Masquerade (19 page)

A faint musing smile edged her mouth, and her eyes took on a faraway look. "The riverfront of old New Orleans must have been a sight to see back in those days. The master street of the world,' they called it then. Vessels of every size and kind—clipper ships, ocean schooners, river packets, cutters, steamboats, smacks, flatboats— they lined the levee for four and five miles, tied two and three deep sometimes. I think Brodie Donovan saw the steamboats arriving, with every available inch mounded with cotton bales, and he talked with rivermen, heard them tell about all the bales waiting upriver for transport to New Orleans and beyond. He saw, and he heard, and —he turned his dream into a plan.

"After about a year on the riverfront, he and his brothers left New Orleans and went upriver to Bayou Sara. There they got a contract from a local planter to clear a section of wooded land he owned; their payment was the timber from it. Then used that timber to build themselves a flat-boat. Then they loaded it with cotton and floated down the Mississippi to New Orleans, where they sold their cargo and the flatboat. They went right back upriver and did it all over again. After just three trips, they bought an old steamboat. Two years later they bought another, then two more each year after that. Finally, in eighteen forty-seven, Brodie got his first oceangoing ship—a schooner. And that was the start of the Crescent Line."

"It sounds like the American dream," Remy declared.

"It was." Nattie nodded in emphasis. "After a couple of voyages with his schooner, he sold off his riverboats and bought more ships, bringing his total to four within a year. A remarkable feat when you consider that less than fifteen years before that he'd been wading in mud digging a canal."

"But how did the Jardin family get the shipping line? And why did Cole tell me my surname should be Donovan, not Jardin?"

"That's because of Adrienne."

"Who's Adrienne?"

"Adrienne Louise Marie Jardin," Nattie replied. "She was one of those dark-haired, dark-eyed Creole beauties people like to write stories about. Both her parents died when she was a baby—victims of a yellow-fever epidemic. Adrienne and her older brother, Dominique, were raised by their grand-père Emil Gaspard Jardin and a maiden aunt they called Tante ZeeZee.

"Now, you gotta understand there've been Jardins in New Orleans almost from the beginning, back in seventeen eighteen. By the time Brodie Donovan met up with the Jardins, they owned a lot—real estate in the city, bank stock, a cotton plantation in Feliciana Parish, and a couple of sugar plantations south of Baton Rouge, just to name some of the larger things."

"In other words, they were wealthy," Remy inserted.

Nattie snorted. "Hmmph, they were one of the wealthiest Creole families in the city."

"You said Brodie Donovan met up with the Jardins. When was this?"

"He met
Adrienne"
Nattie corrected. "The year was eighteen hundred and fifty-two. ..."

 

 

 

 

13

 

 

Like a forest of barren timber, the high, proud masts of the ocean steamers and sailing ships lined the levee, towering against the blue sky, the gray canvas of their sails tightly furled. Their decks and gangplanks seethed with activity, stevedores scurrying back and forth, darky roustabouts shuffling, their bodies canted sideways by the weight of the cargo carried on their shoulders, sea captains pacing in impatience, more roustabouts rolling bales of cotton up the staging and into the holds, press gangs forcing more bales into the ships with their powerful cotton screws, and sailors in the garb of a dozen different nations sauntering ashore or staggering back on board. And the noise, the endless, deafening noise, a cacophony of shouts and curses, hooting laughter and challenging brag, "coonjine" songs and work-gang chanteys, clanging bells and deep-throated steam whistles.

And the wind carried it all, a wind heavy with the ultrasweet odor of molasses and pungent with spices, a wind that stirred up floating wisps of cotton from the mountainous piles of bales stacked on the levee, dotting the air with them.

From the vantage of the levee, Brodie Donovan viewed it all—its jostle, its din, its smells, and its energy familiar to him, more familiar than his own home. He raised a hand in a saluting wave to the captain on the deck of the
Crescent Glory,
then turned his back to the scene and adjusted his hold on the small, flat bundle he carried in his left hand.

Directly ahead of him stretched the tightly packed buildings and narrow streets of the city's old French section, still the bastion of aristocratic Creole families. Canal Street—so named for the ditch, actually a kind of moat (but never a canal), that had once run its length, when New Orleans was a walled city—was the unofficial dividing line that separated the old quarter from the brash and bustling American section, now the city's commercial center. The offices for his shipping company, the Crescent Line, were located in the American section, and most days he would have turned and headed up the levee in that direction. But not today. Today he had an errand in the Vieux Carré.

Striding easily, he went down the levee's sloping bank, past the tin-roofed shanties stocked with cheap trinkets for the sailors, past the grog-shops with their many eager customers, and past the oyster stands. The street beyond was clogged with freight wagons, the river commerce turning New Orleans into a city of drays pulled by mules in tandem.

As Brodie picked his way between them to the other side, he recognized some of the drivers and called easy greetings to them, lapsing into a heavy brogue. "Hey, O'Shaughnessy, why would you be holding your head like that? Was it too much to drink you had last night?" "Micheleen, tell your pretty missus I'll be stopping by for some of her scones—when you're not home, of course!" "Is that a black eye you got there, Dolan? Did you forget to duck again?"

And they responded in kind: "Well, if it ain't himself—or should we be calling you Your Honor now?" "Would you look at the vest he's wearing? 'Tis fancy he's getting." "What would you be carrying in that package, Donovan? Lace kerchiefs for to be blowing your nose with, maybe."

There was affection in their gibes, affection and pride for one of their own who'd made good— and hadn't forgotten them. Like Brodie, the Irish draymen were survivors of the bloody ditch, as they called the canal.

He may have been one of them, but he wasn't like them. And the difference lay in more than the fineness of the black frock coat and brocade vest he wore, or the flat-crowned black hat on his head and the gleaming leather of his boots. The difference had been there even when he was dressed as shabbily as they.

True, Brodie felt the same strong loyalty to his own that they did, and had his moments of dark moodiness, though they were rare. He loved a good laugh and his temper could be quick. And like them he was fiercely independent, but that need for independence had directed him on a different path and turned his thinking in other directions.

Sure, he'd slogged through the ditch's muck and mire beside them, smelled the foul stench of the swamp and the rotting corpses along its banks, and fallen into his cot at night bathed in his own sweat. But never once in that swamp had he thought of Ireland's green valleys and sparkling brooks—not like they had. For him, the thought that had kept him going, that had given purpose to the sweat and weariness and death around him, was the dream that someday
his
ships would steam through the canal he'd dug . . . ships like the one he'd sailed on to America. He'd dreamed it, and the riverfront had shown him how he could make it happen. A roundabout way, to be sure—first flatboats, then riverboats, and finally his ships. But he'd learned that there was always a way, even if it wasn't a direct one.

Leaving the bedlam of the riverfront behind, Brodie entered the old quarter, his glance straying to the new triple spires of the St. Louis Cathedral, which replaced the old bell towers, changing the area's skyline—a change made even more pronounced by the recently added mansard roofs of the Cabildo and the Presbytere and the twin three-story, redbrick and wrought-iron structures built in the Renaissance style by the red-haired Baroness Pontalba, housing magnificent apartments in its upper floors. Brodie doubted they would be the last changes the old Place d'Armes would see. There was currently a lot of talk about changing its name to Jackson Square in honor of the hero of the Battle of New Orleans. It would happen. Americans now held the majority of seats on the city council, and they'd see that it did—the Creoles be damned.

Two more strides and his view of the spires was lost, buildings rising up on either side of the narrow street, their facades smoothly stuccoed and painted in mellow shades of peach or blue or pink, all of them dominated by their tall double-storied galleries, supported by iron posts set in the curb and edged by waist-high railings of delicate iron filigree in a dozen different designs. Brodie walked beneath the overhanging galleries, shaded from the sun, which gave a springlike warmth to the morning in place of winter's usual gray damp.

Drays rumbled and rattled over the dirt streets, occasionally sharing the muddy thoroughfare with fancy carriages pulled by high-stepping blooded horses in gleaming harnesses. Directly ahead, a white overseer with a whip supervised the rare cleaning of the street's cypress-lined drainage ditches by a gang of chained and collared slaves —runaways, most likely.

Brodie continued along the brick sidewalk—a banquette, the Creoles called it—past neat little shops and slave pens with heavily barred windows, past corner fruit stands and flower stalls, past travelers ogling the sights of the renowned city, past young, richly dressed sons of aristocratic Creole families, perhaps en route to fencing lessons with some of the many masters who ran schools on Exchange Street, or merely off to share a cup of coffee with friends, and past an ivory-skinned and incredibly beautiful mulattress—a
femme de couleur,
a free woman of color, her status declared by the brightly colored madras kerchief wrapped around her head like a turban, her eyes properly downcast, her satins and jewels closeted in her little house along the ramparts to await the pleasure of her white lover. Brodie touched a hand to the brim of his hat and nodded a
Bonjour
to a young Creole miss and her glaring chaperone, noting the quickly averted glance and smiling to himself at the hastily whispered
"Yanqui."

To the Creoles of Louisiana, all Americans, regardless of their origin, fell into two categories: the unlettered, uncouth, and hell-roaring river crowd were all
"Kaintucks"
and the rest—the merchants, the planters, the wealthy, and the scholars—were
"Yanquis."
To the first, the Creoles turned an icy shoulder, but as for the second—well, time, the overwhelming numbers of Yankees, and, most of all, economic circumstances had forced them to develop a tolerance of them. They did business with the Yankees, drank coffee with them, and attended the same social functions, but rarely was a Yankee invited to dine in their home. True, marriages between Yankees and Creoles had taken place, but Brodie had observed that in most cases such marriages were largely to the benefit of the Creole family, the union either bringing with it desired holdings or cementing a liaison of particular interests.

The Americans and the Creoles represented two totally different cultures. After nearly fifty years, they'd learned to coexist—warily at times, occasionally clashing, but always competing, however subtly.

Unlike most of his counterparts in the American section, Brodie had taken the time to learn the Creoles' language, though he often found it to his advantage to pretend he neither spoke nor understood it—at least not as well as he did. And he'd learned to control his impatience and not press for a decision on some business matter, instead allowing the conversation to follow leisurely lines before finally arriving at the subject—if it did at all. As a result, a good share of his business came from the Quarter, and several valuable contacts in Europe as well. Yes, he did a lot of business in the Quarter, but not all of it with aristocrats.

On the corner a blind Negro played his violin, his curly gray hair bared to the sun, his slouch hat turned upside down on the brick banquette in front of him, and a pair of black-lensed spectacles partially concealing the heavy scarring around his eyes. Brodie stopped and dropped a dollar into his hat.

"Merci"
The old man bobbed his head the instant he heard the clink of the silver coin against the smaller ones.

"How goes it with you, Cado?" Brodie interrupted, addressing the old free Negro in French.

There was a quick cocking of the old man's head at the sound of his voice.
"Michie Donovan"
he said in immediate recognition of the voice, addressing him by the Negro's gumbo contraction for
Monsieur
as he continued to saw the bow over the strings, never once missing a note. "Old Cado is fine, suh, especially today with the sun warming my old, tired bones."

"Is there any talk going around?"

"There's a lot of weeping and praying at the Gautier house on Royal. The young Michie Gau-tier, he took offense at some little thing said by a planter from upriver. They met at dusk under the oaks. Now blood bubbles from the young Michie's wound where the planter's rapier pierced his chest."

"A punctured lung," Brodie murmured, then asked, "Is there nothing else?"

A small grin appeared. "Michie Varnier from the Julian plantation lost fifty thousand last night in a game of brag. I think he'd sell his cotton cheap today."

Brodie allowed a faint smile to curve his mouth. "You play beautiful music, Cado." And he dropped two more dollars into the old man's hat.

"So do you, Michie Donovan. So do you." The old black man chuckled and immediately launched into a few bars of an Irish jig tune as Brodie moved away.

At the curb, Brodie waited for two heavy drays to clatter by, then stepped into the muddy street and hailed the next one. The driver hauled back on the reins and called a whoa to his mules, cussing them out in a fine Gaelic voice as Brodie climbed onto the running board and balanced himself there, tucking the bundle he carried tightly under his arm and taking a pencil and notepaper from inside his coat pocket.