Creole Fires (3 page)

“It’ll be over soon,” said Lorna Mackintosh, the buxom, dark-haired girl who shared her cell.

“I wish there was something we could do.” There was laughter now, deep and mocking, and the sound
of rending fabric. The woman cursed the men but fell silent after a series of ringing blows that echoed against the walls of the cell and sent shivers of dread up Nicki’s spine. Unconsciously she twisted the folds of the dreary brown wool dress that dragged the earthen floor at her feet.

“The only thing ye kin do,” Lorna told her, “is keep quiet and pray it dinna’ happen to ye.” Lorna still carried the bruises of her own assault, though the guards had been careful to put them where they didn’t show.

So far Nicki had been lucky.

“I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me,” she told Lorna. “No matter what happens.”

Nicole had met her Scottish friend when she’d first been brought to the prison two weeks ago, in a state of near hysteria. Lorna, a runaway bond servant, had been wary at first, but Nicki’s heart-wrenching sobs had finally moved her to action.

“Hush now,” Lorna had whispered, coming to a place on the dirty straw pallet beside her. “Ye dinna want them to notice ye. Stay quiet and maybe they’ll forget ye for a while.”

“I—I don’t belong here,” Nicki stammered brokenly. “This is all a terrible mistake.”

“Aye, lassie. No human bein’ belongs in a scourge of hell the likes o’ this. But ye’ve got to get hold o’ yerself. This won’t be for long. Ye’ll come up for sale in a fortnight, just like the rest o’ us. Then ye’ll be outta here.”

“I don’t care if I never get out. I don’t care anymore if I live or die. I’ve got no place to go, no one left who gives a whit about me.”

Lorna studied Nicki’s pale face in the flickering
candlelight, noting the bruises on her cheek, dark and purple against her smooth skin, the delicate strands of copper hair that hung down from her worn brown bonnet. “Ye speak like an educated lass. Ye musta had someone who cared. Someone who saw to ye schoolin’ and all.”

Nicki closed her eyes. In just three years her life had been turned upside down. “My parents,” she whispered, but it seemed so long ago she could scarcely remember. Almost another lifetime. “Before the depression, we owned a plantation on Bayou Lafourche.”

“Aye. ‘Tis a lovely spot. I been there once myself.”

Nicki smiled at that, a soft sad smile of remembrance. “Our house stood two stories tall. With graceful white columns out front and tiny dormer windows. It was made of pink brick from clay along the Teche. In the evening, the sun turned it the most lovely shade of rose you’ve ever seen.”

Nicki swallowed the lump that swelled in her throat. She never used to cry, now it seemed she’d been crying for years.

“So ye lost ye home in the Panic?”

Nicki nodded. It felt good to tell someone the things she’d been holding inside so long. “I knew Papa had been having money problems …. I used to help him with his ledgers …. I just didn’t know how bad it was until after he died. He was so worried, you see. His heart … he just couldn’t stand the thought of losing Meadowood … of hurting Mama and me.” Tears washed her cheeks and she turned away.

“Go on,” Lorna prodded. “’Tis time ye finished wi’ it so ye kin get on wi’ ye life.”

“I don’t have a life!” Nicki snapped, suddenly angry for all she had lost. “I never will again.” She cried then, harder than she’d ever cried before. Lorna put an arm around her shoulder, but didn’t try to stop her. Eventually the tears were replaced by quiet sobs that eventually ceased altogether.

They talked until late in the evening. Lorna spoke of her home in Scotland and of the family she had lost. “I thought coming to America would be the answer to my prayers.” She scoffed, glancing around the dirty cell. “Well, there’s nothin’ for it now but to try to make the best o’ things.”

“That’s what Mama said after Papa died, but she couldn’t seem to find the will.” Nicole released a weary breath. “I tried to keep things going, but it was just too late. Our friends were all gone—most had lost their homes and fortunes the same way Papa had. The day the men from the bank came to foreclose, Mama met them on the porch with a musket. When they tried to reason with her, she collapsed. Some sort of stroke, the doctor said.”

“So ye indentured yerself,” Lorna put in when Nicki didn’t go on.

“I couldn’t think what else to do. There was no one left who would take me in—the only one I could have turned to was a man named du Villier, my father’s best friend, but he died in France that same year. His younger son, François, was managing the family plantation outside New Orleans, but he and Papa … didn’t get along.”

“We’ve all had our misfortunes, lassie,” Lorna said, “but it seems they hurt more when ye’ve been sheltered from them for so long.”

“The Turners—the people who bought my indenture—were
really very nice, and the contract was supposed to end on my eighteenth birthday. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except for the others ….” She shivered just thinking about Armand Laurent and his cruelty, then that deceitful bitch, Adrian Paxton, whose lies had landed her in prison. “I never thought it would turn out like this.”

But it had, Nicki thought, pulling herself to the present as the moans across the hall began to fade, replaced by the woman’s bitter sobs.

“Ye’ve got to look on the bright side, lass.” Lorna drew her to her feet. “Tomorrow ye’ll be leavin’ this godforsaken place. Where’er ye end up will be no worse than here. In a few years yer indenture’ll be paid and ye’ll be free to do as ye please.”

“Seven years is hardly a few years,” Nicki said bitterly. Her three-year indenture had turned into ten. It sounded like an eternity. She closed her eyes against a wave of despair. “I don’t know if I can survive it.”

“Ye’ve made it this far, haven’t ye?”

“I wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for you.”

On that day two weeks ago when the watchmen had begun their nightly assaults on the women, Lorna, who was nine years older, had read the terror on Nicki’s face.

“Ye’ve not been wi’ a man, have ye, girl?”

“No,” Nicki whispered, wishing she could move away from the cell door but unable to stop watching as one of the guards forced a woman’s legs apart, groped for the opening at the front of his breeches, and shoved his stiff male member inside her. The woman’s pleas for mercy and her thrashing movements only seemed to excite him more.

Lorna’s fingers bit into Nicki’s shoulders, pulling
her away from the grisly scene and into a corner. While Nicki watched the door in terror, expecting the guards to burst in at any moment, Lorna took charge.

“We’ll hide ye right under their noses,” Lorna said with a spark of determination.

“What?”

With swift, sure movements, she braided Nicki’s hair, looped a thick copper plait beside each ear, then replaced her soiled brown bonnet.

“We need to flatten ye breasts,” Lorna told her, and the light of understanding finally dawned. Tearing strips of material from her stained and dirty petticoats, Nicki bound them around her, and Lorna tightened them until she could barely breathe.

“Remember, lassie, keep ye head down,” Lorna warned. “Ne’er look ’em in the eye. With ye hair pulled back and nothin’ ta fill out ye bodice, ye dinna look more’n twelve or thirteen. Old enough to interest some o’ ’em, but most’ll take a woman o’er a girl, if they’ve a choice.”

And that was exactly what they did.

Lorna hadn’t fought them, and Nicki had been too terrified to do more than stare in horror at their brutal violation. They had come again two nights later. By that time, some of Nicki’s courage had returned, and over Lorna’s protests, she’d been ready for them. Hiding behind the door, a wooden stool gripped in her hands, Nicki knocked the first guard unconscious. The second, a young man new to the watch, had hastily taken his leave, retrieving his fallen comrade on his way out the door. As luck would have it, a new group of women prisoners were brought in that same night, providing fresh sport for the watchmen. Since then, Lorna and Nicole had been left alone.

“Maybe someone decent’ll buy ye this time,” Lorna said. Tomorrow would mark the fourth time Nicki had been sold in the last three years, but the first time she’d ever been publicly auctioned.

“Not very likely. I’m not just a bond servant anymore—now they think I’m a thief.”

“Aye, but a bairn can be forgiven a few indiscretions. Pray they dinna notice the age on ye papers.”

“It doesn’t really matter. I can’t go around dressed like a child forever. Eventually they’ll find out I’m a woman. God only knows what will happen then.”

Lorna found it difficult to argue with the truth. Her friend was a fine, educated lady, but misfortune had a way of setting its sights on a body and there was no way of explaining why. Nicki should have had a fine life, married some decent young man who would love her as she deserved.

There’d be no husband now. Most likely, just a fatherless bastard or two. There were laws to protect indentured servants, but the men who could pay the price for them could also pay the law to look the other way. With Nicki’s criminal record—and the face and figure she hid beneath her dingy clothes—she had almost no protection at all. Lorna sighed. Life was never easy.

Worried about the day to come, Nicki slept fitfully on her pallet of straw on the cold dirt floor, then paced the cell all morning. Without the sun for guidance, it was difficult to tell how many hours they’d been waiting before they heard the sound of shuffling feet outside their door, but it was probably late afternoon.

“It’ll be our turn next,” Nicki said, hearing the opposite
cell door clank open, then the sound of women’s voices as the guards began to herd them down the hall. She could almost see herself standing on the auction block, men calling out prices as if she were no longer human, just some object up for purchase—which, in fact, she was.

Shame and dread washed over her.
What would you say, Papa, if you were here?
But in her heart she knew.

“No one can shame you,
ma fille.
You can only shame yourself.” She remembered his words so well, it was almost as if he had spoken.

“Stay close to me,” Lorna was saying. “I know most o’ the wealthy lads about town. The miserable ol’ goat who owned my contract was a newspaper man. There werna’ much about anyone ol’ man Forsythe dinna know. When we get outside, I’ll let ye know which o’ the bidders to encourage, which to discourage.”

“And just how am I supposed to do that?”

“Yer a smart lass. Ye’ll figure it out when the time comes.”

Nicki’s shoulders sagged. She’d figure it out—at least she would try. She would do the best she could, just as she had been doing for the past three years. So far she hadn’t done a very good job.

The sound of a key grating in the lock sent a tremor of fear up her spine. She’d never been afraid before, not the way she was now. Neither had she known such uncertainty, such humiliation. She was thankful she had indentured herself under her mother’s maiden name. No one would believe that Nicki Stockton, the dirty, emaciated waif who watched
them with haunted eyes, was Nicole St. Claire, Etienne St. Claire’s daughter.

“Hoist your skirts,” the guard instructed, meaning to chain the women’s legs together for the trip to the auctioneer’s platform.

As the heavy iron band clamped around her slender ankle, its cold, hard edge biting into her tender flesh, Nicki turned to the woman who had earned a special place in her heart.

“I’ll never forget you, Lorna.” A hard ache swelled in her throat. “I wish there were some way to repay you for the kindness you’ve shown. If there’s ever anything—anything I can do ….”

“Yer a good friend, Nicki, lass. I’ll be prayin’ for ye.”

Clutching each other for support, they walked toward the door and the uncertain future that awaited them.

“I don’t know about you, but this damnable weather is getting me down. I could use a drink.” Alexandre du Villier clapped his best friend, Thomas Demming, on the back.

Though it wasn’t really cold, it was overcast and windy. Unusual, with summer approaching. Always an optimist, Alex figured at least he wasn’t hot and uncomfortable in his double-breasted forest-green tailcoat. His white cravat and pleated white shirt looked as fresh as they had when he’d put them on this morning.

“I hear they just got in a shipment of Napoleon brandy over at the St. Louis Hotel,” Thomas said, the breeze whipping his gray broadcloth frock coat and shiny blond hair.

“Perfect,” Alex agreed in his near-flawless English. Since his return to Belle Chêne last year, Alex had chosen to use English as much as possible. He was an American by birth, though one of French ancestry—French Creole. Although he’d spent a great deal of his life in France, been educated at the Université de Paris, La Sorbonne, and spent a year at L’Ecole Polytechnique, it was Louisiana—and Belle Chêne—he called home.

“What do you think about the price of sugar this year?” Thomas asked him as they crossed dusty Royale Street, heading toward the end of Exchange Place, where the hotel was located.

Alex didn’t answer. His attention was fixed instead on the group of people gathered near the hotel rotunda. “What’s going on over there?”

The answer became apparent as the men drew closer. “Slave auction,” said Thomas, but the color of the skin was wrong.

“Indentured servants,” Alex corrected, his steps beginning to slow. “From the prison. Runaways and thieves, mostly.” He disliked human bondage. Too many years of living in France, where all men were free, and since the liberation, treated for the most part as equals.

“Yes.” Thomas’s distaste was equally apparent. “Let’s head around back and go in from the rear.”

Alex nodded. But catching a glimpse of the small figure standing on the platform, his steps once more began to slow. Instead of turning away, he found himself moving closer. Thomas, a bit confused but rarely surprised by anything Alex did, followed along behind.

“How much am I bid for this sturdy little bit of
baggage?” the auctioneer intoned, proceeding with his singsong money chant. “She’s young yet, as you can see. But she’s comely, bound to be a ripe ’un when she matures.”