BLUE BAYOU ~ Book I (historical): Fleur de Lis

by Bonds, Parris Afton

  Her imagination, which she had told Madeleine was quite lacking, now exerted itself incessantly by day and night. Nightmares left dark shadows beneath her eyes. She would awaken in the morning with her pillow wet and not remember weeping. Madeleine told her that she sometimes cried Philippe’s name in the throes of her dreams.

  She longed for him terribly. In the four years of their marriage, they had not spent one night apart. She had to console herself with the knowledge that at least he was incarcerated in the best of prisons. Most of the inmates in the Bastille, imprisoned for debt or some amorous intrigue, had their own cooks and valets, received visitors, and even gave banquets.

  Winter crept along at its interminable pace. Sometimes Madeleine read a problem passage from her writing, but Natalie was always too embarrassed by the lurid descriptions to offer suggestions.

  Her waistline expanded more quickly, so she had to let out her clothing. “If you insist on having this child,” Madeleine declared one afternoon as they walked in the courtyard, “I shall act as your midwife. Why, I was witness to the Dauphin’s birth in the queen’s oval chamber. There didn’t look that much work to the task. The royal bed was covered in crimson for the birth, but when the queen went into labor, she was moved to the smaller bed. All the while, more than two hundred members of the court waited in the antechamber, trying to watch from the doorway. With the windows closed, it was so hot that I thought the queen would faint.”

  Natalie really didn’t want to hear the details, but Madeleine blithely continued on. “Then, when her time came, she was seated in a chair. The midwife squatted before her on a stool. Imagine, ma petite, after the Dauphin was born, the midwife drank some wine and spewed it into the infant’s mouth!”

  The story should have been diverting, but Natalie was reminded of her own plight. Rather than bring the child into a world of horror, she was at the point of asking Madeleine to smother it at birth. Yet, she couldn’t quite take that final step. Something would happen, surely.

  It did ... in the form of Hervé Bertin.

  La Salpêtriére’s governor had decided to relieve the austerity of the courtyard, and apparently his own grim life there, by adding a fountain. Men from La Force Prison were marched in to construct the fountain, the building of which was overseen by a dandified little man whom Natalie took to be the fountain’s designer.

  The guards prodded their pikes at the laboring men as if they were beasts of burden. Maybe they were, but they entered and left La Salpêtriére regularly, something she could not do.

  Hervé Bertin stood out from the other male prisoners. Though only of average height, he was robust, with a barrel-like torso; in comparison, the others were pale and skeletal. The women inmates talked about him, and the male prisoners from LaForce as well, with excitement. Most of the women had been too long without a man, and they flirted openly with the men, casually walking in groups as close to the working site as the guards would allow.

  Natalie, too, watched, but for a different reason. She noted the way the blond man’s massive muscles rippled beneath the too tight tunic as his pick dug away the dirt for the pipes or the way they bunched into knots when he unloaded the heavy carved stones from the wagon onto his behemoth shoulders.

  It was more than just his uncommon strength that intrigued her. The blond Atlas swaggered with confidence. Time and fear had not yet stooped his shoulders or demoralized his spirit. If anyone, he could succeed in helping her to escape.

  But how?

  During the allotted hours of exercise, she observed everything: the routine of the guards, the movements of the male prisoners. Even if she could disguise herself as one, she would never get pass the portcullis, for she knew the men were counted each day before they were marched from the courtyard.

  As the fountain began to take shape, stone by stone, she knew her chances for escape were dwindling. Maybe two—possibly three more days before the fountain would be completed.

  The following afternoon, when Hervé Bertin approached the wagon once again to heft another stone, she noted the tool chest. Almost the size of a coffin.

  “Madeleine,” she said that evening, “I’m going to try to escape the day after tomorrow. Will you help me?”

  “No.”

  Natalie laid aside the threaded needle she plied through a seam she was letting out. “I had thought we were friends.”

  Madeleine continued to write without looking up from her manuscript. “We are. That’s why I won’t help you.”

  Natalie yanked the quill from Madeleine’s grip. “Look at me! I will not let my child come into a world of depravity. But rather than kill it, I would as soon kill myself. Do you understand? I will commit suicide first.” She picked up the sewing scissors and rubbed her fingertip across their points. “It would be easy enough.”

  “Suicide or escape?” Madeleine asked.

  “You will help then?” she said with a hopeful little smile. Madeleine sighed. “Natalie, if your escape fails, you will find yourself interned, this time in La Salpêtriére’s Great Prison. Canaille—the scum of the underworld—inhabit it. Better you commit suicide than find yourself there.”

  “The escape will not fail. I have thought it out.” She proceeded to tell Madeleine her plan, incomplete as it was and dependent too much upon luck.

  The next day, she put the plan into effect. When the hour came for exercise, she placed herself as close as possible to the wagon. When the man called Hervé next approached, she swayed, then collapsed in a feigned faint. At once he was kneeling over her. She slitted her eyes. Up close she saw that his heavy brows slanted down at the other corners like a bloodhound’s. The hazel eyes were perplexed but intelligent enough. Yes, she could trust him.

  She had perhaps five or six seconds before the others arrived. “I will be hidden inside the toolbox tomorrow when the wagon leaves La Salpêtriére,” she whispered quickly. “If you help me escape, I will see to it that you are amply rewarded.”

  Then two guards were pulling him from her, and Madeleine was pushing her way through the crowd of women. “It’s the child she’s carrying,” her friend explained. “Help me get her to her room.”

  “Well?” Madeleine asked when the two of them were alone. “Will he help you?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t have time to answer.”

  “Nom de Dieu!” Madeleine smacked her forehead with the heel of her hand. “I must be crazy to do this.”

  The next day, Natalie watched Hervé, hoping to see some sign of acknowledgment from him, but nothing passed over his bloodhound-like face. Now that the time had come, she was frightened out of her wits. Had Madeleine asked her who ruled France at that moment, she wouldn’t have known the answer.

  Madeleine did ask, “Have you changed your mind?”

  What choice did she have, really? She shook her head, but the negative reply was merely the shaping of her lips. No sound would come forth.

  “All right.” Madeleine sighed. “God go with you, ma petite."

  Natalie hugged the courtesan; it would be the last time she would see Madeleine.

  The older woman sniffed, dabbed her eyes with a lace handkerchief she produced from her ample bosom, then spun around and delivered a mighty slap to the woman nearest her—a comtesse who put on airs and whom Madeleine had never liked, anyway.

  “What—?” The heavily powdered woman staggered back, her hand pressing against her scarlet cheek.

  “Slut!” Madeleine taunted as the other curious women crowded around.

  The comtesse gasped, outraged. Her hand snaked out and yanked a handful of Madeleine’s red curls. The fight was on. It was the first excitement any of the women had experienced since Madeleine’s last book of pornography had been smuggled in, and they leaped into the melee like seasoned gladiators. The male prisoners, along with some of the guards, gathered to laugh and shout and cheer the women on.

  During the fracas, Natalie slipped off and casually made her way to the back of the wagon. When the capta
in of the guards stepped in to break up the fight, she hauled herself up, somewhat clumsily, onto the wagon bed. With pounding heart, she swiftly wedged her body into the cramped tool chest.

  For what seemed like hours, she lay squeezed on her side within the narrow box. The air was stuffy, and her fingers and toes grew cold from lack of movement. But what bothered her most was, as usual, the lack of light. She had the irrepressible urge to throw open the chest lid. Instead, she concentrated on taking shallow, little breaths and imagining herself back at Maison Bellecour.

  Occasional muffled instructions reached her. What would happen when work on the fountain halted for the day and the axes, picks, chisels, and mallets were piled into the tool chest? Had she jumped from the frying pan into the fire? What sheer folly to think she might escape! Beads of perspiration, generated more by fear than heat broke out on her temples and upper lip.

  At last she detected the sounds of the prisoners gathering for the march back to La Force Prison. This would be the moment that would decide whether she got past La Salpêtriére’s gates, the first of many obstacles. Her stomach churned, and she feared she would vomit.

  When she heard the thuds of the implements being tossed onto the wagon bed, her breath congealed. Her heart thudded so loud she thought anyone nearby could hear it. The tool chest’s lid creaked open, and a shaft of sunlight blinded her; then, beneath sloping brows, Hervé’s spangled hazel eyes coalesced within her vision.

  Anyone watching merely saw the barrel-chested man replace the implements in the chest with an inordinate amount of attention and then shut the lid.

  Buried beneath the weight of tools, Natalie let out a long, pent- up breath. The rest of the escape was up to him now.

  § CHAPTER SEVEN §

  The sunlight Natalie craved rarely penetrated the dense Forêt de St. Germain; for that matter, neither did the king’s grenadiers.

  Self-conscious, she sat with her feet tucked under her skirts on the far side of the crackling fire. The cold of the spring night seeped through the fragmented stone walls and partially thatched roof of the abandoned gamekeeper’s hut. She would have drawn closer to the flames but for the ravaged faces of the four motley brigands sitting cross-legged on the other side. Gnawing loudly on chunks of ham and morsels of bread, they slid occasional leers of curiosity her way.

  She shrank back farther against the crumbling wall and willed herself to pick at the hard, dark bread and ash-encrusted ham. For the sake of Philippe’s child, she had to eat. She still found it difficult to believe that she was free. For hours, it seemed, she had lain crammed in the box beneath the heavy tools. With every bounce of the wagon, particles of dirt had sifted over her face. At times, she had felt that if she didn’t get out of the chest— now, immediately!—if she didn’t stretch her cramped limbs, she would begin to scream and never stop.

  She had forced herself to think of other things: of her father, his jolly eyes set in his battle-scarred face, recounting intriguing tales of foreign lands; of Judith, her beloved governess, singing lullabies mixed with delicious stories of trolls and gargoyles; of Poissy’s abbess reprimanding her for substituting the convent’s goat milk for the holy water; and, as always, of Maison Bellecour. Memories of it held the most comfort, for it was the secluded months she had spent there with her beloved Philippe that she cherished the most.

  Then the jouncing of the wagon halted. She tensed. Muffled conversation was followed by thumps, a yelp, and silence. Once again, the tool chest lid was lifted. One by one, the tools atop her was removed. Twilight filtered in, then portions of a face, the blond Atlas. Blood trickled from a battered nose, but the bloodhound’s drooping eyes twinkled. Behind him, peered the cadaverous faces of the prisoners.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “In the quarry.” He had a gravelly voice.

  “The guards?”

  A grin split the lantern jaw, revealing irregular teeth. “Their heads are cracked like eggshells.”

  She struggled to sit up; her hair fell about her face and shoulders in golden snarls powdered with dirt. “I . . . we must hide . . . Claude Fabreville . . . ”

  She had fainted then, and, when she came to, the wagon had been wobbling along through the dark. This time her rescuer had thoughtfully left the lid cracked open.

  Where was he now? Would he return? Or had he deserted her, leaving her with these brigands of the forest? She stole a look at her dinner companions, who had grudgingly given her food in his absence: all nondescript faces of every age, with bleary eyes, shaggy beards, and ragged clothes in common.

  She looked down at the dirt-stained cape she wore, ermine-trimmed and lined with the finest silk, Marchesseau silk. It would buy the food the brigands had no doubt stolen earlier that day a thousand times over. What if they turned on her? An uneasiness rippled through her. Yet, studying the four again, they all looked rather pathetic. Tired, hungry, sad, angry—but not violent.

  A faint noise outside warned her of someone’s approach. She looked up to see her rescuer stoop to enter the hut. Quickly, she came to her feet. “Where . . . ?”

  “I got rid of the wagon and covered its tracks,” he answered, grinning, obviously delighted with his successful prank. He crossed to one of the men and took the ham hock from his hands. The man surrendered his food without protest and turned to dig about inside a burlap sack to remove a hunk of cheese.

  “I am Hervé Bertin,” he said, settling his great hulk near her. “Who are you?”

  She inched away. “Natalie.” She offered no more. “I want to thank you for what you did. I will see—”

  “Oh, no. Not just Natalie.” He grinned again, looking for all the world like a child at a favorite game. “It must be Comtesse Natalie something-or-other. Or Marquise Natalie. Or Duchesse Natalie. You are a pretty lady. Your skin is milk-white; your hands—” He picked one up in his big paw, which was crusted with quarry dust. “You’ve never scrubbed clothes or scoured pans. And you were in that part of the prison kept for the nobility.”

  His lips pronounced the last word in a sullen tone. His fingers, almost as big as sausages, fingered her cape’s ermine trimming, now torn along the hem and no longer white. “You know the attorney general?”

  She stiffened. The other four brigands stopped eating, alert with interest. She glanced from one hardened face to the next and then back to the pleasant Nordic features of her rescuer. He, too, eyed her with interest, but of a different sort. Her fingers clutched the frogs of the cloak; her mind raced. Tell the truth, and she might find herself held for ransom. She knew now that Claude Fabreville would pay a great deal to rid himself of the future Marchesseau heir.

  “I was his mistress; he evoked a lettre de cachet against me when he tired of me. He wants nothing more to do with me.”

  Hervé grunted. He sank his strong teeth into the meat and tore off a chunk. “You spoke the swine’s name with fear,” he said, his mouth full.

  “You mistake disgust for fear.”

  He tossed aside the picked-clean ham bone and tore off a hunk of bread. “You mentioned an ample reward.”

  She shrugged the cloak from her shoulders, and fingers of chilling cold wreathed about her. “The cloak is worth several thousand livres.”

  He shook his head slowly. “Not secondhand.” Petulance pouted his mouth. “I didn’t risk my life for a handful of livres.”

  “You escaped also,” she pointed out, trying to deal logically with the overgrown boy.

  “I had already planned to escape with the finishing of the fountain.” His heavy brows furrowed into one disgruntled line over the swollen nose as he plodded through the problem. “Taking you with me made the escape more dangerous. You slowed me down. The king’s grenadiers mightn’t bother to scour the forest for just a brigand, but they would for a prisoner by royal order.”

  Suddenly, the other four brigands didn’t look too pleased at her presence either. Inspired by desperation, she blurted, “The convent! The Poissy Convent, where I was e
ducated. Some of my belongings are still there, a few clothes, but also some items of value that would make it worth your while to take me there! A gold-inlaid jewelry box, a pearl-encrusted comb. And other baubles I meant to send for one day. Best of all, the sisters will take me off your hands; they will grant me refuge.”

  One of the brigands, who was missing an earlobe, she noted now, wiped his mouth with the back of his arm and said, “It might be a good idea, Hervé.”

  Mollified, Hervé’s face brightened. He slapped his palms on his thighs. “We’ll leave at dawn.”

  For the first time since she and Philippe had been served with the lettre de cachet, she felt real hope. The other brigands curled up where they were, amidst the crumbs of their meals, to sleep. She had never slept without a bed, not even in prison. Besides, she was too wary of the others to let herself sleep and too exhausted to stay awake. She glanced at Hervé. He was still young, full of life—and ready to spend that life’s seed on the nearest available female, if she was any judge, by the hungry look he cast her way as he crawled on all fours toward her.

  They were both about the same age. He seemed an impulsive young man. She knew that if she could reason with him, she could sidetrack him. “Hervé,” she tried to say calmly, coolly, “I need your help, for you are the strongest of us all.”

  He halted in front of her, squatting back on his heels. “I have helped you enough already. It’s time you help me.” At least he had made no move to touch her.

  “I will. When we get to the convent. But I am weak, I am with child.” The blush warmed her face, but she hurried on. “Surely you must have had a little brother or sister. Do you remember when they were babies how you had to be very careful with them? I must be very careful with the baby growing within me.”

  His big face softened. “I wouldn’t hurt you.” He looked down at his massive hands. “I used to steal fish from the seigneur’s stream—for little Paul, my youngest brother.” He looked up at her, and she wilted a little at the misery in his eyes. “Until the seigneur caught me. That stream belonged to God,” he added truculently. “Not to the seigneur.”