Always & Forever: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 1) (43 page)

She bought Louella a new dress and each of them a pair of
sturdy shoes. What Louella needed most, though, was rest. She was not so young
any more, and Josie saw to it that Molly, the Irish girl, took over the
afternoon street vending. Instead of Louella struggling with a basket heavy
with pies, Molly slung the same basket on her hip and sang all the way to
Jackson Square to hawk them. With her red curls escaping from her cap and her
merry smile, Molly quickly sold out of pies in the afternoons and would come
back to the kitchen for more.

On a Sunday gray with springtime rain, Josie and Louella
slogged through the mushy streets to the kitchen. Sundays were their only days
of rest, but today Louella was to make a tray of cakes and pastries for Josie
to use as samples. She’d made a list of the best supper clubs in the
Vieux
Carré
, and she planned to dress in the best dress she had with her in New
Orleans and present herself to the managers. If even one of them bought from
her, she was sure more would follow.

Josie checked that the rain clouds were blowing over,
covered the basket of samples, and set out to try her luck. At the first club,
Le
Petit Jardin
, the manager, a corpulent gentleman with stains on his vest,
gobbled the sample pastries Josie offered, then told her no, so sorry, no need
for her services. At
La Pêche d’Or
, the gentleman in charge ate a crème
puff and kissed his fingers in appreciation. “Most excellent, Mademoiselle.
However, you must realize my clientele will soon be leaving New Orleans. Before
the heat strikes and the miasma poisons us, everyone who can leaves the city.
But you know this.”

“Yes, of course,” Josie said. “But surely there are many
people who must come to town on business through the summer months.”

“Not enough. Not nearly enough. I believe this summer we
will close our doors all together until the fall. If you will come see me then,
perhaps in late September, we will talk.”

Josie still had a third layer of samples in her basket. She
would try another club before she gave up for the day. The side door to
Les
Trois Frères
stood open and Josie went in.

She followed the sound of voices down a short corridor to
the back of the club. A tall slim gentleman with wavy black hair stood with his
back to her. A much shorter man, in his vest and shirt sleeves, held a bottle
of wine up to the light. “I agree,
mon ami
, it has a beautiful hue,” he
was saying. “The color of a Swedish girl’s hair.”

He turned at the sound of Josie’s footsteps. “Mademoiselle?”
he inquired

“Monsieur. Are you the manager?”

The tall man turned around. Phanor DeBlieux registered
surprise at least as great as hers. “Josephine?” he said.

Josie heard the blood roaring in her ears. The last time
she’d seen him, she’d been arrogant and harsh and unfeeling because he’d help
Remy escape. And because he’d kissed her aunt. But she’d done worse than that
-- did he know how horrible she’d been to Cleo?

She tried to appear unruffled, but she couldn’t keep her
voice from betraying her. “
Bonjour
, Phanor.” She cleared her throat. “I
hope I see you well.”

“Cleo told me you were in New Orleans,” Phanor said.

So he did know. All the times she had been cold or unkind –
Phanor knew the worst of all her faults. He must despise her. She looked at her
wet shoes. Had she left muddy prints across the floor?

“This is
mon ami
, Jean Paul Roquier,” Phanor said.
“He’s the one you want, if you want the manager.” He looked at his friend.
“Mademoiselle Josephine Tassin.”

Josie wanted to run from the contempt Phanor must feel for
her, but her feet seemed stuck to the bricks.

“How may I help you, Mademoiselle?” Jean Paul said.

Josie swallowed and withdrew the linen covering the
pastries. “Monsieur, perhaps you would taste a coconut cake?”

“
Avec plaisir
,” he exclaimed and accepted a small
cake. “Hmm. Wonderful,” he said. “Did you bake this yourself, Mademoiselle?”

“No, but it is from my kitchen.” Josie kept her face averted
from Phanor. “If we can do business, I will cater all the desserts you serve in
your dining room.”

Not a stupid man by any means, Jean Paul read the
disturbance in his friend and in this lovely young woman. He licked his fingers
and contemplated what history brought them to such an awkward moment.

Waving his hand toward Phanor, Jean Paul said, “So you are a
friend of my friend, eh?”

“Monsieur DeBlieux and I…” Josie faltered. She still could
not look at him, couldn’t bear the dislike she would see in his eyes. “We are
from the same part of the River,” she finished.

“Not one of Phanor’s lovely Irish girls then. Phanor, you
never told me about your Mademoiselle Josephine.”

Phanor muttered, “
Non
, not this one.”

Jean Paul’s keen eyes examined him. “So am I to do business
with Mademoiselle? You would vouch for her?”

Silence hung in the room, and Josie felt Phanor would never
answer. She gripped the handle of her basket and finally raised her eyes to
his.

“I believe she is a good person,” Phanor said.

Josie’s chest swelled and she struggled not to cry. “
Merci
,
Phanor,” she whispered.

Phanor picked up his hat. “I must go,” he said. “I have an
appointment.” He stared at Josie. “Do you…?” he began, but he didn’t finish.

Abruptly, he nodded to Jean Paul and left without looking at
Josie again. She didn’t mind the brusque leave-taking. In fact, she was joyful,
gladsome, blessed. He knew, and he’d forgiven her. Josie looked at Phanor’s
friend Jean Paul and beamed through the tears on her cheeks.

Jean Paul pulled a chair out for her. “Sit down, my dear,”
Jean Paul said. “Let me pour you a glass of wine.” He busied himself with the
bottle and the glasses while she collected herself. “This is a delightful
Sauvignon, if the golden hue lives up to its promise.”

Josie drank a glass of wine with Jean Paul. He put her at
ease, drew her out, and soon knew all about her two kitchens and the plan for a
third.

“You are quite a shrewd businesswoman,
ma chérie
,” he
said. “Your part of the River apparently abounds in sharp wits. Phanor will go
far, I have no doubt, and here you are, well on your way to being an
entrepreneur as well.” He raised his glass. “To your success.”

“Does this mean you will buy your pastries from me?” Josie
said.

“Well, I’ll tell you. You do not yet have this third kitchen
running, as I understand. And it is late in the season. I propose this. You
have your bakery ready by September, and I will be your first client. I can
tell you now, the coconut cake will be in great demand.”

A soft rain fell as Josie left
Les Trois Frères
. She
lifted her face to the sky for its benediction and let the drops fall on her
eyes and in her hair. All these months of despising herself, and she had been
forgiven. She gloried in Phanor’s declaration -- a good person, that’s what
he’d said.

With a healing heart, Josie attacked each day with new
vigor. She ran both kitchens and proceeded with plans to open the third. She
wrote her Grand-mère long letters with the details of her business activities,
with amusing accounts of Moncrieff’s unsought advice at the bank, and with
scenes of a New Orleans that ladies like her grandmother never saw. As for
Phanor, she mentioned she had seen him by chance and that he prospered.

“I will not be coming home for the summer,” she wrote. “You
are not to worry, Grand-mère. We Creoles have great resistance to the miasma,
you know -- it’s mostly
l’américains
who are at risk, especially the
newly arrived. I need to be here. The people who buy my pies don’t leave in the
summertime; the work of the city goes on, and they’ll continue to spend their
money at my kitchens.”

Josie regretted she would get no reply from her grandmother.
The only one left on Toulouse who could write was Mr. Gale, and she didn’t
believe Grand-mère could make herself understood to him. Josie suppressed a
wave of homesickness and began a new letter to Mr. Gale. They exchanged regular
notes about the business of Toulouse, and Mr. Gale reported all was going well.
Another blessing, Josie said to herself, to have Mr. Gale running the
plantation.

In the weeks that followed Josie’s encounter with Phanor at
Les
Trois Frères
, she approached every corner convinced she would meet him
coming the other way. She looked for him among the men lined up at her counter,
she scanned the heads in the pews of the church at morning mass, she held
imaginary conversations with him. But Phanor in the flesh did not appear. Josie
tried to tell herself it was enough, the absolution she’d felt when he spoke
kindly, but she yearned for his familiar face.

Easter passed, the sun grew hotter, and the city emptied
itself of everyone who could afford refuge at the cooler, healthier resorts on
the lakes. Josie had been right about her clientele, though. The men and women
who worked in the lower parts of town had nowhere to go, and the loading and
unloading of boats and ships continued. Josie and Louella and the two Irish
girls, Molly and Kathleen, kept both kitchens going even as the flies and
mosquitoes renewed their numbers and the stink of the river grew.

Josie had extra windows cut into each of the kitchens to
make the heat bearable. Louella covered them with cheesecloth, but that only
ensured that the most enterprising of the flies swarmed around her sweaty
forearms. With the long summer days, fortunately, the four cooks managed to
finish their work before sunset when the night air became threatening. Many of
the people left in New Orleans did the same as Josie and Louella. They retired
to their homes and hid from the dangerous miasma of the night.

After suffering through several sweltering nights in their
airless room, Josie and Louella decided to risk letting the evening air in.
They tacked a double layer of cheesecloth over the single window and managed to
sleep most of the night in their sweat-soaked beds. They’d awake in the morning
unrefreshed and irritable.

“I’s thinking I might sleep on de river, Mam’zelle,” Louella
declared. “Dey’s a world o’ folks do dat, to get some breeze. I wrap myself up
wit de ‘squita net, and I get some sleep dat way.”

“What about the night air? You’ll catch the Yellow Jack out
in the open all night.”

“I don’t see how dat can be. I breathes the same air at
night whether I be in de house or under de stars. It don’ make no sense to me.”

“Please, Louella. I can’t let you risk it.”

Resigned, Louella said, “Yes’m,” and continued to toss
through the night on clammy sheets.

Every year, the Yellow Jack crept through New Orleans. Every
year, the city fathers called for greater cleanliness, closer inspection of
ships from the West Indies, stricter quarantines, yet the mysterious fever
continued to claim its victims. It was well known that the new people on the
river, the Americans, the Irish, the newly immigrated Frenchmen, were the first
to fall to it, and that fact reassured Josie she and Louella would be safe
enough in the city. After all, every year the people upriver accused the
steamboats of bringing the disease to them, and so even the plantations were
not entirely immune.

On the way to the kitchen early in the morning, Josie saw a
body fallen in the gutter. Blood smeared the man’s yellowed face, and black
vomit covered his shirt. Josie crossed herself and ran the rest of the way. The
Yellow Jack, Bronze John –- the fever -- had arrived, and Josie worried about
Molly and Kathleen. She’d warned them about the night air, but she knew they
went to the taverns in the evenings to earn a few more picayunes serving beer
and wine. She’d tell them about the man in the gutter and remind them they
should stay indoors after dark.

The body wagons began to rattle through the streets in the
early mornings. “Bring out yo’ dead,” the men would call, and families would
open their doors to deliver their beloved one wrapped in soiled sheets. The
wagon men, mostly toothless, filthy and half-drunk, would toss the body into
the wagon like one more piece of cordwood and roll on.

After seeing yet another poor soul’s swollen body lying in
the gutter before the wagon men cleared her street, Josie went to the church
instead of to work. She pulled a few coins from her pocket to pay for candles
to light beneath the Virgin’s statue. On her knees, Josie prayed for Cleo and
Gabriel. “Wherever they are, Holy Mother, protect them from the Yellow Jack.”
She prayed for Phanor, and Louella and Molly and Kathleen. As for herself, she
had had a jaundice when she was a child. She would not get it again.

In the kitchen, Josie rolled up her sleeves to pare the
first bushel of apples. A mosquito floated in through the open counter window
with the slight breeze. It lit on Josie’s hand, but she waved it off. Then the
tiny vessel of death lit on the fair, freckled arm of Kathleen. She held a
heavy, hot pan of roast pork in her hands, and so merely endured yet another
mosquito bite.

Three days later, Kathleen did not come to work. Two days
after that, she was dead.

“Cleo, this is foolish,” Chamard said. “You and Gabriel
would be much safer at the lake than in New Orleans.”

“We’re native born. We’ll be fine. And I can’t leave
Les
Trois Frères
now. I’m the only singer they have for the summer.” This was
an old argument. However ardently Cleo enjoyed Chamard as her lover, she
resisted becoming his
plaçée
, and she paid her own rent on the tiny
cottage she and Gabriel and his nanny lived in.

“I’m going to be at the Hotel Milneburgh all month,” he
said. “If you change your mind, I’ll come fetch you with the carriage.” He
nuzzled her neck. “Promise me you’ll think about it.”