‘The river is our road,’ Madame Labiche told her as she and Ellen walked under the great awnings of the house down towards the Mississippi. ‘It is our great nourisher.’
Ellen could understand the respect in which the giant river was held, by those whose lands it nourished, and whose produce it whisked to the far ends of the world. The levees the human fortresses were built against a Mississippi which, if angered, could flood the low-lying plantation lands. Built by the Labiches, and completed when Emeritus, the woman’s husband was a boy.
‘The levees and the Labiches are synonymous – they are our safeguards,’ Lucretia told her. ‘Monsieur Labiche would, every evening after dinner, leave whatever guests were at table and go to the levee.’ Madame Labiche scarcely paused in the telling. ‘It is an old sacred tradition of the Labiche men, under whose protection we fall.’
‘Do you go to the levee, Lucretia?’ Ellen asked.
‘Good Heavens, no! No! It is for the head of the household to do such a thing. A lady would never make for such a public display of duty!’
As if in answer, the following evening the Mississippi raised its levels, swelling over the Labiche levee. Little damage was done, some of the gardens momentarily floundering under Big Muddy’s waters. It caused excitement among the slaves – ‘Big River risin’! Big River is risin’!’ they chanted.
Though the house itself was untouched, Madame Labiche considered the breaching of the levee to be an ominous sign. ‘Had Monsieur Labiche been here and not fighting the Northern traitors, this would never have happened,’ she said, as if blaming her own faulty stewardship of the levee. ‘It is a portent, Madame Lavelle, a bad portent!’
It was a portent for Ellen too. That she should leave, continue her search. That Patrick, Lavelle and Stephen had all been here previously had provided some bond, some strange attraction within her for this splendid place. She wondered if the bringing down of these great houses and all they stood for was what this war was all about? A jealous envy thinly disguised in the cloths of ‘equality’ and ‘freedom’? A grasping kind of jealousy. Wanting first to subdue the soul of the South, then possess its riches.
She bade goodbye to Madame Labiche and thanked her for her hospitality. The mistress had ordered that a carriage take her back to New Orleans from whence she would travel northwards.
As she left, Ellen turned to look backwards. Lucretia Labiche stood framed by the majestic structure of Versailles, no hand raised, her angular frame diminishing as the distance grew between them. Like some garden detail, unmoving, its place forever determined.
The journey to New Orleans gave Ellen time to recollect her thoughts. Patrick had been here – often with both Stephen Joyce and Oxy Moran. Stephen would easily have been accepted into such society with his airish ways. Patrick had met and fallen in love with Emmeline, now sent for safety with her sister to a convent – whereabouts unrevealed by Madame Labiche. It was a doomed love, Ellen knew, a mismatch of unequals. At least Patrick would have had no sense of this, she imagined, would have gone into battle with hope in his heart. He and Oxy had gone under Stephen’s command with the Louisiana infantry. Lavelle, having found, what he mistakenly imagined was her book, and Emmeline’s letters, had then arrived, thinking Ellen to have been there at some stage with Patrick.
Lavelle would then, from his visit, have learned of Stephen Joyce. Maybe by now have puzzled out that the book was not indeed Patrick’s but Stephen’s. The question would then arise as to why he had given it to Patrick. Then Lavelle would remember. Her disappearance … all of it would now fit together in his mind.
He would try to find the Louisianians, find Stephen. Exact revenge on her once lover. She quailed at the thought.
She must prevent any retribution, further losses. Get back to the battlefields … must first find the Louisianians. Then she would find Stephen … and Lavelle.