Winds of the Storm

by Beverly Jenkins

  He’d just drifted off to sleep when a loud knocking on the apartment’s front door roused him. The pounding awakened Lynette as well. Sleepily she made to rise, but Archer stayed her with a kiss on her forehead. “Go back to sleep. I’ll see who it is.” Grabbing a robe, he padded barefoot out of the room.

  It was his brother, Beau, and the worry on his face gave Archer pause. “What’s happened?

  “Dunn. He’s taken ill. The doctors aren’t giving him much time.”

  Archer was stunned. “We were just together the other day. He had what he thought was a cold.”

  “Apparently it’s far worse. His wife has called in a number of physicians, and many of the Republicans are arriving. You should come.”

  “All right.” Archer shook off the cloudiness of sleep in his mind. “I’ll dress and be right there.”

  Beau nodded and departed.

  Archer closed the door and hurried back into the bedroom.

  “Are you leaving?” Lynette asked. She’d not taken his advice about going back to sleep. Her nude body shimmered in the lamp she’d lit in his absence. “Is something amiss?”

  “Oscar Dunn is gravely ill.”

  She pulled up the sheet to ward against the night chill rising in the room. “Lieutenant Governor Dunn?”

  Archer struggled into his clothes. “Yes. Beau appeared very worried.”

  “Has he been ill long?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Then maybe he will recover quickly.”

  Archer quickly donned his coat. “I hope you are right.” Ready to depart now, he leaned over and placed a farewell kiss on her soft mouth. “Au revoir, sweet.”

  “Au revoir,” she whispered in reply.

  Outside, the weather, which had been warm for the past few days, was now noticeably colder, and a frigid wind blew ominously. Chilled to the bone, Archer hurried to his carriage.

  When he arrived at the Dunn home, he paid his respects to the stricken family, then went into the parlor to keep watch with the dozen other men talking quietly around the fireplace. Most were Customhouse Republicans, the Radical wing of the Republican Party controlled by Dunn, dedicated to legislative reform and championing the rights of Louisiana’s Black citizens. Glancing around the room, Archer saw no one from the Conservative Republicans in attendance, and he thought that was just as well. The Conservatives were loyal to the state’s carpetbagger governor, the Illinois-born Henry Clay Warmoth. As a result, Warmoth and Lieutenant Governor Dunn were locked in a bitter power struggle over which faction, radical or conservative, would control the party and ultimately the state’s political machine.

  But that had no bearing at the moment. Everyone was concerned about Dunn.

  Over the course of the evening, crowds of concerned freedmen and other Black citizens began to gather outside the home’s front gate, while inside, Archer and the others discussed Dunn’s illness.

  Archer and the others were still in attendance when Dr. Beach, Dunn’s family physician, returned twice during the night. Upon leaving the sickroom the second time, the doctor announced gravely, “It appears his brain has been adversely affected, too.” Then he slowly looked around at those assembled in the room and said simply, “Pray, gentlemen. Pray.”

  Archer went home at sunrise and grabbed a few hours of sleep. Then, leaving the day’s operations of his hotel to his capable assistant André Renaud, he rushed back to the Dunn home.

  The number of people in the house had grown. Solemn-faced relatives had arrived from the outer parishes, and there were many more Radicals in attendance as well. For the rest of the day, a cross section of New Orleans’s best physicians came to call at the home offering aid, but Dunn’s condition continued to deteriorate. By Tuesday morning, he had slipped into unconsciousness.

  At 6:00 a.m. on November 22, 1871, forty-five-year-old Oscar James Dunn, the first Black man to be duly elected lieutenant governor of the state of Louisiana, drew his last breath.

  “Such a tragedy,” Juliana Le Veq Vincent declared that next evening. “He was a great man and had the potential to rise even higher.”

  Archer nodded soberly. He and three of his brothers—Drake, Beau, and Philippe—were gathered around the table with their mother, Juliana, as they often were for dinner. Missing was their oldest brother Raimond, who was vacationing on the island of Cuba with his wife, Sable, and their children. Also absent was Juliana’s husband, Henri, who was visiting relatives on Martinique.

  Drake asked Archer, “I know you’ve heard the rumors that Oscar was poisoned. Do you think there’s any truth to them?”

  The theory that Dunn may have been poisoned had surfaced as a result of the suddenness and violent nature of the illness, but in reply to Drake’s question, Archer shrugged. “Many stood to profit from Oscar’s death.”

  “Most of all Governor Warmoth,” Beau pointed out.

  Before his death, Dunn had challenged the governor’s political power so effectively that the whispers calling for Warmoth’s impeachment were now rising to shouts loud enough to be heard in Shreveport. With Dunn no longer leading the opposition, Warmoth had to be relieved.

  Although Archer didn’t voice his opinion aloud, he was all but convinced that Dunn had indeed been poisoned. Finding the culprit or culprits involved would be difficult, but Oscar had been Archer’s political mentor and friend. As Oscar’s friend, Archer felt duty bound to root out the truth, not only for his own peace of mind but also for Oscar’s widow and the thousands of freedmen who’d elected Dunn with the hopes of a better future for themselves and their children.

  A few days later, Archer joined Republicans of all stripes in the funeral procession that followed Oscar Dunn’s casket to the cemetery. In line were five hundred metropolitan policemen and over eight hundred militiamen. The Masonic lodges in their brightly colored uniforms marched with the city’s Black benevolent societies. Governor Warmoth, Mayor Benjamin Flanders and General Augustus Longstreet were also among the mourners, as were city administrators, judges, Republican ward clubs, and state legislators. It was the largest funeral gathering in the city’s history.

  Afterwards, a morose Archer spent the evening alone in his finely furnished apartments located on the top floor of his hotel. In his hand was a crystal snifter of his favorite cognac. The drink had dulled his sorrow somewhat, but it seemed to have enhanced the burning questions surrounding Dunn’s untimely death. He raised his glass and said softly aloud, “To you, Oscar, old friend. May you find rest and peace from a tumultuous and murderous world.”

  He downed the rest of the expensive liquor, threw the empty snifter into the fireplace, and dragged himself to bed.

  The next morning, still feeling the effects of the cognac, Archer, accompanied by Drake, rode out to the countryside to investigate yet another murder by the local supremacists. All over the South groups like the White Camelia and the supposedly outlawed Kluxers were hiding their identities beneath sheets and masks and spending the nights terrorizing freedmen to keep them from exercising their rights to vote, send their children to school, and work where they wanted. Unfortunately it was not a new phenomenon, but in Louisiana the deaths were rising. The soldiers posted in and around New Orleans were only a small deterrent, because they couldn’t be everywhere.

  “I think that’s the place there,” Archer said.

  The brothers pulled their horses to a halt and slowly dismounted. The small shack in the middle of the field had burned to the ground, and the charred logs that had once been its walls were still smoldering. Archer’s lips thinned angrily. He looked around but saw no one. “Here’s hope that the folks who lived here fled and weren’t inside.”

  They walked closer. Archer had seen many scenes like this over the past few years, but the fury it invoked in him never lessened. Spying something in the ruins, he used the toe of his boot to move some of the burned debris, then knelt to pick up a charred Bible. Beside it lay a child-sized metal spoon blackened and twisted by the heat. His anger i
ncreased. No one was safe from the hate of the men behind this; not children, not God. “This has to stop,” Archer said tightly.

  Drake nodded. “Let’s see if we can find somebody who can tell us what happened here, then we’ll head back.”

  The seething Archer mounted, and the brothers galloped off.

  Because it was early morning, the narrow, dusty road was relatively free of traffic, thus allowing the tarp-covered coach to travel the last dozen miles to New Orleans at a fairly good pace. While the chatter of the women flowed around her, Zahra focused unseeingly on the miles and miles of sugarcane fields flanking the road. Every now and then she spotted small armies of Black men, women, and children tending the fields. The sight of them working the land made her think on her parents, but she set the thoughts aside. She’d dwell upon them once she and her companions were settled into their place in New Orleans.

  Zahra’s first and only trip to Louisiana had been in April 1861, a few weeks after the firing on Fort Sumter. She and a small band of dispatches had slipped into New Orleans to determine the strength of its militia and the extent of its defenses. A year later, the intelligence had proved useful to the Union navy, who, under the command of loyal Tennessean Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, as well as the army under General Benjamin Butler, captured New Orleans, thus bestowing upon the largest city in the South the dubious distinction of being the first Confederate city to fall back into Mr. Lincoln’s hands.

  Now she was returning, a decade later, but there would be no skulking this time; she would be coming in as brazen as Salome dressed in her veils. The big coach she and the women were traveling in was protected by a tarp that bore the mud and dust of the long journey across the South. Other than having to replace a wheel outside of Atlanta, the trip had been free of mechanical mishaps. Zahra was weary of riding, though. She would have preferred a saddle and horseback to the hard seat and springs they were bouncing along on, but this was the only logical way to transport herself, her five female companions, and all their trunks, portmanteaus, and hat boxes. Once they reached the city, the other reason for traveling by coach would be revealed. Araminta wanted them to attract attention, and Zahra was certain that once that was accomplished the city of New Orleans would be knocked on its rump.

  Zahra had asked the driver, a man named Alfred Wilson, to halt the carriage when they reached the outskirts of the city. He did just that. When they came to a stop on the side of the deserted road, Zahra said, “All right, ladies, we have to get out and see to the coach.”

  The women looked perplexed. The blonde Chloe Lee, who, in her interview with Zahra, had claimed to be a second cousin of General Lee, asked in a confused drawl, “What’re we going to do?”

  Zahra explained. “I want us to make a grand entrance, and the coach has been outfitted to do just that, but everything is hidden beneath the tarps.”

  The redheaded Matilda Trent’s green eyes grew large. “Sounds excitin’, ma’am.”

  “Yes, it does,” added the tall, dark-skinned Lovey France. The light-skinned, auburn-haired Adair Rice and the voluptuous brunette, Stella Summers, nodded agreement.

  Zahra replied, “Let’s hope the men of New Orleans think so, too.”

  The tarp was secured beneath the coach’s frame with ties and large buttons, which were now being undone by the coachman, Alfred. He’d been sent to Zahra by Araminta. A former dispatch, he had a mountain-sized frame with arms that looked capable of crushing anything in their grasp. He would serve as coachman, her head man, and keeper of the peace. Zahra was sure his presence in the house would quell any thoughts of troublemaking by the patrons.

  Finished with the task, Alfred slid from beneath the coach and dusted himself off. “Should I change clothes now?”

  Zahra nodded. He went to the seat of the coach, took down a large satchel, and headed for the cover of woods.

  “All right, ladies, grab an edge and pull.”

  Once the tarps came free, the women stood, stunned. The apple red coach, with its gold fleurs-de-lis and elaborately decorated lacquered frame, shone like a polished jewel in the Louisiana sun.

  Lovey gushed from behind her hands, “Now that is a coach for whores.”

  Everyone laughed. They then took a slow turn around the wondrous exterior. This was Zahra’s first real look at it as well. When Alfred had driven it to the Charleston boardinghouse where Araminta had arranged for him and Zahra to initially meet, the wraps had already been secured. At the time, he’d only been able to give her a peek at the color, but now, seeing it in all its glory, she could only wonder who the craftsman might have been. Araminta claimed to have borrowed it from an acquaintance, but she’d refused to reveal a name. The still marveling Zahra decided it didn’t matter. All garishness aside, the workmanship was outstanding. The red lacquer body was smooth and unblemished as glass. The gold paint bordering the doors and fleurs-de-lis looked rich enough to be real. She had no idea what it would take to keep the painted surfaces clean, but she decided she’d let Alfred worry about that.

  When Alfred returned, he was dressed in the well-fitting livery of a footman. Zahra was relieved to see that he hadn’t been outfitted in red to match the coach. The black uniform with its brass buttons and crisp matching hat made him look stately but no less menacing, which suited her just fine.

  Once the women were done admiring the coach, Zahra sent them into the trees as well. They needed to change out of their traveling clothing and put on their gowns. When they returned she was pleased that none of them looked tawdry or cheap. The low-cut décolletage of their dresses and the paint on their faces plainly declared their profession, but the ladies had a sophisticated air about them; an air she’d been counting on when she’d hired them. Zahra’s operation had to be top drawer in order for it to be successful, and she needed girls who exuded that same tone.

  Alfred called out. “Horses coming.”

  Zahra hastened into the coach to tie on her domino. The beautiful black satin half mask with its side ribbons covered the upper portion of her face. Making free use of the money in the trunk Araminta had given her, Zahra had had masks fashioned to match each of her new gowns, and this one complemented the black satin gown and cape she was wearing. She would don the domino whenever she appeared in public so as to safeguard her true identity from anyone she’d preyed upon as the Black Butterfly.

  The horses appearing over the rise were ridden by Union soldiers. Behind them were more uniformed men driving wagons flanked by walking comrades. As the column neared the red coach and the women, it slowed.

  The lead soldier, an older man with a thin frame and muttonchop sideburns, studied the women from atop his saddle for a moment, then spat a wad of tobacco in their direction. “New Orleans doesn’t need more strumpets!”

  The feisty Lovey gave him a tight little smile, then announced for all the men to hear, “We’re not going to New Orleans. We’re heading to your house!”

  He visibly stiffened, and his whiskered face turned whore red. Glaring down at the smiling Lovey, he crisply motioned his men forward and the slow march resumed. The women laughed, and Zahra saw soldiers drop their heads to hide their smiles.

  Her blue eyes glittering with annoyance, Chloe Lee said, “Old hypocrite. He’ll probably be our first customer.”

  Alfred took a low-slung basket from the space beneath his driver’s seat; while they all looked on, he withdrew yet another surprise. Alfred fit the horses with new red-and-gold harnesses that were studded with rhinestones, then he placed matching red-and-gold headpieces, complete with plumes, on their heads. The women looked on with grins. The horses were as finely outfitted as ones in a traveling circus. Zahra thought they’d look smart pulling the red coach into town and hoped they would cause the stir she was after.

  Once the horses were ready to go, Alfred politely assisted the silk-gowned women back into the carriage, then took the reins and headed for New Orleans.

  It was afternoon when they entered the city, and the busy streets w
ere clogged with dust, coaches, wagons, pushcarts, and people of all races. Zahra saw well-dressed citizenry and other folks wearing little more than rags. Vendors seemed stationed on each corner, hawking everything from flowers, to braised meats, to newspapers. In the air were the smells of the Mississippi, burning charcoal, and the fetid pungency of a city filled with thousands of people.

  Because of the pressing traffic, the coach’s progress was slow at best, but the snail’s pace worked to Zahra’s advantage, for it gave the citizens an opportunity to take a good long look at the scarlet coach and its four plumed horses. From the shocked faces following in their wake Zahra was certain the city had never seen anything quite like this. Her painted girls, waving wildly from the windows and tossing sweets and candies to the young men running beside the coach, only added to the spectacle. On the walks, fashionably dressed Creole women watched, rooted to the spot, their mouths open. Men grinned broadly. People pointed excitedly, and mothers hastily covered the eyes of their children. One soldier was so entranced that he walked right into an old woman’s vegetable cart, toppling her wares into the street. Other coaches maneuvered close to get a better view, and when the girls leaned out of the windows to wave, the smiling male occupants fervently responded with calls for the girls’ names.

  Chloe pulled herself back inside and said to Zahra excitedly, “We have a train of people following us!”

  Zahra looked out of her window. Sure enough, it looked as if half the city was streaming behind the horses. She could see adolescents running happily beside the coach, and she heard Alfred barking at people to keep clear of the wheels. Zahra felt like a marshal leading a parade. The only thing missing was a band. She smiled beneath the domino, pleased with the knowledge that even in jaded and sometimes decadent New Orleans, their entrance would keep tongues wagging for weeks to come.

  By the time Alfred halted the coach in front of the fancy house the ladies were to occupy, the crowd behind them had grown larger. Men vocally competed with each other to gain the attention of the girls while stray dogs ran around barking happily at all the commotion. Peddlers were there, as were men on horseback and men driving wagons. She saw soldiers in the midst, and uniformed city policemen too, but she wasn’t certain if they were there to keep the peace or if they just wanted a look like everyone else.