Bal Masque (25 page)

Chapter Sixteen:

Surviving a Nightmare

“It doesn’t feel like a regular thunderstorm. It’s not moving. It just hangs there like a threat.” Lucienne watched the sky as she and Dorcas shared the last of Mort Jessup’s catch of the day. The fish was greasy and unseasoned, but it was a meal.

“Mort said it was gonna be a bad one.” Dorcas wiped her fingers on the stained rag across her lap. “Said iffen we had the boat, we’d just hightail it on out of here before this thing hits us.”

Frogs in the bayou were in fine voice. Lucienne barely heard Dorcas above them. The night was deeply black. No blue relieved the darkness. No stars shone through, and the moon couldn’t pierce the mass of clouds sagging above the trees. From time to time a sheet of lightning bounced silently between the cloudbanks. Lucienne stared into the night. The isolation frightened her. She hadn’t seen Mort Jessup in hours, not since he brought the string of fish to the door and thrust it at Dorcas. She guessed he’d come back and taken a portion of the fish once they were cleaned and cooked, but he’d been silent about it. “You suppose that man left us here alone with that storm coming?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Dorcas admitted. “He wants the money Pa promised him for helpin’, so I don’t think he’d go far.” She put the tin plate aside. “It’s gettin’ late. I’m gonna try to get a little sleep before the thunder starts. You comin’ in?”

Lucienne gave the sky another apprehensive look. “I suppose I might as well.”

****

Armand Dupre glared at the man across the table and silently cursed him as a miserable excuse for a human being. Everyone Armand questioned said Jessup must have returned to the bayou, but Price’s gambling reputation had marked a clear path. Armand had wasted precious hours trailing the man through the lowest dives of the Vieux Carré till he forced a confrontation. Price held a coarse mug in both hands and swallowed half the steaming contents.

“You can see how it is, Dupre.” He sounded as if he were making a reasonable argument to an unreasonable man. “Them girls are as good as dead, what with the size of the storm that’s coming out there. I was gonna go after them, Jessup would tell you that. But I cain’t get through, no chance. The girls—just no way to get to ’em. No point in losin’ another life when we cain’t get there nohow. Nobody’s fault, o’ course. Couldn’t have figured on a bad storm, not this time of year.” He took the remains of his whiskey-laced coffee in one gulp, not his first of the evening.

Armand’s voice stayed level and quiet, holding icy rage in check. “No one’s fault, m’sieu? No one can be blamed?”

“Don’t rightly see how.” Price looked out at the black street, where pounding rain turned the lanes to muck. “No one to blame for the Toussaint girl running away. She just took a notion and followed it. Fool thing to do. Cain’t hold yourself responsible for that. And soon as my girl Dorcas found her…” He stopped suddenly, perhaps aware at last of the tightly held wrath boiling just beneath Armand Dupre’s frozen composure. Cringing, he backed away from the rough table, the whine in his voice more pronounced.

“Now, look, Dupre, you cain’t blame me for this thing. I did all I could. I sent Jessup to you, got the girl in where I thought she’d be safe. This storm, it came up too quick, else I’d got back to her. I would have, I tell you.”

“You did all you could?” Armand’s words sliced like a well-honed knife. “You did, indeed. You took everything she had. You abandoned her to the perils of the street. Then when you’d gambled away everything you had, you used her family’s fear for her safety to pry money from me. You did all you could, except the one thing you should have done. Price, you should have brought the girl home.”

“I couldn’t do that. I’m keepin’ clear of René Toussaint. He done me wrong, puttin’ me and my girl out like that. Didn’t figure I owed him a good turn. I best stay out of his way.”

“And it’s best you keep clear of me, as well.” Armand clenched his fists to keep from strangling life out of the man opposite. “Tell me where I can find the Jessup place. I’ll find a way to get to that cabin of his.” He leaned down over the crude table. “You’d better pray to whatever deity you answer to, be it Lady Luck or one of those voodoo spirits, that I get there and the women are safe. Otherwise…” He left the threat unspoken but the menace in his tone was explicit.

“I doan rightly know how to get to the place, but Jessup’s waitin’ out the storm at the Jeune Fille. You can ask, but likely he won’t go with you. You’ll never make it alone, and Jessup’s not going to try it, Dupre. That would just be crazy. It’s swampy backcountry, full of ’gators and snakes, and in this weather we got comin’, you’ll just get yourself killed. I tell you, you’ll never make it.”

Cold anger flooded Armand. He gripped Price’s arm, pinning it to the table, and saw the man wince in pain. “You mean, m’sieu, that
you’d
never make it.” His contemptuous glance took in the greasy deck of cards, the stained mug, and a man sinking into dissolution before him. “I have no trouble believing you couldn’t make it, but fortunately not all men are like you.
Au revoir
.” He turned on his heel and headed into the threatening night.

****

Once more Dorcas gave Lucienne the scanty bed and made a pallet for herself on the floor. The room seemed close, and the air had a metallic smell to it. Lucienne thought the oppressive heat would keep her awake, but late in the night she fell into an uneasy sleep. Her slumber was erratic, tormented by odd dreams and strange night sounds from creatures out in the swamp. Perhaps it was the lumpy mattress, now more like a bag of corncobs than straw, that ended her fretful rest. Or it might have been the troubled feeling that disturbs all living things when a storm hovers in the distance. Something woke her, and no amount of turning or shifting made sleep possible. Lucienne sat up and crept to the splintery bench. Standing on tiptoe she could see out into the fading night, where the swamp grass swayed in an ashen dawn. The sullen, heavy air tightened her throat and increased the edginess rippling through her.

What was she to do? Without the threatening storm, she’d chance running away from this place. Surely some sort of path ran through the twisted trees. She was tempted to try, in spite of the menacing weather. Common sense held her back. She could be lost in the bayou, and no one would ever know what happened to her. Still, if Price’s scheme went as he planned, by tomorrow night she’d return to the place she’d fought to escape, her future as lost as if she’d plunged into the bayou’s seething darkness. She’d be back with Armand Dupre, in spite of all the ways she’d tried to escape him. She saw only one way out of that trap. She could go and live with Grandmère. It was an unsatisfactory solution, but she could see no other.

Papa was furious with her by now, of course, for foiling his plans. He would let her come home, but he’d never let her forget how badly she’d behaved or what scandal she’d brought on the family. He wouldn’t disown her, but he might as well. Social ostracism was worse than death in their tightly bound Creole world. If she had it all to live over again, all those weeks since Christmas, she’d never agree to Papa’s plans, not if he offered her every inducement in Louisiana. It wasn’t fair that all her schemes had fallen short. Now, trapped in a ramshackle cabin, she faced a merciless storm with no way to escape. Her dress was filthy, her hair a ragged mess. She was scared, and sick of feeling helpless. And it was all Armand Dupre’s fault. Or Philippe’s fault. Or Papa’s. Someone was to blame. The belle of Mille Fleur didn’t belong in a place like this. Lucienne felt so sorry for herself that a single tear slipped down her cheek even though there was no one to appreciate her despair.

A brisk shower, spattering her face through the uncovered window, called her back to her immediate dilemma. Lucienne wiped her face on her skirt. The sky, earlier a narrow swirl of dull grey above the trees, now swelled with thunderheads heavy as an apron full of apples. The hard shower continued, drops falling straight and thick, cold in spite of the night’s earlier warmth. Bloated clouds, ominous, dark, thickening above her, didn’t seem to move at all. No sound rose from the misted stream. It was as if the creatures of the bayou had all fallen silent at one time. Lucienne brushed the last droplets from her face and stood back from the window.

“Dorcas? Dorcas, wake up. Something strange is happening out there. It’s too quiet. It’s not normal.”

“Not asleep. Cain’t get to sleep nohow.” Dorcas moved slowly from her pallet. She too seemed disturbed by the sudden silence. “I don’t know what it is, Miss Lucy Ann. I ain’t never seen a storm come up like this.”

“It’s a hurricane.” Lucienne stared into the night. “I know it’s way too early, but that’s what it is. The silent waiting comes first, then the wind. We had one two years ago; it started out feeling just like this.”

The two girls stood side by side, watching as the downpour thickened. Birds began to chatter, softly at first, then louder, till their shrieks and cries filled the pre-dawn air. The sounds grew sharper, piercing the fading darkness, rising and falling like a chorus of wounded demons. Their shrill cacophony saturated the room. Dorcas clapped her hands over her ears. “I cain’t stand that! It scares me worse than the storm.”

Ignoring the noise, Lucienne watched the daylight changing. The strange color verified they were facing something far worse than a thunderstorm. The leaves above them rattled. A low moan replaced the chorus of alarmed creatures as wind began to rise. Terror made Lucienne shudder. The same trembling apprehension that filled the wildlife around her scraped her nerves raw. The sky held a yellow cast, sickly and threatening.

“Dorcas, no matter how early in the year, I know a hurricane when I see it. We’ve got to find some kind of safety. This house will come down around us as soon as the wind hits it.”

“We got no place to go,” Dorcas insisted. “We cain’t go out in the rain, and I don’t know no house or way out of here anyway; I never been here before neither. No choice, we got to stay here.”

Forcing back the wings of fear that beat at her, Lucienne tried to recall earlier hurricanes. She must remember what Papa had them do when high winds threatened. “Then we’ve got to stay far from the outside walls. Let’s get that mattress off the bed and drag it into the other room. We’ll make as much of a barricade as we can.”

The mattress was poor protection at best, Lucienne knew. They’d need something more substantial. She was sure the walls would never stand much of a blow. She looked around the room for something else she could use.

“The bed frame—it’s sturdy.” Lucienne put her back against the peeling logs and inched the heavy bedpost away from the wall. Cut from massive cypress limbs and laced with rope, the rude planks and supports tore at her shoulders as she dragged the bed frame across the floor. “I think we can use this to brace the inside walls. At least it’s something we can get behind.”

Dorcas shoved the opposite post away from the wall and together they turned the heavy frame up on one side. Tugging and panting, they forced it through the door and into the other room. In the corner, where one wall divided the two rooms, the girls tilted the bed frame till it formed a crude barrier between the rough timbers.

“We better find things to brace it, Miss Lucy Ann. Otherwise the wall is likely to blow over and come down right on top of us.”

“Get everything in the house that will move and pile it around the bedposts so they can’t shift. We have to hurry.”

The “everything” they could find seemed hopelessly inadequate. A three-legged stool forced into the space between the bed frame and the floor made the little triangle of security firmer, but Lucienne thought the stool might crumble at any moment. Braced by the bench from the bedroom, the frame seemed less likely to fall. Ruthlessly Dorcas banged the rickety kitchen table against the wall till it broke into pieces, then slid the warped top between the ropes laced around the sides of the bed. She used two of the broken legs to support the splintery stool.

“Look at that! I ain’t never seen the sky that color!” The glaring brightness filled the bayou. Dorcas stared out at the swamp. The light, harsh and brassy, made Lucienne squint against the glare. Even as they watched, the light darkened and the yellow cast of the sky changed to an ugly copper. The clouds, now a solid mass above them, rumbled and pulsed with an ominous throb. The rain struck then, hard and angry. It no longer fell in a long, straight curtain. Now it whipped and lashed in curls. Darker streaks clawed leaves from trees, dashing them against the house. The wind moaned like a wild thing in agony.

“It’s comin’ fast, Miss Lucy Ann. We best get ourselves under cover.” Dorcas pulled at Lucienne, urging her away from the terror rising outside.

Lucienne swallowed hard. “We’ll need water and food if there’s anything to eat. I have that other dress. We can use that for cover, too.” She looked wildly around the barren room for anything they could salvage. A covered pail of water and a dipper sat near the remains of the broken table. Dorcas thrust it behind their makeshift barricade. Lucienne tossed the wrapped bundle she’d brought from the convent into the lean-to. It still held part of a loaf of bread, as well as her other dress and apron. The bread seemed to be the only food to be found. Her shabby grey dress had kept it hidden. Otherwise, Lucienne was sure, one of the men would have devoured it long before.

“We have to get under cover,” Dorcas insisted again. “Listen! The wind is gettin’ worse.”

Lucienne saw a blur, dark and furry, hurled past the window. A moment later a sodden thump smacked the outside wall. She shivered, realizing the wind had claimed a victim, not the first or the last to fall
. Ninette!
Thank goodness she’d left the kitten safely at Mille Fleur! Thinking of the small animals in the path of disaster, she gulped back the bitter wave that flooded her throat. “Yes, I’m coming.”

Dorcas shoved her a step or two. “You’re plumb fixated by that howlin’, Miss Lucy Ann.” The girl urged her toward the barricade. “Duck under here.” Shutting her eyes, Lucienne at last squirmed between the supports and into the dark hollow. The heat was stifling, and she could barely sit in the confined space. She’d always had a secret fear of small, dark spaces where she couldn’t see outside. Lucienne bit down on her lip and forced herself to think. This was no time to give way to schoolgirl fears.