Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (85 page)

“You could have fooled me.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, a shading of desperation in her voice. “Where are Pierre and Jean?”

“Gone to see if M’sieur Claude will let us have more indigo and permit us to pay him when the trading is done.”

“He won’t.”

The young man shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt to ask.”

There might be something salvaged of the trading season if they could get more indigo, though it would be dangerous, involving a long trek through Chickasaw country to meet with the English traders from Carolina since they could not wait for another ship. Even then, the profit would be small. She went to the table and began to unload her basket. She stopped.

With her hands clenched on a pair of nutmegs, she said in low tones, “It’s all my fault.”

“No,
chère,
there is no fault. These things happen.”

She was grateful for the understanding in Gaston’s voice, even as it surprised her. “If I had not brought Lemonnier on board-”

“And if I had not helped you? Don’t blame yourself, I beg, because if you do I’ll have to share it!”

There was wry humor in his gaze, which was so like Jean’s. He meant what he said, but there was more to it than that. He meant also to cheer her.

“Did I ever tell you, Gaston, what a nice person you are and how much I like you?”

He heaved a sigh of mock gratification, though the glint in his eyes was as bright as the gold ring in his ear. “I thought you hadn’t noticed. Do you think I’m nice-looking?”

“Excessively.”

“And charming?”

“In the extreme.”

“I like you, too,” he said as if confessing some dark secret, and loped into the room to gather her in a bear hug and swing her around.

Cyrene laughed, hugging him in return, and felt a lightening sensation in her chest. It was horseplay, nothing more, but there was comfort in his impulsive embrace and an odd sense of belonging. As he set her down, she brushed a quick kiss along his neck.

His gaze was warm and there was a flush under his skin as he stepped back. He smiled down at her for an instant, then his gaze strayed to her basket. His tone casual, he asked, “What are you cooking?”

Pierre and Jean returned. They had had no luck with M’sieur Claude. It was well known about town now that the Bretons were under the governor’s eye for their smuggling. As much as M’sieur Claude commiserated with them for their bad luck, he could not risk their losing his indigo to the soldiers; he had his own family to think of.

For once, Jean was dejected. Pierre was angry. He sat frowning into his coffee made with the last of the beans that they were likely to have for some time, and there was a smoldering look in his eyes. Gaston strode up and down. He alternately damned the governor and the policies of the French crown and flung out farfetched suggestions of places he might find a job. He was not afraid of work and could set his hand to anything. On the whole, he would rather fish or trap or trade with the Indians than resort to physical labor, but if he must, then he was ready. Of course the best position in New Orleans, the one with the best prospects and the least work, might be held by René, as the gallant friend of Madame la Marquise. What did they think of his chances of dislodging that gentleman?

Pierre only looked at him. Jean shook his head. “You’d have about as much luck as you would asking to be taken on as a guard at the king’s warehouse.”

“Now, why would I want to do that?”

“Because,” said his father deliberately, “that’s where our goods are stored.”

Cyrene paused in the act of stirring the fish stew she was cooking. “If he could become a guard—”

“Yes, we just might steal back our belongings,” Jean finished for her. “But they would no more hire one of us to be a guard than they would set a mouse to look after cheese.”

“No,” she said, her shoulders drooping.

The subject was allowed to languish. Cyrene set the meal she had prepared on the table and they ate. The Bretons, as they were wont to do, got up to help her with the dishes, scraping their plates over the side of the boat and rinsing them in the river before bringing them to be washed, scrubbing out the big kettle she had used, wiping the table, and sweeping the floor. Cyrene was preoccupied. She handed the last handful of wooden spoons to Gaston to be dried before she finally spoke.

“Suppose,” she said, her voice grim, “suppose we were to steal our goods back, anyway?”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Pierre objected. “It would be too dangerous.”

“Theft of crown property? I can feel the whip now. And Pierre was not meant to hang.” Jean gave a mock shudder.

“It isn’t crown property,” she reminded them stubbornly. “It’s ours, taken from us by trickery.”

“The governor wouldn’t agree.” Pierre’s voice had a bitter edge.

“Then bedamned to him!” she burst out. “Are we going to let him deprive us of our livelihood, our only means of bettering ourselves?”

“Are you sure it’s the governor you are talking about?”

“Who else?” She turned on Gaston, who had entered the fray with his comment.

“Lemonnier, for instance?”

She recognized the truth in the suggestion but refused to let it make a difference, just as she declined to admit that no small part of her rage was because her own personal goods had been taken, too, and with them her prospects for the future.

“What of it?” she demanded. “You call it theft to take it back, but we were robbed. We all know what will happen to our goods, if it hasn’t already. They’ll find their way into the coffers of the governor’s wife or else those of the intendant commissary or some army officer. This fine colony is a nest of thieves of one sort or another, official or otherwise. The only rule for name calling is whether you get caught at what you do.”

The men exchanged glances among themselves. It was Pierre who spoke at last. “The guards have been known to be lax after midnight.”

“And before,” Jean agreed, “especially if strong drink is offered.”

“We couldn’t take just what was ours; that would be like pointing a finger at ourselves.” This bit of wisdom came from Gaston, who had an avid look in his eye.

“We are not common thieves,” Jean told him with an assumption of dignity that was tarnished somewhat as he went on. “We could take only a few casks of indigo and maybe a bale or two of blankets, just to throw them off the track.”

“Bribing the guards is too risky,” Pierre mused. “Maybe a diversion, now, a nice fire or a fight?”

“Or a naked woman running down the street?” Gaston suggested.

His father looked at him with pity. “There’s nothing new about that.”

“Maybe not, but it would get my attention.”

“I don’t doubt it would,” Jean said sadly.

And so they bantered and tossed suggestions back and forth, and, within the span of twenty-four hours, had not only decided that it could be done but how it should be arranged and when was the best time. Regardless, they might not have decided once and for all to brave the consequences if it had not been for the note from René.

It was brought by a young boy who said the gentleman known as Lemonnier, the Sieur de Vouvray, had given him a piastre to deliver it. Brief and to the point, it said that Madame Vaudreuil desired to hire a number of boatmen for a trip upriver to supply merchandise to a post commandant. The lady would be happy to give employment to the Bretons if they cared to accept it.

“Our goods, do you think?” Gaston asked when the note had passed from hand to hand.

“It’s possible,” Pierre said.

Jean snorted. “Possible! I’d say it was certain.”

“Are we going, then?” Gaston looked from his uncle to his father and back again.

Pierre’s expression was dark as he said, “It’s money, something we need.”

“A paltry sum for breaking our backs in the service of the governor’s wife when we could have had our rightful proceeds.” Jean smiled. “Of course, the merchandise could disappear before it arrived.”

“It could if we wanted to take to the woods forever,” Pierre agreed.

They were quiet a moment. Cyrene spoke into that momentary silence. “Does it strike you that this offer is an insult?”

Pierre looked at her from under his brows. “In what way?”

“René, and the marquise, must know that we will understand we are being asked to transport our own property. It’s like salt in a wound, something meant to sting.”

Pierre gave a short laugh. “So it is. We’ll hire ourselves out.”

“What?”

“We will show ourselves willing, even happy, to earn our bread as the marquise’s men. We will hire on to transport this merchandise as far up the Mississippi as a boat can go this time of year. We will bow and scrape, pull our forelocks and show our muscles. But we will never leave the levee.”

“How is this?” Jean demanded, his gaze suspicious.

“The goods now in the warehouse, you understand, will be gone.”

A smile began to glow in his brother’s eyes. “Spirited away in the night?”

“A miraculous disappearance.”

“Shall we moan about the loss of our hire?”

“We will cry until it would wring pity from a stone.”

“And will we go trading again, blessed by, perhaps, a run of lady luck at the gaming table?”

“Another miracle.”

Cyrene, her lips curving in a smile at their nonsense, said, “You don’t want to place too much dependence on miracles.”

“Why should we not,” Pierre said, “when we have our lady luck still with us? Our Cyrene?”

11

THE NIGHT WAS moonless and dull with overhanging clouds. The wind that had been out of the south all day had died, leaving the air thick with moisture and clammily cool. Gray fog rose off the river, drifting through the streets of New Orleans. It clung to rooftops and curled about the flagpole and the gallows in the Place Royale. It muffled sound so that the barking of a dog two streets over sounded flat and faraway. In its thickness were the smells of mud and the smoke of dying embers in banked fires.

The hour was late. Most of the town was sunk in sleep, though one or two pothouses still showed a light. The only movements in the streets were a drunk winding his way homeward and a cat stalking along with its fur glistening with damp and the limp body of a huge wharf rat hanging from its mouth.

It was even quieter and darker along the river levee that lay just beyond the square, where the ships docked and their cargoes were unloaded. The king’s warehouses, repositories of the wares that poured from the ships’ holds, were long buildings crudely constructed of logs and planking and lying at right angles to the river. Before the main warehouse a lantern of pierced tin gleamed, hanging from a crosspiece above the door. In its glow a pair of soldiers with muskets at the ready paraded slowly back and forth.

Cyrene, with Pierre, Jean, and Gaston, stood in the shadows of another warehouse belonging to a group of merchants and watched the guards. The two men were neither the best nor the worst of the crown’s soldiers; they were only men carrying out the duty assigned to them. They kept moving because that was their orders and because it was the best way to ward off sleep. Their minds could not have been further from what they were doing. They exchanged a quip or two as they passed back and forth, but for the most part their eyes were glazed with boredom, with sleep denied, and with the contemplation of their own concerns.