Property(40)

“She hasn’t come back?”

“No one has seen her.”

“Delphine must know.”

“No.”

I looked at my hand. There were three bruised marks just behind my thumb. “She bit me,” I said.

“Merciful heaven,” my aunt said.

“She took my husband’s horse and rode off. I begged her to let me get away, but she wouldn’t.”

“Then she has run away,” my aunt concluded.

“But where?” I exclaimed.

“She can’t have gotten far. She is probably hiding in town. It would surprise me if Mr. Roget didn’t know something of her whereabouts. I shall write to your uncle to make inquiries at once.”

My husband is dead, I thought. Why would she run now, when she was safe from him? It didn’t make sense.

“She has her baby with her,” I said.

“That will make it all the easier to find her.”

I could see her face again, her lips drawn back over her teeth, her eyes crazed and glowing in the torchlight as she pointed out my husband to his murderers and stood by until the blade had descended upon his neck.

“Yes,” I agreed. “We’ll find her.”



I SENT FOR Delphine to quiz her about Sarah, and to find out what she knew about that night. She said she had gone into the yard after supper to throw out the dishwater and when she came back she saw three of the runaways standing in the kitchen. So they were already in the house when I was speaking to my husband in his office. Delphine slipped out of the yard and crept along the back of the house to my window, where she threw pebbles until Sarah looked out. “I tole her what I seen,” Delphine said, “and she say for me to wait ’til she pass me her Nell, so I hid by the wall. Then she wrap up the chile and pass her down to me.”

“But I looked out then,” I said. “I didn’t see anyone.”

“I seen you, missus,” Delphine said. “But I was ’fraid to speak out and I figure Sarah tole you, so I stay still ’til she pass Nell down to me. Then I run ’roun the other side of the house and thas when the shots ring out. I hid in a bush ’til you was all running out on the lawn.”

“And you gave the baby back to Sarah.”

“Yes, missus,” she said. “She call to me, then I run back to the kitchen and lock myself in with Rose ’til you come.”

“Where do you think Sarah might have gone?” I asked, though I didn’t expect an honest answer. Delphine hung her head. “I don’ have no notion, missus,” she said.

“No matter,” I said confidently. “She won’t get far. If she hasn’t returned within the week I shall take out a notice in the journals, and that will bring the slave-catchers like flies to sugar.”

Delphine made no response. I considered the last information as good as delivered to Sarah’s ear. “Send Rose to me,” I said. “She’ll have to serve upstairs until Sarah is returned.”



MY FATHER WOULD never keep a runaway, but he never let one stay away either. If it took him six months and cost as much as the man was worth, he would gladly take the loss for the example it set the others to see a malcontent returned in shackles and straightway sold at market. He made sure all our negroes were informed of the proviso to the warranty, that whoever bought the man must know he had run away and could not be trusted, and that his value had been accordingly diminished. This policy resulted in a very low rate of absentees from our farm. Father deplored the laxity of his neighbors, who allowed a hand to disappear for two or three days at a time, always when the crop was in an urgent condition, then return to take his lashes and rejoin his companions with tales of his cleverness in eluding capture. Father wept with laughter when relating to us the policy of Mr. Hampton of Lafourche Parish, who administered a certain number of lashes for each day the slave went missing: fifteen for one day, thirty for two, etc. Father called this plan “the three-day furlough,” for it was revealed that most of Mr. Hampton’s regular runaways returned by midnight of the third day, which this gentleman cited as proof of the efficacy of his system.

House servants were another matter. I can remember only one instance of a runaway from our house. It happened just after the fearful insurrection downriver when I was a girl. We were never in any danger from it, but Father went to the city just afterward and on his return told us what an alarming state the countryside was in. Five hundred slaves had simply gone mad and marched down the river road toward New Orleans, banging drums and waving flags. They killed Major Andry’s son and wounded the major himself, set fire to mills and barns, raided the biggest houses. A stream of planters’ families in wagons and carts, having taken flight in whatever vehicle they could quickly find, preceded the rebels into town.