Another Small Kingdom (14 page)

It took a second for her words to sink in.

‘The one he lay with? He had another woman in his bed, in your own home? The monster.'

‘No, not a woman.'

‘But if not a woman then …'

Suddenly Macleod understood. The thought stunned him into silence.

‘He and St Clair were lovers. We have not shared a bed for some years.'

Macleod was appalled. Marie's words had dragged him suddenly and starkly into a world he knew almost nothing about except that he was revolted to his very soul.

‘My God, you should have killed the swine long before now.'

Her voice took on a slight edge.

‘I told you, I did not kill them.'

‘No, of course, I'm sorry. But if not you, then who?'

‘I don't know who, but I know why they were killed and I knew that when the assassins pulled away the sheets to make sure of their work and saw two men in the bed they would come looking for me. I sleep alone so I wear no night dress when the nights are hot and close. The shots and the screaming woke me and I guessed what was being done so I put on my shoes pulled on a cloak and left by the back stairs as quickly as I could. I came to you because I don't think anyone will look for me here. But the woman who let me in certainly recognised me so I won't be safe for long. I need to leave New Orleans as soon as possible. I need to go far way and travel quickly. I need to go to the British, they are the only ones who can make me safe.'

‘The British?'

‘Yes, and please don't ask why.'

‘But I must ask.'

She considered for a moment.

‘Of course you must, and I must tell you. If it becomes known that I have been with you then whoever killed my husband will kill you anyway, whether you know my secret or not. My husband was a vain fool, but he was a well-born fool who had money and position. His father sent him over here from France supposedly to look after the family plantations, but I think it was more a question of getting rid of an embarrassment. As it turned out he was lucky. The Revolution sent the rest of his family to the guillotine. Not surprisingly he chose not to return to France. He met St Clair and decided to settle in New Orleans. To fit into society he felt he needed a home and a wife so he looked about him and chose me. I was young and unschooled in the ways of the world. But my family were all too aware of what was being done to me.'

‘And they still allowed the marriage?'

‘Oh yes. They were happy to sell me and they got a good price. I was just the sort of decoration de Valois was looking for.'

‘But did you and de Valois never …'

‘Come together as man and wife? On those few occasions early in our marriage when we thought that despite everything we might still produce a child he had to have St Clair in the bed to rouse him enough to achieve his duty with me.'

Both were ashamed, Marie for having to say what she had said and Macleod for having listened.

‘But once you knew what he was like, why didn't you leave him?'

‘And become what? Someone's mistress, a courtesan, a common prostitute? What was there I could do other than sell my looks, my body?'

‘There must have been something.'

‘A convent? Throw myself on the mercy of the Sisters and dedicate my life to God? Or perhaps starve in the gutter, poor but honest?'

‘What about your family?'

‘My family had struck a bargain. They would honour that bargain whatever I told them about de Valois and St Clair. You must understand, Mr Macleod …'

‘Jean.'

‘Yes, sorry, Jean. When a woman marries all she has becomes the property of her husband. She herself becomes his property. It is not only society that wills it to be so, it is the law. If I took money or jewels and left him, even my own money or my own jewels, it would have been theft and although de Valois was rich, he was also mean. To St Clair he was lavish, to me he was a miser.'

‘But the dresses and the jewels. You are probably the best dressed woman in New Orleans.'

‘For display. He couldn't very well let his wife appear in public in rags, could he? Inside the house it was he or St Clair who wore the jewels when they pranced around together naked. I became invisible in that house and that is how I learned their secret. As far as they were concerned I was not there and they became careless. My husband was a fool, but not St Clair, except where his infatuation with my husband was concerned.' She looked down at the front of the shirt and absently brushed the lace. Macleod waited while she readied herself to tell him what she knew. She looked up at him. ‘St Clair was part of a conspiracy.'

‘A conspiracy?'

‘Yes, conceived by France to overthrow the government of your country.'

‘Overthrow the government of America? How could anyone …'

‘The French want America as an ally. But America wants no part of their war with England. Very well, America must change its mind. Money is spent, men of influence are persuaded, plans are put in place, arrangements are made. A man is found who can lead a new government, one who will do exactly as Paris tells him and, voilà, America has a new government and France a new ally. Why not? It is politics. I do not understand it, but, believe me, it is as I say.'

Macleod didn't want to believe her, couldn't believe her. It was too fantastic. But he had been sent to New Orleans because there was a plot, a plot which threatened his country. But overthrow the government? No, that was too much.

‘You must be wrong.'

Marie gave a small cry of exasperation.

‘I am not wrong I tell you. I listened, I know what I heard. I know what I saw with my own eyes. St Clair received orders from Paris, they came to him through his tailor. St Clair sometimes brought them to the house in a small leather satchel when he and my husband returned together. While he and my husband were busy I managed to see some of them. That is how I knew what they were. There were letters, sealed letters, addressed to places in America.'

‘But letters, sealed letters. They may have been anything, business letters.'

‘There were instructions with the letters, instructions to St Clair. To send money to this place, to collect reports from that place. Once to meet a courier who would arrive on a certain ship, to meet him himself and receive by hand what he carried. What is that if not part of a conspiracy?'

Macleod was fighting to make some kind of sense of what he was hearing. Was what she was saying proof?

‘And he had money, plenty of money. He was by birth a common little man. I knew, I could tell. But he had money. Where, I asked myself, did this money come from? He had no plantation, no business, he had nothing. Yet all the time he had money.' She waited but Macleod said nothing. ‘Oh, Jean, please, you must believe me. I cannot tell you everything now. This is not the time. But there is a plot to steal America, Jean, to steal it and use it in the European wars. That is why St Clair is dead and also my husband.'

Macleod was stunned, but he no longer doubted what she said. In a few words she had given him what he had been sent to New Orleans to discover.

‘But why didn't you do anything, tell someone?'

‘Because I was clever, I made it my business to listen. Once I had enough, I intended to blackmail St Clair so he would make my husband release me or, if that did not work, sell what I knew and start a new life somewhere else.'

‘But it was America. If there was a plot you should have …'

‘Pah! What was America to me? It was nothing. Why should I care if America had some French puppet to govern it? All I knew was that I was trapped in a life of misery and at last I saw a way to free myself.' If anything Macleod was more appalled by this show of indifference to the fate of his country than by the revelations of de Valois's behaviour as a husband. ‘Jean, understand. Please understand. I am talking about my life. Knowing St Clair's secret was my only chance to break away from New Orleans and de Valois. But tonight all those hopes ended. Now, to save my life, I must sell what I have quickly and the only people who can save me are the British. They will pay me for what I know. They will pay me and protect me. You must take me to them somehow. You must get me on a ship for Jamaica.'

Macleod was thinking, thinking hard. She was right, she needed to get away from New Orleans and she needed protection. But not from the British. He had to get her into safe American hands. Then his reason for being in New Orleans flooded back. He was here to discover a plot. He had done it. He was here to get information. He must get it. He needed to know more about this enemy. Who had killed de Valois and St Clair and might even now be looking for Marie?

‘Who do you think killed your husband and St Clair?'

‘I'm not sure, it could have been St Clair's enemies to try and stop the plan going forward or his friends because they knew he was becoming careless.'

Macleod knew something was wrong, but he couldn't think what it was. It was staring him in the face and he couldn't see it.

‘There's something wrong.'

Marie stood up.

‘My God, is that all you can say? My husband and his lover lie dead in my house and my life is in danger and you say something is wrong. Everything is wrong. You must get me away from here, quickly. We must go to the British.'

Macleod saw she was once again in danger of becoming hysterical. He couldn't very well slap her again but somehow he had to calm her. He stood up, took her in his arms, pulled her to him and roughly aimed a kiss at her mouth. It was a clumsy attempt but he managed to make contact with the side of her nose as she averted her face. He let her push him away and they stood looking at each other. Had it worked? Her eyes were full of fury. Neither spoke for a second and it was left to Macleod to break the silence.

‘I'm sorry. I had to do something, I thought you might begin to scream. I couldn't bring myself to slap you again. Please forgive me.'

The fury left her eyes as she looked at him.

‘No, Jean, it is I who should apologise.' She sat down again. ‘We must talk, you must tell me what we can do. Please, sit down, I am calm now. We must make a plan, one that will keep us both safe.' Macleod sat down. ‘Now, Jean, tell me how you can get me to Jamaica where I can sell what I know to the British and then get far away from this cursed place and start a new life.'

Macleod's mind was a welter of confusion. Yet strangely the thought uppermost in his mind was that he had kissed her. She was sitting there, asking him to sell the details of a secret plot to overthrow his beloved Republic to his hated enemy the British, and she was doing it calmly, with a gentle smile, as if they were planning a picnic in the country.

Macleod forced his faculties, such as they were, to function again in something like a normal fashion. He would save her, but not at the expense of selling his country.

He stood up. He felt more in control if able to move about.

‘On this floor there are only these rooms that I rent. The landlady and her family occupy downstairs. There is no one else. They must remain silent about your presence here.'

‘How many servants are there?'

‘Three, the landlady who let you in, her husband and a grown daughter who helps.'

‘Could you kill them?'

She was still calm and smiling sweetly.

‘No, Marie, I could not kill them.'

She shrugged.

‘What then? Threaten them, take the daughter, beat her and demand their silence?'

‘I will pay them.' He didn't want her to offer any more suggestions. The memory of the kiss lingered, but her words, and the manner of saying them, dimmed its power more than a little. ‘I will buy their silence until we can get a ship out of here. Also I will need the woman to give you some clothes.'

‘Clothes? Her clothes?'

‘Yes. We will travel as husband and wife and we must not attract attention. I dress as I started out in this, plain and honest. You must do the same. However, people here know I have no wife so we cannot go to the ship together. If you are to walk to the docks …'

‘Walk! But I cannot walk. And certainly I cannot go dressed as a washer woman among the scum of the docks.'

Her manner shocked him into speaking more plainly than he perhaps intended.

‘Good God, woman, try to think straight or we'll both end up dead. You're not a lady of fashion now, you're a target, either for a pistol ball or for a blade to slice your pretty white neck. We need to ship out of here and that means going to the docks without getting noticed. Do you suggest we use your husband's damn carriage to get us there?'

Macleod was surprised to find that he was thoroughly angry and his manner, he realised, had become that of a bully. But he didn't care and was not about to apologise. And Marie saw that it was so.

‘Of course, I see you are right. I must forget for a time the woman I have been and resign myself to the woman I must become.' She looked up at him. ‘But you will do your best, Jean, promise me you will do your best to protect me, to take me away.'

But in his present mood Macleod was not so easily softened by a look. He would save this woman if he could, but now he was again a man under orders. He had information vital to the safety of his country and he must at all costs deliver it. He had to get in touch with Jeremiah Jones and let him know how things stood. But first, and most importantly, he had to make Marie believe he was going to take her to the British. She had to believe in him and believe in him completely.

‘I will go and arrange with those below and then I must go out.'

‘Go out?'

‘Your husband has been shot, you have disappeared. I must go and see what is happening. You must stay in this room. Do not answer the door to anyone but me or the woman from below. I will get you clothes and today book a passage for us. As soon as possible we shall leave this place, but until we do, stay here. If they have any brandy or wine downstairs I will ask them to send it up. Try to sleep if you can.' He took off his robe and threw it over the back of the chair, adjusted his shirt then put on his coat and picked up his hat. I will be back as soon as I can.'