The orchestra played a contradance. Flashes of color in mimic Paris fashions satin-swished among the tailor-sculpted bodies of prominent young Frenchmen. Verandah windows opened to the river and the plaza floated summer breezes draped in jasmine and honeysuckle, magnolia and satsuma blossom.
Along the niche and corresponding plain wood bench sat the quadroon mothers, heads swathed in the required bandana tignons. Fans fluttered nervousness at the sleek, dark, matronly faces. Protective eye-white glances at their griffe – one-sixteenth black – daughters never quite self-satisfied their motherly concern. They were suspicious of the white madame manager of the establishment. The suspicion of young white masters was bred of hard experience.
Shattering the brittle ambiance of the quadroon ball with uproarious laughter and haughty revelry, a Spanish captain strode in livid from his blood-splotched boots to the shock – it was shocking – of bright, red hair. Following was an entourage barely more subdued. It was like a surprise attack that captured her attention; and, in that one moment she first saw him, she committed two indiscretions. She broke off conversatori with an aristocrat who might have solved her life-long worries, and her hand went to her hair boldly in public for a final arrangement.
She was that taken with him. She knew it at once. In that one instant that he fairly kicked his way into the room, imbued with a golden burning strength – vital, vibrant, alive and young – she changed forever. His laughter was like a yellow cloud of mirth that affected the others. As though breathing it one must become as he; a sprite of full, rich living.
One Frenchman whispered to the girl with her, a griffe like her whom she did not know but with whom she had been partnered in the second level of allowing some, but not too much, intimate conversation, "Look at him. A duel … kill a man in the afternoon, celebrate at night."
The young man with him who had only just begun to speak to her then shrugged.
"And if he were the one shot through the heart, could he then celebrate?" he supplied.
She chuckled softly behind her Spanish lace fan, a soft pink blushing her creamy cheek, like ripples widening from a finger lightly dipped into a still, dawn-rose pond. Across the room, the captain saw it. Immediately, he strode to her, his own cheeks afire, kindled by triumph and drink. He flew straight to the mark, took up her hand and kissed it. She blushed, now, all the way to her bare shoulders.
"Mam'selle," he said.
She could not speak. She curtsied, eyes lowered because she was afraid. She was afraid of what she felt when she looked into those blue-hot eyes, and afraid of what she saw there, too. But most of all, she was afraid that he would see all that was in her own eyes.
"I am called Caroline Bassetete, Monsieur," she said softly before lifting her eyes. Then, lifting them, she caught her breath in a gasp so tiny she was sure none other saw, not even him.
"An"ow d'ye knoow to spik the English, lass? An' t'isn't the Irish, noow fer us twoo maties, fer yer as near a colleen that I ever seen, fer awl yer nigger bluid. Let's have the Gaelic, lass."
And he lifted up his arm as though to have the music strike a march. She felt herself blush even deeper then, although she would have thought that impossible, and with her fan hid her face up to the eyes. She did not have to look to know her mother was leaning forward, her own fan a blur of maternal assertion.
"Monsieur, he speaks too … uh … too fast. The tongue, I am just learning."
He took her chin in his hard, smooth hand muscled for the grip of a sword, lifted her face. Indiscretion was his very being. His thumb pulled at her lower lip as though he would examine her teeth. Looking down into her eyes, however, he saw much more. Deep into the rich amber darkness, she was certain he saw the smoldering passionate depths of her own being that she herself had just moments before discovered.
"It's five hundred reales I'll wager that you've already mastered the tongue," he said suggestively. Then he let her go. She was grateful for the white madame. She was afraid that her mother might come onto the floor.
"Mam'selle Bassetete, you have the honor of addressing Captain Jaime ...."
"James," he corrected, "after the king." He clicked his heels with a short, impudent bow so that she curtsied again swiftly, almost a genuflection. "Captain James O'Doyle," the madame continued, "of the Royal Spanish .... "
"Captain of Horse," he interrupted again. He never took his eyes from her. "That is enough, madame. It's a foine toime we' re havin' here together, this colleen lass and I. Isn't that right, me pretty?"
She rapidly began to understand him. It was more than a matter of words or accent. He held her fingers tightly, so tightly her skin was white around the imprint. Even with madame standing there, he said:
"And what will I have to do, little beauty? Eh? Will I have to buy you to take you to me bed?"
"Monsieur!" she spat, crimsoning and extricating her fingers in one mighty try.
He laughed. Not politely, but he did laugh, and full-bodied laughter, too. It was so genuine that she wanted to laugh as well.
"Monsieur, this is not a sporting house," the madame interjected discreetly.
"Yes, yes, I know. The quadroon balls. A jewelry shop for long-term investments in beautiful baubles, is it? All right, all right. It is your table I'm playing at, I'll abide your rules. Eh, lass? So tell me about yerself."
"What would Monsieur like to know?"
"Mam'selle Bassetete speaks three languages, she has been schooled in the social graces, her mother is a freedwoman, a seamstress ...."
"Can ya cook?"
"Oui, monsieur … uh … yes, sir. I prepare Creole, French and Américain ...."
"A soldier's woman needs to cook. We're basic, soldiers. Who's your father?"
"Sir, my father is a gentleman of the countryside ...."
"Frenchman?"
"Oui, monsieur."
"Ah, well, what does it matter when you've got nigger blood? And your mother, does she still … ah … service the gentleman of the countryside?"
"My mother is no longer in his employ," she said, and this time she did not drop her gaze. Their eyes met and she did not drop them, although her heart fluttered within the bodice like a caged sparrow. Thereafter, he asked the boldest questions and she gave him bold replies. She held her stature before him, some strange strength drawn from his audacity toward her and his contempt of her mixed blood and her own acceptance of their juxtaposed statuses. Until his friends pulled him away.
His friends were bound for more immediately earthy sport. They pulled him away by the sleeve of his uniform. He retreated with them, eyes on her, and she kept eye-contact until the sashes of the vestibule covered him like a curtain drawn at the end of a one-act play. After whispered, murmured political outrage from the Frenchmen, the ball took on the usual decor. But inside of her the ball was over.
Her thoughts were filled with him as her mother hurried her past Esplanade and into the Faubourg Marigny, where they rented the slave quarters of a public house. She had changed – on her mother's standing orders – into a homespun dress and the tignon. Women of color were forbidden by law to wear hats or to display fashionable coiffures in public. And anyway, her mother would not expose her beauty to the ruffians of the common streets, pirates and woodsmen and scoundrels and drunkards.
"But wasn't he beautiful, Maman!" she exclaimed in a whisper in the darkness near their door.
"Child," was her mother's only reply, "child."
Later in the lamplight of the shadowed and earth-toned boudoir she halted her daughter in setting down the mosquito netting. A gentle hand at her shoulder turned her this way and that as she appraised her form against the gauzy backdrop of the bed.
"I remember the fire, though, child. Lord, how I remember the fire, she said. "You forget that man. He's no good for you, not here nor anywhere else. You rest and sleep, child. You've got looks and skills enough, but good sense will get you through. Your maman's good sense."
So it was by sheer accident that she discovered he changed the guard at the Place D'Armes early each morning, just early enough for her to catch a glimpse of him before shopping at the market. For extra income and to pass on the art to Caroline, her mother catered delicacies daily to certain wealthy families. These moments shopping for sugar and syrups and the other ingredients, and delivering the cakes and pies and candies, had now become quite precious. Now, at any moment in any narrow street, she might encounter him, perhaps at the head of his troop of cavalry in plumes and shiny weapons and sparkling uniforms. And each day just after dawn, she saw him in his full regalia, commanding the garrison that protected Spanish rule.
At first, she hid to watch him, melding her somber clothes among the other negroes on the corners. Or she just stood back inside the shadows of verandahs or banana trees or the Cabildo, itself. Gradually, however, she began to want him to see her. She knew that she was beautiful, and she felt that somehow that matched, complemented his impressive military posture and manly presence. That way, the ritual of the changing of the guard became a ceremony for her, too. She was transformed, made one with him, a kind of marriage.
And she was careful of her appearance on the street, in hopes of that chance encounter. There was not one wrinkle in her dress when she began the day. She walked so carefully to show her grace and preserve the almost sterile exactness of her attire in case he should show himself that, near the end of her chores, she always had to hurry.
She was hurrying when it happened, that he picked her up, took her into his arms. The fall had turned cold and nasty-wet, the chill sinking into the bones like oil seeping through sand. Bundled with the shawl tucked into her belt and the tignon pulled down over her mist-glossy hair for warmth, she was carefully walking very fast across the slick-shiny cobblestones when he galloped up behind her. He galloped from the mist. There was bright-gray mist all around her and he came swiftly from behind. The horse's hooves clattered against the hard-rising sides of the close-set buildings. Then his strong arm was around her waist. The horse continued galloping, as she was lifted to his lap, skirts across the saddle and his riding-muscled thighs.
"Tis lucky I am to've snared an insurrectionist as lovely as you, lass. What've you got in the basket, there? Treasonous contraband is it?"
Rather feebly, she was pounding the powerful, encircling arms. Her heart was in his holding her, not in her escape. He laughed. Then he pulled away the tignon and let her lush, dark, scented hair fall free, a violation of the law protecting the white woman's romantic advantage.
The sight of her face, flushed from the excitement and exertion, her unbound wavy tresses a lovely dark frame for her sultry, brooding features, set on his own face a look of startled, unexpected love. It was love she saw in those blue orbs that in tiny quick darts searched hers to see if it were true. He vaulted her to the pavement so she knew that it was true.
"Maybe I'll come for you," he said. It was an attempt to regain his posture, but the thickness of his voice betrayed the bogus haughtiness, "some dark day."
Her shoulders straight, her head unbent, she flung it back.
"My mother would not approve," she said.
But he had regained it.
"Nor I," he said, "to mix my blood with that of black heathens."
"Black, sir, but not heathen. I am Catholic … like you."
He harrumphed and spurred his horse, disappeared into the mist. Lightly, she walked slowly the rest of the way home, not from concern for the footing against the slick cobblestones but rather from being sure of her footing in another matter. She was certain she had not heard the last of Captain James O'Doyle.
Then her mother broke her heart. A bargain had been made. Her … duties would begin with setting up a residence. He was a gentleman of the countryside, a friend of her father and nearly as old. An old man already. Her father made the recommendation. She would keep his house, his hearth, his bed in the city. His visits would be infrequent, but there would be servants, sentries. It was bondage. She had no time to wait. She sought out her lover in all but the carnal.
"Has he … had ya yet?"
She shook her head.
"Aye. Then we'll sport us then, first. I'll be the first."
But she denied him. Damaged goods were not sold to gentle folk. She found a place on Barracks Street. The captain took quarters next door. She came to him across the roof. The windows of little gables connected them. Over her sheer white gown she threw a black robe in deception and against the wet cold.
"And is it done?" he asked her that first night, because she had come to him even on that first night, after the old man had gone soundly to sleep. She nodded. He could not hide the wince, but he regained enough strength from the venom to at least reply brutally:
"Good! It's a bloody nuisance, anyhow. And isn't it a tidy little arrangement we've got us now? Come here, wench! I'll make of ya a soldier's woman."
His pride never allowed him to come to her in any other way. But there were moments in the deep, soft, dark night or when the tingling gray dawn lit the jewel beads of mist or dew, when he stroked her tenderly. In those moments, there was nothing except a man and a woman together. There was none of master and servant and slave. Only in those instants did she live.
He called her Callie when they laughed and loved together. It became her name in lieu of Caroline, as though he had brought her into existence with it. The days of duty, keeping up appearances, enduring even the old man's most intimate attentions, became bearable for those fleeting touches of fulfillment.
The captain fared less well. Garrison duty wore thin on him. The deception between them, although at first spicy to his taste, became another dull exercise. He was a man used to taking what he wanted, not waiting for it. Often, he spoke openly to her of how he longed for a transfer to Havana, or even to Guatemala where there was at least fighting. Each time, she prayed a rosary against it. Each time, her prayers were answered.
She lived for those cat-footed trips across the roof tiles, even when, upon returning, the frost sometimes froze hard against the edges of the roof and gables threatening to slide her to the pavement below. She crossed consistently. More often, now, she found him drunk. Sometimes she would simply lie beside his inert, snoring form. She did it just to feel his sleeping warmth. In sleep, sometimes, he stroked her hair.
She came even when winter nights pelted her with sleet. Then came the night she found his window shuttered. All entrances were usually barred against intrusion in those tempestuous times. She could not open it and she could not rouse him as he lay drunk inside.
So she returned. But this one, too, was bolted against her. Some servant, shivering from a draft perhaps, had discovered it, slid home the bolt. Back across the adjoining roof again and tried to rouse him with whispers and tapping fingernails against the panes. Finally, confused and trapped like a fledgling swift fallen through a chimney, she crouched upon the ballast slate roofing tiles. Her only hope was to wait for daylight, attract the early attention of a servant passing and pay the price of lifelong bribery. Perhaps he would awake, take her in to his formidable protection, forever.
There was only the black robe to gather about her. She huddled shivering beneath it, her gentle schooled fingers clawing it together at her breast. The wind was from the north, across Lake Pontchartrain. It grew more powerful and ice-edge cutting as the night deepened.
She backed against his chimney for protection. There was some heat held in the bricks as the fire inside the house grew fainter. She climbed upon the chimney's mouth to catch the last.
That was where they found her in the morning. Frozen there, the black robe fallen from shoulders across her back like folds of down.
Captain James O'Doyle stumbled into the icy street and craned his neck to force his bleary, morning-after gaze to the rooftop where the slaves removed her body. She had been curled around the opening, rigid, frozen stiff. He gave a little cry, stifled it with teeth biting into his knuckle, drawing blood. Then he clutched himself as though to tear the disheveled uniform, the flesh beneath. He ran into the house, bolted the door.
After that, he never ventured from the house except for duty. No one saw him socially. New Orleans society had ostracized him. But he had already purged himself of human company. Not even his Spanish friends could draw him out.
Her country gentleman gave up the adjoining quarters. No one rented them through the winter and into the spring. The captain was alone and without neighbors to hear him rage through the lonely nights. His was complete freedom to recriminate himself until, finally, through drink and grief, he managed to blame her for his suffering. Passersby crossed the street to avoid walking near his windows.
One morning a pedestrian, crossing to avoid the shadow of his house, discovered the stork. The huge bird was building a nest upon the captain's chimney. Creole and European gentlemen and ladies, coureurs du bois and Indians with furs for sale, and many slaves and free colored men and women soon gathered to watch the thatching. To some of them it meant a nostalgic return to European homelands where a stork upon a chimney meant good luck. Storks in Louisiana had never been known to nest on chimneys.
To the captain of horse it meant something quite different. The crowd recoiled when his door banged open and he stumbled into the street half-dressed. A pistol dangled from each hand. Drunk, raving curses in Gaelic and English with his thick Irish brogue, he dragged himself across the street. He lifted a pistol.
"Slut! Whore!" he shouted as he sighted blearily. He pulled the trigger. There was a tiny hesitation between the pan-flash and the charge ignition. He could not hold the muzzle steady and the ball blew away only a piece of the thatch. Yet the wood stork remained. It seemed to gaze downward, impervious.
Cursing more venomously but totally incoherent now, he threw the spent pistol to the street and took the other one into his right hand. Now he could not cock the hammer with one hand. He struggled with both thumbs.
A woodsman approached him. He spread wide his hands in the 'Cadien gesture of supplication. He shook his head.
"M'sieur, it is only a wood stork," he said, c'est juste une calebasse-tete."
"Callie Bassetete!" O'Doyle shouted, moaning, threw his shoulder into the woodsman and sent him sprawling among the boots and moccasins and high-button shoes. The hammer cocked back. He swung the pistol up. The stork rose, now, on the nest. Her wings spread wide, the black tips falling from her back and stretching to farthest reach.
He shot her through the breast. A red stain like a blush spread across the white feathers. She fell, folding, down. She rested in death on her nest.
But the downy feathers had not yet settled when the outraged crowd around him saw, lifting from the torn and blasted feathers and bone and flesh, the woman risen. She was resplendent.
She hovered, hands in the folds of white gown and black robe held so that the fabric draped statuesque, enlarging her. She looked down upon him with dark eyes deep-peering. For a long, full moment she brooded. He cringed slobbering on the damp street below.
A little bend of the knees and push of the feet upon the body of the wood stork. A push so gentle it hardly disturbed the soft feathers. She sailed into a rising morning mist lighted, lifted by the yellow sun.