“You must try to reconcile, whatever that requires,” Denise said. “You tended Pascal Dupree’s burns after all that he did. Surely you can do what is required for healing in your own marriage.”
“He won’t believe the truth.” At least, not the piece of it she had told him. A sigh shuddered over her lips. “I don’t know if I can fix this.”
“You can’t.” Francoise smiled. “But God can, through you. Ask Him.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
AUGUST 1722
At the market between Decatur and Chartres Streets, Julianne held tightly to Lily’s hand in case she tried to wander off. Wearing a brown silk dress, the little girl tugged first one way and then another, according to whatever caught her eye. The Place d’Armes thronged with activity in the open space surrounding the barracks.
Germans from upriver came with peas, spinach, peppers, and cabbage. Houma and Acolapissa natives brought chickens, maize, and beans. Indian women bore baskets on their backs by leather straps circling their foreheads. Their half-dressed children darted with handfuls of wampum between silk-clad colonists. Choctaw entered the commissary with clutches of Chickasaw scalps and emerged with guns and powder. A fisherman slapped a catfish on a table five feet from where she stood. With opaque eyes, the fish seemed to stare at Julianne while the fisherman cut fillets from either side of its spine and ran his blade along the length of it, separating skin from flesh.
She followed Lily’s gaze to the African families being marched in from the docks and parceled out to French and German farmers. When she had first arrived in New Orleans, most of the population was French. Now French colonists were far outnumbered by the Africans they had snatched from sunny shores and enslaved for the purpose of growing the French empire, in the manner of the British growing theirs. It was overwhelming, even to Julianne.
After weaving their way to a German woman with florid cheeks, Julianne paid fifty sous and carefully laid a dozen eggs into the basket at her hip. “And now,” she said to Lily, “how would you like to spend the day with Madame St. Jean and her grandbaby? Lisette and I have some clients to attend.” Clients who also happened to be tavern girls in need of their yearly examinations. It was no place for a child.
“Oh yes!” Lily clapped her hands. “I’m very good with babies, you know. The ones already born.”
“I understand.” Laughing, they threaded back through the crowd.
Shouts pierced the din of the market. Slowly, people siphoned from the docks and sale stalls and toward the wooden horse. Acid churned Julianne’s gut as she craned her neck. A woman, stripped naked, hair draping her face, was already tied there for all the town to see.
“Let’s hurry.” Julianne picked up her pace and delivered Lily to Francoise before the whipping began.
Lisette was ready to go when they arrived at the inn. Crossing back to the tavern was much easier now that so many people had gone to see the girl on the wooden horse. Summer’s heat became unbearable as it beat upon the shadeless square.
Julianne could not ignore the woman’s heartrending screams. “Here.” She transferred her basket of eggs to Lisette. “Take these to the girls. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
Wariness framed Lisette’s clear blue eyes. “What are you going to do?”
“I can’t do nothing.” She turned back toward the sound.
As she elbowed her way through the circle of onlookers, she could almost feel the leather lash through her skin once more. Was this girl as innocent as she had been? Then the young woman raised her head and locked her desperate gaze on Julianne. Helene, the tavern girl whose loose tongue had exposed Julianne’s brand to Pascal, was now being flogged herself.
Julianne waited for a sense of vindication to wash over her. Sorrow rushed in instead for the devout orphan girl Helene had once been. How very far she’d fallen.
“Stop!” she cried. “Stop at once!” She fought her way up to the soldier who held the whip. “Why, Joseph!” She clutched the arm of the young soldier she had once nursed through a fever. “This isn’t justice, it is base diversion.”
The crowd jeered at her and urged Joseph on, like a swarm of Romans bent on seeing blood spilled for sport. When he paused, another soldier ripped the whip from his hand and laid the lash on the woman’s back again.
Julianne lunged for him, but Joseph caught her, pinning her arms to her sides. “Do not cross him, Madame Girard. Not him. He would have you on the horse next, and I’d not have the strength to stop him.”
Helplessness boiled in her chest. Blood streamed from Helene’s back, and Julianne felt that fire raging across her own flesh all over again. She couldn’t bring herself to watch this torture, but neither could she walk away from it. Helene’s body slumped and slipped off-balance, half hanging from the horse. She’d lost consciousness.
Slowly, Joseph relaxed his grip, and Julianne sprang from his arms. “You’ve done enough. She is scarred for life!”
“Like you are, you mean!” A voice in the crowd assaulted her. “It’s the marked midwife! Watch out, or she’ll shoot you in the dark like she shot Matthieu Hurlot!”
“I’ve heard about you,” sneered the soldier with the whip. “Always wondered if it was true.” In one violent move, he grabbed her sleeve and yanked, popping the seam and ripping the fabric down to expose her brand. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed three brave women rush up to Helene and untie her limp form. Circling the whipmaster, Julianne drew his attention away from it—and unwittingly exposed her mark to the crowd.
“The fleur-de-lys!”
“Didn’t you hear? She’s a murderer sent from the jails of Paris.”
Like a scab torn away, the fresh taunts reopened her wounded reputation. She absorbed the taunts as long as she could while Helene’s friends spirited her to safety. The whipmaster looked over his shoulder at them before turning back to Julianne. Evidently, the whip was reserved only for conscious victims. Like her.
Another voice in the crowd rose up. “Such a pretty face. You’d never know the schemes lurking behind it, would you?”
“Bloody her!”
Julianne’s heart raced. She’d stayed long enough.
The whipmaster lunged for her, leering, just as one of Marc-Paul’s men, Raphael, blocked his path with his towering bulk. “You will not touch Captain Girard’s wife.”
As Raphael and the whipmaster faced off, Joseph took her hand and pulled her away. “Time to go.”
He walked behind her through the crowd but could not protect her from the fist that flew at her from the side. “Get back!” he shouted as she tasted blood. “Where can I take you?”
With a shaking hand, she touched her fingertip to her split lip. “I’m fine, Joseph.” She tried to believe it. “My friend is waiting for me in the tavern.”
A moment later, she was inside the dim building and at Lisette’s side.
“Ma foi,” she whispered. “Your gown!”
“It’s nothing. I can repair it.”
“What’s that?” A tavern girl named Claude pointed to Julianne’s shoulder. Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t touch me.”
“Claude—” Lisette’s soothing voice was cut off.
“No. You can tend me just fine, and the other girls too. We don’t want her here.”
A few other nodding heads confirmed the consensus.
“I’m sorry,” Lisette whispered.
“You needn’t be.” Julianne forced a smile. Lisette had a special rapport with the tavern girls, anyway. She was an orphan at Salpêtrière because her mother had been held there for prostitution when she was born. She must have let these girls know it, because her presence was always welcome. “I’ll just collect Lily and go home.”
“Why don’t you rest a while? I’ll bring her back to you later.”
Blood pulsed in Julianne’s lip as she nodded. It would not suit for her daughter to see her this way.
Once home, Julianne went straight to her chamber to see her swollen lip in the glass
above the washstand.
“The door was unlocked. Didn’t think you’d mind.” Benjamin’s reflection stared back at her over her shoulder.
“Benjamin!” She rounded on him. “Did anyone see you come in? You must be more careful!”
His expression shifted from easy confidence to fury. His eyes were sharp grey slits as he scanned from her injured mouth to her flapping sleeve. “Who did this to you?” Muttering a word he’d never been allowed to say as a child, he circled his thumb over her brand, and she flinched from the heat of his touch. “The mark of the king, indelibly on your skin.” His tone was ice, but his face was flushed well past his normal ruddy hue.
Julianne laid her wrist on his brow, and alarm poured into her. His skin was scalding hot. “You’re ill!”
“Just the fever. It comes and goes.”
“To bed,” she ordered, then saw that he had been lying in it already as he waited for her to return. His gun was propped in the corner of the room with his hatchet and moccasins on the floor beside it. “We need to bring your temperature down. Shirt off.”
“Ah, my sister takes such good care of me.” Benjamin pulled his linen shirt over his head, revealing a pattern of tattoos tracing his chest. They were different from Red Bird’s markings.
“Is this the fever you had at the end of your time at the Choctaw village?”
“Yes.”
So that much of the story, at least, had been true. “How near did it come to claiming your life?”
“Very near.”
And it had returned. Turning back to the washstand, Julianne poured fresh water into the basin, plunged two cloths into the water, and wrung out the excess. Back at Benjamin’s side, she folded one wet cloth and laid it on his forehead. She felt his gaze on her as she used the other cloth to sponge the perspiration from his face, neck, and shoulders. His chest rose and fell with every breath as she swiped the cloth over his tattooed skin.
“So we are both marked, I see.” She tried on a smile.
His eyes blazed, but blankly. He was sinking fast.
“You need cinchona tea. I’ll get it.”
When she returned with the concoction, she held his head and brought the cup to his lips so he could drink.
Benjamin grimaced. “It tastes terrible.”
“You don’t have to like it,” Julianne murmured, taking the empty cup from his trembling hand. “A poultice,” she said at once. “I’ll make a poultice to draw the fever out.”
He grabbed her wrist as she moved to leave. “Stay. Talk to me.”
She lingered at his side. His eyes closed, but he slid his hand down and clasped hers. When was the last time she’d held her brother’s hand?
“Girard is gone again.”
She blinked. “Yes.”
“Where did he go?”
Sighing, she sat on the bed beside him and held his hand in her lap. She doubted he would even remember anything she said right now. “Bienville sent him on a brig to the Riviere de la Madelaine, with food and munitions, soldiers and workmen. Very far west of here.”
Benjamin’s eyelids fluttered. “To do what?”
“They were to travel upstream and establish a fort on the riverbank. That’s all I know.”
“Mmm.” He stilled, then began shivering. “So—so cold. Can we not have a fire to take off the chill? Please.”
A fire. In August. But she slipped from the bed, tucked the counterpane snugly around him, and kindled a small flame in the hearth. Soon his deep breathing told her he’d fallen asleep.
All day he slept, and she was glad of it. After Lisette brought Lily home, and once the little girl was snug in her room for the night, Julianne returned to her chamber to find him still there. As the last light of day hung in the room, she saw in his face the little boy she had grown up mothering, and her heart squeezed.
Her gaze shifted to the gun and hatchet in the corner, stark reminders that he’d grown into a man. Then something triggered inside her. She moved closer and knelt on the floor. His gun wasn’t like Simon’s or Marc-Paul’s. She frowned as she brushed her fingertips over the barrel and stock. Benjamin’s gun wasn’t French.
Her middle flipped. Sitting on her heels, she clasped her trembling hands in her lap and stared at it. Surely there was a reasonable explanation. When he awoke, she would ask him. In the meantime, she climbed onto the chaise in the corner, where Marc-Paul had slept for the first two weeks of their marriage. Her eyelids drooped, and she nestled deeper in the brocade upholstery, wishing it was her husband, and not his chair, who held her.
In the morning, Julianne awoke to find her brother’s things absent from their corner and the counterpane drawn up over the empty bed. Benjamin was gone.
Chapter Twenty-nine
SEPTEMBER 1722
Aside from Vesuvius’s enthusiastic greeting at the door, the house was quiet when Marc-Paul arrived home. Lily was already in bed for the night, and judging from the rose-scented steam wafting into the bedchamber, Julianne was in the bath.
The bed groaned when he sat.
“Marc-Paul?” Julianne’s voice floated to him. “I’ll be right there.”
Was she disappointed that he’d returned? Steeling himself for their reunion, he peeled off his gaiters and shoes, removed his waistcoat, and set his tricorn hat on the bureau. With a glance at the Bible resting there, he uttered a silent prayer for peace as he stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes, for even his marriage had become a battleground over the last several months. Truth and deception warred, and he couldn’t guess which would triumph. But there was only one answer that fit all the riddles in his mind.
Julianne stepped, barefoot, into the room, her damp hair falling in waves over her linen nightdress. As Marc-Paul raised himself up to sit on the edge of the mattress, longing stirred within him. He ached to draw her into his arms and into his bed, to indulge in her fragrant skin, her soft lips—but doubt and suspicion held him back.
She sat on the chaise in the corner of the room. Dust hung between them in the fading light of evening. “How was your mission?” A polite question. Or a probe for intelligence.
Head pounding, Marc-Paul leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and rubbed at the calluses on his palms. “There will be no French fort on the Riviere de la Madelaine.” He sighed. “We met a strong party of natives twenty leagues upstream. I told them we came in peace, that the French were here to be their friends and to bring them the conveniences of life.”
“And?”
“They said no. They told us they were satisfied with their condition and wished to live free and off to themselves, without taking any other nation among them. Bienville will be furious.” He studied her for a moment. “Did you know this would happen?”
A ridge formed between her grey eyes. Eyes the very color of her brother’s. “How would I know such a thing?” She pulled her feet up under her, burrowed further back into the chair.
“The natives were ready for us, Julianne. As if they’d been told of our arrival and had been persuaded against an alliance with France.” He kept his voice calmer than he felt. “They knew about our trouble paying our allies. They didn’t trust us. Meanwhile, Britain’s colonies continue to grow.”
Her eyes grew wide. “Will Louisiana survive?” she whispered.
The stillness that followed was thick and heavy, broken only by a pair of white-winged moths fluttering among the open beams above her head. At length, Marc-Paul quietly added his voice. “I don’t know. We are in danger of extinction in this land, more than Bienville cares to admit. Is that what you want? For the French to cede to the British? Or is it merely what your brother wants?”
Julianne froze, her pulse visible in the hollow of her throat. “My brother?”
Tension banked up in the silence. Blood rushed in his ears as pressure mounted between them, a swelling tide that would not be turned back.
“I found his grave.” Quiet words, but a breaker pounding the surf. “Your brother’s grave. His coffin di
d not come out with the rest during the flood. So I dug it up.”
Julianne reeled back, the color draining from her face. She sat unmoving save for the tears rolling down her cheeks and gathering beneath her chin.
“Why do you cry? It can’t be in mourning for Benjamin. You already know that the coffin I opened was empty, don’t you? How long have you known? How long have you kept this from me?”
Julianne pressed her lips together, her eyes bright with tears.
“Of course, he swore you to secrecy.” Disappointment thickened Marc-Paul’s voice. “No doubt he was none too pleased to find you’ve made me his brother-in-law.”
Pushing herself from the chaise, she crossed the room and stood before him, clasping his hands. “You don’t understand.”
“Then tell me.” He stood as well. “The man who came to you on Lundi Gras—that was Benjamin, wasn’t it?”
She nodded. “It was the first time he came to me. I was so unhappy, so alone, and he—it was like he’d been resurrected from the dead to bring me comfort.”
“So unhappy,” he repeated dully.
“Yes.” Sighing, she released his hands. She brushed her hair over one shoulder and braided it into a loose rope, her fingers trembling. “I was unhappy, for reasons you already know.”
She was lonely, and he couldn’t be with her. She wanted a child, and Marc-Paul wasn’t man enough to give that to her. Yes, he remembered. The breeze that swept through the window failed to cool the shame that singed him even now. He walked to her toilette table. Flipping the lid from the silver box of ornaments, he stirred his finger in it until he found what he was looking for. “All those weeks and months, I thought I was losing you to another man.” He held up the silver combs and recited the inscription that had been burned onto his mind since he first read it. “Devotedly yours.”
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