Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (67 page)

“You are sure it’s what you want?”

Irritation rose in her at the doubt she heard in his voice, especially since it mirrored what she felt. “Of course I’m not sure,” she snapped. “What woman ever can be at a time like this? But the Bretons have gone too far. They can’t attack every man who smiles at me. Something has to be done.”

“So it would seem.”

She forced conviction she did not feel into her voice. “I’m not a simpering convent miss, ready to tease and run away; this is entirely different. But if you would rather have nothing to do with it, that is, of course, your privilege.”

He made a swift arresting gesture. “I didn’t say that.”

“If — if we should reach an agreement, there would be no obligation involved. I would require nothing more of you, I assure you. You need not fear I would hold you responsible for the consequences or attempt to constrain you in any way.”

“Would you not?” The implication that she had no other use for him other than the one outlined gave him pause. Always before, it had been he who had made it plain that he would not be held by his actions. This reversal of roles might have been a blow to his ego if it had not been for the humor of it.

“This isn’t funny,” she said between her teeth as she saw the wry amusement rise in his eyes.

“No. No,” he agreed, his voice rich with promise. “It is altogether intriguing. I can’t think when I have been so enthralled or so honored. I am,
chérie,
indisputably at your service. Use me as you will.”

It was a munificent offer; she was well aware of it, and not a little startled by the generosity. She stared at him, her eyes clouded with doubt. “I… would not like to take advantage of your weakness.”

“I beg you to do so.”

“Nor would I like to think that I might hurt you.”

The gravity of his features was controlled by the hard, clamped muscles of his jaw. “Be assured, I do not flinch from it.”

The timbre of her voice became softer, dropping even lower in tone. “They say there is some pain for the woman.”

“There are also ways to make it less, and I will pledge myself to use them and to show you the way to joy.”

Inside the other room, Gaston stirred. “What are you two whispering about?”

The intrusion of his call was a reminder. Cyrene lifted her chin in sudden decision, “I will accept your pledge then, since I cannot think that I will ever be offered more.”

René met her clear gaze with something like remorse lying deep in his gray eyes. All desire to laugh was gone. “It’s little enough,” he said, “less than you deserve. I would that it was more, indeed.”

The problem that faced them was how to find a way to achieve their object in the time allowed. Two days. In two days René Lemonnier must be gone. It would be of no use to appeal to Pierre and Jean, to plead Lemonnier’s desire to learn their trade, to become a
voyageur,
even if his mention of it was a true aim, something of which Cyrene was by no means certain. The Bretons’ suspicions of him, uneasy from the start, had been brought to fever heat by the attentions they had seen. For the remainder of the day, mere was always one or more of them moving in and out of the cabin, cleaning and oiling traps on the front deck or else congregating with their friends at the end of the gangplank.

Late in the afternoon, they also accepted delivery of twenty casks of indigo. The sight of the fat, blue-stained containers marked conspicuously with the word
flour
did much to explain the late hours the brothers had been keeping during the last week at the pothouse. They must have been meeting with the planter who had grown the crop, haggling over the price. Its value had increased of late. News had been received that there was to be a subsidy paid on the delivery of indigo to English ports, the purpose of which was to promote production of the dye in the English colony of Carolina. The result, however, would be to increase the value of that grown in Louisiane as well.

The reasons, or at least one of them, for the increased nervousness and irascibility of the Bretons that Cyrene had noticed in the past few days also became obvious. So long as Lemonnier remained with them, they could not plan the trading expedition the casks signaled, could not even speak of it, much less leave upon it. As a crowning irritation, due to Lemonnier’s presence they were forced to smuggle the dye onto their own flatboat and conceal it under canvases.

The arrival of the indigo, on top of their distrust of Lemonnier, meant that when evening fell the brothers made no move toward the pothouse but instead lolled about the cabin, exchanging jokes and bits of news and gossip and getting in Cyrene’s way as she stirred a dish of fish and shrimp and herbs in a brown sauce that would be served over the rice that steamed gently in its black iron pot.

When the meal was eaten and the men had brought their wooden bowls and spoons to her to be washed, Cyrene said to them, “Aren’t you thirsty? I hear music, I think, from the pothouse.”

“Water will suffice tonight,
chère”
Pierre answered.

Jean chuckled from where he lay on a bearskin before the fire, coaxing a tune from a concertina. “It always suffices when a man’s pockets are empty.”

She might have been able to send Gaston on some errand, but it was not possible to find excuses to be rid of all three without arousing suspicion. Cyrene, exchanging a glance with René Lemonnier where he lay propped on his elbow on his pallet, gave him a rueful smile and an infinitesimal shrug.

There would be no opportunity that night for her seduction. She did not know whether to be glad or sorry.

4

THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, Cyrene walked into town to the market. Her reasons for going were many. She needed to replenish her supplies, yes, but she also felt on her mettle with her cooking now that René was able to appreciate her efforts. In addition, she needed to check the available foodstuffs and begin stocking up for the trading expedition the Bretons would make to the English. But more than these things, she needed to escape for an hour or so from the flatboat cabin.

She had hardly left it since she had fished René Lemonnier from the river and the confinement was becoming oppressive. That was not the main cause, however. Since her agreement with the rake, she had become self-conscious beyond belief around him. She could feel his gaze on her with every step she made; there was no way to avoid it in the small cabin. It might have been her overwrought imagination, but the look in his eyes seemed possessive, impatient, as if he were eager to claim her. Her movements under such surveillance had become increasingly clumsy as her usual smooth coordination deserted her. She was suddenly tongue-tied and stupid, with nothing to say. Moreover, since daybreak this morning she had developed a disconcerting tendency to flush when her eyes met his. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all.

Gaston sauntered beside Cyrene, carrying her basket and whistling between the small gap in his teeth. Their sabots made dull, slapping sounds in the mud of the track. The afternoon was overcast, with a cold wind that flipped the ends of Gaston’s neckerchief and ruffled the edges of Cyrene’s plain linen coif, which she had donned for the outing. The sound of the wind in the trees along the track they walked was like a weary sighing, while farther on the tree limbs were loaded with blackbirds that squawked and squabbled, dropping to the ground and rising back up again so that they looked like swirls of autumn leaves in glossy black. Overhead, a flight of ducks, too numerous to count, winged their way in a ragged vee. Watching from the forest’s edge was a wildcat with a bobbed tail that hissed and fled at the approach of humans.

There was no danger in the cat so long as he was running away. Cyrene and Gaston hardly noticed it.

Cyrene glanced at the square young man beside her. “Do you ever think, Gaston, about leaving your father and your uncle, about going off on your own?”

He stopped whistling to give her an incredulous stare. “Why should I do that?”

“You’re of age. You could be your own man, do what you wanted.”

“I do what I want now.”

That was certainly true. “But don’t you ever think of building something for yourself, for your future?”

“You mean like a house?”

“A house, land, an estate.”

“When I marry, maybe; I don’t know. I like being a trader, living on the flatboat. Having land means you have to clear it and plant it and look after the crop, and that’s hard work. Why do it when there are easier ways to make money?”

“Dangerous ways.”

“You think planting isn’t dangerous when there are storms and floods, snakes and wild beasts in the woods, not to mention Indian raids?” He lifted his shoulders, his tone taking on deliberate insouciance. “Just living is a danger. Our only choice is which chance we will take.”

It was plain he did not feel her dissatisfaction, did not understand her discontent. Cyrene said no more on the subject but inquired instead about his latest conquest, a certain distraction.

New Orleans, built on the closest high ground to where the Mississippi River met the Gulf of Mexico, was carved out of the swamp and marsh well over a hundred miles distant from deep salt water. Occupying a narrow strip perhaps a league and a half long that followed a wide curve in the river, crowded at the rear by the dense forest, the town was growing again after years of stagnation and even decline. The cause was, in part, the influence of the brides sent out by the crown, but it was also the presence of the Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal, who made the colony seem less of a backwater, thereby arousing interest in investment.

The streets were laid out with military precision in blocks known as islets due to the ditches dug around them for drainage, each of which was bridged at the street crossings. The houses were constructed in different ways. Some were built of upright timbers covered by thatched roofs; others had rooftops of split cypress shingles covering walls made of crossed posts with
bousillage,
a plaster made of mud and deer hair, or the gray moss called Capuchin’s beard, between them, or else with bricks in a construction technique known as
brique entre poteaux,
brick between posts. There were even a few dwellings, those of the more well-to-do, which had a lower floor of brick topped by an upper floor of planking. A few window glasses sparkled here and there, but most openings were covered by simple shutters, or with oiled paper or thinly scraped skins to admit light and keep out cold in winter and with loosely woven linen that let in the air but kept out most of the hordes of flies and mosquitoes, moths, and other flying insects in summer.

The heart of the town was the Place Royale, which was an open square that fronted on the river. On the back side of it, facing the water, was the Church of St. Louis, with the house of the Capuchin fathers on its left and the town prison and guardhouse on the right. On each side of the square was a row of soldiers’ barracks. Not too far away was the Ursuline convent in a fine new building and a hospital operated for charity with funds provided by the estate of a sailor. To improve the flood problems of the town, always critical due to its low level, there was a moat outside the Palisade of the town which collected the runoff from the many drainage ditches, and the governor had issued strict regulations for extending and maintaining the levee.

Cyrene had no desire to live in the town, however. Compared to the flatboat, it was a place of incredible filth. The streets were seas of mud more often than not, making the blocks of houses islands, indeed, and when they were dry the gutters that cut down the middle of them were filled with garbage and the contents of the chamber pots emptied into them every morning. The sticky black mud that adhered to boots and shoes could not be kept from the lower floors of the houses; it made a solid layer that had to be removed with a spade. Dogs and cats, chickens and pigs wandered at will, scavenging in the gutters and fluttering and squawking out of doorways as they were waved away with brooms.