BLUE BAYOU ~ Book I (historical): Fleur de Lis (31 page)

Parris Afton Bonds is the mother of five sons and the author of more than thirty-five published novels.
  She is the co-founder of and first vice president of Romance Writers of America.  Declared by ABC’s Nightline as one of three best-selling authors of romantic fiction, the award winning Parris Afton Bonds has been interviewed by such luminaries as Charlie Rose and featured in major newspapers and magazines as well as published in more than a dozen languages.  She donates her time to teaching creative writing to both grade school children and female inmates.  The Parris Award was established in her name by the Southwest Writers Workshop to honor a published writer who has given outstandingly of time and talent to other writers.  Prestigious recipients of the Parris Award include Tony Hillerman and the Pulitzer nominee Norman Zollinger.

Connect with Parris at:

http://www.parrisaftonbonds.com

https://www.facebook.com/ParrisAftonBondsParadise

http://www.amazon.com/author/parrisaftonbonds

B L U E  *  B A Y O U

BOOK II ~ LIONS AND RAMPARTS

BY

PARRIS AFTON BONDS

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PART
THREE

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§ CHAPTER ONE §

Louisiana Colony

July
1751

A section of the Riviere Rouge meandered into a wild and swampy region. People found the area excessively creepy and stayed away. Bleached skeletons of long-dead trees seemed to take on a ghostly glow in the fading light of day. Like long, gray fingers, wispy strands of moss reached down from overhanging limbs for trespassers.

Nearing six, Reinette du Plessis was not a trespasser. Her earliest memory was of magical swamp lights that danced for her. P
ère Philippe called the fairy lights “gases.” She preferred the less prosaic term of fairy lights. For Reinette, the treacherous swamp held only beauty: floating beds of lilies and shaded tunnels of tupelo gums and wisteria that lead to thick groves of feathery bamboo. The only thing that could possibly be lovelier was Maison Bellecour.

The way
Père Philippe described what should have been her estates, so he said, made Maison Bellecour seem like some sort of magical castle. One day, he promised her, he would take her there—“home,” he called it.

A family of egrets lifted their heads in a stately attitude to watch the old man and young girl in the bateau. A screech owl blinked solemnly at the girl’s soft, joyous laughter and took flight
when she leaned near the base of a tree trunk to pluck a wild orchid and tuck it into her tangled mane of tawny hair.

Stillness permeated the tropical air, broken only by the sounds of water burbling against the raft and the splashes of her and
Père Philippe’s poles in the water as they drove the bateau ahead.

A haze of gnats swarmed over
Père Philippe. Mindlessly, quite mindlessly, he swatted at them and murmured in a childish voice, “Kill the pests . . . just like I’ll kill young Fabreville . . . when the time is ripe.”

In the upper reaches above the swamp, the Red River was energetic and somewhat boisterous, flowing from one point to another in a no-nonsense manner. In the swamp, however, it turned lazy and slothful, sprawling out in a drunken stupor of aimlessly meandering channels. Most of these channels ended in bogs that could have slurped down a yoke of oxen. The trick was to find the single channel that didn’t end with a bog.

The old man and the girl poled in the shadows, feeling their way through the low-hanging branches, the dead moss hair brushing their faces. The moss reminded her of Père Philippe’s long, scraggly beard.

Perfectly attuned to the swamp, Reinette detected some current in the water and identified it as the main channel. The main channel led to the river—and towns, towns filled with people. Her curiosity ached to visit these places, but
Père Philippe’s warning that the people were as dangerous as alligators dampened her interest for a while, anyway.

Soon moonlight began filtering into the swamp.
Strange protuberances called cypress knees reached up for the bateau from the watery depths. Mist rose from the water, and the swamp came alive with eerie sounds—screeches, hoots, howls—and something else.

She canted her head, listening for the sound that was out of place. Men’s voices. Just ahead, looming out of the mist, she saw it—a boat much bigger than the bateau. And men, perhaps a dozen, armed with long rifles.

“There he is!”

“That’s the old coot!”

“The girl’s with him—you think it’s her, the Brissac child?”

Père
Philippe shouted, “Paddle, Reinette!”

Over her shoulder, she saw the blue-coated soldiers, as noiseless
and swift as bats, swooping down on them. Then her paddle flayed the water.

Père
Philippe tried to turn the bateau around, but a shot reverberated against the swamp’s tunneled wall of trees. The bent old man struggled to his feet and lurched sideways, unbalancing the bateau. His arms flailed the air with Gallic madness. Then both of them were toppled overboard, and Reinette felt the mire and ooze swallow her.