Island Beneath the Sea (50 page)

"I understand that they've put a price on the Lafittes' heads," said the spy.

"That's something the Americans are doing, Monsieur Moriste!" Violette laughed.

"Morisset. Isidor Morisset, madame."

"The Lafittes are highly esteemed because they sell at a good price. It would never occur to any of us to turn them in for the five hundred dollars offered for their heads," intervened Sancho Garcia del Solar.

He added that Pierre had a reputation for being crude, but Jean was a gentleman from head to toe, gallant with the women and courteous with men; he spoke five languages, wrote with impeccable style, and entertained with the most generous hospitality. He was of often tested courage, and his men, who numbered nearly three thousand, would die for him.

"Tomorrow is Saturday, and there will be an auction. Would you like to go to the Temple?" Violette asked.

"The Temple, you say?"

"That is where they have the auctions," Parmentier clarified.

"If everyone knows where they are, why haven't they been arrested?" Jean-Martin put in.

"No one dares. Claiborne has asked for reinforcement because those men are something to be feared; their law is violence, and they are better equipped than the army."

The next day Violette, Morisset, and Jean-Martin went on an outing, provided with a basket containing a lunch and two bottles of wine. Violette arranged to leave Rosette behind using the pretext of piano exercises; she had noticed that Jean-Martin was looking at her rather too frequently, and her duty as mother was to prevent any inconvenient fantasy. Rosette was her best student, perfect for the
placage
, but absolutely inadequate for her son, who needed to enter the Societe du Cordon Bleu by way of a good marriage. She intended to choose her daughter-in-law with an unswerving sense of reality, without giving Jean-Martin the opportunity to commit sentimental errors. As they left, Tete was added to the party. She climbed into the boat at the last minute with some misgivings because she was suffering the usual nausea of the first months of pregnancy, and she was also afraid of the caimans and snakes that infested the water, and others that sometimes fell from overhead branches of the mangroves. The fragile boat was steered by an oarsman who knew his way with his eyes closed in that labyrinth of canals, islands, and swamps eternally enshrouded in pestilent vapors and clouds of mosquitoes--ideal for illegal traffic and imaginative felons.

The Bastard

T
he Temple turned out to be an island in the swamps of the delta, a compact mound of shells ground by time, with a forest of oaks that once had been a sacred site of the Indians and still held the remains of one of their altars; the name derived from that. The brothers Lafitte had been there since early morning, as they were every Saturday of the year, unless it fell on Christmas or the Virgin's Ascension. Along the shore were lined up flat bottom skiffs, fishing boats, pirogues, canoes, small private boats with awnings for the ladies and rough barges for transporting products.

The pirates had set up several canvas tents, in which they exhibited their treasures and distributed free lemonade for the ladies, Kentucky whiskey for the men, and sweets for the children. The air smelled of stagnant water and the spicy fried crawfish served on corn husks. There was a spirit of carnival, with musicians, jugglers, and a show with trained dogs. A few slaves were on display on a platform, four adults and a naked little boy about two or three years old. Interested parties were examining their teeth to calculate age, the whites of their eyes to check health, and their anuses to be sure they were not stuffed with tow, the most common trick for hiding diarrhea. A mature woman with a lace parasol was weighing with gloved hand the genitals of one of the males.

Pierre Lafitte had already begun the auction of merchandise, which at first view lacked any logic, as if it had been selected with the single purpose of confusing the shoppers, a mixture of crystal lamps, bags of coffee, women's clothing, weapons, boots, bronze statues, jam, pipes and razors, silver teapots, sacks of pepper and cinnamon, furniture, paintings, vanilla, church goblets and candelabra, crates of wine, a tame monkey, and two parrots. No one left without buying; the Lafittes also acted as bankers and lenders. Every object was exclusive, as Pierre shouted at the top of his lungs, and should be, since it all came from boarding merchant ships on the high seas. "Look what we have here, mesdames and messieurs, see this porcelain vase worthy of a royal palace! And what will you give for this brocade cape bordered in ermine! You won't have a chance like this again!" The public responded with clowning and whistling, but the bids kept rising with an entertaining rivalry, which Pierre knew how to exploit.

In the meantime, Jean, dressed in black, with white lace cuffs and collar and pistols at his waist, was strolling through the crowd, seducing the incautious with his easy smile and the dark, beguiling gaze of a snake charmer. He greeted Violette Boisier with a theatrical bow, and she responded with kisses on both cheeks, like the old friends they'd come to be after several years of deals and mutual favors.

"May I ask what might interest the only woman capable of stealing my heart?" Jean asked.

"Don't waste your gallantries on me,
mon cher ami
, because today I am not here to buy." Violette laughed. She gestured to Morisset, four steps behind her.

Distracted by the explorer garb, the shaved face, and the thick spectacles, it took Lafitte a moment to recognize the man he had known with mustache and side-whiskers.

"Morisset?
C'est vraiment vous!
" he finally exclaimed, slapping him on the back.

The spy, uneasy, looked around and pulled his hat down to his eyebrows; it wouldn't help for news of this effusive show of friendship to reach the ears of Governor Claiborne, but no one was paying attention because at that instant Pierre was auctioning an Arab stallion that all the men coveted. Jean Lafitte led him to one of the tents where they could talk in private and refresh themselves with white wine. The spy told him of Napoleon's offer: a corsair's permit,
une lettre de marque
, which was the same as an official authorization to attack other ships, in exchange for which he would vent his spleen on the English. Lafitte replied amiably that in fact he didn't need permission to keep doing what he had always done, and the
lettre de marque
would be a limitation, since it meant abstaining from attacking French boats, with consequent losses.

"Your activities would be legal. You would not be pirates but corsairs, more acceptable to the Americans," Morisset argued.

"The only thing that would change our situation with the Americans would be to pay taxes, and to be frank, we haven't as yet considered that possibility."

"A corsair's license is valuable--"

"Only if we sail under a French flag."

The somber Morisset explained that the emperor's offer did not include that--they would have to continue flying the Cartagena flag, but they could count on impunity and refuge in French territories. That was more words at a time than he'd spoken in a long while. Lafitte agreed to send Morisset their decision since such matters were decided by a vote among his men.

"But in the end the only votes that count are yours and your brother's," Morisset persisted.

"You're mistaken. We are more democratic than the Americans, and certainly much more so than the French. You will have your answer in two days."

Outside the tent, Pierre Lafitte had begun the slave auction, the most awaited part of the fair, and the noise of bids was rising in volume. The one woman in the lot pressed the boy against her and implored a couple of buyers not to separate them; her son was clever and obedient, she said, as Pierre Lafitte described her as a good breeder who'd had a number of children and was still very fertile. Tete watched with her guts in a knot, and a scream caught in her throat, thinking of the children that pitiful woman had lost and the indignity of being auctioned. At least she had not gone through that, and her Rosette was safe. Someone commented that these slaves came from Haiti, delivered directly to the Lafittes by the agents of Dessalines, who was financing arms that way and in passing getting rich selling the same people with whom he'd fought for freedom. If Gambo could see this, he would explode with rage, Tete thought.

When the sale was nearly over, the unmistakable booming voice of Owen Murphy was heard, offering fifty dollars more for the mother and a hundred for the boy. Pierre waited the required minute, and as no one raised the price, shouted that both now belonged to the customer with the black beard. On the platform the woman half collapsed with relief, never loosing her hold on the child, who was crying with terror. One of Pierre Laffite's helpers took her by the arm and turned her over to Owen Murphy.

The Irishman had started off toward the boats, followed by the slave and her child, when Tete came out of her stupor and ran after them, calling to him. He greeted her without any excessive show of affection, but his expression betrayed the pleasure he felt at seeing her. He told her that Brandan, his oldest son, had married overnight and soon would make them grandparents. He also mentioned the land they'd bought in Canada, where they planned to go very soon, and all the family would begin a new life, including Brandan and his wife.

"I imagine that Monsieur Valmorain will not approve of your leaving," Tete commented.

"For some time now Madame Hortense has wanted to replace me. We don't have the same ideas," Murphy replied. "It's going to annoy her that I bought this black boy, but I've held to the Code. He's not old enough to be separated from his mother."

"There is no law here worth anything, Monsieur Murphy. The pirates do whatever they please."

"That's why I'd rather not deal with them, but I'm not the one who decides, Tete," the Irishman informed her, pointing to Toulouse Valmorain in the distance.

The master was standing away from the crowd, talking with Violette Boisier under an oak, she protected from the sun by a Japanese parasol and he leaning on his walking stick and wiping away sweat with a handkerchief. Tete stepped back, but it was too late; they had seen her, and she felt obliged to go over to them. She was followed by Jean-Martin, who was waiting for Morisset near the Lafittes' tent, and a moment later they were all together under the faint shade of the oak. Tete greeted her former master without looking him in the eye, but was able to note that he was even fatter and redder. She lamented that Dr. Parmentier was treating Valmorain with remedies she herself prepared to cool the blood. That man could with a single wave of his walking stick demolish Rosette's and her precarious existence. It would be better if he were in the grave.

Valmorain was very attentive as Violette Boisier introduced her son. He looked Jean-Martin over from head to toe, appreciating his slim build, the elegance with which he wore the inexpensive waistcoat, the perfect symmetry of his face. The youth greeted him with a bow, respectful of the difference in class and age, but Valmorain held out a fat, yellow-splotched hand he had to shake. Valmorain kept the youth's hand in his much longer than was acceptable, smiling with an indescribable expression. Jean-Martin felt his cheeks blaze red and brusquely pulled back. It wasn't the first time a man had made an insinuation, and he knew how to manage that kind of mortification without a fuss, but the brazenness of this
inverti
was particularly offensive, and he was shamed that his mother witnessed the scene. The rebuff was so obvious that Valmorain realized he had been misinterpreted. Far from being bothered, he snorted a laugh.

"I see that this slave's son has come out a little touchy!" he exclaimed, amused.

A paralyzing silence fell over them as those words dug in their claws. The air became hotter, the light more blinding, the smells of fear more nauseating, the noise of the crowd more deafening, but Valmorain did not notice the effect he had provoked.

"What did you say?" Jean-Martin managed to spit out, livid, when he recovered his voice.

Violette seized his arm and tried to drag him away, but he broke loose from her to confront Valmorain. From habit, his hand went to his hip, where the haft of his sword would have been were he in uniform.

"You have insulted my mother!" he exclaimed hoarsely.

"Don't tell me, Violette, that this boy doesn't know where he comes from," Valmorain commented, still in a mocking tone.

She didn't answer. She had dropped her parasol, which was rolling over the white shell ground, and covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes wide and staring.

"You owe me an apology, monsieur. I will see you in the Saint Antoine gardens with your seconds within a period of no more than two days, because on the third I leave to return to France," Jean-Martin announced, chewing each syllable.

"Don't be ridiculous, son. I'm not going to engage in a duel with anyone of your class. I've spoken the truth. Ask your mother," Valmorain added, pointing at the women with his cane before turning his back and walking without haste toward the boats, stumbling along on swollen knees, to rejoin Owen Murphy.

Jean-Martin tried to follow him, with the intention of pounding his face to a pulp, but Violette and Tete held on to his clothing. At that point, Isidor Morisset, seeing his secretary struggling with the women, red with fury, immobilized him from behind. Tete was quick enough to invent that there'd been an altercation with a pirate, and they should go immediately. The spy agreed--he did not want to endanger his negotiations with Lafitte--and subduing the youth with his woodsman's hands led him, followed by the women, to the boat, where the oarsman was waiting with the untouched lunch.

Worried, Morisset put an arm about Jean-Martin's shoulders in a paternal gesture and tried to find out what had happened, but the youth pulled away and turned his back to him, with his eyes fixed on the water. No one said a word during the hour and a half it took to make their way through that labyrinth of swamps and reach New Orleans. Morisset went alone to his hotel. His secretary ignored his order to accompany him and followed Violette and Tete to the house on Chartres. Violette went to her room, closed the door, and threw herself on the bed to weep her last tear, as Jean-Martin paced like a lion on the patio, waiting for her to calm down enough to question her. "What do you know about my mother's past, Loula? You have an obligation to tell me!" he demanded of his
nana
Loula, who had no idea what had happened at the Temple; she thought he was referring to the glorious days when Violette had been the most divine
poule
in Le Cap and her name traveled in the mouths of captains on remote seas, something she didn't plan to tell her boy, her prince, however much he yelled at her. Violette had striven to erase every trace of her past in Saint-Domingue, and it would not be she, her loyal Loula, who betrayed the secret.