Black Master, White Slave Read online

  Pegeen didn’t care. She wanted to impress the master, but she came down too late. He had breakfasted and gone before she appeared. It didn’t matter, she told herself. He had to come home, and when he did he would call her to his bed. Any other thought she found not only illogical, but terrifying. For the first time in her life, Pegeen actually wanted to be bedded, to take a man into her body. As long as the man was Josiah Cavanaugh.

  She stood by the door to the front parlor, arranging the vase of flowers the master liked kept there, when a thunderous knock on the front door filled the hallway. Answering the door was William’s job, one that Old Ellen said he guarded fiercely.

  The knocking had become pounding before William, never altering his measured stride, moved across the tile entry. “Yes?” he enquired in a voice that showed he didn’t think much of who stood outside.

  “I’m here to see Cavanaugh,” said a tight voice.

  “The master is not receiving,” William replied. He did not know Hippolyte Thibodeaux, but his face showed he knew the kind of man he was. For a moment Pegeen would have sworn William was afraid. “May I tell him who called?”

  He hadn’t opened the door more than a foot or so, denying Pegeen a glimpse of the caller. A well-placed fist knocked the door out of William’s grasp, sending it flying open against the wall with a thud that set the side windows rattling.

  Into the hall stepped a young man still carrying the ghost of good looks, wearing what had once been a fashionable suit, now wrinkled and dirty. Three tough, dirty-looking men who were obviously from the lowest rank of laborers followed him.

  “We’ll wait,” said Hippolyte, striding in as if he owned the place. The others were not so comfortable being bold. Apparently they were not used to such a place, for they barely stepped inside the door and looked about in awe.

  “I must ask you to leave, sir…” William said in a haughty voice, but too late. The man had seen Pegeen.

  Pegeen could feel his gaze going over her, hot and hungry just like his hands would have been.

  “Never mind,” he said, stepping toward her. “We’ve found what we came for.”

  “Go to the kitchen at once, girl!” William snapped.

  Trained to obedience, Pegeen dropped the flowers she held and turned away, but not quickly enough. The stranger grabbed her arm and turned her around until their faces were just inches apart.

  “No, girl,” Hippolyte said in a husky voice.

  Pegeen had heard that kind of voice many times before and knew what it meant. Her knees shook with fear. Had Mr. Cavanaugh – Josiah! – decided to loan her out? No… he wasn’t like that. And even if he were he would have told William.

  “You’re the reason we’re here,” he continued, his voice low and insinuating.

  “I must ask you to leave,” William snapped. “The master…”

  “Don’t talk like that to your betters, boy!” Hippolyte glared, incensed that he – a Thibodeaux of Louisiana! – should be expected to obey a darkie slave. “Now we’re here to see Cavanaugh, and we’re just going to amuse ourselves while we wait for him.”

  “She really is white,” one of the toughs said with an odd mixture of awe and anger. “White, not some kind of high yellow.”

  Another one smiled while his gaze raked Pegeen, making her feel naked. “Pretty, too.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling you,” Hippolyte said. His fingers were painfully tight on Pegeen’s arm. “Hardly natural for a darkie to own such a prime piece, is it? Come on, my dear. We’ll go in the parlor and get acquainted…”

  “That is not acceptable…” William began but at a nod from Hippolyte, two of the other men grabbed him while the third pummeled him, bloodying him, and knocking him unconscious with two hard blows.

  “Stop that!” Pegeen shrieked, striking out at her captor with her free hand and kicking at him. She was unshod, but she could tell she hurt him, even though his eyes filled with surprise more than pain. Then the surprise changed to anger and the kind of feral glee she had seen all too often in the lustful eyes of drunken men.

  This man wasn’t drunk, despite an air of stale alcohol that hung about him. Unshaven and bleary eyed, he smelled, too, both of rank river water and old sweat. He might be white, but he was about as poor a specimen of human as she had ever seen.

  Her first instinct, and to be honest, her desire, was to claw his face bloody and kick him until he couldn’t walk for a week, but even though he was no taller than she, Pegeen knew she could never overpower him. There might be a better way.

  Pulling herself erect, she looked him squarely in the eye with a cold, commanding expression. Mrs. Winterborough, Old Mr. Winterborough’s daughter-in-law, had such a look and everyone, from the lowliest field hand to her father in law himself had gone in fear of her. Of course, she also liked to see people whipped, especially the women her husband dallied with. Pegeen herself had been terrified of her, but thankfully her husband had preferred darker flesh.

  “Release me at once!” she ordered, and for a moment she thought he would. Something moved behind his eyes, some early memory of obedience to imperious females, but the moment passed and he gave an ugly smile.

  “Mighty uppity for a slave, ain’t you, girl? Do you speak to your darkie owner like that?” His fingers tightened and twisted on her arm, pulling a small cry of pain from her.

  “Mr. Cavanaugh will be angry…” Pegeen tried to hold on to the image of Mrs. Winterborough, but couldn’t.

  “Mister! You ain’t got no business calling a darkie mister! He should be out in the fields and have his back whipped raw for presuming to act like a white man!” Hippolyte began to rant, little flecks of bubbling saliva catching in the corners of his mouth and along the edge of his scraggly moustache, giving him the look of a rabid rodent. “He ain’t got no business owning slaves like he was a human being himself…”

  Pegeen stood very still and let him rage. He seemed more intent on airing his somewhat incoherent grievances than anything else, and that was fine with her. Surely Mr. Cavanaugh would be home soon; surely he would come rescue her… She suddenly longed for the security of his arms around her more than anything else in the entire world.

  * * * * *

  Old Ellen was in the kitchen setting the sponge for bread baking when she heard the sounds she had feared for years. White voices. Angry voices. She couldn’t tell how many, but her mind envisioned a mob.

  “Run!” she snapped at half-witted Bob, at the moment her only companion. “Massa’s gone to the docks to see about shipping the cotton over the ocean. Mr. Drew’s office. Find him and tell him what’s happening here. And hurry!”

  Bob might be half-witted, but he was not stupid. He could hear the sounds from the front of the house. He was out the kitchen door and out of the backyard in an instant, running for the docks as if his life depended on it.

  * * * * *

  Hippolyte finally ran out of breath, or words, or both. All traces of amused superiority were gone, burned out by his anger. His look at Pegeen was one of pure hatred.

  “I used to own slaves, hundreds of them. They were stolen from me, like my land. But I never owned anything like you. It just ain’t right that a darkie should own things a white man doesn’t!”

  Pegeen said nothing.

  “I mean, you’re a white woman… no darkie should be touching you. It’s against nature! Back home we’d have flayed him alive for being so presumptuous.” For a moment Hippolyte smiled, apparently lost in fantasy, then his expression changed to one of pure hatred.

  “Let me go.”

  “Can’t do that. Got to save you. He might have all the money and all the power on God’s earth, but a darkie should never own a white woman.” His tongue, looking as unhealthily white and puffy as something that lived under wet rocks, slid out of his mouth and moistened his lips. It left behind a slick, wet trail.

  Pegeen shuddered.

  “Especially not a woman like you. You need a real man, one who can pleas
ure you good…” Hippolyte’s free hand reached out and squeezed her breast painfully. “Someone who knows what makes a woman happy.”

  “Let me go!” she said, with more authority. “You got no rights over me.”

  “I got more than that darkie does! He shouldn’t have a woman like you. None of them should be allowed to own slaves. They should all be slaves themselves… every last one of them!” He squeezed her breast again, this time even harder, smiling at her wince of pain. “I’ll show you what it feels like to be with a real man. Just because you’re pretty, you understand? Most white men wouldn’t touch you after you’ve lain with a darkie, letting him touch you and poke you like a whore…”

  His fingers wrapped around the low neckline of her dress and yanked. The thin fabric split and ripped, exposing Pegeen’s nakedness.

  The other men looked hungrily at her. They stepped over William’s frighteningly still body and came closer. One of them made a low rumble deep in his throat. Another giggled. It was an awful sound.

  Pegeen suddenly became very frightened.

  * * * * *

  “Now if we can pack the cotton tighter, increase the tonnage without increasing the space…” Josiah was saying.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said Oscar Drew’s weedy young law clerk, timidly sticking his head in the door of the ship owner’s private office, “but this young person is most insistent…”

  “Massa!” shouted Bob, pushing his way past the clerk with no difficulty. “There’s trouble…”

  Before Bob could do more than stammer a few words Josiah knew what was happening, and running out the door, flung an order over his shoulder for Drew to send the constable and the police to his home.

  * * * * *

  “Now you just come here, girl,” Hippolyte said, pulling her close and forcing his mouth against hers.

  Revolted as much by the thought of that slug-like tongue in her mouth as by the evidence of his erection straining against the front of his less-than-clean trousers, Pegeen turned her face away. The feeling of his wet mouth against her cheek felt bad enough and the smell of him was enough to make her gag.

  Her attacker was infuriated. He twisted her arm cruelly and squeezed her breast again, this time with not even a show of passion. At her cry he released that pained orb and grabbed her chin, forcing her face so close to hers their noses touched.

  “Don’t do that again, hear me? You’re a slave, and you’ve got to do what I say.”

  He looked and sounded mad. His face was distorted and his eyes red-rimmed and bulging. His breath stank almost as much as his body.

  His hold on her jaw made speech difficult, but Pegeen forced the words out. “You’re not my massa.”

  That was too much for what was left of Hippolyte Thibodeaux. He snarled like the feral beast he now resembled and slapped Pegeen viciously. “I’m a white man,” he shrieked. “That makes me your master, not that damned darkie!”

  “Stop hurting her,” one of the dockmen said. “There’s better ways to show her who’s the best man. We’ll all help.” The other two laughed.

  A belated caution came into Hippolyte’s foxy face. “Yes, but not here. I’m her master now. We’ll take her with us.”

  Another dockman sniggered. “Like that?”

  “Why not like that?” Hippolyte answered. “She’s nothing but a slave.”

  Pegeen’s entrails almost turned to water with fear. She knew if she ever left this house with those men she wouldn’t live long. They’d take her and use her again and again until they were tired, then if she were still alive they’d give her to their friends and they’d use her, and if she lived through that…

  No, it didn’t bear thinking of, but now the man was dragging her toward the door.

  Chapter Seven

  Josiah feared the worst. From the end of the block he could tell that his front door was open with no one in sight, an unprecedented state of affairs. The front gate was open, too, and he didn’t bother to close it as he dashed through. Vaguely he was aware of the thunder of feet behind him, but his entire attention focused on the struggling heap on the hallway floor.

  “William!”

  The seneschal looked very different from his usual polished elegance. One eye was swollen shut and his mouth appeared to be nothing but a bloody hole. Even though he tried to move he held his body stiffly and one arm lay at an unnatural angle.

  Broken, Josiah thought bleakly, kneeling beside him. Probably a couple of ribs, too.

  “Mr. Cavanaugh?” A great beefy policeman stood in the door, two more behind him. Josiah knew the man, knew that he disliked treating a black man as an equal, let alone a superior, but knew his duty enough to do it whether he liked it or not.

  “My home was broken into,” Josiah said. “My seneschal has been attacked. Send one of your men for a doctor.”

  The policeman nodded and one of them ran down the walk. They all knew that while Josiah Cavanaugh was a black man, he was wealthy and powerful and more than capable of causing a mere policeman to lose his job.

  “Four,” William struggled to say. His words were mere gurgles. “There were four. The girl…”

  A great knot of ice formed in Josiah’s stomach. “Did they take her?”

  Speaking had been too much of an effort. Feebly William pointed toward the open parlor door. Slowly, filled with a fear he had never felt before, Josiah rose and walked to the door.

  Pegeen.

  Was she gone?

  Had taken her out through the French doors? Or even the front door while William was unconscious?

  Had they killed her?

  A rush of feeling went through him. The thought of never seeing Pegeen again, never holding her in his arms, never making love with her again felt like a knife in his belly.

  Of all the horrible things Josiah had imagined, he had never pictured the scene before him.

  Pegeen, her cap gone and her hair wild about her head like a halo of flame.

  Pegeen, nearly naked with only the rags of her dress still hanging from her.

  Pegeen, holding aloft a small bronze sculpture like a club, her face fierce and strained.

  And at her feet a crumpled body in rusty black.

  Josiah could smell him from the doorway.

  Giving a wordless cry, Pegeen dropped the bronze and flew into Josiah’s outstretched arms.

  * * * * *

  For the first time in her life Pegeen experienced the luxury of lying in bed on a fine afternoon, and she wasn’t enjoying it a bit. Even Old Ellen had said she wasn’t bad hurt – just bruised on her breast and arm and a strained muscle or two, hardly things to put a healthy slave to bed, an opinion Old Ellen had not been shy about expressing in spite of it being Massa Josiah’s orders.

  “I knowed you was gonna be trouble from the minute he brought you in this house,” she grumbled, poking expertly at Pegeen’s muscles and joints. “Ain’t that just like a man – he goes to buy more maids so I don’t have to do all the blessed work in this big ole house and he comes home with a red-haired white girl that carries trouble with her like a bad smell!”

  Pegeen bore it all meekly. It was the first time Old Ellen had been so talkative. “What happened to the maids before?”

  “They got knocked. He didn’t want them in the house then.”

  “Did he sell them?” she dared ask, a quiver of terror going through her soul.

  The old woman cackled. “No, Massa never sells any slave. They’s out at Highgate.”

  After Old Ellen left, Pegeen worried again. Perhaps Josiah never sold a slave before, but what about one who brought criminals into his home, however innocently? Would he think she was more trouble than she was worth? Like now. She should be up helping Old Ellen nurse William; she should be getting dinner cooking; she should be doing her regular chores, but Josiah had ordered her to stay in bed, so in bed she would stay. She didn’t want to give him any excuse to send her away.

  What truly terrified her was that he might not have a choic
e. The penalties for a slave who attacked a white man – for whatever cause – were fearsome. There had been policemen with Josiah, she remembered, and policemen meant the law had to be involved. The law was not kind to slaves, especially white ones.

  Sometime during the afternoon she must have dozed, for when she was aware again it was just before sunset and her door slowly swung open.

  “Massa?”

  The light was uncertain, but it was Josiah standing in the doorway. He had discarded his coat and waistcoat. In the pale light his skin looked even darker compared to the whiteness of his shirt. He closed the door behind him and took the three steps to the edge of the bed, but no farther.

  “I wanted to see how you were.” He sounded oddly hesitant as he slowly crossed the room to stand by her bed.

  Pegeen sat up. The sheet fell from her, exposing her breasts and drawing a gasp from Josiah. Even in the evening light the dark red of bruises were evident on her breasts and arms.

  Josiah gasped, then with a feather-light touch brushed the tip of her nipple. “That bastard.”

  “I’m all right,” Pegeen said hastily, alarmed at the grimness of his face. She was damaged; would he sell her because she wasn’t instantly available? “Old Ellen told me you said I was to stay in bed, but I really feel like getting back to my chores…”

  “That,” Josiah said in low, soothing tones, “is exactly what you are not going to do. You are going to stay there until you are well.”

  “But I’m fine… just a little sore, that’s all,” she said, then saw the fixed look on Josiah’s face. “How’s William?”

  “He’s hurt bad, but the doctor says he’ll be all right.”

  “I should be helping take care of him. There were three men, you know, the ones that beat him up. I was scared they’d killed him.”

  “They nearly did.”

  “Am I in trouble?” Pegeen tried to keep the quaver of fear out of her voice and failed.

  “No. Not at all.”

  “But he was a white man, and I’m just a slave. The policemen…” Her voice broke.