Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (120 page)

Félicité could remember only one occasion when Ashanti had been visibly upset. For the past several years she had slept on the lower floor of the house, in a small chamber facing the court. One hot summer night two years previously, Valcour had come home late from a night with friends on the town. More than a little the worse for drink, he had stepped through to the court for water from the clay jar in which it was kept, to cool his aching head. Seeing Ashanti’s door open to the night air, he had become intrigued. He had looked in to see the maid lying on her cornshuck mattress asleep, clothed only in her short shift. What happened next had never been entirely clear. Ashanti said Valcour had thrown himself upon her meaning to ravish her, and would have succeeded if she had not fought back, using the secrets her mother had told her to send him howling in pain from the chamber, clutching at his lower parts. According to Valcour, the maid had awakened when she saw him passing in the moonlight. She had started to scream, and when he went toward her to tell her who he was, and that she was in no danger, he had tripped and fallen across her bed. She had then become hysterical and most disagreeably violent.

Regardless of who was correct, the dislike they had for each other now bordered on hatred. Valcour reserved for the maid an attitude of malicious disdain, while Ashanti avoided him as much as was possible, only remaining in the same room with him if Félicité was present also. She ignored his commands unless they were channeled through her mistress, a daring thing indeed considering the awe and fear in which he was held by the other servants. Ashanti gave no sign of being afraid of him, but still her mistrust was plain. Her manner toward him was always wary, and the glances she threw at him from the corners of her black eyes were shaded with uneasy contempt.

At a small sound from the street before the house, Félicité looked up, her velvet-brown eyes meeting her maid’s dark gaze. Ashanti put aside her sewing and left the bedchamber. She returned a few moments later with the news that Dom had returned. He knew nothing of the men who had been arrested. His errand had been entirely different, a personal message delivered by Valcour’s orders, though he would not even attempt to make known by his usual gestures the name of the man who had received it.

Félicité sighed, rubbing her hand over her eyes, raking her hair back so that it fell behind her shoulders in a thick, shimmering curtain. “You had best go to bed, Ashanti. There is nothing to be gained by sitting here. It is unlikely we will hear anything before morning.”

“If you will try to rest also, mam’selle.”

“I will try.” Félicité made a last stitch in the cloth she was mending, made a quick knot, and broke off the thread. She pushed her needle into a pincushion, folded the cloth with quick competence, laid it aside, and stood up. Ashanti helped her remove her dressing saque, then hung it away in the armoire, releasing the smells of rose petals and vetiver as she opened and closed the carved door.

Félicité moved to the bed and climbed up on the mattress. On her knees, she carefully drew the mosquito baire that draped from a hook in the ceiling around the bed, closing the folds so she could not be plagued by the flying, stinging insects. As Ashanti bade her a quiet goodnight and took up the candle before slipping from the room, Félicité lay down and closed her eyes.

Sleep did not come. She stared up into the darkness, thinking of the events of the past few days. Ever since she had heard of the arrest, she had been haunted by a fear that she had not been able to face. What if she, by her antagonism toward Lieutenant Colonel Morgan McCormack, her impulsive claiming of responsibility for the insult with a chamber pot perpetrated on the Spanish soldiers, her incitement of the crowd to opposition at the soirée over the matter of the dance music, was to blame for the arrest today of her father and Valcour?

It was true that Valcour had instigated the chamber-pot affair, but apparently he had expected the reaction to be slight, or else for it to seem no more than the carelessness of a household servant that might be lightly punished. Certainly he had never intended for it to be recognized as the studied insolence it was, or for it to be connected directly to Félicité, her father, or himself. Too, at the soirée, Félicité’s comment on the music had not been intended to disrupt the evening or provoke the violence that had ensued. It was those who had taken up her words with such virulent anger who had brought about the near riot. Félicité was certain she had heard Valcour’s voice among their number, as well as the tones of certain other hotheads and young men about town who resented seeing Frenchwomen in the arms of the Spanish officers.

On the other hand, her clashes with McCormack had been no one’s fault but her own. He was arrogant and officious, with an attitude of superiority in strength and force of arms that was no less irritating because it was unconscious. The way in which he had used that admittedly superior position to blackmail her, bending her to his will, still had the power to make her seethe with indignation. At the same time, the threat he had issued then was, she recognized, the basis for the fears that gripped her now.

As the gray-blue fight of dawn sifted through the shutters, Félicité dropped into a fitful and dream-wracked slumber. It was midmorning when she woke. Donning a gown of soft, much-worn cotton in a toile de Jouy print, and with a lawn fichu at the neckline, she left her room. Her intention was to pack a basket of food to take to the barracks, since the fare usually provided for prisoners was uniformly bad. While she was about it, she might also discover news of her father and Valcour, and the reasons for their being jailed.

Monsieur Lafargue, Félicité’s father, was a merchant. His house, like many of those in New Orleans, was built on a style brought from countless medieval French villages. It was constructed of bousillage, a plaster made of mud held together with gray moss and deer hair packed between upright timbers. Its lower floor facing the street was occupied by a draper’s shop and warehouse, while the small back rooms facing the court were used for servants’ quarters, laundry, and storage. The family quarters were on the second floor. Entrance to these was achieved through a tunnel-like portal that passed from the street under the house straight back to the court, with a staircase rising in the rear portion. On the second floor were six fairly commodious rooms; four bedchambers, a salle, or sitting room, and the rear stair hall that was also used as a dining room.

Félicité had started down the stairs on her way to the kitchen in the courtyard when she heard the, tapping of heels on the banquette. She drew in her breath as a thin figure came into view wearing a tricorne with an enormous floating plume draped over one shoulder, and carrying a long knobbed walking cane decked with ribbons.

“Valcour!” she cried, starting forward.

“In the flesh,” he replied, his tone grimly jaunty as he swept off his hat in a bow of greeting.

“Where is Papa?”

A grave look smoothed her adoptive brother’s features. “He is still, unfortunately, the guest of our Spanish masters.”

“You mean — he is still being held? But then, how does it come about that you are here free?”

“Why,” he said, veiling his eyes with his lashes and conjuring up a simpering tone, “you must know, ma chére Félicité, that a frippery fellow like myself is far too vain and lacking in wit to be guilty of fomenting a revolution. Such ideas are so bourgeois and boring. I yawned through one or two meetings because it was what passed in New Orleans as the fashionable thing to do at the time, but I would so much rather have been elsewhere.”

“They were fooled by such addlepated nonsense?”

“I can be quite giddy and extravagantly foolish when it pleases me,” Valcour said, tilting his head. “I am not sure our Colonel McCormack was taken in completely, but his handsome countenance was so thoroughly expressive of stern disapproval that I must suppose he considers me no danger.”

“He was there?” Félicité had to force the words past the knot in her throat.

“Yesterday morning, yes. He is, it seems, second in command during this period of martial subjugation, answerable only to O’Reilly himself. He was not on the scene when I took my leave a few moments ago, by the mercy of le bon Dieu.”

The note of tightly held anger in Valcour’s voice was both an indication of how galling he had found his interview with the Spanish and a warning of the dangerous effects it had had on his temper. “If you would like to go and change,” Félicité said, “I will have croissants and chocolate sent up for both of us.”

“I am touched by your thoughtfulness,” he said, his narrow lips twisting into a smile. “I do desire above all things to remove the prison stench. Be so good as to send Dom up to me also, if you please, as soon as it may be arranged.”

Over chocolate and warm crusty rolls, Valcour told Félicité what had happened the day before at the house of the governor-general. The men who had been invited to O’Reilly’s levée had been greeted with all cordiality. After some little time had passed and refreshments had been served, they were requested to step into an adjacent apartment. Inside, O’Reilly had addressed them in chiding tones while Aubry, the director-general, stood by looking red-faced and flustered. He said that Louisiana was deficient in the respect it showed to Spain, that King Carlos was much displeased at the violence which had been lately exercised in the province, and at the offense which was committed against his governor, Ulloa, and his officers and troops. His majesty was irritated by the writings which had been printed and which reviled his government and the great nation of Spain. That being the case, O’Reilly said, he had been ordered by his king to arrest and have tried, according to the laws of the kingdom, the authors of these excesses and deeds of violence.

The governor-general had then proceeded to read the orders of his Catholic majesty which prescribed to him the course he was pursuing. He had added; “Gentlemen, I regret to say that you are accused of being the authors of the late insurrection. I therefore arrest you in the king’s name.”

During the reading of his orders, a number of Spanish officers and a body of grenadiers had filed into the room with fixed bayonets, surrounding the men. O’Reilly had then informed the men that their property, according to the custom of Spain with regard to prisoners of state, would be seized and inventoried. If they were found guilty, it would be sold, and after providing for amounts owed to creditors and sums for the support of wives and children, the remainder would become the property of the state.

Félicité stared at Valcour. “You mean this house will be seized?”

“And every stick of furniture in it, every ornament, every gown you own and pair of shoes, every trinket and shoe buckle and inch of lace.”

“They can’t do that!”

“They can, they have.” Valcour drank the last of his chocolate and set the porcelain cup painted with roses and violets in its saucer.

“I can’t believe it,” Félicité whispered. This disaster had come so suddenly, after they had been given reason to think themselves safe, that she could not accept its magnitude.

“Nor could I,” Valcour agreed, his face grim. “For a man to be asked — no, ordered — to deliver up his sword, all the while encircled by the points of dull but deadly bayonets — it is not an experience I care to repeat.”

“No. At the barracks, Valcour, were you mistreated?”

“Not physically, if that is what you mean,” he answered, “but there was no doubt in our minds that the Spaniards guarding us looked upon us as doomed men.”

“I thought O’Reilly told you there would be a trial.”

“A mockery, ma chére, Spanish justice. King Carlos has demanded recompense for the slur upon his name and reign; moreover, it has been decided that it will be best for the good of Spain’s other foreign provinces if an example is made of the men who dared to defy the rule of his Catholic majesty. That being the case, twelve men have been chosen for the honor — two officers of the French army, two lawyers, four planters, and four merchants.”

Félicité stared at him. “What are you saying?”

“That is how we were designated by the Spanish guards, not by name, but by occupation. We were, you see, a representative sample of the men in the colony. Who we were, what part we had played in the rebellion against the crown made little difference.”

“That’s terrible. It — it means that the trial will be a farce, that O’Reilly has already decided the guilt of the men arrested.”

“Quite true. And since I did not fit into any of the convenient categories, nor have the look of a raving revolutionary, I was spared.”

“But my father—”

Valcour reached out to take her hand, squeezing it until her fingers were numb. “Your father is Lafargue, the merchant, a prominent man, a freethinker, wealthier than most. That makes him the guiltiest of them all.”

Tears welled up into Félicité’s eyes, overflowing, pouring down her cheeks. She pulled her hand free, raising trembling fingers to her lips. Valcour’s words stripped her fears bare, leaving them stark and trembling inside her.

“Félicité,” he said, his eyes darkening with an uneasy concern, “forgive me if I was abrupt, if I cause you distress, but the truth must be faced.”

She took a deep breath, striving for composure. “I — I suppose you have had time to become used to the idea. I have not.”

“I should not have brought it out so boldly. I have much to do, however, and there may be little time for arrangements.”

Félicité gave little heed to the portentous sound of the last. “There must be something we can do to save Papa. I cannot stop thinking that he may have been arrested because of me, because of the unpleasantness between Colonel McCormack and myself. Perhaps if I went to O’Reilly and explained, or even to the colonel himself—”