Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (108 page)

The answer was none. None at all.

The return to New Orleans was without event. Cyrene was placed in a prison cell alone. It was a small room with a low and narrow bed covered by a thin blanket, a chamber pot, and a tiny high window. Through the window she could hear people coming and going outside in the Place Royale and the ringing of the bell from the church next door. Sometimes she thought she could hear the guards talking to the Bretons, but she was not allowed to speak to them, not allowed to send a message or to have visitors. For the most part, she was ignored. She soon realized that her position was a favored one, however. The food was palatable. In addition, her bonds were removed and the bundle of clothing she had carried to the Choctaw village had been dumped in her cell, and most mornings she was provided with a pan of cold water for her ablutions.

She had thought, even hoped, that René might come to her. He did not. Apparently, he had no need to explain himself, no inclination to savor the victory of his swift retaliation against her. She should have known he would not permit her to remain a threat to him. She might have if she had not been so disturbed over the discoveries she had made about him.

She mulled over the counterfeit notes in his possession again and again, wondering if her knowledge of them could even yet be used as a shield. One difficulty was that she had no idea what, if anything, he had done with them or about them. Another was that she could not use them if she could not see him to discuss it. But the strongest was that, given his credentials now, who would believe in the existence of the notes if he chose to deny any knowledge of them? Her claim would seem to be no more than the ravings of someone who already hears the whistle and crack of the whip.

The thought of the punishment that awaited her, the degradation of flogging and the branding iron, was a horror that she pushed to the back of her mind. Of much more concern was the fate of the others, particularly Pierre.

Again and again the wording of the arrest order came back to her. “The men known as Pierre, Jean, and Gaston Breton …” What did it mean? She had never known the Bretons by any other name, never heard even a whisper of anything else. It would not be surprising, given Pierre’s escape from the galley, that he would take a cognomen, and yet the possibility had never occurred to her. She had always assumed that being so near the edge of the world here in Louisiane was enough, or at least that the Bretons had considered it so.

Pierre. It was not the whip that awaited him but hanging. It could not happen, not to gentle, wise Pierre. Her mind refused to accept that it was possible. She had come to rely on him, to feel that he would always be there, that among the shifting loyalties and changing alliances of the world, he would remain steadfast. No, it could not be.

But the memory of the words René had written, which she was not meant to see there, came back to her also. “… only one way to stop the forbidden trade known as smuggling, and that is by the vigorous prosecution of those caught in it so that they serve as an example …” They were, perhaps, to become that example.

Hour after hour, she sat staring at the wall, her body numb, her brain endlessly turning. And in the cell’s dimness, the crystalline tracks of tears glistened as they crept down her face in her difficult and silent anguish.

On the afternoon of her third day of imprisonment, Cyrene was taken from her cell and marched under guard to the Government House. The crowd gathered outside buzzed with excitement as she appeared, much the same as they had on the night of the masquerade. This was no assemblage of the fashionable of the town, however. Inside the house, the large room where the guests of the marquis had gathered for their pleasure had become the official chamber for a meeting of the Superior Council. Their purpose was to ascertain the guilt or innocence of Cyrene and the Bretons. At the long table sat the appointed members of the council, including Intendant Commissary Rouvilliere, whose duty it was to preside over such meetings, a lawyer or two, the physician, and other men of standing. At the center of the table, in his capacity as head of His Majesty, King Louis’s government in Louisiane, was the Marquis de Vaudreuil.

There was, however, a new prosecutor for the crown standing to one side leading and directing the tribunal. It was René Lemonnier.

The interrogation of the Bretons had already taken place. They stood alone and in chains before the judgment table, with no sign of legal representation, nothing other than their own words for their defense. To one side sat the evidence against them: their own goods in the containers clearly marked in English, still hung with the seals that had been put on them by the government clerks when they had been placed in the king’s warehouse. At the near end of the table was the chair for witnesses, placed at a right angle to the council table so that the face of the person testifying could be seen by the accused, the prosecutor, and the council members alike. It was empty, however, as if the testimony against all of them had been completed. Standing to one side, as if he had just left the witness chair, was Touchet.

Cyrene was pushed into place beside the Bretons. She jostled against Pierre before she could regain her balance and he reached out awkwardly, his chains jangling, to steady her. She saw the rusty stains on his wrists and ankles, saw the concern in his eyes, and her heart thudded against her chest and the ache of tears rose once more behind her eyes. She gave the older man a quick, tremulous smile.

“I’m sorry, for everything,” she whispered.

“Not I.” The look in his eyes was rich and calm.

The intendant commissary rapped on the table. With a faintly acerbic edge in his voice, he said, “May we continue?”

Cyrene looked at the men before her. She had danced with many of them, laughed with them and their wives and daughters, broken bread with them at the governor’s table. The governor himself had shown her a most decided partiality. Regardless, they stared back at her now as if she were a stranger. She felt herself diminished in a way she had not known in her prison cell. It was almost as if she had ceased to exist as a person, for these men, becoming instead a problem that must be solved with the least amount of trouble, the least unpleasantness.

It made her angry. The change felt good. She straightened her shoulders.

“This woman,” René said, “is Cyrene Nolté. There is reason to believe that she is the leader of this organization of illicit trade. You have before you, gentlemen, account books with entries made out in her hand.”

Pierre shuffled forward, his chains swinging. “This charge is ridiculous!”

René ignored him. “She was seen in active negotiation with Captain Dodsworth, the English commander of the vessel
Half Moon,
as we have heard from the witness Touchet. Moreover, the subterfuge that permitted the theft of the confiscated wares from the king’s warehouse bears the marks of a feminine hand most likely to have been hers, and she was heard giving orders by the lieutenant who very nearly captured her that night. It is my contention that she is precisely what she has been called, a lady smuggler, and as such she should be punished to the fullest extent of the law, lest men conceive the idea that it is an easy way to a fortune.”

What was René doing? Of all the men present, he had the best means of knowing exactly what her place was with the Bretons, exactly how successful she had been in her trading venture with the English captain. Had his pride been so damaged by the way she had left him that he required to see her dragged as low as possible for revenge? Or was he playing a deeper game?

“Cyrene has been with us only three years,” Pierre said. “Our trading goes back much further.”

René made a contemptuous gesture. “It may be true that you traded in a simple way. But deny if you can that you have made your greatest profit since she began to lead your expeditions.”

“She went with us, yes, but she did not lead,” Pierre said doggedly.

He was trying to protect her, Cyrene knew; the question of who led them had no importance to Pierre.

“Your profits have been greater these last few years, have they not? Answer, please, Jean Breton.”

Jean looked miserable. At last he muttered, “Yes.”

“Because this woman was with you?”

“It may have been a part of it, but—”

“Then I contend that she was the leader. That she has, in fact, been heard to call herself a lady smuggler.”

“In jest only,” Pierre insisted. “The responsibility was not hers!”

They were afraid for her, Pierre and Jean, afraid of how many more lashes of the whip she might receive, afraid she might be hanged. It was, she suspected as René continued to press the two men, exactly how he wanted them to feel. She had been brought before the court for that purpose and no other. She was sure of it when he put his next question.

“If she is not responsible for your recent prosperity, then how do you explain it? There is only one other way possible. Who is your backer?”

“There is no one,” Pierre said.

“I think there is. I believe there is someone who has noticed your initiative, your modest gains, and sought to benefit. Tell us who that person is. Tell us who provided you with the funds for a larger operation, thereby assuring larger returns?”

They were pawns, the four of them — Pierre, Jean, Gaston, and herself. René obviously suspected that someone with high political connections, most likely Madame la Marquise or else the intendant commissary, was providing funds to the Bretons. He hoped to use their affection for Cyrene, if not fear for their own lives, to force the name of that person from them, thereby helping to prove or disprove the charges against the governor and his wife. In effect, it was not the Bretons and Cyrene who were on trial there at all, but the Marquis and Marquise de Vaudreuil.

Did the governor realize it? It was difficult to tell. Vaudreuil was a veteran of many political skirmishes. The blandly handsome façade of his face gave away nothing. Still, he knew who René was, must surely have seen his credentials as a special agent of the king. He was not a stupid man by any means, for all his smiling good grace.

But did it matter, any of it? There was no one behind the Bretons, Cyrene would wager her very life on it. If they could not provide René with the information he sought, what would there be left to do but to convict them of the charges against them and carry out the sentences that must and would be passed?

Pierre saw the implication of the questions directed at him also, for his voice was dull with despair as he repeated, “There was no one.”

“I suggest that you lie,” René said softly. “Think carefully before you suffer, and allow those you care for to suffer, for the sake of some high-born man who cares only for lining his pockets at the expense of your sweat and blood.”

“There is no one, I swear this to you on the grave of my mother.” Pierre’s voice was so low that it could barely be heard.

“Why won’t you believe us?” Jean cried.

Cyrene had heard enough.

She lifted her head, her eyes flashing. “He won’t believe it because it isn’t what he wants to hear. He speaks of others using our sweat and blood but is willing to do the same to get what he wants, what he needs for his greater glory!”

“Be silent!” René snapped, his gaze hard as he willed her to obedience.

“Why should I, when it’s our lives at stake?” she shouted at him. “Who do you think you are to use us like this? Would you have us perjure ourselves to suit your ends? Do you know that here the punishment for perjury is death?”

“Silence,” the intendant commissary said, but not loudly.

“We are damned if we say the truth and damned if we lie. It seems that what is required is a scapegoat. Very well! I will give you one.”

“Cyrene, no,” Pierre said, his eyes coming alive with anguish as he turned to her. He swung back to the table. “You must listen to me, and me only. I am not just a smuggler. I am also—”

She could not let him speak. She raised her voice, infusing it with a cutting edge of sarcasm, her gaze blazing as she sought to hold their attention. “Hear me well! I am the leader of this desperate crew of smugglers! I, and no one else! There is no man behind us, high-born or not, and no other woman!”

There was the scrape of a chair and Intendant Commissary Rouvilliere got to his feet to lean across the table. “Woman? Who spoke of another woman? What do you know of such? You will tell us at once or be put to the test!”

Torture was not often used in the colony, at least officially, but the threat of it was always present in difficult cases. Cyrene heard Jean’s groan of helplessness, could feel the color leave her face, but she refused to be cowed.

“There is no other woman, did you not hear me? I spoke of one because it is plain that—”