Carolina Gold (28 page)
The taller man in the party smiled and pumped the hotelier’s hand as the bellman hurried up the stairs. “That’s what we love about staying here, Gustav,” he said. “No detail escapes your notice.”
“Ah. I’m glad you are pleased. How much more I could do for you if only I had the entire staff at my disposal.”
While he attended to the other guests, Charlotte wandered to the window and looked out. Carriages and rigs rattled along the busy street. Women pushing carts and perambulators dodged knots of Federal soldiers and noisy children kicking a ball along the banquette. Down on the corner, a vegetable seller was opening up his cart as if this were a normal day and the city was not caught in the grip of a deadly epidemic. But perhaps this part of the city was unaffected. She recalled more than one such outbreak in Charleston when she was young when certain parts of town were decimated while others went unscathed.
The bellman came down laden with bags, hatboxes, and a
trunk. The guests followed him onto the street and a carriage drew up at the door.
“Miss Fraser.” Mr. Dubois joined her at the window. “Please forgive the interruption. The Morellis are regular guests when they are in town. Lovely people, but they do require special tending. Theater people are so temperamental, I find, and so easily offended.” He motioned toward the parlor. “Would you care for more coffee?”
“No thank you. I’m anxious to get started—if only I knew where to start.”
“Yes, well, as I was about to say, I heard that the general has left New Orleans. However, he isn’t the only Confederate general in town.”
“Oh?”
“This city has drawn them like bees to honey. General Hood is here. He had an insurance business for a while, but I’m not certain what he’s doing now. General Early comes and goes. General Beauregard may be the one to see, though I hear he doesn’t much care for strangers.”
“General Beauregard?” Charlotte felt a flicker of hope.
“You know him?”
“Not really. I met him once, years ago.”
“He isn’t quite the same now.” Mr. Dubois shook his head. “It’s a shame, what the war did to so many fine men. Ruined them for anything but fighting and killing.”
Charlotte thought then of Lettice Hadley’s husband. Another walking casualty of the late Confederacy. But she couldn’t dwell on that, not when Nicholas might be sick or dead. She opened her reticule and took out her notebook and pencil. “Where might I find General Beauregard?”
“Ah,
ma petite
, that’s hard to say. He keeps an office at the railway company, and he owns a few properties here in town. But
from what I hear, he’s mostly in residence at his place on Chartres. I forget the address, but the carriage driver will know. If not, tell him to look for a house with big pillars and a curving double stair out front.”
Mr. Dubois held out both arms, elbows bent, his hands curving inward in imitation of a staircase. Charlotte wrote it all down, but from what she had seen on the drive from the train station yesterday, the description fit half of the houses in New Orleans.
“Come,” Mr. Dubois said. “I’ll summon a carriage.”
T
he carriage rocked to a stop. The driver jumped down and opened the door. “This is it.”
Charlotte left the carriage and studied the house. There were the pillars and the curving double staircase Mr. Dubois had described. Through the wrought-iron side gate, a colorful garden beckoned, in sharp contrast to the shuttered windows that offered no hint of welcome. Across the street, a pair of nuns and a gray-haired priest hurried toward the door of a neighborhood church.
“Shall I wait for you, miss?”
“Oh. No, I haven’t any idea how long this might take.” She handed him a couple of bills. “Could you call for me here in, say, an hour?”
“Mebbe. Depends on whether I’m busy.” He pocketed his money, climbed up, and drove away.
Charlotte looked around, then ascended the staircase and rang the bell. A small dark-skinned man dressed entirely in white answered it. “Yes?”
“My name is Charlotte Fraser. I must speak to General Beauregard.”
“You and half of the free world.”
“Is he home?”
“He’s here. But he’s having his breakfast and not expecting any visitors.”
“I apologize for arriving unannounced. But I’ve come all the way from Charleston to find someone who has gone missing. I’m hoping the general can help.”
He drew himself up, blocking the doorway. “Somebody goes missing, you call the police.”
She sighed. “Would you mind asking General Beauregard if he will spare ten minutes in the service of a Confederate lady?”
“War’s over. Confederacy’s dead.” He made a move to close the door.
“Wait. Please.” She fumbled with the clasp of her reticule. “If he won’t see me, would you at least deliver a note to him?”
She scribbled on a wrinkled calling card and pressed it into his hands. The door slammed shut.
When the butler did not reappear, she descended the stairs and stood on the banquette, eyes narrowed against the bright sunlight. What should she do now? Wait to see whether the general would see her, whether the carriage driver would return? Walk back to the Orleans Palace? Or cross the street to the church and hope that someone there would help her?
“Miss. Over here.”
Charlotte whirled around.
A thin girl in a ragged calico dress stood in the narrow alley next to the general’s house, a small white dog tucked beneath one arm. She strolled over to Charlotte. “They wouldn’t let you in, eh?” She grinned, revealing several missing teeth.
“I’m afraid not.” Charlotte held her breath against the stench coming off the girl.
“He leaves home at ten sharp ever’ morning.”
“The servant?”
“No, you ninny. The general.”
“I see.” Charlotte sighed and consulted the small watch she wore on a chain around her neck. Not much past eight. She didn’t relish a two-hour wait in the rising heat, but it might be her only chance to seek the general’s help.
“Gon’ get awful hot just standin’ here till ten,” the girl said. “Another hour and it’ll be hot enough to stop a hummingbird’s wings.”
“Yes.” Already beads of sweat were forming on her brow, and the bodice of her dress clung like a second skin.
“I can take you to my place. Ain’t far.”
“That’s very kind, but I couldn’t impose.”
The girl frowned. “Ma’am?”
“I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”
The dog began to whine, and the girl jostled him to quiet him. “If you ain’t the most impossible person I’ve ever met. Would you mind speaking in plain old English? I don’t know any of them fancy words.”
Despite the odor and the girl’s unkempt appearance, Charlotte found it hard not to like her. “When someone offers to open her house to a lady, the polite thing to do is to ref—to say no thank you. It’s what we call the rules of etiq—of proper behavior.”
The girl threw back her head and laughed. The dog wiggled and did his best to lick her face. “Oh mercy me, fancy lady. Me and Cosette here don’t have a house worth the name. When I said I’d take you to my place, I meant my cool spot down on the river. It’s just a fallin’-down warehouse shack, but I got it fixed up real nice, and it keeps the sun and the rain off. We can sit a spell till it’s time for you to come back here and waylay the general.” She stared into Charlotte’s face, her dark eyes lively with curiosity. “What you want with that Creole anyway?”
Charlotte shook her head. She was tired of explaining.
“Reckon it ain’t none of my business,” the girl said. “Forget I asked. Me and Cosette’s goin’ home. You coming or ain’t you?”
The morning was heating rapidly, the humidity a tangible presence. The carriage driver was unlikely to return for her, and she didn’t relish the prospect of a long, hot walk back to the hotel. Maybe it was foolish to follow the girl when an epidemic was raging, but if this urchin was telling the truth and she could actually speak to the general, perhaps it was a chance worth taking. “I’m coming. Thank you.”
The girl laughed again. “Don’t thank me till you seen the place. Ain’t nothing to brag on, that’s for sure. Come on.”
Charlotte followed her through a maze of streets and alleyways, past Saturday crowds in the outdoor markets and a blur of faces in shades of white, brown, and black. All along the banquette, women in bright tignons tended their children, street vendors plied their wares, and pairs of nuns glided past, hands tucked inside their habits.
At last Charlotte and the girl emerged on the waterfront. “Jackson Square’s up that way, past Chartres Street.” She jerked a thumb. “Me and Cosette don’t go up there too much. We like it down here.”
She led the way along a creaking wharf that smelled of fish and horse droppings. Dead fish, rotten apples, and watermelon rinds floated in the placid, rust-colored water. They came to a row of shacks, the wood weathered to a silvery gray. The girl pushed open a door and waved her hand. “After you.”
Charlotte crouched and entered a cramped space containing a thin, narrow mattress, a cast-iron skillet, a chamber pot, and a stack of old newspapers. In the corner stood a bamboo fishing pole and a metal bucket. A rusty stewpot gave off the odor of fish, potatoes, and onions. The only light came from
cracks between the boards and the open doorway, which overlooked the river.
The girl plopped down on the mattress. “You don’t like it. I can tell. I told you wasn’t nothing.”
“Do you live here alone?”
“Nope. I got Cosette here.”
“But what about a parent, a relative? You seem young to be on your own.”
The girl shrugged. “I’m nigh on fourteen. That’s old enough.”
Charlotte’s heart went out to the girl. “What happened to your family?”
“Dead.”
“Oh. From the fever?”
“Nah. Cholera got my mama when I was ten. Pa got shot one night in a brawl down at the lottery building.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t need to be crying over neither one of ’em. My mama was what you call a lady of the evening. Kept comp’ny with fancy gentlemen. And Pa wouldn’t be dead if he wasn’t a gambling man.”
“Still, someone should look after you.”
“Oh Lord. Please tell me you don’t aim to reform me. I swear, for a while there right after Pa met his maker, the church ladies was down here just about ever’ week, trying to get me into an orphanage or a boardin’ school or some such.” She waved a hand toward the stack of papers. “I can read good as anybody, and count money so’s I don’t get cheated. I got me a place to sleep and the best dog that ever lived. I come and go when I feel like it. Don’t know what else a body needs.”
Charlotte bit her tongue to keep from speaking aloud. She could think of plenty of things. Proper food and a safe place to sleep. A dentist to remove those rotting teeth. Water and soap for
bathing and someone to teach the girl how to get on in the world. “How do you manage to eat?”
“They’s plenty of ways. Fishin’ mostly. Sometimes I make a little money toting stuff off the quay for Mr. Collins. Most days me and Cosette go up to Royal Street where the fruit sellers work. Sometimes they throw away apples and plums and such at the end of the day. Perfectly good too. No sense wasting it.”
“I suppose not.”
“Last fall a cotton ship blew up and stuff scattered everywhere. Watermelons, cracker tins, jars of jelly, a good-sized ham hock. Me and Cosette picked up a wheelbarrow full of food. Ate real good for almost a month.” The girl went to the cooking pot and used a wooden dipper to spoon stew into a cracked china bowl. She let the dog slurp some from the dipper and then held it out to Charlotte. “Want some?”
Charlotte swallowed. “No thank you. I just had breakfast.”
“Suit yourself.” The girl drank the concoction straight from the bowl, wiping the dribble from her chin with her sleeve. The dog jumped into her lap, tail thumping, and she plucked a bit of potato from the bowl and fed it to the dog.
Charlotte blotted her face with her handkerchief and surreptitiously covered her nose as she breathed. Her heart ached for this lost child. No one should have to live in such squalor, even if she claimed to like it.
Presently a red-and-white steamboat chugged into view, its wheels churning the muddy water, lively banjo music spilling from the open deck. Women in brightly colored dresses leaned against the rail.
“That’s the
Mary Eileen
,” the girl said. “Comes this way ever’ Saturday, docks just up the quay at ten o’clock sharp.” She picked up the dog. “Reckon you best be getting back on over to Chartres if you want to catch that general.”
They went outside. Charlotte looked around at the unfamiliar surroundings. How on earth had she gotten here? And how would she find her way back?
The girl grinned. “Completely lost, fancy lady?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Come on. Me and Cosette’ll walk you back.”
A few minutes later they emerged once more onto a street. “This is Chartres,” the girl said. “The general’s house is just down that way. Try not to get lost between here and there.”
Charlotte couldn’t help smiling. “You’ve been an excellent guide. I want to pay you for your services and for your hospitality.”