Gabrielle

by Theresa Conway

  On deck, she looked around dazedly, her eyes sick with terror at the sight of men strewn about the deck, maimed, dead, and some still living, but so horribly wounded that it would be a mercy when the smoke choked them to death. She looked in vain for Jacques and ran up to the poop deck, dodging the hands of a greedy pirate whose jaw had slackened in surprise at the sight of her.

  On the bridge, she could see a black-clothed figure barking orders to the lingering pirates, his sword still held lightly in his hand, deeply stained with blood. She continued to search the ship for Jacques, stepping over bodies and shrinking in horror as hands reached feebly for her. She dashed the tears from her eyes, tears that were caused as much from the smoke as her sorrow, for the black clouds were spilling out from the hold with increasing volume. There was not much time left before the ship would be swallowed forever by the sea, and she with it.

  At last she spied the beige breeches and leather jerkin that Jacques had been wearing when he hid her under the bunk, but now they were spattered with blood. He was lying against the railing closest to the privateer whose name she could barely read through the haze of smoke—the Golden Serpent. A sea serpent that had brought fear and death and disaster, she thought in impotent rage.

  She knelt beside Jacques’ prone body. For a moment he did not recognize her, and as gently as she could, she wiped the blood-tinged spittle from his mouth with a piece of her petticoat. His eyes focused with a determined effort, and she saw the sadness filling them at the sight of her.

  “Punctured lung,” Jacques said breathlessly. “It’s no good, Gabrielle. Save yourself!”

  Gabrielle fought back the urge to scream at him that there was no place for her to hide now—no place that was safe against the enormous ocean that would be their final grave. She stroked his hair with a trembling hand and willed herself not to break down into useless tears.

  “It’s all right, Jacques,” she murmured.

  She crouched next to him, waiting for death. A sound caught her ear and she glanced up to see the man in black she had observed before on the bridge passing near her.

  With brimming hate in her eyes, she glared at him, her head held proudly back on her neck. “Let him kill me now,” she thought, “so that I need not fear the end any longer.”

  With the deep contempt that only the dying can hold for their tormentors, she spat at his feet. “I commit you to the devil!” she cried out at him.

  He stopped suddenly to turn and look at her, and Gabrielle thought he truly did look like the devil himself with his black hair and jet-black eyes. With the smoke billowing about him, he could have been Satan within his lair, she thought cynically.

  He laughed hoarsely at her. “Would you wait here to be roasted, my lovely?” he asked in English, and suddenly he had bent down to her and was catching her around the waist.

  She struggled in outrage as she found herself held tightly against him. He caught at the grappling rope that was curled around the mast rigging, and, still holding her tightly, he swung himself across the widening expanse of water and landed, catlike, on his feet, allowing her to drop ignominiously to the deck.

  “A good feat, captain,” said one of his crew sourly, “but what do you propose to do with the woman?”

  The man laughed again and caught her up in his arms. “Do with her? Why, I intend to bed her, what do you think?” he mocked the other.

  Gabrielle blushed hotly and struggled vehemently in his grasp.

  “Looks as though the lady has other plans,” another of the crew laughed.

  Gabrielle was caught between two powerful emotions: horrified disbelief that these same men, who had committed others to death such a short time before, could laugh so freely, and her intense loathing of this captain, who was fondling her boldly before the avid eyes of his crew. She still could not believe that she was not actually going to drown on the fired ship, that she had been snatched, so to speak, from the yawning orifice of death on the whim of a pirate.

  “The captain has never yet been bested by a wench,” mother man said, winking at his leader who, with no more words spoken, walked with a struggling Gabrielle to his cabin on the bridge and plopped her down unceremoniously on his bed like a sack of booty.

  He hooked his thumbs in his belt and stood with his legs apart, eyeing her with that unwinking black gaze that seemed to take her in from head to heels. “Be glad I rescued you from that burning ship, little dove.

  “I cannot be grateful to a man who is a pirate and kills innocent men and women. I only hope that you have the decency to put me ashore at the nearest port.”

  His laugh jarred her nerves. “How very obliging that would be,” he agreed. “I’m sure, my lovely, that you are not in the slightest aware that I seldom take any prisoners from a quarry ship. A woman’s tears have been wasted on me too frequently for them to be of any consequence. But I must say, your outraged pride caught my eye, and I told myself that this once I would break my own rule—for your sake.”

  “Oh!” Gabrielle raged on, her eyes flashing. “Then I am to understand that you also murder innocent women without compunction. Perhaps you even add children to your heroic list of conquests!”

  He shrugged. “Tell me, spitfire, how comes it that you are a passenger on a cargo ship? Such a vessel is hardly recommended for its luxurious accommodations. Were you, perhaps, the captain’s mistress?” His dark eyebrows lifted sardonically at the haughty look of disdain she gave him.

  “I am no man’s mistress,” she threw at him hotly. “I was—I was obliged to leave France quickly and I—”

  He laughed at her sudden reticence. “I begin to understand now. So you are a fugitive! How you escaped the hold is a puzzlement, but what had you done to deserve such punishment as deportation? Stolen the purse from a stuffy old shopkeeper? Or have you gone after bigger game?” He turned away from her. “I’m afraid that you were too swift in commending me to the fires of hell, my fine lady. It’s a shame, too, for I was hoping to gather a large ransom for your safe arrival.”

  Gabrielle proudly threw back her head. “I am Ma’m’selle Gabrielle de Beauvoir, daughter of a marquis of France. My family is dead, m’sieur, so it makes no difference to anyone if you kill me. But for Heaven’s sake do it now so that I will not have to submit to your disgusting pleasures.”

  ‘“Disgusting pleasures’?” He glanced boldly at her. “Why, such thoughts never entered my mind,” he said smoothly. “I had more in mind to tie you to one of the cannon and have you whipped for your waspish tongue!”

  Gabrielle’s eyes widened, then narrowed, darkening perceptibly. “Do what you will and be quick then. But before I die, I would like to know the name of the man I shall curse with my last breath!”

  He bowed and smiled dangerously at her. “You have the extreme good fortune, ma’m’selle, of speaking to Jean Lafitte!”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Land ho!”

  Gabrielle craned her neck in order to see anything of the narrow stretch of purple that she could distinctly make out now on the horizon. She drew away from the aperture and paced about the room in nervous agitation.

  Jean Lafitte had kept her locked in his cabin for over a week while the ship had set its course for the port of New Orleans and, more specifically, for his headquarters, as he called it, in Barataria Bay. He had dined with her a few times but had not attempted to force himself on her in any way, and she had been surprised and extremely relieved when, upon awakening each morning, she still found herself quite alone in the big bed. Of course, he was in and out of the cabin many times during the day, usually with his Italian navigator or American first mate. She had realized that his crew was made up of an odd assortment of all nationalities.

  His threat to have her flogged had never been repeated, but she found his total dismissal of her almost as irksome, she would still awaken at night, sweating, her mouth open in a soundless scream, as she fought off a nightmare from the firing of the Lillias. She had wept bitterly, and her resent
ment grew against the perpetrator of the deed.

  She wondered what plans Lafitte had made for her and told herself that at least she was going to be kept alive, she had found out through eavesdropping and piecing together bits of information gleaned from the navigator, Antonio, that Lafitte’s whole purpose in pirating the cargo vessel, or any cargo vessel, was to sell the merchandise for his own gain at a low price in New Orleans, where the people flocked to his auctions. Antonio had even told her that they took a great many black slave ships in order to sell the Africans at bargain prices in places where the selling of slaves had been outlawed. If the merchandise were in prime or near-prime condition, Lafitte stood to make four hundred dollars from the sale of each male slave and up to three hundred and fifty dollars from each female.

  Gabrielle was sickened at the talk of dealing in human merchandise, for what kind of leniency could she expect from such a man? She had learned that Jean Lafitte and his brother, Pierre, lived much of the time on Grande Terre island, in spite of its name a very small island located at the mouth of Barataria Bay some forty miles south of the city of New Orleans. They made numerous trips to the city in order to dispose of cargo and see to the running of their warehouse just outside the town. While there, they walked about as bold as you please, in broad daylight

  “Those women think Lafitte is a devilish handsome man,” Antonio confided, “and they nigh throw themselves at his feet.”

  Gabrielle found his words hard to believe. Surely everyone knew he was a pirate and a murderer, didn’t they? Antonio shrugged, commenting that in this wild, new country, it really didn’t make much difference what a man did for a living.

  Gabrielle still refused to believe that any decent, law-abiding citizen could actually consider piracy a “decent living.” She asked, curiously, if Lafitte was a married man, at which the navigator shook his head sadly, relating the tragic story of his captain’s wife’s death from childbirth during their escape from the slave-held city of Port-au-Prince in Haiti. According to Antonio, Lafitte wasn’t very much interested in women and, in fact, was strangely indifferent to them.

  Now, as the echoes of “Land ho!” filled the ship, she felt a new courage and resolve growing within her. She would escape from this Jean Lafitte and make her way to New Orleans, and the city would hold her future in glittering hands. She gazed out now, with eyes brilliant with excitement, as they neared the island which she could see quite clearly in the distance.

  She could hear Lafitte shouting orders to the crew as the ship turned towards a small pass that seemed hardly wide enough to allow the ship passage. The channel lay between two islands, one of which Gabrielle was sure must be Grande Terre; she could see other, smaller ships tied up against its shore. As they passed between the two islands, she held her breath, for surely the strait was not more than a quarter of a mile wide. But the ship glided through easily enough, and soon they had rounded the corner and Gabrielle saw that they were in a wide bay that was protected from the Gulf of Mexico by the two islands they had just passed.

  The ship turned, and she could see the island of Grande Terre, which was bustling with exuberant activity, surprising her with all the people who seemed to be squeezed onto the small land mass. She could count several, possibly more than thirty warehouses, and there were fenced enclosures that reminded her incongruously of animal pens but seemed to serve as places to imprison the slaves, some of whom she could see, crouched in the dust. There was a structure that looked like a haphazardly erected fortress and numerous other dwellings. It was quite a thriving community.

  Away from the island, she could catch glimpses of prize ships and large brigs that must belong to the other crews that Antonio had spoken of. He had told her that Lafitte actually had several lieutenants under him. His brother, Pierre, was one of them, although Antonio had complained that Pierre was more interested in food and women than hard work.

  Gabrielle felt a lump of fearful excitement in her throat as the ship dropped anchor and she heard calls coming from the shore. She paced nervously and waited impatiently in the cabin, hoping that Lafitte would arrive soon to take her ashore. But would be take her ashore? she wondered suddenly, rushing to the window to look out at the crew, who were hurrying to the side to descend into long boats that would be rowed to the island.

  She did not see Lafitte, and she wrung her hands in her skirt to lessen her tension. She could hear loud yells and cheering from the people on the island and thought, with disgust, that such a man did not deserve a hero’s welcome. What would they have thought, she wondered, if they had been aboard the Lillias?

  She jerked her head up at the sound of approaching footsteps, rising quickly to her feet and passing her hand through her hair. Lafitte stood, unsmiling, in the doorway, his eyes measuring her for a moment.

  “Come with me,” was all he said, and Gabrielle hurried after him, glad to be out of the cabin.

  They went out on deck, where Gabrielle could see several men bringing up cargo from the hold of the ship.

  She noted a solidly built man with broad shoulders and a strong, aquiline nose that reminded her a little of Lafitte, making his way towards them. He seemed perhaps two or three years older than Lafitte, who Antonio had already informed her was twenty-eight years old.

  Lafitte saluted him, smiling. “Renato! Has everything been quiet while I’ve been gone?”

  ^ The man he addressed nodded his head, his eyes going to the girl beside his comrade. “Everything has gone well Jean. With this cargo the warehouses here will be packed to bursting. We shall have to begin making the journey to New Orleans to transport some cargo there. I’ll have to send word to Sauvinet to send out notices for the sale. But—” and he nodded towards Gabrielle, “—it seems, my friend, that you have brought home something with which I am at a loss to know what to do. Is she yours?”

  Jean Lafitte shrugged at the question. “I’m afraid I made the mistake of rescuing her from one of our prizes, Renato.” He smiled ruefully, and the other man laughed “Ah, Jean, don’t tell me you have finally fallen under the spell of a female. Impossible—everyone will say so. And your brother, Pierre—I have the feeling that he may want her for himself as soon as she’s cleaned up a little.”

  Gabrielle’s face was mutinous as she glared at the stranger, and if it had not been for a restraining hand on her shoulder, she would have tried to claw his face.

  “A spitfire!” Renato proclaimed in delight. “Ma’m’selle, may I present myself? Renato Beluche, at your service.” He bowed in pretended gallantry, and Gabrielle sprang out from under Lafitte’s hand and tried to pummel Beluche’s face with her clenched fists. Shrieking French at him, she felt two strong arms encircle her waist and lift her off her feet, so that she was dangling helpless, above the ground.

  Lafitte shook her roughly. “Calm down, spitfire. I won’t have you leaving your nasty marks on my friend here. Renato, do you still want her?”

  The other man still smiled despite one red blotch on his cheek where a fist had found its mark. “A tigress only makes the inevitable a bit more spicy,” he remarked allowing his hand to brush against Gabrielle’s bosom which was just now heaving with mingled anger and loathing at the unspeakable way they were treating her. Lafitte set her back on her feet and then pushed her toward the side of the ship where she could see a long boat waiting for them. Beluche, after giving her another engaging grin, slipped over the side and into the boat. Gabrielle foot groped for the rope ladder and found it as she descended the side cautiously, feeling her way from rung to rung. Beluche’s arms were waiting for her in the boat, and he obligingly helped her to a seat after pinching her derrière.

  Gabrielle merely gave him a look of disdain, although she longed to finish the job she had started on board ship. She watched as the slim, lithe figure of Lafitte climbed down easily, and then the men in the boat began rowing them towards the island.

  Before Lafitte could alight from the boat, a veritable swarm of men and women descended on him, patt
ing his back, shaking his hand, the women bestowing kisses on his face and neck.

  One particularly beautiful girl, who could not have been much older than Gabrielle, leaned towards him deliberately and kissed him full on the lips. Her coffee-colored skin gleamed in the afternoon sun and her dark eyes flashed haughtily over Gabrielle’s person as she dismissed the newcomer with a lowering of her lashes.

  Lafitte seemed not to notice and caught Gabrielle’s hand to bring her forward from the boat. “Pierre! Pierre! Where is that rascal of a brother of mine?” he demanded of the crowd.

  Everyone laughed, and some of the women preened saucily. “Probably in bed getting another one with child!” one woman laughed.

  Lafitte laughed too and dragged Gabrielle toward the partially erected shell of a large house. With the crowd following curiously behind, Lafitte knocked on the door and demanded that his brother come out and greet him immediately.

  From within the building, a small scream of embarrassment issued and the crowd pressed inward, laughing even harder at some joke that Gabrielle could not understand until the door was opened and a heavier, more bearlike replica of Lafitte lumbered out, clad only in a hastily buttoned pair of breeches, his hair tousled and his face curiously distorted on one side as though from some temporary paralysis. He was not unhandsome, but when he looked at her his eyes seemed almost to cross owing perhaps, to the disfigurement of his face. Gabrielle gasped as she stepped back against Jean Lafitte.

  Pierre Lafitte looked at the girl his younger brother had brought back with him and immediately felt a tightening in his groin. “Where did you find such a little beauty Jean?” he asked, catching her chin in one huge hand. “God, but you have all the luck.”