Texas Angel, 2-in-1 (9 page)

All this was to change drastically.

Elise had assumed Thomson was an established element in New Orleans. If he had used her mother in the same business twenty years ago, it seemed logical that he had been operating his shady “hotel” for that long. Elise learned otherwise one afternoon.

Mae came into her room as she was bathing Hannah. The older woman was carrying a carpetbag, which she laid on the bed. “Get yourself packed up, Liz.”

“Why?” Panic surging through her, Elise dropped the sponge.

“We gotta vacate this place, that’s why.”

“We?”

“Everyone, Liz, not just you, so don’t worry.” Mae took on a motherly tone. She was only thirty years old, but her position of authority over the girls and the fact that she was the oldest lent her a certain air. Often she was kind, especially to Elise, but she could be hard as well. If a girl got out of line, her discipline was firm and sometimes harsh. She was like a berry patch—full of sweet fruit but surrounded by thorns.

“Where are we going?”

“You do ask a lot of questions, Liz.”

“I suppose it is a difficult habit to break,” Elise replied with a wry grin.

Mae allowed her taut lips to curve up at the corners. She didn’t often let more of a smile than that escape because she was vain about the condition of her teeth.

“Well, Maurry is in trouble, and he is moving us out—lock, stock, and barrel. Well, probably not the barrel, maybe not even the locks. He’s in a hurry. He was in a duel last night and killed the son of a high government official.”

“Maybe they’ll hang him.” Elise felt no compunction at all for the hopefulness in her tone.

“It was all on the up-and-up. But the father of the victim holds some loan markers of Maurry’s. He says he will call in the debts unless Maurry leaves town fast.”

“That wasn’t very bright of Maurry, was it?” Elise said with relish.

“You know men. Sometimes they think with their trigger fingers and not their heads.” Mae shrugged. After fifteen years as Maurry’s slave, she had been around him too long to be shocked by anything. “I never did think Maurry would be able to hang on to this place. Two years in one place is a long time for him.”

“He’s only been here two years?”

“He had a place here when he bought me fifteen years ago. Then he took off—I’m not sure why. Had a place in Natchez for a while, then Baton Rouge, and a half dozen places in between.”

Elise tried not to think of the irony of her father’s coming to New Orleans when he did. If he had waited two months . . . Elise shook those thoughts from her mind. They didn’t help.

Instead, she said, “Mae, you’ve been with him all this time?”

“Do I have a choice?”

The matter of choice was something else best not to think about. Elise grabbed a towel from next to the tub, where she was bathing a contented Hannah. This was all she must think about—that Hannah should always be content like this.

“I’ll finish with Hannah, then start packing.” It made no difference to Elise if she did what she had to do in New Orleans or in some other place. In fact, she didn’t even pursue the subject of their destination. She’d find out soon enough.

Saul, the house servant, came up a half hour later with a big trunk. Elise was to stow her possessions—except for immediate necessities—in the chest along with the belongings of the other girls.

The next morning the trunks and packing crates were taken down to the docks in a wagon. Six of Thomson’s girls and the three slaves he kept as servants piled into two buggies and were transported to the docks on the river several miles south of New Orleans. He had sold off four of his remaining girls to finance the journey. Maurice met them at the dock, looking quite dapper in one of his expensively tailored broadcloth suits. He hardly looked like a man who was on the run. He certainly showed little worry about his future.

“Well, ladies, we are about to embark on an adventure!” He rubbed his hands together with an eagerness that almost dispelled the cruelty Elise had come to associate with the man.

“Where we goin’, Maurry?” asked Gina, the young girl who had been whipped for attempting to escape.

“We are heading for Texas. I have a brother there who has been wanting me to go into business with him. Don’t you know? I own a commodity much in demand in a frontier like Texas. I shall be a wealthy man. Don’t know why I didn’t think of doing it sooner.”

“We gotta take a boat?” asked Sheila, an octoroon with blue eyes, tan skin, and hair dyed red. “I’m not fond of the water, Maurry.”

“We will be sailing on the
RaeAnn
, a sound vessel. And it’s only a five-day voyage.” He turned to Mae. “Were you able to procure some stomach remedies?”

“I got tea and some powders.” Mae did not seem enthusiastic about this.

Elise had never been to sea, but she had heard about seasickness. It could not be worse than the soul-deep sickness she had experienced in the last month. She would go where she must, do what she must so that she and her daughter might survive. Only once was she roused from her detachment. The stevedores were loading the ship, and one carried a peculiar-looking crate. It was rectangular and about three feet by four feet and fairly flat. She had once seen a similar parcel when the Hearnes had received a painting from a friend in London.

Elise nudged Mae. “Are they loading Maurry’s belongings now?”

“I think so.”

“Do you know what that is?” Elise nodded toward the parcel.

“No, but it must be something special for him to crate it up so careful-like.”

Elise thought the same. She also determined to have a look at it at the first opportunity. She had not yet had a chance to see the painting of her mother. Maurice either did not want to hang it out in the open or simply hadn’t had a chance to display it since its return from South Carolina—if he had intended to hang it at all. She’d thought about simply asking to see it but refrained because it galled her to ask anything of Thomson.

Benjamin arrived at the New Orleans dock about an hour before their ship, the
RaeAnn
, was to set sail. The luggage had gone ahead of them the night before, so he had only his family to deal with. That was responsibility enough. After many weeks on the trail and the short riverboat journey from Natchez, one would think the family would have mastered the art of travel. It was amazing how one tiny baby could so upset the order of things. He supposed with all the chaos that morning, he should be thankful they had not missed their ship entirely.

He could hardly believe they were less than a week from their destination, Texas. For so long it had been only an image in his mind, a sentence in his prayers, but soon it would become reality. The three-week delay in Natchez had been difficult for him, but it had worked wonders upon Rebekah. She was almost her old self. True, her smile was still halfhearted, but at least in a physical sense she was stronger.

“Come along, children,” he said enthusiastically, “it is time we boarded our vessel.”

“Will we be truly sailing on the sea?” Micah also was showing some enthusiasm.

“The Gulf of Mexico,” Benjamin explained. “Not exactly the open sea, but close enough.”

“Will we get wet, Papa?” Isabel asked tremulously.

“Of course not, child. This will be great fun.”

Isabel looked up at her father, and he could not tell if it was doubt in her large blue eyes or merely incredulity at his speaking of fun. He wanted to defend himself, telling her he had nothing against fun, not really. It was only that the work of God was so serious and consuming that it often seemed frivolous to take time for amusements. But he said nothing. She was too young to understand deep matters of the spirit.

There was a large crowd on the dock, all either waiting to board the ship or waiting to bid farewell to passengers. Benjamin kept his family in a tight knot around him. He knew there would be all manner of unsavory sorts mingling with this crowd. For that reason he was keeping a sharp eye about him, and because of his watchfulness he saw a pickpocket ply his art upon a nearby woman—a woman holding a baby, no less!

“You there!” he called. “Stop this instant!”

The lad—he could not have been older than thirteen or fourteen— dropped the reticule, which had been dangling from the woman’s arm by a string. He spun around as Benjamin took a step toward him. Their eyes met briefly before the boy sprinted away and made an expert dash through the crowd. Even if Benjamin had been of a mind to chase after him, he would not have succeeded because the lad disappeared so quickly.

The woman, now aware of the situation, glanced at Benjamin. She was dressed as a lady and quite beautiful despite much too liberal face paint. Her abundant hair was black, and thick lashes framed dark eyes, but her gaze was hard and bitter.

“It was a pickpocket,” Benjamin explained, lest she think he might have committed some offense.

“Thank you for chasing him away. But I have no valuables.” Her eyes flicked toward the child in her arms then back to Benjamin. “It was kind of you.” She spoke in a genteel manner, belying the hard edges of her appearance.

An older woman came up to her and took her arm, nudging her forward. “Come on, Liz, it’s time to board.” This woman was also dressed like a lady, but unlike the younger woman, she did not look the part in any other way. Her skin was also of a shade to peg her as a mulatto.

“Good day,” Benjamin said to be polite.

“Thank you again.” Then the woman was bustled forward toward the ship.

Benjamin turned his attention back to his family, and soon they, too, were boarding the vessel
RaeAnn
.

CHAPTER

11

P
OINTING ENTHUSIASTICALLY TOWARD THE SHORE
, Micah looked over the rail of the ship. They were still in the Mississippi but quickly approaching the mouth of the river. Benjamin knew this trip was an adventure for the boy, despite the deep resentment he usually showed over having been taken from his friends and family.

“What do you see, Micah?”

“Over there. What are those creatures? They are monsters, to be sure.”

Lying upon a rock near the bank of the river were three or four alligators sunning themselves as if they had not a care in the world.

The largest was a good ten feet in length.

“They are alligators, reptilian creatures. Don’t you remember Uncle Haden telling about them? They are common in these parts.”

“They look dangerous.”

“I am certain they are.”

Suddenly one rose up on its tiny legs, seeming to stretch, and opened its huge mouth revealing a frightening array of teeth. Micah gasped. Benjamin chuckled, then immediately forced himself to be sober. It was important that he maintain a stern demeanor so that his son would grow to be self-controlled and godly. Regardless of what men like Tom Fife or even Ezra Bancroft might say, Benjamin was certain that cavorting about with his children would cause a complete breakdown of his authority. As a father, he simply did not have the luxury to act as a friend to his children.

Benjamin added more seriously, “I’m sure it would not harm you unless you tried to harm it. That is the way with wild animals.”

“I’d like to shoot me one and have it stuffed to hang over my bed like Uncle Haden did once with that big buck he shot.”

“That is a frivolous endeavor. Animals should be killed for practical use, not merely for trophies and sport.”

Micah shrugged. “I’m gonna see if the captain ever killed himself one.”

With that, the boy skipped off, leaving Benjamin alone at the rail and wondering what it would be like if his son enjoyed his company as much as he did that of men like Haden or Fife or the captain. But that was the sacrifice he as a parent must make if he desired to raise godly children. He thought again of his own father and the fact that his stern rearing had produced godliness in Benjamin. He glossed over the evidence that his father’s strict parenting had brought about a completely different result in Haden.

He was about to go seek out a quiet place to conduct his evening prayers when two passengers strode up to the rail near him and began conversing with each other.

“We chose an excellent time to come to Texas, I should say.” The man who spoke was tall and dressed in buckskin, with a bushy brown beard on his weathered face.

The other man snickered. “I’ll say!” He was shorter and thinner than the first man and wore an ill-fitting, frayed black broadcloth suit. “The place is looking better by the minute.”

“Pardon me,” Benjamin said, drawing closer to the men. “I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. It is encouraging to hear of positive elements in what will soon be my new home. Might I inquire of what you are speaking?”

“The . . . ah . . . special cargo aboard this ship,” answered the man in buckskin.

“Cargo? Farm equipment and such?” Not a farmer himself, Benjamin found enthusiasm over such matters perplexing.

The broadcloth-clad man chuckled. “Females, sir.”

Benjamin shook his head, still confused. “There are less than a dozen females aboard ship. Three or four are children, and the rest, I assumed, are attached.”

“Not Maurry Thomson’s girls.”

“His daughters?”

Now both men laughed outright. “Ain’t you never heard of Thomson?” asked the buckskinned fellow. When Benjamin shook his head, the fellow continued. “I heard Thomson was run out of New Orleans, and he’s making for Texas with his girls.” Still Benjamin responded with a blank stare. The man grinned slyly. “You ain’t no man of the world, are you?”

“I am a minister of Christ.”

“Oh . . .” The two men looked at each other and nodded knowingly.

“Well, sir,” added the man in buckskin, “I’m sure it won’t interest you.”

“I couldn’t say,” Benjamin was growing impatient, “since I still have no idea of what you are talking.”

“I think the minister’s got a right to know,” said the man in broadcloth. When his companion shrugged, he went on, a glint of amusement lighting his eyes, “Well, Reverend, Maurry’s girls are . . . well, ever hear of women who entertain men for a living?”