Louisiana History Collection - Part 1

by Jennifer Blake

  “And what will you do?” Félicité asked.

  The captain smiled. “Who knows? But enough of me. You were going to tell me how you came to be aboard.”

  Félicité had an uncomfortable moment. As she sought for an answer, however, there came from above them the long-drawn-out cry, “Land, ho! Land away to starboard!”

  They swung to see a dark smudge on the horizon, like a low-lying storm cloud tinged with green. Félicité frowned. “What landfall is this? I expected none for days more on this route to France.”

  “France? What can you mean, François Lafargue? Ahead of us is our destination, the only one we have ever had from the moment we left the Mississippi River.”

  “But surely—” she began.

  “I don’t know what you expected, mon petit ami, or where you meant to go, but ahead of you is where the Raven drops anchor, one of the last refuges of those of the black flag, the island of Las Tortugas.”

  12

  LAS TORTUGAS, THE TURTLE ISLANDS. On the same evening of land in the chain, none of any great size. The Raven dropped anchor in the curving shelter of the harbor of the largest. Called Grand Cayman for the Carib word describing the giant iguana lizards that made it their home, it stretched before them, a miniature paradise of waving palm trees, white sand beaches, and blue-green seas, like an emerald in a froth of lace worn on the background of a lady’s turquoise gown. There was a village of sorts near the port, whose inhabitants were mainly British, but if it had a name, none could agree on what it was. From the huddled shacks pelted a stream of children of all ages, colors, and nationalities as the ship was sighted. They swam out to catch bow and stern lines from the lugger, taking the hawsers in and belaying them around the pilings of the rickety pier so that the ship could be winched up to it.

  By the time this feat had been accomplished the wharf and the beach beyond were crowded with calling, laughing women, with vendors selling fresh oranges and limes and hot meat pies, with pitchmen from the taverns and gaming dens, with merchants calling out to the men on the forecastle, asking if they had taken prizes. The sailors at the creaking winches roared out a ribald chantey. Dogs barked, pouring from behind and inside of the tumbledown thatched huts and driftwood-and-canvas-covered hovels. Overhead, gulls whirled with piercing cries and frigate birds swept the blue with triangular black wings. And the gentle trades wafted the smells of decaying fish, rotting fruit, and open sewers upon the warm, somnolent air.

  The instant the gangplank was laid, the crew leaped down it. They were met with open arms and smacking kisses, then towed away, the women who held their arms screaming like fishwives and scratching with talon fingers at any other vulture who tried to take their prey. The men, in varying states of unembarrassed tumescence, clutched at the breasts and hips of the dockside doxies.

  Valcour did not leave the ship at once. Still somewhat weak from his ordeal, he watched the departure of the crew with malicious contempt. Afterward, he approached Félicité, inquiring if she intended to go ashore. He would, he said, see that a hut was constructed for use near the beach, set apart from the others. He was certain she was ready for solid ground beneath her feet.

  Félicité declined. From what she had seen of this tropical port, she thought she preferred the saltwater cleanliness of the lugger. The amusements of the straggling town had no appeal, but perhaps she might promenade the beach in the cool of the afternoon. Possibly Captain Bonhomme would stroll with her if invited. He did not seem anxious for town pleasures either, and if Ashanti went with them, she could always hint that it was the maid who stood in need of an additional escort.

  “As you wish.” Valcour gave her a curt bow and turned away then, but not before Félicité had seen the stabbing look of malevolence he sent in the direction of the maid. Two hours later he was no longer on the vessel and was presumed to have walked into town.

  The captain was accommodating. The three of them strolled along the white-sand shore, listening to the murmuring surf, watching the liquid aquamarine of the waves wash toward them to foam hungrily at their feet, and the packed sand of the waterline glistening pink and lavender with the fading light of the rose-red sun slipping into the cobalt sea. Thatch palms waved their wind-fretted leaves with a dry rattle. Shorebirds played catch-as-catch-can with the flowing tide. Broken wine bottles and breached casks, barrel staves and frayed rope ends, bits of bone and blackened coals littered the beach, while the enormous bleached carapaces of long-dead sea turtles lay half filled with sand like the discarded helmets of an ancient army of colossal warriors on a deserted battlefield.

  “Turtles,” the French captain declared, “are the cause of the piracy in the Indies.”

  “Why so?” Félicité queried, willing to be amused.

  “A few hundred years ago, when the explorer Columbus hove over the horizon, they were so thick in these waters around the islands that they appeared like rocks along the beaches. There were then, and still are, several different kinds, most of gigantic size up to a ton in weight, among them the leatherback, the hawksbill or tortoiseshell turtle, and the green turtle. Great slow and clumsy beasts, they had no enemies except the Indians who lived here. They stayed most of the time in the sea, venturing landward on occasion. Every three months or so, they became greatly amorous, and as a result waded up on the beaches, where the female laid her eggs.”

  “Indians? I don’t remember seeing any among the people who met the ship.”

  “No, you would not, by the mercy of the Spanish. They came two hundred years ago to begin the colonization of the islands of the Greater and Lesser Antilles. They rounded up the Indians, the Carib and Arawak. They saved their souls and put their bodies to use as slaves. Those they did not beat to death they killed with the diseases of Europe that were unknown to the islands until then. But before they did, they discovered the Indian way of catching turtles, using the remora or suckerfish. The fish survives by attaching himself to a host by suction in such a way he cannot be dislodged. If a line is attached to the tail of such a one and he is released again, he will swim at once to a larger fish or turtle, and when he is in place, both remora and host can be hauled in. Another way was to chase down a slow lumbering giant and use either several hands or a prising pole to turn him over onto his back. In that position they are entirely helpless and may be killed at leisure, as much as several weeks later.”

  “But what has that, as interesting as it may be, to do with piracy?”

  “Patience, mon ami, I come to that,” Captain Bonhomme said, smiling. “The Spanish, as you know, were a great success. Every spot on which they set their feet became a gold mine or silver mine, or else a cache of jewels. Spain grew rich and mighty, which made it a threat to the rest of Europe. The result was, as usual, war and more war. Privateers — that is, legal pirates, privately owned ships with letters of marque from their own governments entitling them to attack enemy shipping and keep the spoils — were sent out by the hundreds. When the hostilities were over, there were hundreds of men with no job to be done, men who had had a taste of easy riches. Harrying the plate fleet of the Spanish, wresting the silver and gold bullion, the jewels and ingots, from the dons had become a habit. And then there was the practice of France and England of sending their criminals to the islands, transporting them to be rid of their mischief.”

  “And the, turtles, M’sieu le Capitaine?” Félicité reminded him once again when it seemed he had strayed hopelessly from the subject.

  “Ah, François, you are as persistent of a point as a woman. Have you no interest in the grand story of an epoch that is passing before our eyes?”

  “But of course,” she answered, at once assuming a most serious mien.

  “Yes, I am sure. Very well, the turtles. Privateers and pirates, beating the seas for days for a ship fit for the taking, cannot be forever scurrying back to port. In the damp heat of the tropics, salt pork and beef keep only ill, soon becoming so full of maggots and molds not even an iron-bellied veteran of the galleys will
touch it. The Spanish, and to some extent the French and English, made a practice of putting beef cattle and hogs ashore on the islands to multiply, a great convenience when a ship is beached to repair rigging or scrape off the barnacles, but difficult to keep alive with the proper water and food on shipboard, even if you can keep the stupid beasts from breaking their legs in rough seas. Do you know, by the way, that the word for ‘buccaneer,’ the earliest sort of pirates, comes from their habit of chasing down these wild descendants of tame cows and pigs, cutting the flesh into strips, and drying them in a smoke-filled house? The house, you perceive, was called by the Indians a buccan.”

  He sent her a swift glance, his brown eyes flashing with laughter before he gave a mock sigh. “But the turtles. These beasts could be carried on a ship for weeks without food or water, without any problem at all except for the minor inconvenience of keeping them on their backs. The leatherback turtle is enormous, but unfortunately he dines entirely on shellfish, it being all one to him whether they be dead or alive, and so his meat is inedible. The tortoiseshell is much the same. On the other hand, the green turtle eats only sargossa grass and other green things, and ma foi, never have you tasted so delicious a soup as he makes. And so the well-fed pirate, sustained by turtle meat, palm wine, and cassava beer, can annoy the shipping of the world that sails into the Antilles down the Windward Passage by his front door. He need never return to land until his ship is so low in the water he is like to sink with the weight of his spoils.”

  “You still take on turtles?”

  “Certainement, mon ami. We will load many tomorrow. But as fast as they are being eaten, they will one day be done. And what can a poor buccaneer do then but down sails and let the waves cast him up on land like a beached whale, until the crabs and gulls between them pick his bones and leave him forgotten, bleaching in the sun like the shells of the turtles?”

  Despite the note of bathos with which their walk came to an end, it was necessary after that to taste a soup made with green turtles. Ashanti went down the gangplank to the town market for the ingredients, with Félicité at her side as escort. To find herself striding through the streets with her hand resting on Valcour’s sword, which she had refused to relinquish, was a novel position. More than once she had to shake off clutching hands or shoulder past some determined damsel of the streets.

  The aroma of the stewing turtle, heightened by a dash of herbs and a generous measure of sherry, brought Captain Bonhomme from his cabin. The three of them devoured the succulent dish with chunks of bread also bought in the market, a welcome change from the ship’s fare.

  It was sometime later, in the early hours of the morning, when Félicité was awakened by the sounds of shouts. They seemed to be coming from the captain’s cabin. By the time she had struck a light from the tinderbox, Ashanti had climbed down from the upper bunk. She glided through the door, turning back only as Félicité called her name, asking where she was bound.

  “I go to the captain, mam’selle.”

  “What do you think is the matter? He isn’t — that is, you didn’t—”

  “No, mam’selle,” the maid said with the ghost of a smile. “The captain is a good man, and though he may suspect what you try to hid, I think he will wait for you to reveal yourself.”

  “What is it, then? You cannot go to his cabin this time of night. There may be others there.”

  “I heard only his voice, no one else’s. I saw this night in his eyes the fever coming on. It may be I can help him.”

  Ashanti was right. Brought on perhaps by the chill wet of the storm followed by the heat of the port, the captain’s ever recurring malaria had returned. He lay in his bunk alternating between chills and raging fever. His lips cracked. The look in his eyes grew wild, and he seemed ridden by nightmares of inhuman torture, of scourges, of smoking coal-red brands, and fantasies of a coward’s death, of a man being tied to the muzzle of a cannon and blown to bits. He wanted rum, demanded it, and cursed in the languages of half a dozen countries when he did not get it. Ashanti brewed herb drinks and compelled him by strength of will to drink them. Félicité ordered his cabinboy here and there to see that he was kept clean and dry, and once or twice she sat to spoon broth between his flaccid lips, and think of the hidden pasts of men of the high seas such as the captain, and the charming tales they could concoct to hide the ugliness of reality.

  One night his fever broke. By the next morning he was nearly himself again, though weak. And so the days passed and the tropical sun shone down and the trade winds never ceased to blow.

  It was afternoon. Captain Bonhomme had left the ship to go into town and begin rounding up his men. It was time the Raven took wing, he said. The men had used up their last piastre, and as the rum haze wore off, were getting ugly, fighting among themselves, breaking into houses, raping anything female that walked on two legs. If he didn’t make some kind of move, he would find half his crew hanged.

  Ashanti approached Félicité where she stood at the railing, watching the captain stride briskly toward the center of town.

  “Mam’selle?”

  “Yes, Ashanti?” Félicité turned her head to smile.

  “What are we to do now? If you go out with the ship again, you will surely be found out, and there will be trouble, or else M’sieu Valcour will find a way to separate us.”

  Never in the time they had been in the harbor had Ashanti harked back, reminding Félicité of her warning against this trip, against trusting Valcour. She did not do so now. There was nothing in her tone other than an acceptance of things as they were, and an anxious questioning about the future.

  Félicité sighed. In the endless warm days made temperate by the breezes it seemed impossible to consider that things could change. The timeless sea surrounded them, lapping at the shores as it had through the ages. The sand sparkled like ground crystal, dazzling the eyes, while the shadowed greenness of the underbrush that grew down to the beach promised coolness for an afternoon, an evening, a lifetime of slumber. That the promise was false she knew. Mosquitoes like small demons sent for the punishment of man haunted the tropical glades in clouds, along with five hundred other varieties of insects, all of which stung or bit. And on that brooding island, pitiless sun raised the passions of men and women to such heat that they could destroy. There was no cool and staid protection of laws. Regardless of its look of an Eden, no defenseless lamb could venture there, for those who were not rapacious and hungry lions were tigers or wolves, wolves of the sea.

  “I must confess, I don’t know, Ashanti. It was stupid of me to come with Valcour, to trust him. And I will admit it would be worse still to go farther with him. But what else is there?”

  “I have been thinking, mam’selle. Where there are many men and few women of respectability, there is always a need for food, for dishes that are hot and hearty and filling. We could open an eating house, you and I. You could remain a man for safety, and act as host for our establishment, and perhaps at times as the chef.”

  It was a good idea. Félicité felt the dawning of hope until two major flaws presented themselves. “We have no money to get started, to build a hut or to buy the meat and flour, the vegetables and spices, or the utensils to cook them in. On top of that, Valcour would never leave me behind willingly. He would search the island from shore to shore.”

  “There might be some way we could arrange so that M’sieu Valcour will not know we have left the ship until it is well out to sea. As for the money, perhaps Captain Bonhomme would allow you to borrow it if you ask.”

  The discussion did not end there. They went into it exhaustively, but the conclusion was always the same; they could do nothing without speaking to the captain.

  The sun went down and the swift darkness of these latitudes descended. The glow of lights and sound of hilarity came from the direction of the waterfront town. A few sailors struggled back to the ship, flinging themselves down on their straw pallets that they called donkey’s breakfasts on the open deck.

&nbs
p; Félicité prepared for bed, washing as best she could in a butt of stale water. Ashanti picked up the chamber pot the two of them used in the privacy of their cabin rather than resorting to the head of the ship, preparing to take it topside to empty it over the rail. At the same time, she gathered up the scraps of their evening meal to fling to the gulls. Going out, she closed the door behind her.

  Félicité climbed into her bunk. Lulled by the faint rock of the ship, she closed her eyes, dozing, waiting to let Ashanti in before she locked the door for the night. The maid was taking her own good time about returning. It didn’t matter, of course; she was as entitled as anyone to stargaze. It was a little odd that she had never shown any tendency in that direction before. If was as if she had dedicated her life to serving Félicité at the expense of her own existence. It was disconcerting that it should be so. Félicité had, done nothing to make herself worthy of such a sacrifice, and yet, what could she do to prevent it, especially now? She must be grateful, and vow to see that Ashanti did not go unrewarded.

  An hour passed, and another. Was it possible that Ashanti had found someone to dally with in some dark corner? The idea was so unlikely that Félicité got up from the bunk, pulled on breeches and shirt, and stepped into her shoes. But though she walked the decks looking in every nook and cranny that she dared, even going so far as to descend the gangway and glance into the fetid hole of the forecastle where the crew slept in bad weather, Ashanti was not to be found. Had she gone ashore then on some errand of her own? Had she decided to look further into the possibilities of an eating house, or even a place they might use to conceal themselves from Valcour? Had she seen Captain Bonhomme from a distance, perhaps, and made up her mind to speak to him? Or had she felt the urge to walk along the beach?