The Creole Princess

by Beth White

  At the landing of the stairs, she stopped, heart thudding. Rafa was here. She’d know his voice among a thousand men. It came from the sitting room, so she hurried to the doorway and stopped there, suddenly uncertain, seeing him in conversation with his mother and sister. He never came home in the middle of the day. Something must be wrong.

  As if he sensed her presence, he turned, his expression lighting and that beautiful crease in his cheek appearing. He didn’t look worried at all.

  She walked toward him, drawn like iron filings to a magnet. “Rafa? What are you doing here?”

  He took her hands and kissed one, then the other, drawing her apart from Sofía and Doña Evangelina. “I came to say goodbye,” he said cheerfully. “The governor is sending me off to Texas.” He laughed. “It seems I am to be a temporary vaquero, of all things. Just what I went to the naval academy for.”

  “You’re leaving?” she said stupidly. “For Texas? How long will you be gone?” It didn’t matter how long. By the time he got back, it would be too late. Luc-Antoine could be dead. Maybe the governor would see her, but he was so busy . . .

  Rafa must have seen her distress, for his smile disappeared. “What is it?”

  She showed him the letter. Her hand was shaking so badly the paper rattled. “I got this today, from Daisy. All that information she gave us about the walls of the fort . . . She discovered it when Luc-Antoine started climbing in to see Papa. Madame Dussouy caught him leaving one night and whipped him, then went to Major Redmond to tell him what was going on. Now she won’t even let Luc-Antoine go to Grandpére’s house on Sundays, and Major Redmond moved Papa to a solitary cell and put him back on short rations. He also tightened up Daisy’s restriction to the fort again. She had to sneak this letter out through Corporal Tully—” Feeling as if she were drowning, she gulped for air. “There probably won’t be more letters after this.”

  Rafa’s hands squeezed hers tightly, his eyes grim. “Don’t worry. We’ll do something.”

  “Don’t worry? Rafa, you don’t understand how much she hates us. She’ll kill Luc-Antoine, by the slowest, most devious method she can think of! How could I have let him go to her to begin with—”

  “It’s not your fault,” Rafa interrupted. “Lyse! Listen to me—I’ll see Gálvez again before I leave, convince him to send Simon back to get Luc-Antoine.”

  “What about Daisy?” Lyse felt tears flood her eyes, hot and out of control. “Oh, her papa will be so angry! What if he finds out she has been writing to me?”

  Rafa released her fingers to catch her face in his hands. “Simon will bring her out too, if that’s necessary. You’ve got to trust us.” He kissed her trembling lips, gently and briefly. “Now I really have to go finish packing, if I’m going to have time to speak to Gálvez about this.” He kissed her again, once on each wet cheek. “You’re salty,” he murmured, letting her taste for herself. “I love you, mi corazón.”

  When she opened her eyes again, he was gone, leaving her alone with the other two women.

  “Why does the woman—this Madame Dussouy—why does she hate you so much?” asked Sofía.

  MOBILE

  JUNE 6, 1779

  Daisy could hardly breathe. She sat in the rocking chair in her quarters, listening to the rain beat on the roof and knitting a perfectly useless sock, which no one in his right mind would wear—except possibly Niall, and she couldn’t have said he was in his right mind, anyway. If she didn’t get outside soon, her own wits might go begging, like the Pelican girl Ysabeau Bonnet who, legend claimed, used to wander about the settlement of Mobile dressed only in her undergarments.

  She had given the letter to Lyse into Corporal Tully’s care over a week ago, and she had no idea if it had arrived or if it lay at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Tully said he’d sent it on a Dutch mail packet headed for New Orleans, but there were no guarantees of delivery.

  There were no guarantees of anything, she knew that. By some standards, of course, her life was comfortable. She had plenty to eat—should she ever develop an appetite again—and the room in which she was imprisoned was quite comfortable, if one discounted that incessant rattle of rain.

  But she had gotten desperately tired of her own company since Papa had curtailed her movements and company. Only Tully and Niall were allowed to speak to her, and then only when they brought meals. Neither would give her any information about Antoine, Luc-Antoine, old Mr. Chaz, or Justine and the children—not even about her students, whom she’d had to once more give up teaching. Certainly nothing about what was going on in the outside world concerning the war.

  The commander’s daughter was a prisoner in effect, if not officially.

  She didn’t know why, unless they’d discovered her writing to Lyse in code. And how they would have known that was a mystery. Tully claimed not to know why she was contained to quarters, though he wouldn’t meet her eyes. Niall simply ignored her questions as if she hadn’t spoken. She’d gotten so hungry for information she’d begun exploring ways to get out of the officers’ barracks. Yesterday she’d started to climb out the window, but seeing a cadet lounging beneath, smoking a cheap cigar and paring his fingernails, she’d quickly pulled her head back inside, heart pounding. Perhaps she wasn’t as brave as she had thought.

  Now she sat here as twilight fell, thinking about Luc-Antoine and Cain, and all the possible methods Isabelle Dussouy was capable of inventing to make them miserable. And she thought about Antoine, chained in a hastily constructed outhouse near the fort’s foundry, subject to suffocation from its smoke and fumes, as well as rising water from the torrents of rain they’d had in the last week. She couldn’t fathom what created the heartless stone that seemed to have come to rest where her father’s humanity used to reside. Duty was one thing, but every sense cried out at this relentless pursuit of retribution.

  She sat praying and knitting until there was no longer enough light to see her work, and she was too tired to get up and light a candle. She must have fallen asleep with her head against the back of the rocker, for something, a thumping noise at the window, woke her with a jerk. There was another noise, this time a muffled groan, and she threw down her yarn and needles and jumped to her feet. The room was dark as Hades, but her pupils had adjusted after her nap, so she could see shadows where her bed sat against the wall and the white curtains she’d put up last summer.

  “Who’s there?” She felt frozen, her feet blocks of ice incapable of moving. There was no answer, just the rain, now slackened to a soft patter. Her breath came in quick pants, and she could feel every pulse of blood in her throat.

  Then she realized it was someone else’s breathing she heard. A moving shadow in the window.

  “Daisy? Don’t scream. It’s me.”

  She almost screamed anyway, keeping control of her throat with superhuman effort. Finally she choked out, “Simon?”

  “Yes.” He had her in his arms, held fast against wet clothing, his heart thudding heavily under her ear.

  She wanted to climb inside him. She clung to him, crying, incapable of understanding why he was here, what happened to the guard outside her window, what he was saying.

  It was “I love you” that finally reached her. She tipped up her face, let him kiss her, fell into an ocean of joy that all but drowned her.

  When she came to, she was sitting in his lap in the rocker. Her mouth felt bruised, but she didn’t care, and the rain from his shirt had seeped into her dress, but she didn’t care about that either, and he was holding her face, breathing hard, as if he’d run a long way.

  “Daisy, stop,” he said for the third time.

  “What?” She felt drunk, though she’d never been drunk before.

  “We have to go. I hit the guard pretty hard, but he’s going to eventually wake up, and we . . . oh, Daisy. I mean, we really have to go.”

  “All right. Let me just . . . do I have time to leave a note for my father?”

  “No! For heaven’s sake, no! I found that place on th
e wall Luc-Antoine told you about. It’s still not guarded, can you believe it—so we’re going out that way, but you know they’ll come after us, so we have to make as much time tonight as we can.”

  “All right,” she said again. Papa would just have to wonder where she’d gone. It would serve him right for the way he’d treated her.

  Simon laughed softly and pulled her arms from around his neck, kissed her quickly, and pushed her off his lap. “You’re a handful, young lady. No wonder your papa kept you locked up.”

  “Only for you,” she said with a giggle that felt very odd. She hadn’t laughed in a long time.

  19

  NEW ORLEANS, FORT SAN JUAN DEL BAYOU

  AUGUST 14, 1779

  Little Nardo, strapped to Scarlet’s front with wide strips of soft cloth, babbled a long string of nonsense as his mother squatted to lift the full, heavy laundry basket onto her head, then rose with it balanced just so. Nardo, a year old in July, could stagger successfully across a room on his own two fat legs, but carrying him was the only way to get anywhere fast. She followed Daisy and Lyse, similarly laden with baskets, down the footpath from the old fort to the Bayou San Juan, which meandered between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River.

  Scarlet had been thinking all morning of the stories the old slave Blackberry had told as the two of them worked side by side, picking cotton on the plantation in Natchez. Those stories, of village women singing as they washed their clothes in African rivers, their children tied to their chests, had kept Scarlet from going mad from grief. Of course, that was before the wild American who called himself Willing had snatched up Scarlet and twenty or so other healthy slaves and took them to the market in New Orleans. Poor Blackberry had been left to undoubtedly die of starvation, with nobody there to mash or chew her food soft enough for her toothless gums.

  Remembering Blackberry always made Scarlet sad, until she remembered to sing the old woman’s favorite songs. Songs about going to the Promised Land, about eating manna in the wilderness, about seeing dry bones come to life. At first she’d thought them crazy, nonsensical songs, until Lyse explained the Bible stories behind the words. Then they made perfect sense.

  Stories, always stories. Life, too, was a story, Scarlet could have told anybody that. Her own life had a beginning, a middle, and an end to come. There was glory to look forward to, but first you had to endure the fire, like the three Hebrew boys who dared to defy Nebuchadnezzar. Scarlet had survived a couple of fires of her own and come out golden. She couldn’t imagine heaven being any better than this.

  Just look at her, she thought, crouching to set the basket down at the edge of the water. She had a place to sleep with two good friends in a tidy little house the soldiers had built for them in the shadow of the fort. They had work to do and plenty to eat. Her little boy was healthy and happy and brought her unspeakable joy. Just looking in his bright eyes or patting his bottom when he slept made her think of Cain, and she was grateful all over again to have known love like that. Best of all, she was free. No matter what happened, no one could take that away.

  “The bayou’s higher than ever today.” Daisy splashed into the water with a few shirts slung over her shoulder. Her skirt, like those of the other women, was hitched between her legs and tucked into the front waistband. “Much more rain and the whole fort will wash away.”

  “True dat,” Scarlet said, tipping her head back and using her hand to shield her eyes against the glaring sun. Patchy, angry clouds, pink-tinged, hovered to the south. A storm was coming, like it or not.

  Daisy shook her head. “Simon says another transport ship came in yesterday morning. That makes six. Where will they put more men on this little patch of ground? There are camps along the lake as far as you can see already.”

  “Plenty work for us,” Scarlet said contentedly. She didn’t mind it, though she knew it was hard on Daisy, who had never done anything more strenuous than lift a textbook before Simon brought her here.

  In fact, Daisy had been in a state of such shock that it was a whole week before she could talk about her escape from Mobile. Some things she still wouldn’t talk about—like what happened to Mr. Antoine. Lyse had questioned Simon, but he’d just said, “It’s bad, Lyse” and refused to say more. He did say they tried to get Luc-Antoine and Cain out, but they’d already escaped, and there wasn’t time to look for them. But every time Simon came around—which wasn’t often, because of his duties in the governor’s service—Daisy came a little farther toward normalcy. Simon would eventually marry her, and she would be fine.

  As she soaped, scrubbed, rinsed, and wrung uniforms, Scarlet watched Lyse. She had been so quiet since they came here to live and work. Too quiet. Of the three of them, this new chapter of their lives had been hardest on her. After all, she had been treated like a daughter in the Gonzales household. But once it was discovered her mother was a slave, just like Scarlet’s, that indeed they were first cousins—and it seemed she had lied to cover it up—there had been no mercy. She had been termed a colored gold digger, and with Rafael gone, there was no one to plead her case.

  All the pretty dresses were taken away, her few belongings tied up in a scarf and handed to her. With her own eyes Scarlet had seen the coldness and confusion mask Sofía’s face—and it was not a pretty sight.

  Lyse had taken it in silent hurt, because there was nothing she could say to reverse the truth. Besides, she didn’t want to live in a house where she wasn’t wanted. By the time Simon came back with Daisy, Lyse and Scarlet had gone to Rafa’s friend Oliver Pollock for help. He was a busy man, but he had helped them find this house and this position—though notably not offering to take them into his own home.

  None of their circumstances were fair. But Scarlet had given up on fair a long time ago.

  Still, the three of them were fighters. If they were meant to be laundresses, they would be the best laundresses in New Orleans, they would strengthen and pray for one another, and they would play their small part in birthing a free, independent nation. Even Lyse, as grimly as she held onto hope, prayed aloud daily for Rafael and Simon’s safety, for the success of the Continental army, for the leaders of the Congress to make wise and good decisions.

  Nardo suddenly grabbed both her ears and planted a sloppy, drooling kiss on her chin. As Scarlet laughed and hugged him, she met Lyse’s smiling gaze. God had a way of bringing encouragement into the darkest of days, and she would hold onto that.

  NEW ORLEANS, GONZALES MANSION

  AUGUST 15, 1779

  “What do you mean—she’s gone?” Rafa regarded his mother with horror, trying not to put too much meaning in the way she avoided his eyes, the way her hands pleated her skirt into a mass of wrinkles.

  He had found her in her sitting room, sorting dried flowers laid out on a table: lavender to the right, progressing to pinks, then blues, and deep indigo on the left. She was arranging flowers, and Lyse was somewhere out in the city, while a strengthening hurricane lashed the coast with a fury of wind and waves. Even now, he could feel the house rocking on its pilings against the onslaught of the storm.

  “I offered to let her stay,” Mama said, “her and Scarlet and the baby—but she would have none of it. I told her you would sort it all out when you returned, but she insisted on leaving. I suppose we weren’t good enough for her after all.”

  “Mama, Lyse wouldn’t leave without a good reason. What did she say?”

  “Why, she said hardly anything at all. After we had been so good to her, Sofía even treating her as a sister.” One more pleat went into the dress.

  Rafa stood tapping his fingers against his thigh for a moment. Every moment he wasted, Lyse could be in greater danger. He didn’t know what had happened while he was gone, but clearly his mother wasn’t going to help. “Where is Sofi?”

  Mama circled a hand. “In her room, I suppose. You know how Sofía feels about thunderstorms.”

  Yes, he knew. As a child, Sofi had been caught in a storm in an open carriage that
had been hit by lightning, killing the horse right in its traces. She would be somewhere in a corner, too petrified to speak.

  “All right, Mama. I’m going to the Cabildo to report in. Maybe Simon will know where Lyse is.” He turned, then hesitated. “Listen, if this gets worse, if you start seeing water in the house, you and Sofi should get all the servants and go up to the attic to wait it out. Already the water is over the road.”

  She nodded apathetically, and he left, frustrated. He stood for a minute on the porch, trying to judge the state of the turbulent sky. All hurricanes had their own personalities. Seven years ago, the family had lost most of its roof when a cyclone thrust a large pine tree through it. Two years later, all the upstairs windows had blown out as if with cannon fire. This one seemed to be a deadly combination of wind and rain, with long, intermittent squalls followed by brief eerie silences. He knew not to assume a pattern, however.

  Taking a deep breath, he stepped off the porch into the swirling water.

  Two hours later, he was back, this time with his father in a boat. He still hadn’t found Lyse—a fact which he tried not to find terrifying—but he hadn’t been able to withstand his father’s plea to help move Mama and Sofía to the fort, which was on higher ground. He prayed that Simon had been able to get to Lyse, as well as Daisy and Scarlet, before navigating in the storm became impossible.

  By now, the entire city was in danger of blowing away before the fury of the storm. Gálvez’s expensive fleet from Havana had been scattered in the Gulf, hundreds of the troops drowned or battered by flying wood and stone. The confiscated British warship Rebecca—Oliver Pollock’s pride and joy, which he’d had fitted out as a transport ship—was now a mass of broken timber piled, ironically enough, atop the rubble of Pollock’s mansion on Chartres Street.