Louisiana History Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  Elene made a brief, dismissive gesture. “I know nothing about the place, beyond the fact that the people speak French in spite of forty years of Spanish rule, that it’s hot and incredibly muddy and crawls with snakes. That much my father told me in his letters while he was there.”

  “The snakes are bad only when it floods,” Ryan answered. “Otherwise it’s a pleasant town. The breezes from the water keep it fairly comfortable in summer, and the winters are just cool enough to be a change. It has the look, somehow, of both a French and a Spanish town. The reason is the fires during the Spanish regime that caused much of it to be rebuilt. The balconies, the wrought iron, and the courtyards give it a Spanish air, but the roof lines, the shapes and position of doors and windows, the rounded corners of the streets, will remind you of Paris.”

  “Papa said he was almost extinguished with boredom.”

  “He must have made no attempt to become known to people. There are always balls and dances, card parties and musical evenings and outings into the country, and for the gentlemen, cafés, cockfights, gambling dens, and drinking houses of all kinds serving everything from wine and absinthe to ale. Then everyone strolls in the square, the Place d’Armes, to take the evening air and see and be seen.”

  “You are fond of it, are you not?” Elene asked.

  “It’s my home,” he answered, as if no other explanation were needed.

  She looked away. She wished she had that sense of belonging. She must have felt something of it as a child for the island, but there had been so many years in France that it had faded. France itself, because there was always the possibility of being recalled to the island at a moment’s notice, had never quite seemed like home.

  Ryan waited for some comment. When none was forthcoming, he said, “New Orleans could be home to you, too.”

  Elene lifted her chin. “Saint-Domingue is where I was born.”

  “I assume you have thought of someone here who may help you then, some friend of your father’s, or business acquaintance?”

  “No one,” she said, coolness entering her voice.

  “Ah, well, I’m sure something will come to you.” He stretched and relaxed, shifting to lie at full length on the pallet. “For instance, you can always throw yourself on the mercy of the officer in charge since the death of General Leclerc.”

  “General Rochambeau?”

  “You think it would be useless to aim so high? You may be right. There is a fat colonel I met a few days ago who would, I expect, be the very man.”

  Suspicious of his cheery helpfulness, she asked, “How so?”

  “He appeared to have a heart as soft as his brain, and a most lascivious eye. I’m sure you could persuade him to do anything you please. You might even marry him.”

  “Marry? Never!”

  “Become his mistress?”

  “What?” she cried in wrath.

  “His laundress then? Though you should know that the women who go under that name are sometimes expected to perform other services when officers remove their uniforms.”

  “I know that,” she said, goaded. “Anyway, I thought you were certain the French under Rochambeau will be defeated?”

  “In that case, there will always be the beefy British officers removing their uniforms.”

  She snatched up his coat and flung it in the general direction of his head in the dimness.

  The mock exasperated click of his tongue was muffled by the cloth of the coat over his face. “There’s just no helping some people.”

  5

  “LIGHT THE CANDLE,” Elene whispered.

  Ryan came awake abruptly, which was not surprising since he had been jabbed in the ribs. “What is it?”

  “There’s something in here with us. Light the candle.”

  A pattering sound, slight, stopping then starting again, could be heard. It was followed by delicate scrabbling in the corner where their food supplies sat.

  “It’s a rat,” Ryan said softly.

  “I know that,” came Elene’s reply in a fierce undertone. “Light the candle!”

  The creature had been attracted by the food, no doubt, and had made his way under the house’s foundation and shimmied down into the hole with them. Nothing short of annihilation could keep it away from them now, and Elene had no intention of sharing their refuge or their food with it. Not only did such vermin carry fleas and disease, it just might become tangled in her hair as she slept.

  Beside her, she heard the scrape of flint in the tinderbox as Ryan prepared to make a light. Stealthily, she reached out, feeling for one of his boots to use as a weapon.

  She touched the rat’s tail. It was hairless and cool and twitched under her fingers. She jerked her hand back, smothering a cry of repugnance.

  “What is it?” There was concern in Ryan’s voice.

  “I touched it!” she said, shuddering with loathing.

  She thought she heard the ghost of a laugh. A moment later, a yellow light flared as the tinder caught. Ryan reached for the candle and thrust the wick into the small flame, then as the candle caught, snapped the box closed to extinguish the lighted flint.

  Elene pounced on the boot she had been seeking and raised it in her hand. She looked around for the rat. It was just whisking behind the water jug. She lunged after it, beating the floor as it jumped and dodged.

  “Kill it,” she said over her shoulder in passionate intensity, “kill it.”

  Ryan set the candle in a corner, took up a boot, and gave chase. He and Elene hammered and smacked the floor, leaping this way and that, dodging each other and the rat as it made frantic dashes from one side of the hole to the other. Their shadows swooped around the walls in a fantastic dance, colliding, separating, meshing, and springing apart.

  The contest was never in doubt. The rat had got into the hole easily enough, but there was no easy way out, and there were two of them armed with unflagging determination as well as a boot each. Within seconds, it was over. Ryan removed the corpse to the dirt ledge just under the trapdoor, where it would be out of the way until Devota could dispose of it. The two of them sat down then to catch their breaths.

  “Poor little beast,” Ryan said in mournful tones, “all it wanted was a bite to eat.”

  “Yes, right out of your big toe, I expect,” Elene said, unaffected by his spurious regret.

  “What a hard-hearted female you are; I didn’t know it was in you.”

  “I hate rats.”

  She refused to look at him. She was, if the truth were known, a little embarrassed by her own zeal, and sickened by the sound that had been made as Ryan dealt the rat the mortal blow.

  “I thought you might,” Ryan said, his voice dry.

  She flung him a quick, frowning glance. “I didn’t notice you being squeamish.”

  “No, indeed,” he agreed promptly. “I certainly have no love for them. More than that, when a lovely lady requires my services, I give them gladly and to the utmost of my ability.”

  “Do you, now?”

  “I do. Particularly when the lady is one who might, perhaps, be generous in her gratitude.”

  “You really expect me to reward you?” she asked in disbelief.

  “Only if you feel it’s due.”

  “Of all the insufferable, conceited—”

  “Now how was I to know you would be upset? Here you were planning to give yourself into the keeping of a fat colonel merely for the sake of his patronage. Surely there’s little difference?”

  “I was planning no such thing! You’re the one who made that vile suggestion.”

  “You had nothing else to propose, and it’s as plain as the nose on your face that you will have to make an accommodation with a man in one way or another,” Ryan said matter-of-factly.

  “I don’t see that at all,” Elene said. She sniffed in protest.

  “No? The fact is, only a man can protect you in these desperate times. On top of that is the fact that you are much too attractive, much too desirable, for the vult
ures to leave you alone.”

  “Vultures among whom you, naturally, don’t count yourself.”

  “Oh, but I do. I’m chief among their number.”

  “At least you’re honest,” she said. It was meant to come out with cold sarcasm, but instead had a compressed sound.

  “Such an admission! Now this is progress.”

  Ryan sat watching her, the way the candlelight made a warm pearl sheen on her skin and gathered itself in golden fire in her hair, the way it glorified the soiled splendor of her rag of a gown. It was foolish of him beyond measure, but he felt no real urge to leave this prison of theirs. If he was not careful, the end of their incarceration would be the end of their acquaintance, the end of something that was assuming the aspect in his mind of a subterranean idyll.

  Elene sent a glance through her lashes at the man lounging at ease beside her. He was joking, she thought. He didn’t really expect her to reward him for killing the rat by giving him her body. Or did he? He was a difficult man to know, or to trust. He gave so little of himself away. Despite the intimacy they had shared, the vast amount of talking they had done, she still could not feel she knew him. It was as if he guarded some essential part of himself. Not that she could blame him; she did the same.

  Irritation flashed across Ryan’s face and was gone. He gave a short laugh. “Don’t make such hard work of it. I want nothing from you that you aren’t ready to give. Lie down and go back to sleep.”

  Almost before he finished speaking, he leaned and pinched out the candle. The hole was plunged into darkness once more. Elene heard the rustle of his clothing as he prepared to lie down. She moved hastily to give him room, stretching herself out on the pallet. His arm touched hers and she drew away as if she had been scorched. They shifted a little, seeking comfort. Not finding it in any degree, they subsided in resignation.

  The moments slipped past. Elene stared unblinkingly into the dark. She would like to discover some other option for safety than those Ryan had recounted for her: a relative overlooked until now, a government official who might be in her father’s debt, a friend who would take her and Devota in or offer them passage elsewhere. There was nothing.

  When she slept, the nightmare returned, but she conquered it silently and alone.

  Elene and Ryan could always tell when someone was in the room above them. Footsteps sounded loud on the floor above their heads, making a hollow, rumbling echo in their enclosed space. Sometimes they could hear voices in snatches of conversation, a pair of servant girls or the querulous tones of an older woman who was without doubt Favier’s mother admonishing, ordering this or that task done.

  Dinner time was the worst to endure. Then the dirt that was embedded in the rug covering the trapdoor sifted down whenever a chair was moved. The smell of rich food and wine penetrated to them at a time when their own late evening meal might still be hours away, after the house was quiet for the night so that Devota could bring it. But most of all, the presence of Favier, with his mother and once even a pair of guests, forced Ryan and Elene to remain in absolute stillness for what seemed like countless eons. They learned to be intensely grateful that the members of the household took breakfast in bed and the noon meal somewhere outside, probably on a gallery.

  The conversations they overheard during the course of various dinners proved illuminating, however. It appeared that while Dessalines himself was attempting to drive the French troops from the island, he had sent groups of his own men to encourage the rising of the slaves still on the plantations, urging them to the destruction of their masters for the purpose of eventually killing every white man, woman, and child on the island or else driving them from it. The list of houses burned and families massacred grew longer with each day. There were endless tales of people cornered in cane fields, found hiding in barns and stables, or caught as they tried to flee to Port-au-Prince or Cap Française. They all ended the same, with death, though only after the most savage assault and mutilation.

  It sometimes seemed that Favier delighted in speaking of such things while he ate, talking overloud to be sure they could hear, as if in forcing them to listen he was paying back all the slights and insults that had been visited upon him by their kind over the years. However, his own position was none too good. It was always possible that a mob bent on blood might make a mistake, might choose the wrong house, accidentally or otherwise, under the cover of night.

  It was somewhere near midmorning of the third day, as far as Elene could tell, when there came the sound of a pair of voices raised in altercation almost directly above them. They belonged to Devota and Favier’s mother.

  Ryan came as erect as was possible for him, crouching with his back to the stone wall, balanced and poised, as if ready to defend their sanctuary. Elene rose also. She listened intently, her gaze automatically lifted to the wooden barrier of the trapdoor overhead.

  What had happened? Had Favier said something that made his mother think there might be something of interest hidden away down here? Or had the woman perhaps become curious about Devota’s presence in the house and kept watch on her movements, discovering her interest in the dining room to be excessive?

  It was always possible that she and Ryan had made some sound that had alerted the older woman, perhaps spoken an unguarded word at the wrong time. They had tried to limit discussion of any length to the late-night hours, to listen always for footsteps before they spoke, and to remember even then to use the most muted of tones. Still, there had been times when they had forgotten.

  After a few minutes, it became clear that Devota had been discovered trying to bring them their breakfast. The older woman was upbraiding her for sneaking food from the kitchen, demanding to know where she was going with it. Devota had apparently said she was going to the table to eat her meal, for the explanation brought on a shrill tirade about servants getting above themselves, thinking they could use the master’s furniture as they saw fit, lying abed until all hours, stuffing themselves with the best of everything from the master’s pantry.

  Devota’s answer was insolent, there could be no other word for it. It also made Elene’s eyes widen in shock. If the words Devota spoke were true, it appeared she had taken on the role of Favier’s mistress.

  It was an excellent excuse for being in the house instead of out in the slave cabins with the slaves, there could be no denying that, but was it only an excuse? Could Devota actually have given herself to Favier in order to safeguard Elene and Ryan?

  Devota was ordered into the kitchen to eat. The voices receded. Only the smell of the coffee and bacon Devota had been bringing to them, maddeningly fragrant, remained.

  Elene sank slowly back down onto the pallet. “Do you realize,” she whispered, “that we are as trapped here in this place as the rat we killed?”

  “The whole island is a trap, as I told you before. This is just another degree of it.” Ryan let himself down to sit close beside her so they needed to speak no louder than a breath of sound.

  “What will you do if we are discovered?”

  “The only thing I can do. Fight, and hope there aren’t too many of them.”

  “What if Favier’s mother should find us? He seemed to think she will give us away.”

  “If she lifts that door up there, I think she will have to join us in here, willing or not,” Ryan said. He clenched a fist.

  “Yes,” Elene said, almost to herself. It might be possible to do that. “Yes.”

  Devota did not come for the rest of the day. Nor did she come when dinner was over and the house grew still with the advance of night. Elene fretted over her maid’s continued absence, not just because she was hungry, though they had had nothing except a chunk of bread since the night before, but because she was worried about the woman who was her aunt. What if Favier’s mother had become suspicious, had shut Devota up somewhere, or decided to be rid of her son’s troublesome new woman? What if Devota had left the house for some reason and been recognized and killed? The possibilities were many, e
ach more horrible than the last.

  Ryan was on edge also, cursing the fact that he could not stand up to his full height, that he could not tell what was taking place beyond the house walls, that he was unable to make things happen himself. Elene thought he did not trust their host, no matter how sanguine he pretended to be when she questioned him about it. This was the night when Ryan’s ship could be expected to put in an appearance. If Favier did not bestir himself, if he should prove too cowardly to call attention to his house by going out and waving a lantern, then the two of them might have to stay in their hiding place another three days or longer. It did not bear thinking of, not when the danger of discovery increased every day, every hour.

  Elene, in her bare feet, paced up and down the quilts in the small space available to her without stepping over Ryan’s long legs with each turn. There was inside her a growing need to leave this dark place, to breathe fresh air and feel open space around her, to see the sun and the sky, trees and flowers and grass, to sit in a real chair and sleep in a real bed. The pressure of it was building inside her, until she was not sure how much longer she could contain it. More than that, like Ryan, she wanted to know what was happening above them. That need was so strong it seemed worth any risk to satisfy.

  Ryan reached out to catch her skirt as she crossed in front of him once more in her striding. His voice rough, he said, “Sit down. You’re driving me mad.”

  He was effectively prevented by the low ceiling from the free movement she was using to relieve her feelings. She made a rueful grimace that he could not see, then knelt to settle beside him.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

  “You can’t continue like this, you know, living from day to day like a scared rabbit down a hole. You have to come with me to New Orleans.”

  “We have been through this before. I have no way to live.”

  “Is it any better here? But you do have a way. You can live with me.” That had not come out the way Ryan had planned; still, it was close enough.