Nicolette, confined to the house by Laffite’s orders, felt even more imprisoned by the steady deluge. When the sun forced its way through the slate-colored clouds on the third day, it set the whole area steaming.
Nicolette and Marie Louise burned bay and juniper berries in every room to try and dispel the fetid vapors from outside. The humidity was so bad that shoes left on the floor overnight were covered with mildew by morning. The women tied vetiver roots into small bundles for every armoire and drawer, trying to dry the air and save their gowns from ruin. But nothing seemed to help.
Marie Louise, Nicolette noticed, moved about like a zombie. She could imagine her thoughts of Pierre, who was still in the Cabildo in spite of the two lawyers’ efforts. If they were this uncomfortable with the heat and dampness in Laffite’s spacious mansion, Pierre must be in total misery, chained in a dark, cramped cell. The rising waters would undoubtedly drive all manner of lowlife in from the flooded streets to share his quarters. Nicolette shuddered at the thought of rats, frogs, and snakes crawling indoors, and decided she would be better off not thinking about such things.
“Chin up, Marie Louise!” Nicolette advised as they worked together changing soured bedclothes. “Pierre will be free soon.”
“Oui, madame,” the woman answered, not meeting Nicolette’s eyes.
“When Jean gets home, I’m sure he’ll bring good news.” Nicolette made another attempt at cheering her companion, but this time Marie Louise didn’t answer.
She gave up. Her words, meant to be encouraging, came out in a tone of voice as hopelessly limp as the starched curtains at the bedroom windows. She hadn’t seen nor heard from Jean since before the rains began. He had left the morning after their dinner party that first night in New Orleans, saying not to worry, that he might be gone a day or so. Nicolette sighed and flopped down on the freshly made bed, staring vacantly at the ceiling. For all she knew, Jean could be sharing Pierre’s cell by now!
Jumping up suddenly, she said to herself, “I can’t wait any longer. I’ll go stark, raving mad!”
The man who had been watching the house for days pulled himself back into the late afternoon shadows of the house across the street when he heard the carriage entrance door of Laffite’s mansion open. He saw Nicolette come to the black wrought iron gate and start to open it. He tensed, ready to act. But then a second woman, an octoroon, appeared.
“No, Madame Boss! You cannot go out into the streets!” he heard her say.
Nicolette tried to pull away from the clutching hands. “I have to find him!” she insisted.
“You’ll find nothing but death about this afternoon,” she said ominously. “There’s a bad feel to the air!”
“What are you talking about?”
“The fever, madame! It has begun already. Now the rains have come and gone. This sickness clinging to the city will infect any who are exposed to it. I cannot let you go!”
“Damn that witch to hell!” the man across the street muttered under his breath when he saw Nicolette hauled forcibly back indoors.
He leaned back against the cool, shaded bricks, his fevered mind playing tricks on him. He thought for a moment that he saw her face at a second-storey window, staring down at him. He wiped his sweating brow with the back of his hand and settled back to wait once more.
“Sooner or later you have to come out,” he muttered.
And it turned out to be sooner than he expected. The argument between the two women ended when Nicolette insisted that she be allowed to go to the cathedral and light candles and say prayers for Jean and Pierre. Marie Louise gave in at last, making Nicolette promise that she would take the highest ground to avoid wetting her feet in the fetid water still standing about, and that she would return within the hour.
Nicolette held a handkerchief soaked in camphor oil before her nose and mouth as she came out into Bourbon Street. She turned into Orleans Street, the city’s widest street, which ran into the back of the cathedral. She hurried her steps. She would do as she had told Marie Louise, but she had other plans besides prayers and candles. The Cabildo stood next to the cathedral. Perhaps she could get some word from the guards on duty. At least she could make sure that only one Laffite brother was in custody.
Her mind and her feet were working at such a clip that she didn’t realize she was being followed. She had an hour or more until twilight. She never thought to worry about being out alone this time of day.
Nicolette came up short and her breath froze in her throat when she spotted black, oily smoke billowing up from the direction of her father’s warehouse.
“Fire!” she choked out, visions of that night in her house on Bourbon Street flashing horror through her brain.
“Only controlled fires in barrels to kill the threat of fever,” a familiar voice said behind her.
“Thank God!” she answered, then gasped when she saw the man approaching her. She tried to flee, but it was too late. He already had a restraining arm about her waist.
“Leave me alone, Diego!” she cried, trying to fight her way out of his grasp. She looked about frantically, but the street was deserted, all the windows and doors closed against the dreaded mists.
“I’ve been very patient, Nicolette,” he said in a shaky voice, hauling her into the alley beside the cathedral. “I thought you’d tire of your role as whore by now and come crawling back to me, begging for forgiveness. I should have known from the start what kind of woman you really are. But you belong to me. If you resist, I’ll just have to persuade you.” He gave a nervous, hacking half-laugh, half-cough.
Nicolette looked at him closely for the first time. He was very ill. She recognized the early symptoms of yellow fever from having helped nurse one of her mother’s cousins once, the jaundiced skin, yellowish eyes, the sweating, the hoarseness.
“Diego, wait! Where are you taking me?”
“Where we can be alone!” he answered as he turned her into a narrow alley at the back of the Cabildo.
“You won’t get away with this. They’ll be out looking for me any minute.”
“Who’ll be looking for you?” He offered her an ugly laugh, followed by a coughing spasm. “That nigger wench? I’ve been watching the house. I know Laffite’s nowhere around.”
Diego took a roundabout route to reach a dilapidated flatboat tied up at the levee. A number of people in the vicinity of the boat saw the two of them together, but these were not the type to meddle in the business of others—vagrants, rivermen, prostitutes, and pimps.
“Please, help me,” Nicolette sobbed when they came close enough to a man in ragged clothes and the turkey feather of a Kaintuck.
“By damn, mister,” he said to Diego with a lecherous squint of his dark eyes, “if you ain’t hired this ‘un for the whole livelong night, I’d sure pride myself in helpin’ her!”
Diego snarled French curses at the riverman, who moved off, not wanting trouble, only a good time with a pretty woman.
Shaking with a chill, Diego used all the strength he could muster to drag Nicolette onboard the filthy boat and tie her inside the canvas-walled cabin. He started to gag her as well, but she talked him out of it. Having secured her to his satisfaction, he fell back on a dirty pallet, breathing heavily.
“Diego, why are you doing this?”
He didn’t answer. His eyes were closed. Nicolette wondered if he had lost consciousness. His heavy breathing and the shrieks of prostitutes and curses from their customers in the neighboring flatboat-brothels seemed the only sounds in the gathering dusk. She kept very quiet, hoping that Diego would not rouse. Given time enough, Laffite would find her or she would think of a plan of escape.
He came awake so suddenly, and jumped up, his sweating face close to hers, that Nicolette screamed. In one cruel motion, he slapped her across the mouth and brought his hand down, tearing open her bodice. Nicolette bit her lip so she wouldn’t cry out again.
Diego lit a lamp and brought it close to her face, staring at her bare breasts and tr
acing fine blue lines which extended out from her nipples. She sucked in her breath at the touch of his fingers—so light, yet so threatening.
“What’s this? These marks weren’t here before!” He examined her more closely. “And you’re bigger!” He looked up into her face, a suspicious grimace beginning on his own. “Are you carrying his child?”
Nicolette shook her head vigorously. “No, of course not, Diego! What would make you think that?”
He slapped her again and raged, “Don’t lie to me! I’ve seen the changes in a woman’s body once she’s conceived! I know you’re pregnant. You shameless whore!”
Nicolette’s heart was pounding. How could he have guessed from so little evidence? Even Jean hadn’t noticed. But then he didn’t see the gradual changes in her body yet. He saw her naked nightly.
Diego sat back on his heels, mumbling to himself. “Now I can’t do it… not with her this way. It would make me sick to my stomach!” He turned on her again, yelling, “How dare you have his child!”
“It could be yours,” she lied, desperate now to protect the tiny thing forming within her. She knew full well that Laffite was the father.
A slow, vicious smile curved his yellowish lips. “No. It couldn’t be mine. Jada complained to me the very day she died about having to wash your bloodied things. But I have a new plan. You’ll like this one better.”
“What was your old one?” she asked, trying to keep him talking, hoping he would pass out from the fever.
“Oh, a bit of sport. I thought I’d have my fill of you and then hire you out for as long as you lasted. This is my boat, you see. I kicked the women off who were using it. They didn’t pay their rent on time. So now I need a replacement. Since you’ve had so much experience, I thought you ought to bring in a lot of trade.”
“Weren’t you afraid I’d tell the customers to bring Jean Laffite to rescue me?” she asked, trying to make her voice sound calm, though horror gripped her.
“Not at all! Most of the men who frequent the girls on the boats could care less about saving anyone but themselves. And they like to play rough, too. You would be out of your wits in a few days—if you lived that long.”
Nicolette shivered. This insane beast was the man the Church recognized as her husband.
“But that plan won’t work now!”
“Why not?” she forced out, tasting bile in her throat.
“Because the thought of taking a pregnant woman makes me sick. I’ve never touched one of my women after she got caught. It’s the most disgusting thing I can think of! Pregnant women shouldn’t even be allowed to show themselves in public. They should be punished severely, if they do. If they can’t stay locked in their rooms, they should be locked in the stocks!” A queer look came over his face as he raved on and on.
“I’m sorry if I disgust you, Diego,” she said meekly. “Untie me and I’ll be gone from your sight in a moment.”
He threw back his head and laughed until she hoped the awful noise might draw outside attention and bring about her rescue.
“Oh, no, my dear!” he drawled. “I have a much better idea than my first.” He fumbled in his vest pocket and drew out a key. “Do you know what this opens?”
Nicolette, remembering his penchant for handcuffing her, could not find her voice. She shook her head.
“This little key unlocks anything I want unlocked! But at the moment, I have in mind the pillories on Chartres Street.” He offered no further explanation of his intentions.
None was needed to make Nicolette’s insides cramp with terror. How often had she walked a block out of her way to avoid the ugly sight of some poor felon, perhaps guilty of no more than stealing a loaf of bread to keep his children from starving, with his head and arms locked into the wooden stocks, which stood facing the Cabildo. It was a favorite sport among the naughty boys in town to throw rotten vegetables from the market at these unfortunates. A sign always dangled from the prisoner’s neck, telling his name, his crime, and the duration of his punishment.
“Don’t look so stricken,” Diego said. “You’ve been saved! This won’t kill you. I’ve only known one person to die in the stocks and that was from a rock carefully aimed at his temple by a passerby.”
Nicolette steadied her breathing in order to calm herself. Certainly, she reasoned, this couldn’t be as awful a punishment as Diego’s first plans for her. And besides, the pillories were in an exposed area, right on the edge of the Place d’Armes. She would be released in no time. She felt a wave of relief. She was ready to get on with it—to have this all behind her.
“Very well, Diego,” she said. “I see I have no choice.”
His eyes went cold and menacing. “Not in such a hurry.
There are still a few people about. Around midnight we’ll go.”
He stretched out on the pallet again as if he meant to sleep, but sat up suddenly, grinning, his eyes fever-bright, and said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you the best part.” Grabbing a piece of scrap lumber from the firebox and a charred stick, he scratched something on the board then held it up for Nicolette to see. “Here’s the sign for your neck.”
She read: Nicolette Vernet Bermudez—The Pirate Laffite’s Whore
Nicolette made a choking sound, but Bermudez went on, “The other thing is that we can’t have you appearing in public in that torn gown.” He yanked at the ripped bodice, destroying it totally. “So you’ll sit in the pillory naked for all New Orleans to see the tainted flesh of one of their lilies!”
He pulled a dirty blanket around his shoulders and lay down to sleep. Nicolette tried to keep reason in her frantic mind. Surely someone would find her before Diego went through with this insane plan. He was getting visibly weaker. She might be able to overpower him. For two hours she pored over escape plans and struggled, trying to loosen her ropes. But it was no use. Diego Bermudez was an expert with a knot.
“Your time’s come!” he said at length.
Nicolette drew back, whimpering with terror, as he untied her.
Laffite covered the distance from Tremoulet’s Coffee House, where he’d been meeting with Livingston and Grymes, to the house in Bourbon Street with angry strides. Hours and days were slipping away and with them his brother’s strength, perhaps his very life.
Still Claiborne blocked every move they tried to make. Legal obstacles were thrown up at each turn. And there seemed no clear path in sight to Pierre’s freedom.
He slowed as he neared the house, trying to compose himself. Pierre wasn’t his only concern. There was Nikki. The reported fever cases had tripled in the past three days, and God alone knew how many as yet went unreported. She would be in grave danger if they lingered in New Orleans. And not only Nikki, he thought, but the baby as well!
He smiled to himself. How utterly proper of her not to confide in him, to keep her precious secret to herself for as long as she could. But did she think he was a blind man? He would lovingly wring a confession out of her tonight, he decided.
Glancing up at the door, he frowned. The cathedral bells had tolled eleven several minutes ago. Nikki never turned her lamp out until after midnight. Her bedtime habit was to read French poetry and her Bible before she went to sleep. But her room lay in darkness as was the rest of the house except for a small room where Marie Louise slept.
His old premonition of disaster struck like a physical weight. Hurrying through the carriage gate, he charged up the stairs and pounded frantically when he found the door locked. Somewhere deep inside the house he could hear the empty sound of shuffling footsteps over the pounding of his heart. A lamp flickered inside, casting a dull gold glow on the fanlight above the door.
“Who is it, please?” Marie Louise called from inside.
“Laffite, dammit! Open up!”
The door swung wide immediately, revealing Pierre’s mistress, her eyes red from weeping and her face a taut mask of worry.
“Oh, Monsieur Boss, thank Le bon Dieu!” the woman cried. “You have found her, oui?”
/> “Found her? What are you talking about? What’s wrong here?” Laffite demanded, his fears rising to the panic level.
“Madame Nikki, she’s gone!” Marie Louise wept. “She should have been back hours ago. I’ve sent Xavier and Gator-Bait out to search for her, but they haven’t returned either. I have been here all alone for hours—wanting to go out and look for her, but afraid to leave in case news arrived.”
Laffite led the hysterical woman to the salon and poured her a glass of brandy. He had never seen Marie Louise in such a state. She had always been a virtual stoic. Her alarm fed his own.
“Now tell me, calmly, Marie Louise. When did she leave and where was she going?”
The Place d’Armes and Chartres Street lay under several inches of foul-smelling water. In spite of the humid heat of the night, Nicolette shivered, naked, under the torn blanket Diego had draped around her before they left the boat.
An hour earlier, Diego had released her and ordered her to strip off her clothes. He never looked at her until the blanket hid her offensive body from his view. She had cooperated, planning to go along with him until she could get away. She would scream her plight to the world then, at her first opportunity. But Diego Bermudez’s thoughts were a jump ahead of hers even in his feverish state. He gagged her securely before leading her off the boat. Now all she could do—her hands tied and her cries bound up inside her—was struggle along, trying to keep on her feet so she wouldn’t fall in the contaminated water. Several times as she waded through ankle-deep water, she felt things slither against her bare legs. She tried not to think what sort of creature might have touched her.
Diego, she noticed, stumbled from time to time, and he seemed out of his head with fever, rambling on and on with fragments of conversation that meant nothing to her. Again she took heart. He might collapse before they reached the pillories.
Tainted Lilies Page 23