Summary: A set of vignettes featuring Marie.

Rated:  K+    Word count: 2211

 

And Then Came Marie

 

“Are we there yet? On the Ponderosa, I mean.”

He smiled down at her. “Yes.” His grin widened. “We have been for the better part of the last hour.” He heard her gasp, and a soft chuckle escaped his lips. “I told you we had a large ranch, my dear.”

“Large! Large is…” She waved her hand and gestured to the sky, “This is not large. This is…” She had no words. They would have been wasted anyway, for he leaned down and covered her lips with his.

“It’s about two more miles to the house. It will not be much longer, love, and we will be home.”

Home. His home. Their home now. His sons. Their sons? “Benjamin, the boys…“

“Will love you as I do, Marie.” He shook his finger at her gently, “Do not worry, my love. This time it will be happily ever after for the both of us.”

She slid her arms about his waist and rested her head against his shoulder. Happily ever after. Holy Mother let it be so.

 

~******2******~

 

She missed the church bells. The bells of St. Louis Cathedral could be heard throughout the French Quarter calling the faithful to mass each day and thrice on Sunday. It had been nearly a year since she had heard the cathedral’s bells, months since she had heard any type of church bell at all. Marie sighed and shook her head. No church bells, no plaintive whistles from the boats on the river, no hawkers calling, none of the bustling sounds that emanated from thronged streets, no French songs, no soft drawling voices, no… She leaned her head against the window frame and stared across the muddy yard toward the barn.

“Mama?”

She drew in a deep breath before she turned. “Yes, Hoss?”

“I, I hurt my finger.” The statement was followed by a sniff as the boy held out his pointer finger for her inspection.

She took his hand in hers, used her handkerchief to wipe away smeared blood, and inspected the gouge. “We must clean it, mon petit l’un, and wrap it up to keep it clean.” She felt the tug as he tried to pull his hand from hers.

“No, Mama, the soap stings.” The child’s hair fluttered from the shaking of his head, and his lower lip slipped forward.

“But we must, Hoss, is that not why you came to me, for me to care for it?”

“I, I thought you could, I thought you could kiss it better, Mama. Please.” His blue eyes widened with pleading.

“Ah, I see, and I shall, but then we must clean and bandage it.” She raised his finger to her lips and pressed them firmly on the tip. “See, a kiss before and a hug after, n’est pas cette droite?

“Two hugs,” he bargained and with a small smile added, “two hugs and some cookies?”

She laughed softly, “Oui, two hugs and if you are very brave two cookies. Agreed?”

“Yesum, agreed.” He smiled, and her hand darted out to tickle his side. The laughter that pealed from the child rang far sweeter than any church bell.

 

~******3******~

 

She heard the rap on the door and called her invitation to enter. She watched as the door opened slowly and her elder stepson entered the room. He took only a few steps before stopping at the edge of the light from the bedside lamp. His head was up, but Marie was sure that his eyes were not focused on her.

“Pa said… Pa said I was to apologize. I apologize.” The final two words were so laden with insincerity that they dropped like a stone to the floor.

“And I accept your apology. There is no need to say more.” She saw his arm rise and his hand tug his ear.

“Uh, uh, uh, Pa said something else.” His voice faded away, and the silence grew taut.

“Your Papa said what, Adam?”

She saw the slight shudder that ran threw his body which then grew stiff.

“He said… he said his punishing me hasn’t worked very well, so… this time I’m to take my punishment from you.” His voice broke slightly with the final two words.

She had thought his punishment would have preceded his apology, and her surprise kept her silent for some moments.

“I have accepted your apology, Adam. As I said before, no more need be said…” She paused and sighed. “Or done.” She turned her face from him in dismissal. After a minute when she did not hear him depart, she looked again to see him standing in the shadows. “You may go, Adam.”

“If you don’t punish me, Pa will.”

She could hear the severity of his father’s threatened punishment in the boy’s tone. “I shall speak to your papa.” When Adam continued to stand unmoving, she rose and walked toward him. “You have obeyed him; your father will understand this.”

“I hurt you with what I said.” He tugged his right ear. “I meant to hurt you.”

“So, you think that I should want to hurt you now?”

“Punishing isn’t the same as just hurting.”

“No, it has a different purpose. I shall not punish you, Adam, and I shall ask your father not to punish you.” She turned away from him.

He spoke the truth to her back. “I won’t hate you if you punish me, not any more than I do now.”

She turned back toward him. “Just which me is it that you hate, Adam?”

“Which?”

“Would you hate me if I was anyone but your papa’s wife, if Hoss had no reason to call me Mama? Do you hate me or the woman that took your mama’s place?” Her words had gained heat as she spoke them, and he took a step back.

“We didn’t need you here.”

“Your papa did.”

“I don’t want you here!”

“But I am here, Adam, and that is not going to change. There is nothing you can say or do that will hurt me enough to make me go. I love your father, I love your brother, and, child, a part of me loves you.”

“I don’t want you to love me.”

Her shrugged was Gallic and very eloquent. “That is a shame because you cannot stop me.

“Mama loved me!” She could hear the tears in his voice though his cheeks remained dry.

“Oui, I have not the doubt, and you loved her.” Her hand reached out and hovered not quite touching his cheek. Her voice became barely a whisper. “She… I have done only what she did Adam: love Benjamin Cartwright and that which is his.” Her fingertips made contact with his cheek. “I think that your mama would not want her son to hate.”

“She…” His next word was lost in a sob, and he jerked around so that his back was to her.

Marie reached out and wrapped her arms around him pulling them together. The words she murmured were French, but their meaning was clear enough. She felt his tears drip onto her hands and turned him toward her, hugging his head to her chest. When he stilled, she loosened her hold, and he turned his head against her shoulder.

“She’d be ashamed… she’d be ashamed of me for what I said… for hurting you. She’d… the one time… the only time she spanked me was ‘cause I said something mean that made a girl cry.”

“Disappointed, Adam, not ashamed.” Marie drew back from him, and he lifted his head.

“I’m sorry. Truly, I’m sorry that I said it.” This time his eyes held the same message as his words.

Her hands cupped his face again, and when he did not pull away, she pressed her lips against his forehead. “You are forgiven, mon petite.” Her hand dropped from his face.

“Thank you.” He swallowed and then stiffened. “Don’t tell Pa not to punish me; I deserve it.”

There has been enough pain and tears, my son. “Your papa said your punishment was to be mine, did he not?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then the punishment is mine to bestow.” The only thing that moved was the flicker in his eyes. “One day in your room without the books, the pens, or the paper. You may leave only for the chores, and your brother may not come in. Though perhaps that is a punishment for Hoss also.”

“He… he’ll have you.”

She smiled, and for the first time Adam allowed himself to see what there was in her that attracted his father.

“To bed with you now.” She saw his mouth open and knew it was to protest the earliness of her command. She raised a finger to his lips. “Now, young man.”

“Yes, ma’am.” A trace of a dimple appeared. Then he cocked his head. “Can’t I even read the Bible?”

Her eyes narrowed. “The sisters would make us copy from the Holy Book, verse after verse after verse. Perhaps…”

“You said I wasn’t to have pen nor paper.” Adam spun as he delivered this interjection and darted from the door. “Good night, ma’am.”

She smiled though her cheeks grew wet with tears.

 

~******4******~

 

She stood next to the open window gazing into the night. The moonlight set her white cotton nightgown shimmering as the summer breeze set it fluttering around her. He rose and went to stand behind her.

“Marie.” His voice was barely a whisper against her cheek as he slipped his arm around her waist. She leaned back into his embrace placing her hand over his as it rested against her stomach. “Can’t you sleep, my love?”

“I’ve better things to do than sleep.”

“Like counting stars?”

“Not stars, Benjamin.”

“Then what?”

“Dreams, I’m counting dreams that have come true.”

“And do they outnumber the stars?”

She turned in his arms to gaze into his eyes. “Nearly.” Her smile held love, contentment, and something he could not quite decipher. “Ben,” her arms came up to encircle his neck, “you know how I have dreamed of having our child?”

“As I have dreamed you would.”

“Then both of us can count another dream come true.” She rested her cheek against his chest and felt his heart quicken with the realization of what she had shared.

His arms pulled her to him and then held her away, so he could read her face. “You’re, you’re …, are you sure you’re with child?”

“My heart is sure, though I meant to wait until the doctor confirmed it to tell you.”

The sound that rose from his throat was pure, inarticulate joy. He swept her off her feet and spun them both across the floor.

“Ben, Ben, you’ll wake the boys!” Her hand cupped his face, and her thumbs pressed against his lips. She shook her head and then lowered her mouth to his kiss.

He carried her back to their bed. “Tomorrow, tomorrow you’re seeing Paul Martin.”

She murmured her agreement. “Tomorrow.” She settled in his arms as the night grew quiet around them. Both of them kept their prayers silent and then drifted into sleep.

 

~******5******~

 

She unbuttoned her night dress as she listened to the clock chime twice. Settling the baby to feed, she leaned back in the rocker and smiled. The moonlight was soft and offered just enough illumination for eyes, accustomed to the darkness, to safely maneuver through the house. She had not lit a lamp preferring the enveloping gentleness of the night. A push from her toes set the rocker in motion, and her hand matched the rhythm of the chair as she patted the baby’s bottom. She bent her head and hummed a lullaby from her past remembering only the melody and not the words. The rocker creaked lightly, but the baby’s cry had not wakened Benjamin, so the sound did not worry her. None of the sounds that came to her caused concern. They were all the familiar sounds of her home. She sighed at the thought. My home, my husband, my children, my son.

A tear slipped down her cheek. A single tear was nothing when the nights before her Benjamin had been so often filled with weeping. She sighed again and snuggled her nursing child closer. Ben had healed her with love and given her a larger piece of heaven than she had ever hoped to know on earth, for this she sent a prayer of thanksgiving to the Virgin and her Son and then asked the angels once again to care for the little one she had never had the chance to hold. The child stopped suckling, and she shifted him to her shoulder to begin rubbing his small back in slow circles. “Ah, mon peu un, my little Joseph, you shall always have what love can give and only memories of sunshine.”

She rocked and rubbed and hummed until the child slept in her arms. Laying him in his cradle, she slipped back into her bed. Without waking, her husband turned toward her, and each pair of arms instinctively encircled the body of the other. This time her sigh ended in a smile. She was asleep before the clock chimed thrice.