Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (121 page)

“No! It would be useless. Already O’Reilly is being besieged by women begging for the lives of their men.”

“This man McCormack must have influence. Surely if he was approached in the correct manner he could be persuaded to use it.”

Valcour stared at her, his eyes narrowing to slits. “And what, dear sister, do you consider the correct manner?”

“Why, I’m not sure. With apologies for past behavior and a plea for mercy, for him to reconsider this punishment of my father for my deeds.” Félicité spoke disjointedly, flinging a hand out in passionate despair. “I could beg, cry, anything that may be necessary to secure my father’s release.”

“Anything?” Valcour queried softly.

Félicité lifted her lashes to meet her brother’s hard gaze, a flush rising to her cheeks as she realized his meaning. “I did not mean that literally. Such a thought never occurred to me!”

“That does not mean it will not occur to Colonel McCormack.”

“He wouldn’t — he couldn’t.”

“No? He is the conqueror, though he has yet to draw his sword.” Valcour’s tone was bitter, the lines around his mouth curving downward in a sneer. The coat of puce-colored broadcloth he had changed into was a poor choice for his sallow skin and the shadows of sleeplessness that lay beneath his eyes. Such inattention to matters of dress was a sign of how agitated he was over the situation.

“Such a thing is impossible, it must be,” she whispered.

“The women of a subjugated people are always fair game.”

“Among barbarians, perhaps, but Spain and France are civilized countries. Our rulers are cousins; we speak languages based on the same Latin roots.”

“O’Reilly and McCormack, if you will remember, are Irishmen.”

“That doesn’t make them uncivilized!”

Valcour leaned toward her, bringing his fist down on the table with a crash. “Forget hopeless measures! Believe me, it would be madness. There is only one thing to be done now, and that is to make ready to leave.”

Félicité’s brows drew together in a frown of puzzled consternation. “Leave? What do you mean?”

“What could I mean?” he snapped. “Go, depart, take ship! We must gather up everything of value we can carry before they come to inventory your father’s possessions, before they come to confiscate everything you own and set you out, like a pauper, in the street.”

“If I did that, it would make me a criminal, a thief who had taken state property, would it not? Where could I go that they would not find me?”

“You could go to the British at Manchac, or you could come with me, to France.”

“You are going to France?” There was both disbelief and an accusation in her voice.

“It seems the most intelligent thing to do. Why should I stay and risk the chance that after interrogating the others O’Reilly may decide to make an example of a bon vivant or two?”

“How will you go?”

“I have friends who will take me as far as Havana, where I can book passage to Le Havre.”

“Friends?” She had been aware that Valcour had acquaintances neither she nor her father knew. He had on occasion disappeared with them for days, even weeks, at a time. Usually, questions concerning them were met with cold and discouraging anger. Now, he merely shrugged.

“Is that where Dom was yesterday, making these arrangements for you?”

“What if he was? I have not trusted these Spaniards from the first, when we were given such soft assurances of O’Reilly’s friendship and regard.”

“And will the Spanish soldiers allow you to leave, just like that?”

“They will not be able to prevent me if I go by way of the bayous.” Valcour’s face held a grim triumph as he made this announcement.

“The only men who are that familiar with the back door to New Orleans, the bayou passages, are the smugglers.”

“They can be convenient people to know, these men. They will bring me to Balize at the mouth of the river, where a ship will be waiting. What does it matter how I go, as long as I remove myself from the grasp of the Spaniards and reach the shores of France? Come with me, Félicité.”

“I can’t leave Papa, you must see that.” That he could imagine she would was more than she could understand.

“You can’t help him. He would be the first to tell you to go, to put yourself beyond danger and certain penury.”

“You make it sound as if he has been condemned already. Despite what you say, there is every chance the men imprisoned will be proved innocent when they are brought to trial. Haven’t I heard you and my father argue that to object to becoming Spanish subjects could not be considered a crime while the Spanish governor, Ulloa, had not presented his official commission, and while the flag of France still flew over the Place d’Armes? That, indeed, until those conditions changed we were still under the protection of France? That being the case, how can they be guilty?”

“The Spanish will find a way to twist the truth to their advantage. I tell you, Félicité, that their purpose is not to mete out justice, but to frighten the people of New Orleans into obedience.”

“Obedience, or flight?”

The words were out before she considered how they sounded. In dread, she watched as Valcour came slowly to his feet with his eyes blazing and his nostrils white and pinched with rage. He moved to stand over her, one hand resting on the back of her chair.

“Are you suggesting, ma chére, that I am afraid?”

“Not in the way you mean, Valcour,” she said, lifting her chin, meeting his gaze squarely. “I was distraught. You must see that. You must realize also that I cannot leave my father. Who would take him food, or clean clothing? Go if you must, but do not ask me to do the same. It is impossible.”

It was long moments before he moved or spoke. A fly buzzed in at the shutter that stood half open with the morning sun lying in a golden pool on the window sill. Abruptly he pushed away from her; moving toward the door. “Mon Dieu, what a fool I am! Let us hope, my dear sister, that you do not regret this decision.”

Félicité did not speak to Valcour again. He left the house a short time later, after giving Dom detailed instructions about the packing of his clothing, wigs, and other necessary items of his wardrobe. Toward dark, Félicité questioned the manservant and learned that he had been ordered to take his master’s baggage to a certain house under cover of night. For himself, there would be no need of a portmanteau; Dom was not going to France with his master.

There was little time to trouble with such matters as what would be done with the manservant. Félicité carried a laden basket of food and clean linens to her father at the barracks. The Spanish officer on duty accepted it from her, searching through it with careless hands that allowed the ruffles of her father’s clean shirt to trail across the butter for his bread. The man would not listen to her request to see him. Such visits were strictly forbidden. The officer himself was grieved that he must disappoint so lovely and gracious a lady, but orders were orders. He was even more desolated when she repeated her request later that evening when she fetched her father’s supper, though the answer remained the same.

The night passed. Félicité rose early, since she could not rest in any case. It was as well. To the disasters that had befallen were added others. The first of these was discovered by Ashanti. As she was airing out the master’s bedchamber, she discovered that the flat, narrow brass box that usually rested upon the top of the armoire, behind the pediment, was not in place. This box was where Monsieur Lafargue kept his small hoard of gold coins. It was found at last, pushed into the back of the armoire in Valcour’s bedchamber. Unsurprisingly, it was empty.

That Valcour would take this cache belonging to her father, without a word or offer to divide it, was so beyond belief that for long moments, Félicité could not bring herself to accept the evidence of her own eyes. It was equally unlikely that Dom would have stolen it. Still, she sent for the manservant to question him. In this way she discovered that Dom had not returned to the house after delivering Valcour’s baggage to him. A search of the small room he occupied off the court revealed nothing taken, no sign of a hasty departure. It was the upstairs maid, sent to hang out a basket of wash, who brought them the answer to the mystery. Failing into gossip with a servant girl from next door who had ventured forth to shake out a dust mop, she learned that Dom had been sold to a nephew of the other girl’s master. A fine bargain he had gotten too, since Monsieur Valcour Murat had seemed anxious to close the sale; agreeing to the first price offered.

Her father in prison, her adopted brother gone, her father’s emergency reserve of money taken. Dom, who had, strictly speaking, belonged to her father, since he had been purchased in Monsieur Lafargue’s name and did double duty as manservant for both men, sold for a pittance. Surely nothing else could happen?

It could. Scarcely had the dishes from her solitary breakfast been cleared away when a loud knocking was heard on the portal of the lower floor. Ashanti went to answer the summons, returning to conduct a group of officials into the sitting room, where Félicité waited. They were the delegation sent to inventory the possessions and papers of one Olivier Lafargue, prisoner of state.

“You are Félicité Marie Isabel Catherine Lafargue?”

“I am.” Félicité gave the answer with as much composure as she could manage as she stood stiffly before them for this visitation.

“You are the only child of the prisoner?”

“That is true, although he has an adopted son.”

“May we know the whereabouts of this person?”

Félicité lifted her chin. “I do not know.”

The man asking the questions, a newly appointed alcalde, frowned. “He resides in this house?”

“He did until his arrest the day before yesterday. He has not slept here since then. I understood that he had been released from prison, however. Is there some problem?”

“We will ask the questions, señorita, if you don’t mind,” the alcalde said in pompous dismissal. “All we require is your cooperation in the listing of your father’s belongings for his majesty’s government.”

There followed an exhaustive enumeration of every item in the house. With pettifogging exactness, the alcalde and his assistants listed lengths of cloth and spools of ribbon in the draper’s shop and warehouse on the lower floor. Ascending the stairs, they counted beds, armoires, settees, cushions, bed linens, lengths of toweling, clothing and its buttons, silver, china and crystal, basins and ewers, pots, pans, skewers, spits, and even foodstuffs, down to the last crock of preserves. They did not, of course, forget to list the three slaves that were left, Ashanti, the upstairs maid, and the cook. With a sealed box of her father’s papers under one arm, the officials left at last, the alcalde pausing at the foot of the stairs.

“You realize, señorita, that you are now enjoined from disposing of anything in the house and its environs? To do so before the case of Lafargue comes to trial would constitute theft from his most Christian majesty King Carlos.”

“I understand,” Félicité replied, and watched with hard eyes as the strutting official bowed and took his leave. What she did not understand, and no one had seen fit to explain, was how she was to live in the meantime.

Ashanti had come to stand behind her. “Mam’selle! Félicité,” she said, her voice low, “what are we going to do?”

The question from the maid, usually so self-assured, was an indication of how disturbed she was, and why not? If Monsieur Lafargue was found guilty, she would be taken away from the house she considered home and the people she thought of as family to be sold to a new master. In the meantime, the house was without a protective male in a town swarming with Spanish soldiers and mercenaries, and there were four women, including the young maid, the cook, Ashanti, and herself, who must somehow be kept safe, and fed from the meager supplies in store.

Félicité turned slowly to face Ashanti. “I think I will have to visit Colonel McCormack after all.”

4

IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN thought odd by some to place the barracks of the soldiers of France in the same rather isolated section of the town as the convent of the Ursuline nuns. To the French it made perfect sense, having the men sent by the crown to protect their persons and the religieuses sent to protect their souls quartered in the same area. If the good sisters needed help in spading their gardens, digging drainage ditches, patching the roof, or other such tasks, there were the soldiers near at hand to come to their aid. When the convent bakehouse occasionally turned out more cakes or loaves of bread than the good sisters could eat, the always hungry men were appreciative. On the arrival forty years before, of the “casket girls,” the young females sent out by the French crown as wives for the colonists with their worldly goods contained in a single box, or casket, the soldiers were on hand to keep the overardent suitors from storming the convent where they were lodged. At the time the Natchez Indians had risen in force and massacred the French colonists at Fort Rosalie on the Natchez bluff, the surviving orphans had been sent to the convent, and the soldiers had built cribs and made toys out of bits of wood and string. And both events, the presence of women and homeless children, had encouraged the men who had come to the colony with muskets and swords in their hands to put them down and pick up plows and other tools to forge for themselves a place in this New World.