Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (115 page)

She swung back out onto the narrow ledge that hung above the street. “Valcour, you wouldn’t—”

“Wouldn’t I?”

“It’s far too dangerous. This man is no Ulloa. He’ll not be frightened by a few broadsides tacked to trees, or a mob drunk with wedding champagne and shouts of liberté.”

A sneer moved over Valcour’s expressive face, and he made a negligent movement of his shoulders. “What can he do?”

“What can he do?” Félicité tilted her head, one winged brow lifted in disbelief. “He is an Irish mercenary, a hired killer in the service of Spain with an army at his back. He can do what he pleases!”

“A Frenchman is the equal of any ten Spaniards, or an uncivilized bog Irishman for that matter. Do not excite yourself. It is doubtful it will come to that. We will prevail without force, just as we triumphed over the other long-nosed Iberian sent to lord it over us.”

Félicité stared at him. There was anger and spite in his words, and yet they held also a hint of steely purpose at odds with his appearance. Valcour Murat was of no more than medium height, with a thin frame and a pale, rather sallow complexion. To make up for the deficiencies of nature, he had adopted the mode of dress and languid airs of an exquisite. On this day he wore a close-fitting bag-wig heavily powdered and tied at the back with an enormous black bow known as a solitaire, the ends of which were wrapped around his neck and tucked into his snowy stock. Froths of fine lace appeared at his shirtfront and fell over his wrists. His coat was of celestial blue silk heavily embroidered in silver thread. His waistcoat of lavender-gray satin was also stiff with embroidery, as were the bands at the knees of his breeches. His clocked stockings were without a wrinkle. His face had been lightly dusted with cornstarch powder, and on one cheek, hiding the ravages of a childhood bout with smallpox, he had placed a gummed patch of black velvet cut in the shape of a cabriolet carriage complete with a miniature horse. The only incongruous note was the rapier that hung from his side with the chased silver scabbard pushing through a vent in his coat skirt.

Félicité moved once more to the railing of the small balcony. “I’m not so sure.”

“Have you no faith in me, or in your father’s judgment of which side in this matter deserves his allegiance?”

“It isn’t that,” she said over her shoulder. “When we set ourselves up as an independent country we are challenging the might of Spain, threatening its power and prestige. They dare not let us succeed for fear of losing their other colonies in the New World.”

“Both France and Spain are giving away colonies right and left — witness the passing of Canada by Louis XV to the British and the ceding of Florida to the same by our would-be master. What should the loss of a few arpents more matter?”

“What a man, or a country, may give away or lose through carelessness and the fortunes of war is different from that which he will allow to be wrested from him.”

“You are an expert then on men, ma chère, as well as the colonial policies of France and Spain?”

She sent him a darkling look from the corner of her eye. “You know very well I am not.”

“You relieve my mind. It would be a great pity if I were forced to turn my attention to avenging your honor in the midst of this most fascinating crisis.” He shook out the lace at his wrist, adjusting its fall.

Despite appearances, it was no idle threat. Valcour had taken it upon himself more than once to discourage the ardor of men attracted to her, or depress the pretensions of those who aspired to her hand. He had no small measure of skill with the rapier he wore, and a temper notorious for its uncertainty. He could, when the occasion arose, inflict devastating wounds upon his opponents while smiling in enjoyment.

It was not as if he had any right to stand between her and matrimony; Félicité’s father was well able to direct her in that undertaking. Monsieur Lafargue had not as yet seen fit to approve a husband for her, did not seem to notice, in his absorption with his own affairs of business and politics, that she required one. His daughter was far too dear to him and necessary for his comfort for him to part with her, though she would soon, at the venerable age of nineteen, have passed beyond the first fragile bloom of youth to something perilously near spinsterhood.

For herself, having formed no lasting attachment to any of the young men of the town who had presented themselves to her, she was not anxious to leave her father’s house. She was all too well aware that when the time came for her to wed, considerations such as wealth and family background would be given more weight than her preferences. There were among her friends, the girls with whom she had attended the convent school of the Ursuline nuns, many who had been wives these four years past, and were now mothers two and three times over. She did not begrudge their superior standing, though she was often curious about the physical duties, the transports of joy and pain, that had become their lot.

These mysteries had exercised her mind much of late. She had begun to wonder if she was destined ever to come close to them, or if she would continue as she was, acting as housekeeper for her father and brother, pampered and protected by them for the rest of her life.

It was also becoming a trifle embarrassing to be escorted everywhere by Valcour. He was an attentive gallant, as proficient on the dance floor as on the dueling field, as ready to lend his presence to an outing to the market on the levee for fresh fish and vegetables as to the most elegant soirée. And yet, he was no substitute for a proper parti. It was a question of pride. As little as she relished the idea of marriage, she disliked the appearance of an inability to attract a husband.

Valcour’s interference was his own choice, an assumed responsibility. Nearly ten years Félicité’s senior, he had been taken in by her father when she was no more than a few months old. His parents had succumbed to the same cholera epidemic that had taken her mother’s life. The age difference between them had been too great for them to be truly close as they were growing up, but still, as she had developed into adolescence he had begun to take special notice of her. He had always been there, someone to turn to when her father became immersed in his books and radical ideas of freedom and equality. The blood that ran in their veins was not the same, but there was a bond between them made up on Valcour’s side of pride and possessiveness amounting almost to jealousy, and on Félicité’s of trust and an uneasy relief that her unpredictable adoptive brother never turned the vicious edge of his nature to her.

“Valcour,” she said, her voice quiet as she clasped her hands together at her waist, “I am afraid.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, chère,” he said, his tone threaded with impatience. “Be a good girl and ring for refreshments, will you? I am parched with thirst after my exertions in this heat.”

She stepped inside and called for the young maidservant, Marie. She arrived breathless and anxious. Félicité ordered ratafia, a cordial flavored with almonds and peaches, for herself, and wine for Valcour.

“I will have cognac,” her brother corrected, eyeing the maid without favor. “And you may send Dom to me with my fan.”

The maidservant curtsied and went away. After a moment Félicité returned to the balcony and the subject that troubled her. “I mean it, Valcour, I’m frightened.”

He sighed, pushing erect, taking a stance beside her and picking up her hand to fondle it in his cool, dry fingers. “How can this be? You forget, I know your courage.”

“Courage? I have none.”

“Was it cowardice then that made you brave the current of the river a few years ago, learning to swim like an eel, or that allows you to ride now with all the grace of a Valkyrie? And what was it made you swagger through the gaming hells at my side in breeches, coat, and sword like the most cocksure, beardless gallant, and even to challenge the man unwise enough to slight you?”

“Madness, I think,” she answered with some asperity, “though the last is hardly true. You were much too quick with your own demand for a meeting to allow me to issue mine.”

“Well, perhaps. As I have tried to impress upon you before, acting as my fencing partner with buttoned epées is one thing, sword-play with naked blades is something quite other. There are some to whom dueling scars would be an asset, a definite improvement, but you, ma petite, are not one of them.”

“Unfair, as always.”

“Right, as always.”

“And with your usual deviousness, trying to distract me. It won’t work. A certain boldness I may have for myself, but I possess very little where you and my father are concerned.”

“Yes, but — listen!”

From the Place d’Armes there came the roll of snare drums. The beat fell into the measured cadence of a field march, signaling vast numbers of men on the move.

Valcour cocked his head to one side, a cynical smile tightening his narrow lips. “It appears we are to have the honor of seeing the troops of his Spanish majesty marching in review. Aren’t you overcome with the thrill of it?”

“The threat of it, you mean!” she answered, her tone grim. “No doubt we are meant to be cowed into submission by a display of force.”

“Thrown into veritable paroxysms of fear,” he agreed. “Will such a tactic succeed, do you think?”

Félicité flushed under his coolly questioning gaze. “Surely such arrogance can only anger the people of New Orleans, encouraging open revolt?”

Valcour nodded. “I knew you were laboring under a simple irritation of the nerves. You could not be so chicken-hearted as to shiver in your silk slippers at the mere thought of the Spanish dons.”

“It was more than that.”

“I know. Your papa’s involvement in this plotting in courtyards is a worry.”

“And yours also. It is treason, or so some say.”

“Ridiculous. How can we betray a country that has not officially possessed itself of the colony?”

Félicité did not answer. The sharp, steady rattle of snare drums was coming closer, and they could hear the muffled tramp of marching feet.

Behind them, the maid appeared with a tray bearing their refreshments, and with Valcour’s manservant, Dom, close on her heels. Félicité took her glass, watching as Dom bowed, presenting a fan of painted chicken skin to her brother before stepping back out of the way so Marie could serve his master’s cognac.

The Negro man, strong, well-proportioned, had said nothing. He could not speak, though that had not been his condition when Monsieur Lafargue had bought him at auction five years before. A few months after he had been brought into the house to be trained in his duties as valet for the older man and Valcour, Félicité had asked Dom the whereabouts of her brother. The manservant had replied that he had gone to a cockfight and from there meant to visit the house of a certain mademoiselle. The woman mentioned was a quadroon, a free woman of color, though Félicité had not realized it at the time. When she had spoken of the matter to Valcour, he had been coldly angry, forbidding her to question his comings and goings again, or to speak of the woman. That same night Dom had suffered an accident, falling from a second-floor window into the court at the rear of the house. His tongue was bitten in two, so evenly it might almost have been severed by a knife.

Now the maid flitted from the room, but as the manservant turned to go, Valcour stopped him with an upraised hand. His yellow-brown gaze scanning the street below, one of the main thorough-fares down which the Spanish must come, he said, “I wonder if there could be found an unemptied pot de chambre in the house?”

“What?” Félicité stared at him in sudden mistrust.

“Are you so strict a housekeeper that you require the servants to sling the contents of such into the gutter more than once a day?”

“Valcour, you can’t mean—” Félicité stopped, staring at him with dismay in her eyes, unable to put her terrible suspicion into words.

“Can’t I?”

“It would be insanity, an unforgivable insult!”

“I’m not sure our garlic-eating friends would notice the additional stench.” Valcour allowed himself a thin smile for his witticism as he unfurled his fan and plied it with languid strokes.

“Think of the attention it will focus upon us! You may as well post a sign on the front of the house declaring our leanings toward independence.” Reason, she had discovered, was the only way of reaching Valcour when he embarked on one of his mad starts.

“You think they don’t know already? O’Reilly will be well aware of who has been plotting here. Our good and brave commandant, Aubry, will have made certain of it.”

“There’s no need to invite trouble.”

“I have a feeling it will come whether we invite it or not, rather like the Spanish, wouldn’t you say? Dom, procure for me a chamber pot, as full as may be found. Quickly!”

With set face, the manservant bowed and went quietly from the room to do as he was bid. At the far end of the street, the Spanish soldiers had appeared, stepping through alternating bands of deep shadow and bright, slanting wedges of sunlight falling between the houses. They advanced with relentless precision, a wall of red now fading, now washed with blinding color. The dust raised by their measured tread rose to hang like a pall in the air above them.

“Valcour, I beg of you, don’t do this.”

“A most affecting plea; I wonder how I resist it,” he mused, contemplating the Fragonard scene depicted on his fan.