BLUE BAYOU ~ Book I (historical): Fleur de Lis (20 page)

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN §

By Natalie’s reckoning, it was nearing three in the morning. Another sleepless night. She silently cursed the armada of mosquitoes that circled her, pricking her sensitive flesh and sucking her blood.

The rest of her life! She couldn't do it. She could not survive this kind of existence for the rest of her life!

Her fingers curled into the sheet. Since the evening four weeks before at St. Denises’, when she had learned that the Duc d’Orleans—and thus Fabreville—still held the reins of power and would do so indefinitely, she had been living in utter desolation.

How long? How much longer would she have to wait before Fabreville was out of power and Philippe was free?

The clump of sheet was a damp knot in the palm of her hand, and she released it. She didn’t need to peer into a stream’s reflective surface to know that dark splotches rimmed her eyes, that her body was growing emaciated, that she looked even more haggard than when she had emerged from the hold of the
Baleine
.

What if the duc ruled as minister for twenty years more?
Bon Dieu
!

She drew a long, steady breath, afraid that she would start screaming and awaken François and Nicolas. If she started screaming, she’d never stop! The thought terrified her as she recalled all too well the inhumane treatment of the insane at La Salpêtriére.

She forced herself to think of something, anything, to distract her from the growing hysteria locked inside her. About François snoring steadily across from her. Philippe had never snored, but she liked the sound. It gave her a safe, secure feeling there in the isolated wilderness where the only sounds one ever heard at night were the howl of the coyote or the scream of a spotted cat.

She didn’t know if Nicolas snored or not; she had never heard him. But then did he ever sleep? Sometimes, she would swear she thought she heard him leave the cabin in the deep of night.

Nicolas’s presence lightened the dreary succession of lonely days; he was someone with whom she and François could talk since they obviously couldn’t talk to one another. Soon Nicolas would complete the cabin he was working on, then he would be leaving on another journey to San Antonio or Mexico City or Santa Fe. After that, what would be left for her and François? Years of emptiness stretched before her.

She was young! How could she possibly waste away her best years in this hinterland? Seeing few people, toiling all day long, making soap and candles and . . . She would endure it not a moment longer!

Stealthily, she slipped from between the coarse bedcoverings and searched in the dark beneath her bed for the small casket she had brought with her from France. Her fingers located the brass handle on one end and pulled. The casket’s metal frame grated against the puncheon floor, and she shot an apprehensive glance at François. His soft snoring reassured her. She dressed quickly, silently.

On cat’s paws, she crept into the kitchen, past Nicolas asleep on his Spanish-moss-stuffed mattress spread before the fire-banked hearth. Stretched out on his stomach, he was shirtless, oblivious to the mosquitoes. Her lips pursed with frustration. It wasn’t fair that her pale skin so attracted the winged beasts and Nicolas’s dusky body did not.

Casket under one arm, she turned and lifted the leather thong from the door latch. She was leaving with no more than she had when she came. Quietly, she eased out the door. The silver stream of moonlight beckoned, and she almost skipped like a child as she hurried to her freedom.

Nicolas missed the northern lights. But that was all he missed. Louisiana supplied the freedom that in Canada the mother country had managed to suppress. The waters to the north whispered of intrigues by France, Spain, and England: a transplanting of ancient feuds to this primeval world, a political seething.

He wondered, though, if he would ever be able to settle down as
François had. He yearned for far places, for long trips into the wilderness.

In the other room, he heard Natalie stirring restlessly. He knew it was she and not
François by the small sounds she made, by the shifting of her light weight on the mattress. Unwillingly, he let himself dwell on his friend’s wife, how she turned in her half-sleep as his running dog used to, turning several times in a circle before settling itself down for the night.

But she wasn’t settling down. He tensed, sensing her approach. Eyes closed, he listened as she paused before him, her scent reaching him with the faint rustling of her gown. A combination of scents, really: her own particular one, which he could identify in a room filled with the odor of humans;
the scent of crushed lavender she had added when washing her hair; and the scent of green bay berry wax that clung to her hem, leftover from her candle making two days earlier.

He waited while she slipped into the night, giving her time to put some distance behind her. Then he rose and, thrusting his pistol and tomahawk into his sash, set out on her trail. It led out across the field and into the encroaching forest. Beneath the bright southern moon, her pale hair was easy to spot as she flitted in and out between the oaks and pines like St. Elmo’s fire, that apparition created by marsh gases.

She was fleeing, he realized, and had no sense of where she was going or the danger in which she was placing herself. Stubby palm fronds grew like mushrooms over the soft earth. Bordering them, just beyond, were cypress knees that protruded above inch- high water. Farther into the forest, the water was imperceptibly deeper.

He lessened the distance between them. The leafy branches filtered out the moonlight, and his eyes refocused, absorbing every bit of refracted light. Once or twice, he almost caught up with
her with the intention of halting her flight, but he knew she’d have to halt of her own accord, return of her own free will.

She seemed to skirt the swampier areas instinctively. She took no precaution to soften the noise her feet and skirts made against the undergrowth. A thin fog swirled off the swamp bottom but didn’t completely conceal the coral-blotched viper curled up beneath the fan-shaped ferns. Natalie paused to look around her, perhaps realizing for the first time that she had no sense of where she was going. She was breathing heavily, and he doubted if her untrained eye had noticed the venomous reptile. Its bullet-shaped head swung close to her ankle and drew back to strike.

Hissing like the coral snake, the tomahawk winged through the air. Its impact rustled the fronds. She whirled, her hand at her throat. A scream trembled on her lips, then died as a muskrat scampered away through the undergrowth.

She moved more slowly now, more carefully, yet more uncertainly. He figured the casket had to be getting a little heavy. He retrieved his tomahawk, not far from the twin halves of the colorfully banded, deadly snake, and moved off in the wake of his quarry.

The pulse of pounding drums reached his mind’s core, vibrating along his bloodstream, before she even became audibly aware of their rhythmic noise. Unknowingly, she let her footsteps carry her toward the primitive music that seeped like fog through the trees.

She paused at the edge of a clearing, which was starkly lit by the moonlight, and he halted several yards behind her. Before them, fifteen to twenty black people, arranged in a haphazard circle, swayed in unison to the steady, irresistible beat of a drum. Their shadows danced on the ground before them like drunken spirits.

In the center of the circle was an impromptu stone altar. The opiatic incense that smoldered at each end of the altar cloyed the night air. He recognized the ceremony. The Conjure religion. It was a heritage of black Africa and the West Indies. The magic had become entwined with a sort of perverted Catholicism like the Black Mass. The low mumblings of the African slaves accompanied the roll and thump of the drum.

Upon the altar was a piece of black wax in the crude shape of a snake. If he correctly recalled what Jean-Baptiste had told him,
the symbol of the snake was similar to the phallic worship found among other primitive nations of Africa and India. The snake represented the all-powerful supernatural being from which all events derived their origin. The creature was vast and terrible, not unlike the God of the Old Testament; all-powerful but at the same time frivolous and malicious. The participants of such orgiastic rituals had to be intensely emotional and possess a childlike credulity and an imagination easily inflamed in order to understand the black magic.

The adoration of the serpent started when the king, or shaman, began a weird African chant. His shiny black loins were girded with red handkerchiefs, a blue cord encircled his muscled stomach, and a cloak of multicolored feathers mantled his shoulders. Nicolas recognized him—it was Joseph, St. Denis’s house servant and Jasmine’s brother. With a high, intelligent forehead, flaring cheekbones, and strong, albeit tattooed, chin, the Senegalese prince was handsome.

Nicolas’s gaze moved among the worshippers and located Jasmine. Her slender figure, clad in a guinea-blue wrapper, twisted sensually to the mounting tempo of the vodu drum.

Joseph stepped before the altar and held aloft a large rooster that beat its wings frantically as it squawked with terror. The drumming ceased, and the chanting lowered to an underlying hum. From the scabbard attached to his blue cord, Joseph withdrew a long, slender blade that glinted in the moonlight. The knife slashed the struggling rooster time and time again. Blood squirted everywhere. A chorus of muttering approval arose from the worshippers.

Joseph held the dying but still faintly struggling bird over the upturned face of the nearest worshipper, a stoutly built man with the mashed-flat features of the Congo tribes. Avidly, the man opened his mouth to catch and swallow the warm gore.

Nicolas heard Natalie’s startled gasp. She whirled to flee, her blind steps directing her toward a thirty-foot wall of nearly impenetrable and brittle cane brake. Once in there, she would make as much noise as a cow loose in a cornfield.

Sprinting lightly after her, he leaped forward and dragged her down with him into the tall grass. At the impact, her dowry chest thudded against the soft earth at the same time as all the breath whooshed from her lungs. His hand clapped down on her mouth before she could scream. Her darting eyes, wide with fright, stared up at him without immediate recognition.

“It’s Nicolas,” he
whispered. Her eyes focused on him with concentrated effort, and he said, “Don’t make any noise. Do you understand?”

Her frightened gaze clung to the movement of his lips; she nodded.

“They mean no harm, but they are emotionally overwrought. They might unintentionally react dangerously.”

She nodded again, indicating her comprehension. With the motion, loose hair about her temples fell across her eyes, and he brushed away the silky strands. At the intimate gesture, her eyes locked with his.

His temples tightened. He gathered her against his length. Her rich golden color was a counterpoint to his swarthy skin. Beneath him, he felt her heart beat an erratic, rapid tattoo against her fragile rib cage. A mighty yearning was reborn in him after a long period of quiescence. His manhood stirred at the pressure of her warmth against him: not aggressively, just a growing— quiet and sure—even as he sensed a subtle change in her breathing.

He simply could not give her what she wanted. He rolled away from her, his features controlled, expressionless.

“Why were you running away?” he asked quietly. He lay stretched beside her, one hand holding her wrist to keep her from bolting.

Behind them, the drums started up again, their irresistible, syncopated beat of tribal and primeval passion punctuating the air.

Her face looked numb; her lips moved uncertainly. “Nicolas . . . Nicolas . . .”

He released her hand, and her little fists began pounding ineffectually on his uplifted shoulder. “I can’t stay here,” she
murmured brokenly. “I can’t. Not the rest of my life, all the years to come, I can’t.”

“Why not?” he asked piteously. “Where else would you go? If you show your face in France, what do you think this Fabreville will do? Do you have any family—anyone—left to turn to?” He caught both her wrists in one hand and gave them a little shake.

She stiffened. Her mouth set in rebellious lines.

“No,” he answered for her. “That’s what I thought. And what about François? He’s in love with you, you know. He married you and took you in, knowing nothing about you—neither that you are a felon nor that you have known other men. Don’t you owe him loyalty, at least, if not a wife’s love?”

Her rigid body went limp. Wet lashes dropped over the beguilingly sad eyes. “Help me, Nicolas,” she whispered. “Help me. I’m so alone, so lonely!”

“Why should I? I don’t like you. I don’t like you one damn bit.”

At her deep, shuddering breath, he felt a moment of exasperation, mainly with himself. His eyes glittered, reflecting something savage in his face. He bent his head and lightly brushed her lips in a kiss meant to comfort. It was the wrong thing to do.

Beneath his lips, hers moved pliantly, languidly. The crescendoing beat of the distant drum lit a fire in his blood. The fecund scent of the moist earth and grass—and that emanating from her body, which was hot, damp with sweat—stirred a powerful desire in him. Her mouth tasted salty; her lips were soft, yielding.

Sensing all would soon be lost, he groaned and set her from him. She stared up at him, dazed, as mesmerized as the vodun worshippers. “This is wrong,” he ground out darkly. “Do you understand?”

Did he understand? Really?

She nodded dumbly, and he rolled to his feet, pulling her upright along with him. Whatever he expected to happen next, it certainly was not the manner she evinced. Sweeping past him to retrieve her chest, head held regally high, she declared in that husky contralto of hers, “Merci
bien
for saving me from an indiscretion,
Monsieur le Sauvage
."