Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (140 page)

He went still. She could feel the jarring of his heart against her palm, though if he breathed she could not discern it. She allowed her touch to slide downward through the furring of hair on his chest, over the ridged hardness of his abdomen to the flatness of his belly. He inhaled then, slow and deep. Her daring was fueled by gratitude and the obligation of a debt of honor, and yet there ran beneath it a quickening of anticipation. She eased closer, raising to one elbow above him so that the honey-gold curtain of her hair, silken and scented, swung around them. She touched her lips to his mouth as her fingertips brushed the heated rigidity of his maleness.

He lifted a hand, twining his fingers in her hair. His other arm encircled her, his hand resting lightly on her hip. Sweet and throbbing languor suffused them as they pressed closer in the clouded blackness of the night. With mingled breaths and exquisite care, they explored blind sensation until their blood pulsed with the warmth and mystery of it. Holding her to him, he entered her, forging the bond of pleasure between them. Together they moved, reaching toward a dark and mindless rapture. Their thrusts became more frenzied, and his arms like corded steel grasping Félicité, he rolled over her, plunging deep, sending the rippling shock waves of piercing pleasure along her nerves.

She felt the gathering of somber forces, the dim surging of an opaque and turbulent ecstasy. It mounted higher, carrying her toward a shadowed explosion of being. It filled her, surrounded her, blotting out the trivial madness of the world, drawing her into its straining, night-black heart. She gripped his shoulders, spreading her hands over the scars that ridged the muscles of his back, and the one thing that made it supportable, that allowed her to pass through

the fathomless depths unscathed, was the fact that she was not alone.

Afterward, they lay with their limbs entangled and their breathing rasping in labored gasps. With her eyes bleak and unseeing, Félicité felt the slow shift of dismay move through her. How simple she had pictured the joining of a man and woman. Perhaps it was for some. Perhaps under different circumstances, with another man, at another time, it would be for her. But for now and for her, with the Spanish-Irish mercenary Morgan McCormack, the desire of the flesh was a ravaging thing. It did not help to know that the taint which turned it from something to be enjoyed to a thing to be endured came from within herself. Excuse enough for it could be found and more. Resentment played its part, as did hate and fear. But what could change it? Would it ever change?

Sleep did not come easy. It had to be wooed with stillness and tight-lidded concentration. Even when it came, it was not restful, but was instead plagued with desolating and exhausting dreams. It was almost a relief when daylight began to seep into the room. That Morgan felt the same was proved by the irritable energy with which he wrenched out of bed and began to pull on his uniform.

It was unusual for him to put on his sword before breakfast. When he picked it up and began to buckle it about him, she said, “You are leaving so early?”

“I must. O’Reilly has ordered every man on duty for today. There will be extra patrols, and special details to be detached to the barracks prison and the Place d’Armes.”

Félicité sat up, pulling the sheet up over her breasts.

“Surely he doesn’t expect an uprising of townspeople?”

“It’s always a possibility. Even the few Spanish officials left behind from Ulloa’s brief tenure, Navarro, Gayarre, and Loyola, sympathize with the prisoners.”

“This will be a — a public execution?” she asked, forcing hardness into her tones.

He adjusted the set of his sword and picked up his coat. “How else is the point, that of the unhealthiness of defying Spanish authority, to be made?”

“Of course. And the appointed time should, therefore, be when the greatest number of people can be present?”

“The time has not been set. The black man who usually performs the office of hangman has refused, and another will have to be found. You don’t intend to be present?”

“Why not? These men were my father’s friends.”

“It will hardly be a pleasant spectacle for a lady.”

The gaze she turned upon him was cold. “If I go, it will not be for the spectacle. It will be for the reason one sits beside the bed of a dying man, so he will not be alone.”

“As you wish,” he answered, reaching to take his tricorne from the back of the chair. He stood for a long moment turning it in his hands, his brooding gaze following its banding of gold braid.

If he had been debating a further warning, he thought better of it. Stepping to the bed, he pressed a hard kiss to her mouth, then turned his broad back and walked from the room.

The endless, racking hours of that day passed. More than once Félicité sent the maid, Marie, to the square before the church to see what was going forward. The report all through the morning and into the afternoon was the same: nothing, no activity. The delay in the proceedings was due to the search for a substitute hangman. None being found, it was decided just before noon that the sentence would be changed to death by firing squad, and O’Reilly so signed the proper orders.

The girl returned with another tidbit of information. It was being said that O’Reilly, pricked perhaps by conscience or else the need to prove himself humane, had let it be known that he would not be displeased if Noyan, the nephew of Bienville, should disappear from his cell. Heroically, Jean Baptiste Noyan had refused to cooperate with such a dishonorable release while his fellow countrymen remained behind; he would live or die with his friends.

It would have been difficult to remain ignorant of the events when they were finally set in motion. The tramp of soldiers converging on the square, the shouting of orders, was enough to alert all but the deaf and blind. A short time later came the slow and regular thump of drums as the men were transferred from the old French barracks to the square. The sound grew louder, echoing through the streets of the town, rebounding from the stockade walls that surrounded it. There had not been much movement in the narrow thoroughfares all that long day. Now it ceased entirely as people went in and shut their doors. In the sullen quiet Félicité’s footsteps, as with Ashanti beside her she hurried toward the Place d’Armes, had a hollow clatter that was unnaturally loud. She seemed to feel the contemptuous stares of hundreds of eyes watching her from behind closed shutters.

She was not entirely alone when she reached the open square. Though the crowd was sparse, two score or more of people stood in the warm autumn sun, their silence complete, their stillness absolute. Every eye was turned toward the five men being led, mounted on asses, toward them along the street. Their arms were pinioned behind their backs, and flanking them on either side was a heavy escort of grenadiers.

To one side stood O’Reilly, his bearing in his uniform glittering with braid and honors one of stiff attention. Near him, on his right hand, were the mayor of the town and a few other officials. On his left was Lieutenant Colonel Morgan McCormack, and behind them stood a military escort, two men of which bore the silver maces of the governor-general’s office.

On the parade ground directly before the officials was a great body of Spanish troops some thousand strong. Drawn up in a square around the edges of the Place d’Armes, they had left a hollow opening in their center. Features wooden, stares impassive, they stood in a time-honored battle formation that was a bulwark against the townspeople as well as a living prison for the condemned men.

The prisoners came to a halt. They were assisted to dismount, and in single file were marched into the middle of the square. A court clerk came forward, and with his papers rattling gently in the warm breeze, read in Spanish the sentence that had been proclaimed. It was then repeated in French. That done, a copy was placed in the hands of a public crier, who, with a look both stern and self-important, carried it around, bellowing out the words to the troops and to the gathered crowd.

When the last syllable of his loud, clear voice had died away, a platoon of men were ordered forward. The prisoners were forced to kneel, facing away from the detail. The sword of the officer in command rasped from its scabbard. He called an order, and the men presented their muskets, already loaded with powder and patch, then lifted them to arm’s length. The officer stretched out his sword arm, barked an order, then let the blade fall.

A fusillade of shots rang out. Dark stains bloomed with the sheen of blood on the clothing of the men. They toppled forward, twitched with the involuntary jerking of muscles, then lay still. They had spoken no word, had shown no sign of fear and trembling. Their quiet and unpretentious fortitude in the face of useless, inglorious death was a pitiable thing. And yet, it was also the single element that made the entire fiasco bearable.

Félicité did not expect Morgan to return to the house until late. Now, when the executions had been carried out, might be the time when the malcontents, the remnants of the men who had been a party to the original conspiracy, would feel compelled to retaliate, striking a final blow for their martyred friends. Orders had gone out that all places selling strong drink be closed, as well as all coffee houses, gaming halls, and other places of meeting or vice. Seeing that these instructions were met would be the responsibility of the military rather than the civilian government during this period of martial law, and therefore Morgan’s responsibility. It was unthinkable that the colonel, even knowing her distress over the events of the day, should leave his post. It was, therefore, alarming to hear his footsteps on the stairs less than an hour after her own return.

She had been lying down, thinking of Cuba, wondering how she was to reach the island, if she could possibly arrange transportation at the same time as her father, and if there was any chance that Morgan might receive a transfer of duty to Havana that would allow him to take her with him. Now she slid from the bed, shaking the wrinkles from her skirt. Without bothering to search for the slippers she had kicked off when she lay down, she padded into the salle.

Morgan stood in the center of the room, a bundle in the curve of his arm. His face was drawn as he turned, and in his eyes was dull emerald finality.

She stopped, one hand on the back of a carved cypress chair. “What is it? Why have you come back?”

“Sit down, Félicité,” he said, his voice carrying the expressionless strength of a command.

“Why?” she asked. Receiving no answer, finding none in his features, she allowed her gaze to drop to the parcel he carried. Of an awkward size and shape, it seemed to be several items wrapped in a coat. It was an instant before recognition came. She lifted her eyes to meet his once more, then with limbs grown heavy and clumsy, she moved to drop down upon the chair.

Morgan stepped toward her. Going to one knee, he laid the things he carried in her lap. The coat of snuff-brown velvet fell open to reveal a pair of shoes, a snuffbox with a cloisonné lid, a bound copy of Virgil, a book of poems, and a sword. The things, well worn, infinitely dear, were the belongings of Olivier Lafargue. She reached out to touch them with hesitant fingers.

“Félicité,” Morgan said, his deep voice quiet, “though it gives me pain, I must tell you that your father is dead.”

“Dead?” she asked, her voice dull. “But how? How can he be? His sentence was for six years only.”

“He died by his own hand. Who can say why? Prison does strange things to the minds of men.”

She raised her lashes, caught by a faint hint of evasion in his words. “How did it happen?”

“What do details matter?” he asked, drawing back. “It happened. That’s all.”

“No, it isn’t,” she said sharply. “I have to know.” The thought that he might be keeping something from her, and of the form that omission could take, was like a goad.

“Don’t do this, Félicité. Remember him as you saw him last and be content.”

Her lips tightened. “Was he killed by his guards? Was he bayoneted like Villeré?”

“No. I told you, he killed himself during the night.”

“That was convenient, wasn’t it? Perhaps it was planned that way? Perhaps he even had help? That would make me a fine dupe, wouldn’t it, trading my favors for my father’s life while all the time you meant discreetly to do away with him? Was the idea yours, or was it O’Reilly’s? Or did you ever speak to the governor-general at all?”

“Enough! You don’t know what you are saying.”

“Don’t I? Last night while I slept in your bed my father died in his cell in some strange way. Nearly twenty-four hours have passed; in the meantime five of his friends have been shot, and only now am I told my father is not among the living. All this, and you won’t explain. What else am I to think?”

“Think what you please, but these are the facts. Last night, Olivier Lafargue lost his grip on reason for a flicker of time and hanged himself with the cord used by someone to tie a parcel of clean linen. No one else touched him until they cut him down this morning and buried him in an unhallowed grave. No one.”

“Buried? You mean — that has already been done?” She stared at him with loathing.

“It was, by my orders. Death by hanging is not an easy one. I thought to spare you the sight of it.”

“You ordered the disposal of my father’s body without consulting me, without giving me the chance to lay him out or dress him in funeral vestments, without allowing his neighbors and friends, to say nothing of me, to say their farewells? Without the blessing of a priest or a mass for his soul?”