Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (99 page)

Cyrene wrenched her arm from his damp and clumsy grasp. “You forget yourself! I suggest that you have made a mistake, m’sieur, one that can prove dangerous if you persist.”

He caught her elbow in a rough hold, dragging her off balance so that she fell against him. “Oh, I’m going to persist, all right. We’ll see what kind of mistake there is and who made it when I get through with you.”

Gaston stepped forward, shoving the other man. “Let her go, you nameless dog!”

“Keep out of this.” The lieutenant threw the words at Gaston in growling menace. “Stay clear or I’ll have you trussed up to the flogging post before you can spit.”

“You’re big on threats,” Gaston snapped. “Let’s step outside and see what else you can do.”

“No, Gaston,” Cyrene cried.

“I warned you, cockerel!”

“Have you,” came a quiet drawl from behind them, “a warning for me also?”

Cyrene felt the officer stiffen. His hold on her elbow tightened. There was a movement too swift to follow, a sudden sharp blow, and the lieutenant’s grasp was broken. Cyrene was drawn to stand in the curve of Governor Vaudreuil’s arm.

She was unspeakably glad for the intervention, but at the same time she was embarrassed by it and thrown into a paralyzing dread that the reason for the necessity would be discovered.

The lieutenant seemed equally paralyzed. He gulped and began to stammer. “I-I beg pardon, Your Excellency. I didn’t know — that is, I had no idea.”

“You didn’t know what?” the governor said, his voice cold.

“Nothing! Nothing at all.” The lieutenant was pasty-white, his voice a croak. “Pray forgive — forgive me. I must have mistaken the lady for someone else.”

“I feel sure of it. It is not a mistake you will make again, I trust.”

“No, certainly not. No.”

The marquis made a brief gesture. “We will forget the matter. You may leave us.”

The lieutenant obeyed the command with all haste. Cyrene made an attempt to step away from the governor but found herself firmly held. She moistened her lips as she lifted her gaze to meet his. “You came most fortunately, sir. It was kind of you to rescue me; I am more grateful than I can say.”

There was a soft footfall behind them and René spoke at her shoulder. “You may add my gratitude to Cyrene’s. I saw the disturbance from across the room but was not able to arrive so timely.”

An expression of faint displeasure crossed the governor’s face and he sighed. “I might have known you would be close, Lemonnier. I suppose I must now relinquish Mademoiselle Cyrene to you for soothing.”

René inclined his dark head in a bow. “That would be my preference, Your Excellency.”

“I somehow thought it might.”

A woman, obviously following in René’s wake, joined them in
a
whispering rustle of taffeta petticoats. It was Madame Pradel,
Cyrene thought, as her gaze rested on the expanse of bosom exposed by her Etruscan costume, which featured a
full skirt, a copper corset constricting the lady’s waist to amazingly tiny proportions, and a practically nonexistent bodice.

“
Lèse-majesté,
no less, René,” the lady said. “You should have proper respect for the rights of our reigning overlord to succor damsels in distress and offer consolation.”

“Our overlord, madame,” the governor said austerely, “is Louis of France.”

“So he is,” she said in a pretense of surprise. “I was forgetting, but then I’m sure Mademoiselle Cyrene was in danger of the same.”

“Not at all,” Cyrene said, aware of the prick of the woman’s sarcasm if not of the cause. Though, on consideration, the cause was not difficult to discover. Madame Pradel, having secured René’s attention from the marquise, had not been pleased, perhaps, to have it diverted from her. There was time, however, for only the most fleeting recognition of this insight, for their group was enlarged by an abbess in a wimple and with a rosary banging her knees from the quickness of her stride.

The governor’s wife, her tone stringent, said, “What is the meaning of this public display? You will unhand Mademoiselle Nolté, Vaudreuil, before the clatter of tongues becomes deafening.”

The look Cyrene received from the governor’s wife was chilling. More disturbing than that, however, was the intent look on the face of the man who sauntered after her to hover at the edge of their circle. Dressed in the gray-brown habit of a monk, with the hood standing like a collar around his scrawny neck and no mask to hide the cynical malignancy of his gaze, was Madame Vaudreuil’s lackey, Touchet.

The Marquis de Vaudreuil gazed down his nose at his wife. “Mademoiselle Cyrene has had a shock. Scandalmongering being the natural pastime of the human animal, there is no need to abandon concern for a lady merely because of it.”

“Please,” Cyrene said, “I’m perfectly all right.”

The governor removed his support of her, though without haste. René stepped to take the other man’s place. He said in quiet tones, “The music is beginning. If you are truly without ill effects, shall we take the floor?”

“If you please,” she answered, her voice low.

“An excellent idea,” Madame Vaudreuil said sharply, her gimlet gaze moving from Cyrene to her husband. “Your arm for this minuet, Vaudreuil?”

“As you wish,
chère.”

The governor, his back stiff, bowed his lady from their circle. René followed with Cyrene’s fingers upon his wrist. The dancers shifted to accommodate them. They joined the stately march of couples, bowing, bending, swinging in a sweep of petticoats and costume skirts, their feet lightly shuffling on the polished floor. The candlelight gleamed on silk and velvet, taffeta and satin, caught the lustrous sheen of pearls and glittered in the depths of multicolored jewels. It traced the edges of masks and flickered over the anonymous and lasciviously smiling mouths beneath the disguises. This was the Government House, and there was no license permitted, and yet a vague air of dissoluteness hung over the gathering, a reminder of the ancient bacchanalian festivals from which the tradition of Mardi Gras was derived.

Cyrene, circling behind René in the movements of the dance, saw Gaston at the far end of the room serving as partner for Madame Pradel. The woman was gazing up at him as if he were some particularly appetizing sweet, while the younger Breton looked intrigued but also apprehensive.

René caught sight of her smile with its tinge of irony as she returned to his side and they began to promenade down the room, pointing their toes at each step. “Was it necessary,” he said in goaded tones, “to make a public disturbance just now?”

There had been no opportunity for Cyrene to rid herself of her rage and chagrin, not only at being accosted by the lieutenant but also at the unwarranted censure of Madame Vaudreuil. It came boiling back now at his scathing comment.

“Why not?” she demanded. “There’s nothing I like more than being pawed and fought over like some quai d’Orsay tart. Unless, of course, it’s being condemned for a slut by a jealous wife!”

“You might have sat quietly somewhere without stirring up trouble.”

“Indeed? Am I to understand that you think I enticed the lieutenant to remember me? Perhaps you are of the opinion that I flaunted myself before him?”

What René thought was that she was too beautiful, too memorable, for her own good or for his peace of mind. It was the irritation caused by his uncomfortable concern for her that had made him lash out at her. It would have suited him much better if she had been quiet and biddable and retiring. But then she would not have been Cyrene.

“Well?” she demanded.

“I am perfectly well aware that you did nothing to provoke the lieutenant except be yourself.”

“Meaning what? That I should not have worn my hair unbound? That I should not have been grateful to the governor for his rescue? Perhaps you think that the best thing I could have done would have been to go with the lieutenant wherever he wished and allowed him to do with me what he would? That would have settled everything nicely, and without the least noise!”

He glanced around them, his expression harassed. “Will you lower your voice?”

“Oh, yes, tell me to mind my tongue, why don’t you? It’s the last refuge of a man who has started a quarrel he cannot finish.”

“Very well,” he said, his grip on her hand tight as he swung her about, ready to return down the length of the room, “what would you have me say? That I should have kept a better watch over you? That I should have been quicker to come to your aid? That I resent Vaudreuil for getting there first, and harbor murderous intentions toward the man who dared to touch you? That I am, in short, wildly jealous?”

She lifted her chin, her eyes blazing as she met his steely gaze. “Yes, why not?”

“Why not, indeed? It’s perfectly true, all of it.”

She stumbled, nearly tripping on the hem of her gown. When she looked back at him, he was staring straight ahead. For long moments her heart beat high in her throat, then as she watched the taut angles of his face, it subsided. So he had felt responsible for her, concerned for her, even jealous of her — what of it? To him she was no more than a possession, something to be guarded, protected against interlopers. It had nothing to do with her as a person, this jealousy, but rather with his disinclination to share her or to lose her so long as his interest held. His sense of responsibility, his concern, and most of all his jealousy would be gone the instant he grew tired of her.

“How very flattering,” she said with brittle irony. “What can I have done to deserve it?”

René heard the disbelief in her voice and did not know whether to be enraged or relieved. To be both did not suit his idea of his own emotional stability; even less did it suit his cause.

The ball was over at midnight with a grand unmasking on the stroke of twelve. Lent began with the dying away of that final stroke, a stretch of forty endless days of fasting and austerity. The last bite of food was swallowed, the last drink hastily downed. The musicians put away their instruments. There was nothing to be done except to go home.

The guests departed, carrying by their strings the masks that now looked bedraggled and rather silly. They spoke smooth phrases of praise and appreciation for their night’s entertainment to their host and hostess, called out farewells that echoed in the wet and empty streets, and scattered into the night.

A fine rain was still falling, dropping out of the black night sky with the relentless persistence that indicated it might not stop for days. The ditches along the street outside the Government House were running streams of water that reflected the flaring torches beside the door. The sedan chair René had commanded to wait was a welcome refuge, even for the relatively short walk to the lodging.

As Cyrene settled on the narrow seat of the chair and it was lifted on its poles, a linkboy came hurrying toward them with his lantern of pierced tin swinging on its bail. “Light the way, m’sieur? For you, very cheap!”

He was young and thin and soaked to the skin, but was gamely looking for custom on this dreary night. There were no few like him in New Orleans, orphans left to make their way, victims of the terrible death toll that had always plagued the colony. Most were cared for by the Ursuline nuns, but there were always those who preferred living in the streets to the discipline of the nuns.

René tossed the urchin a coin. The boy flashed a grin and set off down the street ahead of the chair. Government House was soon left behind. Around them was the dark, wet night, relieved only by the dancing yellow beacon of the linkboy’s lantern.

The rain spattered on the small, square roof of the sedan chair. The leather curtains billowed inward to let in a fine mist. Now and then one of the chairmen slipped in the ankle-deep mud, causing the chair to lurch and tilt before it was righted. Cyrene braced her feet as best she could and held on to the loop set into the wall, but at one particularly violent jolt she threw out her hand to catch herself and bruised her wrist on the window frame.

She was nursing the aching arm when she heard a shout. The next thing she knew she was tumbling, sliding, first forward then backward, as the chair was thrown to the ground. Cyrene gave a startled cry. The chair teetered, rocking, before righting itself. She reached for the door and thrust it open.

“What is it? What’s happening?”

Back the way they had come there sounded the thud and splatter of running feet. Cyrene turned her head sharply in that direction in time to see the chairmen in retreat with heads down and arms pumping. The linkboy was gone, but his lantern lay in the mud, its candle guttering, giving off a feeble light. There came the hiss of a sword blade being drawn. She swung in the other direction.