The Creole Princess

by Beth White

  Daisy had of course instantly fallen in love with Simon and followed him around for months—until he took to jumping out at her unexpectedly from behind trees and making her cry. For a while after that, she refused to acknowledge his existence. Then on the day of her thirteenth birthday, she came upon him sitting on her back steps. He was waiting for Lyse and puzzling over a pamphlet that Reverend Garrett had left in a stack for Papa to distribute among the soldiers.

  “What is this—this—nonsense?” He’d thrust the paper toward her, black eyes blazing. “Papist idolaters? Is that what you think of me?”

  “I—I—of course not.” She shut the kitchen door, took the paper, and sat down beside Simon. She turned it over in her hand. “Where did you get this?”

  “It was lying on the ground right here by the steps. Your family is Anglican, don’t try to deny it.” His voice, deepened to a velvet rumble since the last time she’d spoken directly to him, shook with something that almost sounded like hurt. It pierced her tender heart.

  “Yes, but I don’t believe everything in that pamphlet. In fact, most of it I don’t even understand. Please, Simon, you know I’m your friend—Lyse’s friend, I mean.” Afraid to look at him, she gripped her hands tight in her lap.

  “Well . . . I love God just like you do. And you shouldn’t leave things like this around where they will hurt people you care about, especially if you don’t even believe it.”

  She peeped at him, relieved to hear the softening of his voice, to see the calming of those stormy eyes. Lyse’s aggravating older brother had turned into a man while she wasn’t looking—harder along the jaw, leaner and bonier in body, tall enough to tower over her.

  And she was thirteen now, a maiden who had just that morning put her hair up for the first time. As he stared back at her, something bloomed between them. She felt it in the heating of her cheeks, saw it in a subtle shift in his expression. He was no longer angry, just intrigued.

  Now, three years later, standing in the schoolroom with her desk between them, she was fully aware of her power over him. If she wanted to distract him, all she had to do was walk a little closer, lay a hand on his wrist.

  But he suddenly grinned and stood up. “No, you don’t, my lady. You will not look at me with those blue eyes and hope I forget all about what I came to find out. What mischief is my sister up to this morning?”

  She gave him the pouting smile that usually got whatever she wanted. “Simon . . .”

  He stared at her, unmoving.

  She looked at the clock and sighed. She wasn’t going to finish the spelling list now. “It’s seven-thirty, and the children will be here at eight. Come sit on the porch with me, and I’ll tell you about Don Rafael Gonzales de Rippardá.”

  Rafa lounged back in his seat on the Princesse—an ancient but apparently seaworthy bateau captained by its scowling owner, Simon Lanier—and tried to convince himself that his only interest lay in ascertaining British strength along the Gulf of Mexico.

  Unzaga would not be pleased at his delay. At least, not until he heard Rafa’s report of intelligence gathered during this delightful interlude with his charming little Creole maiden. That she was one of those Laniers was an interesting detail indeed. That she had the alluring face of a gypsy princess was a delicious fact that his commander need not know.

  She sat facing him with one hand gripping the side of the boat, the black spirals of her hair coming loose to blow like silk ribbons in the wind, eyes narrowed to topaz slits against the fierce morning sun. Every so often, she would lean and point, drawing her dress so snug across her bosom that he could hardly focus on landmarks with musical names like Bay Minette, Chacaloochee Bayou, Mullet Point, and Bay Bon Secours. And then the peevish brother Simon—who had apparently discovered the proposed tour from Daisy Redmond and then raced to the pier to chaperone—would give him a warning look, reminding Rafa that he could not afford distraction.

  “Señorita Lyse,” he said to divert the protective brother, “you must tell me how it is that you come to be related to the Laniers of New Orleans.”

  He watched Simon Lanier’s expression shift from protectiveness to outright hostility. Where the girl’s eyes were that innocent dark gold, his were black and stony, the eyebrows slashing above an arrogant nose. His skin was baked a darker brown, the curly black hair pulled into a no-nonsense queue. The similarity between the siblings was in the generous mouth, the design of the white teeth—which were now bared like a wolf’s fangs.

  “We have nothing to do with them,” Simon Lanier said coldly. After a moment he looked away and applied himself to adjusting the sail.

  Lyse leaned closer to Rafa, her hair blowing across his lips, her frown apologetic. “There is bad blood among my family.” She glanced at her brother. “It has to do with the former Louisiana governor, O’Reilly—”

  “Lyse, you will not speak that man’s name.” Simon spat over the side of the boat.

  “But Simon, this is unreasonable! We cannot bring back Uncle Guillaume—”

  “I said, don’t speak of it! I let you bring this Spaniard onto my boat because we need his silver, but you will not divulge our private business to him. Pére wouldn’t like it. Comprendre?”

  Lyse stared at her brother, her delicate pointed chin trembling, tears standing in her eyes. “I understand you are a big blockhead. The world is a chessboard, and King Louis got himself mated out of the game. But we who are neither black nor white still have to live here, and discourtesy will not undo what has been done.”

  Simon clamped his lips together. After a moment or two he looked away and began to vigorously pole the boat away from an approaching sandbar.

  Lyse met Rafa’s eyes, her expression distressed. “I beg you will overlook—”

  “Please, señorita, it is of no moment.” He took her hand and gently kissed the scarred knuckles. “I have the habit of impertinent questions. My mama beats me for it daily.” When he won a small smile, he sat back, satisfied.

  Maybe he hadn’t been able to coax the so-beautiful English rose into taking him about the city of Mobile. But as a substitute, the French camellia looked to be blooming under his touch. There was no end to what she might divulge before the day was done.

  Don Rafael had gone back to New Orleans, leaving Lyse to help Simon tie the boat up at the pier and wait for another ferry customer.

  The very fact that she had conversed with someone who bore the title don caused her to look at the world differently. Before today, she had felt some of her brother’s resentment for the Spanish race. She hadn’t known her uncle Guillaume as well as Simon had, but she understood the grief his death had caused her father and her grandfather. Defending this particular Spanish gentleman, however, painted a different color on the canvas of her feelings.

  She elbowed Simon, who sat beside her on the dock with feet dangling over the side, fishing pole in hand. “Simon, why do you suppose Uncle Guillaume got involved in the revolt against the Spanish but Papa didn’t?”

  Simon gave her a funny look. “It was the same year Maman died, don’t you remember?”

  “Maybe I’m like Papa and blocked out everything except that.”

  She’d been about eight, old enough to understand that when people died, they went to heaven and never came back. Maman had been sick with something that made her beautiful café-au-lait skin turn ashy, the whites of her amber eyes the yellow of poached corn. For days she had burned in an agony of fever, twisting in her bed until the smell of the room became nigh unbearable. Papa, for one, couldn’t stand the sight of his beloved Cerise fading like a tide going out. He’d begged Grandmére Madeleine to come attend Maman, while he’d retreated to his fishing boat and a brown jug that turned him surly as a dog with a sore tail.

  On that day—that horrid, endless day of defeat and sadness—Grandmére called Lyse and Simon into Maman’s room and bade them say goodbye. Grandmére had washed and tended Maman, then changed the bedclothes, so that Maman looked like the frail, transluce
nt shell of a sleeping angel. Simon, uncharacteristically diffident, gripped Lyse’s hand so tight her fingers ached and approached their mother with lagging steps. He’d brushed a kiss upon her brow, then backed away with his stringy young throat working. Abruptly he dropped Lyse’s hand. Releasing a guttural sob, he ran.

  Lyse looked up at her grandmother, who placed a gentle hand upon her head. “Go ahead, cher,” Grandmére murmured. “She knows you’re here, and she won’t leave without your blessing.”

  Her heart felt as if it would melt from her chest, but Lyse found courage in her grandmother’s presence. She swallowed and knelt beside the cot. “Maman,” she whispered. “I love you. I’ll take care of Papa and Simon.”

  Her mother’s eyelids fluttered. “My precious girl. Strong and sweet as a rose.” A faint smile curved the blistered lips. “Listen to Grandmére. Read every . . . every book in Grandpére’s library.”

  “I will.” Because she didn’t know what else to say, Lyse knelt there, praying wordlessly with tears dripping off her chin.

  After a time, Grandmére touched her shoulder. “Come, cher. It’s time for your father to say goodbye.”

  Lyse hadn’t known he was there, but as she rose and reluctantly backed toward the doorway, the strong scent of spirits overpowered the sickroom smell. She turned.

  His face was awful in its grief. Pushing Lyse aside, he stumbled into the room, grabbed fistfuls of his own hair, bent double as if he were the one in death throes.

  Lyse felt Grandmére pull her out of the room. In the kitchen, she flung her arms around Grandmére’s waist and burrowed into her in an attempt to block out the sound of Papa’s sobs.

  Grandmére held her tight for a minute, then gently led her out to the gallery. “Let’s sit on the steps. I have something for you.”

  “I don’t need a present,” Lyse said as she plopped down beside her grandmother on the top step. All she wanted was her mother. She crossed her arms over her knees and laid her head on them. She could still hear Papa crying through the open window.

  “No, it’s something my maman gave me when I needed it. Now it’s time to pass it on to you.”

  Lyse turned her head. “Which maman?” According to family legend, Grandmére had been adopted as an infant, her real mother being Grossmére Geneviève’s unmarried sister Aimée.

  “The one who loved me enough to give me her Bible and teach me to revere its author.”

  Lyse frowned, trying to disentangle Grandmére’s meaning. “Grossmére Geneviève?” she guessed.

  “Yes. She came to Louisiana when it was little more than a rotten fort and an Indian village or two. People say she came just to marry my papa, but she really came because of this Bible. She believed every word of it and read it every day.”

  “Like you do?”

  Smiling, Grandmére leaned over and picked up the Bible, which had been lying on the seat of one of the rocking chairs on the gallery. She sat there every morning as the sun came up, reading and rocking and praying under her breath. “I wanted to be just like her.”

  Grandmére was the happiest person Lyse knew. She slowly reached for the Bible. It was heavy, leatherbound, scarred from years of use. It pressed on her lap with the weight of wisdom. “Will you help me understand it? Grandpére says I’m smart, but—” she looked doubtfully at the Bible—“there’s an awful lot of big words in there.”

  Grandmére nodded. “There’s hard truth and stories of cruelty and evil as well, but there will also be help and encouragement when you need it. And stories of heroes who lived for God. Women who followed him even when their lives were difficult. Geneviève Lanier was a woman like that. She had to keep her faith quiet for a time, but God protected her.”

  Lyse had heard the stories of the Huguenot persecution in France, how Geneviève and her sister Aimée had gotten on a boat with twenty-three other French brides-to-be, to come to New France and choose husbands from among the king’s explorers. Tristan Lanier had been a man among men, one of Bienville’s trusted advisors. When the settlement was moved downriver from the twenty-seven-mile bluff, he had been instrumental in choosing the present location. Still, he and Geneviève had built their home apart from the fort so that they could practice their Reformist faith without interference from the king’s Catholic prescriptions.

  “Why didn’t God protect Maman from the fever?” she asked.

  “Lyse, everyone dies, some sooner than others. We cannot know what lies behind God’s mighty purposes for those who love him. What you can know is that he is with you always, even now. He understands your grief, he weeps with you, he will hold you through it. Look at me, little one.” Grandmére took Lyse’s chin. “You must keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, no matter what happens.”

  Remembering that scene, Lyse looked at her brother with new eyes. He hadn’t been as close to Grandmére as she. No wonder he had a hard time with faith and forgiveness.

  Simon put an uncharacteristically gentle hand on her shoulder. “It was a hard time for us all, cher. Grandpére submitted to the British here in Mobile in order to keep his property. He tried to stop Uncle Guillaume from going to New Orleans, knowing the revolt was pointless and dangerous.” He shrugged. “It turns out, he was right.”

  Politics had never interested Lyse, except when her family was directly affected. But this young Spaniard had awakened something . . . restless within her. “So are you going to marry Daisy?”

  He heaved a moody sigh. “Of course I want to. But the major doesn’t particularly like me. And I can almost understand why.” One side of his mouth curled up. “My prospects aren’t particularly bright.”

  “Why don’t you ask Grandpére to teach you the shipping business? You could be a great help to him.”

  “I don’t want to sit in an office running accounts. I want to be outdoors on my boat, working with my hands.” He paused. “Besides, Daisy is young. She thinks she wants me, but she also thinks her father is going to give in and give us his blessing. I’m afraid we may have to go away if we want to be together.” He scowled. “Don’t you tell her I said all this, Lyse.”

  He hadn’t talked to her in such depth since they were children. She shook her head. “I won’t. You’ve thought about this a lot, haven’t you?”

  “Of course I have. I can’t just marry Daisy and move her in with us over at Bay Minette.”

  Lyse laughed. “No. And that really isn’t funny, is it?”

  “No.” But he smiled. “I hear things at the docks, Lyse. Changes are coming, now that the Americans are trying to throw off the Brits. They’re going to be cracking down on trade, embargoes are likely, and I’ve got to find ways to keep us fed. As long as fishing is good, we’ll be all right . . .” He shook his head.

  Simon might be the most cautious one in the family, but he wasn’t afraid of anything. Hearing him express these doubts was sobering. Lyse knew better than to press him about the Spaniard.

  Who she’d likely never see again anyway.

  The line jerked. “Simon, you’ve got one!”

  Fishing was a much more productive enterprise than wishing one’s life away.

  3

  MARCH 1777

  Lyse was helping Simon unload a workboat full of tobacco up from the island, when Niall McLeod’s bright red head popped from behind a towering stack of crates. The whites of his blue eyes were round as eggs.

  “Lyse, you’ve got to come now! Your pa’s got himself in trouble again.”

  She shifted the heavy crate in her arms onto a new stack, then stood up with a hand to her back. The days of lazing about with a charming Spaniard on a boat tour down the bay, as she had seven months ago, were long gone. If it was true that an army marched on its stomach, the British troops of West Florida were going to subsist mainly on cigar fumes. She and Simon had been shuffling tobacco crates all morning, with no signs of stopping before dark. The British frigate Hinchinbrook had brought her valuable cargo from Carolina, sailing around East Florida via Havana, and had orders t
o leave port at dawn on the morrow.

  Reluctant to take Niall seriously, Lyse glanced at Simon. He hadn’t heard, or he’d be exploding with anger. He was arguing with a porter whose wagon had been commandeered to transport the tobacco to the fort. Their father should have been here to deal with cartage so Simon could focus on the boats, but they hadn’t seen Papa all day. “Papa’s always in trouble,” she said with a shrug. “What’s the problem now?”

  Niall edged between the crates and stood before Lyse, rotating his hat between his hands. “Drunk and disorderly again. I talked the sergeant out of putting him in the guardhouse, but you’ve got to come get him. Now. Please, Lyse.”

  She looked down at her work garb—Simon’s outgrown breeches and shirt topped off by an ugly, shapeless homespun coat, with homemade moccasins on her feet. Necessary for hauling freight on the dock, but unacceptable for walking about in town. “Niall, I can’t come now. Don’t you see we’re in the middle of—”

  “Either you come get him and take him home, or I’m letting him go to the guardhouse.” Niall’s round face was set in uncharacteristically obstinate lines.

  Papa must have really done it this time.

  “All right, I’ll come.” She glanced over her shoulder. Simon couldn’t be spared, so it would have to be her. “Simon! I have to run an errand—I’ll be back in an hour.”

  Guiltily shrugging off her brother’s angry objection, she followed Niall. They dodged the longshoremen, sailors, merchants, and slaves who crowded the dock, Lyse pulling her hat lower to cover her eyes and hide her face. Her hair was braided and tied out of the way under a scarf, so maybe nobody would recognize her and tell Justine she’d been working at the wharf again.

  She tugged Niall’s sleeve. “What did he do this time?”

  Her old friend hesitated. “There was a faro game at Coup de Chance.”