by Alie Infante
Napoleon’s Gift
by
Alie Infantè
Ppc
Poisonedpin Creations
ISBN-13: 978-1483936680
ISBN-10: 1483936686
Cover Art by Soleil Burgess
Edited by Carin Gotlib
© Copyright 2013 Alie Infantè
Printed in the United States of America
Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights
North American, Australian and UK Print
Rights
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electric or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written consent of the author, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance or likeness to actual living or dead persons is entirely coincidental.
Author’s Note;
This book contains a Southern Dialect, so speech of certain characters may appear as typos, however they are not. It is a dialect, written to give the book the nuances and temperament of what Old Nworlens once was in its history.
Dedications…
To my amazing Kidlets who through some of the worse circumstances in life have made mamma proud with Master’s PhD’s and BA’s.
Sabes que me encanta usted mucho
To Carin: my gurl who works tirelessly and for free to make sure we have something great; you’re the best sweets even if Reviewers give you crap for missed typos.
Thanks Mom for always being you.
To my Creole Nanna…my inspirations for this book.
To my students who continue to inspire me every day, you are the greatest.
To my own lil Betta readers, much love!
To my Fans.
You make me proud to say that I am an author…
Other Books by Alexandria Infante
Historical:
A Lad’s Trouser’s
A Slow Time to Love
Fire & Ice
Coming Soon;
Shards of Grey
Caprice
A King among Thieves
Contemporary:
Grave Reviews; Hannah
Coming Soon:
Sand’s of Time
Grave Reviews; Meghan
One Foot in the Grave
Paranormal Faè Series: A Lite Farie Tale:
Book 1: Midna’s Farie Tale
Book 2: To Teach is Divine; Halleren’s Prophecy
Book 3: Precede with Caution; Bekan’s Quest
Coming soon…
Book 4: Gata; Daughters of Light
Teaching Between Midnight & Dawn Series: Paranormal
Book 1: T.BM.D; Arieanná’s Legend
Book 2: T.M.T.N; Kissing Cousins
Book 3: T.C.B.M; the Arvantes
Book 4: Dark Premonitions; the Seeker
Book 5: A Kiss Between Midnight & Dawn; Sephoroth’s Return
Book 6: The Gargoyle Keeper: Best Mates Forever
Book 7: Red Ryzin; Okuzo
Book 8: Blackwind’s Song; Love at First Sight
Book 9: Cycles of Change; Jade Council
Book 10: Loose Connections; Making Choices
Book 11: Carousel; Legacy
Coming soon…
Book 12: Hidden Shadows
Napoleon’s Gift
by
Alie Infantè
Chapter One…
New Orleans…
Haven Plantation 1870
I had been on this plantation, since my birth.
I thought as I walked across the southern most part of the plantation, closed my eyes, and just breathed in the scent of the copper colored irises. I figured old Jimmy must have mixed the flowers together when he’d planted them, because the front of the plantation sprouted what everyone knew as one of Louisiana’s flowers, the blue irises, however the north side had what you might call multi-colored, because they were yellow, white and pink.
Moreover, when the morning sun played off the copper color, it was one of the most beautiful sights anyone could behold.
I knew Haven Plantation like the back of my hand, but that still did not mean I was at home. It was a beautiful place to be, granted. The old moss hanging from the tiptop of the house, the giant-blue swamp irises, which surrounded the front porch, the magnolias surrounding the garden, the pink hibiscus flooding the walkway, and the lush greenness of the grass, thanks to the mighty rainfall we had each year. Even to that old swing on the veranda Mr. Jones should have had taken down ages ago, to the smell of warm bread coming from Mary’s kitchen, always gave me some kind of comfort, even if my life was not what I wanted it to be.
There was no place on earth like New Orleans; at least, that is what I heard the white men say down on the Basil-leaf Plantation.
The people here ranged in a variety of colors. From what I knew, when Nworlens was founded, there were Americans, French, Creoles, Irish, Germans and lastly, Africans. Nevertheless, like most things taboo, you got a mixing of sorts as well, so no one was any one thing anymore.
Hence my beautiful Mama.
I did not know much about her, except what Granny told me, and she had said my mother was beautiful. I saw a portrait of her once, hidden in Mr. Jones’s bedroom. Deep brown color, which seemed like the very sun itself, had kissed her skin expressively, beautiful slanted brown eyes, and the whitest smile anyone had ever seen. Granny said Mr. Jones had taken a liking to her, and nine months later, I was born.
Unfortunately, she had not been able to bring me into this world without, what the doctor called complications.
She died giving birth to me.
I tend not to think about it though, or all my days on this earth so far would be full of sorrow. To know I caused her death, weighs heavy on the heart, but Granny says I cannot look at it like that. She gave me the gift of life, by giving me hers. It still hurts like the devil though, every time I pass her grave.
Now Granny, she was such a character.
Marié Antoinette Basile, 89, and still kicking.
Marié lived 74 of her 89 years on Haven Plantation. Born in 1781, my grandmother was a French colored free woman, from the island of St Domingue. My great-grandparents were some of the first freed coloreds to own their own land in the islands; however, because of a coupe, Napoleon being upset with Toussaint L’Ouverture, she and others like her were shipped back to France; and although still free, many were forced into manual labor. Her parents died soon after that, and Marié at the age of 15, indentured herself to servitude to Tobias Colum Jones Senior, hence her stay on the Haven plantation. She was never treated as a slave though, because Mr. Jones Senior knew she was not. That was the beginning of a prosperous relationship between Mr. Jones Senior and Granny.
There was not one thing about the people, this plantation, or how to run it Granny did not know. Even after Mr. Jones Senior passed, Mr. Jones Junior relied on Granny nearly all his life, because Granny worked for his father, so he knew he could trust her.
I smiled to myself as I thought about my Grand-mère. She was French New Orleans through and through. The reason I could read, write and speak French was because of my Grand-mère. Even though back then it was illegal in many parts of these United States for slaves to read and write, Mr. Jones Senior made sure Granny could. If she were to run his plantation, because despite what most people thought, whites do not do what Granny called domestic work unless they were poor, they leave it up to their head slaves. Not a slave by any means, it was still what most whites perceived Granny as, so Mr. Jones Senior knew she would need to
do both in secret.
The peculiar thing was Mr. Jones Junior never married. I was sure he had visited Madame Soleil’s in his youth, but as far as a wife, he had never taken one.
Whenever I asked Granny why, she would just smile and say Anaïs, which was my mother’s name.
I sighed as I came across the back end of the plantation.
Granny was not doing so well these days, even if she said she was. I would sometimes see her when she thought no one was watching, and the faces she made, let me know she was in more pain then she cared to let on. She worried me lately, because I did not really know anyone her age anymore. Old François down on Harbor was 78, Josiah down at Basil Leaf was 81, and Millie was 82, but none as old as Granny was.
Nevertheless, if you wanted to know New Orleans, the happenings, the gossip and the things most of the rich white plantation owners tried to conceal, just ask those four, and you would have a birds-eye view.
Many people did not know it, but New Orleans was named for Philippe d’Orléans, Duke of Orléans, who was Regent of France at the time. His title came from the French city of Orléans. New Orleans itself is a principal port, to nearly everywhere.
Heard them say that too.
The climate here is what Mr. Jones calls humid subtropical, but the wonderful thing is we have short, mild winters, even if we do have hot, humid summers. Yearly, our summer months are the wettest, while mostly October is the driest.
Granny told me that the Haitian Revolution, which ended in 1804, established the second republic in the Western Hemisphere, and was the first led by blacks. It occurred over several years in what was then the French colony of Saint-Domingue. She said thousands of refugees from the revolution, both whites, free people of color, or what we call affranchis, gens de couleur libres, arrived in New Orleans, often bringing African slaves with them.
While the Governor at that time, Claiborne and other officials wanted to keep out more free black men, the French Creoles wanted to increase the French-speaking population. As more refugees were allowed into Louisiana, Haitian émigrés who had first gone to Cuba also arrived. Many of the white francophones had been deported by officials in Cuba, in response to Bonaparte’s schemes in Spain.
I learned that nearly 90 percent of the new immigrants settled in New Orleans. Granny said by 1809 migration brought 2,731 whites; 3,102 free persons of African descent; and 3,226 enslaved persons of African descent, doubling the city’s French-speaking population.
As a principal port, New Orleans played a major role in the slave trade. Its port also handled huge quantities of commodities for export from the interior and imported goods from other countries, which were warehoused and then transferred in New Orleans to smaller vessels and distributed the length and breadth of the vast Mississippi River watershed.
Dwarfing in population the other cities in the South, New Orleans had the largest slave market in the domestic slave trade, which expanded after the United States’ ending of the international trade in 1808.
Two-thirds of the more than one million slaves brought to the Deep South arrived via the forced migration of the domestic slave trade. The money generated by sales of slaves in the Upper South had been estimated at fifteen percent of the value of the staple crop economy. Slaves as we knew were a market all their own, both white and colored.
Hence Madame Soleil’s.
Everyone knew exactly what went on there.
However, I had never seen a colored girl in her establishment. If I was correct, most of the girls were imported, indentured servants, and the like. The colored girls mostly worked the waterfront.
The Vieux Carré, as Granny calls it is the French Quarter, and the oldest part of New Orleans. Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville founded New Orleans, or La Nouvelle-Orléans, as Granny says too, in 1718. The city is centered on the French Quarter, or what she also says is the “Old Square”. Jean Fafitte’s Absinthe House, Madame Soleil’s and Chevalier’s are notorious for some bad juju.
That means they are always up to no good.
I had heard the stories about Madame Soleil’s, but I stayed clear of it anytime I was sent to town. I would see the gentleman callers, and was surprised they were the very wealthy of the city. I’d also seen the ships come in, with wealthy travelers from far off, and would sometimes sit and watch, trying to figure out from where they came, what it would be like to live there, and if they had any colored people there. Unfortunately, Granny and Madame Soleil were sworn enemies, so she believed Madame Soleil would cause me harm, just because. Therefore, anytime I went to town, she would remind me to stay away from it.
I did not know if I truly believed Madame Soleil was a voodoo priestesses, but I did feel very peculiar anytime I was ever near her. Equally, Madame Voule’s was notorious for some bad juju as well. That was one place, if I had to pass it, I would much rather walk in the streets, with the prospect of being driven over by wild horses, than to walk on the same side of the street as it. I remembered Celia from Basil-leaf regaling me with stories of chicken heads, feet and such. I thought it quite funny, until she told me about a séance, enormous amounts of blood, and the boy who went missing from Harbor.
I made it a point never to go that way again.
As for Madame Soleil’s, one would have to have lived under a giant rock to have no notions of what the goings on there were.
Although prominently a thing for the west, “the girls” as they were often call by those in town, could be found in many different places throughout the United States Granny said. She also said it was a quickly growing profession. Already present in most of the Louisiana Territory when the United States purchased us from France, Granny said it spread to major cities like New York and Chicago. Granny also said there were saloons and outposts in the west.
She explained that brothels could be found in all different areas, and these same brothels ranged from makeshift tents, to dignified mansions, even portable brothels that traveled around the country.
This to me was the most disturbing.
Considering that prostitution had been around in the west before the west became a part of America, it makes sense that prostitutes were some of the first to populate and establish businesses in the west; they played a significant role in developing areas. Granny said, prostitution continued, and soon after became generally accepted in “red-light” districts, districts with brothels who displayed red lights, thus, much of the French Quarter.
The Napoleon House is centered on the French Quarter as well. Its name derives from the fact that its building was intended to be a residence for Napoleon Bonaparté after his exile. However, a local plot to bring Napoleon to Louisiana in 1821 was halted with news of Napoleon’s death. Yet, we still cherish it, because after all New Orleans is French through and through, even if the new white settlers will not see it as such.
The river in front of the city is filled with steamboats, flatboats, and sailing ships. Despite its dealings with the slave trade, New Orleans has the largest and most prosperous community of free persons of color in the nations, who are educated, and some even own property. Moreover, this was before the Emancipation Act was ever created.
I did not know many myself, but Granny swore this was true.
Nevertheless, I was not the usual colored girl either.
Not only was I educated nearly from birth, but also Mr. Jones Junior was my father. It did not mean I had some kind of special privilege, because I still worked the house even if I was free. However, I was able to stay in the room when he would keep company, and Adèle his God niece and I were the best of friends, even if she was white. As well, as a child, I could not be disciplined, unless Mr. Jones did it himself. In addition, well, he seemed as if he loved me of a sort, so those occasions were few and far. I did not really know that much about him. He seemed sullen most of the time. I could see the pain in his eyes, when he thought no one was there, and I often wondered what caused it.
He was a very studious man as well, because most o
ften whenever I encountered him, he always had his nose in a book, papers, or such. He was a very handsome man too, and I could easily see why my mother fancied him; nonetheless, I was not privy to their relationship, except to know that Granny said he loved my mother.
For the last year, he had been terribly sick, and it seemed like no mater what the doctor did, he just did not get any better.
Granny said it might be Consumption, which was why he had very few visitors.
I sighed again as I walked into the garden with the baskets.
We were living in what the whites called The Reconstruction. President Lincoln had been shot five years ago, and President Jackson tried to bring the country back to its former glory. Fortunately, for us, Mr. Jones’ Plantation was spared, his monies intact, and we weathered through that storm. Although free now, it really was not much different, since Louisiana had the largest state for free blacks in the first place. Not to mention, as far as France was concerned, coloreds were free there anyway.
Granny once read me a quote from a pamphlet by Olympe de Gouges, called Reflections on Black People, which said, “Why are Black people enslaved? The color of people’s skin only suggests a slight difference. There is no discord between day and night, the sun and the moon and between the stars and dark sky. All is varied; it is the beauty of nature. Why destroy nature’s work?
I must say, I have to agree with this completely.
Granny says, even before de Gouges’ pamphlet in 1789, critics attacked the slave trade and slavery in the colonies. France had several colonies in the Caribbean, the most important of which was Saint Domingue, which is where Granny was from. They had 500,000 slaves in 1789 and they provided the labor for sugar, coffee, and cotton plantations. The behavior of slaves and the actions of slave owners in the colonies was regulated by a series of royal edicts, called the Code Noir, or slave code.
