Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [116]
When the bee-hive casts its swarm;
Acorns ripe down-pattering,
While the autumn breezes sing…
Somehow Mary Ann’s tone seemed to have become just faintly harsher. With a clatter of pitchers and cups Catharine had come into the room. She wore under her apron a dark gown, of a blue so deep it was almost black, picked out by bright points that might have been either red fruits or red coals. Forrest had issued her this fabric himself, from a store of rolls he’d recently bought to clothe his slaves.
Catharine stood tall, erect as a lion-hunter, the long neck holding her head up high, the weight of the many fine braids of her hair spreading and flowing over her shoulders. Only a slight rattle of the crockery betrayed a trace of nervousness. After a moment’s hesitation she moved to serve Mrs. Montgomery first, bending her legs to bring the tray and its contents within this mistress’s reach. Mrs. Montgomery served herself delicately from the steaming china pot, added two lumps of sugar, emitted a brittle smile.
Catharine passed the tray then toward Mary Ann Forrest, who waved her off with the back of the book, and went on, a little louder, with her reading.
Oh Sweet Fancy! Let her loose.
Everything is spoiled by use:
Where’s the cheek that doth not fade
Too much gaz’d at? Where’s the maid
Whose lip mature is ever new?
Where’s the eye, however blue,
Doth not weary? Where’s the face
One would meet in every place?
Where’s the voice, however soft,
One would hear so very oft?
Catharine lowered herself before Forrest now.
“Suh,” she murmured, molasses slow. “What will you take, Mist’ Fo’est?” Her brown eye caught his for an instant before slipping easily away. Forrest took his coffee black. She’d sewn her bodice firm and tight. A swatch of white muslin tucked in the V still permitted a view of the dark cleft between her breasts. Her nipples pushed red berries up through the cloth.
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.
“That’ll do me,” Forrest said, sitting back on the sofa, careful not to spill his cup, and Catharine caught him again with a sidelong smile as she rose, with a graceful turn away from him, but looking over her shoulder to say to him, “Suh, is that all you want?” As she moved off to serve the men sitting outside on the gallery, it occurred to Forrest that she might be slightly better tolerated by the white women of this household if she could only swing her hips a little less winsomely.
Catharine did not remain long on the gallery. The two Cowan men, Mary Ann’s uncle and cousin, had gone outdoors to smoke cigars, perhaps for a discreet taste of whiskey. They did not care for coffee now.
Let, then, sweet Fancy find
Thee a mistress to thy mind:
Dulcet-eyed as Ceres’ daughter,
Ere the God of Torment taught her
How to frown and how to chide;
With a waist and with a side
White as Hebe’s when her zone
Slipt its golden clasp and down
Fell her kirtle at her feet—
Mary Ann broke off, a little sharply, and without finishing the last few lines of the poem. Again Catharine had appeared in the frame of the doorway. “Missus,” she said. “Will they be anything else?”
Mary Ann glanced up without looking at the new housemaid directly. “We’ll want no more of you tonight—you can go on to the quarters. But leave the tray with us.”
Catharine seemed to smile obscurely as she stooped to settle the tray on a low table. The movement involved an undulation of her long back and brought her derriere in tight relief beneath the fabric.
Mrs. Montgomery had apparently pricked herself with a needle. She sucked a droplet of blood from a fingertip. “Exotic costume for a house servant,” she remarked, once Catharine had barely swayed out of the room. “A saucy wench if I make no mistake. I wonder you don’t find her stout enough for the field.”
Though the remark seemed generally addressed, Forrest rather took it to himself. I wonder if she’s stout enough to stand up to your witchery, he thought, but had the good sense not to say it.
Mrs. Montgomery looked at her daughter then,