Iron Lace Part 4

"You're going to have a baby?"

"Where are your eyes?"

He let his gaze drop slowly, and he saw what he had missed. Despite her corset-which he knew she wore only for his pleasure-her waist was thicker. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, heavy and ripe, rebelled against the unaccustomed restraint and strained toward freedom.

"When?" he asked.

"In the spring. When the birds fly north."

All the implications ran swiftly through his mind. "A son?"

She lifted her shoulders again, and this time it was not her neck, but her b.r.e.a.s.t.s that he watched in fascination, to see if they would gain the freedom they so longed for.

"Do you want my son, Lucien? If I have your son, what will life hold for him?"

He thought of everything he had to offer. His home, his name, the money and social position that had come to him through his marriage to Claire Friloux, his stature as an officer of Gulf Coast Steamship. All this he had to give, but none of it could he offer Marcelite's child.

"What would you have me give him?" he asked.

"A house better than this one." She gestured behind her, toward the hut where they had spent so many pleasurable hours. "A lugger, so that he can earn his way in the world. Later, perhaps, a place in your business."

A son. Lucien felt his chest grow tight with longing. A son with Angelle's black hair and laughing brown eyes. A son grown strong on salt air and hard work, a son who could never carry his name, but who would carry some essence of him into the next generations. And perhaps, if fate decreed and Antoine Friloux, Claire's father, did not outlive Lucien, a son who might someday inherit part of his estate.

"You'll get your house," Lucien said. He touched her cheek again, but this time his fingertips weren't quite steady. "I promise to send a boat in the spring filled with lumber. Can you find men to build it?"

She nodded. Her eyes softened to the black of a moonlit bayou, her gaze flicked languidly over him. "Can you find a man to live in it with me sometimes, hein? hein? A man to teach my son of the city?" A man to teach my son of the city?"

"Our son and our daughter."

"Maybe we should go inside and see our daughter now?"

He knew that Angelle always napped away the afternoon. They would see a child soundly sleeping, curled in a ball on a mattress stuffed with Spanish moss. From experience, he knew there would be more enticing things to view.

He followed Marcelite, then crossed the room and made the correct sounds of fatherly approval as he gazed at Angelle, asleep under the tied-back folds of a mosquito bar. His daughter lay just as he had imagined, her cottonade dress twisted high above her knees, her cheeks rosy. She clutched the doll he had bought at her birth, well used and loved now, no longer perfect like the dolls in Paris fashions that lined Aurore's room.

Finally he turned and watched Marcelite undress.

Her shirtwaist dropped to the crude wooden bench beside her bed, followed by her homespun skirt. She faced him in garments elaborate enough to suit Claire. He had given her the pink, lace-trimmed corset at the beginning of the summer, and it still looked as new as it had on that June day. Her chemise was snow-white, but the ribbon adorning it showed signs of wear. He told himself he must remember to buy her another.

She lifted her hands and began to uncoil her hair. It fell past her shoulders, past her waist. The airy room was pleasantly cool, but he could feel himself beginning to sweat.

She came to him without a word, holding out her hand for the straw hat he had already removed. He gave it to her and watched as she placed it carefully on the bench. He spread his coat while he waited, and when she returned he lifted his arms just enough so that she could push it off his shoulders.

Skilled and sure of herself, she took her time with the rest of his clothing. His eyelids drifted shut. He could feel the harsh whisper of her hands against his chest and arms, feel the damp breeze sifting through palmetto fronds to tease the beads forming on his forehead. Her hair brushed his face, and he savored the fragrance of the pomade she made from jasmine petals.

"You'll help me undress, too, non? non?"

He opened his eyes as she curved against him, lifting her hair so that he could find the strings of her corset. His fingers were heavy and uncoordinated as he struggled with the hooks. He felt her sigh as the corset came apart, but before she could move away, he cupped her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in his hands and felt them rest heavily against his palms.

"And the lugger for our son?" she asked, arching back against him. "A boat of his own, one he can fish from and sail to the city?"

Her bottom danced in a slow, sensuous rhythm against him, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s swayed in his hands. Lucien groaned. "You'll always have what you need, mon coeur. mon coeur. And so will your children. Always." And so will your children. Always."

She turned slowly, and her legs spread to cradle him. He lifted her and moved toward the bed.

"The lugger?"

"More, if I can give it," he said as he fell with her to the mattress. "Trust me to take care of you. Trust me."

Aurore Le Danois was hiding from her mother. One noise, one breath sucked in too deeply, the whisper of one black stocking rubbing another, and she would give herself away.

As she watched, her mother crossed the room, returning from the gallery where she had rocked unceasingly for the past hour. She pa.s.sed the little table that sheltered Aurore, but she didn't glance her way. At the doorway of her own bedroom, she raised her hand to her forehead and murmured something indistinguishable. Then she disappeared from sight.

Aurore waited, worried still. When she was certain forever had pa.s.sed, she straightened one leg, biting her lip at the cramp that made it nearly impossible. When her mother didn't reappear, she slid back against the wall and stood.

She watched her mother every day, and knew her habits. Now she would sleep restlessly, moaning sometimes, like the wind that bent the trees outside their door. But not until Ti' Boo, Aurore's nursemaid, came back from her daily visit to her uncle's family would anyone think to check on Aurore. She was free, if she dared, to run outside and dance with the wind. She could play under the swiftly gathering storm clouds. And if the lightning came...

She clasped her hands. If the lightning came, she could watch it streak the dark sky and pry open the clouds. Rain would fall again, pure silver rain, as shiny as her bedroom mirror in New Orleans.

The wind beckoned. Leaves spun merrily, and many-hued petals of oleander flew light as angel wings through the air. Across the train tracks that ran in front of her, Aurore could see the empty cottages lining the other side of the clearing, and behind them, lowing mournful music, a small gathering of the sleepy-eyed cows who roamed the island.

The tracks were as empty as the houses. The tourist season was finished at the Krantz Place, and now the mule who pulled the tram car down to the beach twice each summer day was pastured behind the dining hall for a well-deserved rest.

She wished the season hadn't ended. In summer there were other children. Under the watchful eyes of Ti' Boo, she could romp and shout, and no one thought to tell her she must rest. No one remembered she was a frail, big-eyed child who took fever after too much excitement and sometimes couldn't draw a proper breath. In summer she waded in the Gulf, and collected sh.e.l.ls and driftwood. She had learned to crab this year, and to float with her feet toward the waves. Next year, Ti' Boo promised, she would learn to swim.

She wanted to swim. She wanted to swim to the end of the Gulf, to the great water beyond, and never, never stop. She would leap high with the porpoises, and the sharks would not eat her. She was too thin, too pale, to interest sharks. Ti' Boo had told her so at the beginning of the summer, when she was still a little girl and frightened to get wet.

A gust of wind lifted a curl off her neck and plastered it against her cheek. She giggled and held out her arms to embrace her unseen playmate. In a moment she was under the oaks, whirling to the wind's rhythm. She scampered past the dining room. There hadn't been a shout from her cottage or any of the others. In the summer, fifty people would have seen her and asked questions. But now, on the last day of September, not even Mr. Krantz, who was such a large man he seemed to be everywhere, had spotted her.

She wanted to see the waves once more. Her family was leaving for New Orleans on Monday. Last night, her father, Lucien, had come from New Orleans to escort them home. And though they wouldn't go to church tomorrow, because Papa said that the cheniere, cheniere, where the church was located, wasn't a suitable place for his wife and child, her mother would pray in their cottage, and Aurore would be forced to stay inside. where the church was located, wasn't a suitable place for his wife and child, her mother would pray in their cottage, and Aurore would be forced to stay inside.

Aurore knew that her father wouldn't discover her escape. Earlier in the afternoon, she had heard her mother and father arguing. Papa had wanted to go sailing, but Maman had begged him not to. M'sieu Placide Chighizola had warned her of an approaching storm, and she believed him. Hadn't he made her stronger with his herbs and diet? How could she believe he was wrong?

Aurore's father had scoffed, saying M'sieu Chighizola knew nothing. The old man's cures were voodoo, no better than the gris-gris bags carried by the blacks who still believed Marie Laveau, dead though she was, would save them from some imagined curse. His prediction of a storm was nonsense. Couldn't Claire feel the slight chill in the air? Every sailor knew a big storm never followed a cold front.

Aurore had watched her mother grow paler. Her father had grown paler, too. As she continued to plead with him, he had raised a hand, as if to strike her. Then he had turned and stalked away.

Aurore thought her father was the handsomest man in the world, but at that moment his face had been twisted into a horrifying carnival mask. She had seen his lips move under his luxuriant drooping mustache, and she had been afraid of the words he muttered.

Aurore had told Ti' Boo about the angry words. Ti' Boo had said that parents sometimes argued, and that once her mother had chased her father with a broom.

Aurore wished she was as old as Ti' Boo. To be twelve, and able to leave your parents for the summer to work as a nursemaid! True, Ti' Boo had to visit her aunt and uncle each day and submit to their questions, but Ti' Boo's life still seemed like freedom itself.

Someday Aurore would be twelve, too. She tried to imagine it, but she couldn't. To be twelve. To be free!

The waves seemed to call her, with their own promises of freedom. Her mind made up, she started toward the water, following the iron rails. In the distance, she saw the roofs of the bathhouses where she and her mother changed before entering the water. Far to one side there were other bathhouses for the men. Ti' Boo said that the men bathed without clothes, and that was why their houses were so far away. More than once, Aurore had tried to imagine such a thing.

As she reached the dunes and followed the track through them, she saw there were no fishermen today. Against the horizon, several boats with colorful triangular sails rode the angry waves, but no one fished in the surf.

She drew a sharp breath at the majesty of the waves. She was not foolish enough to get close. The waves ate into the sh.o.r.eline hungrily, and they would eat a little girl, too. As she inched forward, the trunk of an ancient cypress, s.n.a.t.c.hed by wind and water from some mysterious swamp, was flung against the sand, then s.n.a.t.c.hed back.

She clasped her hands, as she had on the gallery. Far away, there was a silver flash, beyond the boats, beyond the waves. Light drifted down to the water between black thunderheads, as it did in the pictures of G.o.d's son rising toward heaven. She crossed herself quickly, then clasped her hands again.

"Ro-Ro!"

She whirled at the sound of Ti' Boo's voice. For a moment she hoped she could hide; then she knew it was useless. She could only fling herself into the waves, and she was afraid to do that.

Ti' Boo, her chubby face pink with exertion, came running through the dunes. "Ro-Ro!" She stopped and shook her finger at Aurore.

Aurore tried to look sorry. "I only wanted to see the beach once more, Ti' Boo. I wasn't going to go any closer. Truly."

"You scared me to death. My heart, it's stopped!" She clapped her hand over her chest.

"I didn't think you'd be back. I thought no one-"

"No one knows but me."

Aurore said a quick prayer of thanksgiving. "Don't tell! Please don't tell!"

Ti' Boo flung her arms out dramatically. "The wind, it could carry you away!"

"I was careful." Aurore took advantage of Ti' Boo's open arms to throw herself into them. She wrapped her arms around Ti' Boo's waist. "Don't tell, please?"

Reluctantly Ti' Boo stroked Aurore's long brown curls. "Silly ti' oiseau. ti' oiseau. I won't tell, but if we don't get back quick, someone'll find us here." I won't tell, but if we don't get back quick, someone'll find us here."

Aurore looked up at her friend. She thought Ti' Boo beautiful, with her cheerful round face and her straight black hair braided over her ears. "I don't want to go home. I want to stay here forever."

"Next summer, you come back, and I'll take care of you again."

"I wish you would come to New Orleans."

"Non, my home, it's on the b'you. What would my maman do without me, heh? Her with twelve to feed?" my home, it's on the b'you. What would my maman do without me, heh? Her with twelve to feed?"

Aurore brightened. "I could come with you to Bayou Lafourche. I could help."

Ti' Boo laughed. Aurore could feel the rumble against her ear. "And what would your maman do? Without her ti'oiseau? ti'oiseau?"

Aurore didn't think her mother would mind too much.

"Come on. Le's get back before anyone knows we went."

Aurore took one last look at the waves. She promised them she would be back next summer, too. Then she followed Ti' Boo through the dunes.

CHAPTER FIVE.

Raphael Cantrelle stood high on a sand dune, one hand shading his eyes as he looked out to sea. In the distance there were pirate ships with billowing sails and masts so tall they speared the black clouds and carved a corsair's route to heaven.

They were coming for him.

Raphael felt inside the pocket of his pants. His hand stayed there a moment, savoring the feel of his tiny store of treasure. He had a section of rope, a chunk of bread and smoked fish wrapped and tied in a piece of cloth, a shard of gla.s.s finely polished by the sea, two sh.e.l.ls, and a piece of driftwood shaped like a dagger. The pirates would be proud to have him on board. Jean Laffite himself would beg him to sail on the biggest and finest of the ships.

He would have to say no.

As he watched, the ships disappeared, one by one, until there was nothing left but a clouded stretch of sea and sky and two fishing boats coming into port. He recognized one of the canots, canots, with its red lateen sail and green body. It belonged to the father of etienne Lafont, a boy his age with whom he played when etienne could sneak away from his family. with its red lateen sail and green body. It belonged to the father of etienne Lafont, a boy his age with whom he played when etienne could sneak away from his family.

Next to Juan Rodriguez, etienne was his best friend. etienne wanted to be a pirate, too, but Juan was a pirate. Juan could teach him everything he needed to learn until the day when his mother no longer needed him and Raphael would sail away with Dominique You and Nez Coupe. And if they really were dead, as etienne insisted, then he could sail away with someone else.

He wanted to leave the cheniere. cheniere. He knew of no other place to live, had never even crossed the pa.s.s to Grand Isle. But he knew that somewhere there had to be a village where no woman would call his mother names, where no man would tell his children they couldn't play with him. He knew of no other place to live, had never even crossed the pa.s.s to Grand Isle. But he knew that somewhere there had to be a village where no woman would call his mother names, where no man would tell his children they couldn't play with him.

Only recently he had discovered that he was different from other boys. He was not the only child on the cheniere cheniere without a father. From time to time, the Gulf waters took their toll, and boats washed in to sh.o.r.e, empty and battered by storms. But other fatherless children had families to see to their needs. Uncles and cousins, grandfathers and G.o.dfathers, brought them fish and game, milk and fresh vegetables from their gardens. Their mothers were welcomed into homes all through the village. without a father. From time to time, the Gulf waters took their toll, and boats washed in to sh.o.r.e, empty and battered by storms. But other fatherless children had families to see to their needs. Uncles and cousins, grandfathers and G.o.dfathers, brought them fish and game, milk and fresh vegetables from their gardens. Their mothers were welcomed into homes all through the village.

Raphael had learned from etienne, just last week, that he had a family on the cheniere, cheniere, too, an uncle who was able to provide for Raphael's mother. But no one brought her fish or milk. She mended nets and washed clothes to buy the fish she didn't catch herself. Whatever else she needed, she bought with the coins she received from M'sieu Lucien or with the pretty gifts he gave her, traded to the storekeeper in the village, who sent them to New Orleans to be sold. too, an uncle who was able to provide for Raphael's mother. But no one brought her fish or milk. She mended nets and washed clothes to buy the fish she didn't catch herself. Whatever else she needed, she bought with the coins she received from M'sieu Lucien or with the pretty gifts he gave her, traded to the storekeeper in the village, who sent them to New Orleans to be sold.

etienne had taken Raphael to see his uncle's house. It was one of the finest on the peninsula. Anch.o.r.ed on a slight inland ridge, it rose high above the ground and the other houses surrounding it. etienne had told him that the house was made of bousillage-entre-poteaux, bousillage-entre-poteaux, and that it was so st.u.r.dy it would still be standing on Judgment Day. and that it was so st.u.r.dy it would still be standing on Judgment Day.

Raphael had found his way there half a dozen times since. He had twice seen the man who was his uncle. Auguste Cantrelle was tall, twice as tall as Juan, with a chest as wide as a lugger's sail and curly dark hair like Raphael's own. The second time, Raphael had stepped out of the shadows. Auguste Cantrelle had looked at him; then, with an angry face, he had hurried away.

He hadn't asked his mother about the tall, tall man. Once he had asked her about his father, and she had told him that he had no father, that he had no family other than her and Angelle. After all, they were enough family for anyone, were they not?

Neither had he asked her about the boys who couldn't play with him, the mothers who shielded their children when he pa.s.sed, the bad names they called softly after him. He had seen that some people spoke to his mother and some did not.

Raphael's hand slid into his pocket again, and this time he lifted out the packet of bread and fish. It had been some time since the noon church bell had tolled the Angelus. His belly told him it was time for food, but he didn't want to eat too early. His mother had told him to stay away this afternoon. M'sieu Lucien was coming to visit, so there was no hope of begging more bread from her. He wasn't supposed to go home until the sun was almost to the horizon, and if he disobeyed, he would go to bed hungrier than he was now.

He solved the problem by eating half the contents of the packet, then carefully retying the string and saving the rest of the rations for later. Feeling better, he went to find Juan.

Juan's house was far away, a long trip across the settlement, even though Raphael walked as fast as he could. Juan lived by himself in a house much like Raphael's own, but there were no neighbors to share his marshy land. When the twilight breeze blew from the direction of Juan's house, it always carried mosquitoes with it. He had asked Juan about them, and Juan had said that mosquitoes were kinder than people. Mosquitoes stung once or twice and took what they could, but people, they kept after you until every drop of blood was drained from your body.

Raphael had met the old man one morning outside Picciola's store. Raphael had been waiting in the shade for his mother, chasing chickens to pa.s.s the time, when he noticed Juan coming toward him. The old man had walked like a crab, with swift little steps that veered to one side until he stopped, straightened, then veered to the other.

Juan was small and bent with age, although he carried no cane. Instead of a hat, he'd worn a red scarf, knotted and tied over one ear. No one had spoken to him as he wobbled his way toward the store, but Raphael had seen people move to one side, as if they were determined not to get in his way.

There'd been little reason to worry. Juan had avoided them with even more determination, preferring to stumble into the shade, rather than take a chance on the crowded path. But Juan had misjudged, and his foot had become entangled in the roots of a chinaball tree. He would have fallen if Raphael hadn't sprung forward and braced him until he recovered his balance.

The old man's swarthy skin had flushed with embarra.s.sment, but he'd mumbled a merci. merci. Then he'd reached inside his pants and retrieved a small silver coin, pressing it into an astonished Raphael's hand before he started back toward the store. Then he'd reached inside his pants and retrieved a small silver coin, pressing it into an astonished Raphael's hand before he started back toward the store.

On the way home, Raphael's mother had listened to his story, then taken the coin to keep with her own. In return, she'd told him that Juan Rodriguez was the son of a man who had sailed with Jean Laffite, and that some on the cheniere cheniere believed Juan himself had sailed with pirates, too. Juan's mother had been a bayou girl, and at Juan's birth she had moved to the believed Juan himself had sailed with pirates, too. Juan's mother had been a bayou girl, and at Juan's birth she had moved to the cheniere cheniere to wait, always wait, for her husband to return from his journeys. to wait, always wait, for her husband to return from his journeys.

Raphael knew how hard his mother worked. There was little time for storytelling in her busy life, but on that rare day, with Juan's silver coin jingling happily in her pocket, she had told him about others who lived on the cheniere. cheniere.