Pride of the King, The (53 page)

The Pride of the King dissolved after James St. Clare’s death. Henry Bologne and Samuel Claypool came to visit Lauren on one occasion, but after that she never heard from them again. She suspected that life had become difficult for them after The
Pride of the King
disbanded. She understood entirely. It had become difficult for her too. Isi visited as well, but eventually she was called back to her people on the Mississippi.

Lauren frequently thought of Heloise and Cornelius, Rene and his mother Anne, and those who had given their lives for The Pride. They were all lost to her now, but in their place she had James’ child. As the years passed so did her grief. She devoted her life entirely to Janie and her home on the Hudson where she had found happiness.

One spring afternoon when the river had been open for several weeks, and the trees had sprouted their pale green leaves, Lauren stood on a ladder trying to hook a newly painted sign to the bracket outside of the tavern. Her copper-colored tresses had returned, tumbling down her back, as always an unruly mess. Janie sat under a tree, now three years of age, playing with a corn husk doll Gunnar had fashioned for her.

A donkey cart bumped down the road and Lauren looked up. It was driven by one of the boys from town, and someone shouted from the back seat, “Haven’t you put that sign up yet!”

Lauren climbed down and waved to Mrs. Quill, who was sitting in the back of the wagon her legs dangling. The boy stopped the cart at the steps of the inn and helped Mrs. Quill down, removing her trunk and thumping it up the steps. Stiff and sore from the ride, the matron complained excessively to the young man but pressed a generous tip into his hand.

“How was Albany?” Lauren asked helping the woman to a bench under a maple tree. Mrs. Quill could see the Hudson glisten in the distance, the water open at last, fresh and cold from recently melted ice.

“It was tolerable,” she replied removing her hat. Mrs. Quill ran her eyes over Lauren then the child. “You two look well.”

“So do you,” agreed Lauren.

“It was good to be gone from this brutal place during the winter,” Mrs. Quill commented with a shiver.

“Gunnar looked after us and Polly too.”

“I see you are putting up the new sign,” the woman said nodding.

Lauren held it on her hip and scrutinized it. “Polly is talented at painting. The fluyt is perfect.”

“
The Pride of the King
,” read Mrs. Quill. “It’s a good solid name for an inn.”

“I am glad it lives on,” said Lauren wistfully. She reached over and tousled Janie’s curly auburn hair, set the sign down, then picked up a broom and started to sweep the steps. “Tell me about your stay. Does your cousin enjoy her new home in Albany?”

“She does,” said Mrs. Quill, brushing some dust off her sleeve. “She had other guests who arrived the day before I left. They were tiresome flibbertigibbets, but my cousin was impressed with them. They once owned property up here on the Hudson. The mother and son that is--”

Lauren stopped sweeping and looked up. “Mother and son, do you remember their names?”

Mrs. Quill sighed, “Oh, I don‘t know.”

“Bench? Was it Bench?”

“Why yes, that's it," Mrs. Quill said, frowning. "My Heaven’s do you know those pretentious snobs?”

Lauren dropped her broom and began to laugh. “Why yes I know them, Heloise and Cornelius Bench! Tell me everything,” demanded Lauren, sitting down and grabbing Mrs. Quill's wrinkled hands. “Tell me where they have been, what they have been doing.”

Mrs. Quill blinked several times looking at Lauren, surprised at her enthusiasm. “Well, my, my,” the matron said leaning back. “They said they were in London for several years, then for a short time in the West Indies.”

“The West Indies!” gasped Lauren, shaking her head and smiling.

“They had an enjoyable time there, living with some well-to-do family. My cousin told me in confidence, that the old gentlemen that was with them had been convicted of some crimes here in New York and imprisoned down there in the Indies for several years. He was quite ill. The Benchs brought him back.”

The smile dropped from Lauren’s face.

Mrs. Quill continued, “The man’s health had been bad--”

“Old gentleman,” Lauren interrupted. “There was an old man with them?”

“Yes, a most disagreeable sort, such a gravelly voice. I do believe he was enamored with me,” she said grimacing. "He was constantly asking me questions."

Lauren jumped up, her heart pounding and grabbed Mrs. Quill by the arms. “What was his name?” she demanded.

“What? Well, I don’t remember. Honestly! What is wrong with you?”

“Was it Fitch? Leopold Fitch?”

The matron blinked and replied, “Why, yes. It was.”

Lauren threw her head back and laughed. “Ha! St. Clare survived. Somehow that man always survives!” She began to pace back and forth, shaking her head and laughing.

“Have you lost your mind?” Mrs. Quill barked, but Lauren didn’t hear her.

She dashed up the stairs into the tavern, returning a moment later with a bag stuffed full of clothes. She threw a cloak over her arm and said breathlessly, “What time does the packet return to Albany?”

“At--ah--at half past four,” she said looking at Lauren as if she was daft.

Lauren scooped Janie under her arm and ran down the road, her hair flying in the wind. Over her shoulder she cried, “Tell Polly to take care of the tavern. It may be a while, but when I return, it will be on
The
Pride of the King
!”

About the Author and Excerpt from Amanda’s Latest novel,
The Grand Masquerade

All her life Amanda Hughes has been a Walter Mitty, spending more time in heroic daydreams than the real world. At last she found an outlet writing adventures about audacious women in the 18
th 
Century.

All of her novels are stand-alone works. Her debut novel,
Beyond the Cliffs of Kerry
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004V12JIK
was published in 2002, followed by
The Pride of the King
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0056QJOVE
in 2011
,
The Sword of the Banshee
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BB0NR9E
in 2013 and
The Grand Masquerade
in 2014
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OABX19M
Amanda is a
graduate of the University of Minnesota, and when she isn’t off tilting windmills, she lives and writes in Minnesota. Please visit he
r
www.amandahughesauthor.com
and sign up for the mailing list
http://www.amandahughesauthor.com/contactmailing-list.html

The Grand Masquerade

Natchez Trace, Mississippi 1831

       
Sydnee was worried. Margarite was too drunk to conjure the spirits. She had fallen asleep in the shed with her head on her arms at the table used for divination. Her Madras
tignon
was askew, and she was snoring loudly.

Sydnee looked at the old slave and bit her lip. It was obvious the woman had been drinking for some time because candle wax was running down onto the altar cloth. She would have to set things up for the reading all by herself and do it quickly.

The fourteen-year-old girl looked around the shed frantically. In the corner, she found a burlap bag and took out statues and skulls arranging them on the altar in front of a standing crucifix. Next she ladled water from an earthenware jar into a wooden bowl and then scattered fresh flowers everywhere from a basket, all to prepare for a Hoodoo reading, a blend of Roman Catholicism and Voodoo.

Sydnee Sauveterre looked up. The rain was drumming hard on the shed behind The Devil’s Backbone tavern on the Natchez Trace. Her father had opened the tavern on this heavily traveled, dangerous thoroughfare almost twenty-five years ago. His customers were flatboat men, nicknamed “Kaintucks” who brought goods down the Mississippi River to sell in New Orleans.

Sydnee worked frantically to get ready for the customer who was up at the tavern drinking. Everything had to be set up in proper Hoodoo fashion before Margarite could begin her divination. The most difficult part would be to shake the whiskey from the old woman’s brain. Margarite had been sneaking more and more “white lightning” lately, and Sydnee did not want her father to give the slave another beating.

“Margarite,” Sydnee said, shaking the old woman’s shoulders. “Margarite, Papa will be angry. You must wake up.”

Beads of perspiration broke out on the girl’s forehead. She pushed the damp, brown hair off of her forehead and stepped over to an earthenware jar. She took a ladle of water, pulled back the collar of the slave’s threadbare gown and poured water down her back.

Margarite jerked her head up, slurping her drool. Wiping her mouth with her sleeve, she mumbled an oath in French and looked around with bleary eyes. Her face was lined with wrinkles and ritual scarring from her early days in Martinique.

“We must hurry,” warned Sydnee, placing a chamois bag of cat bones on the table. “The man will be here any minute. Here are the bones for the reading.” The girl reached out and straightened Margarite’s
tignon
.

“
Ma chère,
you tire yourself,” the old woman said, pinching her chin.

Wind chimes by the altar flooded the room with an eerie jingling. They looked up at the decoration made out of old keys swaying in the corner. Margarite murmured in French, “The spirits are here. They will protect me. Now go, child.”

Reluctantly, Sydnee nodded. She cast one more look around the dark room. A crucifix was set out and seven candles were guttering on the white altar cloth. Water was in a bowl ready as a medium for the spirits to enter the room, and floral offerings were strewn for the ancestors.

Sydnee looked up at the chimes. She too felt the presence of the spirits and was comforted by it. The moment she opened the door to leave the shed, several cats raced toward the steps trying to get inside out of the rain. She slammed the door quickly behind her and dashed for the woods. Squatting down in the wet brush, she watched the man enter the shed.

The rain ran down Sydnee’s face and soaked her clothing, but she did not notice. She had grown up in the elements and was accustomed to all kinds of weather. Put to work from the moment she could walk, Sydnee grew slowly. At last, she was the correct height for her age, but she was as thin as a skeleton and as dirty as a street urchin. Her hair had been washed only a few times in her life, and her clothes were nothing more than shreds hanging on thin bones. Quiet and withdrawn, taking to animals rather than people, Sydnee was reclusive and shy. With wispy hair, freckles and high cheek bones, the girl was a mere waif with large, brown eyes.

“The eyes of a doe,” Margarite would say affectionately.

When Sydnee’s mother died giving birth to her, Victor Sauveterre purchased Margarit
e.
It was a convenient arrangement for him in every way. He could use the slave to do the heavy work and satisfy his sexual needs as well.

From the first day Margarite arrived at The Devil’s Backbone, she had been a mother to Sydnee. She fed her, nurtured her, and taught her, but as a slave, their relationship was limited. Sydnee’s father exercised complete authority over the two females and dominated all decision making in the household. He firmly believed women, slave or free born, were his property, and he did not hesitate to punish them with violence if necessary.

The only source of power for the females was through Hoodoo, and Margarite and Sydnee were proficient at it. Margarite learned it as a child in Martinique and carefully schooled Sydnee in the arts from an early age. Victor Sauveterre encouraged the divination because it made him money at the tavern or “stands” as they were called on The Trace.

For years The Devil’s Backbone thrived. The Kaintuck boatmen traveled downriver in flatboats loaded with goods from Nashville to New Orleans. Once unloaded, the men would break up their boats, sell them as lumber and then come north again on foot to drink and carouse in Natchez. After their revelry in the bordellos and taverns of Natchez Under-the-Hill, they would start their four hundred mile overland journey on the Natchez Trace back up to Nashville. Along the wilderness trail, they would patronize stands like The Devil’s Backbone for food, drink and whores. Once in Nashville, they would purchase flat boats and goods and start all over again. The journey was dangerous, and the men were too.

A rush of wind blew into the room as the customer stepped into the shed for his reading. The candle flames blew horizontally, and the wind chimes jangled nervously. The moment Margarite laid eyes on the man, she sobered up.

He stepped into the doorway and stopped for a moment, looking at Margarite with his head lowered. His grey eyes glowered at her under a heavy brow. The stranger was tall and lanky with rounded shoulders and sunken cheeks. He wore a long, threadbare greatcoat with the collar up, and heavy boots. Although he was bald, he had a ring of long, thin hair at the base of his skull.