The Creole Princess

by Beth White

  Well, mostly confident. Simon could be quite disagreeable when he thought Lyse had been interfering overmuch between Papa and Justine.

  But really, what else was she to do? Since Grandpére’s visit, Papa had been drinking more and more—despite Lyse’s persistence in pitching every jug of ale she found into the bayou—and bringing less and less in the way of foodstuffs home for the children to eat. Last night he had raged about like a bear with a sore paw upon the discovery that his stash beneath the gallery steps had gone missing.

  Yes, she would brave Simon’s impatient scolding a thousand times, if he would only come and try to talk Papa into moderation.

  Lyse couldn’t help thinking of happier times, when Luc-Antoine was a baby, Papa and Justine still love-drunk newlyweds, and she and Simon pretty much left to their own devices. Sometimes she wished she could go back to those innocent days of tea parties with Daisy, while Simon and his friends fished the bayous and hunted the verdant woods—before she became aware that her skin would never be fair, though she scrub her face raw, and her hair would never have the silken texture of Daisy’s blonde mane.

  Ever since the two of them had begun putting up their hair and lengthening their skirts, life had gotten exponentially more complicated. Her choices became limited to scrabbling for food to stave off physical hunger for herself and her little siblings, while the longings of her heart and mind found release only in the pages of the books in Grandpére’s library.

  There were boys in the city and its environs with whom she could probably build a tolerable family life of her own—but that would mean abandoning Justine and the little ones to God only knew what difficulties. She wasn’t quite stonehearted enough to do that yet.

  Stumbling a little over a limb in her path, she tossed the flowers aside and dashed an annoying film of moisture from her eyes. Rafa wasn’t coming back, and dreaming would never feed anybody, as Simon had reminded her many a time. And since he was the eminently practical one of the family, he was going to have to help her find a way to get past Papa’s unending ill humor.

  She caught a glimpse of Simon’s houseboat through the trees and started to halloo. But a flicker of light bouncing off the water stopped her on the indrawn breath. Odd. She knew every knot in every tree trunk between here and Bay Minette, and she knew when something was off or out of place. She slowed, listening. There was a rhythmic chinking noise, as of someone digging in sand.

  What was Simon up to?

  She crept closer, moving from tree to tree, until she could make out her brother, knee-deep in a long sandy swale some fifty yards from the boat landing, wielding a shovel with efficiency and single-minded concentration. Was he digging something up—or burying something?

  She hesitated just at the edge of the clearing, wondering, putting together Simon’s long periods of disconnection from the family circle, Daisy’s gentle frustration with his refusal to communicate with her, and rumors running about town that new sources of money had begun to siphon into local commerce. Should she make her presence known? Continue to observe?

  Again she thought of her conversation with Grandmére on the day her mother died. Her grandmother’s words had bequeathed to her some supernatural craving, and she’d found herself through the ensuing years a seeker after vision—searching for Jesus in the mundane, the odd, the bizarre events and people in her life. Sometimes she heard him in Daisy’s infectious laughter, felt him in the childish kisses of her small siblings, saw him in the grand depths of the ocean beyond her bedroom window. Dancing with Rafael made her yearn with an inexplicable, indescribable fire. Had that been God?

  Perhaps.

  But where was God now, when Rafa was gone, her mother gone, her grandmother gone, her father sodden with drink, and even her friendship with Daisy curtailed by their separate responsibilities?

  Let me look, Father. Let me see.

  She blinked, straightened her spine, and moved from her hiding place. “Simon! What are you doing?”

  He jerked upright, pulled the shovel across his body defensively. “Lyse! What are you doing here?” He glanced back at the partially covered hole in the sand. Obviously there was no way to hide it, so he didn’t try. But he didn’t look happy to see her. And he hadn’t answered her question.

  The shovel head slid to the sand. Simon waited for her, mouth clamped in a straight line.

  Lyse approached, guarded, not afraid of him but wondering what she could say that would make him tell her the truth. “I needed to talk to you.” The hole in the sand drew her gaze. She could see the top and side of a canvas sack. Impossible to tell what was in it, but its shape was irregular, bulky, ridged.

  “Is something wrong with the baby?” Simon had been around when Justine’s first three children came along, and he understood the difficulties that could arise.

  Lyse shook her head. “No, Rémy’s perfect. It’s just . . .” She took a step closer. Simon was not a thief. “We’re out of food. Papa doesn’t fish anymore, he gambled away the boat, and he’s drinking up any money I bring home from selling Justine’s baskets. He might listen to you—”

  “Wait. He lost the boat gambling? When he came to borrow mine, he told me his sank.” Simon’s face was dark with anger. “Lyse, where is my boat?”

  “Papa took it over to Mobile yesterday, and we haven’t seen him since. Simon, you’ve got to do something!”

  He jammed the shovel hard into the sand. “The first thing I’m going to do is get my boat back and never loan it out again. After that—I plan to build my own life here and never look back.” He must have seen the hurt and disbelief in her face, for he looked away. “I don’t know what else you expect from me. Papa is a grown man who has had every chance to succeed, but he cannot seem to discipline himself to do so. I am very sorry for Justine, but she chose to marry him and must live with the consequences.”

  Lyse stared at her brother. How had he become this stranger?

  When she didn’t answer, Simon sighed. “Lyse, you know I care about you. But if you really want Papa to wake up, you and I have both got to stop shoring him up.” He glanced over his shoulder at the houseboat rocking on the water. “There isn’t much room here, but you’re welcome to move in until you marry and establish a home of your own.”

  “Move here? Leave Justine and the children?” Lyse felt as if the sand were shifting under her feet. “Marry who?”

  “The whole town knows Niall McLeod would take you in a heartbeat. For a smart girl, Lyse, you are an idiot.”

  “Niall would take me? What basis is that for getting married?”

  “It’s a very practical basis. Niall has a steady job with regular pay. He’s in good standing with the Brits, and has the means to purchase land if he wants it.” Simon made a comical face. “And God knows why, but he is very fond of you, in spite of the disgraceful way you’ve treated him.”

  Lyse grabbed for her spinning thoughts. “Niall is almost as much like my brother as you, and anyway, that’s not the point! I cannot leave Justine by herself with four children to care for. If I could, I would go live with Grandpére. Did you know he came to see us just a couple of days ago? I thought he and Papa might reconcile, but—” she swallowed against the lump in her throat—“things have only gotten worse.”

  Simon’s expression softened. “You should go to Grandpére. He needs you too, maybe as much as Justine. And you could live like a lady. You wouldn’t have to marry Niall, if you’re so dead-set against it. Maybe someone else would court you—maybe one of the British refugees pouring down here from places they’ve been run out of by the Americans.”

  Lyse stamped her foot. “I don’t want to live like a lady, not if it means sugaring up to people taking property away from those of us who claimed and settled it generations ago! As much as I love Daisy and her papa, I’m not British, and I never will be.”

  “Not with that attitude, you won’t.” Simon scowled. “You’d best express a little gratitude to the folks in power who make the laws and keep
you safe. You’re not sympathetic to those American rebels, are you?”

  “I don’t know anything about American rebels. In fact, I don’t give a sou about politics at all.” Her shoulders sagged. Clearly Simon was invested in his own pursuits and had no intention of doing anything about her request. Her gaze fell upon the sack half-buried in the sand. “What is that?”

  Simon looked over his shoulder. “It’s—something I found.”

  “Something valuable? Money? Simon, what have you done?”

  “Nothing illegal, Miss Nosy-Rosy.” He stared at her a moment, the famous Lanier eyebrows twitched together above his handsome nose. “Do you swear you won’t tell a soul?”

  “I will if you stole something.”

  “Lysette, you know me. But you’ve got to promise not to tell. I’m not sure yet what I’ll do with it, and it’s got to stay buried until I figure it out.”

  Lyse wavered between curiosity and indignation. “All right,” she finally said. “I’ll keep your secret. If you’ll help me figure out a way to make Papa stay home and work.”

  Simon nodded and threw down the shovel, then reached for the neck of the sack sticking up out of the sand. He hauled something obviously heavy out onto the dry sand, untied the opening, and thrust both hands inside.

  Lyse heard the shivering chink of metal coins. Simon turned and rose, hands cupped under a pile of bright disks that winked in the hard morning sun.

  Gold.

  Scarlet was hanging out the wash when Lyse’s little brother Luc-Antoine ran across the yard and ducked under a pair of M’sieur Michel’s underdrawers before scooting into the blacksmith shop. It had been a fine spring morning, with birds calling to one another in the magnolia trees, a soft breeze to stir the sheets, sending the pungent fragrance of lye and jasmine against her face, and the knowledge that Madame wouldn’t be home for midday meal. In fact, Scarlet almost enjoyed her task, because it got her out of the house and out from under the caustic tongue of Madame’s housekeeper, Martine. Martine also happened to be Cain’s mother and had taken it upon herself since the death of Scarlet’s maman to personally direct every breath she took—and tell her when and where to let it out.

  Martine claimed to be the best cook on two continents, which gave her a certain cachet within the servant hierarchy of the Dussouy mansion, but Scarlet would be switched if she’d let the woman tell her how to properly starch and iron Madame’s beautiful pintuck lace petticoats. Scarlet’s own maman had taught her how to launder fine fabrics, how to keep them in good repair with small invisible stitches, how to fit a woman’s changing body through pregnancy, childbirth, and a certain middle-aged spread. Scarlet knew her worth, never mind what Field Marshal Martine might say.

  She’d been singing a song Maman had loved—the one about Beulah Land and what a good, good time they’d have there—but broke off mid-run to duck beneath the last sheet she’d pegged and go after the boy. Luc-Antoine wasn’t exactly her cousin, since his maman was the white lady Mrs. Justine. But he was Lyse’s little brother, which made him next thing to family, no matter how Madame looked down her nose. He was supposed to be at school, not chasing through the Dussouys’ yard or bothering Cain in the blacksmith shop.

  Scarlet marched toward the tidy little tin-roof building that was Cain’s domain of a weekday morning. The wash would have to wait.

  The smithy smelled of metal and oil and woodsmoke, and the heat made Scarlet instantly break out in a sweat. She didn’t immediately see Luc-Antoine, but through the smoke she made out Cain standing at the forge with his back to her, big and black as the iron he worked, raising a monstrous hammer like some Olympian god from the stories Lyse had read in her grandpére’s library. Shivering with pleasure, Scarlet watched the hammer slam down with a mighty clang on a red-hot sheet of metal lying across the anvil. Cain was the strongest man Scarlet had ever met, yet gentle and shy as a lamb when he touched her. His leashed power and sleepy smile made her weak in the knees.

  But Maman had also taught her that the secret to managing a man lay in a woman’s ability to keep him mystified.

  Setting her hands to her hips, she swayed her way toward the forge. “Cain! I’m going to the big house for a cat-head biscuit and syrup. Want me to bring you one?”

  At the sound of her voice, he turned, pulling down the red kerchief tied across his mouth and nose. His slow smile as he watched her approach brought the familiar warmth to her body, and she had to suppress a smile of her own.

  “I be hungry,” he said. “How’d you know?”

  She stopped a safe distance from the forge. “You always hungry. When you gonna stop growing?”

  Shaking his head, he laid the hammer on a worktable and rubbed his huge hands together. “’Twixt you and my mama feedin’ me, maybe never.” His laugh rumbled out. “I’m gonna grow right out the roof like Jack’s beanstalk. Does Madame know you in here?”

  “She’s gone to town.”

  “Then come here and kiss me. I’d rather have you than a biscuit.”

  “You had me yesterday, and too many treats makes little boys spoilt and lazy.” She laughed at his chagrin. “Besides, it’s hot as the gates of Hades in here, and I could smell you all the way to the clothesline. Or maybe that’s the little mouse I just saw scamper in here. Did you see Luc-Antoine Lanier run through?”

  Cain dragged his gaze from her face to look around. “No, but I been busy, last hour or so. Madame wants new carriage wheels.”

  There was something odd in his expression. She frowned. “This isn’t the first time he’s done this, is it? Where is he?”

  “I said I don’t know. I ain’t see him today.” Cain turned back toward the forge. “I got to get back to work. But I would like a biscuit, if Mama’s got an extra one.”

  Scarlet stood tapping her foot, staring at his broad back. “Hmph. We’ll see.” She whirled and stomped toward the door. The big liar. What was he hiding? Outside, she skirted the corner of the shed, flattened herself against the wall, and listened. She could hear Cain pumping the bellows, the roar of the fire.

  Then a small, childish voice. “Hey, Cain, reckon she’d bring me a biscuit too? I’m pretty hungry.”

  Aha! She hadn’t been mistaken. Vindicated, she swept back inside just as Cain, a resigned expression on his gentle face, turned to greet his young visitor, who was peering out from behind Madame’s wheel-less carriage parked along the side wall.

  “How’d you get back there without me seeing?” Cain dropped the bellows and wiped his sweaty face with the kerchief. “You gone get us both in trouble.”

  The boy grinned. “You really didn’t see me? I was real quiet.”

  “No but I saw you!” In one outraged step Scarlet grabbed Luc-Antoine by the ear and hauled him out from behind the carriage. “Why you not in school, boy?”

  “Ow! I was bored. And hungry.” The boy looked up at her sullenly from under an untidy mop of brown curls. “Maman didn’t have nothing to send with me for lunch, so I went hunting.” With a jerk of his head, he snatched loose. “Cain gives me something to eat most days. Don’t you, Cain?”

  Cain shrugged, looking at Scarlet uneasily. “When I got extras, I do. You can bring back two biscuits, can’t you, Scarlet?”

  She scowled at Luc-Antoine, avoiding Cain’s pleading eyes. She knew how Madame felt about the Laniers. But then she noticed the almost translucent texture of the little boy’s skin, the prominence of the high cheekbones. When his stomach gave a loud rumble, she sighed. “All right. I’ll be back in a minute. But you got to go back to school after you eat, you hear?”

  “Yes, ma’am!” he said with a dimpled grin so much like Mr. Antoine’s she slapped him affectionately upside the head.

  “I ain’t no ma’am.” She turned on her heel and headed for the big house.

  Martine, always contrary where Scarlet was concerned, seemed reluctant to part with even one of her famous cat-head biscuits. But when Scarlet told her they were for Cain, the older woman packed half a doze
n in a cloth-lined basket and tucked in a jar of cane syrup and some links of pork sausage as well.

  Scarlet hauled her prize back to the smithy and set it down on Cain’s worktable with a thunk. “I swear your maman is the most ornery colored woman in Mobile. No you don’t!” She swatted Luc-Antoine’s dirty little paw as it reached for the basket. “Wash your hands first! Both of you.” She gave Cain the look.

  The two males, one big and black, the other small and pale, headed for a bucket of water Cain kept on hand for regulating his fire. They scrubbed their hands and faces, then reported to Scarlet for inspection. Using one of Madame’s silver table knives, she spread the biscuits with the thick, fragrant brown syrup and gave one each to Cain and Luc-Antoine. “Wait!” she said, just as the boy crammed a quarter of one of the giant biscuits into his mouth. “Didn’t your maman teach you to say grace?”

  “Yes’m,” he mumbled around his mouthful, reddening. “Sorry.”

  “Bow your head,” she said severely, winking over his head at Cain. “Dear Lord, we thank thee for these thy bountiful gifts. Help us to live our lives in gratitude to you and charity toward one another as you have shown it to us. Amen.”

  The words were hardly out of her mouth before Cain had disposed of one biscuit and reached for another. “Amen,” he said, eyes twinkling.

  They ate together quietly for a time, with Scarlet supervising to make sure the boy didn’t drip syrup onto his clothes nor lick his fingers. Cain she didn’t have to worry about, as his maman had refined his manners until he could’ve eaten dinner with the governor in the big house. There were some things she could be grateful to Martine for.

  She watched him, enjoying the roll of shoulder muscles under his thin cambric shirt as he moved his arms and the play of a shallow dimple in one cheek as he chewed. His head was perfectly shaped, the coarse hair cut close to keep lice at bay, and his ears flat and well-proportioned. He would make a fine father for her babies. She put her hand on her stomach, imagining the swell and flutter.

  “I can’t eat no more, I’m full.”