LAVENDER BLUE (historical romance)
Page 8
She whirled back to face the sloop and raised her fist against the sky. “You French bastard!” she shouted.
CHAPTER NINE
“Young man, the Cause is deeply indebted to your bravery and your generosity,’’ Colonel Ford said, gravely shaking Jeanette’s hand. “I only regret that your Mexican citizenship prevents you from officially serving the Confederacy. With your ingenuity, you could no doubt win a battle single-handed.”
Praise was rare from John “Rip” Ford, who was no less than a former Texas Ranger, doctor, lawyer, and was now Commander of the Sub-Department of the Rio Grande. Jeanette left his tent that night feeling that his warm words of gratitude were worth all the planning, the hard riding, the sleepless nights of the last five days. Even worth the prostitution of her body. For that was what it really was. She tried not to let herself think about those two debasing times she had given herself to the Frenchman.
She wondered if a man could ever understand the humiliation of being sexually used—of having one’s own body turned into an instrument of betrayal. Perhaps that was why she felt such a sense of achievement in delivering the war materiel to the Alleyton railhead. She had surmounted odds that many a man would have found difficult—the most difficult being the obstacle of subterfuge that she, as a female, had to undergo.
She watched as soldiers, dressed in yellowish gray tunic coats and pantaloons, began to unload from the four burro-drawn wagons the supplies bought with the contraband cotton. Item by item was checked off by a pimply-faced sergeant and then stacked on the Alleyton railroad loading platform.
She knew the exact count of every item. Had she not earned each one? Two thousand British Enfield muskets, fifteen new French artillery pieces with ammunition, forty thousand rounds of small-arms ammunition, whole bushels of gun caps, along with Sharps’ breech-loading carbines and even some unwieldy blunderbusses from God knew where. She calculated that those Enfield rifles that cost twenty-one dollars apiece in England were costing the Confederacy fifty and sixty in Bagdad.
And what had been her price? Costly. The Frenchman had forfeited a goodly sum for an afternoon with her in his bed.
With Felix, who was as large as his father Trinidad was small, and four of Columbia’s faithful campesinos, she began the drive back to Brownsville with the cotton-filled wagons. The ancient Camino Real north from Matamoros was rapidly becoming the Cotton Road. In the moonlight a trail of cotton lint brilliantly marked the deeply grooved wagon route. Though it was the fifth of December, the first frost of the year had yet to come.
Even wearing sturdy leather gloves, Jeanette’s hands were chafed from handling the lines and working the whip. Her back ached from jouncing in the springless wagon, and her voice hurt from shouting vituperations at the burros. And she loved it. She reveled in riding along through the starry night—carrying out a forbidden and dangerous mission. It was exciting and stimulating.
Much more so than remaining home. The inactivity at Columbia was unbearable. Even Cristobal, her one source of amusement, was off again, pursuing another story. She had tried to involve herself in the running of the household, but between Aunt Hermione and Tia Juana the great house was kept in impeccable condition. And lately there had been little need for bookkeeping with the market for Columbia’s citrus fruits and cotton severely limited by the war.
And then, too, there was Jose Carbajal. Because this latest of the revolutionaries to besiege Matamoros roamed about the Rio Grande, she had insisted Trinidad remain at Columbia. The little old man had offered little resistance. Perhaps after twenty-six. years of serving as a surrogate uncle he knew her well enough to know she would do what she wanted anyway. Still, caring for her as he did, the old man felt, like all males, that a woman had her place—her role—in life.
With a bitter taste on her tongue she recalled some of the men in Brownsville who through bribery had either wrangled medical certificates stating they were unfit for military service or who suddenly elected to serve with “home guards” that were far from the battlefront.
Men! The lazy, cowardly Cristobal. The unscrupulous, exploitive Frenchman!
So engrossed was she in her mental damning of the male sex she did not at first notice the two men. Dressed in matted bobtail coats and dirty coonskin caps and sporting long grizzly beards, they moved stealthily out of the shadows of one of the isolated elm motts that dotted the flat landscape. “Hold at it!” ordered the one cradling a rifle with its bayonet pointed directly at her.
In the wagon behind her she heard Juan petitioning the Virgin Mary and all the saints for protection. More and more often bandits were plying their trade along the newly created cotton route, whose traffic was growing daily. Robbery and murder marked the route as well as the cotton lint. She should have brought a rifle or revolver. Hindsight did not help her now.
“Well, well. Will yew lookee at this, Clem,” said the other man, whose walleye seemed to rove in all directions at once so that she did not know to which he was referring—the cotton bales or her. He spit a clump of tobacco. “Wagons full of cotton bales.” He grinned then, showing brown-stained teeth. “I bet yer pockets are loaded, too. Contraband fetches a good price these days, don’t it, Clem?”
“Shut up,” the one with the bayonet commanded. He moved his nag alongside her wagon. “Strip, kid. All yew greasers—strip down.”
Sweat broke out on her palms. The fringed leather jacket she wore against the cool December night suddenly seemed as hot and heavy as a coat of armor. If only it were as protective. She swallowed.
“Do as Clem sez,” the walleyed man said and prodded her shoulder with the tip of his bayonet.
Her blacksnake whip snapped up and left the plaited imprint of its thongs across the man’s face. She had missed! She had aimed for the rifle! He yelped and dropped the rifle, but Clem’s jerked to his shoulder to fire. Oh, God, she did not want to die yet! The blast shattered her eardrums. She blinked and saw Clem slide off his horse like a sack of potatoes.
She whirled to face the other man, but he was already hightailing it for the sunrise as if a posse were on his heels. The riderless horse pounded close behind the bandit.
“Dios, perdóneme,” Felix rasped, begging God’s pardon, and lowered his Mexican pistol.
Spanish expletives and words of gratitude directed to patron saints filled the night, but Jeanette’s ears droned with a faint buzzing. She closed her eyes against the gruesome sight of the blood-spattered man stretched out in the dust beside the wagon. Still, she was unable to prevent the churning of her stomach. She leaned over the wagon and threw up in the dust.
“Señora, you are all right?” asked Pedro, who had lost an arm in a cotton press.
She nodded weakly. When the threatened fainting spell passed, she feebly cracked the whip over the burros.
“Hija! Andale! Vaya!” came the shouts from the Mexican teamsters behind her, anxious to get safely back to Columbia.
But all that Jeanette could think of was the man who had died before her eyes. If Felix had not killed him, she would have tried. It frightened her . . . the violence which she had just realized she was capable.
By the time they reached Columbia’s boundaries, a blinding rainstorm obscured everything but the hundreds of water toads that suddenly appeared. Shivering with cold, Jeanette collapsed into bed for an entire day, secure in the knowledge that even at that moment Trinidad was having the campesinos stack the cotton bales in the already packed church.
Aunt Hermione was beside herself with worry. When Jeanette made her way downstairs that evening, her aunt plied her with hot chamomile tea. “It’s bad enough that you disappear to spend days at a time with your—your—”
“Lover,” Jeanette supplied, holding a handkerchief to her nose to forestall another ghastly sneeze.
“But to walk along the beach with him—in the rain— for all to see.”
“It was raining,” Jeanette mumbled against the handkerchief. “There was no one out walking to see us.”
Jeanette slid a glance at her aunt, who moved her knitting needles fast and furiously. “Have I been indiscreet?” she asked cautiously. “Has anyone mentioned seeing me about—with a man?”
“Why, no. No, dear. But that’s just the point. Why can’t you just marry this man—make it all proper?”
Jeanette stifled a smile. “What if he’s married, Aunt Hermione?”
The old woman gasped. “Oh, no! After all the Sundays I have dragged you to church. You wouldn’t dare commit adultery, Jeanette! Would you?”
She smiled sadly. “No, Aunt Hermione. I daresay this man has not the slightest intention of ever facing an altar.”
“Then why don’t you invite him to the city’s New Year’s Eve ball? Perhaps if he saw what kind of people you come from, your background—perhaps it might put some ideas in his head. Do I know him or his family?”
“No, I don’t think you do. Besides, he wouldn’t come to the ball. He—he doesn’t like to be around a crowd.”
The old woman sniffed disdainfully. “No doubt some Union deserter seeking the safety of the border. I hope you aren’t thinking of marrying someone like that.”
Exasperated, Jeanette set down the cup, sloshing the tea in its saucer. “Can’t you understand that I am not now, nor will I ever be, interested in marrying anyone? And, if I recall correctly, several months ago you were very interested in marrying me off to a man who never even had the courage to fight in the war!”
“But Cristobal has good breeding and background,” Aunt Hermione continued, unperturbed by her niece’s outburst. “And I do hope he will be back in town for the ball. His presence adds the perfect touch to a party. Promise me you’ll go to the New Year’s Eve party. Dancing with Cristobal would at least lend some respectability to the evening.”
Jeanette rolled her eyes to the ceiling, giving up on ever communicating with the well-meaning old woman, but agreed to attend the ball. She would have that long to calm down Aunt Hermione’s shocked pride—and talk her out of the idea that marriage with Cristobal would be such a perfect solution.
In the meantime, while she waited for word from the Frenchman, she recruited Trinidad as a shooting instructor. She knew she had been lucky with the bandits. She did not intend to depend on the whim of the gods the next time. Foregoing stays and hoops, much to Aunt Hermione’s displeasure, and wearing only a slatted sunbonnet, she rode down to the abandoned church with Trinidad. Twenty-five years earlier, the monkeylike man had fought at San Jacinto alongside Sam Houston and Deaf Smith for Texas independence, and that afternoon brought his old Navy Colt six-shooters with him.
“Hijole!” he swore as he tossed the empty tequila bottles in the air and she missed each shot. “Did I not tell you thees was no job for a woman?”
“Callate!” she said impatiently. But her impatience was with herself, her lack of skill. “Men weren’t born knowing how to hit a bull’s-eye. Toss another bottle. I’ll hit one yet.” She did, but by that time she had run out of ammunition and daylight and bottles.
Never had the soldiers looked so dashing and so handsome, the women so lovely. The upper story of the market, which was used as an assembly room for public receptions, had been cleared of chairs. Its chandelier blazed with a hundred sparkling candles over the multitude of guests gathered to welcome in the New Year of 1863, which suddenly looked so bright for the Confederacy.
Since there were no telegraphic signals south of New Orleans, the people of Brownsville had only just learned of General Lee’s victory at Fredericksburg, Virginia, nearly three weeks earlier on December 13. As a result of the terrible defeat, General Grant removed General Ambrose Burnside from the command of the Army of the Potomac.
Yet even here in Brownsville, the Confederacy’s southernmost city, not every citizen was loyal to the Cause. Indeed, over a third of Texas was pro-Union. Many, like Jeanette’s father, had emigrated to Brownsville from the North. Others had lived all their lives in the Deep South but were loyal to the Union and had moved to be closer to the border of Mexico, whose President, Juarez, was sympathetic to the Federal Government.
If any of them discovered Jeanette’s furtive activities, her hope of aiding the Confederacy would be endangered. Thus she flirted outrageously and whirled through the waltzes and quadrilles with one soldier after another, praying that no one would ever associate the shallow, slightly promiscuous widow with anything that required substantial thought. Her aunt was right. For all purposes she and the feckless Cristobal appeared to be a perfect match.
As it was, Cristobal did not return in time to illuminate the New Year’s Eve ball with his presence. And neither had the Frenchman returned to Bagdad.
This upset Jeanette far more than Cristobal’s absence upset Aunt Hermione. Almost every day that first month of 1863, Jeanette either sent Trinidad or rode herself to the Bagdad wharves to search among the forests of masts for the Revenge. Although she dreaded seeing the steamer, knowing what its captain would require of her later, she dreaded even more its absence, which meant a costly delay in her gunrunning.
It had been more than three months since his steamer had put out to sea. He should have returned by now. Had the Revenge been captured? Or had he merely decided it was not worth his while to run the Brazos Santiago’s Federal blockade? After all, there were other Confederate ports that would pay dearly for his services.
And Confederate women.
Damn the blackguard to Hell!
CHAPTER TEN
With seeming nonchalance Jeanette leaned against the peeling stucco siding of the wretched cantina that fronted the busy Bagdad harbor. As she huddled in a thick, grimy navy coat, her boy’s disguise protected her from the flotsam and jetsam of humanity that crowded the streets. For more than a week her anxious gaze had constantly scanned the Gulf of Mexico’s horizon for the Revenge. At last, the sloop had put in with the high tide that chilly gray February morning.
Jammed into the coat’s pockets, her hands clenched and unclenched furiously. Impossible! But too obviously true. Lighters moved to and from the Revenge, depositing their cargoes on the shore. As she watched through anger-filmed eyes, the loads of contraband were deposited in two separate areas for the customs officials. At one end of the wharf Solis supervised the loading of war materiel that presumably would go to the same warehouse from which she made her last collection.
But at the other end—God rot the Frenchman in Hell! The contraband being stacked there under the supervision of one of Juarez’s soldiers was not the niceties desired by people deprived by the war—fine silks, foreign coffee, elegant dinnerware. No, the contraband was also war materiel. Arms and ammunition that the Frenchman had declared he would dare risk at only one price—her body! As surely as burros brayed, the Frenchman was not collecting a night in Juarez’s bed as the price for his services.
She had sold herself for naught! She could just have easily paid for the arms and ammunition, the quinine and medical equipment, from the proceeds from the sale of the cotton. She had debased herself—no! The Frenchman had debased her. Her sacrifice for the Cause was reduced to a farce. She was little more than a whore! Oh, how the Frenchman must be laughing at her noble sacrifice! How amusing she must be to him!
Damn him!
Tears of helpless rage blinded her eyes during the stagecoach trip back to Matamoros and the journey from there to the Santa Maria Chapel where she changed back into her camisole and day dress. All that afternoon she paced her bedroom like a restless spirit would wander through a haunted house, knowing there would be no peace for the soul until she was avenged.
Several times the back of her hand came up to wipe away the tears that flooded her eyes. The beauty of the marriage she had shared with Armand was sullied beyond reclamation. No modern-day instrumen
t, no thermometer or scale, could gauge the depth or intensity of her hatred. She abhorred herself only a little less than she did the Frenchman.
And she would tell him so in the most scathing terms and have done with the scoundrel, that scum of the sea, once and for all. She waited impatiently through the rest of the day for him to send word via Alejandro that the supplies—and his invoice—were ready. Word did not come that day, and she had to suffer through one of Aunt Hermione’s poetry-reading parties. Browning, Carlyle, Poe— the literary giants of the day all had their works read. Washington thought the reading tedious, for after each lady had read and taken her seat the bird responded with a “Help!”
“Quoth the Raven, Nevermore,” Jeanette hoped fervently.
She sat in the parlor with a vacuous smile pasted on her face, delivered pretentious praise for writers whose works held little interest for her, and trilled laughter reminiscent of Cristobal’s chortle. But she passed when her time came for a reading, and Aunt Hermione directed a worried frown at her.
Tia Juana was unlacing Jeanette’s stays that night when Aunt Hermione came into the bedroom. Her lantern-jawed face puckered in an uneasy expression as she moved nervously about the bedroom, touching Jeanette’s brushes on the dressing table, fingering the ivory voile curtains at the window. “Is it that man you’ve been seeing, Jeanette?” she asked at last. “Have you two had a lovers’ quarrel?”
Jeanette sliced a glance at Tia Juana. The old Mexican woman wore a guarded expression. Shrugging the dress off her shoulders, she passed it to Tia Juana, commenting airily, “Of course not, Aunt Hermione. I guess I’m just a little tired tonight.”
“You’ve been riding too much, that’s what.” Her aunt peered at her closely. “And look at your complexion. Tanned! Dear Lord, Jeanette, there won’t be a man who’ll look at you if you don’t start protecting your skin. And look at your hands, will you!”