Savage Surrender Read online

  "That night, as I was sitting on the veranda, I saw a faint glow in the southern sky. I gathered Dominique and some of the men and we took out a couple of small boats, but by the time we cast off, the Charleston Belle was a blazing torch on the dark sea, and before we could reach her she sank into the gulf with her Captain aboard.

  "The moon was fair, and we kept an eye out for floating timbers that could have supported a clinging survivor, but there was nothing. The evil that was Captain Fowler perished by fire and water at his own hand.

  "The next morning your fever was gone, and you spoke your first words, Mademoiselle. You asked me to kill a dead man. I am sorry; I should have felt honored to kill him for you."

  I sat without moving, stunned by his words.

  "But life goes on, Mademoiselle, and that chapter of your life is finished forever, or it will be when you feel you trust me enough to tell me about it. Do you not think it is too big a burden to carry alone?" Without waiting for an answer, he said, "Come, let us go inside now. You are tired."

  "Yes, I am." He bent over to pick me up. I rested my hand on his arm. "Monsieur Lafitte."

  "Yes, Mademoiselle?"

  "My name is Elise. Elise Antoinette Leonore Mariani Lesconflair. I—I would be honored if you would address me by my first name."

  "Thank you, Elise. And you may call me Jean, if you like."

  Lafitte left for New Orleans the next day on business. He expected to be gone a week, perhaps more. Lily was determined that when he returned I would greet him at the door standing on my own two feet and looking, as she put it, as pretty as a black-eyed Susan. She was a stern taskmaster, watching what I ate and making me take longer and longer walks every day.

  "It feels good to walk on a surface that isn't tipping under my feet," I told her. "It's much easier, in fact."

  I learned that the two pirates who had discovered me on the Charleston Belle were Jean Lafitte's older brothers. They came to visit me one day. Pierre, who was only two years older than Jean, was the same height as his brother but thicker in build and darker. He was careless in his dress—his shirt was torn and soiled, and he wore a knotted red handkerchief around his neck—but he had a kind of rough attractiveness that I found very appealing. Dominique You, ten years older than Pierre, was short, hardly taller than I was, with a dark swarthy face badly scarred on the left side by powder burns. His shoulders were broad and meaty, about twice the size of his brothers', and I could see why I had felt like a cloud, if his arms had carried me off the Charleston Belle. Dominique You looked like the crudest, most dangerous villain imaginable, but when his face broke into a mirthful grin and his eyes twinkled at me, I could see that he wore his villainy like working clothes—to disguise his good heart. I thanked him for saving me from the Charleston Belle.

  "Ah, Mademoiselle, it is always a pleasure to rescue a young lady from evil like that. And may I say you are looking quite dazzling today. Why, this island's never seen the likes of you before, has it, Pierre? Say, how did you come to be on that tub, anyway? That Captain got his desserts, I suppose Jean told you. Our Jean is a great one with a blade, and with words, too, as you have no doubt discovered."

  Pierre spoke up. "Shut your trap, Dominique, for God's sake. Mademoiselle is too tired to listen to your yarns. My apologies for my brother, Mademoiselle. He did not have the benefit of the fine education Jean and I received, and he has spent so many years in the crude company of privateers and low waterfront types—"

  "Few so crude as you, Pierre!"

  "—that he has forgotten how to act with ladies of quality."

  I barely managed to keep from giggling. "Thank you, Monsieur, but I find nothing at all objectionable about your brother's manners. You forget, I have spent a good deal of time myself in the company of low waterfront types, and I fear my quality has been somewhat tarnished."

  "Never!"

  "Unthinkable!" They chorused in protest. "Gold," Dominique asserted gallantly, "will always shine brightly when it is rubbed, even if it has the grime of centuries on it."

  I couldn't help myself. I laughed merrily and said, "Thank you, Monsieur Dominique, for that delightful compliment. I have never had a nicer."

  "You numbskull," Pierre growled. "Swords have two edges; compliments should never have more than one, much less three! But then who could expect a full-sized brain in a little sawed-off runt like—"

  Dominique's eyes flashed. "Why you bandy-legged, two-bit bean smuggler. I'll give you both edges of my blade in your scrawny neck. I was chasing the British when you were still wearing baby dresses."

  "Maybe so," Pierre retorted, "but did you catch any, grandpop?"

  "Catch them! You bet your skinny ass I caught 'em, and I squeezed the life out of 'em and threw 'em overboard, just like I'm going to throw you over Mademoiselle's balcony." Quick as a flash Dominique had wrapped his huge arms around Pierre who, though brawny himself and a full head taller, struggled and shouted futilely while Dominique dragged him out on my balcony. I ran after them and tugged on Dominique's shirtsleeve.

  "Where?" I asked breathlessly, hoping to prevent bloodshed. "Where did you chase the British, Dominique?"

  "Ho, where haven't I, eh, Pierre?" Pierre affirmed with a sullen grunt, and Dominique released him. Then they began to tell me the story of the Lafitte brothers.

  The Lafittes had been born on the island of Haiti, in the days when it was still a French possession, and before the bloody and bitter slave uprisings that had brought it to independence as a black nation in 1799. Alexandre, the oldest, became a privateer, and after the fashion of the other privateers of the times, he changed his name—to Dominique You.

  As a privateer, Dominique carried letters of marque from French colonial governments which authorized him to stop and seize enemy vessels, mostly English and Spanish, in the name of the Emperor. Naturally, the spoils of war were the privateer's to keep, and Pierre and Jean were eager to follow Alexandre or Dominique You, into this most dangerous and lucrative profession.

  Dominique sailed to France, where he won fame as a cannoneer in Napoleon's navy. The two younger brothers joined their cousin, Réné Beluche, who already had twelve years experience as a privateer. When the situation in Haiti during the slave rebellions became critical, Pierre and Jean evacuated many French refugees to New Orleans, and then set out to procure their own letters of marque and a ship of their own.

  The American purchase of Louisiana put a different light on things. America was a neutral nation, not at war, like France, with England, Holland, and Spain. Under no circumstances could she condone privateering. But Jean decided, like many of the other privateers, to continue the lucrative but illegal operations. So, using Louisiana as their home base, Jean and Pierre became pirates, and when Dominique returned from France, he joined them.

  The pirates took their prizes outright, without pursuing their claims through maritime court as they had done previously, and they smuggled their goods to New Orleans, where eager buyers awaited them. American restrictions on imports and the embargo on shipping in 1807 forced prices up in American markets. When the pirate-smugglers began to offer identical goods at lower prices, they found that the markets would take whatever they could supply. Hundreds of independent smugglers tried to cash in on the demand, and it soon became obvious that some sort of organization was necessary to channel their various nefarious talents properly and to keep prices competitive.

  "For example," said Dominique, "you take some green, smart-assed young fellow in tight breeches who decides that he wants to be a pirate. He gets himself a boat, goes out after a big merchant ship, and the Devil drinks bilge water if he isn't so stupid that he sinks her! The merchant loses, the pirates lose, and the public loses. Hopeless!"

  "And," Pierre added, "even if he does manage to capture the ship, where does he go to sell his goods? He doesn't have any connections, you see, and he tries to sell his bolts of silk cloth to some storekeeper who has a thousand bolts already and who offers him a dollar apiece for
the bolts, saying, 'Well, I don't need your cloth, but I'll take it off your hands as a favor.'"

  "Why, if you had enough goods you could create your own demand," I said, "by controlling the supply."

  "You catch on pretty damn fast," said Dominique proudly. "Make a good pirate, this one, eh, Pierre?"

  "So what did you do?" I asked. "What happened next?"

  "We had ourselves a Pirates' Convention about six years ago, right here on Grand Terre. They all came, remember, Pierre? Vincent Gambie, and Réné, and that Cut Nose Chighizola. Cut Nose and Vincent Gambie each thought they were gonna take over the whole empire, no matter how many throats they had to cut along the way, the bloodthirsty bastards. And every organization has to have a leader, you can see that."

  "Of course," I said, fascinated.

  "Well, you can imagine the scene," said Dominique slowly, savoring his position as the center of my rapt attention. "There we are, everybody with a sword in his mouth and a dagger in each hand, gathered together on this sand bar in the middle of nowhere like we were waiting for the second coming. And in a way we were. The way it works out there are four possible choices: Réné, Cut Nose, Gambie, and Jean. Pierre and I aren't in the running, because we know that Jean is smarter than any of them and he's smarter than us by a long shot, and neither do we relish working for Cut Nose or Gambie, the—Well, never mind. Réné Beluche is all right, because he's a cousin, but Réné has always liked the sailing and whoring part best and he doesn't really want to run the show. Gambie wants it bad because he's just plain greedy, and Cut Nose wants to set himself up as the King of Barataria. We all know that both of 'em would cheat us blind, but they're hard men who would kill to stay on top. Thank the Holy Gates they hate each other's guts, because if they teamed up we'd all be working for nothing." Dominique shook his head.

  "And then there was Jean, sitting there as cool as you please in the middle of all that scum. I can still see him, flicking out the ruffles on his cuffs and smiling as though he was stepping out to a ball. Some of them don't know him too well, and they look at him and decide he's soft. But Jean just watches them fight it out. Some of the boys line up behind Chighizola, and some of them behind Gambie, but Jean doesn't care.

  "Two days of wraggling go by, and we're all tired and edgy, and then all of a sudden when they least expect it, Jean stands up and says in that soft voice of his that penetrates over the roar of a cannon, "Gentlemen,'—he always calls 'em gentlemen—'Gentlemen, you are wasting your time, if you will forgive me for saying so.' This brings on a bit of a stir and a rumble 'cause they don't like this young fellow gettin' up there insultin' 'em. 'You have come here to elect a leader,' he says, 'and instead it looks like you will follow either a thief, who will rob you'—that's Gambie—'or a knave who will use your talents and then throw you to the wolves'—that's Cut Nose.

  "And then he tells 'em that if they want this thing run for profit it should be run like a business, and that takes a man with brains. He tells 'em exactly what has to be done: storing the goods, moving them, distributing and getting a fair return on 'em. And most of all, doing it so every man of us doesn't land in jail. They like it, we can tell, and it's quiet while they're listening, for the first time in two days it's quiet. You can feel the tide turning in Jean's favor, but there are two men there who don't like it, don't like it at all.

  "So Jean is telling the boys how he'll do all this for them, and they're cheering and drinking to him and eating right out of his hand when he tells them that he'll make them twice as rich as they ever dreamed. And then Gambie comes up and throws his arm around Jean's shoulders and tells him how he thinks it's great and how he'll do all he can to help Jean, and so on. Nice gesture, isn't it? But there's steel in Gamble's other hand that nobody sees—Vincent always likes to carry a knife up his sleeve, just in case—and then quick as a flash Jean throws him down and gets his knife and sits on his chest, with the point of the knife just pricking Vincent' s gullet."

  I was spellbound with excitement, and Dominique smiled appreciatively.

  "'Monsieur Gambie,' he says all polite, 'I have always admired your courage and your abilities as a pirate, and I regret having to exclude you from this venture, but you leave me no choice.' He digs in with his knife a little harder and Vincent squalls like a baby and says he didn't mean it, he was only testing.

  '"And did I pass your test, Monsieur?' Jean asks him. His voice is as hard as flint, and all you can hear is the waves on the sand, everybody is that quiet. Vincent Gambie says yes, you pass. Then Jean stands up and hands him back his knife and turns his back on the man, to show he trusts him. That's what really wins the boys. And then Jean takes a sword and weighs it in his hand and says, 'Perhaps there is another among you who would like to test my mettle?' Not a sound. 'Very well,' says he, 'I agree to run this business for you. I am one of you, gentlemen. The man who cheats me cheats you; the man who crosses me betrays you; the man who kills me dissolves the organization and puts you all back where you started, squabbling and arguing like a bunch of hungry sea gulls. Is that clear?' It's clear. 'Then by God what are we waiting for? Let's drink to it!' he says. And they give him a cheer that can be heard in New Orleans.

  "And that," said Dominique, settling back and beaming at me, "is the story of the Lafittes."

  "It's a wonderful story," I breathed.

  Pierre nodded. "And there isn't a soul in New Orleans who isn't involved in this thing one way or another. There's never been anything like it."

  "Yes, and look at us now," Dominique said. "Six years later, and on Grand Terre alone we have forty warehouses, forty! Not to mention the ones in New Orleans and up and down the river as far as Donaldsonville. And we got homes here for the boys that wants 'em, and a brothel and a tavern, and a hospital—"

  "But no church?" I put in. They roared with laughter.

  "No, no church! Hey, Pierre, we'll have to tell Jean that. He'll like it. And slave pens—"

  "Slave pens?" I frowned. "You mean—"

  "Of course. Why do you think we took that slave ship you were on, if not for the cargo? I know it's not nice for patriots like us to prey on an American ship, but that Captain was outside the law and he took the risk. You know what they do, these American slavers, they run up a Spanish flag when they come into American waters and nobody is supposed to touch 'em. Well, we touch 'em. Slavery is a big part of our business here. Did you know that a good slave buck brings five hundred dollars on the open market now? And a female three hundred?"

  Lily came in and saw that I was looking tired.

  "Now you boys know better than to talk this poor girl to death. Shame on you, Mister Dominique, and you too, Mister Pierre. You jest get on out of here now, 'fore I throws you out."

  "Aw, Lily, we was just telling the young lady—"

  "I knows what kind of trash you been tellin' her, now git!"

  Somewhat abashed, they stood up, bowed stiffly, and shuffled out.

  I was still exhilarated by the romantic history of the Lafittes, but discovering their involvement in slavery soured my enjoyment and made me feel bitter and depressed. But what, after all, had I expected?

  "What you lookin' so low about, Missy?" Lily asked.

  "It seems the bold buccaneer is just another slaver after all," I said sadly. "He's no different from Captain Fowler."

  Lily frowned and turned her head on the side. "Slaver? Mister Lafitte? Well, now, I suppose he is. But he didn't invent slavery, and he can't change it, and so he lives with it. We all do, Missy. You can love it or you can hate it, but you can't change it. Didn't they have no slaves where you come from?"

  "Oh, no, Lily. We—they have servants, of course, who are paid a wage or given a place to live and their keep."

  "Well, that's what the slaves gets here, too, at least the lucky ones do. 'Course some of 'em are just about worked to death, from what you hear."

  "Are you a slave, Lily?"

  The big woman put her hands on her hips and said haughtily, "Me? One of them
ragtag good-for-nothin's? I should say not. Why, I'm married and I got four children. My man's done been sailing for Mister Lafitte for the past five years. Now you rest. Those fools ain't got no business comin' up here and makin' you all tired and sad like this."

  What a strange country this was, I thought when I was alone. In addition to being a pirate, this Lafitte was a shrewd businessman who bought and sold human flesh. Now a shrewd man would not be guilty of making a poor investment. I wondered what he had in mind for me when he took me into his house and restored me to health. Would he sell me, too? Why, oh, why did the course of a woman's life seem to depend on the choices a man made concerning her?

  The next day Lily brought me a beautiful sprigged muslin gown. "From Mister Lafitte," she said. "He put some women to sewin' for you before he left. And there's lots more, Missy. Dresses and night things and beautiful negligees, and oh, so many pretty things."

  I fingered the fine fabric. The soft white muslin was embroidered at the neck and hem with crimson rosebuds and trailing green vines. The neckline was cut modestly low, and the sleeves were softly puffed. Red ribbons attached to the sides crossed under my breasts and tied in a bow at the back. "It's lovely," I said.

  "Here, put it on." Lily helped me out of my convalescent robes and into the lovely soft gown. "Oh, Missy, that's beautiful!" The full skirts moved gracefully as I walked around the floor. I lifted the hem and marveled at the tiny stitches. I had never seen such beautifully delicate handwork, not even in Paris. "I'll say one thing, Missy, you sure can wear the clothes. Yes, Mister Lafitte will be real happy. He likes his women to wear pretty things."