The Creole Princess

by Beth White

  “Niall? So do I.”

  “That’s not what I mean, Grandpére, and you know it,” she mumbled.

  “And it would not be fair to wed Niall if your heart is given to someone else.”

  She looked up at her grandfather, aggrieved. “But the someone else hasn’t spoken for me, and I’ll likely never even see him again! I can’t wait for him forever! Besides, my father married for love and made everybody miserable, even you!”

  Setting aside his bowl and knife, Grandpére leaned down and took her hands. “Listen to me,” he said gently. “I was a fool, and I was wrong about that. Your mother and father had a difficult time, but they were happy together. Can you imagine Antoine married to Isabelle Dussouy? Pah! What a stupidity that would have been!”

  “But Grandpére—”

  “I say listen. I was wrong, and I have been trying for fifteen years to crawl out of the ditch I created between my son and myself. What I want for you is the joy I had with your grandmother. We were cousins and friends, yes, but we had a union of mind and spirit that the Bible calls holy. And that, my child, is worth waiting forever for.”

  Lyse found herself without an answer. When she was still a little girl, her grandmother had told her something very similar. To hear it, unsolicited, from Grandpére seemed more than a coincidence.

  She scooted close and laid her head upon his knee. “But what if he doesn’t want me?”

  “How could he not, precious girl?” The strong, gnarled hand caressed her hair. “Wait and see what God will do.”

  There was an odd note in his voice. “Grandpére,” she said, looking up, “clearly you know something I don’t. What happened that day Rafa came with you to Bay Minette?”

  He hesitated. “Let me just say that young Don Rafael is a herald of changes coming to the world that my brother and I could never have foreseen when we were small boys in the Mobile Indian village. My mother married a Frenchman, and they divided Louisiana between the British and the Spanish—so who can predict the victors of this present tussle?” He tipped her chin. “There may come a time when you and the children will have to flee the city. Your Rafael will come for you, and you must go with him.”

  Fear crawled along her spine. “Grandpére! What do you mean?”

  “The less you know, the safer you will be.” His lips pressed together in a stubborn line, then he released her chin with a little push. “Our guests will be here within the hour. I’ve put out goods for the king’s cake in the kitchen, along with your grandmére’s receipt. Maybe you feel brave enough to put it together for me?”

  “Yes, of course, but—”

  “No more questions. Tomorrow brings the time for fasting and regret. Today we revel in God’s goodness.” He smiled. “And we need a cake!”

  FORT CHARLOTTE, MOBILE

  Daisy smiled up at the new adjutant on duty in the guardhouse at the wooden gates of the fort. “Would you please tell my father I’m here and have someone escort me to him? I’ve brought him something to eat.” She showed him the covered basket on her arm as proof of her intentions.

  Gone were the days when she and Lyse could sashay in without prior permission. She had not seen her father for more than half an hour at a time in the past week. Colonel Durnford had come over from Pensacola to stay, this time without his family, and the two men had been closeted in Papa’s office at the fort for hours on end.

  Indeed Daisy could hardly reconcile herself as the naive young girl who—less than two years ago—had been horrified at the thought of Englishmen shooting at Englishmen in rebellion against the king. She loved her father and certainly wished him no harm. But she was the daughter of a soldier. War had already come, and men of strong principles fought on both sides. The hard, cold truth was that George III had sent armed regulars to fire upon his own people, hardworking men who stood in protest of the fruit of their labor being wrested from them at the point of a bayonet.

  Part of her indignation came from awareness that Papa, and men like him—including Simon—thought her too weak and too silly to understand the ramifications of the conflict. She was neither, and if that made her a rebel, then so be it.

  Still, her father had to eat, and she was, if nothing else, a dutiful daughter.

  She shifted the heavy basket to the other arm, impatiently looking around for anything interesting to pass the time while Ensign Whoever-He-Might-Be returned for her. There seemed to be significant improvements in the condition of the shoddy little fort since the last time she had occasion to enter. Some of the rotten wood of the fences had been replaced with new planking, and the crumbling mud wattle which stuck the bricks together had been newly cemented in critical places. Even the stone that formed the bastions had been newly shored up with a mixture of clay and dirt.

  Frowning, she walked toward the east bastion, where a new cannon sat upon a wooden platform atop the earthworks. A couple of soldiers in ragged uniforms were cleaning and reloading the huge weapon. Eighty-pounder? What on earth? She knew that in January Papa had been ordered to begin refurbishing the fort, when news of the British loss at Saratoga reached the West Florida command in Pensacola. Had things gotten to such a point that, even in the relatively unimportant little port of Mobile, there was danger of an attack?

  Now that she thought about it, she had noticed Indians from the surrounding villages pouring into the city, camping under their tents at the outskirts like animals seeking shelter from an approaching storm. She had thought they were coming in search of food, as they sometimes did when the harshness of winter struck. But this winter had been unusually mild, and yet there seemed to be thrice the normal numbers of savage children peeking into the schoolhouse windows and giggling at the sight of the white-skinned boys and girls stuck indoors in the middle of the day.

  With a pang she thought of Simon, somewhere, possibly in danger from enemy guns. Please, God, keep him safe and bring him home to me.

  “Miss Redmond? What are you doing?”

  The deep voice behind her made her jump. She turned to find Papa’s administrative assistant, Corporal Tully, mustache bristling, watching her with his arms folded across his chest.

  “Oh! You startled me!” She smiled to cover an odd feeling of guilt that heated her cheeks. “Can my papa see me now?”

  Tully stared at her for another moment, then nodded. “Yes. Come with me.” He wheeled and stalked toward officers’ quarters.

  Odder and odder. She clutched the basket to her stomach, skipping to keep pace with his long military stride. Tully looked suddenly older, his usually ramrod-straight back bent like a pine tree in a strong wind. His reddish brows came together above his nose in a permanent scowl.

  “Corporal Tully, are you all right? You seem . . . worried.”

  He gave her a sidelong look, a ghost of his dry smile appearing. “I work for your papa. Don’t I always look worried?”

  She smiled. “I suppose so, now that you mention it. But everyone seems more sober than usual, and isn’t that—wasn’t that a new cannon?”

  Now he definitely looked unhappy. “You’ve always been an observant little thing. More than your da gives you credit for.”

  And he hadn’t exactly answered her question. “Why are so many Indians coming into the city? I’ve noticed them in the market, more every time I go. Is there some news about the war?”

  Tully chewed the end of his mustache. “Now, miss, you know I don’t talk out of turn. You’ll have to ask your da.”

  “Well, all right, I will. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  Tully grunted.

  A moment later they reached officers’ quarters, where the corporal rapped upon the door with his knuckles, then opened it without waiting for an answer. “Here she is, sir.” He nodded at Daisy, then disappeared.

  Daisy found her father standing behind a table, poring over a map with Colonel Durnford. Both men had looked up at her entrance, expressions stern.

  Papa glanced at the basket. “You could have left that with Tully,
” he said on a note of admonishment. Then he saw her expression. “What’s the matter?”

  She didn’t like speaking this way in front of another officer, but there was no help for it. She set the food on Papa’s desk and busied herself with emptying it and arranging the contents in a tempting display. “I’ve been worried about you, Papa. You’re eating little and hardly sleeping.” Her hands stilled, clutched around a cloth-wrapped cheese. “Is—is there anything you can tell me about the progress of the war?” She looked up and caught the colonel’s eye. “Forgive me, Colonel Durnford. I know I shouldn’t—”

  But the colonel stopped her with a raised hand. “Never mind, my dear. You’re right to be concerned. I had to leave my own family in considerable distress.” Exchanging glances with Papa, he sighed. “The news is official anyway, and word will quickly spread. France has declared war and allied herself with the thirteen rebel colonies. This makes our ports here and at Pensacola critical—which is why your papa and I are working hard to keep you and the other ladies and children safe.”

  She caught her breath. “Papa—!”

  “Now, now, don’t worry overmuch,” Papa said. “As you can see, the situation is well under control. Our men are preparing for all eventualities. However, the time has come for you and me to make the move into officers’ quarters here in the fort. I need you to begin packing your belongings—only the most necessary items, of course—and be ready by tomorrow morning. I will send around a cart.”

  Daisy stared at him openmouthed. “Papa, I cannot—What about Lyse?”

  Papa looked uncomfortable. “There isn’t room for her here,” he said gruffly. “I know she has been as a sister to you, but none of her family have taken the oath of loyalty to the king. They must be treated with extreme caution, and I warn you above all not to confide in her further.” His voice hardened. “I’m afraid that from now on the connection must be completely severed.”

  “But the school—”

  “You may continue to teach any of the children who reside inside the walls of the fort.”

  Daisy felt as if her limbs might no longer hold her up. She dropped the cheese and leaned heavily against the desk.

  No more friendship with Lyse? How could she bear it on top of losing Simon?

  And where was Lyse to go now? She could hardly stay in the Redmonds’ house alone. She could go back to her father’s crowded little place on Bay Minette, but that would mean giving up teaching the town children. Lyse would be crushed.

  And perhaps most critical of all, how was Daisy to deal with her growing restlessness in the face of her duty to her father? Holding her tongue about her libertarian convictions might become an impossible task. If that happened, would her father reject her? Expel her from the fort? Arrest her?

  Dear God, what was she to do?

  12

  NEW ORLEANS

  MID-MARCH 1778

  In the five months since Rafa had returned to New Orleans with Simon Lanier, the city had become even more a hive of intrigue. He meandered along the muddy brick streets of the Vieux Carré, whistling a ditty he’d heard an Acadian flutist playing on a corner just that morning. Perhaps he would sit down and dash off some words to the tune, after he completed this evening’s errand for Pollock. A love song, forsooth. Lyse would like a song in her honor.

  That is, if the piratical elder brother could be persuaded not to part Rafa’s head from his body in the interim.

  The short voyage from Mobile to New Orleans had been completed with a minimum of fuss, considering Lanier’s volatile nature. Rafa had used the time to get to know the fisherman-pirate and found him, naturally, not so easy to charm as Lyse. Simon was intelligent, fiercely independent, suspicious of everyone except his closest vanguard. That he had agreed to the temporary alliance with Rafa spoke to his desperation regarding that shipment of gold.

  Rafa’s gold.

  But repining was a waste of energy. Half a shipment was better than none. And if Lanier could be turned for the cause, all the better.

  But first, this meeting with the American agent, Captain James Willing. The Natchez storeowner had defected to the American cause early in the war and acted as a node in the secret supply chain to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. When British officers in Natchez discovered his perfidy and booted him out of the city, he’d returned to his native Pennsylvania and joined the rebels with the rank of captain. Subsequently, because of his familiarity with the southern end of the Mississippi, Willing was given leave to raid British settlements southward along the river, forcing their Loyalist citizens to take oaths of neutrality or be taken prisoner.

  Rafa had yet to become acquainted with Willing, but Pollock seemed to consider him an asset to the cause. Word had circulated that the British command in Pensacola were outraged that Gálvez had not only consented to harbor Willing in New Orleans, but allowed him to auction off the property of British citizens in front of their very eyes. Pollock, ever practical, had worked out a deal to maintain half the profits as a way of recouping some of what was owed him by the Continental Congress—funds which, he more and more strongly suspected, would never be repaid.

  With a mental shrug, Rafa swung round the corner of the Rue Baronne. The noise from the Saturday morning market reached ear-splitting levels, a mélange of the squawking, bleating, and lowing of animals, human shouts and laughter, and the general blaring dissonance of commerce. The accompanying smells he supposed he’d never get used to, but they were all part of life in New Orleans. The general atmosphere here was always lively, but customers trying to complete their Saturday purchases before sales were halted for the holy day jammed in front of the stalls like packs of jackals around a carcass.

  He pushed and shoved his way through increasingly dense crowds until he reached the slave auction. It was a distasteful and depressing location that he generally avoided, but Willing had insisted upon meeting here so that he could oversee the dispensation of the last of the contraband taken in his river raids. Rafa took up a spot on the gallery of a drinking establishment across from the Exchange which was slightly elevated above its neighbors, and leaned upon the rail to search for Willing in the crowd.

  No one around him paid him the least attention. He’d dressed for anonymity in a plain brown coat and waistcoat, with buff-colored breeches tucked into the tops of his oldest boots. His tricorn shaded the upper part of his face, and he kept his mouth turned down in not entirely feigned disgust. The stench of body odor and animal waste was more noisome than usual.

  Resisting the urge to hold his nose, he turned his reluctant gaze to the auction block, where an auctioneer in an oversized coat stood arguing with an obviously British gentleman distinguished by his enormous height and missing left arm. Though he couldn’t hear the words, Rafa could imagine the man’s distress that his belongings were about to come under the hammer.

  “Good to see these Royalists finding out what it feels like to have one’s belongings stripped away without notice, ain’t it?”

  Rafa turned to find a small-statured man, maybe a few years older than himself, leaning upon the gallery rail and watching the auction scene with all apparent satisfaction. Rafa hazarded a guess. “Willing?”

  “At your service.” Willing reached into his pocket for a cigar, offered it to Rafa first, then, when Rafa refused, stuck it into his own narrow mouth. “I take it you’ve heard of me,” he said as he lit the cigar.

  “Pollock said I was to meet you here.” The Irishman had actually said little about the American captain, a sure sign of his distaste. Now he saw why. “He says you have a requisition for the supplies needed.”

  “Yes. The transfer needs to be completed quickly. I’ve important things to take care of in the city today and need to be on my way north tomorrow.”

  Willing’s arrogance was absurd, considering the debt the Americans owed to Spain already, but Pollock wouldn’t thank him for being rude to the agent.

  “Of course. Where shall I . . .” He stopped as a line of slaves
emerged from the holding pen, herded by a handler toward the platform where they would be auctioned off. As they filed up onto a set of shallow stairs, Rafa strained to see the third woman in the line. Her face was now obscured by the gathering crowd, but he could have sworn she looked familiar.

  “What’s the matter?” Willing stood on his toes, trying to see what had caught Rafa’s attention.

  Rafa shook his head. His longing for Lyse had him seeing her image in every beautiful octoroon who passed. “Nothing. It was just—” The crowd had shifted again, giving him a clear view of the young woman’s face. “Willing, I’ll be back. Don’t go away.” Rafa vaulted the gallery rail and ran toward the Exchange.

  He shoved his way past three vegetable stalls and a hatmaker’s booth and came out in front of the Exchange, an enormous four-foot-high platform constructed of patched timbers. By now the crowd had become even more dense as word got around that the slave auction was about to begin. Rafa shouldered through a surprising number of women mixed with the men, heading directly toward the holding pen, until he finally stumbled into the rope holding back the crowd. He proceeded to jump it.

  Someone grabbed his arm. “Here now, you can’t go that way!”

  Angrily he snatched away from the guard. Scarlet had turned at the commotion—all the slaves had—and her mouth was open in shock. She had recognized him.

  “Scarlet!” He struggled to get to her. “How did you get here?”

  “Didn’t you hear me? You can’t go past this rope. Time to examine the merchandise is over. If you wanted to see her, you shoulda come early this morning.”

  Snarling in frustration, Rafa turned to the man, a burly Englishman with a two-day beard mostly covering a dark, pock-marked face. “I don’t need to see her. I know this woman. She’s—she’s a relative, of sorts. This is a mistake!”

  The guard gave him an evil smile. “Know her, do you? I just bet you do. But I got her papers, and she’s for sale—so if you want her, get in line and bid for her just like everybody else. Now move!” With a shove he sent Rafa reeling back against the rope.