been over a month since she had seen Michie Vincent, she wished she could remember anything special about him except that he was handsome and that she had resolved to give herself to him with a pure heart.

He was late in coming. It had been raining for hours, Zurlina was gone. The cold air swept through the rooms as he opened the door,
and she saw his shadow leap suddenly forward from the fire. He held a bouquet of roses in his hand, the only dash of color about him except the soft ashen pink of his lips. She had forgotten the man’s presence, his strong steady gaze, his black eyes. An elusive perfume seemed to rise as he removed his black serge cape and threw it carelessly over a chair. She went to take it, her hand out, when he stopped her.

“Do you want some supper, Monsieur?” she whispered. “Why, there’s gumbo and oysters and, why, there’s anything you…”

“I’ve never seen you in silk,” he whispered. And touching her shoulders lightly he moved her as though she was a statue planted in the center of the room. He had not touched her since that last day in the parlor of the boardinghouse, he had come and gone, visiting only with Madame Elsie in the back upstairs. His white cheeks looked utterly smooth above the sleek black of his whiskers and the eyes, deep-set, gleamed from the neat lines of his eyelids as if these had been drawn with a pen. It seemed the sense of belonging to him passed over her for the first time, and at that same moment he smiled.

She took a step back and began to cry.

“I’m afraid, Monsieur!” she whispered, all dignity and coquetry utterly lost. He would be so disappointed. She looked up at him through the glaze of her tears.

But he was smiling still. “Of me, Anna Bella?” he whispered. “Of me? Why, you’re frightening me, now, Anna Bella, come here.”

But this was mere nonsense he said to make her laugh. He was all confidence and gentleness. He guided her directly past the carefully set little table into the bedroom and toward the bed. She could feel his eyes moving lovingly over her, hungrily, she could feel an urgency in his hands. He
stood
behind her, his hands on her naked shoulders, and then on her naked arms. He kissed the back of her neck and waited and then breathing deeply he kissed it again. “O Lord,” he whispered. A startling chill moved over her flesh, and without meaning to, she became nearly drowsy, head falling to one side.

“You’ll be gentle, Monsieur…” she whispered. He turned her around. She could see the flames in his cheeks, hear that rapid, urgent breath. And suddenly she understood as he held her how much he wanted her, how much he wanted all of this.

“Sweet, sweet, that’s what you are, the word is sweet,” he breathed, kissing her. And then his hands moved rapidly over her hair. He pulled the pins out, he caught the curls as they unraveled. “Please, take it off…no, here,” he sat on the side of the bed, “let me watch you, I won’t hurt you. No, don’t touch the candle. I want to see you. You don’t know how pretty you are.”

He ripped at the strings of her corset, and sliding her chemise off onto the floor, clasped her tightly, almost painfully at the waist. He
ran his fingers over the soft marks left in the flesh by the whalebone, and lifted her quickly into the bed. She closed her eyes as he undressed, and did not open them until she felt his kisses again on her naked breasts. He was stroking her all over as if he could not see enough, feel enough, savor enough. And she was suffused with a drowsiness that seemed to come from the way that he said, over and over,
“Ma belle
Anna Bella,
ma pauvre petite
Anna Bella.” It was almost an hour before, unable to contain himself any longer, he seemed to become rigid from his shoulders to the tips of his toes, mounting gently, gracefully, careful not to crush her with his weight, as he gathered her under him in his arm. But she was yearning for it, the pain was nothing, she could hardly feel it at all. Her head was thrown back in some delicious paralysis in which he had become the mover of her limbs. She let out a little laugh when it was finished. His pleasure had been acute, and he was lying back on the pillow beside her, his face smooth in contentment, his hand gathering hers by his side. “Was I gentle?” he smiled.

“Yes, Monsieur, very gentle,” she said.

She was drifting into sleep when she realized he was dressing by the firelight. He put on the robe that Zurlina had laid out for him, and ran a comb through his long hair.

It seemed a gift of the gods that he was so uncommonly handsome, “Go to sleep,
ma bébé,”
he said leaning over her.

“Are you happy with me, Monsieur?” she asked. Zurlina would have been so furious if she had heard.

“Splendidly happy,” he said. “Can’t you tell?”

She was asleep again when he came back into the room. She thought she should get up, attend him at once in whatever he wanted, and struggling she broke the surface of her dream. She’d been riding south with Old Captain, stopping at one plantation after another where she’d slept in spacious bedrooms in his arms. A black woman in a white kerchief had been saying, “Let me rub that child’s feet, look at that child’s feet, those feet are cold!”

“I’m coming,” she said sitting up so the counterpane nearly slipped away. She had to catch it at her breasts. He sat beside her. He was holding something in the dark, too large to be a book, she couldn’t see what it was.

“Where did you get this?” he answered. She put out her hand.

“Oh, Marie, brought it to me, she’s my friend…” she stopped. “You put it on a table to write letters, or on your lap in bed.”

It occurred to her then, without much reality, that he might not know that she could read and write, and she wondered if he could disapprove. What would he think when he saw her books that were still in the trunk, or her little diary with its gold clasp?

“Marie?” he asked.

“Marie Ste. Marie,” she said. She wondered if he would know the name. It frightened her suddenly. She knew his relation to Michie Philippe, she knew all about it, Madame Elsie had investigated him completely. She wished now she hadn’t brought the name into it at all.

“Aaah…” he answered after a while, and kissing her told her to go back to sleep.

She watched him standing in the firelight with it for a while before he went out the door. He had put it on her dresser after rubbing some small spot beneath the lock that no longer had a key.

Later in the morning while he still slept clutching the rumpled pillows, she picked it up and tilting it toward the gray window saw the letters there that spelt
Aglae
all but rubbed away. It meant nothing to her this name, only perhaps that some lady had owned this long ago, it had a fine patina that might have been enhanced by this person named Aglae. Yet she wondered at it, and the way he had held it, as she put it aside.