The Seven Sapphires of Mardi Gras

by Vickie Britton

  The little Swamp Prince was a parody of the luxurious Josephine on which I had made my journey to New Orleans. No bronze chandeliers, no Brussels carpet here. The boiler rattled and the single deck which held cargo and passengers alike smelled of oil. There seemed to be very few passengers. I hurried up to the railing so that I could wave to Mr. Winters.

  For some reason I had expected him to wait and see me off, but he was nowhere in sight. I felt slightly puzzled, even a little disappointed.

  As I stood watching the few last-minute passengers hurry to board, a strange feeling grew in the pit of my stomach. I missed my mother’s brooch. Whether it was a genuine stone or not, I had no way of knowing. But it had been my mother’s favorite jewel, and that made it precious to me. And now it was lost forever!

  The nagging thought came to me that it was my own fault for taking the brooch off and placing it in my purse. But how could I have known that it would be misplaced—or stolen?

  I thought back to the confusion of the crowd—the children, the beggars, the scarred man who had jostled my arm. Any one of them could have taken my purse. The idea of some pickpocket coming close enough to me to cut the strap of my bag and slip it off my arm gave me a disarming sense of insecurity. I was so grateful to Ian Winters!

  The way he had appeared almost the moment I discovered my loss was certainly a coincidence. I frowned, remembering how I had first noticed him near the steamboat. Again, I found myself wondering what he had been doing there. The person he had been waiting for had never come!

  Later, on the way to the carnival, had he been purposely following me? He might have seen me take off the brooch and put it in my purse. I remembered how he had brushed close by me at the flower stand when he gave me the rose. Could he have cut the strap and slipped the beaded bag from my arm then?

  I recalled my very first impression of Ian Winters. A gambler, my instincts had warned. Despite his helpfulness, his fashionable clothing, and charming manners, there was something about Ian Winters that I just didn’t trust.

  I checked my thoughts, feeling suddenly ashamed of myself. Here I was, entertaining the possibility that Ian Winters had stolen my purse. The same Ian Winters who had bought me a second boat ticket, not to mention the lovely rose. It seemed ungracious, to say the least. If not for him, I might still be stranded in New Orleans.

  Once more, I thought of the unsavory crowd, the frightening voodoo man. The way he had looked at me through the crowd still sent shivers of fear racing up and down my spine. It was as if somehow, in some uncanny way, he had recognized me. But that was impossible!

  Something compelled me to glance down below. Suddenly I saw him again! As if my thoughts had made him materialize, the voodoo man now stood upon the dock, close to where Ian Winters had been.

  His skin was dark and rich, the color of black coffee. The high cheekbones, the shining baldness of his well-formed head gave him the look of a carved mahogany statue. The wind whipped at the voluminous robes, making them flutter against his bony frame. A chill crept deep into my bones as he raised his eyes and looked up at me. It seemed a ghastly smile of recognition lit his face. I tried to move, but my frozen limbs resisted; it was as if he had me under the power of some evil spell. I could only stand motionless, my aching fingers stiff upon the railing as the voodoo man stepped forward to join the other passengers. He was boarding the Swamp Prince.

  Chapter Two

  “You’d better go down below, miss,” the old captain warned as he passed by, the scent of his whiskey breath giving immediate credibility to Mrs. Harrington’s gossip. “It’s going to rain sure as you’re standing there “

  “I will. Thank you.”

  Wary of encountering the voodoo man, I had remained alone at the railing, watching until all traces of New Orleans were swallowed up by the misty gray shoreline.

  I shivered slightly in my long-sleeved dress, now dampened with spray from the river. A glance up at the sky told me that the captain was right. The afternoon sunlight had faded, taking with it the crisp, clear warmth. Clouds, dark and threatening, were gathering overhead. I would have to go down soon and join me others on the passenger deck.

  I took one last look at the unfamiliar world that surrounded me. How haunted, this native land of my mother’s. An ethereal shadow world where there were no crowded streets and restless carriages. Lush foliage mingled with heavy cypress along the water’s edge. Spanish moss draped the graceful tree branches, giving them a somber appearance, like a thousand veiled women in mourning, A droplet of rain fell upon my cheek.

  Steeling my courage, I found the stairway that led to the single deck that held cargo and passengers alike.

  Where was he? My eyes darted about the room, settling upon a dark form in the corner. An old colored woman, head nodding in sleep, sat upon the floor near the warmth of the boiler, a basket of fruit beside her. Beyond the sugar hogsheads and sacks of mail were rows of wooden benches where the rest of the few passengers huddled miserably together. The voodoo man was nowhere in sight, though. I had seen him board the boat. He could hardly have disappeared into thin air!

  Cautiously, I advanced and began to search for a place to sit. I counted only seven passengers on the benches. Nearest to me sat a young woman holding her child. Both were groggy with sleep.

  Three old men, probably veterans, swapped war stories and smoke in the far corner. I moved tentatively toward the two remaining passengers, a pair of elderly ladies dressed in their finest silks and satins.

  “Do join us” invited the first, her brown eyes bright with curiosity as I seated myself beside her.

  “What is your name, dear?” asked the second.

  “Louise. Louise Moreland,” I answered, glancing over to meet another set of probing brown eyes, this pair rimmed with silver spectacles.

  The two must be sisters, I observed, taking note of the resemblance between them—the shiny button eyes, the iron-gray curls peeking out from under sprigged bonnets, the slightly hooked noses. If the one wasn’t wearing spectacles, I would have had difficulty telling them apart.

  Tm Mattie, and this is Madeline,” the woman with the glasses leaned across the other woman’s seat to explain. “We’ve been to New Orleans, visiting the cemetery. Our beloved parents are buried there. We’re sisters, you see.”

  So I had been correct. I remembered Mrs. Harrington’s mention of All Saint’s Day. A time when decent people remembered the dead with flowers and tears.

  “We’re on our way back to Lafitte,” the first lady, the one with the softer voice, volunteered. “Next stop, thank heavens.”

  I felt a slight sense of disappointment. I was hoping that they, too, were going to Iberville.

  “And you?”

  A strange silence filled the air as I told them of my destination.

  “Have you ever been to Iberville?” I asked, curious about their unexpected reaction.

  “Oh, of course!” The reflection of the river glinted off Mattie’s round glasses. She pursed her lips in a way that reminded me of Mrs. Harrington. “But not often. Desolate little place, if you ask me. Swampland. May I ask what takes you there?”

  “My relatives. An uncle, Edward Dereux, and his wife and child live there.” As I spoke, I felt the anxiousness flutter in my heart. My mother’s family!

  My mother had often and always lovingly spoken of her dear brother Edward, her life before the war, and the lovely plantation of Evangeline.

  “Have you heard of a place called Evangeline?”

  Both ladies shook their heads. I wasn’t surprised. The house would be little more than an empty shell now. Edward had warned me that, except for Grandfather’s one futile attempt to restore it, the old family place had lain empty since the war.

  But that would soon change. Though I had not told Edward of my plans, I intended to restore the old family home and live there. To live in the house that my mother had loved so much had become my dream, my obsession. It had been my one ray of hope, the dream that had kept me
sane and filled the empty void that had been my life since Mother’s death.

  Ever since I was a child, we had planned to make the journey together. “Someday Grandfather will forgive us,” Mother had insisted so many times. “Hell realize the war is over. And then he’ll send for us.” Sighing, my pretty mother, with her sad dark eyes and thick coppery hair, would try to explain. “After all, Louise, I knew in my heart that I would lose my family when I chose to marry Jeff. It was a choice that I never regretted, though we had so little time together.” My father, a Yankee soldier, had been killed in the battle of Bull Run shortly after he had taken my mother away from Evangeline.

  Even fifteen years later, on her deathbed, she had not abandoned her stubborn hope. “I always believed that Father would relent—not so much for my sake, but for yours. I wanted so much to take you there, Louise. You would have loved Evangeline—its oak and marble, its elegant rooms, the gardens of wisteria and rose vine. It is our destiny, Louise. Though we may be stranded here in St. Louis, Evangeline is where we belong.”

  Fearing for my mother’s condition, I had penned a letter to her father—my grandfather. Unlike the others, this one had not gone unanswered and the long-awaited letter of forgiveness had finally come.

  Choking down a wave of bitterness, I had forced myself to read the letter from Raymond Dereux. “My gentle, sweet daughter,” he wrote. “ ‘I have made such a terrible mistake. So much time lost between us. Can I ever repair the damage? You must come to Iberville. Please! Do not delay one more day, one more hour.’ ” I had read the words with irony, filled with anger for the man who had forgiven too late. By the time his letter reached me, May Dereux Moreland had been buried a week.

  Grandfather died shortly after my mother. Perhaps he had died of his own grief, his own heartache. With his passing, the family home of Evangeline had become mine. When I received Uncle Edward’s invitation to visit Iberville, I packed my bags at once. I felt that Mother would have wanted me to go there, to be reunited with the family she had lost. She had made me believe that my own destiny, whatever it might be, was linked with Evangeline and her beloved South.

  “Dereux ... The name does have a familiar ring. Doesn’t it, Madeline?”

  “Then maybe you’ve heard of Royal Oaks?” Royal Oaks was Uncle Edward’s place, where I would stay until I could see to restoring the house.

  Again the ladies shook their heads. “The names keep changing. So many of the old places were either destroyed or abandoned during the war. And carpetbaggers have been moving in like vultures. But I’ve heard there are still a few of the old plantations left along the bayou. Royal Oaks might be one of them.” Mattie gave a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry I can’t help you much. Iberville’s just down the river, but it could be in Africa for all we’ve been there.”

  An odd look passed over Madeline’s face. “Iberville’s an out-of-the-way sort of place. Not overly pleasant, if you don’t mind my saying so. Its very location invites hurricanes, and the swamps virtually breed yellow fever.”

  City talk, I thought, trying to laugh off my growing sense of apprehension. Mother’s South had been full of magnolia-scented walks and moonlit nights, not sickness and violent storms.

  “They practice voodoo in the swamps” Madeline said in a hushed tone. “Have you ever heard of Marie Laveau? The Queen of the Voodoos? Well, some say she’s dead, but others swear she lives out there. Some have seen her dancing in the swamps, and they swear that she still looks just like a young girl, even though she’d be over a hundred years old now.”

  “There’s not only witchcraft and voodoo in the swamps, but there are murderers also,” pointed out the more practical Mattie.

  “And ghosts” added Madeline with a little shiver. “They say the ghost of Lafitte the Pirate still haunts the bayou, guarding his hidden treasure.”

  “Oh, be still, Madeline. The girl doesn’t want to hear your prattling about ghosts. Spirits and witchcraft aren’t real—but cold-blooded killers are. Remember that man who killed his wife—”

  “Nevertheless, I feel it’s my duty to warn her about the voodoo people,” Madeline interrupted. “The voodoos have strange powers. It doesn’t pay to get them mad at you.”

  “Oh, don’t talk nonsense, Madeline!” Mattie scolded.

  “I’m serious! There’s no end to the harm they can cause. Why, for no reason at all they’ll make a doll of your likeness and stick pins in it!”

  I almost laughed at the seriousness of her tone. But then a feeling like a cold wind drifted over me. The voodoo man had climbed down the stairs that led out to the railing and entered the room. He had been out there, too! Since I had not seen him, he must have been on the other side of the boat. But what had he been doing out there? Had he been looking for me?

  I scolded myself for being too fanciful. He could not be following me! His boarding the same boat as I had taken from New Orleans was only a strange coincidence.

  Unnoticed by the ladies, he passed behind us, moving silently, motionlessly as an apparition, until I could see only the bare outline of his robes in the shadows near the cargo hold.

  Mattie steered the talk back to the murder—determined to tell her tale. “It was—Let’s see—it Would be close to a year ago now that this young man killed his wife. It had something to do with a fire—”

  “Yes, I remember now!” Madeline broke in, her eyes shining. “They say he started a fire in her room during a masquerade ball. Burned her to death.”

  “And, what’s more, it was their wedding day!” Mattie added with growing outrage.

  A frown creased Madeline’s forehead. “But, Sister, didn’t the courts find him innocent?”

  “They couldn’t find enough evidence to convict him” she admitted reluctantly, “but there’s no doubt in my mind that he was guilty.”

  “But they say he loved her so! How could he have done something like that to his own wife?”

  “It’s simple,” Mattie explained. The poor devil must have gone mad! It was only because he came from such a fine family that they let him go free.” Mattie leaned over her sister to peer into my face. “Louise, dear, are you listening?”

  My attention had wandered. It was not Mattie’s story of some crazed man who may or may not have killed his poor wife that made a cold chill creep into my very bones. I could feel the voodoo man’s penetrating eyes upon my back. “I’m sorry. You say they let him go free?”

  “Yes, though he should have had the hangman’s noose for what he did.”

  “But he was such a nice-looking man. I’ve often wondered if he might have been telling the truth. He could have been innocent.”

  “Nonsense! He was mad. Utterly, stark-raving mad.” Once more, Mattie crowded her sister out. “And now that he’s been freed, I hear he wanders the swamps like a madman. Why, our neighbor’s little maid actually met up with the fellow. She was working in a tiny inn and tavern near Iberville at the time. She said she was walking home late one night when this man grabbed her arm.”

  “Black cloak, red silk scarf. Right away, she knew it was he! You see, he has this distinguishing mark—a tiny black spot in the corner of one eye. There’s some who call it a devil’s mark.”

  “What happened? Did he harm the girl?” I asked.

  “Only if nearly scaring someone to death can be considered harm. The poor child thought she was done for—especially when he peered closely into her eyes and she saw the dark spot. But then the strangest thing happened. Just like that, he released her. Calm as a gentleman discussing the weather he explained that he was sorry, he had taken her for his wife. Imagine! The wife he had killed! It gave her quite a scare. She left Iberville the very next day and came to Lafitte to work for our neighbor lady.”

  “What an unusual story,” I commented.

  “What was his name, Madeline? Do you remember?” Mattie prodded.

  Madeline’s gentle face fell as the detail eluded her. “Why, the last name was some French name. But the first—Yes, I remember
now! Nicholas, they called him. During his trial, the papers called him Mad Nicholas “

  I was about to make some rueful comment when the steamboat whistle suddenly blew. The two ladies began to gather their belongings. “This is our stop, dear,” Madeline said, patting me on the hand. “Good luck to you.”

  With a sense of loneliness, I climbed back out to the railing to watch the two ladies depart. My companions had made the stillness around me less pronounced. Alone, I was plagued with a thousand nagging doubts that their lively gossip had deflected.

  The rain had stopped. I watched the rest of the passengers straggle off the boat. The young woman with the child followed the two ladies, the little boy crying bitterly at being awakened from his sound sleep. I watched wistfully as her family greeted them and hugged them close.

  Again, I thought of Uncle Edward, his new wife, Lydia, and his daughter, Christine. A family I had never met. I could only hope that my own reception would be as warm and loving.

  The three old veterans were the next to leave, followed by the Negro woman with her basket of fruit. I felt the slow pulse of movement beneath my feet, the bumpy turn of the paddlewheel as the boat once again moved away from the shore. Not one passenger had boarded. And the voodoo man—where was he? With a start, I realized I had not seen him leave the boat.

  I felt a chill like the brush of spiderwebs creep up my arms and neck. Even before I turned, I could sense that the voodoo man was behind me. He moved to join me at the railing, where he stood tall and silent as some statue carved in rich mahogany. Fearing him, I had at first thought him ugly, but now I saw a certain magnificence to his proud bearing. But what did he want with me? Why didn’t he leave me alone?

  Almost as if he could read my mind, his piercing eyes slid up and fastened themselves upon my face. I felt suddenly drained of energy.

  He spoke. Fear blocked out the mumbled words, making them barely distinguishable. Something about darkness and a storm.

  “A terrible storm,” he said again. “Spirits—evil spirits.” His voice was strangely soft and thick with some unusual accent. He began to weave slightly to and fro. Was he inebriated? Mad? An eerie chant now issued from his lips. I wanted to turn and run, but I was like some fly caught up in a deadly spider web. Had he bewitched me? My hands and feet refused to obey my commands, so I merely stood watching in silent horror as his eyes rolled heavenward, as if he were falling into some deep trance.