Tainted Lilies (9 page)

“What about Aunt Gabrielle and Sukey? Will they be going with us?”

Laffite frowned. He hadn’t thought of them. Transporting three women could prove hazardous.

He gave her a sly look and asked, “Do you really need your maid along, darling? Can’t you manage with just me?”

“I suppose… if you’ll help me lace my stays, Jean.”

He howled his delight at the image of Nicolette, dressed for a formal outing, traveling all that way through the bayous by pirogue. Leaning down to reach her, he kissed her softly blushing cheek and said, “I think we’ll leave your corset and stays here with Sukey,
ma chère.
You won’t need them and I’d hate to see some alligator end up wearing them!”

“Oh!” Nicolette exclaimed.

“As for Gabrielle, I’ll leave it up to the two of you to decide whether she stays here or goes with us. But I warn you, the cabin is small and not outfitted with all the comforts of home.”

Gabrielle DelaCroix came in while Nicolette was having her breakfast of
café au lait,
croissants, and orange sections in bed. She had made plans of her own. No, she would not go to The Temple with them.

“I’ve talked Reyne Beluche into taking me on to New Orleans, Nikki,” she stated firmly.

“But, Aunt Gabi .

She raised a hand and shook her head to silence her niece’s protests. “Now, I won’t have any argument, young lady! Jean will take care of you, I’m sure. If I go on to Claude and Francine, I can pave the way for you and your husband. They’ll have to listen to reason. I think it might be wise for Sukey to return with me. She’s an old woman and the life here may prove too much for her. Besides, how would it look for me to arrive in New Orleans on a smuggler’s ship without a proper chaperone? The man I love knows that Reyne once fancied me. He’d be sure to jump to the worst possible conclusions. So it’s all settled!”

“Well, if you’re sure…” Nicolette began.

“I am, indeed!” Gabrielle cut her off. “I sail this afternoon aboard the schooner
Spy.”
She smiled happily, as if taking off with a band of avowed ruffians and cutthroats were the most natural thing in the world for her to do.

“I’ll miss you,” Nicolette said, taking her aunt’s hand.

Gabrielie’s great brown eyes glittered with mischief. “I have a feeling that your darling corsair will keep you far too busy for you to even realize I’ve gone. You’re a lucky woman, Nikki. Give all your love, all your attention to your man. Love him as if there were no tomorrow!”

“I do,” Nicolette whispered. “I hurt, I love him so much, Aunt Gabi,” she confided.

Gabrielle closed her eyes and sighed dreamily. “Ah, how often I wish to know that kind of love again.
C’est magnifique!”

That afternoon, after several hours of frenzied activity on Grand Terre, ships and pirogues set off in all directions.

Already, Laffite’s messenger, Raymond Ranchier, was speeding up through the lazy, brackish bayous, his swift cypress dugout propelled toward New Orleans by twenty muscled black arms.

The
Spy,
which had been anchored in Barataria Pass between the sheltering islands of Grande Terre and Grande Isle, took its two passengers onboard and sailed out into the Gulf, headed for Lakes Borgne and Pontchartrain and finally into Bayou St. John to make port in the Crescent City.

Nicolette, sensibly clothed in a calf-length canvas skirt with britches underneath and high boots, climbed into one of the pirogues bound for The Temple. Jean took her hand and settled her in the center seat.

“Comfortable, darling?” he asked.

She offered him a smile more confident than her feelings and answered, “Couldn’t be more!”

“Then haul away, you bloody brigands!” he shouted to the men at the poles.

The flat-bottomed cypress boat shot forward like a bullet, speeding over the ubiquitous duckweed, which gave the bayou the appearance of being covered in green velvet.

Nicolette settled back, fanning herself with a palmetto frond, and watched the bright sun fade into greenish-yellow half-light. The swamp closed in over them, giving her the serene feeling of being inside a vast, green cathedral.

Even while Nicolette painted fanciful pictures of the place Jean called The Temple, a warning began to buzz in her brain. As they drew deeper into the swamp, all feelings of serenity fled. She told herself that she was being silly… that it was only her nerves grating at the sound of the swarming mosquitoes all around them. Still, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t silence a voice somewhere deep inside her which kept insisting she should never have left Grande Terre.

Jean Laffite watched over Nicolette carefully throughout the trip, keeping a protective arm about her most of the time. To his relief she showed no outward signs of discomfort. She took the long boat ride and the attacking swarms of insects in her stride. He cursed himself more than once for not thinking to have the boat covered with a frame and netting for her comfort. But, after all, he thought, who in New Orleans hasn’t learned to live with mosquitoes?

Still, he felt he’d made a mistake by bringing her along. He had been too furious with Vincent Gambi for interrupting their first days together to think seriously about the dangers to Nikki when he made his hasty decision.

What if troops did show up at The Temple and shooting broke out? Monsieur Vernet had never appeared at the auctions on Grande Terre or at The Temple, but what if he came to this one in search of his daughter? Which man… which life… would Nicolette choose, if told she had to decide on the spot between her family and her lover?

After all, Laffite thought with a sharp twinge of pain in his heart, we aren’t really married—not until we have the sanction of the Church.

A loud commotion up ahead snapped him out of his dismal reverie.

“What the hell?” he muttered.

“Chomp that nigger, ole buck! Bite that thar boy! Goddammit, ain’t you hongry for a taste of prime dark meat?”

The cries exploded through the swamp, disturbing the peace in an egret aerie, causing the snowy birds to swoop skyward.

“Sounds like Kaintucks, Boss,” Dominique called from the boat ahead, referring to the rough rivermen who plied the Mississippi in their keelboats and then sold them in New Orleans, once the cargo was unloaded, to be turned into floating cathouses along Gallatin Street near the levee.

“Sounds like trouble to me,” Laffite yelled back. He handed Nicolette a kerchief like the ones the men wore and ordered, “Tie this around your head and don’t say a word. Keep your face down. We’ll all be better off if they don’t find out a woman’s with us.”

“They’re just hunting ‘gators,” Dominique said. “We don’t mess with them, they won’t mess with us!”

Then a shrill cry reached them—a child’s voice, begging, “Please, massas, don’t throw me in dere no mo’. That old ‘gator gone snatch off my leg right up to my eyeballs! Please, have pity on this poor, no-’count boy!”

A roar of laughter answered these words, then a loud splash, and the bellow of a bull alligator. Shots rang out, followed by a scream, shrill and terrified.

Nicolette, unnerved by the sounds, clutched Laffite’s arm and whispered, “What’s happening up there?”

“Nothing to worry about, darling. We’ll be past them soon. Just keep your head down.” His face and voice were grim. “Dom, pull up when you spot them. We don’t want any wild shots coming this way if we surprise them.”

“Aye, aye, Boss.”

They rounded a sharp bend, where the bayou turned back upon itself, and three men came into view. Their flowing, matted beards and battered felt hats sporting red turkey feathers in the bands proclaimed to the world that they were indeed men of the river—at all times spoiling for a fight, lusting for a woman, and thirsting for a long pull at a jug of Monongahela whiskey.

“River trash!” Laffite said and spat into the bayou.

Nicolette’s eyes grew wide. She stared in spite of Laffite’s warnings. She had never seen men like these at close range. She had been cautioned about their kind in New Orleans, and no proper Creole would go near the rough waterfront dives and hot-sheet hotels they frequented.

“They be the spawn of the devil!” she remembered Sukey remarking in hushed tones once when a Kaintuck wandered into Royal Street.

“Ho, mates!” Dom hailed.

The three men looked up, eyeing the approaching flotilla of pirogues suspiciously, their long Kentucky rifles cocked and ready.

“I’m Dominique Youx of Grande Terre, bound for The Temple with niggers to sell,” he called out. “You gentlemen from around here?”

The leader of the group, a man of ominous proportions with hair and beard as red as hell’s fires, snarled, “ Tain’t likely! Though I myself was borned and bred in a river swamp akin to this ’un. Me mother was a wiley vixen who got herself cotched by the meanest, orneriest catamount what ever stalked the earth. I was suckled by a rattler and learnt what I know from a sidewinder. Alone, or with Spike and Zeb here, I can lick twenty men and skin the hides offen ’em to make boots! You spoilin’ for a fight, little man?”

Laffite dreaded Dom’s reply. He’d heard one other hapless soul call his older brother “little man.” That Spanish grandee’s bones were now lost among the coral beds off the coast of Florida. Before Dominique had deep-sixed the outspoken noble, he had slit his throat and his tongue.

“Easy, Dom!” Laffite cautioned. “We have Nikki to think of.”

Dominique turned for a moment, his face black with rage. But his features softened when he looked at his sister-in-law. His nod was slight, but significant.

He turned back to the rivermen and answered, “I think not today at least. I myself fought my share when I served as Napoleon’s cannoneer in the
grande armée.
It’s enough to have made the acquaintance of three such noble pugilists. I would offer you, though, some good Jamaica rum for the inconvenience we cause by passing through your ‘gator pool.”

Dom raised a wicker-covered jug, offering it to the red-haired brute.

“Don’t mind if I do!” the man said, snatching the bottle and yanking the cork out with his teeth.

For several minutes, he stood, feet planted wide apart and the weight of the basketed demijohn tilted skyward. The dark brown rum ran down to saturate his beard and soak the front of his filthy shirt.

“Ah-h-h!” he breathed at last, belching his appreciation of the gift as he wiped a begrimed sleeve across his lips. “A mite sweet, and she ain’t got the bite to her that a good swig of ‘Nongaheli do, but my gut’s right grateful for most anything I happen to toss down its way. Reckon this here Jamaicy firewater’ll serve, mister! Now, tell you what we’ll do, you bein’ so first-rate polite an’ all. We gonna fix you up with enough ‘gator meat to see you all to N’ Orleans and back. Right, boys?”

His sidekicks nodded and mumbled their agreement, being much more interested at the moment in sampling their share of the rum.

“Haul your black carcass out here, Gator-Bait!” the fiery-haired giant roared, yanking viciously on the length of rope that ran from his belt into a nearby stand of scrub palmetto.

“Please, massa! Not no more! That ‘gator’s gone eat me sho’ ‘nough next time!”

Nicolette half rose in the pirogue when she spotted the small black boy, the end of the rope tied about his thin middle. The Kaintuck lifted the protesting pickaninny and tossed him into the murky bayou.

“Catch that old bull ‘gator now, you piss ant, or I’ll screw your kinky head up your you-know-what!”

Dominique Youx chuckled softly at the wild flailings the slave boy made in the water. He eyed a movement in the bushes, the unmistakable motion of a large alligator lumbering toward the commotion.

“Damn fine bait, eh, Boss?” he said to Laffite, who nodded his agreement.

Both men knew that many young slaves were taught to attract alligators during a hunt in this manner. This boy obviously knew his job well. The more noise and splashing, the more likelihood of attracting the quarry. After the huge reptile entered the water, the bait would be snatched back to safety before the alligator reached him or the men opened fire. Prime gator-bait was too valuable to be used only once.

Nicolette, however, did not know all this. Such quaint folk customs were not taught by the Ursuline sisters. When she spied the horny head of the alligator, its jaws parted, showing double rows of jagged, razor-sharp teeth, she jumped up and screamed, “No! You can’t do this!”

Laffite tried to pull her back to her seat and silence her, but she twisted away from him. He managed to grab the hem of her skirt and keep her in the boat for the moment.

The three rivermen recognized a woman’s voice when they heard one. ‘Gator-hunting was good sport, but there were others they enjoyed far more. And a woman—any woman—meant just one thing to them.

“Reckon you fellers been holdin’ out on Big Red,” the leader said, baring yellow teeth in a wide grin. “‘Pears like you got somethin’ a heap better than rum fit for the sharin’.”

Laffite rose to his full height, several inches shy of Big Red’s astounding stature, and pointed the four barrels of his pistol at the man’s heart.

“This is my wife! Back off now and let us pass or you’ll be dinner for that ’gator!”

Nicolette was too caught up in the terrifying drama taking place in the water to realize any threat from the Kaintocks. The ten-foot alligator had emerged from the underbrush and was slithering over the muddy bank toward the water’s edge. The little boy was screaming with real terror now, trying desperately to fight his way back to shore. Nicolette knew that once the creature maneuvered its heavy body into the water, it would strike like lightning. There were only seconds, and none to spare.

Hauling her canvas skirt up, she knotted it about her waist and leaped from the pirogue to the spongy bank. She ran directly for Big Red and yanked the rope from his hands, pulling for all she was worth. The hysterical child kicked and squirmed, making it more difficult for her to bring him to safety. The alligator was in the water now, sailing like a log in swift current toward its evening meal.

“Dammit, boy, quit fighting me!” Nicolette yelled.

The men fell silent, taking in the drama with amazed immobility, too stunned by her actions and words to offer help.

It seemed to Nicolette that she tugged at the coarse rope forever. Her delicate hands burned, her shoulders ached, and her breath tightened hot bands about her chest. Finally, just as the dreadful beast gave a last lunge, his jaws wide to receive the bait, she yanked the boy onto the bank. The release sent her sprawling into a stagnant pool of slimy mud. A cheer went up from all the men.

“Goddamn! If she ain’t a pistol!” Big Red hooted, slapping his knee. “I reckon it ain’t likely you’d want to sell her to me, mister?” He measured Jean Laffite with an unmistakable gleam in his bloodshot eyes.

Laffite raised his hand weapon again and the look on his face told them all that he wasn’t far from pulling the trigger. He answered in a steely voice, “Not for sale, for barter, or for loan, you filthy, overgrown son of a river rat!”

He went to Nicolette, never taking his eyes or his aim off the big Kaimuck, and positioned himself between her and the three men.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Big Red answered almost sheepishly, raising his hands in front of his chest as if to shield it from the bullets he expected at any moment. “I ain’t one to jump another stud’s mare. They’s a-plenty more in the pasture. Just thought as how I’d ask, mister. Don’t do no harm to ask, does it?”

“Well, you’ve got your answer! Now get away from her before I let daylight through your shirt.”

Laffite reached down to help Nicolette up. “Come on. Let’s get back in the boat and get out of here before I have to shoot somebody,” he said.

She sat cross-legged in the mud, refusing to budge, and said stubbornly, “No!”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not leaving here without that boy! These men cannot be allowed to go on torturing him this way!”

“Nicolette, be reasonable,” Laffite pleaded softly. “The boy’s been raised to hunt ‘gators. He doesn’t know anything else.”

“Why, that’s inhuman!” she cried. “I can’t believe you’re willing to accept this and just go your own way. And even if you are, I’m not!”

Jean Laffite scowled, helpless in the wake of this sort of insubordination. He knew his men were all watching the confrontation. And probably laughing behind their beards, he thought. He’d have to take a firmer stand with her.

“You will do as I say! Now!” he bellowed.

“No, I won’t! You didn’t buy me at some auction, Jean Laffite, and you can’t order me about. Either the boy goes or I stay.”

Big Red heard Nicolette’s reply and grinned broadly. He winked at her and said, “I got a nice tent, missy, and plenty of whiskey and ‘gator meat salted down. We could have ourselves a high ole time!”

Laffite narrowed his green eyes at the man and made a menacing motion with his pistol.

“Nikki?” he said, trying to raise her again.

She only shook her head, set her jaw in a firmer line, and stayed put.

“How much for the boy?” Laffite growled at last.

“Oh, me and my men, we paid a-plenty for this little, ole nigger. ‘Sides, there’s sentimental attachment.” He poked the toe of his boot into the buttocks of the panting figure on the bank and snarled, “Ain’t that right, Gator-Bait?”

“Yes, massa! Whatever you say, massa!” the boy answered, quaking with fear.

“Why, this here youngun’ll tell you, I been just like his own pappy. Don’t reckon I could part with him… without it plumb breakin’ my heart… for less than a thousand.”

The boy darted his eyes, panic-filled and pleading, from Big Red to Nicolette.

“Pay him, Jean,” Nicolette demanded.

The pirogues moved on up the bayou a few minutes later. Big Red and his compatriots grinned and waved from the bank while they counted their gold coins—currency that had lately resided in Jean Laffite’s leather pouch and before that in the velvet purse of an unfortunate Spanish nobleman.

Nicolette used a lace-edged handkerchief to wipe the mud from the tiny black face beside her. His wide eyes looked uncomprehending.

“What’s your name, child?” she asked.

“Gator-Bait, ma’am. Ain’t never had me none other.”

“Well, we’ll remedy that.” She thought for a moment.

“I’m going to call you Daniel, because he escaped death in the jaws of a fearsome beast, too.”

The boy, probably not more than eight years old, crinkled his face into a merry smile. “Yes, ma’am. I heared tell about that. How Marse Dan’el Le Beaux over to Vermillion Parish whupped that ole swamp cat bare-handed and saved his own skin.”

“No, not in Vermillion, Daniel. This was in the Bible.”