Conditions in the central camp were far more bleak than in the area surrounding the laundry. Sable had never seen so many people packed into one space. She could barely walk, nor could she turn around without bumping into someone. She must have apologized a score of times as she led Patrick through the thick throng. She saw runaways who had nothing but a thin blanket to protect them from the elements. There were families huddled together on the bare ground; people who looked unwell and destitute. She’d heard about the aid societies and the
missionaries who’d come South to offer assistance, but they looked to be facing a monumental task. For every hale and hearty individual she passed, there were two or three who appeared frail and undernourished.
Finally, after many fits and starts, she found the place she’d been seeking. People in this part of the camp called it the Message Tree. Handwritten notes and letters were tacked onto a large piece of wood nailed between two stout trees. There were so many runaways trying to get a look, folks had formed a line. She and Patrick patiently waited their turn.
It was full dark by the time they neared the front of the line. Torches had been lit and posted. A tall muscular man ahead of them had tears in his eyes as he turned away from the board, clenching his fists in anger and frustration. As he made to pass Sable and head back toward the lights of the camp, his gaze met hers. He looked so distressed, she felt compelled to ask, “Can I help in some way?”
“Only if you can read.”
“I can.”
“My name is Avery Cole and I’m looking for my wife. I’ve been away a couple of weeks building bridges with General Sherman’s engineers. We came back yesterday and I can’t find her or my son.”
The torches illuminated the distress on his face.
Sable looked down at Patrick, soundlessly asking if he knew the man, but the little boy shook his head no. “Why did you ask me if I could read, Mr. Cole? My name is Sable Fontaine, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you. I asked because I need somebody to read this to me.”
He placed his finger on a shadowy note on the board. “My wife can read, but I can only recognize my name. I know this is my name here, but what’s the rest say? I’ve been down here three times today trying to make the letters talk to me, but I can’t.”
Sable saw that the message was indeed addressed to
Avery Cole, just as he’d suspected. “Is your wife’s name Salome?”
“Yes!” he replied.
“Then yes, this message is for you. She says your son was ill and was seen by the army doctor. She’ll come here each day at three in the afternoon to seek you out so the three of you can be reunited.”
To Sable’s surprise the man grabbed her and gave her a spine-cracking hug. “Thank you! Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done, if it hadn’t been for you.”
Sable smiled. “You would have simply found someone else to help you.”
He seemed to notice Patrick for the first time. “Is this your son?”
“No. This is Patrick. He got separated from his Uncle Benjamin and we’re trying to find him.”
Avery bent down and touched the child’s head. “Poor little fellow. I’ll ask around if you’d like.”
“That would be very helpful, Mr. Cole. I work over at the laundry. You may send word to me there.”
They shook hands. Cole thanked her again for her help, then walked off into the night.
Although Sable was happy about Mr. Cole’s success, the board offered nothing in the way of clues for Patrick. No one had posted a notice about a missing boy matching his description. She and her new little friend were no closer to unraveling the mystery than they’d been earlier that day. They were also hungry, and since Sable had yet to complete her first full week of employment, she had no funds. She knew it was too late to get rations from the communal kitchen and doubted anyone in camp had food to hand out freely, but Patrick needed to eat. Looking around the dark camp, she also realized she had no idea how to get back to the river where she lived.
Patrick looked up at her and asked, “Are we lost?”
Sable did not lie. “Yep. But we’re lost together, so if
you take care of me and I take care of you, we should be all right.”
He gave her his first smile.
Sable smiled down in reply.
An hour later, Sable, more lost than she cared to admit, finally came across an area that seemed familiar. She saw why when she spied the big white mansion that served as the processing center and housed the army command. Even at this late hour dozens of contrabands stood waiting their turn to enter. Was the major inside? she wondered.
Raimond had just returned from the makeshift showers behind the house and was toweling his head dry when a knock sounded on the door. Scowling at the interruption, he growled, “What?” His day was done. Any problems would have to wait until morning.
The door opened and Andre appeared. “Someone to see you.”
The aide stepped aside to reveal Sable. Raimond’s eyes widened with surprise. “Miss Fontaine.”
“Good evening, Major.”
He was shirtless and must have just come from bathing, Sable noted, because moisture still clung to his dark torso and muscular arms. With Patrick in hand, she managed to pull her eyes away from his magnificent physique and say, “I’m sorry if we’ve disturbed you.”
Raimond finally found his tongue. “No apologies are needed.” He slipped on a clean blue shirt and gestured her in to take a seat. “Thank you, Andre.”
On the heels of Andre’s departure, she asked, “Do you have something for a starving child to eat? He became separated from his companions and needs to be fed.”
“I’m glad you came to me for help.”
“I’m assuming if you have enough food to invite me to dine, you’ve enough to feed a small boy.”
She watched LeVeq assess her young charge before
hunkering down to Patrick’s height “What’s your name, son?”
Patrick volunteered his name. Under further questioning he told the major the same story he’d told Sable about becoming lost.
“Would you like something to eat?” Raimond asked.
“Is Sable going to eat too?”
The major gave her a questioning look, to which she replied, “Patrick, I don’t know if he has enough to feed us both.”
Patrick asked, “Is there some food for Sable to eat?”
Raimond smiled and nodded. “Come with me.”
He ushered them outside and over to a large tent. “Welcome to my home.”
The tent had few furnishings. There was a listing desk and an equally battered chair, a cot, and a big sea chest. The sight made her remember Araminta’s dream. Sable quickly buried the memory.
There was a table on the far side of the tent. Atop it were some covered pots and dented pans. He lifted the lids to reveal the contents: chicken, collards, and yams. It was a veritable feast for someone who’d been eating nothing but Mrs. Reese’s hash.
“We have the very resourceful Andre to thank for this,” Raimond commented. “He found a woman in the area with a full cellar.”
“I didn’t think you Yankees allowed that.”
He grinned. “You’re right. How she kept her food out of the hands of the troops is a mystery to me, but she did, so I’ve hired her to cook for me.”
Raimond withdrew a couple of tin plates from the chest. He fixed three plates and they all sat down on the tent’s dirt floor to eat.
Raimond spent the meal watching Sable interact with the small child. It was apparent that they’d grown comfortable with each other over the course of the day. She seemed to like the boy and he her. “Do you have any children?” he asked.
“No. Do you?”
“No. I’d like some eventually though. I’ll have to find a wife first, of course.”
“What would you look for in a wife?”
He shrugged as he chewed. “Someone I wouldn’t mind being with for the rest of my life, I suppose, though before the war, I never even considered marrying.”
“Why not?”
He grinned. “Too many seas to sail and too many beautiful women to woo.”
At least he’s honest, she noted. “So what has changed your mind?”
“This war and all the death that has come with it. I want the blood and sacrifices of my parents and their parents before them to live on in my children and in the children my brothers will sire. I can’t ensure that legacy if I don’t marry.”
Sable thought about Mahti and the other women in her ancestry. There would be no more queens, or so it appeared. Sable did not expect to marry, and if her brother Rhine never returned, the family line would end with her. “Gossip has it that you are very wealthy,” she commented.
Raimond seemed to be assessing the intent behind her words. “Does the thought of my supposed wealth make me more desirable in your eyes?”
“No. I just imagine you would choose a wife from your own class.”
“Not necessarily.”
The intense interest in his gaze made her return her attention to her meal.
By the time they finished, Patrick was having a hard time keeping awake. Sable pulled him into her lap and he immediately fell fast asleep.
Raimond stood and held out his arms. “Hand him to me,” he instructed softly. “We’ll let him sleep on the cot.”
Sable wondered about this show of chivalry, but handed the unconscious boy over to the major’s gentle hold. He carried the sleeping Patrick over to his bed.
“Do you have any suggestions about what I should do about him?”
He covered the boy with a blanket and silently escorted her outside so they would not disturb the youngster’s sleep.
“In the morning,” he said, “I’ll see if Andre has time to do some searching. Maybe he’ll have better luck.”
“Thank you.”
“Just trying to earn my reward.”
She grinned and looked away. She looked back up at him in the glow of the torches stuck in the ground outside the tent. He was a man of some prominence here. The idea of Blacks holding positions of authority was still new for a woman recently out of slavery. She realized she would be entering a whole new world as a free woman. “Where can folks go if they leave here?” she asked.
“Able-bodied men can join the fighting, work with the army engineers as laborers, or agree to a work contract on a federal plantation to grow cotton for the Union. Some of the Black regiments like the ones stationed here protect contraband settlements against raiding Reb guerrillas and marauding Union troops.”
“Union troops?”
“Yes, they’ve been known to harass settlements like this one.”
“What about the runaways who stay behind? What happens to them?”
“Some can’t handle conditions here and return to their masters. Most are simply waiting for the government to settle on a policy that will offer them help so they can start their free lives.”
Sable had no way of knowing whether the government would indeed step in, but everything she’d heard about Mr. Lincoln indicated he possessed compassion so
she hoped he had a plan for the slaves he was setting free.
“Are you a runaway also?” she asked.
“No, I’ve been a free man all my life.”
“
All
your life?”
He nodded.
The words surprised her because she’d never met anyone from the South who hadn’t been born a slave. “What’s it like to be free?”
Under the torches’ flickering light, he shrugged. “It is not easy residing in a country that holds our race in such low esteem, but I am a man of the sea. I’ve seen too much of the world and accomplished too much to accept that I’m only three-fifths of a man.”
“I went to Europe once. I thought the ocean would never end, but I loved being on the deck, especially at sunset and dawn. The smell of the sea, the wind in my face…If I were a man, I’d be a sailor.”
He grinned. “It’s hard work.”
“I don’t doubt that, but to be captain of one’s own life, to come and go as you please—the work would be a minor thing.”
At that instant he wished he was a genie so he could conjure them both a vessel to sail in around the world. He’d show her Egypt and Bahia, the Caribbean and Cathay. He wanted to watch her green eyes marvel as he steered her past waterfalls so spectacular the sight stole her breath, and through mountain channels with cliffs so high they kissed the sky.
Raimond shook himself. Whatever was the matter with him? He was waxing poetic over this contraband woman as if she were his own true love. He admitted being attracted to her, but his reactions reminded him of his best friend Galeno Vachon, and the way he’d once mooned over Hester Wyatt. La Petite Indigo, as Hester came to be known, had put Galeno through his paces before finally taking pity upon him and agreeing to become his wife. Raimond had found the sight of his in
vincible best friend reduced to pudding quite comical, though Galen had not appreciated the humor. If Raimond remembered correctly, Galen had voiced the hope that there would be a woman in Raimond’s future who’d “stomp around inside his heart too.” That had been nearly five years ago. So far no stomping had occurred.
“Do you always stare so, or is something the matter?” Sable asked. She’d become uncomfortable under his unwavering scrutiny.
“No, to both questions. Simply thinking back on an old friend. How’d you get to Europe?”
“I accompanied my half-sister Mavis on her wedding tour. I went as her servant.”
“Did you get to see anything of the countries?”
“Very little outside the museums. Mavis insisted I be included on the museum outings because she and I have always enjoyed portraiture. We’d sometimes look through our tutor’s books on the old Masters and concoct wild stories about their lives. Touring those museums changed my life.”
“In what way?”
“I saw portraits and statues of people who looked like you and me. I’d never seen such a thing before. You’ve been free all of your life, so it’s probably not surprising to you, but for me—I saw a vase in Greece with a White man on one side and a woman of the race on the other. Our guide said she was a Black princess named Lamia, and the man was the great god Zeus.”
“Ah, Zeus and Lamia.”
“You know the story?”
“Yes, my father was a seaman. I grew up on the tales he brought back from his world travels. Zeus loved the African princess very much.”