“What would you like me to do?” she asked.
He came to her and touched her shoulder, beaming down at her. “Then you agree. I don’t think you’ll be sorry, Pandora. If you will lie down on the couch, I will call Madame Celeste.”
A moment later, the prune-faced assistant took her place in a chair across the room, her notepad on her lap and pen at the ready.
“Madame Celeste will make notes on my questions and your answers, if that’s agreeable with you, Pandora,” the doctor told her.
She nodded her assent.
“Fine. Then we shall begin.”
Dr. Pinel’s voice was low and quiet—very soothing. He told her to focus on the lamp on his desk, the one with the rainbow-colored shade. He reminded her that she was to retain no conscious memory of anything that transpired during the session.
“Your eyes are growing very heavy, Pandora. You will want to close them soon. You will want to close out the whole world—the noise from the street, the ticking of the clock, everything except the sound of my voice. Slowly, now. Slowly, let your eyes close. That’s very good, my dear.”
Pandora tried at first to fight him, to keep her eyes open. Dr. Pinel’s voice wrapped her in its warmth and security, and soon her heavy lids closed, leaving only the swirling colors of the lamp’s bright shade.
“Now, Pandora, I want you to let your mind travel back in time. The days and months and years will fly backward, like the flipping of pages in a picture book. When you reach the year of the great storm, you will stop.”
She lay very still on the couch, letting her mind drift back. Her body felt very heavy at first, then she experienced a lightness. It seemed as if she had left her being entirely to float through space and time.
“You remember the hurricane, don’t you?”
“Yes, I remember.” Her voice sounded far away to her own ears.
“Tell me about it, Pandora.”
“There’s a strange cast to the sky. Brickdust! A bloody tint as if bricks had been powdered and blown all about. The wind is rising. I can hear the waves pounding on the beach. It’s going to be a terrible blow!”
“And how do you feel?”
“I’m afraid! I want to leave, but I refuse to go alone and the others insist they’ll ride it out.”
Dr. Pinel glanced at Jacob Saenger’s letter. Yes, this all fit. Jacob had written that Pandora tried to warn her parents of a nightmare she’d had a few nights before the storm struck. They regarded her forebodings as childish prattle. They stayed and they died.
“So you will have to remain at Indianola.”
Pandora’s eyes flew open suddenly. She stared blankly into the doctor’s face, seeming to focus on some point beyond the man, beyond the room.
“Indianola?” she said in a strangely accented voice. “I know of no such place.”
Dr. Pinel shifted in his seat. This was outrageous. Had Saenger sent him the wrong information?
“Where are you, then?” he asked quietly. “Tell me the name of the place.”
“We thought it was Campeachy when we came.”
“Mexico?” he asked.
“Yes. But we were wrong. This island was not on the charts. The Indians call it Isla Serpiente.” She smiled, then chuckled softly. “My husband, of course, still calls it Campeachy. He is a stubborn man. He insists that all the other charts are wrong and only he is correct. He will go to his grave insisting that we reached his planned destination, although he knows we did not.”
“Your husband?” Dr. Pinel’s voice boomed in the room. He paused for a moment, collecting himself. Somehow, something had gone wrong. Pandora Sherwood was only ten years old when her parents died. She had no husband. Where was she now?
“Do you know what year it is, Pandora?”
She made no reply.
“Pandora, can you hear me?”
“Are you speaking to me, sir?”
“Yes, of course I am.”
“Then use my name, please.”
The doctor was leaning forward, watching her intently. “What is your name?”
She laughed. “You had better call me Madame Boss as the other men do. My husband is a jealous man. He would fight you if you dared address me by my Christian name, Nicolette.”
“Very well, Madame Boss, can you tell me the year?”
She laughed. “Why, where have you been that you don’t know the date? It’s been three years since the end of the great battle at New Orleans. It’s fall now, the fall of 1818.”
“Doctor!” Madame Celeste gasped. “What have you done?”
He motioned the woman to silence. He had to get his thoughts together before he could go on. Finally, he framed his next question.
“The storm. You were going to tell me about the storm.”
Pandora twisted uneasily on the soft leather couch and her face lost its calm expression. She cradled her arms to her breasts and her head tossed from side to side.
“Oh, please, let’s leave before it’s too late!” she begged. “We can still make it to the mainland. But I’ll go only if you come with me. The baby and I will not be separated from you, darling!”
“What baby?” Dr. Pinel demanded. “Who is your husband? Tell me your child’s name. Madame Boss, can you hear me?”
The woman on the sofa heard none of Dr. Pinel’s frantic questions. She was far away in another time and place, with the rain and wind slashing the island, the water rising steadily, and the ship that might have saved her from the storm now foundering at its anchorage.
Stubbornly, she remained, determined, even if it meant her death, to stay by the side of the man she loved.
Chapter Eight
A sound like cannonfire thundered in the distance out over the Gulf. Disturbed by the noise and by the tension she could feel in her mother’s body, the baby left off suckling and began to cry.
“Oh, sh-h-h, Jeannette,” the ebony-haired woman crooned. “It will be all right. Papa will keep us safe.”
The words trembled on Nicolette’s lips. How she wished she could believe those assurances! Perhaps she had made a mistake in refusing to leave the island. The storm was of uncommon savagery—no coastal gale, but a full-blown West Indian cyclone.
She glanced out the window of the bedroom. Through the blowing sand and hard-driving rain, she could just make out the faint outline of the collection of huts where her husband’s men and their families lived. Shaking her head sadly, she thought how he had warned them to build better, stronger homes like his own—houses that would survive the stormy months of fall. But the band of nearly a thousand displaced men who now called Campeachy home had more adventurous things on their minds. There were Spanish ships to be taken, treasure chests to be plundered, women to be brought home and ravaged as part of the spoils of war.
Nicolette tried not to think of that sordid side of the island’s life. She could do nothing about it, so she tried to put it out of her mind. Here in her own fine home, she was insulated from the ugliness of the village. When she went out, her husband saw to it that she was never alone. If he was unable to accompany her, he sent one of his trusted men to guard her from the others. She had had one narrow escape at the grove, when two men accosted her. If they had not been drunk and argued over which of them would have her first, and if ’Gator-Bait had not run for help, she shuddered to think what might have happened. Her husband had arrived in the nick of time, putting a bullet between the eyes of Thomas Corkland even as he held her to the ground, preparing to violate her. Frenchie McCabe, the other brigand, had dangled from the yardarm of the Pride for nearly a week—until the gulls and terns had done with him—a warning to any others who might take it into their heads to lay a hand on the Boss’s woman.
For a time after that, she had been confined to Maison Rouge, the great scarlet-painted mansion that was her home. Only when she finally agreed to an armed escort, was she once again accorded the freedom of the island.
&
nbsp; She loved this bare sand spit in spite of its reprobate crew, its snakes, its mosquitoes, its multitude of dangers. She loved it, quite simply, because she was here with him!
Now, as the howling wind beat relentlessly at her windows and the water rose at the stone steps of the mansion, she wondered why she—the gently-bred daughter of a fine Creole family—had ever left New Orleans to come to this godforsaken speck of sand. She knew the answer without ever having to think about it. She was here because she loved Jean Laffite with every shred of her being. She had loved him, not from the first moment she saw him, but from the very beginning of creation. She would continue to love him to eternity’s end.
“Darling?” His voice brought her out of her reverie.
“Oh, Jean, you’re back!” She placed the sleeping baby in her crib and ran into his open arms.
He was soaked to the skin, his hair and shirt were plastered with wet sand, and his mouth tasted of salt, but none of that mattered. The feel of his body pressed to hers and the sweetness of his kiss filled her senses.
When he drew away at last, she saw that his green eyes were deeply troubled.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” she whispered.
He shook his head. “The worst I’ve ever seen. The whole island’s flooding. We’ve lost two ships. A dozen men have drowned already. How high the water will rise is anyone’s guess.” Suddenly, he clutched her to him in an embrance of sheer desperation. “Why, in God’s name, didn’t I send you to safety while there was still time?”
She looked up into his eyes, her own wide with fear. But her words were calm and determined. “You could not have made me leave you, darling. You would have had to drag me on board that ship in chains and lock me away like a prisoner.”
“Then, by damn, that’s exactly what I should have done! If anything happens to you and Jeannette…”
“If anything happens, my darling, it will happen to all of us together. Do you think I’d want to live if you were gone?” She was trembling with fear. “What can we do to make sure nothing does happen, Jean?”
“I want you to carry Jeanette up to the attic. The water will flood the first floor any minute now.”
She glanced about at their snug, dry bedroom—the room she loved most in the house. The Turkish rug glowed like a warm jewel beneath her bare feet. A driftwood fire crackled soothingly on the hearth. The bed, with its gilt cornice and crimson drapes looked its most inviting. If they pulled the heavy drapes at the windows, she would hardly know that a storm was in progress. They could make love until it passed.
“But, Jean, we should be perfectly safe upstairs here in the bedroom. I don’t want to leave.”
He shook his head furiously. “There’s no time to argue, darling. When the storm surge comes, the water will rush in so quickly and with such force that this floor could be flooded before you have time to run to the attic stairs. I want you up there now!”
“I’ll do as you say,” she answered submissively. “But it’s so dark and close up there, with only that one tiny window.”
“Another point in our favor. The shacks in the village are beginning to blow apart. Soon the wind will be carrying loose boards like deadly missiles through the air. You could be killed if one smashed through the bedroom window. In the attic you’ll be safe. Hurry now! I want you settled before I leave.”
Icy fingers closed around her heart. “You aren’t going back out there?” she cried. “Jean, that’s madness!”
“I have to, darling. The men and their families need help. I’ll bring as many as I can back here to the house. They can’t stay out in the open. Take the sick and injured and the children up to the attic with you. The rest will have to fend for themselves down here.”
For the next hour, Jean and Nicolette hauled supplies up the attic stairs—food, clothing, blankets, jugs of water and wine. Then they set about carrying furniture from the first floor up to the bedrooms. When they could not jam another chair or table or piece of china into the second story, Laffite ordered his wife to the attic.
“Where’s ’Gator-Bait?” Nicolette asked suddenly.
Laffite glanced about as if he expected to find his wife’s lazy little servant loitering about as usual. “Isn’t he with you?”
“No,” she answered. “He went out shortly before you arrived. He said he’d left Jeannette’s toy chest in the garden and he didn’t want her doll to drown.”
“Goddammit!” Laffite exploded. “That little bastard causes me more trouble than he’s worth. I should have let those Kaintucks feed him to that ’gator and good riddance!”
“Jean, please! He’s only a child.”
He gave an angry snort, then smiled at her in apology. “I’ll see if I can find him for you, darling. You stay in this attic. And, remember, only women and children are allowed in.” He shoved a loaded pistol into her hands. “Use this if you have to. Some of the men aren’t above taking advantage of the worst situation.”
“Oh, Jean, surely they wouldn’t!”
“Well, you know what to do if you have to, darling. Don’t hesitate. Shoot to kill!”
He gave her a quick farewell kiss. His boots, thudding down the stairs, seemed to echo with a hollow sound in her heart. She felt utterly, completely alone—cut off not only from her husband, but from the rest of the human race. She would even have welcomed a fretful cry from Jeannette. Her daughter, once settled in the old sea chest in the attic, was now sleeping soundly. Only the constant howl of the wind and the drumming of rain on the roof broke the lonely silence.
When she heard pounding on the front door, she hurried to the attic stairs, bent on welcoming whoever had come. Perhaps ’Gator-Bait had finally returned. Or it might be the first refugees arriving from the village.
“Come in out of the storm!” she called from the head of the attic stairs. She heard the door slam shut, but no one answered her.
“Gator-Bait! Is that you?”
Still no answer.
She hesitated for a moment, then started more cautiously down the stairs to the first floor. She could hear footsteps, someone sloshing about the flooded living room below. Already the ground floor stood in almost a foot of saltwater.
Edging slowly down the stairs, her heart pounding frantically, she called out, “Who’s there?”
She heard a cabinet slam shut in the pantry, then the watery sound of someone walking back toward the front of the house. Instinctively, her hand slid into the deep pocket of her shirt, closing on the pistol her husband had left her. Her finger gripped the trigger as she saw a man’s boots at the foot of the stairs.
Quickly, she pulled the gun out and aimed. He was coming up. She could see his boot tops and the wet, sandy knees of his canvas britches. She held the pistol with both hands, trembling all over, but ready to squeeze the trigger, if she had to.
“Don’t come another step!” she ordered.
“Ma’am?” said a familiar voice. “Is that you, Madame Boss? It’s me, Frisco. Your husband said I should come keep an eye on things.”
Nicolette went weak all over with relief. Slowly, she lowered the pistol, then slipped it back into her pocket. Frisco. She should have guessed. He was the young man her husband usually assigned as her bodyguard—in his early twenties, red-haired, blue-eyed, and born, he claimed, to the madam of the finest sporting house in all of California. Frisco looked like a mere boy, but according to Laffite, the lad was “mean enough to rip out a man’s gizzard with his bare fingernails.”
“Frisco, you scared the life out of me!” she said. “I’m glad you’re here. I was getting so nervous I was about ready to jump out of my skin.”
He grinned up at her, parting a million freckles with his smile. “Hell, ma’am, you couldn’t be no gladder than I am. I sailed three times ’round the Horn and back, and I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that storm out yonder. I’s tickled plumb pink when the Boss told me to get on up here to the house to see was you and the baby all right
.”
“We’re fine, Frisco. But I’m worried sick about ’Gator-Bait. You haven’t seen him, have you?”
“No, ma’am. You want I should go out and have a look around?”
She hesitated. She hated to send Frisco or anyone out in this weather. “It’s just… He can’t swim!” she cried. “You know I got him from those awful men who were using him as bait to hunt alligators—tying a rope around him and throwing him into the bayou. He’s been terrified of water ever since. Frisco, he’ll drown out there!”
“I’m gone, ma’am! Now don’t you worry none. I’ll find the little bugger and bring home safe and sound.”
Frisco had no more than shut the front door when it flew open again, crashing against the wall. Three half-drowned women came tumbling in, blown by a fierce gust of wind. Nicolette bit her lip as she realized who they were. They were not sailors’ wives, but inmates of the only other structure on the island called a “house.” The women there came from all over, lured by the smell of adventure and gold. Some had followed the Pride from New Orleans, but the vast majority hailed from much more exotic ports—Havana, Lisbon, Naples, Santo Domingo.
“Welcome,” she said solemnly. Her delicate nostrils twitched as she became aware of the odors they brought with them—unwashed flesh, French perfume, and the strong, rancid smell of shark oil, used to repell the island’s dense winged population.
The trio eyed her curiously. They had seen her before, but only from a distance. They seldom strayed far from the house and Madame Boss never ventured near it.
A heavy-bosomed woman with copper-colored skin spoke for them all. “Your man told us we should come here. We ain’t just bargin’ in.”
Nicolette nodded. “I said welcome and you are. This may be the only safe place on the island soon.”
The thin girl with long, blonde hair began to sob. She turned to the woman who had spoken. “Lord, I’m so scared, Tildy! We’re all gonna’ die and go straight to hell!”
Forever, For Love Page 14