Word Count: 1,268
Archive: DarkMagick.net, Apollymi’s Grimoire, and Archive of Our Own. Anyone else wanting it, please ask first. I’ll probably say yes, but ask first…[endsection]
To say that the Robicheaux family was familiar with scandal was like saying the sky was a mite bit blue.
The matriarch of the family was Arthémie Robicheaux, and it was her name that her triad shared. She’d been a well-born Creole, with a well-to-do maman and a daddy who was not only society but also a soldier. Her other mama, however, was Cajun through and through. And Momma didn’t raise a fool-headed child.
From Maman, she had learned poise and grace. From Daddy, she’d learned how to weather society life by standing tall and letting words roll off her back. But Momma… Momma had taught her how to cuss like a sailor who’d been out to sea for months and was just back on dry land. She taught her to question things that “didn’t make no sense on God’s green earth,” and she taught her how to laugh in the face of the same society that would look down on her for having a Cajun mother.
“If’n they knew that I were the one to carry ya, darling,” she would say, “they would look down their noses at’cha. So we ain’t never gonna tell ‘em, are we, ma cher Arthémie?”
So Arthémie did what she wanted within society’s embrace, even as she snorted at how lofty folk seemed to think they were.
That was how she met Sabine Beauvilliers.
Now, Sabine herself was also Creole, through and through. But she wasn’t as high up in society as the Robicheauxs, and that was only due to one teeny insignificant fact: her mother was white Creole, true enough, but her daddy was mulatto, which made her quadroon.
That one of her parents was mixed was enough of a scandal, and folk wondered why her white daddy wasn’t the one to sire her. But the Beauvilliers didn’t much care what society thought, as they were content with their beautiful daughter, and her mother doted upon her more than either of her daddies.
Arthémie was in love nearly from the second their eyes met across the room, Sabine looking utterly done with the conversation going on around her. Soft grey met light hazel and both women were utterly gone on one another.
They had a quiet wedding, just themselves and their families, and opted to remain somewhat respectable by taking the Robicheaux name. They still caused something of a scandal, not looking too hard to find their third, the one who would round out their relationship and make them complete. Both Arthémie and Sabine knew he was out there in the world, waiting for them, but they didn’t think they needed to dedicate their entire lives to tracking him down.
And they were right.
Dempsey Gaudet found them instead.
And, oh, but the scandal that caused! Arthémie had laughed for days.
Because Dempsey wasn’t Creole. Not in the very least. He was one hundred percent Redbone Cajun, and he made no bones about that fact.
Both his mamas had been half-Chitimacha and his daddy had been a quarter that himself, and he had learned to hunt in the swamps from all three of his parents. Hell, he still went hunting with his Ma, his only living parent.
He had only caught sight of Sabine walking down the street while he was in town, selling some furs from the rabbits he’d caught a few days earlier, and he fell for her the second he spotted her. Following her from a distance, he’d watched her greet Arthémie and just knew that he was supposed to be living in that big ol’ house with those women, and he set out to make their acquaintance.
Because he was, as he would delight in telling folk later at the society parties he was grudgingly invited to, just a “dumb ol’ Cajun boy,” Dempsey had seen no problem with walking up to the Mesdames Robicheaux and making his introductions to them.
Luckily for him, Arthémie and Sabine were completely charmed by his boldness.
It wasn’t too long after Dempsey had married into the family, likewise taking on the Robicheaux name and doting upon his wives like any true gentleman would, that Sabine fell pregnant with what would be their only child. And while they were thrilled at the news she was expecting, they did worry some for the child’s chances in life.
His father would be a Redbone, one who could pass for white despite proudly proclaiming his Chitimacha heritage, and his mother would be a quadroon who did not pass for white, not with her soft coffee-and-cream skin that she’d inherited from her own father.
The best they hoped and wished for was that the child would be lighter skinned than Sabine, so they could pass it off as Dempsey’s heritage breeding true. If that were the case, they could easily say that Arthémie had carried their heir, much as her own maman claimed, and no one would be the wiser.
To help with the charade, the Robicheauxs withdrew from society for a short while, citing that Madame Robicheaux was feeling poorly as the babe was not sitting well. And society thankfully bought into it, although if anyone had asked the servants they could have told tell of how Arthémie continued to ride her horse and go out into the swamp on occasion with Dempsey while Sabine sat in the gardens to read or took long walks with her triad as her stomach slowly swelled with their child.
But no one did, and even if they had, the Robicheaux servants were far more loyal to the folk who treated them as part of the family than to gossip mongers.
And then their son, their little Goodnight, was born. Named by Arthémie as was tradition in her family — the mother who didn’t carry the child got to name him or her, it was only fair — after her daddy who’d died at the Alamo, the boy seemed as if he could have been carried by his Maman T after all… because most of his skin was as fair and pink as Arthémie’s own, his eyes the same as Dempsey’s, with the only true sign that Sabine had birthed him a few small, nearly unnoticed patches of skin on his left thigh that were the color of coffee-and-cream.
“What the hell voodoo is this?” Sabine had laughed, utterly delighted even with her shock. “How did I carry a child so obviously yours, ma coeur?”
And so the Robicheaux family, happily familiar with scandal, were able to pass off their son as less than a quarter Redbone with no trace of black Creole to be found. And they lived their lives happily for many years, until war came calling when Goodnight was only just twenty. He wanted to fight without suffering from the draft, and his parents let him go with heavy hearts.
When the damn Yanks came into New Orleans, intent on occupying the city, Arthémie and Sabine and Dempsey had looked at one another for a long minute before packing what they could and fleeing for Lafayette. There they settled, and there they stayed, and there they greeted their beloved son when the war came to an end and he needed his parents.
And when he left again, heading west not even a year later, they knew he would come home as often as he could.
After all, they had found their hearts at home. Goodnight’s hearts were somewhere out there in the world, and he was his Daddy’s son. He was going to find them on his own.
[section=Footer Notes]02 January 2017Translation Notes:
(All translations are taken from Google Translate or Adora’s shaky remnants of French)
French:
Maman – Mamma
Ma cher – My darling (feminine)
Ma coeur – My heart (feminine)[endsection]